# Growth Expert: Build a Profitable SaaS from Scratch Everytime

Channel: Brett Malinowski
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHQDCple6DI
Duration: 1 hr 22 min
Language: English
Words: 21636
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/jHQDCple6DI

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[0:00] How old were you when you made your first $100,000? Um, probably like end of 13 years old, early 14. You made $100,000 at 14 years old. How old were you when you dropped out of high school? 16. How much is your company roughly worth right now? Um, our last valuation we raised at last year, a little over a year ago, was uh

[0:18] $800 million. You've done this whole path for 13 years. I'm interested if you were to start a new company [clears throat] by like by scratch, you wanted to start a software company, just you How do you go about that? What are the steps in your mind from the idea getting it built, getting your first customers, and what were like the frameworks you

[0:40] would use to scale it? Mh. The first question to myself would be like, what annoys me? Like what don't I like about the world? So, I'd probably like I would just go through my day like what do I do throughout the day? Like I wake up, that's fine. I don't think I would change anything there. Um I start brushing my teeth. It's annoying. I get annoyed that I have to hold my toothbrush every single morning. I'd probably like one idea would be like an automatic toothbrush that's just like a mouth guard you put in and it brushes your teeth for you automatically. Um so I would just go down the sequence of

[1:04] like how do I spend every minute of every day like when I call my Uber am I happy or am I upset? I'm pretty happy. It's pretty awesome. Uber comes in 60 seconds. Like there's not much room for innovation there. So I would just go down every minute of my day. I would carry a journal with me probably for like a month and force myself um unless it becomes like this is the idea. But I would set like a pretty like unlimited time frame of I'm just going to write

[1:21] down every single thing that annoys me. um because if it annoys me and I'm willing to then pay for it, other people will also be willing to pay for it. So that would be step one is when we started [ __ ] it was we had 30 bots of this one bot called Eve. Um they were selling for $50 a day. I went we found this random Discord server. I started selling them. We were making like $2,000 a day. I just had a spreadsheet of all these license keys. I'd have to VMO

[1:40] request people. It was really annoying. So like we built [ __ ] for ourselves because I just wanted to have more time back in the day. Like I didn't want to sit on a spreadsheet all day resetting keys and VEmo requesting people. So, um, step one is build something that annoys you. Um, step one. Okay. And no, it's interesting. You have no affinity toward, oh, it's going to be a software company. Oh, it's going to be a physical product. You didn't really have any sort of bias there. It's, you were starting with a root problem

[2:05] that you just feel annoyed by. It's interesting you use the word feel. Yeah. I would say the formula is probably level of annoyance 1 through 10 times level of excitement on the idea 1 through 10. So it's like if there's something that's 10 out of 10 annoying, but you're one out of 10 excited to solve that problem. Don't solve that problem. Like 10 excitement, one annoyance, don't solve it. So it's like a balance of what is the most annoying problem that you're most excited about

[2:28] solving. Now, how do you build that thing? Depends [clears throat] what it is. Like I'm not tech I don't know how to program like at all. I'm like a hor I tried learning programming for so long. It never clicked with my brain. So like for me like most of the business I've built have been software businesses. I had I needed Stephen and like Stephen for most

[2:44] of it and the Chucky came in at the end. But um I needed partners. So I would personally never start a software business. Um like I would never start a tech company without a technical co-founder because I've just seen the it does not end up how you think it's like this notion of contracting a developer to build you something like [ __ ] today

[3:01] has been iterated on a thousand times. So it's like you need someone in the ring with you. So it just depends what the business is. Like I've tried selling physical products before. Found this woman from China named Sonia and became friends with her and she had a factory and we started building [ __ ] So, it's kind of like whatever whatever it is, how do you go? It's just like find if you can create the thing on your own, then do it yourself if you're if you want to work alone. Um, or if you can't like go find whoever the best person in the world is in your like who you can

[3:26] get connected to right now that can build it with you. So, so step two, find a co-founder. Yeah, find a co-founder. Complimentary skills. I would not build a business alone. Would never build a business alone. Okay, so you did that. You know you need a partner. How did you how do you find a

[3:39] partner? Um, that's a hard question. Answer how you found yours. I made a post in a Facebook group um just saying, "Hey, I need an iOS developer. I'm looking for an iOS developer." And Stephen responded. Um, so that doesn't get that hard. [laughter] It's pretty simple. Um, Sharky was the same. I found Shark in a different Facebook group. But I mean, yeah, just like go It's dating like you're It's like I got very lucky. It's like Steve and I have been working together since we were 13. So it's like we've been working together for almost 14 years now. That's like a marriage. Like I got very lucky. But it's just like go date

[4:09] like like go find these people and go just post in a bunch of groups. Go go go to meet up just go to whatever you think wherever like-minded people are. Meet them in Discord servers. Go to Zfellow's events. Do whatever. So make So you would join online communities where developers might hang out and you just make a post.

[4:24] This actually wasn't even a developer. This was a sneaker reselling group. So it was like a sneaker reselling group. I just said, "Hey, need an iOS developer." But it was for an IO a sneaker reselling tool. Yeah. It was just a bunch of No one in there was technical. It was like very serendipitous. Wow. Okay. So you just went to a group

[4:37] all resellers. Yes. But you asked and the right person came. Okay. Interesting. Spiritual. All right. So step one found an idea that had high annoyance and high excitement. Step [laughter] two, you need to find a co-founder. So you joined a community where those people hung out and you just made posts looking for a technical person just asking the

[4:56] universe for this role. Okay. Now that you have your co-founder, you have your idea. What's the next step? Build it. Build it fast. How do you decide what to how to build it? Whatever the like um for the bot rental marketplace um v1 I mean whatever the bring your product to market as fast as humanly possible like if someone change it to just like bring it live as fast as possible. Get people using it. The faster you can get someone

[5:22] using it the faster you get feedback. You should be building for yourself. Um but at the end of the day like you have customers who have different needs and wants in life. So you want to get it in their hands as fast as possible to understand what they like and what they don't like so you can calibrate. Um, step three is get like if you start building today, can you get someone using it tonight? Like if the answer is no, like okay, cool. What's the earliest? Like what is the least if you're building um for W for us it was like the actual minimum viable product

[5:46] was a place where you could it was a list of bots. You could click a bot. You could see a calendar and you click a date on the calendar. It would give you a price. You would click purchase. That was like the most basic. Like there's nothing else you need. If you remove any of that, it's broken. So like you I think the good philosophy is like whatever your scope is cut it to where you've deleted like 20% too much where you're like [ __ ] I need to add that back. So when you start deleting [ __ ] and you're like I have to add that back

[6:08] or else the product doesn't function then add it back. So for us it was what are the bare minimum things we need for this thing to function. If we remove any one of the pieces it is broken and doesn't work and then you get that live. Um so step three is like get a product live. While Steven was building that in our world I was getting customers lined up. So it was like get the I was started messaging sellers before the platform was ready. Hey, this is going to be ready in a week. Like, get ready to list your bots. We're going to have customers for you. Um, so it's kind of just like

[6:31] everything's almost like its own factory line of like get everything to the next checkpoint as fast as possible is kind of how I look at it. So, since you were building for yourself, you had a good feel of what the V's point exactly what it needed to be. So, it needed a basic version, but you wanted to get that out as fast as possible with the minimum amount of features to then so you can just get into customers hands to then start getting feedback from the market and to

[6:50] go from there. Okay. So, you could be wrong. Artists are wrong. Like you could make a song that you think is a banger that no one likes. So it's like you still have to get validation. Okay. So now that you have it the first version built and you need validation, how do you go about getting feedback? Get on the phone with people. How do you

[7:06] find them? Uh what are you selling? Like where are they? Go find them. Like for us, I'll just use examples that work for us. It was it was sellers of Sinkerbots and it was buyers of Sinkerbots. So like where are the sellers in these Discord servers? Like first it's like a very clear it's like people who own Cyber Soul, people who own Easy Cop, like whatever the bot is, like be very

[7:23] specific. Where are those owners? They're probably in the Cyber Soul Discord. Um, and go find them and then message them and then pay them to get on the phone. Do whatever. Just get on the phone with them. Um, if you take another random example, if you're selling, um, if you're selling a software, what's a

[7:36] random software company? Cleansot X, a screenshot tool that I love. It's such a good tool. Um, who is their customer? Someone who takes a lot of screenshots. Who takes a lot of screenshots? product managers, developers, um graphic like product designers. Okay, cool. Where? Let's take product designers. Where do product designers live on the internet? They

[7:53] probably follow Figma on Twitter. There's probably Discord communities. There's Reddit communities. There's meetups in the city. So, it's like just pick the one that you think you can infiltrate the best and then go and just talk to people and be like, "Yo, I'm building this thing." I I would never started every [ __ ] was free for the first 18 months on the seller side. Like, we didn't charge sellers anything outside of just normal Stripe fees. It was just 2.9% and 30 cents. So, I would never give someone a reason not to use your product. Um, so it's like make go find where those people are very literally in

[8:18] real life or get on the phone with them and then make it free and let them use it and just listen watch have them share their screen and use it and watch them using it. You're like like click the [ __ ] button right there but they don't click it and they go over there and you're like interesting and ask them why didn't you click the button that said like list my bot like why didn't you click that and they're like oh I didn't it's the button next to it was brighter and I didn't actually look at it and you're like oh and you start to

[8:37] learn. So that's how I think about it. So you find out yeah the type of person that needs like lit it's not like a it's like literally who is it like it is a product designer in New York and like be as specific as possible and even better than that it's like the more specific you can be the better so it's just like very specific who is okay so I have clean I have screenshot tool who needs screenshots product designers designers whoever that is one of them where do those people hang out on the internet oh they probably follow Figma they're on Twitter blah blah blah

[9:01] okay then I go through Figma's follower list okay then I start identifying these people then I DM them saying hey I'll pay you $500 if you hop on a call with mem M okay, whatever. Maybe not in the beginning if let's assume someone has no money. It's just like, hey, like my name's Cameron. I'm

[9:13] 20. Like, use things to your advantage. I'm 18 years old. Like, I'm building a company. Um, we're trying to build a better screenshot tool for product designers. Like, can I show it to you? Like, like I want to build it for you. I want to build the greatest tool you've ever used in your life. Like, can we call for 10 minutes? And you try using it. You tell me what you think. And if you send that to a thousand people, 10 to 20 will reply. Like, you will get

[9:31] responses. Okay. Interesting. And then once you're on the call, you're literally having them are you just ask them questions up front and then you give them the tool. Say, "Hey, could you try it real quick?" Yeah. And then share screen. I mainly say like, "Hey, like I give a little bit of background like I built this I'm building this product like this

[9:45] is the problem we're trying to solve. Like we think whenever I take screenshots, I have to go put it in Photoshop to draw an arrow. So like these are the problems like I want you like first I would ask them like how do you do you take a lot of screenshots?" If they say no, I'd be like okay cool thank you for your time. Like I don't

[9:56] want to if they say yes, okay, cool. What do you take screenshots for? Like understand what they use it. Um, they take screenshots because they design prototypes and they want to send it to their team for feedback. Um, okay, cool. Like, have you ever wanted to like edit like like whatever it is like you go

[10:10] down these rabbit holes, you understand? Okay, cool. Like here, um, would you mind sharing your screen? Here's the tool. Like, please show us how you use it. And it's not like let them log in and then share their screen. It's like they start like if it's a downloadable file, like they start when they click the download button or like even when they go to that page, is it easy to click the download button? That's like got to the end experience. So, watch them use the entire thing. And then the best version is you give them a goal like I want you to in this we're going

[10:33] down the screenshot example but in this for the [ __ ] example it's like list your bot like get your bot live it's actually get your first sale like get your first sale on this platform go and then I go on mute and I force myself not to talk and it's so painful but they'll be like what do I do here like do I click this button it's like whatever you think like trust your gut um because you see where they get stuck so they share their screen you should shut up I should shut up and just watch them use it and see where they get stuck

[10:54] okay so you challenge them like okay this is the end goal you want so for you is get listed on the marketplace place and get a sale basically. And so you're like, "All right, start from scratch, go." And you're not allowed to talk and you're just watching them and you're taking notes like, "Okay, he could not figure out that the start now button was right here or you could not figure out the edit description was down here to the left. So we need to are you asking him on ideas and where he would like after that session's over, are you then asking them, yeah,

[11:19] what are you asking them? What was most confusing? Um what step did you enjoy the most? What um like that's really it. like what was most like we go through anything I saw at this p like when you were setting the price per day you stop for like 60 seconds what were you thinking about because that's kind of like when you're building a product you become so deep in the weeds where you can't actually you're biased like you cannot see it from the lens of a new person who's looking at it for the first time what makes sense to you might not make sense to anyone else or inverse it might make

[11:42] total sense so um it's really like under when someone pauses for 30 seconds you the only way to figure out why they pause is to ask them there's no data that will really show you can see they dropped off there but like they might have gotten distract like it might have been it was hard to find. Or it might have been you have the coolest animation ever in the background. They got distracted by the animation. The

[12:00] animation is actually not that helpful. It looks cool but it doesn't actually do that much. So it's like why did you stop for 30 seconds on this page and they tell you and then you can decide maybe you like that they stared at the animations. That's what you're going for. You want people to spend more time. So it's like then you can decide what to do with that information. That's where intuition probably comes in. That's where intuition is the only thing that matters once you've collected the

[12:17] context from the market. Fascinating. How many people are you going to talk to and when do you decide what's enough people? Um, I don't know. Let me think. How many people am I going to talk to? It doesn't matter. Just until you feel like you have a good Yeah. Like you know what to do. Okay, cool. So, it could be the first person like, "Damn, that was crystal clear. Didn't think the first person gave you 20 things. I wouldn't go talk to number two cuz like go solve those 20 things and then go talk to number two and then get feedback to the next person

[12:43] based off those iterations." It's good sometimes to get like a couple different takes, but like generally don't waste people's time. If you talked to someone, they gave you 30 minutes, your time, they pointed out a ton of [ __ ] before you go on to the second person. Solve those problems. So, the next experience is more enjoyable. What are the five most unique ways

[12:56] you've gotten on a call with somebody? Methods that you use to get on the call. Find someone's address and send an Uber driver to their to their house to knock on the door. Was the most unique? Knocked on their door. We needed to get on the phone with someone and they weren't answering. So, we got their address and we sent an Uber driver to their phone. The Uber driver was like, "Yo, like I don't feel comfortable doing this." And was like, "I will tip you $100. Like, go knock on their door." And then the person was

[13:15] taking a nap and they woke him up. [laughter] So, you paid an Uber driver to go to his house out of his car and the Uber driver knocked on the person's car to wake him up. Yeah. Okay. What? Another give me more. [laughter] That's fun. That was probably the crazy I mean the other easy ones are like you find someone's address, you send them edible arrangements. Um, you find someone's I'll give away alpha. There's most people's primary email is tied to their iMessage account like their iCloud account. So, if you get someone's email and you put it into iMessage, it'll often if they have an iPhone, it'll

[13:45] often go through. So, if you get my personal email, you can text me because it's connected to my iCloud. Um, that's baller strat. We've gotten in touch with a lot of people doing that. Um, it buy someone's product. Like, if you want to talk to them so badly, the best thing you can do is be their customer. It's like, hey, I just bought like I bought your bot. Like, want to get like

[14:03] someone's selling a cyber soul for $60. Cool. Like, when we were starting, like I'm going to buy it. I'm going to rent it for a day. They they sell it to me. Cool. You can go sell it to someone else. Like, I don't actually want it, but like can we call it for 10 minutes? They're like sure. That was it's just like someone gave someone told me this recently which is like memories are sparked from things that surprise people. So like if you go through a mundane day we've lived I've lived so

[14:20] many days I don't remember most of it. Um the things I remember the things that shock me the things that catch me off guard. So you have to catch someone off guard. Um how do you catch someone off guard? You send someone to their house. You send them a gift. You buy their product. It has to be like if you message them saying hey can I get on the phone with you? They're probably not going to get on the phone with you because that's not very like there's no effort that went into that is how I look

[14:36] at it. Nice. Wow. Okay. Very cool. WAP just released a new app store that gives software developers instant distribution. [ __ ] is a community platform where creators install apps into their community. Think of it like Discord bots, but instead of bots, they're full-blown web apps. Developers just list their apps on the [ __ ] app store and then creators install them in their community and sell them to their audience for you. This is a very high lever distribution channel because just getting one creator to install your app into their community could get you thousands of paying users. There are over 100,000 mainstream creators on the

[15:11] platform like Arak, Druski, and Imongi who are waiting to install your apps. And [ __ ] does more than just distribution. The new [ __ ] API also has payments, memberships, and authorization built in. So you can handle billing, manage access, and fetch user data, which is a few lines of code. This works for all web apps, whether you host on [ __ ] or on your own site. If you want to ship fast, validate quickly, and start earning right away, I highly recommend using the [ __ ] stack for your app. I'll leave a link to the [ __ ] SDK below so you can get started today. Now, back to the

[15:44] episode. Next, you got the feedback, you have a usable product, the person finally likes it, you've iterated it the right amount. Um, that's the first person, maybe two or three of the people are testing it, playing with it. They like it. They give you approval. What's next? Um, are they using it every single day is kind of like my lmus test. So if they're not if they're not using it as their primary for us like if people are still renting their bots in BotMart and on these other platforms versus [ __ ] like it's still not good enough. So why are they not doing it? The problem might be

[16:11] they don't have enough customers so we have to go solve the customer problem. So it's like are people becoming power users? Are they using it? Once it's like you don't want to overoptimize like at some point you want to go get more people. So it's a it's a healthy balance of like make the product better, get more people, make the product better, get more people. So it's a dance of like if you're only making the product better, you're not getting people. You have no customers. you might as well like you're you're actually providing no impact on the world whatsoever because no one's using your product. So, um I

[16:33] would say once your power users that you onboarded for free are using it and getting value out of it, then they then go get more customers. You've proven that they're power users. They're using it day in and day out. Now, it's time to get more customers. How do you get more customers? Um I'm going to assume you have like no money and you have no network. like the hardest of it's probably like you have no brand to rely on, you have no money to rely on. So, um that is where we were for most of it. So, it's like gorilla like go find the customer. So, still

[17:05] make it I we [ __ ] was free for 18 months like I said that a couple times like it's just like it was so important because we didn't give anyone a reason not to do it. It was like it was at the very least this is going to be cheaper and you get more mass on platform. So, I would say do whatever you can to acquire users like make it free, charge a little like whatever works for you and then go find these customers. So it's I would I mean for the beginning for W for the first year all I was doing was just sales calls all day long like talking to

[17:27] like anywhere I could each conversation was about 30 minutes so I could probably talk to like 20 to 30 people a day um and then manage the existing relationship. So it's go acquire new logos or merchants at any anywhere you can get new people using your platform get them using it and then once they're happy find out how you can get people from their network. So whenever we'd get a seller on our platform it would be like okay cool like do you have any friends who are sell like give them the greatest experience in the world and then ask for a favor just like do you

[17:49] have any friends who like want to use it? So like, yeah, actually I have a but like they'll it's also if you give them such an amazing experience, they'll refer their friends. Like I've told you to buy products in the past because I like them and they're like I want to if they're good for me, then I think they'll be good for you. So it's kind of like people like referring products to their friends if they're amazing. So just go get c like the the tactical answer is back to rudime like back to the first example of like who is your

[18:12] customer still the same person? Great. Where do they live? Go get more of them. And now instead of like needing every single person to get on the phone, it's just like hey I built this. It's free. I think it solves a big problem. like try it and see if it solves it and get more people using it. Build a community of those people, have them all talking to each other, have them inviting their friends, and then it just compounds over time, too. And then when you have when you get to a point where like so many people are coming in, they love it. Then for me personally, that's when I would

[18:31] start charging for something. So when there's thousands, it's just like it's it's back to the example of like you're either planting seeds, you're eating the fruits off your trees. When you start charging, you're literally eating the fruits off your trees. When you're planting seeds and something's free, it's it could spread like wildfire. So, um I would just lean on the side of is if it were up to me like Ste like it's probably good that this happened, but it probably still would be free. Like I would probably have kept W free forever. And that's why like Steve and I compliment each other well because he's like, "No,

[18:54] we actually need to generate revenue so we can hire more people." And like that was a good call. But I would just like because it's like if you go paid tomorrow, you cash everything in. If you stay free for one more day, when you go paid the next day, you have a bigger pot is kind of how I look at it. So I would just keep I'd probably build too big of

[19:08] a pot though and never cash it in. Technically, it's still free. It is still free. We are back. I guess we're back to where we started where it's now free again. That's funny. Okay. So, that's very interesting. So, you have the product that you've proven that people are using. So, it's providing value for them and now you're going to use that exact same method that you got the person on the call and you're going to pop out 20

[19:25] to 30 sales calls per day. And so, instead of just like, hey, can I get product feedback, it's, hey, I have this tool that how's the pitch different to get them on the call, though? Well, it also depends on the business. Like for us, we're focused on getting sell. It's not like a SAS. We're like our customer wasn't like a normal consumer. Like these are sellers. So, it's like for someone to move their business, like you're not if you're making more than $10,000, you're probably not going to move your business. So, that strategy would probably be different if it was more of

[19:49] like a BTOC play. Maybe not for your first 20 or 30 customers. Yeah. Still for sure get on the phone. Um, but the how are you like how did you get on the phone with the people that you're actually going to try to sell now instead of like, hey, is it still product feedback? Like, is it still the pitch or is it like slightly tweaked of like, hey,

[20:05] what do they care about? I think this would help you. We've proven show a Loom video of how it works. Like, is it different? How many emails that have like a Loom video in it do you respond to? I I don't get a lot of emails with Loom videos. If someone sent like you pro the most people don't like no one wants to be sold to is kind of like the answer. So you need to like what do they

[20:24] discover something? Yeah. The way I look at it is there's like two there's two things that have stuck out. One writing messages to get someone on the phone read it out loud and if it sounds weird don't send it's like when you when you read when people write copy they often like write an email. That's not how you talk to a human at the bar. Like pretend like you met your customer at a bar or on the side of the street and you have like [clears throat] 20 seconds to pitch them and film a voice memo. That's your outreach message. It feels very different when you're reading it. So if

[20:45] you type an email to someone, it feels like you were emailed. If you film a voice memo of like um if I met someone on the side of the street like yo, what up? Like um I noticed that you rent Cyber Soul and BotMart like we just launched W. If I was talking to someone on the side of the street, it'd be like we just launched a platform where it'll like you set the price per day and you get paid automatically. You withdraw to

[21:01] your bank instantly. It's all automated. Like that's probably how I would if I was writing an email being like hey um reaching out on behalf of a plat if I was meeting someone on the side of the street I'd never say I'm reaching out on behalf of a platform called but so many people do that in their email. So I think the first thing is the copy you write you need to read it out loud and make sure that it sounds human and start

[21:17] by not even writing just voice memoing. You're saying you're going to speak into it but it's going to transcribe it. Just listen to the voice. Yeah. I'm not sending the audio. Listen to the voice memo and then write. But try different strategies. I've tried sending I've sent so many selfie videos. That's another because it's like you have to everyone sends cold emails. Everyone sends cold messages. you have to do something different. Like some of the best responses we've gotten is a selfie video. Yo, what up Chad? I'm hitting you up from MOP HQ right now. All the engineers are grinding. They're so locked in. They're not leaving the

[21:40] office tonight until you respond to our message. Like he's going to watch that and be like what? Like that's like they clearly didn't they only made this video for me. Like why are they doing this? Um they're showing care. So I'm a big believer in like you have to stand out. Like you this notion of like automated

[21:52] messages like that does not work at all. Um so that's one component of it. And then that's all I remember from what I was saying. That's [laughter] good. No, that's perfect. So, you're just going to grind 20 to 30 sales calls a day, like which is an unbelievable volume and is an absolute grind. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, this and then what do you say is like what do they care about? So, it's not you you have to look at it from the lens of like what are they going to read and be interested about. So, if you're messaging them, your pitch might be different than what

[22:18] they care about. So, when we were talking about people that were renting, if I was reaching out on behalf of [ __ ] when we were doing the sneaker bot rentals, I would probably say like, "We built this platform. You can list your bot automatically. Um, you can set the price per day, but the actual part that was most annoying for sellers was the fact that they had to manually collect the money and they had to manually reset the keys. That's all that matters. So, it doesn't matter what I think the value is. The only thing that matters is what is the value in the eyes of the person

[22:39] who you want to use your product. So, they care about the fact that we have we built an API that would automatically reset people's license key. So, it's the example I would use is like if you're renting out your Netflix account, imagine every time you got a sale, you had to reset the password. Like that's what the world was like. And we built an API that would hit the bots's API um and reset the key automatically. Now, if you

[22:55] get someone renting your bot at 10 p.m. on a Friday night, instead of having to go to your computer and reset the password, it would be automatic. That was the first thing. The second thing was you would have to Venmo request people. That's really annoying. So, when I'm reaching out to them, it's like the how you and your question was like, do

[23:06] you still ask for product feedback? No. When you have the value established and you're clear that you have value, show them the value. It's like there's two things we're going to do for you. One, when it's 10 p.m. on a Friday night and someone buys your bot, you're not going to have to reset your key. It's going to be done automatically. Two, when someone wants to buy your [ __ ] they're going to pay and it's going to instantly go to your bank account the next day. You don't have to do anything. Um, and then they're like, "Wow, like that does solve my problems." Um and then you get them

[23:25] using it. Okay. Amazing. So then how many users [clears throat] you've basically had a two core differentiators that made your product better than the other competitors. So you had very clear like product market fit at that point would you say? At least in that micro niche and you have probably a few thousand customers at this point. When are you deciding to either raise money or to go paid? And why did you

[23:46] make the decision that you guys made? And was that the time? Mhm. The raising money. We weren't actively trying to raise money. We got an acquisition offer from Hyper, the company I was describing. So, they were like the biggest company in our space, far bigger than us. They'd raised like $100 million valuation. They tried to acquire us um for millions of dollars and this was like three to four months into starting [ __ ] And we'd come off of like five to six years of just eating [ __ ] and our businesses were doing horrible um and we were really just like living off of savings at that point,

[24:11] getting like pretty deep into it. So, um we we we had millions of dollars over here that we could take um or we could build it on our own. And we got introduced to somebody named Cory Levy who has um a program called Zfellows which is like a better version of Y Combinator. Um shout out Corey. And he um he was just like within minutes was like we'll invest like he got the founder of Tinder on the phone, Justin Matine. Um and they were both within like 30 minutes. It was like a live Shark Tank deal. Like they turned their we were on a Zoom call with them and

[24:36] they turned their video and mic off for like five minutes and we pitched them. They went on mute for five minutes. They called us back and they um committed the first investment. So, at that point, it's kind of like this company that we're competing against, they have $17 million in the bank. Um, if we had more money, we could probably get better talent. We could probably like go faster. We could get a nicer off. Like, we could just go harder and put oursel in a better position. So, um, it was and it's also there's something honestly like the most valuable part wasn't really the money because we were making

[25:02] money at that point. Like we were making probably like 75K a month. It was just the three of us. So, like it wasn't that bad. It was like meeting Corey, meeting Justin Mat, ending up meeting Peter Teal, like getting surrounded with these people who have built like Tinder is a massive business. like being able to call them when we get stuck and get the advice um was really helpful. So that

[25:18] was why we raised at that point. So the main reason was strategic like you wanted to have strategic investors be around people that could guide you like the professional structure. I don't think you like if I was going to I don't I hope I never start any other businesses outside of [ __ ] I love [ __ ] so much. But if I did start another business, I don't know if I would like if I have my own per like I don't you

[25:36] don't need to raise like by any means. It's not the like I think there's so many like you don't need to raise by any means. It was more so for us probably at the time it was like a cushion more than anything. It was like let's have like a million dollars in the bank so we know that we can try [ __ ] out and fail but no we still have money and it was like a

[25:51] way we could really bet on ourselves. But if I was starting a new business tomorrow like I don't know if I it it's all certain like do you need money right now? Don't raise just for the purpose of raising. Like if you need money if getting n number of dollars would allow you to scale faster than without it and that bet gets you to like a destination fast. It's just like a a EV bet. Like is there is there value in taking the money

[26:09] to grow faster? Did you say Hyper had $17 million? Yeah, they raised 17. Is that why you guys raised the certain amount you raised the first time? [laughter] No. Okay. I actually Wait, I actually don't maybe it was 15 17. I don't remember the exact number. We raised 17. I don't know if they raised. Maybe I'm mixing it up. That's what I was wondering. They raised like they raised like $100 million. I think they raised like 15 million

[26:26] probably around there. Mhm. Okay. So, you guys just raised because was it like that's I'm curious. Did you guys just raise because it was like the thing to do? Did you raise because you wanted to build a really big company? I know that's Steven's kind of thing. He's always wanted to build a really big company. Was it just like kind of those more reasons than just like

[26:39] I mean it just gives you a necessity. It wasn't a necessity but it was like we could go faster like we weren't thinking about hire it like shifted. There's also something nice about the pressure of like other people own equity in this business. Like let's deliver. Um so we didn't need to raise money by any means but um it gave us more money to play with which just gave us the ability to take more shot. actually like the the thing that there was an early looking back it's like amazing that we did raise because we ended up making like a really strategic acquisition of this other

[27:06] company in the space which was it would have been hard to like compete with Hyper but we acquired this one company called Freddy Dashboard which was this one dude who built um this tool that had like 40 people on it was like the biggest bots. Stellar was using it. Haven was using it. It was like this custom white label dashboard that he built but he wasn't making any recurring revenue. It was $3,500 upfront for the client and then it was $50 a month. So he was making no money. So we were able to buy that really cheap relative to the value of the customers on his platform

[27:30] because he had no reason to continue retaining their businesses and had we not raised we wouldn't have been able to do that. So it gives you for us it gave us the like we had cash on hand to make moves when the time it it also forced us to start being way more aggressive because now that we have a million dollar in the bank before we had 75k in the bank. So it's like okay now we can take like way bigger swings but we didn't know exactly what we were going to spend. Do you think that if you didn't raise it would have been like it

[27:49] the business would have capped at like a few hundredk a month and then it would have been harder to pivot up like do you think that because of the that what you're saying like you [clears throat] raise money you have accountability from external investors now which I think is actually very very important for like a motivating factor and then simultaneously it forces you to be aggressive because you do have to use this money you can't just not use the money you think that if you guys bootstrapped I'm just very curious if that like I think it's far cooler to bootstrap than to raise like it's much it's harder

[28:16] like It's cool. Like you did it all on your own. So I think like each person should optimize for like them. Raising money has become a very like cool thing to do and it's you're literally giving up equity in your business. So if you're bullish on yourself, this is like your your life's work. You're giving up equity. So like there better be a good reason to do it. It's not like you're

[28:34] not going to this won't buy you a house. Like you can't use the money you raise to like change anything about your personal lifestyle. If you do, you're [ __ ] Like that's a horrible place to be and you should not be building a business at all. So okay, it has to like help create more value in the long run. I think it's gonna less and less popular. I think it's culturally cool. I think the counter culture is coming very, very soon, especially with the price of SAS going

[28:51] down. Um, but okay, let's take that let's take that out of the equation and go back to our conversation. So, let's just say you have either you raise money or you're making like a 100K per month, which is very profitable, and you have cash flow to invest in the company. Uh, I'm imagining this is like, okay, a five maybe like $5 million paper with nice healthy multiples, whatever, if you really wanted to go for it. How are you going to go from this five to10 million1 to10 million company range to $100 million with the money that you're

[29:18] bringing in for your business? It's the same. It's nothing. It never changes. Like it's like what market are you going after? Who is the customer in that market? Why are they not using your product? Like how many of them are there? It's always the same. So you developed this playbook for the bot rental marketplace. Like you found like Stellar, you found these big people, you found this guy, you acquired him. So you found like the biggest players, you got them on the platform and then it just just became you basically monopolized or won the bot rental market and then it's like okay we have this playbook now

[29:46] we can just duplicate this playbook into a different market and that's where you guys went after Discord. Yeah. It's also like how how does any business at the end of the day scale like they tell me they pick a market they want to focus on. Um they define the customers that they're building for like a market might be big. There might be different customer segments in the market. They pick a customer they want to build for and then they build the best product for that one customer. Once that customer is head over heels excited, they go find every other person who is exactly like that customer and

[30:10] they just go get and like you get to a point of maybe diminishing returns where it's like if there's 10 pe if you've gotten a thousand and there's 10 people that remain but there's a new market that is 100,000 like it might make sense like you don't need to get it's not like you have to get 100% of the people. We didn't get 100% of the bot rental but like we had the majority and that was all that mattered. So um the playbook is just like market you're going after who are the customer who what is your like Sam who can you service in the market um

[30:32] and then prioritize how we do is we prioritize like this is the biggest whale this is the smallest and then start with the smaller people to make sure if if the small people aren't joining you're never going to get the big person. So you start with the small people, get the small people joining, get them really excited, they start referring their friends, and then immediately go for the big person and do whatever it takes to close the big person. Like fire festival, the dude who was responsible for getting the water

[30:50] vibe, like do whatever it takes. [laughter] And this is something you guys have done time and time again now because if we look at [ __ ] it was bot rentals, then it was like Discord groups, then it's sports betting, crypto trading, clipping, info, and you even ran that playbook with EMO for the info. You started with the smaller people and you got the big key figure. So you found this like core product that had product market fit. You won the market by getting the big people. Everybody kind of has consensus and you duplicate that across different markets that you want to go

[31:19] after. Mhm. And that's how you guys got to $800 million. Mhm. Yeah. And I don't think we I think with the it becomes harder. So it's like to monopolize a sneakerbot rental marketplace. The market is $300,000 a month in volume. Like 3 to 500k a month in volume. So it's not that big of a market. It's still a lot of money. Like to be netting like you're making like 100k a month at peaks. like that's a lot of money for like three people running a company. But um now we haven't by any means like won these markets. I think we're like really clear in the markets

[31:45] we're going after and we have we're off the ground in like mass but like in any of the markets like coaching and courses we have not won that market. Paid groups we have not won that market. Agencies we just scratching the surface software we are the the smallest person on the block. Um so I think they just become bigger. They become like multi-year projects versus like a couple month sprint as the business gets bigger. But what's interesting is you're following that same playbook end to end. Even from what you just started, okay, we want to go after new market. We need to talk to our first customer, give feedback. What

[32:12] features do you want? Okay, we got those features. Let's go talk to the other people. Let's get 20 to 30 people. Let's get a sales team to go after them and let's continue to iterate that product. Now, you're just doing that by business model by business model by business model. Where WAP is now this platform that you can just run your entire business no matter what business model you're in. if it's paid group, coaching courses, agencies, whatever. You've like built all the tools and then you have the same go to market strategy for each individual

[32:36] category. And then you just like separate the teams internally because now you have raised a lot more money. We have a way bigger team now and so you just kind of bucket those different business models. I mean the things that got you off like the strategies don't need to necessarily change. Like I was thinking about like if you look at like maybe this a bad example like Amazon doesn't look that different than it did like 15 20 years ago. It's like when you find something that works like you stick with it and you like obsess over what you're best at. So um it's kind of like

[33:05] you could take like Uber's UI hasn't really changed. So I think it's kind of like you don't need to I think we got I personally got caught up in this is like we need to change like as we get bigger we need different strategies but it's kind of like no you just need to do your same strategies bigger and like do them more mass. So, um, and there's also like as you we now have like you we have media channels like we didn't have a WAP YouTube a year ago. So, it's like it's not to say you should only do what you did. Like you should add new strategies. Um, but it's

[33:29] like if something's working it's kind of like you when you find a strategy that works like you should juice the [ __ ] out of it until it dies and until you like continue pouring more money into that strategy until it breaks. As a marketer, I just find it like it broke my brain when I found out you guys had an $800 million valuation without ever doing any like one to many marketing. Like it was just pureon amazing product and then a sales team basically going after the best people in that space and then you just won these markets. So that's very

[33:56] very fascinating. I don't know if like there's probably an alternative universe where we like focus on marketing earlier and MOP's way bigger than it is right now. So it's like who's to say that's the best way to do it. All we know is it worked at least to the level in which we're at today. And so it's just opposite to me cuz I'm like first thing I think of product. How am I going to market this? Like before I [laughter] even think about the product, I'm like how is this going to be talked about in the world? And it was just very very fascinating to me and I've never

[34:18] heard you articulate it so systematically and so in order. So that was very cool to listen to. You I've no like you can't you can market a shitty product but it d like the I watched a video on this the other day and it's kind of like they give the analogy of like a ring of fire. Um, so it's kind of like when pretty much the example is like you want to look at use if your users that come to the platform die over time, you're going to eventually run out of field. So the if like your like Facebook, Uber, WhatsApp or not Uber, sorry, Facebook, Instagram,

[34:46] WhatsApp, they users that they acquire on day one will be more engaged on like day 30 to 60. Like people that join Instagram become more engaged over time. That's where you want to be because you acquire user and they become more engaged. Um if you this ring of fire example was pretty if you acquire users and your users if you're only focused on top of funnel and you're acquiring users but you have a leaky bucket where they end up like dying and leaving the platform you're going to eventually run out of users. So the analogy that clicked for me was like you throw a flame in a field a grass field it'll

[35:12] start with like one fire and then it'll start to grow and it turns into this like ring of fire. So the ring like the fire gets bigger the inside gets burned. Um, so once it hits like the if this table was a field at one point before the fire runs out, the ring of fire will be this entire table and it's going to be massive and you're going to feel like

[35:27] you have the biggest fire of all time. It's amazing. Everything on the inside's dead. You killed the entire inside. The second it hits the end of the table, the fire dies and now all you have is a field of tar and you have nothing left. So it's like if you can't burn the market, you're burning your market and there's

[35:41] there's 8 billion people in the world. You'll always be able to fill top of funnel, but if your top of funnel is not retaining and grow, not just retaining, but growing, you're going to run out of people eventually. So, you have to grow the base of people you have. That's all that matters. Top of funnel is very easy. You can spend unlimited money on ads and fill top of funnel. So, top of

[35:55] funnel is not hard. It's like retaining. Oh, sorry. It's still hard, but I think retaining is far harder. Interesting. So, I think that's very very important for people to understand because this is like kind of the the age-old cluey question. I love royale. I think that the concept of the product is extremely extremely cool like that is a really good use case of AI but it is to be determined if the product will stick and it's like is too much attention his whole concept of mind share is that going to a cause a lot of people to try a product and have a bad product experience and never come back or is the

[36:28] mind share worth it get enough initial users enough initial revenue to keep the company going to then eventually build a good product we'll see what how it goes what I'm describing works for me and Stephen like and Sharky like that that is like our squad. Like if I was good I'm not good at marketing. If I was good at marketing, our strategy would be very different. It would probably like a marketing playbook. So I think um this isn't people should lean into what they're uniquely good at. Like I love

[36:52] talking to people and I love selling. Like I [ __ ] love selling. So like we're going to be probably a salesled company. Um that doesn't mean like we should expand into other things. But I also think the clearly example I'm like like they're going to crush it. Like I'm confident that like to get that much mind share at that cheap of how much they're paying for it is go is unbelievable. We're talking about Cluly right now. Like it's good. So he's

[37:12] they'll figure it out. I'm bullish on Cleie, bro. It's just an interesting thing of like, okay, if you market a product too early, do you like I just the burn analogy was like familiar. Like okay, you market it and then they have a bad experience. Will they come back? Like that is they're just young. They'll figure it out. But like me like they're they're like Royy's 21. Like he will figure it out. But they've definitely for sure burned people which is also like that if you want to look at the negative side like that is a negative side but they also grew quick like and everybody knows who they are and

[37:35] then once the product does get good enough snap their fingers or they burned everyone and people don't care anymore but probably if the product's really good it'll probably be easy for them to respark. Something that I think makes you a world-class performer is how serious you take your habits, how serious you take your health, how serious you take your sleep, how serious you take your routines, workout everything. M so I would love to understand a day in the life of a 26-year-old [laughter]

[37:59] billion dollar tech startup founder. Mhm. Um okay. Um my days I guess my like philosophy is kind of the I'm a product of like how I feel. So like if I'm uh if I feel really good I'll create the best work possible. So how do I position myself to create the greatest work for the next 50 years is kind of how I look at it. So um day in the life is I'll wake up I need to get eight hours of sleep every single night minimum. Like I will not sacrifice that. Some people can some people can do great with six and seven hours. I can't. I'm I'm dumb as a

[38:27] rock if I don't get eight hours. So, I get eight hours of sleep. I'll wake up anywhere from 5:45 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. based on the time I go to bed. Um the I have to get out of my I have like an eight sleep mattress and a whoop wristband. So, my alarm on my bed goes off first. Um so, I set my alarm on my bed 1 minute before my wristband. When I feel my it's like a vibration. So, when I feel my bed vibrating, I have to get out of my room within a minute or else I think I'll have a bad day of like

[38:51] convince myself of this. My bed starts vibrating. I I know I have 60 seconds to get out of my room. So, I make my bed, open my curtains, open my window, and then have to get out of the room and close the door within before my wrist starts vibrating on my whoop. So, um that is fun. It just forces me to get out of the bed [laughter] in the morning. Um I start with that. Then I brush then I'll just drink like as much water as I can until I feel sick. I'll just pound water. Um then I will brush my teeth. Then I stretch for like 10

[39:16] minutes or so. So, I have just like the stretching routine I do in the morning. Um then I'll work out six days a week. So, I'll either go on a run um or go to the gym. Um then I I have this chair called like a shift wave chair. It's like a vibration meditation chair. So, I'll do that for like five minutes usually before I work out. Then, um I come back from my workout. Um I'll usually take a cold shower and then I meditate for about like 20 minutes in the morning. Um and then I usually just like will journal for a minute or two

[39:43] just like what is the goal of today? What do I want to accomplish? Go to the office. Um I drink pretty much the same drinks every morning. I have decaf coffee with ghee butter. I have this big bucket of water that I fill up, which I'll drink in a second. And then I drink this like longevity mix thing. Um, and then

[39:59] what is the longevity mix? It's like a Brian Johnson mix. It just has like creatine in it, a bunch of other [ __ ] Um, so I take that. I've just been like AB testing my body for a lot of people will be like, it's not for every like some people, Stephen, my co-founder, does none of this [ __ ] go. It doesn't doesn't care about anything and he performs great. So it's kind of like I've just been AB testing my body for a while and this is what makes me feel the best. Um, I'll usually eat my first meal of the day. I haven't eaten

[40:20] anything yet today. It's like 4 p.m., but I'll usually eat my first meal of the day anywhere from like 1 to 6 p.m. I get a massive meal. I eat the same thing every single day. I try to just condense it into like one or two meals max. Um, I've tested a ton of different food. The meal I have right now makes like I don't feel any crash. I don't have any meat. I don't have any sugar. Um, very little carbs. So, it's just like I don't really It just gives me fuel, but it doesn't there's nothing. Um, I'll have um an egg, mushroom, broccoli, avocado burrito

[40:47] with um it's not like bread. I don't know. It's some like healthy wrap. Um and then two vegetable puree soups, one miso soup, a salmon, like 10 pieces of shrimp, tofu, um a protein smoothie with like strawberries and bananas, and then this is lunch. This is one meal. Yeah, one meal. And then um like a orange like a immunity drink like a

[41:10] orange drink. So is the thought process that soup like is faster to metabolize. You're not tired to digestion. There's no thought I just I just feel the best when I eat that. So I don't have I don't know like any of the science behind it. It just makes me feel good. So but you are obsess like this is something I very much witnessed from you. who are obsessed with optimizing and so you're split testing stuff and it's more based off how you personally feel like you're being a scientist on yourself rather than watching Andrew Huberman or you know any of like the real I know like sleep is

[41:36] important like eight hours of sleep is important but like outside of that I know working out like I know I feel good when I work out so it's kind of I've done like I got um a sugar a blood sugar tracker like that I put I injected that I wore for a couple weeks and that showed me like how my blood sugar would spike when I eat different food but you can kind of feel like if I eat a big tub of ice cream 30 minutes later I feel

[41:53] like [ __ ] Like it's not rocket science. So, um I'm Yeah, I don't really know any of the science behind this stuff. I've just tested like this is personally what makes me like feel the best right now. Um so, I do that for lunch. Then I'll drink this like cacao um powder and almond milk. I don't drink any coffee, but that has like a little bit of natural caffeine in it. So, I'll drink that. And then some days I'll do dinner, some days I won't. If I do dinner, I'll just have like a vegetable soup with salmon. Um and then I'll go home. I'll try to I try to cold plunge in sauna

[42:22] every night for like 20 minutes. It just forces cold plunge is just the hardest thing ever. Like it I it's so hard every single time. So it just grounds me like no matter how hard my problems are during the day at work, it just keeps me pretty grounded and remembering like it's not more painful than the cold plunge. Like the pole punch is pretty hard. And then I'll journal in the sauna every night of just like what went well today, what didn't go well to just like reflect on the day of the things that happened. Then I go upstairs. Um, at some point I'll turn off my phone and

[42:46] then I will stretch for another like 10 15 minutes and then do like a nighttime meditation and then fall asleep reading. [laughter] So you wake up in the morning to a vibration and you give yourself one minute before your Whoop wristband goes off [clears throat] or else you're going to fail. Yeah. I have to be outside my room. Jump out of your bed. Jump out and then

[43:09] you sprint to the sink to chug water. Well, make my bed. Open the curtains, open the window, and then get out of the room. And you chug water until you feel sick, stretch, go into [clears throat] this insane massage chair with headphones and a blindfold and meditate. And then I just imagine you're sprinting. Yes. And then you then you go

[43:29] you sprint to your run. Yeah. And you come back from your run, meditate longer, shower, come to the office. Yeah. And then eat, drink your health. Yeah. Yeah. The one thing I missed also, I have a whiteboard in my apartment and I have every day I have to rate myself 1 through 10 on if I'm happy or not. And I used to have it be like way more regimented. Like it used to be like six things like how focused was I today, how honest was I like all these things. But I recently changed it to just happy because I feel like at the end of the day it's like this there's at

[43:55] least going through there's like death and those things which are really difficult, but outside of that like this work has been by far the hardest thing I've ever done. Um it is like extremely difficult and very rewarding. Um but I need to if I'm not hap it's kind of like the problems won't be gone there will be more problems tomorrow every day there will be problems um no matter what like guaranteed there will be so many things that we're trying to grow really quickly so there's always going to be things wrong so if I'm solving like how am I solving those problems am I solving them

[44:22] from like a stressed out like unhappy self or am I happy and like I think you even in times of like extreme dire and shitty things I think you can still be happy so I'm trying to always just say even if things are going horribly wrong like you can be happy solve those problems.

[44:36] I am very glad we are on the same team. I'm glad I'm on your team. [clears throat] This is awesome. Me too, bro. If you [laughter] want to see I don't know how to put it into words, but like there is no faster moving [clears throat] person I've ever came across. And I'm like someone that's

[44:50] like, "Okay, like we have a big win. Enjoy the win." Like you worked really hard. You guys have this very short window of like, "All right, great. We killed it. What are the next three biggest problems we have to solve to stop us from the next leg of growth?" And it's like less than like a twominute acknowledgement. There's never an acknowledgement other than like good job, but immediately move on. It's never brought up again about all the things you did right in the past. It's like what are we [ __ ] up right now consistently? Is that a mindset that you have had your entire life or is that a

[45:18] mindset that's been adopted through like you're in the tech startup world? You guys raised money from Peter Teal. You guys raise money from all the biggest like you guys are like true and true like as esteemed startup vibe you could possibly come up with. How is that something that's like personal to you guys or is that taught to you guys by like these like adviserss

[45:37] that you have? Mhm. I think um it's been just like a day like I think since like the day we were born. I mean like Stephen and I met when we were 13 so we've just like we've meshed pretty well for 13 years now. Um but I would say it depends when something goes well and you get a win. It's all re I don't think you should never celebrate anything. Like when things go well I get very excited. Like I was jump like I was literally jumping

[45:57] up and down in my apartment last night. I was so like I we closed a deal and I was so excited. I was literally just staring at myself in the window jumping up and down very excited. So I think it's good to celebrate but it's kind of like I did that for 30 seconds and then I was like okay cool. What's next? And it really I think like the way I look at it is what time horizon are you celebrating within? Like a win is all relative to what like it's just what are your goals? Like we I want hundreds of millions if not billions of people to be

[46:19] making money on [ __ ] So when like we close a deal last night, there's still only 15,000 people that made money on wealth last month. So it's like it's fun because I like to feel excited. It motivates me, but it's also like reality check. There's still a lot of work to go. I think someone gave me the analogy once that has honestly changed the way I look at everything, which is at all points in life, you're either planting trees or you're eating the fruits off your trees. Um, and when you're planting

[46:39] trees, you're creating like new crops. So anytime you're planting seeds, it's a long you if you plant a seed in the grass tomorrow, you're not going to see anything. It'll take a couple months before you start to see like a blossom and a tree comes up. And then once it's fully formed after n number of months there might be apples on the tree. Um you could then start like in my opinion there's like two phase of life. You're planting seeds or you're starting to eat the fruits off your trees. When you're eating the fruits off your trees you're

[47:01] not creating any new long-term growth. So I try to always it's like I had dessert yesterday for the first time in like three or four months and I was thinking yesterday I was just like I want a treat. Like I haven't had a tree in a long time. So like it's that and that in my opinion is like taking fruits off my trees. Like I'm going to feel shitty from eating the dessert. It doesn't actually help me but like sometimes it's okay to feel good. It's all like people it's all re people

[47:20] should do whatever makes them happy. Like I'm this makes me very happy. So some people might love eating dessert. You should eat dessert every day. Maybe not. If you love it, probably not. But if that makes you happy, do it. But I think for me it's just like always obsessing over how can I be planting more seeds? Um because the seeds won't feel great today, but a year from now I'll have a really a ton of trees and it'll be awesome in 10 years. And how clear are you on what you're trying to accomplish? Cuz you have sacrificed [clears throat] more than I've ever seen

[47:43] a human being sacrifice in their life. Like I thought I was some cool successful person, made a few million dollars in my 20s, had a big YouTube channel, whatever. Huge ego. Coming to you, I'm like a it's super humbling and I'm super grateful for everything that you do because I see how much you

[47:55] sacrifice from your day-to-day life. Going out on the weekends is non-existent. You face the biggest problems here firsthand. If there's a problem, you have to dive in. You have to hire people. It's incredible pain that I've seen you physically go through, but you power through it with a smile on your face and you always maintain high energy. So, how clear are you on your goal of what you're trying to build or how do you think about it because you're t like what is driving you to go through so

[48:20] much pain? Yeah. I think first is like the perspective of like I was born into like what I view as like the greatest country in the world and like a a good city and I had like loving parents. So, it's kind of like it's all there's kids in the Congo right now that are like there's childhood slavery that still exists in the world. So I think first is like the why was I lucky enough to be born into like this country in this city that I was born into and have like my parents

[48:45] that I have and my sister kind of thing. So I think first is kind of like I feel like I almost have like a duty to humanity to pay like to do good work because I was fortunate to be buil like could have not been born like I could there's so many things that could have happened. So I think that's the first thing. I think um the second thing what's the question like the pain how clear are you like are you like are you like are you goal driven missionoriented like are you how clear is it in your mind of what you're trying to accomplish or is this just your

[49:11] natural state of being of like today I optimize today I solve the next biggest problem yeah um I have very clear goal I mean I'm number one I'm always going to be working like I love to work like I love this grind So that will never if I have enough money one day to buy anything it won't it won't change it for me um at all. Like I love this [ __ ] Um I think I I really want to open a ton of monastery

[49:38] schools. That's like my personal goal. Um like I was fortunate enough to go to Monasuri school growing up. Um it's something I talked to my mom about a ton. Like we talked together about opening a ton of Monatory schools. So that's like a personal project that will take a lot of money and resources that I will do in the future. Um I think the goal of [ __ ] is um that that drives me for sure like a ton as a personal like that is what I want to accomplish. I think like the way you change the world is you start with like kids like you

[49:58] that's really it. Like once someone hits like once someone's 20 like every year that goes on it's harder to change who the person is. So if you want to change the world it's like start with two-year-olds like that's or start with like whatever whenever kids go to school. So I think that's how you I personally can have the biggest impact in the world which I want. I want like very grateful to be alive and I want to I get immense it's almost like there's a

[50:17] saying like camp is for the counselor. Like I get a ton of joy out of helping people. Like if I can donate to a certain cause or if I can help someone, like it might help them a lot, but like deep down it probably helps me more um because I love that feeling of helping others. So um that is personal. What drives me? Um what drives me um work. I think we I started making money when I was like 13, 14. Um I was making more money than my parents when I by the time I was 15. I was able to drop out of high school when I turned 16. Like it is

[50:43] awesome to like do what you love and to make money, be able to provide for yourself and your family and not have to like wake up in the morning dreading going to work. So I think making money on your own accord is like the ultimate freedom in life. Like you don't report to anyone. You do it yourself. You're able to like if you want to go to the beach more, you can go to the beach. If you want to go to the library, you can do whatever you want. You can provide for your family. And um that that so I think with [ __ ] I think what we're

[51:05] building um that that to me is like what calls me. It's like how can we there like how can if we want hundreds of millions of people um to make money on the platform most of those people have no idea how to launch a business. So over the next like 5 to 10 years how do we productize that and how do we take someone who wouldn't have otherwise been able to make money on their own and help them do it through the tools that we built. Um, so that and it's just like I've had so much fun in my life. When I was 17, I wanted to go travel somewhere

[51:28] and able to do that. When I wanted to like get my sister a gift, provide for my family, my mom, all that stuff. Like it's pretty awesome and I I feel like everyone should be able to do that. And I think the world has gotten like pretty divided where it's like there's these big corporations and everyone's like slaves to the corporation. So how um do we help people escape? And I think we were able to figure it out. So we need to build the tools that help others do

[51:46] it. How did you go about getting your first few people to put their bots on your platform? Yeah. Um, so we've always had we've it's always been very like gorilla style. So it wasn't like let's do a big marketing campaign, let's do a big push. It was literally just like who would use this platform. So in the early days with the Sneakerbot rental marketplace, um, the people we needed sellers and buyers. So the sellers were people who own the bots that were selling them. The buyers were people who wanted to purchase. So where do the sellers live? They lived in a couple Discord servers and like we just

[52:12] found those Discord servers and went in there. Um, didn't have a relationship with the community. I would just DM each person one by one. So, like anyone who was a seller, DM them being like, "Yo, um, do you still have this bot for sale?" They'd be like, "Yeah." And I would position it as like, "I was a prospective buyer." Um, then they would say, "Yes, I do." I'm like, "Okay, cool." Like, "I have someone who will buy it." And I would just tell them to list it on the marketplace. Um, and then that was how we' get the seller. So, it's just DM all these sellers in the be

[52:33] we it was unique. We got lucky like we actually own some of the bots in the beginning. So, we listed the first like 20 to 30. So, if you have a marketplace where you need two sides, if you can solve one of the sides out the gate, it makes it a lot easier. So, we listed the initial bots. Um, but to get more supply after ourselves, we just went to DM sellers who had them for sale. So, hey, it's kind of like when Airbnb launched, they just like reach out to everyone on Craigslist like, "Hey, is this apartment sale available?" Yes, great. Listed on

[52:54] our platform, we'll get you customers. Um, on the buyer side, we were really focused on since we had the initial bots, we made them free. So, that attracted buyers. Um, and I think in the beginning, you should make as much [ __ ] free as possible to just get people using it. Don't like leave any reason for someone not to use it. If it's $5 and there's a reason not to use it. If it's free, everyone will try it. So, um, we made the initial bots that we had free. And then um we would go to customers um it was the same vibe. So we

[53:17] we had a 25% take rate in the beginning. So we would just give anyone who wanted to try it as a buyer 25% coupon. But at a high level it's just like who are the sellers? Not like vague. It's like oh it's these kinds of people. No it's Jimmy. Jimmy owns five bots. Go get on the phone with Jimmy. Do whatever it takes. Share screen with Jimmy. Sit there with him. Get them to list the bots on our platform. And then who wants to buy it? Message them. Hey what bots

[53:37] you looking to buy? Curate it for them. Like okay here's the link to purchase. As soon as it purchases like make sure it's fulfilled. So very like connecting the pieces. So you were the broker basically even though you had the tool. You would make him list it on your tool and then find the buyer for them.

[53:51] Force usage. So in their mind that they thought the W marketplace was getting them a customer even though it was just you. But that perception built and then it became the norm in the industry. I think that's one thing you guys have really done really well because it's like first you started with the bot rental marketplace. Then you just did that. You got the five 10 biggest sellers on the platform. just started selling these bots for these people and then it became the platform for this entire category and then you guys kind of evolved into like this Discord role, paid Discord marketplace and you did the same thing. You captured

[54:18] the crypto crowd and then you captured the sports betting crowd really early on and so you found like these markets you would get like a critical mass of like the most influential people and then it became like the norm in that industry. Were you thinking about it this way or how would you describe how that process

[54:34] has evolved? Yeah, I think it's similar. Hunter spoke about this in your episode of peer groups, but at in the very beginning like we had sneaker bots, we captured that. Then we wanted people selling access to discord servers on [ __ ] So where are people doing this right now? The biggest company was called Hyper. They were probably processing like5 million a month with a couple thousand sellers. So it was like the next logical step was go join Hyper's Discord server where they had all their customers and start talking to their customers. And um I remember vividly they had a channel called suggestions where sellers merchants on

[55:01] their platform could request new features. I would just sit in that channel all day long. Anytime a new suggestion came in, I would message a person saying like, "Hey, we'll build this for you right now." Um, so we found another company um and just got closer to their customers than they were with their own customers. And then anyone who upvoted the suggestion, you could see on Discord, who reacts to a post, message all those people. So, um, it was always working backwards of like, we have a market we're focused on. Where are those people? Get extremely close to them, solve their problems, build their product. Once you've kind of like filled

[55:26] that, once there's nothing left to pull from that market, pick a bigger market, a different market. And in the hyper example, it was like with Discord, we just got so close to them, we would solve their problems and then within a couple weeks, we had a better platform than they had because we were just talking to their customers and then you just go down the list and it was again just message every single person one by one. So yeah, this is something I experienced firsthand three years ago when I first [clears throat] met you. We were in the Discord world of selling access to Discord communities and I get on a call

[55:50] with you [clears throat] and you were the most you've I've never met someone who talked faster and was more willing to help me. I think I thought of [ __ ] as like my own personal development agency for like three months without even really understanding that what the platform was. But you just came to me and you would constantly like, "What do you need? What do you need? What do you need?" And I'm like, "Why is this guy doing so many

[56:09] favors [laughter] for me?" And then you would just like every single time you just pound out this crazy list of everything that I said and then bring it back to me. And is this just like your method to building good product cuz you seem to be on the growth side, but you seem so

[56:22] product oriented. Yeah. on the for the we when we did the bot rental marketplace we had a 25% fee but when we started letting people sell access to discord we made it 100% free and the philosophy was like in your example you were one of the biggest YouTubers um at that time in the entrepreneurship space so how do we get like if we can build the perfect product for Brett everyone that follows Brett will want to use this product as well so the philosophy it was like you you might see it as us doing you favors but you were doing us favors by telling us what

[56:46] you wanted and then we just built that and then if we had the perfect product for Brett then everyone who wanted to be like Brett would also view this as a perfect product. So, um, that's how I kind of looked at it of just like make it free so there's no reason someone wouldn't use it and then just continue working with them to build whatever they

[57:00] view as the best product. Do you remember how you got in contact with me? Like, um, yeah, was it did Hunter introduce us or was it No, maybe. Yeah. Um, how do you get all I'm trying to ask is how do you get in contact with like these really well-known [clears throat] people? Yeah. In the beginning, we would just pay for introductions. So, um, if like it was if we're if there's money to be made, I would always give up as much like I will give 100% revenue. I don't care cuz it's

[57:22] kind of like the world is very big. There's 8 billion people in the world. Like I want to I don't want any reason to hold us back from working with someone. So, I don't care at all to in in the beginning like didn't care at all to make money off of anyone that was existing because you're already existing. It's like hard enough to get in contact with you. If we're also going to try to charge you, why would you join? So, um, how we get in contact was if there's money to be made, we'll give the person who introduces us as much of our revenue. I don't really care because

[57:43] that if we get that figurehead, they'll bring so many other people with them. If we're not making any money, just pay people for introduction. So, in the back in those days, we were paying people anywhere from $500 to $1,000 to just introduce us to people um once they join the platform. So, it was just literally

[57:56] paying cash for introduction. You were also a very you're a unique blend because you're like the tech startup founder. You're a CGO, but you're like hella in the product. Like you influence the product a lot. So you're like this tech person that understands growth, but then you're also like more intuitive and you're meditating on a regular basis. So just tell me your perspective on intuition when it comes to the tech

[58:17] world when everyone loves data. Where what's that blend and how do you think about it? Um [laughter] um I think at least for me like I didn't I dropped out of high school um so I didn't go to college, I didn't finish high school. I don't know that much to be honest like from like an intellectual st like I'll lose most intellectual debates. Um but I think from there's like a really good Rick Rubin clip um who's just like a really famous music producer who's very much on the side of intuition and they ask him like do you know how to do you know how to

[58:48] play any instruments? He's like no. Um do you know how to work a soundboard? Absolutely not. Um and then it's like well what do people pay you to do? and he says, "I'm you I'm I know exactly what I like and what I don't like and I'm like uniquely like I'm very specific on what I like." And I think that's kind of I think there's a lot of people there's a lot of really really smart people in the world who are very

[59:10] successful because they're very smart. Um I think for me it's kind of like I just know what I like and what I don't like and sometimes I can't really justify it. Um and sometimes I'll be wrong. Like I don't think my intuition is always right but it's done me well. Like I'm grateful for my intuition that I have. Um, and I think it's kind of like why why fade your intuition? Like if you have like a you sent me a clip once that was kind of like if you walk into a store and there's 10 jackets on the wall, one of those jackets is going to speak to you the most. Like why fade

[59:39] that feeling? Like why be like no? Like I don't like this thing that spoke to me at first I don't actually like. Um, so that's kind of how I think about it. It's like it should be when I'm most tapped into my intuition. Even the hardest decision in the world can take a couple seconds cuz it's kind of like you just know if it's right or wrong. And you also it's it's a muscle that you like develop over time that gets stronger. So I think that I think um data is important. Like I've I've buted heads a lot with Stephen and others on like my lack of data rigor. And I think

[1:00:05] it's kind of like I don't think the I don't think the best version is like only intuition because like your intuition what what helps your intuition is more at least for me more context. Like if I can feed myself more context. Um, if I'm going to be if I'm picking the jacket example, but I know that I'm going to be in Antarctica for a month, like that's a data point of it's going to be really cold. So, it's like this one might look the best, but like I should probably get something that protects me in the cold. So, um, I think intuition it's like it's just a there's

[1:00:31] no like I don't think there's a formula of like how to be successful, have this much intuition, this much intellect. I think each person is like born different. For me, I'm much heavier on the intuition. Where I need to get stronger is probably trusting my intuition more and not being like afraid of it. not not being afraid of like justifying why I believe something should be the way it is. It's just like if that's what I believe, that's what I [ __ ] believe and like go do it. And then also um theta is context. So like I should be yearning for more context to give my like more context can help power

[1:00:58] the intuition more. That's how I think about it. I'm all on the intuition side. [laughter] I don't think I can even process data. Like I I very much have come to the conclusion that [clears throat] I don't know where our thoughts come from. Like where are these ideas coming from? Where are the words

[1:01:13] that I'm saying coming from? Like I don't even think I'm in control of what's going on. Like I think I'm just like set I set a goal of wanting to buy a Counter-Strike team and all of a sudden I moved my entire life to New York and and working [clears throat] with WAP and I think that there's I can like try to explain to myself why I'm doing these things. But it's just like I I personally think you can accomplish anything you want if you're just willing to if you set the goal. This is going to

[1:01:36] sound people are going to hate this. They're going to be like shut the [ __ ] up. Tell me what to eat so I can be productive. [laughter] say it. What is it? But I I literally think you just set the goal and then every single morning if you meditate, you get like excited about something or like the like [clears throat] you could either go to your computer or go to the office or go shoot a video. Whatever one sounds the most exciting, that's probably the right

[1:01:55] thing you need to be doing. And there's all these different like guilt or external points that come to you like you should be doing this, you should be doing this. But I do genuinely think that anyone can just take their path and then you're going to obviously be challenged in how much pain you go through as long as you're willing to do

[1:02:09] that work and grow and face it head on. Mhm. I think that that is like Yeah. you anyone could like achieve anything. Mhm. Yeah. I think I agree. I think there's some I've thought about this a lot of like if you believe you can do something then you can like then you can do it. If you don't believe you can do something then there's no chop like it works out. So I think like I think about that a lot of like throughout the day all the time it's like you can't do this. I can't I'm not good enough to do this. And it's like well if I believe that then there's

[1:02:34] no shot I'll be able to do it. And because it's like you guys didn't the way you [clears throat] guys have like iterated and pivoted which isn't really like iteration or pivoting is like like you could never have planned that path to get to this product today. [laughter] You know what I'm saying? And so I just think it's like that's why I was asking about how clear you are with your your mission or your goal or whatever. Like

[1:02:53] it's just that's just interesting to me. Yeah. I think it's important to I think there's like a lot to unpack. It's like important to have I like working backwards from things in life. So, it's important to like have direction. It doesn't need to Someone gave me this analogy once of it's kind of like it's it's my responsibility to be really clear on like where we're taking off. If you take a plane, it's like where's the plane taking off and where's the plane landing? Like you need to be clear on that. But how someone flies the plane, it's like no like if every flight from New York to LA takes like a slightly

[1:03:20] different path and like there's probably like a world record time that has been taken, but like someone will break it and there will be like someone will build a better plane, someone will find a faster route. So it's kind of like getting crazy. The takeoff and destination are important. The how you fly the plane is kind of like if there was a right way to fly the plane, then there's no innovation. There's never innovation. So it's like there's a beauty in the fact that one someone one time is going to fly from New York to LA and go through Mexico. Um, and that's a what we know know is a dumpster, but

[1:03:44] like you have to try everything to see what works. So I think I kind of see it as like it the exact in the plane example maybe that's a bad example because you need a runway to land us as an exact for me it's kind of like as long as I'm directionally clear where I want to go like life will unfold. I'm reading this book right now that there's like a good um there's a good sentence that I read two nights ago which was kind of like earth has been around for like 13.8 billion years. There's so many like we have food, we have water, we

[1:04:07] have like the ability to um procreate. Like there's so many amazing things and like I'm going to be a human that's born on this planet and decide that like I need to control everything and like when like this thing has just been like it's it's pretty magical like what what exists in life. So it doesn't mean you shouldn't work hard like it almost motivates me to work even harder but it's kind of like open up my eyes to like things will just present themselves and when they do like follow them. Um and it's not like wake up and chill on the couch and play video games until

[1:04:32] they present themselves. Like put yourself in a position to have these opportunities open up but be open to the fact that like it's pretty amazing we're all alive. There's a like the fact that we're all here is much more exciting than any company that's ever been created. You have to be paying attention for the opportunities, be able to like spot

[1:04:45] them, but you're almost like observing. You're like looking left and right. But working through observation, of course. What do you think you're the best in the world at? [laughter] [ __ ] Um, how many books a month do you read? One. Not that many. I don't I don't think I'm the best in the world at anything right now. Um I think what I've learned recently was like in the in the beginning of business I think like Yeah. I don't know. I don't think I'm the best in the world at anything right

[1:05:22] now. Um I think Can I answer? Sure. I think you're the best in the world at when you receive new information at immediately changing your mind and then immediately taking the first step towards that direction. Mhm. Does that make sense? Yeah. I think there's probably someone I think you were No. [laughter] I'm putting it on the record right now.

[1:05:45] Guinness Guinness World Record. Fastest person from new information, new idea, first action. Mhm. Cameron's app. Congratulations. Maybe. Maybe. Um I think Yeah, I think it's important when you get new information, I think it's important to change as fast as like as fast as possible. [laughter] Well, how many books do you read? One a

[1:06:08] month? Uh yeah, one a month. Why do you read books? Um to learn new information. Do you read books with intent? Do you read books just because there's potent you just know there's more information out there and you don't know what you're going to find? Do you read books because you have a specific problem you're trying to solve and you're seeking

[1:06:22] specific information? I think I'm right now I'm reading books about things that are like fascinating to me. So I'm reading this book right now called like surrender experiment about this guy who just like surrenders to life. He built like a pretty large business like a multi-billion dollar business but it was all through like he was really deep into meditation. Um and it was just like he first focused on going inwards and like building a better relationship with himself and understanding how like the voice in his head works. And then he started just like being open to what life had to present and like pretty accidentally built like a big business. And I think

[1:06:51] what I I think I went through like a period where I was forcing myself to read business books because like I need to get smarter for purposes of making the business bigger. But I've since like just started reading about things that like pique my interest. And if I'm it's really because at the end of the day like to build a generational business it takes um a very long time. It takes like

[1:07:11] tens of years if not hundreds of years. So I kind of approach it from like everything I do is how do I ensure that when I'm 70 I'm still I'm performing at a higher output than I am right now. So if I have to do things that excite me like I can't I can't read a book that's not exciting to me. Like if I were to read a book on like something that's not interesting to me

[1:07:28] tomorrow I wouldn't I wouldn't retain. I'm not interested in it. So um I kind of whatever I'm excited or curious about in the moment is what I will try to learn about. How big of a company are you trying to build? Massive. How big? Like infinite. I don't think like I don't I don't there's not like a number. It's more like I wouldn't stop ever like I hope I'm working a WAP until the day I

[1:07:47] die. When you are making decisions, how big of a company are you trying to [clears throat] build? What dollar amount? Infinite. Like I want I want hundreds of millions of people if not bill I should say billions but it sounds like too big and scary of a number but I want like everyone in the world to be making money on [ __ ] Like why not? Um so that's kind of the lens. I think if you do that it's probably worth a lot of money. It's probably many trillions if you can accomplish that. But um I think for me I don't a number is just what someone's

[1:08:11] willing to pay for it. So it's kind of like that's not what true success is. Like valuations are what the market decides something is worth. That doesn't actually mean that's what the company's worth. It's kind of like for me I'm looking at this from the lens it's if I were to try to give like practical answer it's kind of like how does this decision we make I don't think about this consciously. It's probably like more subconscious, but like how does this decision we make impact us a week from now and how will this impact us two years from now is probably the lens I'm looking at right now. And so it's more

[1:08:38] so like if we're only optimizing for the two years, we might die. Like you need to we need to survive. We need to grow tomorrow to get more resources to be able to fulfill this 2 year 20 or 200 year vision. So how have you convinced yourself that you might you take this very seriously and that if you don't do this you're going to die? That is something I've heard you

[1:08:56] say many times. Explain that perspective. It's kind of like whatever um whatever you box yourself into is what you will do. So if the target for something is we want to build a $5 billion company, we'll probably build like a 4 to6 billion company like you'll miss low or miss high like a little bit. Um if the target is help 100 people make money via [ __ ] if like we're not going to stop until we do that. Um and we will get like we'll hit it. So, it's kind of like the or die. Like, [clears throat] one thing I've done whenever I'm running, if there's someone in front of

[1:09:34] me, like I have to catch them or I think I'll die. Um, and it's kind of like if I I don't want to die. So, like if I set that target, then like I'll figure out a way to hit it. So, it's kind of I've just realized this about myself is um at least for myself, I will work backwards from I mean, I'll miss some targets for sure. Like, I actually probably miss most targets, but um when I set these things, I will give it my all. like I will do everything I possibly can to hit this and I'll just work backwards from

[1:09:57] whatever I set. So, how do you set a target? Um, it depends on like I think I could try to answer. Now, I don't want to use too many hypotheticals, but if I it's really like it should be some balance of like it's not impossible, but some shit's going to have to go your way is kind of how I look at it. So it's like for as a business like if it's really what at the end of the day it's honestly like what sounds scary but exciting to you. So like if running an 8-minute mile you're like yeah I could

[1:10:27] do that it's not a good enough target. If running a six-minute mile is like [ __ ] like other human beings have done it so it's definitely possible but like it's going to take me a [ __ ] ton of work then that's like the range I like to operate within. How do you convince yourself to the point where you actually think you could die? Because [clears throat] I like for me if I said that I would immediately just like laugh and be like [laughter] it's all good. I'm running. Like this is [clears throat] totally fine. Like I'm doing the thing I'm supposed to be

[1:10:51] doing. I don't actually think if I don't catch the person I'm running I'm going to die. Like I don't expect to like have someone walk up behind me and be like shoot me in the head and like immediately. But I think it's it's more so my life is just a game of like my relationship with myself is kind of how I look at it. like that. Like I don't know if like I think about the Truman Show sometimes of like that analogy. I don't think other people are fake. I think other people are very real. But it's kind of like I can only control myself. Like at the end of the day like

[1:11:17] if we put a cup of water on this table, you and I are both going to leave away with a different perspective of that cup of water. Like you're going to look at it one way. I'm going to look at it a different way. I might see the glass and you might look at the water. So it's kind of like I can't control how other people think or what they do. I can only control myself. So I'm um I know what gets the most out of myself and I feel um the most fulfillment in life when I'm

[1:11:36] driving impact when I'm pushing myself. Um so that's what makes me happy. So it's kind of like in terms of how do I convince myself like I'm not going to lie to myself like I'm going to be true to myself. So it's like if I say I need to catch that guy running in front of me and if not I'm gonna die like I need to catch that guy and make a commitment basically and I'm just not gonna [ __ ] myself. Like I'm not gonna like lie to myself. Like I will like I this is like an exciting I'm too grateful to be alive to like lie to

[1:12:00] myself and hold myself back. Like why am I in this position? I have no idea. But like I'm so grateful and like might as well make the most of it. I I just I'm just curious how you take it so seriously. Like and I'm very impressed by it. like it's a very admirable trait to have and I think it's one of the core things that drives you

[1:12:14] is to be a successful person. [clears throat] I'm just so curious. I think it's like miss came from I think I um not from a place of like cockiness whatsoever but um I think I have the ability to like change the world like I want to open a ton of montory schools and I think that'll leave a really positive impact. So that is what ultimately like pushes me forward like I need to for I'm just like very grateful very very grateful to be alive. So I want to help people um as much as I can and so a deep duty to educate people through

[1:12:40] monastery school. Mhm. And maybe that's not what it turn like this is I've been saying this for a while so maybe like it turns out to be something completely different but that is like right now at least what sounds really exciting to me like I think that's where you can drive the most impact and I think like life is awesome like life is really awesome and um if we can make the world like I don't believe in the notion of like yolo um so and and so it's like I don't like the goal is not how do I extract max value from this life it's like how do I use this life to create

[1:13:06] like riches for the future for myself and for all other living beings like I'm able to be in this position Because when I was in the world fighting on making the world a better place or at least like in America like not pay that forward. So it's like it's like you feel like you have the [clears throat] ability you were given gifted this ability to operate and you can accomplish the highest things in the world. It's your

[1:13:28] [clears throat] duty to accomplish that. So you can because it's you literally are obligated to help people. Not like that sounds like I didn't word that correctly, but like it you like feel blessed that you are able to be like this competent and your true potential could be Yeah. making billions of dollars to then turn around and to help like you have the

[1:13:44] ability to help millions of people. That's like possible. Yeah. And you since you have that, you feel a deep responsibility to help millions of people in your mind. Yeah. And it's also I'm not like I'm not like thinking about that 24/7 either. That's not like the only thing driving me. I think it's just like I don't like I think everyone's alive for a reason. Like I don't think there's like such a thing as like yolo. Like you're just born like like I think

[1:14:06] everyone is alive for a specific reason. Um and I don't know why I have this mind that I do and and I also like I have so much to learn. I'm like so excited to like We get it, bro. You're humble. Like [laughter] I think I'm just like I want to um I don't I want to make the most of this life is kind of how I look at it. Um and some people might hear Yeah. For me, like pushing myself really hard is awesome. I love it. Some people are probably like, "Oh, like he's like d whatever." It's like I love it. So, it's kind of like for me for other people it

[1:14:34] might be a completely different strategy, but for me, like I care a lot about getting like the most out of every single day. So, you've built sales teams. You've attacked multiple markets. You guys are in the multi-figure valuation range. What is the way to scale from here? You guys have operationalized. Now, hiring is a much bigger focus. You're trying to build out the or you have over 60

[1:14:57] [clears throat] to 70 employees. What is that? What challenges is that facing and how are you approaching things now? Mhm. From like a business standpoint, it's through business if you look at it's business model. So like how did Amazon scale? They started with books and they went to electronics and then pets and then toys. How did Uber scale? They started in SF I believe and then they went to New It was just like a limo car service. So it's like you just go whatever your cut is. So for us it's business models. Like right now we're really focused on coaching and courses, paid groups, software, agencies,

[1:15:26] platforms. Those are like the five we're focused on. Um tactical like how do you actually do it? It's no different than like how we scaled sneaker bot rentals. Like each of these it's a market. There's someone who should be in charge of the market. They have targets. Um we push them really hard and that's like pretty much it. So it's kind of like the at this point all that I think really it's all that matters is the talent like the people at our company. That's the only thing that actually matters. It's

[1:15:47] all that really matters at any stage. But in the beginning it's just the talent of the founder. So it's like they'll either figure it out or they won't. Um so it's like who do we to me it's kind of like this tree like if I close my eyes like you can I can kind of like visualize the entire company which is like what do we care about? Who owns what we care about? Will that person pull it off or not is kind of how I look at it. And like I think we have we have like a very unique team. Um a lot of like young folks a lot of people like

[1:16:11] coming from all sides of the internet. So it's really like how do we scale from here? We decide what we care about. We make sure that we have the best people we can possibly find owning the things we care about. Um, and we push them as hard as feasibly possible to pull it off. And we're in the trenches with them. I'm in the trenches as much as I can be to help them with any problems that come up. But, um, it's no it's no different than like what got us to like a million-dollar business. Like, it's all the same things. It's just larger scale and and it just takes like a

[1:16:36] village. I think it's very interesting how you set targets. Could you just explain like high level systematically like what that looks like? like, okay, we want to hit $100 [clears throat] million in GMV here. Like, explain just like the thought process behind that. I think I'm pretty horrible at setting targets to be honest. I think my track record is horrible, but I think the framework I'm starting to care more about because personally I don't care targets at all. Like I because a target is like you're putting you're boxing yourself into something like the target is infinity for me. Like but um I think when you have a team of people it's

[1:17:05] important to rally around like it's it's important to how do you measure success? Like if everyone is if there's no targets then like what does success look like? So you can use it as like micro benchmarks to just like micro checkpoints to align that we're moving in the right direction. So how we set targets should really be like what is the opportunity? Um if we're talking about coaching and courses like we do $100 million a month in coaching and courses as a business model. That's probably like a $2.5 billion a month opportunity. That's the target. How long will that take us? If we crush it probably a year. Like that's probably

[1:17:33] like six to 12 months is like if we play all of our cards right and we dominate it. Um realistic the realistic answer probably a little bit longer. But the target is like we're doing 100 now. It's just chip chipping away. Like we pick how how would you actually capture all that $2.5 billion worth of volume. Um and you say

[1:17:49] like uh 20% is going to come from this. 30% is going to come from this. Okay, let's focus on this one this quarter. Um and now the target is that number. Like let's only obsess over that. That becomes the target. We're going to capture that 20% which is $200 million a month in the next 90 days. And like

[1:18:01] we're just going to sprint and go do it. Um so that's how I usually think. You just work back like you Yeah. So, you set the target of $100 million for the quarter. Yeah. How do you just make sure that everyone on the team is like operating clearly, everyone knows what each other's working on, like how do you actually just go about like

[1:18:17] organizing 50 people? Yeah. I mean, if you if you go bottoms up again, it's like everything everyone is going to like every minute someone is choosing how they want to spend their time. Then you can say that's the same for every hour. And you can say for every day like for today I'm choosing how I'm going to spend my time. So then um what I've personally seen work best is this concept of just like a weekly plan. like what are we going to do this week function by function. So each person every function list exactly what they're going to do for the week. Um we do that before the start of Monday

[1:18:43] morning and then you that is the goal for the week. It's just relentlessly go at what what are we doing for this week and each person owns what they say they're it's really just like at the end of the day it's a to-do list like what is the to-do list for the week and I like boxing it in weeks because you can get a lot done in a week. Like we've tried doing two week sprints. We tried doing monthlong sprints. When when you have a month to finish something you're going to take a month to finish it. When you have a week to finish something

[1:19:02] you're going to get it done in a week. So box as much as you can into one week without sacrificing quality. Um and then yeah, I think everything needs to have like everything in the world needs to have one owner, not two owners, not zero owners. Like everything in the world needs to have one owner. Um and there needs to be like a clear scope. Um and directionally I don't think like I I like setting deadlines for purposes of making sure that like people commit to what they say they're going to do. We should if you miss a deadline because you think there's more quality to be

[1:19:28] had, great. If you miss a deadline because you're being lazy, not great. So it's like not it's not like when the deadline hits we're shipping exactly what we have but it's like good to have targets of like we are going to get this done by Thursday and it's going to be really someone who's really talented never needs to sacrifice time for quality like you can get something done amazing in a short amount of time. So that's how I look at it and yeah so it's basically like a a week-long like this what I'm going to this is what I'm going to ship this week like it's very outcome focused not like

[1:19:52] I'm going to work on this or create a plan. It's like I'm going to send I'm going to close 20 creators or I'm going to create five social media posts. It's a very tangible you're having those people commit to that weekly plan and then you have like owners like this person owns this business model and then you're very very diligent on like okay you decide what you will do but I need to know when you have this really cool saying who will do what by when explain that because that is like been like the most effective thing I've ever

[1:20:21] seen in a company. Yeah. um who is the person who's owning it like will do like do what is the scope and by when is the time. So it's like who will own who's in charge of this scope by this time is kind of how I look at it. Um and then you ask the person like you you define that and you talk to them and let

[1:20:38] them define their time. Let them set it. So then they're not being like micromanaged. Yeah. Let them set it so they can buy in. And then they say 800 p.m. on Wednesday night. Great. I'm excited to see you 800 p.m. on Wednesday night. And you set a calendar. Yes. And so like you ask them when will this be done and then you say or they say 800 p.m. by Wednesday. You say great. You schedule a 15inute call on their calendar with them

[1:20:55] to review it. Yep. And that's accountability. Yeah. And then just end of the week we have this like companywide all hands where everyone can show off what they did that week. Yeah. There's something I met um CFO of like a pretty big company recently and he said the reason ownership is important is because um you need someone who you can like he said verbatim like you need someone who can choke at the neck and say why the hell is this not going up or why is this going down? So I think ownership is really important

[1:21:18] because everyone I can only do so much. You can only do so much. Like people need to own their surfaces and feel extreme ownership over it and they need to be responsible for things going up. Okay. Well, Cam Zab, you are the most high performing person I've ever worked with. I [ __ ] love working with you. Very grateful to be a part of this and I can't wait to run this back when we can learn how to go from zero to 100

[1:21:34] billion. So my friend, thank you bro.

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