25 Years of Business Advice in 27 Minutes

0:00:03 So I’ve been running businesses for 15 years, and I’ve hit this wall multiple times.
0:00:08 It’s somewhere around $7, $8, $9, $10 million in revenue, where suddenly your biggest problem,
0:00:12 it’s not a lack of ideas. It’s an issue with you. You’re the bottleneck.
0:00:16 And so I’ve got this buddy named Ryan Dice. He’s got this amazing quote. He says,
0:00:19 the more valuable you are, the less valuable the company is.
0:00:24 And I read that quote in one of his books a while ago, and it kind of changed my game on how I
0:00:28 thought about business. And so I decided to have Ryan come on and talk about the simple,
0:00:32 but very effective framework he has for running companies. It’s changed my life,
0:00:36 and maybe it could change yours. But on this podcast, he shared everything. So he shared his
0:00:40 whiteboard, his spreadsheets, his flowcharts with his employees. It’s basically like a 30-minute MBA,
0:00:44 which is pretty insane and very valuable. So check it out. Let me know what you think in the comments.
0:00:45 All right, let’s get into it.
0:00:57 You have two things that I like. One is you have this quote, which is,
0:01:03 the more valuable you are at your company, the less valuable your company. I think this is like
0:01:10 for every entrepreneur, you will hit this point, especially when you want to sell where it felt
0:01:14 really good to be the man, to be the one creating all the value, to taking all the shots and having
0:01:19 your name everywhere and your face everywhere and your fingerprints all over the business. It does feel
0:01:25 good from an ego perspective. It does feel good to have control, but it sucks if you ever want to go on
0:01:29 vacation or sell your business. Because the more valuable you are to the business, the less valuable
0:01:34 the business is. Yeah, you got to decide. Do you want to be down on the court, hitting the last
0:01:41 minute jump shot to win the game? Or do you want to be up in the owner’s box? That is the choice that
0:01:46 you make. And so you’re either going to be the most valuable player or you’re going to own the team.
0:01:54 entrepreneurs would much rather be valuable. And they would rather do the things that enabled them
0:02:01 to get started than do the things that are going to enable them to actually achieve the things that
0:02:07 they say they want. But really, they kind of like being important. They kind of like being valuable.
0:02:11 And I think that’s, you’ve got to decide what you actually want. And the nice thing is,
0:02:15 it’s your business, so you get to decide. Yeah, but a lot of times the problem is impulse control.
0:02:19 Like, so like… He says, as he cuts you off.
0:02:28 It’s impulse control, I think. Like, I can say that I want something, and I do truly want it.
0:02:33 But 20 years of previous behaviors have to be broken, and it’s incredibly challenging to
0:02:38 actually do that. And I think that, like, evolving as a person is, we actually just did an episode on
0:02:42 the other day, is way more challenging than a lot of people think.
0:02:47 I like this graphic you had here of the before and after. You know, I think the messy sort of
0:02:51 entrepreneur, which is, you know, I’ve been guilty of a lot of these things. You’re working 80 hours a
0:02:57 week, you’re in the weeds. If you ask who owns this, the answer is me, me, me, for each area.
0:03:01 The whole team is asking you, hey, you got a minute to talk about X, you know, 200 times a day,
0:03:05 you’re missing soccer games. You can’t sell the business because it’s too dependent on you,
0:03:10 and the business owns you rather than you owning the business. And then you have sort of the ideal
0:03:16 sort of outcome here at the end, which is, you know, it’s an hour a week for you. Team executes
0:03:20 without you. The team optimizes without you. The team decides without you. You can take a 30-day
0:03:24 vacation. You break revenue records while you’re gone, and you’re exit ready if you want to,
0:03:28 right? Like, as an ideal end state. And this is for an entrepreneur who wants to exit,
0:03:32 you know, wants to build what is sort of insultingly called a lifestyle business,
0:03:38 but is, I think, the main type of business I’m interested in. I use business to have a good
0:03:43 lifestyle. So yes, that’s kind of what I want. So what’s the process? How do you do that transformation?
0:03:46 How do you go from player to the owner’s box, Ryan?
0:03:53 The way that you begin to implement it is you have to establish defaults. You have to establish
0:04:01 certain default constraints. I’m going to leave at 530 every day. Like, I’m just, I’m going to do that,
0:04:05 and I’m not going to show up until nine. And what do you know, magically, I got my work done in that
0:04:09 block of time because I did. And so just the prioritization of that is going to do it. So I
0:04:15 mean, that, I think that’s the first thing. That is then going to force you to at least stack rank
0:04:19 your priorities because you can’t do everything. Because yeah, you’re right. We got a million different
0:04:24 ideas, but what are the ones that we’re going to do first? I like to say like, our ideas are like
0:04:29 chocolate cake, not cotton candy. You can only eat so much chocolate cake. It’s delicious, but you can
0:04:34 only eat so much of it. So what are those, what are those things that you’re going to do to begin to,
0:04:39 to stack rank those? And it does come down to, again, just getting really good at constraint
0:04:46 identification. We can do everything. Like we, there’s all this stuff that we could potentially
0:04:54 do. As entrepreneurs, we are trained and adept at identifying problems. We see them everywhere.
0:05:01 We will never not see them, but we, we certainly can’t fix them all at once. So what’s the one we’re
0:05:08 going to do next? And that’s the only question I’m ever asking. What is my right next thing? What is the
0:05:14 thing that I’m going to do next? And every problem in business is going to come down to one of two
0:05:20 things. Is it a supply constraint or a demand constraint? Demand constraints. I just need more
0:05:24 leads and sales supply constraint. Please don’t give me more leads and sales. I can’t fulfill the ones that
0:05:30 I got. And so once I’ve identified that category, now I just need to say, okay, how do we get this done?
0:05:36 So if it’s not going to be me that does it, who do I need to bring in to do it? And ultimately what it’s
0:05:44 going to look like is bringing somebody in who is better than me at one aspect of this. So I’m not
0:05:49 going to find somebody who’s better than me at everything, but I can almost certainly find multiple
0:05:55 people who are better than me at one aspect of that. And that’s what assembling a leadership team
0:06:01 looks like. What you have to first do is you have to map and visualize what are the core value drivers
0:06:05 of the business. And every business does three things. You make stuff, you sell stuff, and you
0:06:12 fulfill stuff. And so if you will create a visual map of how that happens. And so we do this with visual
0:06:18 process mapping. Like we literally will get, go to a whiteboard and get sticky notes and we’ll say,
0:06:22 okay, how do we get customers? Let’s sticky note this out in flowchart form.
0:06:28 And you’re basically creating like assembly lines that connect. Is that the right way to think about
0:06:33 this? Like it’s literally like a pipeline. Something comes in at the start, then what happens to it?
0:06:36 And then it gets handed off over here, then it gets handed off over here, right? That’s kind of what
0:06:42 you’re doing? Exactly. So this is an example of one that we would do just in sticky note version.
0:06:48 But like this is an example of the growth engine. So where we would start is, you know,
0:06:50 how do we generate initial awareness? So like, let’s say for this business,
0:06:54 they run Facebook and Instagram ads, they run Google ads, and they’re doing,
0:06:59 you know, reels and stories. So we’re going to start here. And then we’re going to say,
0:07:04 okay, cool. Then what happens? And so for this particular business, they’re driving traffic to
0:07:12 an email challenge. So they’re going to have people sign up for that challenge page. And then all you’re
0:07:17 doing is just saying, then what happens? Well, do they register? If not, then we’re going to retarget.
0:07:21 If yes, we’re going to deliver it. And all you do in this process, you just keep saying, okay,
0:07:28 then what? Then what? Then what? And if you just will map the process, and I didn’t invent this,
0:07:33 this is called business process mapping. But if you will just say, where does it start?
0:07:40 where does it end? And you will create a business process map for everything that you do as a company.
0:07:50 And specifically, if you’ll do it for how you get customers, what you do with them once you have them,
0:07:55 and how, you know, you can also do it for your manufacturing process, your product creation process.
0:08:02 Then what you’ve done is you visualize the core value creation aspect of your business.
0:08:03 Have you ever done this, Sean?
0:08:10 Yeah. But the question is, what are you doing it for? So, you know, there’s a couple of different
0:08:14 ways you can look at that. One is you look at it and you identify where’s the constraint.
0:08:18 Ah, you know, the problem is this part’s working well. Like, you know, what we would do is we would
0:08:21 overlay some numbers. We would say, great. So how many, how much are we spending on those Facebook
0:08:24 ads? How many clicks are those driving? So I would have little numbers written on the arrows,
0:08:29 basically. And then we would kind of circle to one, like, where’s the leak in our bucket?
0:08:35 You know, this is the, this is where we feel weak. You know, we got a lot of demand, but maybe,
0:08:40 you know, we’re breaking in terms of how many we can fulfill. There’s a long wait list, right? Or
0:08:44 they’re not coming back. Why aren’t they coming back? And you try to identify the constraint. So is
0:08:48 that why you do the business process map? Or is there a, is that the first thing you do with it? Or what’s
0:08:50 the, what are the different things you do once you create the map?
0:08:53 So this is kind of a digital example of the growth engine I just showed you.
0:09:00 And this would be like their fulfillment engine. So what I would do is we would take this growth
0:09:07 engine. And one of the first things that we would do is we’d say, okay, which of these can we really
0:09:12 not afford to screw up? So one of the biggest mistakes that companies make when they’re trying
0:09:17 to, to systemize is they try to document everything. Don’t do that. Just document the ones that are
0:09:22 really, really, really important. The second thing that we do is this is how we figure out
0:09:28 who we need to hire. So we create this thing called a high output team canvas.
0:09:35 And so every single one of the sticky notes, every single step or stage on here, we’re going to say,
0:09:39 okay, this one right here, Facebook and Instagram ads, who is uniquely responsible for this one?
0:09:46 And then we will create this canvas. So I’ll go down to the marketing team and I’ll say, okay,
0:09:53 you’ve got, you know, John here, John is going to, you know, collaborate with agencies to,
0:09:59 you know, establish those, those budgets, but ultimately it’s going to be our agency that’s
0:10:05 going to manage and optimize these. So every single sticky note, every single box is going to have
0:10:10 corresponding, what we would call critical accountability bolts. And this is how we begin
0:10:16 to assign roles and responsibilities. So that’s, that’s the, the second thing that we do with this.
0:10:22 And it becomes interesting because as you go through these, instead of going to people and
0:10:29 saying, okay, what does, you know, what does Betty do? You know, what is, what does Lloyd do?
0:10:36 What does Carly do? You start with your value creation processes and you, you assign stuff to
0:10:41 the people. And when you’re done, you realize who’s got all the things and who’s got like none of the
0:10:46 things. And so you can see on your team, who’s overburdened with work that actually matters and who
0:10:51 is underburdened with work that actually matters. But to the point that you made, this is how we create
0:11:02 our scorecards. So for our scorecards, every single one of the different squares, every single sticky
0:11:08 note, if you will, is going to have one or more corresponding metrics on the, on the scorecard.
0:11:12 And so this is how we know that we’re actually tracking the metrics that matter. And so when you
0:11:17 look at your scorecard and our scorecards, if you work top to bottom, that’s going to visualize
0:11:21 what we’re seeing as we work across here.
0:11:28 All right, check this out. So Ryan is giving away his entire operating system. I’m talking about the
0:11:34 actual spreadsheet he uses to run his companies, everything from sprint roadmaps and workflows
0:11:39 to planning tools, the whole thing, the same system we’re talking about in this episode.
0:11:45 You can get it right now. Scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now let’s get back to the
0:11:49 show. When I see things like this, it’s sort of like reading the book, how to win friends and
0:11:52 influence people where you’re like saying stuff. And I’m like, Oh yeah, that’s obvious. That makes
0:11:56 sense. And yeah, I don’t do it. And I’m like, I would love to do this. I should do this.
0:12:03 What, what mistakes am I likely to make when I see this stuff? Because to me, as someone, you know,
0:12:09 what do they say? Like, uh, like, uh, it’s easy to sell, like, it’s easy to sell water to like a guy in
0:12:14 hell. Like to me, this is like where I am now where it’s like, yeah, I need this. And so I see,
0:12:18 there’s like five or 10 of these types of frameworks that I’m like, I want all of them.
0:12:18 I need all of them.
0:12:22 So after this, Sam’s going to go run off and do it. What’s the first place he’s going to stub his toe?
0:12:23 Yeah. Where am I going to screw this up?
0:12:28 Let’s first kind of talk about like the hiring component. Cause that is one of the things that I
0:12:33 see entrepreneurs as they’re scaling screw up and they, they tip, they make one of two really big
0:12:41 mistakes. Um, the first is they hire helpers or they want to try to hire somebody just like them.
0:12:47 And like, it’s these two opposite ends. It’s like, so they either try to hire a bunch of helpers to
0:12:52 just do the stuff that, that they don’t want to do. Um, or they’re like, oh, I thought if only I
0:12:56 could hire somebody just like me, if I could hire like a quote unquote integrator as one of the biggest
0:13:03 lies ever perpetrated on the entrepreneurial community is this concept of I, as the visionary
0:13:07 snowflake can just hire this, like one magical integrator who’ll just do all the crap that I don’t
0:13:11 want to do. It just does not freaking work. It makes for a very good book. It just doesn’t work
0:13:20 ever in practice. So it’s not about you changing necessarily. What it’s about you doing is getting
0:13:25 really good at identifying what is the single biggest constraint right now in my business,
0:13:32 right? What is that right now in my business today for us to grow to the next level? And it’s
0:13:38 never ideas. And this is the thing as, as entrepreneurs, as business owners, what we do
0:13:44 in the beginning, what, what gets us going is I got an idea. And so like, that’s the freaking hammer
0:13:50 that, that, that, that we take to every single nail is I got a new idea. And the last thing at some
0:13:56 point that your business needs is another new idea. It doesn’t need another new thing to implement.
0:14:02 What it needs to figure out is what is the thing that is holding us back from the level, you know,
0:14:07 of growth that you need. So the first shift that needs to happen is shifting from, I got an idea to
0:14:15 shifting from, to constraint identification. Once you have shifted from idea generation to constraint
0:14:21 constraint identification, then the answer becomes, okay, what’s the best way to solve for this
0:14:28 constraint? And it’s almost always system and people related, but it’s almost never hire a bunch
0:14:32 of helpers. Cause when you hire helpers, what you actually did is you gave yourself a new job called
0:14:37 management, which is even harder. Or let me hire somebody just like me. Cause somebody just like
0:14:42 you doesn’t want to work for you. What you need to typically do is realize that that constraint is
0:14:50 solved by a functional leader. And so what you need to get good at is hiring very, very, very good and
0:14:56 talented functional leaders. So head of sales, head of marketing, head of product. And this is the thing
0:15:03 that most entrepreneurs aren’t as good at as they’re scaling. They’re good at hiring a bunch of little
0:15:08 helpers. They think they’re good at hiring a quote unquote COO. Although nobody actually knows what that
0:15:12 is, if you can get really good at hiring a functional leader and building a team of those,
0:15:17 now team leadership becomes a lot easier when you have really, when you have three or four actually
0:15:23 talented skilled people working for you. They have massive capacity because they’ll build the teams
0:15:28 under them to execute all your ideas. Today’s episode is brought to you by HubSpot. Did you know
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0:15:44 in emails, call logs, transcripts, all that unstructured data makes all the difference because
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0:15:51 part of it, visit HubSpot.com.
0:15:57 Sean, two years ago, you were like, I just hired this. I think, I think you said, I just hired this
0:16:01 VP of marketing or CM. I forget exactly. It was a marketing position. I forget the title. And you’re
0:16:07 like, what was it? Was it a CMO? And you were like, why didn’t I do this sooner? And I remember thinking,
0:16:12 oh man, you found a winner. Like that’s like the highest leverage thing that we can do is just like
0:16:16 find winners. And it’s so challenging. But I remember you like talked about finding this,
0:16:18 this, this, this person and your like frame was broken.
0:16:24 Yeah. There’s a new test for, is this person a good hire or not? Uh, which is you basically,
0:16:32 you switch from, uh, I, I wish this would happen, or I hope this would happen, or I want this to happen
0:16:39 to basically fear that, uh, will this person leave? Because, oh my God, this person is so good. And they
0:16:42 are like, they’re so transformative to the business. And I just don’t have to worry about that. And then if
0:16:46 they ever left, I would have to worry about that area of the business again. Uh, I think we had a
0:16:51 John Morgan on last, last week, and he has this phrase called send and delete people. He’s like,
0:16:54 there’s people in your company that you could just send them the email and you could forward them the
0:16:59 email and then you can delete the email. Cause you know, it’s going to get handled. And, um, you know,
0:17:02 Brian, this thing you just said is so true. I actually was talking about this last week about
0:17:07 helpers. I was like talking to somebody on my team. I was like, are you going to be a helper?
0:17:11 Like so far, this has worked because I needed you as my helper, but now I’m asking you to drive,
0:17:16 but you still are acting like a helper and like, but you want to be a driver and we need a driver.
0:17:20 So like, it’s time to be a driver. Now, whether that person can, can make that adjustment or not,
0:17:24 I think is, is, is always just about that person and their, their own kind of goals and self-improvement
0:17:29 and self-development, their, their self-image. But, uh, it’s so true that it’s very, very tempting
0:17:33 to hire other just kind of entrepreneurial people like me. Great. Now I got another sort of like
0:17:38 shiny object syndrome idea guy in the room that doesn’t help. Or I got a helper who,
0:17:43 as long as I’m directing everything, they help me get stuff done. But that means I always have to
0:17:48 keep my eye on that area because I’m the one coming up with the plan. I’m the one driving the execution
0:17:52 and they’re just, you know, there to help. It’s a, I’ve, I’ve definitely felt this problem firsthand.
0:17:56 The biggest thing that people make when they, when they map their, their business process maps is
0:18:03 they will map what they wish were true instead of mapping what actually is. And so you have to map
0:18:08 what actually is happening today. Not like, well, what we should be doing is this. Like
0:18:12 that’s generally unhelpful. You need to see all of those as points of future optimization,
0:18:17 because we’ve got to get a picture of what it is today, because that’s what’s going to inform
0:18:23 what are all of the people actually doing or what should they be doing? Um, what are the metrics that,
0:18:28 that we do need to track? The other kind of thing that you want to make sure that you’re doing is
0:18:33 that you are starting from the audit of those value engines. So you, you, you don’t want to just say,
0:18:38 I’m going to build out my scorecard because that looks cool. Okay. But what are the metrics that
0:18:44 you’re picking? Because if the metrics don’t, that, that you’re tracking, if they don’t all link back
0:18:49 to a step or stage, you know, on one of those business process maps, then you could very well be
0:18:55 tracking something that doesn’t matter. I’ll give you an example. When we rolled out our scorecards
0:19:03 to our team, we had somebody on at our company who was like, Hey, we don’t currently have any metrics
0:19:08 for, this was at, uh, uh, at digital marketer, one of our companies, we don’t, we don’t currently have
0:19:16 any metrics for our email newsletter. Why don’t we have that? And I was like, well, where, where,
0:19:20 show me where the, show me where the newsletter feeds into anything like, Oh, well, you know,
0:19:24 it’s, it’s good for awareness and engagement of the list. I’m like, okay, but how does it drive
0:19:30 into anything? And the answer was, it didn’t because the newsletter didn’t show up as a sticky note
0:19:35 on any of our growth engine, because at no point in the newsletter, did we ever link off to anything
0:19:41 that was meaningful. It never showed up. It never wound up as a sticky note on anything like that’s,
0:19:46 that’s why it never showed up on a, on one of our, you know, growth engines, which is why it never
0:19:50 showed up on the scorecard. We’re not tracking the metrics. So I had to say to the person, like,
0:19:57 look, if you can show us where this actually has an impact on one of our, uh, you know, on, on,
0:20:01 on our growth engine, then, then you’ll get some metrics to track. And until then you won’t. And if
0:20:04 you don’t, then we’re going to stop doing it completely. There’s so many orphaned activities
0:20:11 that companies are doing that it’s because you’re doing things that don’t have a, a, a sticky note
0:20:15 that’s represented anywhere. And so that’s the other kind of mistake I’d say that people are making.
0:20:18 I think I read somewhere that someone said, like, I think it was Jason Lemkin. He was like,
0:20:23 if you get to a 10 million in revenue, it’s you 100%, your business can 100% get to a hundred
0:20:27 million in revenue. Do you think that what stops people from growing from 10 to a hundred million
0:20:34 or whatever this arbitrary, um, like it’s kind of working to, it’s a huge home run is like being
0:20:39 better operators, like being systemized and things like this. Yeah. It’s almost always systems at the,
0:20:44 at the end of the day, I think it happens earlier. Like really this swamp of scale happens at kind of
0:20:51 four to 6 million. That’s no man’s land. That’s when you probably need three people that you
0:20:58 absolutely can’t possibly afford, right? There’s like three, you know, VP level kind of roles that,
0:21:04 that you can’t afford yet. But if you could get them, they would take you up to 20 million. At that
0:21:08 point, you would have the margin, you would have the cashflow to be able to get the rest of the people
0:21:12 to then be able to scale to the next level. And the only way that you can bridge that gap is through
0:21:17 systems. You’re not going to be able to bridge it through, through just brute force, through just
0:21:23 chewing rocks. Like that’s, what’s going to get you from a million to 2 million. Like you said, maybe for,
0:21:29 for really, you know, motivated people up to seven, eight, 10, but it is not going to get you beyond that.
0:21:34 You’re going to have to get really, really, really talented people and really talented people
0:21:39 are expensive. And the only way you’re going to be able to create that margin is through systems.
0:21:45 Also really talented people want to work for good companies. One of my like least favorite pieces
0:21:50 of advice is like, oh, just go hire talented people. That’s like saying to like your sad,
0:21:58 lonely, pathetic friend, just like, oh, just only date tens. That’s not helpful. You have to become
0:22:06 the kind of person that a 10 would want to date. And it’s the same if you want to attract talent.
0:22:11 As a business, you have to become the kind of business that A players want to come and work for.
0:22:15 It’s why I say like, my goal is not to hire like rock stars and A players. My goal is to build a company
0:22:20 that doesn’t require them because I know that that’s the kind of company that rock stars and A players
0:22:25 want to come and work for. So that happens through better systems. If you can put those in place,
0:22:30 then great people want to come and work there. It’s why, you know, big companies get even bigger.
0:22:37 So me and Tyler, the CEO of Beehive came up with a little challenge for you. It’s the newsletter
0:22:41 challenge. Now, if you know me, you know that I’m a big fan of newsletters. I got my own newsletter.
0:22:45 I also had a business that was a newsletter business that was amazing. I wrote this newsletter about
0:22:49 crypto. We grew it to quarter million subscribers and we ended up selling it after a year for millions
0:22:53 of dollars. And I want you to be able to do the same thing in your business. So we’re doing a
0:22:57 challenge. 10 grand is on the line. Plus me and Tyler will actually be in your corner as growth
0:23:02 advisors. You just need to go to beehive.com slash MFM and you either start a new newsletter or you move
0:23:07 your current newsletter over there and five finalists will get picked to pitch me and Tyler sort of like
0:23:13 shark tank and the winner gets 10 grand. So go to beehive.com slash MFM. That’s beehive.com slash MFM
0:23:21 is the company of selling this like license of scalable of the scalability company. Is that going
0:23:26 to be the best business that you’ve ever founded? I mean, is it sort of going to be like EOS? I heard
0:23:30 EOS, which is like, you know, an operational framework. I heard that company sold for like,
0:23:36 I think $90 million. Yeah, it won’t be from that perspective because we talked about doing the
0:23:42 licensed practitioner model with it. We don’t want to. So our model is when we work with clients,
0:23:48 we do it all internally. And so we’re somewhat limited in terms of what we can do. But that’s
0:23:53 because again, for us, this is us getting paid to do due diligence because we want to basically have
0:23:59 access to the deal flow. And so if we were to license our model to other kind of coaches and
0:24:05 consultants like EOS did, it would be a simpler business. It would arguably be more scalable,
0:24:11 but we would lose out on all the deal flow. And so we talked about it, but we don’t do it. So on
0:24:16 one hand, I mean, scalable this year is going to do just right at about $10 million in revenue,
0:24:22 which is good. And it’s really good, healthy margins. But what we generate from the deal flow
0:24:28 is way better than that. There’s one deal that we’re going to have that we got from it
0:24:34 that it won’t happen this year, but it should be this next year. $300 million company. It’s not,
0:24:39 we’re not going to get 20% of it. Well, it’ll be a much smaller percentage of that with a baseline.
0:24:44 But if this business winds up going public in a couple of years, let’s just say that’s a couple
0:24:49 of EOSs for me. Dude, this is why you’re fascinating to me when you’ve, I think that when you have,
0:24:55 like, I think Sean uses this phrase generative. I use the phrase prolific. You’ve been like doing
0:25:01 stuff for like 30 or 20 years now. Yeah. No, and look, a lot of it’s just being old,
0:25:07 having done, having been around for, you know, for 20 plus, for 20 plus years and being, and being in
0:25:12 the, being in the game for a long time. And that’s why I tell people like so much of this is, is, is,
0:25:19 is patience and, and just allowing, you know, just getting in the stuff and doing it. I mean,
0:25:23 again, the first thing that I sold online was an ebook on how to make your own baby food for $14.
0:25:30 So your first thing does not have to be, I went out there, I had an idea, I flew out to San Francisco.
0:25:36 I got, you know, it was in the YC batch and, you know, next thing you know, I’m a billionaire.
0:25:41 Like, that’s not how it has to be. It’s not how it is for most people. It can start pretty humbly.
0:25:42 When did you first feel rich?
0:25:44 I still don’t feel very rich.
0:25:45 Why not?
0:25:51 Part of it’s because we still live relatively below our means. I’ve got four kids and I,
0:25:58 I never wanted to live in kind of a place where, you know, they, they weren’t around,
0:26:02 I guess, normal kids, if that makes sense. I’ve seen some of my other friends who they,
0:26:07 they moved when they hit it big, they moved to like very ritzy areas and there were no kids there
0:26:10 for their kids to play with. And so my wife and I talked about that. Like,
0:26:14 we just sort of stayed in the same place that we were in the whole time. And so I,
0:26:16 I haven’t really expanded my lifestyle that much.
0:26:18 Are you still chasing money?
0:26:22 Yeah. I think the, the main reason though is, is I still live in a,
0:26:24 the perpetual fear that it’s all going to go away.
0:26:28 I appreciate the honesty. I feel like most people aren’t, uh,
0:26:31 honest with themselves or others about, about that. You know, the same just says,
0:26:37 are you chasing money? I think most people would, uh, you know, reflexively deny that.
0:26:40 No, I, I just love what I do, blah, blah, blah.
0:26:44 And then it’s like, but everything you do is about making money. And if there was no money,
0:26:49 you wouldn’t do it. Uh, you know what I mean? Like, um, and so I appreciate the, uh, the,
0:26:56 I am completely coin operated. I, I’m in this for the money. Um, I wish, you know, and, and I,
0:27:01 and I acknowledge the brokenness of it too, by the way, like, I wish, I don’t know that,
0:27:06 that there is like some, some number. And it’s, it’s, it’s also one of those things like,
0:27:11 I don’t even know how much I have. It’s, it’s, I don’t look at it because it’s not about like
0:27:16 stacking those kinds of things. And it’s the same, even with the businesses, like I can tell you more
0:27:21 about the businesses we have that are broken than I can, the ones that are working well,
0:27:27 you know, like it’s for whatever reason, my focus is always on the things that, that aren’t quite
0:27:32 right than on the things that, that are. You’re, you’re interesting to me because you come off like
0:27:40 a fairly conservative person, meaning like, um, uh, super well operated. And yet there’s this other
0:27:46 side of you that comes off like a gunslinger, like, uh, screw it, put it all in red. Let’s do it.
0:27:52 You look like a guy who I’ll see at church every weekend, but also has a bookie who calls him and
0:27:58 it’s like, Whoa, okay, great. I like it. Very close to home, Sean. Thank you. Um, all right. That’s it.
0:28:05 That’s a pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it
0:28:14 All right, everyone. If you’re listening to MFM, you probably want to make more money. Well, I want
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