Bootstrapping a +$1B Business + Selling To The Ultra Rich | Jesse Pujji

0:00:02 You said a couple interesting things, so let’s break this down.
0:00:03 We have no money, we’re bootstrapping.
0:00:05 Let’s get ourselves on GLG as experts.
0:00:08 I’m like, OK, my charge is $500 an hour.
0:00:09 She goes, no problem.
0:00:11 But we talked to someone after a few weeks,
0:00:13 and he goes, do you guys have research?
0:00:14 And we looked at each other.
0:00:16 We’re like, yeah, yeah, we have a report.
0:00:17 It’s $5,000.
0:00:19 So I was joked that was Ampush’s Angels round.
0:00:23 We raised $150,000 selling research reports to hedge fund
0:00:24 people.
0:00:25 It’s pretty sick.
0:00:26 That’s an amazing story.
0:00:27 And by the way, there’s eight of them
0:00:30 that have high eight or low nine figures in EBITDA.
0:00:32 The whole category has just crushed.
0:00:34 The two takeaways from this, by the way,
0:00:37 are sell to the rich, and then your way of figuring out
0:00:38 what they need was.
0:00:40 I feel like I can rule the world.
0:00:43 I know I could be what I want to.
0:00:47 I put my all in it like days off on the road.
0:00:48 Jesse, what up, dude?
0:00:49 How are you doing, man?
0:00:49 What’s up, guys?
0:00:51 I’m pumped to be on here.
0:00:52 Good to see you.
0:00:53 Where should we start?
0:00:55 You sent us a doc, had a bunch of cool ideas on it.
0:00:56 Which one do you want to start with?
0:00:58 Yeah, maybe some of the stuff we’ve
0:01:00 learned at GatewayX as we’ve been building new ideas.
0:01:02 I think the idea I’m most excited about,
0:01:04 which I think Sean, you and I have talked about,
0:01:06 is Ox Insights.
0:01:08 Sam, do you know about this business?
0:01:08 No.
0:01:10 What is Ox Insights?
0:01:11 Oh, dude, this is sick.
0:01:12 OK, tell us about this business.
0:01:14 You’re going to love it, Sam.
0:01:17 One of the things that as we’ve learned starting new businesses–
0:01:19 and some of them you guys probably know like Kehani, Sean,
0:01:21 you were a customer of it, it failed.
0:01:22 We stopped doing it.
0:01:24 And one thing I’ve learned sitting in this seat
0:01:27 is it’s really important to understand demand
0:01:31 and that there’s a customer who has a problem that you need.
0:01:32 And then goes like to stand up the thing.
0:01:34 With Growth Assistant, that’s what I did.
0:01:35 I already knew people needed it.
0:01:37 I just stood it up and immediately started to work.
0:01:41 And so I started my career in finance and consulting.
0:01:42 I went to Penn.
0:01:44 I got a million friends who were in private equity.
0:01:46 And after we sold Ampush, I would
0:01:50 get a call from one friend once a month without fail, who
0:01:52 worked at Blackstone or worked at TPG
0:01:54 or worked at one of these fancy private equity firms.
0:01:57 And they’d go, hey, I have this deal
0:01:59 in front of my investment committee.
0:02:01 It’s a billion dollar company.
0:02:03 And I’m getting asked all these questions
0:02:05 about their Google and Facebook ads, Jesse.
0:02:06 What if they don’t perform well?
0:02:08 Or how do we know they’re good at them?
0:02:10 And they’re asking me to look at the web traffic
0:02:11 and make some analysis.
0:02:13 Jesse, I have no idea.
0:02:14 And my investment kidney is not happy
0:02:17 because I can’t convince them to buy this business.
0:02:18 What should I ask them?
0:02:20 So the first few calls, I’m like, well, the same thing
0:02:21 any of us would do.
0:02:22 Well, go look at Google Analytics.
0:02:24 How many creatives are they testing?
0:02:27 And my fourth guy was like, dude, can you just do this for me?
0:02:30 And I’m like, me, I’m like, well, yeah, a couple hundred
0:02:31 thousand dollars I’ll do it for you.
0:02:32 And he’s like, oh, that’s it?
0:02:33 Yeah, done.
0:02:34 Let’s go do this.
0:02:38 All right, let’s take a quick break
0:02:40 because I want to talk to you about some new stuff that HubSpot
0:02:40 has.
0:02:42 Now, they let me freestyle this ad here.
0:02:45 So I’m going to actually tell you what I think is interesting.
0:02:47 So they have this thing called the false spotlight,
0:02:48 showing all the new features that they released
0:02:49 in the last few months.
0:02:52 And the ones that stood out to me were Breeze Intelligence.
0:02:55 I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but if you’re in HubSpot
0:02:57 and you have, let’s say, a customer there,
0:03:00 you can just basically add intelligence to that customer.
0:03:01 They estimate a revenue for that company.
0:03:03 How many employees it has.
0:03:05 Maybe their email address or their location
0:03:07 if they’ve ever visited your page or not.
0:03:09 And so you can enrich all of your data automatically
0:03:12 with one click using this thing called Breeze Intelligence.
0:03:14 They actually acquired a really cool company called Clearbit.
0:03:17 And it’s become Breeze, which is great because now it’s built in.
0:03:19 I always hated using two different tools
0:03:21 to try to do this. Now it’s all in one place.
0:03:24 And so all the data you had about your customers
0:03:25 now just got smarter.
0:03:26 So check it out.
0:03:27 You can actually see all the stuff they released.
0:03:28 It’s a really cool website.
0:03:31 Go to hubspot.com/spotlight to see them all
0:03:33 and get the demos yourself.
0:03:35 Back to this episode.
0:03:37 And so AUX Insights is essentially a private equity consulting
0:03:40 business that works for private equity firms,
0:03:42 specifically in the office of the CMO,
0:03:46 marketing related diligence and what’s called value creations.
0:03:47 Value creations after they buy the business,
0:03:49 they want you to spend time helping them put together
0:03:52 the strategy for how they grow the business.
0:03:55 And there’s businesses like Accordion, the cool example,
0:03:56 $300 million in revenue, $100 million in EBITDA.
0:03:58 It’s only a 12-year-old company.
0:04:00 They do the same exact business for Office of the CFO.
0:04:01 What?
0:04:02 So anything finance related.
0:04:03 Yeah, Accordion.
0:04:07 I mean, you can look at LEK is $800 million and $250 in EBITDA.
0:04:10 McKinsey has an over-billion-dollar business
0:04:14 just for private equity firms that’s got 55% EBITDA margins.
0:04:16 And when you say they’re Office of the CFO,
0:04:17 so let’s break this down.
0:04:19 So you said a couple of interesting things.
0:04:22 The first was, it’s a lot easier to succeed in business
0:04:24 if you first find the starving crowd.
0:04:28 So find the really hungry market versus how you and I,
0:04:30 Sam, like starter, at least I should just speak for myself.
0:04:31 I don’t know if you did the same thing,
0:04:34 but I would always be like, what’s a cool idea?
0:04:36 Or what’s something I could make?
0:04:38 Or what’s something that seems easy to do?
0:04:41 And it was easy at the start because it’s so familiar,
0:04:44 or it’s like just nearby, but I have no idea the demand.
0:04:46 Or the demand is all, another broke people like me.
0:04:48 So it’s gonna be really hard to sell and make money,
0:04:49 or I need so many customers to make money.
0:04:52 Whereas you’re like, well, let me work backwards.
0:04:54 Who are the richest people and the richest companies?
0:04:57 It’s like private equity, hedge funds,
0:04:58 that type of customer.
0:05:00 – They’re not price sensitive at all, they’re urgent.
0:05:02 – And they’re super rational.
0:05:05 They’re like, cool, if I can buy something for $100,000,
0:05:08 but it’s gonna help me make a $10 million decision,
0:05:11 great, you know, the math maths I’m in.
0:05:13 So they’re wealthy, they’re not as price sensitive,
0:05:14 they’re rational.
0:05:17 And in your case, you figured out what the need was
0:05:20 because you had one fortune at circumstance,
0:05:21 which was like, they were calling you
0:05:22 to ask you about this thing.
0:05:26 And you basically, so what you built was like a marketing
0:05:27 due diligence.
0:05:30 So they’re looking at a company, they need to know,
0:05:33 is there, are there digital ads performing very well?
0:05:35 Not so good, is there any red flags in here?
0:05:36 Any concerns?
0:05:38 In the same way that if I wanna go buy a company,
0:05:40 and I get a bunch of financial statements,
0:05:42 I might ask a super financially literate friend.
0:05:45 Yeah, like, hey, my accountant, can you look at this?
0:05:46 Can we do a quality of earnings?
0:05:48 Can we get some understanding of like,
0:05:50 are these numbers solid or not?
0:05:51 They are really financially literate,
0:05:53 but they’re not as Facebook ads, and Google ads,
0:05:56 and Pinterest ads literate as you are.
0:05:58 So you’re providing that diligence.
0:05:59 And then after they buy, then you’re like, cool,
0:06:02 and then we’ll help you like, we’ll show you some levers
0:06:04 that might be able to grow this thing
0:06:06 after you buy to create the value, right?
0:06:07 You should get background.
0:06:08 So you started and sold Ampush
0:06:11 for some tens of millions, I think, dollars, and then.
0:06:13 And then Visual Marketing Agency.
0:06:16 And then with that money, you went and started GatewayX,
0:06:18 which is almost an incubator.
0:06:20 Yeah, we call it a studio, and we told Coe.
0:06:23 Where you have started three or four or five businesses.
0:06:25 We started six, we’ve shut down two.
0:06:28 One is kind of going sideways, two have crushed it,
0:06:30 OX being one of them, and one is new.
0:06:31 Got it, okay.
0:06:32 And let me jump in and say two things.
0:06:35 What we call it at GatewayX in the studio, Sean,
0:06:39 is we have to have a unique insight and an unfair advantage.
0:06:40 I wanna build like, in 10 years,
0:06:43 I want this like holdcove studio thing
0:06:44 where we’ve got five to 15.
0:06:45 I don’t care what the number is.
0:06:47 Operating companies, they’re all profitable.
0:06:49 They’re compounding on top of each other,
0:06:51 and we’ve got this super cool culture of builders
0:06:53 basically inside of it.
0:06:55 – You don’t raise money at the start for them, right?
0:06:56 – We don’t raise money.
0:06:59 We tried it with Kahani, as you know, and it didn’t work.
0:07:00 Like it wasn’t, it just wasn’t for me, I shouldn’t say.
0:07:02 It was fine, it just wasn’t for me.
0:07:03 – What’s Kahani?
0:07:05 – Well, this is a great example of Sean’s point
0:07:07 of like a cool idea, so that you’re gonna think
0:07:09 the idea is cool, the second I tell it to you
0:07:11 in like a shitty idea of business.
0:07:12 I was like, look, e-commerce sites
0:07:14 look like they’re 10 years old.
0:07:16 And meanwhile, Instagram and TikTok
0:07:17 have got these like full vertical videos.
0:07:20 So let’s make a plug-in to let e-commerce companies
0:07:23 change themselves to look more like TikTok and Instagram.
0:07:26 So the first product was the little stories nav bar
0:07:29 at the top of every e-commerce site.
0:07:31 And we had it on Sean’s site, and I was like,
0:07:33 oh, it’s gonna, people are gonna engage with it.
0:07:34 The content’s gonna look bigger, it’s gonna,
0:07:36 and we launched it, and everybody,
0:07:38 people thought it was a really cool idea, right?
0:07:40 But nobody actually like, Sean.
0:07:41 – By the way, I thought it was an awesome idea.
0:07:43 In fact, I kind of still think it’s an awesome idea.
0:07:45 – It is a good idea, but it doesn’t solve
0:07:48 anybody’s problems, and nobody’s lining up for it.
0:07:50 And then we were like, oh, it’s improving your conversion.
0:07:51 But then it’s like, well, it’s not sure
0:07:53 it’s improving our conversion.
0:07:55 It kind of seems like people engage with it.
0:07:56 And then people are like, it’s kind of slowing my site down
0:07:57 or it takes me too much content.
0:07:59 They just ripped it off the site.
0:08:00 – Was it basically just a plug-in?
0:08:01 Is it a plug-in?
0:08:02 – Just a plug-in.
0:08:03 So I mean, we had a big vision for it, right?
0:08:05 You’d have landing pages and you could put your influencers.
0:08:08 I still think someone’s going to figure it out, but I sat there
0:08:10 and I was like, I got this other business, Growth Assistant.
0:08:12 And here’s a funny story, you guys will like this.
0:08:14 We go to Shop Talk.
0:08:15 And you know, Shop Talk matches you.
0:08:17 And I have one sales guy from Kahani
0:08:19 and one sales guy from Growth Assistant.
0:08:20 And they both do the matching thing.
0:08:22 The Kahani guy gets three meetings.
0:08:25 The Growth Assistant guy gets 25 meetings.
0:08:27 One selling like marketing talent in the Philippines.
0:08:30 And I go, man, is there’s ever a signal for like
0:08:33 solving a problem versus, you know, just a cool thing.
0:08:33 This is it.
0:08:35 And that was like one of the key decisions
0:08:36 where I was like, I don’t want to do this anymore.
0:08:38 – And with Aux, so with Kahani, he’s like,
0:08:40 yo, you want to invest?
0:08:40 We’d love to have you on board.
0:08:41 Here’s the deck.
0:08:42 And I’m like, looking at it, I’m like,
0:08:44 I kind of like the idea, but I’m not fully sold.
0:08:46 So I ended up not investing with Aux.
0:08:49 He half tells me the idea to text message.
0:08:51 And I’m like, I got to invest in this somehow, right?
0:08:53 Like even I was like, instantly I was like,
0:08:54 this shit’s going to work.
0:08:57 This is a great idea, much easier to solve.
0:08:59 And one really cool thing I had heard,
0:09:00 Jesse, can you talk about this?
0:09:03 Which is earlier when you were doing Ampush,
0:09:05 you signed up for GLG,
0:09:07 which is a like expert network
0:09:10 where basically rich dudes on Wall Street
0:09:11 will call you and be like, hey, nerd,
0:09:13 you know a lot about this biotech thing,
0:09:15 or you know a lot about newsletters.
0:09:18 – It’s like if a banker is about to take a company public,
0:09:20 like email software company public,
0:09:23 they want to talk to all types of users of email software
0:09:25 and ask them questions so they can have more conviction
0:09:26 in their decision.
0:09:27 – Yes.
0:09:28 And by the way, there’s eight of them
0:09:30 that all have like high eight or low nine figures
0:09:32 in EBITDA, to be clear.
0:09:35 There’s Guidepoint Global, there’s Alpha sites.
0:09:37 The whole category has just crushed.
0:09:40 – And it’s basically like if Brad Pitt called you
0:09:41 and was like, hey, you ever been
0:09:42 to this Italian restaurant in New York,
0:09:43 he’s going to take a supermodel there,
0:09:45 but you’ve been there and he’s like, how’s the parm?
0:09:46 And you’re like, that’s pretty good actually.
0:09:47 And then they’re like, cool, they hang up,
0:09:49 you don’t know why they asked you.
0:09:52 – And they pay you $1,000 for the feedback.
0:09:54 Well, here’s the story of GLG is hilarious.
0:09:57 So I don’t usually tell this part of the story,
0:09:58 but it starts earlier.
0:10:01 Young Jesse’s an associate at Goldman Sachs.
0:10:03 He decides, my best friend, who’s my co-founders,
0:10:05 hedge fund blew up during the financial crisis.
0:10:06 So he doesn’t have a job.
0:10:07 So he kind of sits around, he’s like,
0:10:08 I don’t want to get a job, Jesse.
0:10:09 I want to start something.
0:10:11 He gets me excited enough that I’m like,
0:10:12 all right, I want to start something too.
0:10:14 Let’s go start something in a few months.
0:10:15 I give my notice at Goldman.
0:10:18 They’re like, take 90 days, wind down.
0:10:19 And I was like, me, I’m like,
0:10:21 hey, do you mind if I use the firm’s resources
0:10:23 to research my future business idea?
0:10:24 And Goldman, by the way,
0:10:28 probably has a multimillion dollar subscription with GLG.
0:10:29 So we have an unlimited calls.
0:10:30 They don’t charge us per call
0:10:32 because at Goldman, they’re paying them so much money.
0:10:35 So me and my co-founder line up three phone calls a week
0:10:38 with like digital ad experts and lead gen people.
0:10:39 And we researched e-commerce.
0:10:41 Like you name the category.
0:10:42 We were talking to an expert in it
0:10:45 for like the 90 days before I left Goldman.
0:10:47 We also had all the sell side analysts come and tell us,
0:10:48 like, what are the internet trends
0:10:49 that we should be paying attention to?
0:10:52 So this was the research before Ampush started.
0:10:54 I’m 24, 25 years old.
0:10:57 Then I started Ampush.
0:10:58 Quinn Street, which you guys may or may not know,
0:11:01 is a publicly traded lead gen business.
0:11:02 It goes public.
0:11:03 And the same thing happens.
0:11:04 A couple of my hedge fund friends call me and go,
0:11:06 dude, isn’t this what you’re doing?
0:11:08 Like, and I go, well, here’s what you need to look at.
0:11:10 And here’s how their margins work.
0:11:10 And then I get the idea.
0:11:12 I’m like, we have no money, we’re bootstrapping.
0:11:14 Let’s get ourselves on GLG as experts.
0:11:16 So I call my old rep and I go,
0:11:19 hey, can I be an expert on your GLG?
0:11:20 Are they asking me?
0:11:20 And they go, yeah, we need someone.
0:11:23 I’m like, okay, my charge is $500 an hour.
0:11:24 She goes, no problem.
0:11:26 So now me and my co-founder are doing,
0:11:27 on the other side of the marketplace,
0:11:28 we’re doing five calls a week.
0:11:30 We’re making 25, you know, it’s good money.
0:11:32 But we talked to like someone after a few weeks
0:11:35 and he goes, do you guys have research
0:11:36 that you can put together?
0:11:38 Because the way you’re explaining is so helpful.
0:11:40 And we look at each other and we’re like, yeah, yeah,
0:11:41 we have a report.
0:11:42 It’s $5,000.
0:11:43 I’ll send you guys a report.
0:11:44 You can link to it.
0:11:46 It’s super outdated at this point.
0:11:47 It’s a 50 page report.
0:11:48 It’s gonna explain the lead gen industry to you,
0:11:51 tell you who the competitors are, blah, blah, blah, blah.
0:11:52 He’s like, yeah, I’ll take it.
0:11:55 So we basically spend four days all weekend
0:11:56 putting this report together.
0:11:57 And then GLG is like,
0:11:59 “Hey, we’re getting a lot of other questions
0:12:00 “about this report.
0:12:01 “Can you sell more of it?”
0:12:02 By the time it was all said and done,
0:12:03 we sold 30 of the reports.
0:12:05 So I always joke that was Ampush’s Angels round.
0:12:08 We raised $150,000 selling research reports
0:12:10 to hedge fund people.
0:12:11 – That’s insane.
0:12:13 – I don’t know if you heard on the pod,
0:12:16 but Anand from CB Insights did the same thing.
0:12:17 Did you hear his story?
0:12:19 He basically sold a PDF. – No, he’s smarter.
0:12:21 He turned into a huge business.
0:12:24 – Well, he started with the PDF and then he’s like,
0:12:26 you know, he’s trying to charge like $500.
0:12:27 And then he’s like, the best thing
0:12:28 that ever happened to us was my buddy was like,
0:12:32 “No, no, no, you need to charge like $12,000 minimum,
0:12:34 “$25,000 as your medium.”
0:12:36 And then I have a $100,000 option.
0:12:38 And he’s like, “Dude, it’s a PDF.”
0:12:39 Like, “Are you sure?”
0:12:40 (laughs)
0:12:41 – 100% right. – And that’s what they did.
0:12:42 And they made like 300 grand that year.
0:12:44 – It’s a giffin’ good.
0:12:44 – Yeah.
0:12:45 – All right?
0:12:48 If it gets more value when people think it’s more expensive.
0:12:50 I mean, that’s overpricing for AUX.
0:12:53 We charge $50,000 a week for a team of consultants.
0:12:57 And McKinsey, Bain and BCG charge $200,000 a week.
0:12:59 So our argument is we’re 75% cheaper than them,
0:13:02 but way better in our world of online marketing,
0:13:04 the world that we know extremely well.
0:13:07 – How come you don’t charge 71% more and say we’re better?
0:13:08 – That was, so one of the things I didn’t tell you
0:13:10 when my friends were calling me and I was like,
0:13:11 isn’t there someone who does this?
0:13:13 Why are you keep calling me about this?
0:13:14 And what they told us,
0:13:16 this is part of the market research was they said,
0:13:19 “Look, McKinsey, Bain and BCG are $200,000 a week.”
0:13:21 And they’re not practitioners of marketing, Jesse.
0:13:22 So they don’t actually know the answers.
0:13:25 And then every time we ask an agency,
0:13:27 agencies come back with recommendations
0:13:29 like change your match types
0:13:31 or do more lookalike audience or whatever.
0:13:32 And they’re like, we don’t know what the fuck
0:13:33 they’re talking about.
0:13:34 Like we don’t understand what they’re saying.
0:13:36 What they want is you do this
0:13:37 and this much revenue in EBITDA will come.
0:13:40 So a big part of our work is literally just translating
0:13:43 marketing levers into revenue in EBITDA terms
0:13:44 so that they can actually understand
0:13:46 what they’re gonna spend money on
0:13:47 or what the risk levers are in this.
0:13:49 – Do you run like fake ads?
0:13:53 Like a lot of people when they have a company,
0:13:54 they’ll be like, you know, we wanna make this product
0:13:56 but we’re not actually sure if anyone’s gonna buy it.
0:13:58 And so they make an ad for the product that doesn’t exist.
0:13:59 And sometimes the landing page will be like,
0:14:01 oh, you caught us a little bit too soon
0:14:03 but let us know if you want this, whatever.
0:14:04 – We’ve done it in value creation.
0:14:06 We haven’t done it in diligence.
0:14:08 Diligence is like, you’ve got four weeks
0:14:09 they’re trying to discern whether they wanna buy the business
0:14:11 and you’re just like, you have so much data,
0:14:13 you have to figure out what’s going on
0:14:15 and be able to give them a smart answer.
0:14:17 Value creation, you have 12 or 20 weeks sometimes,
0:14:18 depending on the engagement.
0:14:20 There we will definitely run experiments,
0:14:22 we’ll make ad changes, we’ll do all these things
0:14:23 and come back to them and say, hey, this is a good idea.
0:14:24 This is not a good idea.
0:14:27 – So to make this actionable, like even for me or Sean
0:14:29 or listener, what do you look for?
0:14:30 Like what can I look for in my business?
0:14:32 And I assume obviously this is only
0:14:34 if you are running digital ads,
0:14:36 Facebook and Google basically ads.
0:14:37 What can you look for to be like,
0:14:41 there’s opportunity here or this is stupid, shut it down.
0:14:43 – Yeah, I mean, we approach it in a few different ways, right?
0:14:45 One is top down, like we use Veros
0:14:46 and a couple of their third party data sources
0:14:49 and our own data to figure out benchmarks of the company.
0:14:50 So if you’re an e-commerce business
0:14:52 with you’re selling water bottles,
0:14:53 what should your click-through rate,
0:14:55 what’s your conversion rate by channel?
0:14:57 That’s our top down, we have kind of assessing
0:14:58 where they stand.
0:14:59 And so that’s just whatever,
0:15:01 you can get that data anywhere online.
0:15:04 And then the bottom up part of it is,
0:15:06 for example, for Facebook, right?
0:15:08 We’ll say like, is the account structured correctly?
0:15:10 Oftentimes there’s too many ads trying,
0:15:12 breaking the signal in too many different places
0:15:13 and it needs to be consolidated.
0:15:14 The other question we’ll ask is,
0:15:16 is their event match quality good?
0:15:18 Oftentimes these old school companies
0:15:20 owned by private equity,
0:15:22 they have like a three out of 10 match quality,
0:15:24 which means Facebook’s signal is super crappy for them.
0:15:27 And I bet Sean’s company and most startups have nine out of 10
0:15:29 ’cause they’ve like major date,
0:15:31 Facebook’s getting all the right data.
0:15:32 Then there’s all the creative stuff.
0:15:34 Are they, the easiest thing is almost as my performance
0:15:37 is bad, I’m go, how many creative do you test a week?
0:15:38 A week, what are you talking about?
0:15:40 Oh, we do two a month.
0:15:41 Well, yeah, of course your performance
0:15:42 is gonna be horrible, right?
0:15:44 So creative testing is one of the easiest levers to pull
0:15:46 in terms of improving Facebook.
0:15:47 And if a business that you’re looking to buy
0:15:49 has all of these things that they’re doing wrong
0:15:51 and they’re still succeeding,
0:15:54 and for you, you’re like, there’s opportunity here.
0:15:55 If they get this right,
0:15:57 you’re gonna be even better at providing this test.
0:15:58 Exactly, and size, right?
0:15:59 So the key deliverable,
0:16:00 the first five slides of every deck
0:16:03 are here’s the grade for every channel.
0:16:04 And then here’s the waterfall that says
0:16:06 what your current EBITDA,
0:16:08 and then if you improve the things
0:16:09 that we think in a pretty moderate way,
0:16:11 here’s what your EBITDA of the business could be.
0:16:14 And that’s the money chart for a private equity guy.
0:16:14 That’s pretty sick.
0:16:16 It’s a super cool business.
0:16:19 And honestly, like the validation that we’ve gotten,
0:16:20 like that’s the other cool thing
0:16:22 is one of my other tests for a business is
0:16:24 if in my discovery phase,
0:16:26 people start asking me to buy it,
0:16:27 I know I’m on to it.
0:16:28 Like that’s what happened with growth assistance,
0:16:29 that’s what happened with AUX
0:16:30 and early days of AMP push that happen.
0:16:32 I was like, hey, this is an idea we have.
0:16:33 We wanna get you offshore marketing people.
0:16:35 And they’re like, can I get one of those people?
0:16:36 And I’m like, oh, okay, we’re good.
0:16:37 Same thing with a private equity guy,
0:16:39 call us on my buddies and go,
0:16:40 here’s this idea we have, we wanna do this.
0:16:41 He’s like, oh, I actually have a deal right now.
0:16:42 Can you guys start looking at it?
0:16:44 That’s awesome.
0:16:45 How big is this business now?
0:16:46 Is it a year old?
0:16:47 Could you say like a year one?
0:16:48 – A year old, yeah, so it’s like five million.
0:16:50 It’ll do five million this year.
0:16:51 – That’s insane.
0:16:52 – Yeah, it’ll do five million.
0:16:54 And we, by the way, we invested one-tenth
0:16:55 of what we put into Kehani into it.
0:16:57 – And by the way, Sam, like I think the key,
0:16:59 ’cause you were like, what are the marketing levers?
0:17:01 And like he gave you like a,
0:17:02 as good as the answer you give,
0:17:04 not having like the thing you need is like,
0:17:06 doctor, what can I do to be better?
0:17:07 But here’s none of my data, none of my scans,
0:17:08 none of my notes.
0:17:10 It’s like, well, you should, I guess, you know,
0:17:11 and check on your health.
0:17:15 So the key here with this business though is it’s,
0:17:17 and he won’t say this, it’s not part of a sales pitch,
0:17:20 but like, it’s not that he has to be like this marketing
0:17:23 savant that’s gonna like find the genius levers.
0:17:26 These companies are really buying certainty.
0:17:28 And it’s CYA, right?
0:17:30 It’s why a lot of consultants get hired in the world,
0:17:31 is there’s a CYA component.
0:17:33 You’re doing a deal.
0:17:35 You need to understand that the thing you’re buying
0:17:37 doesn’t have any like, you know, horrible warts.
0:17:38 That’s the first piece.
0:17:41 And then, cool, what is a like best case,
0:17:43 base case, worst case kind of scenario
0:17:45 of what we can do to grow this thing.
0:17:47 And it’s not even like a specific tactic,
0:17:48 like, oh, change the audience segmentation.
0:17:51 But it’s like, we need a plan made by people
0:17:53 who know a lot about this.
0:17:55 And that’s enough to like kind of move the ball forward.
0:17:57 And then of course, like when you could go in
0:17:58 and you actually like do the shit,
0:17:59 you’ll figure it out case by case.
0:18:01 Like there’s not like, like you go to 100 e-commerce
0:18:04 companies and you could take the 10 smartest people
0:18:05 in Facebook ads and Google ads,
0:18:07 they’re gonna give you 10 different answers
0:18:08 for every single company.
0:18:10 Because one guy likes cost caps,
0:18:12 another guy likes ASC and other guy says,
0:18:13 simplify the structure and other guy says,
0:18:14 use all the new shit.
0:18:16 You know, another guy says, do this attribution method.
0:18:20 Another guy says this, there’s no real uniform answer
0:18:21 for like, how do you do,
0:18:23 how does this work better versus worse?
0:18:24 – Yeah, well, I’ll disagree.
0:18:27 Like I’ll show you, can I share my screen?
0:18:28 – Yeah, yeah.
0:18:30 – I mean, this is an example of the internal tool
0:18:32 or the internal like analysis to give you
0:18:36 the detailed answer, Sam, of like everything we look at
0:18:38 when we’re trying to assess and grade
0:18:41 inside of a private equity, right?
0:18:42 So there is top down, it’s bottom up,
0:18:44 how much spend is getting spent plays?
0:18:45 What’s campaign structure?
0:18:46 What’s how fast– – You made this?
0:18:49 – I mean, my team made this, yeah.
0:18:50 – That’s so cool.
0:18:51 – So this is what we go through and do.
0:18:52 And we’re gonna turn this into software
0:18:53 at some point, by the way.
0:18:55 – Any color coded Excel sheet were like,
0:18:57 ah, this is great.
0:18:59 I remember Steph Smith came on and showed me like
0:19:01 just like beautifully formatted Excel sheet.
0:19:03 I don’t think I even read anything that was in it.
0:19:04 But I was like, you’re great.
0:19:05 This is fantastic.
0:19:09 I’m such a sucker for formatting on an Excel sheet.
0:19:11 – Well, but and Sean’s right, which is like,
0:19:12 the other thing I would think about too,
0:19:14 that I think a lot of entrepreneurs miss
0:19:16 ’cause we were so caught up on ourselves is
0:19:18 the humanness on the other side of the table.
0:19:20 So you say private equity firm and you’re like,
0:19:21 oh yeah, private equity firm.
0:19:25 But what’s really happening is there’s a mid-level partner.
0:19:27 If they buy a business and Facebook blows up
0:19:30 in a year on them, it’s career limiting for them, right?
0:19:33 So the human being on the other side wants to go in
0:19:35 and sell this deal to their committee,
0:19:37 be able to put a good case together.
0:19:38 And the reason McKinsey and Bain
0:19:39 both built billion dollar business to doing this
0:19:41 is ’cause those people wanted to go look,
0:19:43 McKinsey says the market is big.
0:19:45 Now the dream is they go, look,
0:19:48 AUK says there’s X amount of EBITDA available in marketing
0:19:50 and look at the analysis they put together
0:19:51 that’s convincing of that.
0:19:53 – What percentage of the deals do you say it’s shit?
0:19:56 You’re like, no dude, like there’s no opportunity here.
0:19:58 – We’ve had, I mean, it’s a young business.
0:20:02 We’ve only done 20 projects, but let’s say on 25%,
0:20:04 we’ve said, you should stay the hell away from it.
0:20:06 I mean, one, there was just straight up fraud
0:20:08 in the SEO back linking
0:20:09 that they would have never spotted without us.
0:20:10 That was a huge win.
0:20:13 And I mean, they paid us, obviously they didn’t do the deal.
0:20:17 And then we’ve had a couple where we were not convinced
0:20:18 that there was as much leverage.
0:20:21 Like the management team puts together projections, right?
0:20:23 So they share projections in these things
0:20:25 and we look at those projections and we basically go,
0:20:27 dude, this person would have to be the best Facebook ad market
0:20:29 on the planet to hit these projections.
0:20:30 Like we think they can grow,
0:20:32 but we don’t think the projections they put together
0:20:34 are reasonable and we need to double click
0:20:35 and as they double clicked on that,
0:20:37 they lost excitement about the deal.
0:20:39 – Wow, what a cool business.
0:20:40 Good job.
0:20:41 – Thank you.
0:20:42 (laughing)
0:20:43 Much better than Kehani.
0:20:45 – So your thing was like kind of office for the CMO,
0:20:46 you talked about how accordion
0:20:49 and there’s the equivalent for the CFO side.
0:20:51 Can you talk about other businesses
0:20:54 that are like this a sell to the like ultra rich customers?
0:20:57 So let’s call it hedge funds, investment banks, whatever.
0:20:58 I heard you talk about a business
0:20:59 that I had never heard of called,
0:21:01 I think it was First Ring or First Raising.
0:21:02 – Rain.
0:21:03 – What is that?
0:21:05 That sounded very interesting.
0:21:06 – Well, the first thing I was telling people ago,
0:21:07 like who’s the richest man in New York?
0:21:09 Sam, who’s the richest man in New York?
0:21:12 – I don’t want to ruin your story.
0:21:12 – Okay, fine.
0:21:15 Ari, who’s the richest man in New York?
0:21:18 (laughing)
0:21:18 Do you think it’s–
0:21:20 – So long, here’s the homey guess.
0:21:21 – Here, the homey guess, I hedge fund guy.
0:21:22 – Some real estate guy.
0:21:27 – Yeah, Daniel Ock or Steve Schwartzman or whatever.
0:21:28 Nope, nope, nope.
0:21:29 It’s Michael Bloomberg.
0:21:31 It’s the guy who’s selling information.
0:21:32 And so sitting at Goldman,
0:21:34 I had this terminal we were paying $1,200 a month for
0:21:36 and they never negotiate price.
0:21:40 Every single terminal, they never do volume discounts.
0:21:40 And you’re like, damn,
0:21:41 this guy’s just, I mean,
0:21:43 they’re printing money in that business.
0:21:45 – It also helps that he owns the entire thing.
0:21:46 – He owns the entire thing,
0:21:48 but dude, whether he did or didn’t,
0:21:51 the thing makes like 5, 10 billion a year in a bit.
0:21:51 – It’s huge.
0:21:53 – It’s a ridiculous business, right?
0:21:56 And so I’m sitting there, I’m an entrepreneurial person
0:21:58 and my boss comes up to me and she goes,
0:21:59 “You got to set up First Rain, Jesse.”
0:22:01 And I’m like, “Oh, cool, what’s First Rain?”
0:22:03 And I’m like, looking through it.
0:22:05 And it’s like, pull the stock ticker
0:22:07 and get an alert to your inbox
0:22:08 when there’s news about this company.
0:22:10 And I’m like, this is just Google alerts.
0:22:14 She’s like, “What’s Google alerts?”
0:22:16 And I’m like, “What do we pay a month for this?”
0:22:19 She’s like, “Oh, we pay like $2,000 per license.”
0:22:22 And I’m like, well, our group is like 40 people.
0:22:23 Like we’re paying $80,000.
0:22:24 No, no, we got a discount.
0:22:25 It’s $50,000 a month.
0:22:28 We’re paying for this Google analytics thing.
0:22:29 I’m like, “What the fuck?”
0:22:32 And so, one of the categories for us now,
0:22:34 and again, remember, unfair advantage is very important.
0:22:36 I happen to have lots of friends in this world
0:22:37 ’cause of where I went to college.
0:22:39 Just whatever, unfair advantage.
0:22:40 – Where’d you go to college?
0:22:42 – I went to Penn.
0:22:43 – Fancy.
0:22:45 – The Wall Street training school.
0:22:46 So a bunch of my friends work at Hedge,
0:22:48 friends of private equity.
0:22:51 And these guys want information,
0:22:54 like that they’re willing to pay tons and tons
0:22:55 of money for everything.
0:22:56 They’re not price sensitive at all.
0:23:00 They can, ROI of everything, every decision they make.
0:23:01 ‘Cause that was what we got told about First Rain.
0:23:03 They go, “Oh, it’s $50,000 a month.”
0:23:05 But if it gets us one trade ahead of somebody else,
0:23:07 it’s paid for itself for the full year.
0:23:09 So because of the numbers they’re dealing in,
0:23:10 they can just pay anything.
0:23:13 Just like the $200,000 to diligence the project
0:23:16 for a half a billion dollar deal, it’s nothing for them.
0:23:19 So this category is a great one to sell into
0:23:21 and actually have another funny story you guys will like.
0:23:24 So on GLG, GLG has been like my life,
0:23:25 my savior in business.
0:23:29 What happened for me, I became like a regular,
0:23:30 take that term any way you want,
0:23:33 for hedge fund dudes for Facebook.
0:23:35 Every quarter, 10 same people would call me
0:23:37 and they would go, “How’s the quarter going, Jesse?
0:23:39 “Do you think Spen’s gonna be up or down?”
0:23:42 ‘Cause they own huge positions in Facebook, right?
0:23:43 So one of the guys eventually is like,
0:23:46 “Jesse, I want access to your data.”
0:23:47 Like I just want the aggregate,
0:23:49 and I’m allowed to share it, it’s my data at Ampush.
0:23:51 I’m spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
0:23:53 And he goes, “I want just full real-time access
0:23:54 “to your data.”
0:23:55 I go, “I can give it to you in aggregate.
0:23:57 “I can’t give you any client data.”
0:23:58 And he’s like, “Well, what can I get to you?”
0:24:01 And I was like, “Well, Bootstrap Company, right?”
0:24:02 I’m like, “You know, we’ve been dealing
0:24:05 “with this like working capital situation with our bank.
0:24:07 “Like, will you just give me a $5 million
0:24:08 “interest-free loan?”
0:24:10 He’s like, “Done.”
0:24:12 He’s like, “Done.”
0:24:15 So this guy, Peter, he’s a good friend of mine now,
0:24:17 he gave us a $5 million loan.
0:24:18 So we didn’t have to pay any interest to our bank
0:24:19 to do working capital.
0:24:22 And all I had to do was basically give him a real-time feed
0:24:26 from our tableau or whatever, our aggregate, CPM, CTR,
0:24:28 whatever, all of our data for Facebook.
0:24:30 So anyway, First Rain is a basic software tool
0:24:31 you sell to hedge funds ’cause they’re willing
0:24:32 to pay anything for it.
0:24:35 And so one of my ideas, by the way,
0:24:37 and if anyone’s listening wants to build this with me,
0:24:41 I need someone very good at analytics and decent at sales,
0:24:43 is just with my network,
0:24:47 I could probably get $5 billion in meta Facebook spend
0:24:49 and give people a survey every quarter.
0:24:51 Did you spend more or less?
0:24:53 How excited are you, like a detailed survey?
0:24:55 It’d have to be a really robust survey.
0:24:58 Then I’d go to all these hedge fund people and I’d say,
0:25:00 you can have access to this data every quarter,
0:25:02 it’s $50,000 a quarter.
0:25:05 And you have to guarantee me two years of a subscription.
0:25:07 And I think I’d have people align out the door
0:25:08 of people willing to pay for that data.
0:25:09 And then I would do it for Google,
0:25:10 then I would do it for Amazon,
0:25:13 then I would do it for all of these different platforms.
0:25:15 – Dude, even easier, we like,
0:25:16 why not just go to “Triplewell”
0:25:18 who already has all the data and be like,
0:25:23 “Hey, Triplewell, let’s do this line of business,” basically.
0:25:23 – 100%.
0:25:25 Yeah, let me license your data
0:25:27 for the exclusive use in the financial service,
0:25:28 ’cause that’s not gonna be important for them.
0:25:30 And then you can basically create
0:25:31 a thing that hedge funds would pay for.
0:25:33 And the best thing I would do to hedge funds,
0:25:35 I’d say, I’m only gonna sell it to 20 of you,
0:25:37 but let’s do a reverse auction.
0:25:40 So now make them bid against each other for this data.
0:25:41 And as long as you limit it, they’ll do that
0:25:43 because they don’t want everyone having the data, right?
0:25:45 That’s a really important thing to them.
0:25:47 But anyway, the lesson here is that category,
0:25:51 alternative assets are a great thing to bootstrap into
0:25:54 because one deal basically can make you as a business.
0:25:56 And then you can go from there.
0:25:58 – Yeah, my old business partner used to call it,
0:25:59 just adding a zero.
0:26:02 He’s like, basically, what market or product can we go into
0:26:04 where we do the same exact work,
0:26:07 but we just add a zero to the end of the dollar amount
0:26:08 that we’re able to charge?
0:26:10 Like, Sam, you told me this with your events too.
0:26:12 You used to charge, I think, like $300 a ticket,
0:26:13 but then other people charged $3,000.
0:26:15 And then I forgot who it was, like,
0:26:17 recode or whoever it was, charged $30,000 a ticket.
0:26:21 – And it was like the same work, same product.
0:26:22 It was ridiculous.
0:26:24 And I did the exact same thing, Sean,
0:26:25 that you said you did where you’re like,
0:26:27 I have an idea, but I’m broke,
0:26:29 so I’m just gonna assume that everyone else is broke.
0:26:30 (laughing)
0:26:31 That’s what I did.
0:26:32 – And when you go hang out with other broke people.
0:26:33 – Yeah, it was like–
0:26:34 – It was really an easy thing.
0:26:35 Like, the two takeaways from this, by the way,
0:26:37 are sell to the rich.
0:26:39 You know, you’re gonna be able to add a zero
0:26:40 to what you’re doing.
0:26:42 And then your way of figuring out what they need was,
0:26:44 you had friends in that circle,
0:26:45 you could go make friends,
0:26:46 or you were using GLG,
0:26:49 you were like, I have one area of expertise.
0:26:51 That could be my calling card to get in the door.
0:26:53 And then that will be how I, you know,
0:26:55 understand what these people need,
0:26:58 and then maybe I can pair what I know with what they need
0:27:01 and to either a data product or a consulting product.
0:27:03 – Yeah, and to tie them together, actually,
0:27:04 if anyone’s listening, I would say,
0:27:06 what is it that you know extremely well
0:27:08 are a couple things that are cross sections of each other?
0:27:09 And so first figure that out,
0:27:11 and then figure out who’s willing to pay you
0:27:12 the most money for what you know.
0:27:14 That’s essentially what I did with AUX business.
0:27:15 I was like, I know this thing,
0:27:17 who’s gonna go pay me the most for it?
0:27:19 And that group is gonna pay me the most by far.
0:27:21 – Can I, you didn’t put on this sheet,
0:27:23 but I wanna ask you a couple questions about this,
0:27:25 particularly because I don’t know if Sean knows
0:27:26 much about this company,
0:27:27 and I know a little bit about it,
0:27:29 but I know that what I know,
0:27:30 they’re like crazy impressive.
0:27:34 So I think you sold your company to Red Ventures,
0:27:35 is that right?
0:27:36 – So we saw it, it’s a longer story.
0:27:39 We sold a minority, they wanted to buy the whole thing,
0:27:40 we couldn’t get the terms, we sold a minority,
0:27:43 we gave them an option to buy the rest of the business.
0:27:45 They started buying content assets,
0:27:47 and decided not to buy the rest of our business,
0:27:48 so we ended up eventually selling it to someone else.
0:27:49 But we did for basically–
0:27:50 – But you got to know them.
0:27:52 – For two years, we operated as one company,
0:27:54 ’cause the plan was originally for them to buy it.
0:27:56 So I know them and Rick incredibly well.
0:27:58 – Do you know about this company, Sean, Red Ventures?
0:27:59 – I know about the surface level,
0:28:02 and actually we’ve hit up Jesse being like,
0:28:03 “Dude, this is fascinating, should we get Rick on?”
0:28:06 Like, and I wanna know more.
0:28:07 – Well, but there’s one part of the story
0:28:09 that I just wanna mention, which was amazing,
0:28:10 is like he started this thing,
0:28:13 and then he was actually on the plane
0:28:16 that’s solely landed in the Hudson.
0:28:18 And he gave this amazing talk when he was like,
0:28:21 “I was like one or two years into my business,”
0:28:24 and for some reason, that life or death situation
0:28:26 kind of changed his outlook on life,
0:28:28 and now Red Ventures is known as one of the best places
0:28:31 to work, and it sounds like it’s a great company.
0:28:34 So yeah, what’s the background?
0:28:36 – Yeah, so the story, the way that they tell it,
0:28:37 they started the business in 2000,
0:28:39 so Rick and Dan are the founders,
0:28:41 and they’re both friends, and both multi-billionaires,
0:28:45 and they actually met Ascendant in the late ’90s.
0:28:45 Do you guys know what Ascendant is?
0:28:49 They had like the coupon book, they launched Orbitz,
0:28:51 they were like the original internet holdco.
0:28:54 They met there, very direct marketing heavy.
0:28:56 So in 2000, the two of them broke off on their own,
0:28:58 literally months before the internet imploded,
0:29:02 they started Red F is what it was first called.
0:29:03 Five years later, and their story,
0:29:05 they’re telling of it, not mine,
0:29:07 Rick says, “Dan, give me a dollar.”
0:29:07 Dan gives him a dollar, he goes,
0:29:09 “You can have my half of the business.
0:29:12 “I hate this business, I don’t wanna do it.”
0:29:13 So they do a hard reset.
0:29:14 Five years in, I think they barely
0:29:15 were doing a million in EBITDA,
0:29:18 and these guys are the best learners you’ve ever met.
0:29:20 So then at the time, go back to 2005,
0:29:22 there was this new thing called Google AdWords,
0:29:24 and there was agency starting,
0:29:26 and there’s where lead gen businesses,
0:29:27 and they, for whatever reason,
0:29:28 had a relationship with Direct TV.
0:29:31 They said, “Hey, to Direct TV, if you remember back then,
0:29:34 “I was looking for satellite people to sell in the mall.”
0:29:36 Like these resellers.
0:29:37 So Rick or one of them had this idea
0:29:41 of let’s go to Direct TV and become a dealer.
0:29:42 So they go, “Hey, Direct TV, you wanna be a dealer?”
0:29:44 I go, “Sure, we love dealers.
0:29:46 “What’s your territory?”
0:29:47 They go, “Oh, this new thing called the internet
0:29:48 “will be our territory.”
0:29:49 (laughing)
0:29:52 They go, “Okay, sure, we don’t know anything.”
0:29:54 So they became Direct Star TV,
0:29:56 authorized dealer of Direct TV,
0:29:57 but as a part of their thing,
0:29:58 they owned all the web rights,
0:30:00 they owned all the AdWords rights,
0:30:01 they owned all the SEO,
0:30:06 and in four years, they built a $75 million EBITDA business
0:30:07 just selling Direct TV subscriptions
0:30:09 because they would run the media,
0:30:10 take the phone calls,
0:30:12 and all these things that are commonplace today
0:30:14 where like what you do on your website gets cookied
0:30:15 and then you know on the phone call,
0:30:17 they were pioneers in all of that stuff.
0:30:20 – And basically, if someone became a reseller
0:30:24 of the TV tech dish network or whatever it was,
0:30:26 Direct TV, they gave Red Ventures like $1,000.
0:30:29 – They get $500 bounty for every single customer they get,
0:30:31 and Red Ventures just had to do it for less than that, right?
0:30:32 And so between their media,
0:30:33 and of course, after a few years,
0:30:35 Direct TV is like, “Well, we can’t get rid of you
0:30:38 because you’re driving all of our customers,
0:30:39 but we don’t like the deal we made.”
0:30:41 So then they renegotiated a million different times
0:30:43 and they still probably work with them.
0:30:44 But then they went and took that out.
0:30:45 And then General Atlantic,
0:30:47 the big private equity firm invested
0:30:49 and has crushed it on that deal.
0:30:51 And they went and did that
0:30:53 for any high LTV purchase you can imagine.
0:30:55 So every credit card company worked with them,
0:30:59 American Express, Verizon Wireless,
0:31:01 people who sell Pest Control,
0:31:03 like anything that was like a long-term purchase,
0:31:05 basically Red Ventures was either running their marketing
0:31:06 and when they invested in us,
0:31:08 we want to do the same deal
0:31:09 for direct-to-consumer companies,
0:31:11 which did not work nearly as well as it worked for them,
0:31:13 which is a different story for a different day.
0:31:14 But that’s what they got to.
0:31:15 Then they got to 2015,
0:31:18 they’re doing two, 300 in EBITDA,
0:31:19 and there’s no more growth left,
0:31:20 which is why they invested in us.
0:31:22 And they bought, they did a bunch of other things,
0:31:23 and Rick’s really smart.
0:31:25 And he goes, “Okay, I’m gonna invest in Jesse.”
0:31:28 He did five other deals at the same time, same year.
0:31:30 And a year later, Amplisher’s going,
0:31:33 “Okay, one went down to zero, one, you know.”
0:31:35 But they bought an SEO business
0:31:37 that they use their same playbook.
0:31:38 And within nine months,
0:31:41 they took it from three in EBITDA to nine in EBITDA.
0:31:43 And they go, “Oh, shit, so that worked.”
0:31:44 “Okay, let’s go do a bigger deal.”
0:31:46 So then they bought like a $10 million EBITDA
0:31:49 SEO content business, and they took it to like 25.
0:31:51 – When you say SEO content business,
0:31:53 you’re talking about like the points guy.
0:31:55 – Yeah, the first one was reviews.com.
0:31:57 The second one, I’m forgetting the name of it,
0:31:58 but yeah, like the points.
0:32:00 Then they finally, like, they did a couple of those,
0:32:02 and Rick’s like, “All right, I’m ready for the big time.”
0:32:03 He went and bought Bankrate,
0:32:05 which is a billion dollar publicly traded company
0:32:07 for 100 in EBITDA.
0:32:10 It owns the points guy, it owns creditcards.com, it owns.
0:32:11 And in less than two years,
0:32:14 they tripled the EBITDA of the business.
0:32:16 And then they bought Healthline, they bought CNET.
0:32:17 I mean, so they basically took their,
0:32:19 and now the services part of their business
0:32:21 is a tiny part of their business,
0:32:23 and the SEO content part is a massive part of their business,
0:32:25 but the same culture, the same playbook,
0:32:27 and it’s an incredible business, incredible.
0:32:28 – Can you explain what they’re doing?
0:32:29 So they buy these SEO businesses,
0:32:32 which is, let’s just take Bankrate as an example.
0:32:35 People Google Best, mortgage rate,
0:32:36 more current mortgage rates, whatever,
0:32:39 and they, Bankrate has done the content work
0:32:41 and the SEO work to be the top thing
0:32:43 that shows up on Google.
0:32:44 So then you click it, you go in,
0:32:46 and they have like these affiliate offers,
0:32:46 and that’s all great.
0:32:49 And what Red did was they basically,
0:32:51 am I right, that they bought a business
0:32:53 that was like primarily SEO driven,
0:32:56 and then they layered on paid to that?
0:32:57 Is that the main thing that they did,
0:32:59 or what did they do to the assets?
0:33:01 – There’s four major levers they pull.
0:33:02 And the first thing I have to tell,
0:33:03 and whenever I tell this story is,
0:33:06 Rick, and it’s the most unique culture.
0:33:08 Like at some point, I just take you there,
0:33:10 and you got to tour the campus and check it out,
0:33:12 because you’ve never seen anything like it.
0:33:13 And there’s a great New York time article
0:33:16 where they describe it as like part Wall Street trading desk,
0:33:18 part like Southern politeness,
0:33:21 and part like hard-nosed direct response marketing.
0:33:23 And that’s exact, like, it’s a very apt description.
0:33:24 But anyway–
0:33:25 – Well, and that’s why I wanted to ask you about it,
0:33:27 because Rick seems like an anomaly.
0:33:30 Like he seems like a, like this is normally like kind of a,
0:33:33 no, this could be a shady industry.
0:33:34 It often is a shady industry.
0:33:36 He doesn’t seem like a shady guy.
0:33:38 And they seem like people love working there,
0:33:39 which is rare.
0:33:41 – He’s one of the most special people I’ve ever met.
0:33:42 I mean, he’s one of the most special people in the world,
0:33:43 I think.
0:33:44 – What would we notice if we toured the campus?
0:33:45 What would we see?
0:33:46 – It’s funny you asked that.
0:33:48 So one of my requests to him when they invest,
0:33:50 I want to shadow your leadership team for a week.
0:33:52 Me and my 10 leaders are going to shadow your leaders.
0:33:55 And I want to see what you guys do.
0:33:57 And what you’d find is, you know,
0:33:58 these things that are like startup adages,
0:34:00 they’ve done at a scale of 5,000 people.
0:34:02 Every meeting is short.
0:34:03 Every meeting starts with a bottom line.
0:34:05 Numbers are the only thing that is ever talked about
0:34:07 in levers and every person is basically trying
0:34:10 to optimize more EBITDA and any discussion they’re having.
0:34:13 And they don’t talk about the work that gets done
0:34:16 as independent of that, right?
0:34:18 And so another example is like they shape teams.
0:34:20 So, you know, for digital marketers,
0:34:22 they don’t say like, we have a client team
0:34:23 and we have a marketing team.
0:34:25 We have, they go, we have like team click-through rate
0:34:27 and we have team conversion rate.
0:34:28 And we have team traffic volume.
0:34:31 Like they literally organize people by the KPI
0:34:32 that they’re trying to drive
0:34:34 so that there’s a deep, deep focus into it.
0:34:36 They have these really cool things called business reviews
0:34:39 where basically Rick and the leadership team sits
0:34:40 and you have 20 minutes to come in,
0:34:41 give an update on your business.
0:34:43 Real decisions are made about the business
0:34:44 and he does like 40 of the,
0:34:46 or like 40 over two days basically.
0:34:49 So it’s a high energy, very smart.
0:34:50 It’s like, it’s a very unique culture.
0:34:52 But anyway, so the culture is a starting point by far
0:34:54 because without it, I don’t think any of this works.
0:34:56 They have four main levers.
0:34:58 The first is improvement of traffic acquisition,
0:34:59 both paid and organic.
0:35:02 So to your point, Sean, they’ll layer on paid
0:35:03 in a really smart way.
0:35:04 They think a lot about cost per visitor
0:35:06 and revenue per visitor
0:35:08 and get that equation working extremely well,
0:35:09 but they’ll do a lot of SEO as well
0:35:11 and they’ll get volume up, right?
0:35:12 So I think I remember high level
0:35:14 when they bought the points guy,
0:35:15 I’m making these numbers up,
0:35:18 but it was doing 70 cents in revenue per visit
0:35:20 and maybe 40 cents in cost per visit.
0:35:22 And two years later it was doing like $1.70
0:35:25 in revenue per visit and like 90 cents in cost per visit.
0:35:27 But the visits were up by like a factor of two
0:35:28 or something like that, right?
0:35:31 So first lever is traffic acquisition.
0:35:33 Second lever is they’re extremely good
0:35:34 at onsite optimization.
0:35:36 If you guys pull up the points guy
0:35:38 or any of those things now, you’ll say, wow,
0:35:40 Platinum American Express is plugged here,
0:35:41 but it’s plugged in a smart way,
0:35:42 but I want to click on it,
0:35:43 but it doesn’t feel too salesy.
0:35:44 They’re very good at getting basically
0:35:48 the onsite optimization to be significantly higher.
0:35:50 The third lever is they’re incredible geniuses
0:35:52 when it comes to pricing
0:35:55 to the efficient frontier of a customer’s curve.
0:35:57 You guys know what I mean when I say that?
0:35:59 – You’re using a lot of words, my friend.
0:36:02 – Dependently, but when you put them together that way,
0:36:03 it was just a combination I wasn’t familiar with.
0:36:04 – So when you’re a credit card,
0:36:06 so you’re American Express, right?
0:36:08 And American Express is probably worth
0:36:12 willing to pay $700 per credit card application,
0:36:13 but their person on their side
0:36:16 will pay 200 if they can, right?
0:36:19 So the only way, if you can figure out
0:36:22 the exact willingness to pay for an incremental customer
0:36:24 by your customer in their business,
0:36:26 your profits skyrocket.
0:36:29 So the simple way to say it is they’re good at pricing.
0:36:31 They can really charge more for what they get.
0:36:33 And I’ll tell you a funny story.
0:36:34 The guy who’s retired now,
0:36:36 but he’s a good friend of mine.
0:36:37 He’s a Southern dude.
0:36:41 He’s very disarming, but then he’s smart as shit.
0:36:44 And he’s like, Jesse, we were 60 days from close.
0:36:46 We were gonna close this bank rate deal.
0:36:48 And their team told me there was a bidded auction
0:36:50 for how you bought credit card applications.
0:36:52 And no technology could beat it.
0:36:54 And he said, I looked at it and I said,
0:36:56 Discover’s only paying 500 for an application.
0:36:58 And they said they’re willing to pay 900.
0:37:00 Why are we not charging them 900?
0:37:02 He’s like, well, that’s how the algorithm works.
0:37:03 He’s like buying this deal.
0:37:05 He goes, the day we closed the deal, Jesse,
0:37:07 I threw away that algorithm.
0:37:07 I pulled up a spreadsheet.
0:37:08 I called all the customers and said,
0:37:09 what are you willing to pay?
0:37:10 What are you willing to pay?
0:37:11 I got them.
0:37:13 I charge them exactly what they were willing to pay.
0:37:15 And I got 20% more in EBITDA over and like,
0:37:18 within the first month I owned the business.
0:37:19 And so that’s the third lever they’re good at.
0:37:22 And then the fourth lever is they’re not crash and burn
0:37:25 people, but they’re very thoughtful about,
0:37:27 and when they invested in Ampush,
0:37:29 I cut the headcount under their sort of tutelage
0:37:32 by more than half and our revenue grew during that time.
0:37:34 So they’re very good at like,
0:37:37 truly challenging the bloat in an organization
0:37:39 and being like, how many people do we actually need?
0:37:40 Like one story you guys will love is,
0:37:41 one of their executives said,
0:37:44 they bought some like government owned thing.
0:37:46 It’s a really weird business that mails you all the mailers
0:37:48 when you move, forgetting to deal with it right now.
0:37:50 I hate that.
0:37:53 So it actually was owned by the USPS and then it got.
0:37:54 I hate that.
0:37:55 Now Red Ventures owns it.
0:37:57 I go, so how’d you decide how to reduce the headcount?
0:37:59 He goes, we took the top three managers in the company
0:38:00 and we held a draft.
0:38:04 So we basically put everyone’s name on the board
0:38:07 and we said, there’s only 40 people of 80 staying.
0:38:09 Now go draft your best people.
0:38:12 And again, they’re compassionate with obviously
0:38:13 the people they let go.
0:38:15 It’s not meant to be a negative towards them,
0:38:17 but like these organizations,
0:38:20 they’re very good at leanly staffing these organizations.
0:38:21 So those are the four big levers
0:38:23 and that’s how they get the kind of results they get.
0:38:24 That’s dope.
0:38:26 Appreciate the Red Ventures masterclass.
0:38:27 That’s great.
0:38:29 They’re like a juggernaut that I didn’t know much about
0:38:31 in terms of how they actually operate.
0:38:33 Your boyfriend, the guy from Silver Lake,
0:38:34 the guy you love, who’s the guy?
0:38:36 What’s his name that you have a crush on?
0:38:38 I should probably know his name if he’s my boyfriend.
0:38:40 Egan, what is his name, Egan?
0:38:42 I think he’s on their board.
0:38:44 Yeah, he’s on their board, GA’s on their board.
0:38:47 And I mean, look, they’re all minority holders.
0:38:49 They’ve never raised a dollar of primary capital.
0:38:52 So they’re, in my opinion, they’re a bootstrap giant, right?
0:38:54 They’ve taken secondary, but they’ve never raised primary.
0:38:57 Their headquarters is like North Carolina or something, right?
0:38:58 Yeah, they’re in Charlotte.
0:39:00 But again, dude, Rick is a hustler of all hustlers.
0:39:02 It’s right across the border in South Carolina
0:39:03 because the state of South Carolina
0:39:06 has paid for the whole thing with tax incentives.
0:39:12 You have on here, every profitable founder
0:39:14 should understand PE and rollups, what’s that mean?
0:39:18 Yeah, I think one of the biggest value creation levers
0:39:21 if you’re running a $2 to $5 million Ubitda business
0:39:22 is a rollup.
0:39:24 And I’ll tell the story of the company
0:39:26 that ended up buying Ampush
0:39:28 because it’s kind of like still hurts me
0:39:29 a little bit when I tell it.
0:39:32 So there was a business called Elite SEM.
0:39:34 It was an SEM agency.
0:39:36 4 million Ubitda, same year that I think Ampush had
0:39:39 like six or something in 2015.
0:39:40 We went to the deal of Red Ventures,
0:39:42 whatever, learned a ton.
0:39:45 But these guys sold to a business called Mountain Gate Capital.
0:39:47 And let’s assume, I don’t know what they paid,
0:39:48 but let’s assume it was on eight times Ubitda,
0:39:50 which is a fair multiple.
0:39:54 So they paid 32 million for the business, right?
0:39:56 The founders rolled 30%, I don’t know for a fact,
0:39:58 but I’m just making that up in this scenario.
0:40:00 Founders roll 30% of the value.
0:40:01 They take 20 million off the table
0:40:03 and they roll the rest in.
0:40:06 Mountain Gate goes and buys another six different businesses
0:40:08 in the one to two million Ubitda range.
0:40:09 Now for those businesses,
0:40:14 they pay like four to five times Ubitda.
0:40:16 Then they grow the whole thing organically, right?
0:40:18 So then they go for, was it math four?
0:40:20 Let’s say they buy another five or six companies.
0:40:22 They buy 10 and Ubitda, right?
0:40:26 Total invested capitals call it 60 ballpark.
0:40:28 – But now the business is worth 15 times Ubitda.
0:40:29 – Correct.
0:40:32 Then it was bought by New Mountain who bought Ampush.
0:40:34 It was bought by New Mountain for 15 times, 15,
0:40:36 which is 225 million Ubitda.
0:40:38 So the founders got 20 million
0:40:41 plus they got another bite of call it 40 or something like that.
0:40:44 Plus the PE firm obviously crushed it on it.
0:40:45 My push to founders would be like,
0:40:48 if you understand that multiples are a function of growth,
0:40:51 stability and margin or defensibility,
0:40:52 however you want to think about that.
0:40:54 And all those things improve with scale.
0:40:56 And so there’s just what they call,
0:40:58 the finance nerds call it multiple arbitrage,
0:41:00 which means I can buy at a low multiple
0:41:02 and then I can sell in a few years for a higher multiple.
0:41:03 And I think a lot of,
0:41:06 if I’m a profitable bootstrap founder including myself,
0:41:07 like even for growth assistance and other things,
0:41:10 I’m like, this seems like such an obvious path
0:41:12 to create a tremendous amount of value
0:41:14 that’s like better than the venture path
0:41:17 for so many different reasons more apt and more just,
0:41:19 but yeah, I think everyone should look at it in their space.
0:41:21 And by the way, I think I’ve been approached
0:41:22 multiple times and pitched on this
0:41:27 and it’s on my list of like creative AI meets rollup.
0:41:30 So Jesse, go, let’s go buy a creative agency,
0:41:33 redo their processes with AI, right?
0:41:35 Then once you’ve figured that out,
0:41:36 let’s go buy 10 more of them.
0:41:38 And not only will you be able to roll up
0:41:39 and get all this multiple arbitrage,
0:41:41 but you will create a much more profitable business.
0:41:44 So I think there’s a lot of strategies out there.
0:41:45 And I would say like,
0:41:46 I think a lot you can do with private equity,
0:41:47 without private equity,
0:41:49 but the founders of running these businesses
0:41:50 should be the ones leading them.
0:41:52 And the more the founder has the strategy,
0:41:53 the better they’re gonna do with the PE firm
0:41:55 if they ever need the capital to go do it.
0:41:56 – Right.
0:41:58 You mentioned AI, I wanna ask you about that
0:42:01 because you were early to the social networking wave.
0:42:03 I think you were doing like a social networking
0:42:05 type of thing in the first year of Facebook.
0:42:08 I think there’s some story where Zuck called you.
0:42:09 – I called him on his cell phone
0:42:11 and pretended to be somebody else, that was a good one.
0:42:13 – You called Zuck, tell that story, by the way.
0:42:15 – Who did you pretend to be?
0:42:19 – So summer of ’05, we’re like,
0:42:21 Facebook’s, oh my God, Mark Zuckerberg’s a year old,
0:42:22 he’s our age, right?
0:42:24 We’re like, he’s our age, he’s gonna crush it.
0:42:26 But he’s never gonna go into high school.
0:42:27 Somebody should start a high school Facebook.
0:42:29 And we’re like, why not us?
0:42:30 So we start the high list.
0:42:31 I have like the docs,
0:42:33 we have these little iconography and all this stuff.
0:42:35 We basically rebuilt the clone of Facebook.
0:42:36 And at the beginning of the summer,
0:42:39 we went to go by HSFacebook.com.
0:42:41 And some kid at Columbia, I don’t even remember his name.
0:42:44 Maybe he’s listening and he can, he can from himself.
0:42:45 He owns it.
0:42:48 And he goes, well, I’ll sell it to you for like $20,000.
0:42:49 And we’re college kids, we’re like, no thanks.
0:42:51 We’ll call it the high list.
0:42:52 And we say peace.
0:42:54 We build the whole product, we launch it.
0:42:56 Literally on the eve of the launch, he calls us
0:42:59 and he goes, Mark Zuckerberg wants to buy HS Facebook.
0:43:02 So I’m giving you a last chance buddy, like, you can get it.
0:43:04 And I was like, oh my God, we need,
0:43:05 and I was like, my first question was,
0:43:06 is he going to launch in high school?
0:43:06 He’s like, yeah, he says he is.
0:43:07 And I’m like, no, are you sure?
0:43:09 Like, I think the guy’s bullshitting me.
0:43:11 So I’m like, prove it.
0:43:13 So he forwards me the email from Zuck.
0:43:14 And this is not, this is just a guy named Mark Zuckerberg.
0:43:16 He’s not Zuck Zuck today, right?
0:43:20 And the guy includes a 917 area code number.
0:43:22 Sorry, Zuck, your area code is 917 on your cell phone.
0:43:24 And I don’t know what the rest of it was.
0:43:25 I don’t remember.
0:43:27 But basically it has a cell phone number.
0:43:29 So I’m like, okay, how do we call
0:43:31 and how do we verify this is true?
0:43:34 So I call Zuck, by the way, I call him
0:43:36 from my summer internship office at Bain Capital.
0:43:37 So I’m like sitting inside
0:43:39 some finance company calling him.
0:43:42 And I go, my name is Tom Goldberg.
0:43:44 I’m partners with this guy, Bob.
0:43:47 And we own HS Facebook together.
0:43:48 So I want to make sure that you’re not,
0:43:50 like I’m not getting cut out of this deal
0:43:52 that you apparently have with him.
0:43:54 And he goes, yeah, I’m going to buy it from him.
0:43:55 And you need to sort that out with him.
0:43:57 And then I go, well, what are you going to do with it?
0:43:59 And I kid you not, he spends 30 minutes.
0:44:02 And to his credit, he outlines the entire strategy
0:44:04 that Facebook has executed.
0:44:05 He goes, first we’re going to go to high schools.
0:44:06 Then we’re going to go to workplaces.
0:44:07 Then we’re going to go into pods.
0:44:09 Then we’re going to, like he had the whole strategy.
0:44:11 This is in ’05, dude.
0:44:12 This is a year into Facebook.
0:44:13 – And he’s like,
0:44:14 – He’s like, they’re going to start wearing chains
0:44:15 and cool shirts.
0:44:16 – Yeah, he didn’t know that.
0:44:17 – Right around the age of 35.
0:44:19 – He’s like 22 or when I’m 21.
0:44:21 And then he’s like, wait, by the way,
0:44:22 what was your name again?
0:44:23 And I’m like, click.
0:44:27 Needless to say our high school Facebook plan
0:44:29 did not work out.
0:44:30 They launched and they crushed us.
0:44:33 And we went and got jobs in finance.
0:44:34 – That’s an amazing story.
0:44:35 – That’s a sad story.
0:44:37 – And by the way, isn’t the funny thing that like,
0:44:40 the actual answer was go join Facebook.
0:44:41 Like just go do whatever you can.
0:44:43 – At every point in my life,
0:44:45 that has been the right answer to maximize my outcome.
0:44:47 And when I started Ampush, dude, for 10 years,
0:44:50 like I was before all their ads and I did the math
0:44:52 because a buddy of mine got a job with same resume,
0:44:54 got like a corp dev and he didn’t take it.
0:44:55 I was like, he’s an idiot,
0:44:57 but he didn’t take it, but we have his offer.
0:44:59 We have his physical offer still.
0:45:01 It’s like, oh, that would have been worth $75 million.
0:45:02 – Dude, I talked to a guy the other day
0:45:06 who was like the two or 300th employee of Facebook.
0:45:09 And he was like, I had a $100 million in Facebook stock.
0:45:10 – Yes.
0:45:11 – You know, he worked there for seven years
0:45:12 or something like that.
0:45:13 – What I should have done is said,
0:45:15 hey, look, I started this high school competitor.
0:45:16 Do you want to hire me, dude?
0:45:18 Because I’d probably be like a billionaire right now
0:45:20 because we’re a year into the business existing.
0:45:23 – And by the way, like to start Facebook,
0:45:27 unbelievable amount of work and genius
0:45:30 to be the founding kind of like first five,
0:45:33 10, 15, 20 people there.
0:45:34 Tremendous amount of work.
0:45:37 You’re scaling something that’s massive
0:45:38 and you got to be like really sharp
0:45:40 or you’re going to get washed out.
0:45:44 To be the hundredth or 200th person at Facebook,
0:45:46 don’t need anything special to be honest.
0:45:47 – Dude, or the thousandth.
0:45:49 – You’re around, okay, get over here.
0:45:50 Can you lift boxes for a bit?
0:45:52 All right, he lifted boxes for a bit.
0:45:54 Hey, can you, we got a bunch of spammers.
0:45:56 Can you look at all these and figure out like
0:45:57 what we’re going to do, tell the team,
0:45:59 like we need people to filter this.
0:46:01 And by employee 200, you no longer need to be
0:46:03 at the top of the genius curve.
0:46:04 – Oh my God, dude.
0:46:07 – Work an incredible amount and you still get rich.
0:46:11 – So here’s the deal.
0:46:15 I made most of my money from a newsletter business.
0:46:17 It was called The Hustle and it was a daily newsletter
0:46:19 at scale to millions of subscribers.
0:46:21 And it was the greatest business on earth.
0:46:25 The problem with it was that I had close to 40 employees
0:46:27 and only three of them were actually doing
0:46:27 any writing.
0:46:30 The other employees were growing the newsletter,
0:46:32 building out the tech for the platform and selling ads.
0:46:35 And honestly, it was a huge pain in the butt.
0:46:38 Today’s episode is brought to you by Beehive.
0:46:41 They are a platform that is built exactly for this.
0:46:42 If you want to grow your newsletter,
0:46:44 if you want to monetize a newsletter,
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0:46:50 So check it out, beehive.com.
0:46:54 That’s B-E-E-H-I-I-V.com.
0:46:58 – Hi, four years into Ampush,
0:47:00 I was looking for a head of sales
0:47:01 and our best place to hire salespeople
0:47:02 was from Facebook itself,
0:47:04 because they knew how to navigate the beast
0:47:07 and get us more leads from that.
0:47:11 Get this guy, we love each other on the first dinner.
0:47:12 He meets two other people on the team
0:47:13 and where he’s four interviews in
0:47:15 and I do the classic talk.
0:47:17 All right, let’s talk comp for a second, right?
0:47:20 We’re a startup, we’ll give you a couple points of equity.
0:47:22 And he gets this very scared look on his face.
0:47:26 He goes, “Jesse, I’m investing $800,000 a month
0:47:28 “in Facebook stock, how are you gonna match that?”
0:47:32 And I’m like, “Dude, what, what?”
0:47:32 – Yeah, why are you here?
0:47:34 – Good to meet you, buddy, I’ll see you later.
0:47:36 – That is absolutely insane.
0:47:40 Sean, have you heard the story about Noah Kagan
0:47:41 and how Noah was hired to work at Facebook?
0:47:45 Noah was a 32nd or 30th employee.
0:47:48 And basically what happened is he was out at a party
0:47:50 and he was drunk or something like that.
0:47:53 And he tells a reporter, a tech rich reporter,
0:47:55 we’re gonna launch this thing and that thing
0:47:56 and it’s gonna be the best thing ever.
0:47:58 And it becomes a news article the next day.
0:48:00 And Zuck goes to his desk and he goes,
0:48:03 “You’re fucking with my company, you’re out.”
0:48:05 And he fires him on month nine.
0:48:09 So Noah was three months away from his first divest.
0:48:11 And Noah’s told me, he goes,
0:48:13 “Had I just made it that three months,
0:48:17 “those shares today would be worth about $100 million,
0:48:18 “those three months.”
0:48:23 All because he had a big mouth when he was 21
0:48:24 and drunk at a party.
0:48:27 He was Ampush’s first Facebook ads client,
0:48:29 believe it or not, AppSumo was.
0:48:30 – That’s awesome.
0:48:31 – I bought his first, I got his first customers for him.
0:48:33 – Yeah, and now it’s like, you know,
0:48:35 a business that does 100 million a year in revenue.
0:48:36 So it kind of worked out,
0:48:37 but it would have worked out a lot easier
0:48:39 if he kind of kept his mouth shut.
0:48:41 – Yeah, but my thought, I don’t know
0:48:42 how you guys feel about that.
0:48:44 I’ve done that math and I’m like,
0:48:45 but I don’t think I could have worked,
0:48:47 like I don’t want to work for someone.
0:48:49 – Of course, you can’t look back and be like.
0:48:51 – But even if I could, even now make that decision,
0:48:52 I’m like, I don’t think I would have wanted to work
0:48:55 for Facebook or anywhere for that long or like.
0:48:58 – Dude, I would, that would have been awesome.
0:48:59 Are we gonna say shot?
0:48:59 – I think you’re both right.
0:49:02 So the math on this, just to put it in perspective,
0:49:04 let’s say you join when Facebook has valued at a billion
0:49:08 dollars, which I think it was like a few years in.
0:49:10 I don’t think it was like right away ’cause at the time,
0:49:13 it was unclear, social networking would be that big.
0:49:16 And so let’s say you join at a billion dollar valuation
0:49:18 and your employee, you know, 400,
0:49:23 and you’re so junior and they give you $10,000 of stock
0:49:26 a year and you’re gonna make, you get a $100,000 salary
0:49:29 and you’re gonna get 10,000 of stock.
0:49:32 Over four years, you’ve accumulated $40,000 of stock
0:49:34 at even at a billion.
0:49:38 Today, Facebook is a $1.35 trillion company.
0:49:39 So that’s, you get-
0:49:40 – 1,000 bagger.
0:49:45 – Multiply by 1,000, but $1,300 times your $40,000.
0:49:48 It’s a $54 million stock option you got
0:49:50 for being the janitor at Facebook at the right time,
0:49:52 which tells me a couple of things.
0:49:55 Number one, picking the right company and project
0:49:58 will be like, by far picking the right market to be
0:50:00 in the, and then the winner of that market,
0:50:03 if you’re in the tech industry is by far the most impactful
0:50:06 thing you can do in your, in your like career.
0:50:07 It’ll, it’ll beat your hard work.
0:50:09 It’ll beat your own like, you know, intelligence.
0:50:12 It’ll beat being right many times in a row.
0:50:13 Like you just had to be right once in the right time.
0:50:16 And I should point this out, which is that at the time,
0:50:19 or like every kind of like four years,
0:50:22 it’s pretty obvious what like winning companies look like.
0:50:24 So my version of this was I only did two job interviews
0:50:25 in my life.
0:50:27 The first one was at Monkey Inferno,
0:50:28 which was the, the studio I ended up joining
0:50:30 cause I wanted to be in a studio.
0:50:31 And the other one I did was Stripe.
0:50:33 And I could have told you right then,
0:50:34 like Stripe is the winner.
0:50:35 Like it’s the winner of the startups.
0:50:37 There’s a reason that was the only other interview I did
0:50:40 was because I was like, Stripe is the winner.
0:50:41 It was super obvious.
0:50:43 And I’ve done the similar like heartbreaking math of like,
0:50:45 wow, even if I had joined,
0:50:46 I would have just been like a sales guy,
0:50:49 a biz dev guy, like I had no, like,
0:50:52 I would no seniority would have made an absolute fortune.
0:50:53 Now, on the other hand, you have the Jesse thing,
0:50:55 which is like, do you want to do it?
0:50:57 Would you, would you actually have stuck it out?
0:51:00 And even beyond that is, would you have held?
0:51:03 Cause there is no chance that I would have held.
0:51:05 I bought Bitcoin in 2014.
0:51:06 I did not hold all the Bitcoin.
0:51:09 I gambled Bitcoin away on a poker night one night
0:51:11 cause I was just like playing online poker.
0:51:12 I did all kinds of things.
0:51:16 That’s now a four times $60,000, you know, thing.
0:51:17 At the time, Bitcoin was like 300 bucks.
0:51:20 So it was like, I thought a thousand dollar investment.
0:51:22 It was actually a quarter million dollar investment.
0:51:23 And so, you know,
0:51:26 the idea that I would have held is ridiculous.
0:51:29 And I don’t think, I don’t think the math is actually real
0:51:31 because nobody holds for that long.
0:51:32 – I agree.
0:51:33 – That’s insane.
0:51:35 I’ve got the same story, by the way, with Airbnb.
0:51:38 I think I was going to be employee 120 or something.
0:51:39 And I don’t know.
0:51:41 Also, it was a $20 an hour job.
0:51:44 I don’t even know if the equity would have been a lot,
0:51:47 but you do the math and it does sting a little bit.
0:51:50 – But dude, I mean, the one way, like I was,
0:51:52 I worked at Goldman, I was 25.
0:51:55 My 29 year old boss made $2 million a year.
0:51:59 My 35 year old boss was making $15 million a year.
0:52:01 And then I got off that path because I was like,
0:52:04 I don’t want to like sit here and look at spreadsheets all day.
0:52:05 Like it’s a very not dynamic job.
0:52:07 I didn’t, I looked at my boss.
0:52:08 I said, do I want to be them one day?
0:52:09 And I said, no.
0:52:11 And I literally wrote this down to keep myself honest.
0:52:15 I said, I’m okay with like half my personal expected value
0:52:17 to be able to like do my own thing in the future.
0:52:18 I don’t know, I’ve never rerun the math,
0:52:22 but I had to like make that decision for myself.
0:52:25 – What’s a $15 million a year employee at Goldman do?
0:52:27 – There’s a bunch of jobs that make that kind of money.
0:52:29 But in my world, I was in the like the buy side hedge fund.
0:52:32 They were investing, we had a $7 billion fund,
0:52:34 two and 20, right?
0:52:37 If the thing delivers 10% a year,
0:52:41 they make the fees on seven billion or like what, 140 plus
0:52:45 on 10% is 700 million, it’s like 350 million in carry.
0:52:48 And there’s four senior people.
0:52:50 Now, Goldman might even get half of it or whatever,
0:52:53 but like they’re paying 50% out of whatever people make
0:52:54 in the hedge fund.
0:52:55 So, but then bankers make that much.
0:52:57 I mean, all of these financial services
0:52:59 at a senior already level, they all make tons of money.
0:53:01 There was a guy who endowed a scholarship I got
0:53:02 when I was a pen who was a partner at Goldman
0:53:03 at the head of the infrastructure fund
0:53:07 and was making 55 a year is what he told me.
0:53:07 – And then when he told you,
0:53:10 did he just like smirk the biggest spark
0:53:13 you’ve ever seen in your goddamn life?
0:53:14 I mean, it just, it was permanent.
0:53:15 He had a facial.
0:53:18 – But I saw that I was like, hey, you’ve been there 30 years
0:53:19 and like, have you ever been in those atmospheres?
0:53:22 None of the three of us would last more than two
0:53:23 or three years in those atmospheres.
0:53:27 They’re not, they’re political, it’s not, I don’t know.
0:53:29 There’s more than money, right?
0:53:30 – I totally agree.
0:53:32 I think our actions have showed that,
0:53:33 but I also think it is entertaining
0:53:38 to see like just the sort of mind bending amounts
0:53:40 that people make doing certain things.
0:53:43 And in the case of joining companies early,
0:53:45 like, wow, that’s kind of it.
0:53:47 That’s all you really had to do
0:53:48 in terms of like financial success.
0:53:50 There’s a funny tweet that Chamath put out the other day
0:53:54 where he was like Bill Gates, you know,
0:53:56 if he had just basically held his Microsoft stock,
0:53:58 I think the richest man in the world
0:54:01 or number one or number two, something like that.
0:54:03 And instead, you know, he did the Gates Foundation
0:54:04 and he did a whole bunch of other things.
0:54:08 He like sold and then has his family office.
0:54:11 And the top reply, which was like a huge ratio
0:54:12 was like, now do you with meta, right?
0:54:14 Because I think he leaves Facebook.
0:54:16 He’s like, great, I got a billion bucks
0:54:17 and then I’m going to do social capital.
0:54:18 I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that.
0:54:20 And for, you know, to do SPACs,
0:54:21 I’m going to do all these things
0:54:25 for like, you know, the next 12 years, 15 years.
0:54:27 And if he had just simply like held the meta stock
0:54:29 and chilled, he would have financially out far out
0:54:32 and formed his own, you know, his own brilliance
0:54:34 doing all this different investing action.
0:54:35 – Yeah, I, you know, but that’s the thing.
0:54:37 That’s why you got to do things that you actually care about
0:54:39 or that light you up or that you motivate you in a way
0:54:40 that’s different from cash.
0:54:42 Because I mean, dude, the other thing is how many,
0:54:43 I mean, you guys probably have friends like this.
0:54:45 I have friends who are worth more than I am
0:54:46 who have much more money and,
0:54:49 but they got it through like a meta type situation.
0:54:50 They’re like the most insecure.
0:54:52 Like they’re like, oh, I just got lucky.
0:54:54 They’re afraid to talk about it.
0:54:56 Like it seems like a, like a horrible existence.
0:54:59 Like, and there’s a lot of people I know like that.
0:55:01 I met one of the founders of YouTube once
0:55:04 and the guy was like, I lotto ticket success.
0:55:07 You know, I like, he was, he was very unhappy
0:55:08 with the amount of money he had made.
0:55:10 So you think that it’s like, I’m on easy street.
0:55:10 I get it.
0:55:12 Like, but the psychological thing that people feel like
0:55:14 for all, I mean, it’s a whole nother,
0:55:16 there’s a whole nother vector of challenges
0:55:18 that come with it versus I think all the three of us
0:55:20 are founders, you start a business,
0:55:21 whatever it is you made, you made it,
0:55:22 you know, you did it.
0:55:25 Like there’s a different element to it, in my opinion.
0:55:26 – I like talking about it the same way.
0:55:29 Like looking at mega mansions on the internet.
0:55:30 It’s fascinating to one part of my brain,
0:55:32 but then the main part of my brain is like,
0:55:33 I wouldn’t even want that out.
0:55:36 Like, not even then, it’s like, dude, that’s way too big.
0:55:37 That wouldn’t be fun to live in, that’d be uncomfortable.
0:55:39 And man, the maintenance of that would be like,
0:55:41 pan of the ass, if that’s not what I want.
0:55:44 In the same way that when we got acquired by Twitch,
0:55:46 I had thought in the last seven years,
0:55:49 I had worked towards like, I want to build a, you know,
0:55:51 a successful tech company, right?
0:55:54 I was in the venture capital world success in that world
0:55:56 as you build a billion dollar plus company.
0:55:59 We were doing like a social type of product,
0:56:02 a media product and Twitch is like one of the 10 winners
0:56:04 that like actually existed.
0:56:06 And then I saw Emmett’s day to day and I was like,
0:56:08 oh man, I would be miserable if I was doing this.
0:56:11 And not even in like, like it was just, that wasn’t fun.
0:56:15 Like his job fundamentally was like putting out fires
0:56:17 and you know, all problems roll up basically.
0:56:19 And like, it’s the worst problems that roll up.
0:56:20 – Shit rolls up ill.
0:56:22 – Yeah, shit rolls up ill, exactly.
0:56:24 It’s the worst problems that rolled up past your executive
0:56:26 team because they would solve a bunch of them,
0:56:28 but the ones that they can’t really solve cleanly
0:56:29 roll up to you.
0:56:31 So you get the worst of the worst that roll up to you.
0:56:32 And he would sit in the conference room and basically,
0:56:34 you know, his calendar was managed by somebody else.
0:56:36 And there’s a 30 minute block and another 30 minute block
0:56:37 and another 30 minute block.
0:56:39 And he’s reading memos and he’s doing decisions all day.
0:56:41 And I’m like, man, this is not like,
0:56:43 like the fun factor is not there.
0:56:44 And that’s when I started asking a question.
0:56:47 That’s why I started this podcast is I was like,
0:56:49 who’s having the most fun?
0:56:50 Rather than who is the most successful,
0:56:51 who is the most rich?
0:56:53 It’s just fundamentally, who’s having the most fun?
0:56:54 And I remember looking at Joe Rogan and I was like,
0:56:56 I think Joe Rogan’s having a blast.
0:56:59 It seems like he basically, the podcast,
0:57:01 which is like an unedited, unscripted thing.
0:57:04 He’s hanging out with comedian friends
0:57:07 or super interesting scientists and paleontologists
0:57:09 and just fascinating people like that.
0:57:11 And then on the side, he does comedy,
0:57:12 which is like, you know,
0:57:14 a craft that he really cares about that he does.
0:57:17 He does the UFC, which is like his hobby.
0:57:19 And he gets to commentate for that and sit ringside,
0:57:21 but he also doesn’t overdo any of the things,
0:57:25 meaning he doesn’t do his podcast in a way
0:57:27 that’s like optimized for views.
0:57:28 He’s not like, he’s like,
0:57:29 I want to do a three hour conversation
0:57:30 because that’s what I want.
0:57:33 Not because that’s optimal for the algorithm.
0:57:34 For UFC, he doesn’t travel.
0:57:36 He’s like, I’ll do the ones that are nearby me,
0:57:37 but I’m not going to fly around the world
0:57:39 every weekend commentating this.
0:57:41 Like, I hope that works for you guys.
0:57:42 Same thing with this comedy stuff.
0:57:43 He’s like, you know,
0:57:44 I’m going to do it the way that I want to do it.
0:57:46 And when I saw that, I was like, okay,
0:57:49 that is a different model of success that I, you know,
0:57:53 I want more than kind of what I wanted in my twenties.
0:57:54 – You use Joe Rogan,
0:57:56 but I honestly think you can apply that to anyone.
0:57:58 Like my hedge fund friends who love hedge funding,
0:57:59 they’re happy.
0:58:00 They love it.
0:58:01 It’s finding your thing.
0:58:02 It’s finding the thing that you really enjoy
0:58:03 and then just going all in on it.
0:58:05 Those are the people I think who are winning.
0:58:08 – You really got to enjoy like doing it a lot
0:58:11 because it all really sucks to get there.
0:58:15 Like, do you guys remember Zuck in ’06 to,
0:58:18 maybe it was like ’08 to like ’15?
0:58:19 Like, I would not have trade places with him.
0:58:21 I would never in a million years
0:58:23 trade places with Elon Musk.
0:58:24 But the idea of like having all these things-
0:58:26 – Zuck’s like, yeah, me neither.
0:58:28 No trade.
0:58:29 I also reject that trade, Sam Parr.
0:58:32 – Yeah, very, very, very fair of him to say that.
0:58:34 But it does seem cool.
0:58:35 Like, I guess what I mean is like,
0:58:38 I could acknowledge that that seems awesome.
0:58:40 That would be cool to have.
0:58:42 And also, I’m not willing to do it,
0:58:44 but it’s, that’s like fantastic.
0:58:45 – Yeah, I think one of the most powerful things
0:58:47 is figuring out what’s,
0:58:48 there’s the difference between cool for you
0:58:49 and cool for me, right?
0:58:50 – That’s right.
0:58:52 – There’s so many things where I see people’s life set up
0:58:54 and I’m like, that is super cool for you.
0:58:56 And like, I don’t mean that in a negative way.
0:58:58 It’s like, I do think it is super cool.
0:59:00 And I think it’s even cooler that it’s what you wanted,
0:59:03 but I have to figure out what is cool for me look like.
0:59:05 – You know what’s funny is our last episode,
0:59:08 you talked about the seven spiritual roles.
0:59:11 And you talked about that book that you were reading,
0:59:13 or how you were thinking about reading it
0:59:13 or something like that.
0:59:15 I went and bought it because personally,
0:59:18 I’m in a little bit of a place now where it’s like,
0:59:20 I think some people call it the second mountain.
0:59:22 You know, you already like achieve a little something
0:59:26 to where you’re like, you’re secure, but you’re like, all right,
0:59:28 but what’s a problem that I want to work on
0:59:30 or a way to spend life that may be a little bit higher up
0:59:32 on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
0:59:36 And so I’m personally still like asking myself,
0:59:37 it’s not defined yet for me.
0:59:39 – Jesse, do you have one?
0:59:40 I’m curious.
0:59:43 – Yeah, you know, I’ve done,
0:59:44 I think Sean, you know this,
0:59:46 I’ve spent probably a better part of six or seven years
0:59:47 on this personal growth journey,
0:59:50 which has turned into like a spiritual journey.
0:59:53 And the defining moment came for me,
0:59:55 maybe three years in when my coach was like,
0:59:57 what’s the one thing you can’t not do?
0:59:59 It’s like a really weird question.
1:00:01 And the exercise for, you know, you can do it, Sam,
1:00:02 right now is what’s the one thing you can’t not do?
1:00:04 Write down a few sentences,
1:00:05 and then every week look at those sentences
1:00:07 and see if they seem to grow with you.
1:00:08 – That’s a good idea.
1:00:11 – And in one funny way he’s like,
1:00:12 what’s the thing that comes in the room when you show up?
1:00:13 Like, what’s the stench?
1:00:16 ‘Cause his point was we try to make purpose
1:00:17 this far out thing we have to go get.
1:00:18 And it’s actually the thing already inside of us
1:00:21 that we just need to like tap into and live more fully.
1:00:25 And for me, it was, I love helping other people
1:00:26 like be the best versions of themselves,
1:00:28 like raise their game to the next level
1:00:30 of what they’re capable of.
1:00:30 Even in this podcast,
1:00:32 like I think I taught you guys two new things.
1:00:34 Like it just, it comes out, it’s not purposeful.
1:00:36 And that’s, I’ve made it more purposeful now.
1:00:37 But like at the time it wasn’t,
1:00:39 but it was a thing any of my friends would tell you about me,
1:00:40 any of my employees would tell you about like,
1:00:41 what do you do?
1:00:43 Jesse walks in and like the bar goes up
1:00:44 and it’s like an exciting go up.
1:00:48 And so I really, one of the interesting examples of this,
1:00:49 he goes, so how do you keep your to-do list, Jesse?
1:00:51 And I was like, oh, initiatives or clients.
1:00:54 And it’s like, what if you kept your to-do list
1:00:56 based on your people you worked with, like executives
1:00:57 and how you’re helping them
1:00:59 be the best versions of themselves.
1:01:02 He’s like, you’d probably still like get the work done
1:01:03 that you need to get done,
1:01:04 but you do it in this very inspired way.
1:01:06 And Gateway X, I mean, Gateway X is a whole function
1:01:08 of me going, the thing I want to do
1:01:10 is help other people learn and grow.
1:01:12 I’m not the CEO of any of these companies.
1:01:14 Like now I do actually keep my to-do list that way.
1:01:15 I don’t write growth assistant or AUX.
1:01:17 I write Adrian and Casey.
1:01:20 And I’m like, how am I helping those people?
1:01:22 And I find it’s a weird thing when I frame my success
1:01:24 or my life through the PNLs of those businesses,
1:01:29 I get very like, I’m not as powerful.
1:01:32 I’m like a more scarce minded person.
1:01:33 And when I frame it as the like,
1:01:35 how do I help those individuals?
1:01:35 Which is the same shit
1:01:37 because they’re running the businesses.
1:01:40 I’m like creative and I’m happy and I’m more flowing.
1:01:41 So for me, it’s like,
1:01:43 that’s the thing and it feels really energizing for me.
1:01:45 Like I think I could do it for a really long time.
1:01:46 And obviously the setup,
1:01:48 the way I’ve got it set up matters a lot too.
1:01:50 Like I’m, you know,
1:01:51 not running any of the individual businesses.
1:01:52 I don’t think I want to.
1:01:53 I don’t want to run staff meetings.
1:01:56 I don’t want to run comp plans, hiring.
1:01:57 Like all these things, I did it.
1:01:58 You guys have done it.
1:01:59 Like it’s not what I want to do,
1:02:02 but I do want to help grow each of these businesses.
1:02:04 – Dude, you’re awesome.
1:02:05 I appreciate you doing this.
1:02:06 – Thanks man.
1:02:07 – Thanks for having me.
1:02:07 – Great to see you.
1:02:10 By the way, how’d you get Nellie at your birthday party?
1:02:11 What was that about?
1:02:13 Tell that story before we go.
1:02:14 – Dude. – It was the quick one.
1:02:17 – So I turned 40 in May, as you guys know,
1:02:19 and I have a cool video montage of the party,
1:02:20 my wife and I have some party,
1:02:23 but I’ve been telling all my friends about St. Louis
1:02:24 since I was 18, so I went to college.
1:02:26 I’m like, St. Louis is the best city, whatever.
1:02:27 And everyone’s like, I was like,
1:02:28 I’ll move back there one day.
1:02:29 They’re like, no, you’re not.
1:02:31 And then I moved back and they’re like, oh shit,
1:02:32 you moved back.
1:02:34 And so I had 200 people in town
1:02:36 who I’ve been raving to about St. Louis
1:02:38 for like 10 plus years.
1:02:40 So I’m like, what’s the most ridiculous thing
1:02:41 you could do if you’re me having your 40s?
1:02:44 Like Nellie, I mean, you guys are similar, similar in age.
1:02:46 From my high school to early college,
1:02:47 Nellie was like the biggest rapper on the planet
1:02:49 and he’s from my hometown.
1:02:50 – Nellie was our guy.
1:02:53 He was the first famous St. Louis guy.
1:02:55 And it doesn’t matter what race you are,
1:02:58 how old you are, Nellie was like our son.
1:03:00 He made us so proud.
1:03:02 – If you’re in your 30s or 40s, just close your eyes.
1:03:05 I’m just gonna say a few words that’ll just take you back.
1:03:09 Country Grammar, Air Force Ones, EI.
1:03:11 – John and her?
1:03:11 Oh my God.
1:03:14 Like just the memories that come with those words.
1:03:17 – So I’m like, all right, yeah, I’m, you know,
1:03:18 what’s the ridiculous thing I could have my party?
1:03:19 I’m like, have Nellie perform there.
1:03:22 So my wife closed through the normal channels.
1:03:24 They’re like, you know, he basically doesn’t do this, right?
1:03:26 So he’s like, look, it’s 300,000 just as a starting price.
1:03:29 By the time you do it all, it’s half a million dollars.
1:03:31 And I’m like, I wanna die with zero,
1:03:34 but like that’s a little, little rich for my blood.
1:03:35 – I don’t wanna live with zero.
1:03:37 – Yeah. So I’m like, all right, we’re not gonna do that.
1:03:39 And then I kind of am sad for a few months.
1:03:41 And then the entrepreneur of me goes, wait, come on,
1:03:43 there’s gotta be another way to approach this, right?
1:03:45 So St. Louis is not a big place.
1:03:47 I asked a couple of people, I go, you know,
1:03:48 Nellie’s people, right?
1:03:50 And I’m like, can you introduce me?
1:03:52 And so I get to know, they’re great.
1:03:54 By the, there’s this guy, Mike Chaffin,
1:03:55 there’s one wonderful guys, I get to know them.
1:03:57 And you know, they introduced me as this guy
1:04:00 who’s like an expert digital market or e-commerce guy.
1:04:01 So I’m like, hey, what’s going on?
1:04:03 What’s going on in your world?
1:04:06 Oh, you know, Nellie is actually working
1:04:09 on two big e-commerce businesses, like his team is.
1:04:11 And I go, ooh, tell me more.
1:04:13 And they have to help me all about it.
1:04:14 And I’m like, okay, well, here’s the thing
1:04:15 you should think about and make sure you tag this product.
1:04:18 And they’re like, oh, wow, you know a lot about this.
1:04:21 And I’m like, okay, how can I be helpful, right?
1:04:24 And then I just basically have been working with them.
1:04:26 And right, here’s a Shopify app, do this.
1:04:28 Here’s a good contractor for this.
1:04:30 They’re helping their team get it going.
1:04:32 And at some point it came out, the AUX business came out.
1:04:34 And I’m like, yeah, I charged private equity firms
1:04:37 like $200,000, $300,000 to do that, right?
1:04:39 And they’re like, oh, but you’ve just been doing it for free.
1:04:40 Like, well, can we be helpful?
1:04:42 I’m like, it’s funny you ask.
1:04:44 A young man’s dream would be to have Nellie
1:04:46 at his birthday party.
1:04:47 And you know, they’re his people.
1:04:49 So they’re like, well, let’s go talk to him.
1:04:50 And they go, well, he’s got to meet you
1:04:51 ’cause he doesn’t know who you are.
1:04:53 And if he doesn’t know you, so I take my wife,
1:04:56 you know, I get my sort of urban like going on there
1:04:59 and we become, he’s super nice guy, really friendly.
1:05:01 – Dude, have you ever been more nervous
1:05:02 walking up to that meeting?
1:05:03 – I was nervous.
1:05:04 My wife was super nervous.
1:05:06 Like, why the hell am I here right now?
1:05:08 We meet him in like the Soho wannabe in St. Louis.
1:05:10 So a club wannabe.
1:05:11 – You go for the handshake, Dap Up?
1:05:12 What do you do?
1:05:14 – Yeah, you know, not the handshake, but the, you know,
1:05:15 pull in.
1:05:17 Yeah, yeah, of course.
1:05:20 And so that goes really well.
1:05:23 – Yeah, my guy, he started using that phrase, my guy.
1:05:24 – Yeah.
1:05:26 And he asked me, so what do you want to do?
1:05:28 And I think like, I was like, oh man,
1:05:29 you got to come out to EI.
1:05:30 We got to have the intro.
1:05:32 It’s gonna be like, and he like looks at me.
1:05:33 He’s like, okay, you’re a real fan.
1:05:36 I’m like, yeah, man, this, like, you were, you were the guy.
1:05:39 So they’re like, okay, Nelly loved you, we’re in.
1:05:41 Then they’re like, wait, what was the date again?
1:05:43 It’s May 25th.
1:05:45 Like, well, he’s in Napa on the 24th night
1:05:47 at some festival, and then he needs to be in Vegas
1:05:49 on the 26th day for a day party.
1:05:54 And they’re like, he would do it as a friend now
1:05:56 because you’ve helped him, but he just can’t make
1:05:56 the date work, Jesse.
1:05:59 And so again, I’m like depressed for 48 hours.
1:06:01 And then I’m like, no, fuck this.
1:06:04 I’m like, what if I fly in private both ways?
1:06:07 And they go, we’ll talk to him, come back the next day.
1:06:10 Okay, he’ll do it, but it’s gotta be a G4 or better.
1:06:11 – Oh my God.
1:06:13 – Nelly does not fly in anything below a G4.
1:06:15 So I go and I do a bunch of like, you know,
1:06:17 I’ve been flying private a little bit
1:06:18 since the Ampere sale and I was like,
1:06:20 talked to a bunch of these brokers
1:06:21 and I basically get them to beat each other up.
1:06:22 And it was roundtrip.
1:06:24 So it got a little cheaper per hour than it normally would.
1:06:27 But for 60 grand, I got him a roundtrip on a G4,
1:06:30 Napa to STL, STL to Vegas.
1:06:31 And he rolls into the, you know, he rolled,
1:06:34 and he, by the way, he was amazing at the party.
1:06:36 Like, I’ll text you guys videos and stuff.
1:06:37 Like he, it was scary
1:06:40 because he wasn’t under any contract with me.
1:06:41 So he could have come out and said,
1:06:43 “Hey, happy birthday, Jesse, EIEI.”
1:06:44 And he could have left.
1:06:47 He ends up doing a 45 minutes set.
1:06:49 And he told like his manager and manager told me,
1:06:51 he’s like, dude, he was like so hyped.
1:06:52 There was like all these Indian people
1:06:54 who like knew his music.
1:06:57 Like he was so pumped that you guys are all just like,
1:06:59 rapping and my brother and I are on stage,
1:07:00 rapping EIEI with him.
1:07:03 Like it was, dude, it was a top three life moment.
1:07:04 Like it was unbelievable.
1:07:07 – That’s so awesome.
1:07:10 – It was the best.
1:07:12 Like it was honestly one of the best hours of my life.
1:07:15 – He was super cool.
1:07:17 – A little dicky if you’re out there listening,
1:07:19 I would, I’m turning 40 in a few years.
1:07:20 I would love to start, you know.
1:07:22 – Yeah, you gotta save that money, dude.
1:07:23 You gotta save that money.
1:07:26 – Yeah, you have to hope that his like career just goes down.
1:07:27 – Well, I told my wife,
1:07:28 I’m like for your 50th, I’ll get Beyonce
1:07:30 because hopefully by then I’ll have a little more money
1:07:33 and you will, her stock will be down.
1:07:35 – Yeah, we gotta just catch them right before they hit cameo.
1:07:37 So they can’t be peaking.
1:07:38 They gotta be on some sort of a decline,
1:07:41 but like not all the way rock bottomed yet.
1:07:43 So that’s, that’s what we’re going for.
1:07:45 – Jesse, we appreciate you, you’re the man.
1:07:46 Thanks for doing this.
1:07:47 – You too guys, good to see you.
1:07:48 – All right, that’s it.
1:07:49 That’s the pod.
1:07:51 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
1:07:54 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
1:07:56 ♪ I put my all in it like no days on ♪
1:07:58 On the road, let’s travel never looking back
1:08:01 (upbeat music)