I have a business that no one on a podcast has ever discussed.
It's literally the first time this has probably ever been talked about on YouTube or in the audio format.
I'm I'm, I'm breaking grounds here.
Okay. Jackie Robinson.
I feel like I can rule the world and know I could be what I want to.
And Sam when you see this.
What does this look like?
This just looks like.
Just like I don't know a great ballerina typical.
A program. Yeah right.
Yeah, it's a show program.
And that's what everybody in that crowd thought.
But not me, I saw a business plan, Sam.
I saw a business plan, I saw information.
I saw a giant information leak.
Okay, so check this out, this woman has built a million dollar plus kids dance studio just down the street from us.
And I think this is remarkable.
And I think it's a good reminder that like, there's these million dollar businesses like all around you.
You don't have to do something really grand or innovative to do it.
You just gotta provide a service that people love and you gotta scale it in the right way.
So check this out. On the back is a list of all the dancers in the show.
Now, all the dancers at the show are all the dancers across for three locations.
All the kids basically.
Everyone performs. Okay, so I look at this and everyone else is looking for their kid's name.
I'm looking for topline revenue numbers.
Okay, I'm trying to figure it out.
And so I see, all right, each of these columns is about 50 names.
There's six columns, okay.
We got 300 kids at this dance show.
Now, I know that we pay something like $250 a month to be a part of the dance studio.
This is the spring recital, so immediately my head says, all right, we're doing at least spring and fall, might even be doing four recitals a year, I'm not sure.
I just bought the tickets to this recital, so I know that in addition to the $250 a month membership, you're going to be paying for the uniforms. You're going to be paying for tickets to watch the show.
Of course every single parent is gonna watch their kid.
And the thing, in fact, we brought grandparents with us and a few extras, but you look around that theater it's totally sold out standing room only.
I know a mom who was in our class who she did not log on to buy her tickets right away and therefore only got two tickets and got them in the back.
And so she kicked her husband out of the two tickets and was like, hey, tell your mother.
She got her mother -in -law to come with a walker so that they could go sit in the ADA seat.
Like that's how, that's how vicious the, uh, the competition is for these, the demand is insatiable.
Okay. So, um, basically if you do the math on this and you say, okay, we spent a hundred bucks on the tickets for the recital that you spent 250 bucks a month, and then you're in this thing year round, um, you end up seeing that this is a business that's generating a little over a million dollars a year in, um, in revenue, 1 .25 million.
So you said 300 names, $250.
That's $75 ,000 a month in sales.
just off that. And then you add on the plus plus the shows the tickets the photos oh for the photo package you spend 100 bucks you know it's one thing after another basically that they sell to you and it's great we're happy customers.
And so you get there she basically does no marketing, the show is for marketing and what ends up happening is that you and then at the end of the show she brings out the teachers to take a bow these are the teachers so i'm like oh thank you now i see the opex line, well we got seven teachers here!
Okay cool seven teachers, pictures.
Got it. And so I'm trying to figure this out.
Okay, so I'm pretty sure that this dance studio is netting somewhere between five hundred thousand and seven hundred thousand and even that every year.
Okay. Amazing. It also does she like arrived to the class in like a like an ass class like what type of car would she drive?
Yeah I installed a tracking device underneath just to see where she lives.
Media back give out any hints as to how well a bit the business was doing called a Birkin bag Sarah wanted to go to like some concert and I was like yeah like Charlie XC 90 and you know it's actually like Charlie I forget what it is you know like this new like hot girl don't know I that's one of those where I just don't say it XC 90 is a Volvo I was like Charlie XD 90 like XC 90 it's like XC something all But go ahead.
So I just thought this is inspiring, that just this local service, dance shows for little kids, or dance classes for little kids scaled to three locations can be such a great business for somebody.
And they're basically kind of like found that sweet spot of doing what they love.
She's been doing it for like 25 years now, she's an institution locally, has a great community of people around her, and is making people happy, making families happy.
And I've just been seeing this ever.
All right. Let me, can I show you?
Let me show you something interesting.
I was just talking to this guy, but have you ever heard of goldfish swimming classes?
No. It's a franchise that I'm pretty sure does about $600 million a year in revenue and it's a children's swim class.
And it was one of those things where he was talking to me.
He was basically, I'm not going to, I can't reveal too much, but he was like, I quit my prestigious job because I want to get into the swim class business.
You know, everyone's like probably giving this guy the same like look of like but you're throwing it all the way and he i kind of like was like all right tell me more because i'm sure there's like there's a story here because you worked in finance like you're not doing this to feel good tell me more and he started breaking down the economics of this goldfish chain and he was saying something like each location does like two million in revenue and they have something like 300 locations all right here's the deal if HubSpot tripled the price I'd be screwed. The reason I would be screwed is because my
entire company is run on HubSpot .com.
My website, my email marketing, my dashboards, how I track my customers, literally everything.
And if they tripled the price, I would pay them more money.
And that's because the product is so freaking powerful.
My entire company is built on it.
And so, if you're running a business and you wanna grow faster, you wanna grow better, you wanna be more organized, check it out HubSpot .com.
Alright, back to the pot.
Yeah, I'm on their site.
They got a lot of locations.
I don't know about 300, but they got a lot.
It was something insane like that.
And it was another one of those things that was just like hidden in plain sight, but I have a hidden in plain sight business, not hidden in plain sight, but a business that like no one on earth, no one on a podcast has ever discussed.
And this is going to be the beast, the thing I'm about to talk about.
It's literally the first time this has probably ever been talked about on YouTube or in the I'm breaking grounds here.
Okay, Jackie Robinson.
Yeah. Is there a Hall of Fame for things like these?
Because I would be in it.
All right, so I just slacked you a URL.
Go to dysbuilders .com.
So you're on this website.
Let me tell you a story really quick.
You know how the Amish are famous for creating amazing fertilizer?
I wanted to buy a bed for my kid and I wanted an heirloom quality bed where I was like, man, I wish I had my bed from when I was a kid, my crib from when I was a kid.
How cool would it be to give my daughter a bed that I can reuse for all of her kids and eventually one of them can let their kids do it?
So my grandkids have my bed.
So I was looking up Amish Furniture and I came across this website randomly because I got interested in the Amish craftsmanship.
Now, this website, it's at DYSBuilders .com.
I think they make homes.
Scroll all the way to the bottom where it says contact.
And read to me, uh, the email address that you see.
DYBuilders at IBYFAX .com.
Okay. So I noticed, I, this is just one example, because it was easy to see, but I noticed on many of these Amish websites when I was looking at how to like place an order, I had to email like, you know amisfurniture at IBYFacts .com.
There was all these really weird URLs that I had to email the facts.
I got really curious.
So I want you to go to IBYFacts .com.
It says, send and receive emails with your fax machine.
So I was seeing this and I got a tip from one of our listeners, Andy Allen, and he emailed me this and it was just all coincidence that like six months prior, I was wondering what this was.
So let me tell you the background of this.
So if you're Amish or you're Mennonite, a lot of them are very entrepreneurial and they work with the outside world.
So they make furniture that they sell to people like me.
They have websites.
However, according to their religion, they are not allowed to use certain technology that's considered individualistic.
So looking down on your iPhone or sitting down in your home and staring at computer screen, they think that things either bring them closer to God and other people, or it takes them away.
They feel, according to the rules, that looking at your phone and using the internet brings them away from other people.
However, they have all these websites, and they sell furniture.
Well, how do they do it?
Well, there's this small website.
I think it's called IBuyFacts, as in InternetBuyFacts .com.
It's this service where you pay something like $20 a month, plus like 10 cents or 50 cents per fax.
But basically, on the campus, I don't know what they call it, the campus of a lot of Amish towns, there is literally like a small house, like a shanty.
And in that small house is a fax machine.
And if you're an Amish guy running a website and you want to see how your orders are doing, or somebody emails you, and they're asking a question about a bed frame and like, can you do this or can you do that?" They go to this fax machine and this phone.
They have in their small box, which I have a photo of by the way in our document, but it's literally a tiny, tiny little outhouse where you make the call and you talk to your customer, but you have to use I Buy Fax.
And so, the I Buy Fax service, what they're going to do is they're going to collect all of your emails, and they're going to fax - They're going to - This photo is outrageous.
It's outrageous. It's like an outhouse.
It's literally... It looks like a phone booth slash porta potty.
It's in the middle of the road, and on the wall is just a tiny phone.
Like a corded - a phone with a cord. Yes, and so that's because the - There's not even a fax machine.
Where's the fax machine?
So some of them have fax machines, some of them have phones.
And so I buy fax, they'll either call you and be like the middleman and answer the questions like hey, Linda at Gmail .com.
She's in this place.
She wants to know, can you make a bed like this?
Or Dave wants a child's bed, but he wants it to be in this color.
Can you do it? And they'll reply and they'll either hand write the reply and fax it back or I buy facts has people who they say that they will actually you talk to them and they'll be your middleman.
And another thing that they'll do is let's say that you need let's say you want to buy something off eBay or you're trying to figure out what the prices of a certain farm equipment, it, you can ask I Buy Facts.
Please tell me how much it would cost to buy _____ on eBay." And they'll reply back by fax or telephone answering your question.
And so this way the Amish can do business with the rest of the world, but aren't breaking their rules.
And this website that I found, it's used on all of the websites.
So if you look at Amish Furniture, if they're like really OG Amish, a huge percentage of them are using this website.
And the Amish community, it's not tiny.
It's about 400 ,000 people and they are very entrepreneurial.
That's like, part of the religion is to be self -reliant or part of the community rules is to be self -reliant and Amish furniture is definitely a well -known thing.
Amish crafts of all types are a well -known thing.
And this guy who emailed me, he goes, I own a business that buys and sells wooden pallets and in particular, we are based in Pennsylvania and so we work with mostly Amish people.
And whenever they communicate with us, which we work with a lot of them, they only communicate with us by iBuyFacts .com.
And they're all using this website.
And this website, here's where it gets kind of funny.
I looked on LinkedIn, I can't find too much about any of the background on it.
The only, and I'm not going to blow this guy's spot up too much, so I'll only say his first name.
The owner, his first name's Jamal.
And so. So in my head, I'm like, and he lives in New York.
I'm like, is there a brother who just came up with the brilliant idea to create an Amish faxing website?
And is this like how we cheer the world?
So I swear to God, that's his first name.
So is he Amish or no, when you found him?
No, he lives in New York.
No, he lives in New York.
And his first name's Jamal.
I can't find a photo of him, but like I don't I don't know.
I don't think he is because the Amish can't work websites.
So like you have to be like an ally, you know, I'm saying but you can't be part of the community This is great.
That is so funny be like Jamal Like slogan I find the opportunity be like Jamal What by the way, why don't people like could you just basically go buy a bunch of could you work with the Amish by facts?
and just be like I'm gonna buy furniture from you.
But you run a website so you run a website when somebody comes places an order with you and your website says made by the Amish.
Amish -made furniture, handcrafted Amish furniture.
Finest Amish fine goods, whatever.
And then when somebody places an order with you you just fax these guys and sell?
Could you just be a layer on top selling?
Yeah so, from - Or do they say no to that?
Well first of all I think that there is some fraud there of like, Yeah, we're Amish, like, you know, and they're not, you know, they're not, I'm not saying you really do buy it from them.
Yeah, I think that the way yes, I think and they call it so they call those people I think the slang that they use is English.
So like, they have an English guy.
They like an English guy meaning that's like, they're straight man, they're front man who like can work with the world.
And he's, he's, we trust him, you know, he's an outsider.
But like, he's, you know, he's had our back for decades.
So we trust him. I guess that's a Jamal in this case.
But you can have other English dealer.
Yeah, you can have like and and they have like a name for that which is like they call it English But it's like yeah It's a well known thing that this is our person who's got our back and we give them a cut On the stock.
It says AWS for the Amish.
What is that? Do you like that?
That's just a little I was workshopping What do you think about that It's good.
I like that. This is a pretty nifty website, and if you go to similar web and look at their, and guess their traffic, it's not nothing.
Yeah 400 ,000 Amish people.
Let's just assume for a second that of the entrepreneurial Amish people, a very high percentage of them are going to need to use a service like this, right?
So if you say that even 5 % of Amish people are entrepreneurial, of the Amish population, maybe he's a little high.
Let's say there's 20 ,000 people.
I think you could pretty easily get to some version where you have 5 ,000 customers paying this thing, 20 bucks a month, that's a $1 million business.
It's a 1 .2 billion.
Sure. That's the exact math that I had.
I said one to 1 .2 million a year.
And I'm pretty sure it's just this guy.
Jamal. Jamal is the only guy running.
I think his name could have been Javal, J -A -V -A -L.
But it was some name.
Do you think Jamal just - does he have trouble sleeping because he just laughs himself every night thinking about what his career is he's like I just can't believe it I just I just take hold I just can't believe that this is what I did and this is called providing value this is it oh it's for sure and the the I just know that these Amish guys they're not exactly known for you know being open to change so once you get a customer like you're with them Like they measure, or they measure churn, not like, in terms of like, you know, like percentages per year, but it's like per generation, because this is absolutely
something that is going to be passed on from generation to generation.
And the website looks like it was launched.
Like web 1 .0. Yeah.
There's like seven sentences on the site.
All right. This is amazing.
So this episode is basically local million dollar businesses.
That's what this episode is.
You want me to do one more?
I have one more that could fit in this category.
This one, it's depressing.
But, well, okay. So, when you have - Don't do it if it's depressing, trying to feel good here.
Well, it's important.
So, when you have to euthanize your pet, it's like a horrible experience, obviously.
It's like the worst thing next to your children.
And so, I used a service that came to my house.
And it like was the best of the horrible situation.
It couldn't have been better for the worst thing ever.
And I, after, you know, I'm a nerd. like after a few months, I was like this service, it was like phenomenal.
What was this? How did I learn about this?
Google at home pet euthanasia.
It's the first one that comes up because they crush.
I'm not googling that.
Okay. Fat Karma. I'm not doing it.
Okay, it's called - I don't even want that in my search history.
Lap of Love. So lap of love .com is the website.
And I was reading this press release by them.
And here's how this business works.
So they have vets. So they contract it all out.
So they have like, uh, uh, best practices that they use and then they are like the call center and they dish it out to a local vet who, you know, does what they need to do.
And they teach them their ways, whatever.
This website, Lap of Love, they put out a press release that said that they are getting 10 ,000 customers a week.
And they charge, I think, $600.
Um, and so if you do the math, this business is making hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue of which they split with the vet.
But I was like very happy with my service with these guys and it was amazing that I had never heard of it and how this company just owns the entire space.
Wow. 10 ,000 a week.
Can you believe that?
How'd you even know that that was a thing?
How'd you find out about it?
Well it's word of mouth.
You, you know, like your wife or me was like telling people, yeah, we were like, look, this is horrible.
I don't want to do this." And they're like, Well, I use this service wherever was and you and you hear about that one -liner and you're like, Oh my god, that's so much better than like, right, then the alternative.
And that's how we found it.
And I was like researching it.
And what they do is they because I was like googling.
They just own like if you google that word, you know, like related phrases, they own the Yelp pages in every city.
So it will be like at home pet euthanasia in New York, in Nashville, in this, and they grow entirely through local search. Wow.
That's a crazy business.
That's a crazy business, isn't it?
Crazy business. And they said how much?
10 ,000 a week, you said?
Sorry. I got confused.
10 ,000 a month. So they handle 10 ,000 a month and it costs anywhere from 500 to $1 ,000 depending on a variety of things.
But isn't this wild and it is like, this is another one of those services where it sucks, But like, it's incredibly necessary.
And I was amazed at how large this was.
All right, here's another one.
Under the radar business that just crushes with local businesses.
I saw this guy, Tane, on Twitter talk about this.
He said - Who? I don't know how you say his name, exactly.
Don't make me say it again.
Okay, sorry. All right, so.
So... I just found out I've been calling my piano teacher, Steven, and his name's Vinnie, for like the last two months.
Alright, I'm still reconciling that fact of what I've been doing.
Did he just take it?
Well I didn't say it often, and I say it fast because I was a little unsure.
But dude, saying the word Vinny slow does not sound like you're saying Steven - or saying the word Vinny fast does not sound like you're saying Steven at all.
I'd be like, alright, say bye to Steven!
I'd tell my daughter to say bye, and then she would say bye Steven.
I'd be like, oh my god, his name's Vinny.
Blame her. Listen honey, you're gonna learn an important lesson today.
It's called Taking One for the Team.
I need you to say out loud the following words today.
Alright, so there's this business called Taro, and Taro...
His tweet was, today I learned about Taro, a hundred million dollar company that routes phone orders from Chinese sushi and pizza restaurants in the All right, folks, this is a quick plug for a podcast called, I Digress.
If you're trying to grow your business, but feel like you're drowning in buzzwords and BS, then check out the I Digress podcasts.
It's hosted by this guy named Troy Sandich. He's helped launch over 35 brands that drive $175 million in revenue.
So if you want to get smarter about scaling your business, listen to I Digress wherever you get your podcasts.
All right, back to the pod.
And so what it does is, what these guys did was these two brothers back in 2015, they start this business and they're basically like, hey, we'll help local businesses take orders over the phone.
We will be your phone staff.
So your your staff is busy, you don't want to have somebody on the phones or just constantly interrupting their workflow, we'll just take the call and then we'll put the order into your system.
And so they started doing that they basically serve 3 ,000 local restaurants in the United States with phone ordering.
And they basically are like, cool, we'll do this for 10 % cheaper than your labor costs if you do this yourself.
And by having phone ordering, you're going to get an extra 10 to 20 % of revenue that you wouldn't otherwise get.
Simple proposition, right?
Get more revenue and I could do it for you at a lower cost than you could do this for yourself.
And by the way, nobody cares who picks up the phone to take this order.
They, as of this year, say that they reached $100 million run rate.
And... And how do you spell it?
T -A -R -R -O. And it stands for Technology All Restaurants Run On.
It's the adidas of online phone ordering.
Is this bootstrapped?
I don't think it's I don't know if it's bootstrapped or not.
But it could be because this is the type of business you could definitely bootstrap like heavy cash flow business.
Now it says it's AI powered phone ordering.
Does that mean that they don't use Filipinos anymore?
I think both right.
So I think it's basically is the AI a name of one of their workers.
Is Alfred Ignacio over there.
Powering all yours.
It's both. So I think there's, there's funny things happening with AI in call centers.
So there's like AI tools that will change the accent of the person.
So they, you know, you call somebody they're in India, but their Indian accent gets remixed on the fly using AI.
So it sounds like he's Steve in Wichita.
And so that's like one tool that all these guys are using now is like, the AI doesn't take the order, but they just change the accent so that you have an American accent.
What's that called?
Uh, I don't know. There's a few companies trying to do that.
Um, so there's accent changers.
there's AI handles 50 to 70 percent of the routine things, and then it routes to the human in the 30 to 50 percent of calls that couldn't be solved with AI.
So basically AI makes their call center need half as many people as it did before.
And the rest is just profit that just falls to the bottom line for them.
So there's some cool stuff happening with that.
It's actually kind of interesting to track call center stocks to see what the market thinks is going on.
Are they gonna be extinct?
Is call centers just going to go away?
Are they actually going to survive but become much more profitable because now they're AI powered and they cut a lot of their human costs?
It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
Interesting to the most boring person on earth, I guess.
What happened to...
The NBA playoffs are on, I guess that's probably more interesting.
Yeah, but if you're listening to this podcast, you definitely might be in that category of people who are boring.
I think Coachella was last weekend, and I only was watching the live stream of the Berkshire Hathaway conference.
What's the name of that really big company, was it called TaskUs or something like that?
Yeah. Are they publicly traded?
I think they are. Is their market cap just getting obliterated right now because of all this?
1 .2 billion dollar market cap, and yeah it's down, in five years it's down like 5X.
But it's been, yeah it's been, it got nuked basically from, it kind of was at the peak of the 2021 range so like let's see, um yeah it basically went public right at like the peak of the market like September 2021 and then has just been down since then.
I have gotten... oh yeah, you're right.
So it could be, it's a bunch of stuff.
Yeah dude by the way, I just invested this company, I think you might actually be an investor.
Are you an investor in owner .com?
Yeah, yeah, he's cool.
That thing is crushing.
It's crushing. this businessowner .com is kind of amazing.
So what they're doing is they go to restaurants across America and they're basically like, hey, you need software, you hate your current software you're using 15 different tools.
Use the owner system instead.
Okay, that's actually like not that new of a pitch. You know, there's other companies that have claimed to be like, oh, we're an all -in -one or we have the best point of sale checkout system.
And these guys have just got it like really, really right because they're growing incredibly fast, and so what they do is they go to a company and they're like, hey look, today, if I Google, there's a great case study on their website, like if your case study is good, this is when I decided to invest. I was like doing like the diligence on it and I was I watched their case study and most case studies on business websites are awful, god awful.
I watched it and I was so thoroughly convinced and I just thought to myself, if they do their case studies this well, imagine how they're doing like the other important parts their business because this is like a you know the the sort of like the thing that's kind of a throwaway for most businesses and they're pretty poor at execution so it was this dude who was a pizza shop owner in somewhere maybe Pennsylvania or somewhere like that and he's basically showing he's like look if you googled my pizza shop's name if you googled like whatever like town slice pizza Pennsylvania, the first result is slice
the second result is doordash the third result is like all these other companies are stealing my like people are searching for me They're not searching for DoorDash.
They make these websites that rank in SEO.
I was on page two. Basically, I started working with owner.
First of all, now I'm the first result.
Because I'm the first result, when people are searching for my business, those orders come through me directly.
I don't have to pay DoorDash the 15 % fee.
My website and my online ordering works really well, because that's what owner does.
They provide that out of the box.
I don't have to know anything about tech to be able to do that.
And then, I get customer's emails and phone numbers and I'm able to text them and we have promotions and sales and deals and things like that.
And basically I'm making an extra 10 grand a month.
And that's huge for me.
That's the difference between bringing on the brink of failure or having a margin of safety.
It's the difference of hiring an extra person or not.
And I just saw that same business proposition which is like, look, it's 2025.
You need to have a website, You need to be able to take online orders yourself.
And you need to rank for your own name at the top of Google.
And, um, look, you don't want to have to deal with, you know, 15 tools to be able to do that, and we should do it for you out of the box and do it really well.
And this business is scaling very, very fast right now.
I've very, very impressive growth.
And, uh, this guy seems like one of those founders.
That's kind of like.
High octane. Um, I don't know super well yet, uh, but just seems very, very high octane.
I'm pretty sure. The intro I got to him was someone said, This is the best company I've ever invested in, and this is the best founder I've ever invested in.
And I was like, Are you just saying words?
Or like, Do you mean these words?
And he's like, I mean these words.
So it could be wrong, but I mean them.
That's a hell of an endorsement.
The way that I invested in him was way less fancy as yours.
I just, Jason Lemkin was like, He's the best. And I just said, okay, in.
And And I remember talking to him and when I talked to him, this was I think, no maybe this was four years ago.
He was 21 years old and he was telling me a story.
And once I heard like 21 years old and Jason Lemkin saying he's the best I was like well okay cool.
I think I'm in. And the valuation I believe was really, really expensive.
It was like a nine figure something valuation.
And I was like this has got to be huge to like really be worth it.
and I think he's gonna actually make it a massive, massive business.
Have you ever even talked to him?
Only through email.
We traded like five emails in one night, because I was like, tell me the answer to these five questions, and then he did.
He is the Terminator.
When I had a conversation with him, I was like, oh you're gonna destroy everything in your path.
Like I could sense that, he gave me that vibe where I was like, I don't wanna be your enemy.
You're on a high protein diet, huh?
he's on his videos for work and stuff like his like youtube videos or whenever they got to do like interviews he's like a comes off like a really sweet nice guy when i talk to him one -on -one uh i was i he's incredibly intense he he will annihilate people in in an ethical good way but like he's the type of guy where uh i do not want to compete against this guy it's so funny how you get a vibe off people and um very quickly so like i remember Joe Rogan once described somebody, he was describing somebody who we just thought was just like a in his mind, I don't know, just like a total loser, but like
just like a nose like a spineless person and he, and for the way he was describing them, he was like, he's like, they just had no energy.
You know, meet somebody and like, are your veins empty?
Like where's the blood, is there any blood in your veins?
And I just remember when he said that immediately in my mind, I could think of three people who are like that, just like very low energy people in my life.
And they can meet these other people that literally, like, they walk at a different pace.
They have a different amount of energy.
I remember when we were hanging out in North Carolina and Mr. Beast took us to Walmart to show us the things, I remember, I was like, why is this dude walking so fast?
This guy has literally an extra heartbeat or something in his cadence.
He's just walking faster than everybody else.
He literally had more energy than anybody else, and he was busier than everybody else.
And I couldn't tell, is he so busy because he's got so much energy or did he have to raise his level of energy?
Does this guy have just more ATP in his body because his schedule demanded it?
And I still don't know cause and effect to that but it was very obvious to me as I've met more and more people that literally having more energy is a common trait of like the most successful people.
And I don't know if it's cause or effect.
I was, so I've got a, I think we have a small team, maybe 15 people and a lot of them are these like young 25 year olds, and they're animals like they're rabid animals and they like do crazy animal stuff and every once in a while I gotta correct them and I have to remind them stay crazy just like I need a director crazy a little bit and they were asking what I meant and I was trying to think of like well how can I give you a good analogy and I was like have you guys ever seen curling?
I was like you know like when they take like that big rock that like is capable of just smashing through everything if it wanted it to and they push it.
And then there's all those people in the front with like these brooms that are just like sweeping the area to make sure like everything like the path that unique to that that big rock that's a like a brute force like blunt object.
So you are just guiding it to in the right lanes and it's like clearing the path.
I was like, I'm the broom and you're the rock.
And someone's we're gonna we're gonna push you down this lane and I just need to be in front of you constantly clearing the space and if I'm ever not clearing the space for you, or I need to reprimand you, it's just me kind of saying, like, hey, I need you to go into this direction, but you need to continue being, like, this brute force rock.
Be the rock. Yeah, that's just gonna, like, smash through stuff, and it's just our job to, like, change directions every once in a while, but I need you to, like, stay where you are.
And that is when I know I've hired the right people is when A, I feel like that and sometimes I feel like I'm intimidated by them.
Have you ever hired someone and you're like, I want to keep you happy because if you go work for someone else, it's going to be bad news.
Or you almost get intimidated.
Have you ever had someone who you hired who you're intimidated by?
I don't know if intimidated is the right word, but I think I know what you mean.
Like, FurCon was like this.
Immediately, I was like, oh, whoa, okay, so there's no yeah, but.
It's like, yeah, he's super smart, but he doesn't know anything about business.
No, actually, he does.
Yeah, but he doesn't work that hard. Nope, actually, he works way harder than everybody else.
So it's like, wait, wait, wait, there's no buts, it's just super smart and works super hard and is like, well -rounded and knows enough about the other stuff to get it right.
It's like, holy shit.
Okay, you know, and I will say the biggest thing is like their self -assumption.
So how do they carry themselves and how do they think about themselves?
You hire a lot of people that want to fit into your company or they want to defer to you or they defer to your judgment.
And every once in a while, you hire somebody that doesn't want to do any of those things.
They come in, they see broken stuff.
They want to fix it.
They don't think what you were doing was right.
They just, if it's good, they think it's cool.
If that's broken, they think it's broken.
Like that's it. They don't think that anybody else is more qualified in the companies to do it.
Like they think they could do it themselves.
They don't think that there'll be an employee forever.
Like, they're like, cool, I'm here right now.
There's a partnership.
And like, you know, eventually I'm going to be doing my own thing or I'll be in the leadership of this company, I'll have more equity in this company than I have today." There's some people who have a confidence about themselves because they have a certain self -assumption.
And for the person...
It's a self -fulfilling prophecy, you know what I mean?
FurCon was the guy who worked with you at Monkey Inferno, the incubator, and he previously helped start AppLovin, which is a $100 billion company.
But between him... between AppLovin becoming a $100 billion company and him starting it, he worked for you.
And it wasn't like a clear runaway hit for a minute.
But then it did, and his...
What, AppLovin? Right, it wasn't a clear hit.
No, AppLovin was already a runaway hit when he left. Got it.
Got it. He knew it was a winner.
So then, what the hell was he doing working with you?
Or maybe it had it not paid out yet.
Believe it or not, he doesn't care.
I think, I think I'm a not in that category.
Because I was there when the money hit.
Oh, got it. Okay. He was still working on our, like beta release of our app that had 400 users.
And he was up to 3 a .m. that night and he could have carried less and nothing changed between going from, you know, whatever, you know, normal person to being worth, you know, nine figures in an instant, nothing changed.
Nothing. It was unbelievable.
And I remember even telling him, I said, look man, I was like prepping him like a psychologist. I was like, look, man, it'd be crazy if nothing changed.
I understand. We got to figure out like how we're going, are you just going to want to retire?
Are you going to like, is you going to lose that edge?
Is it going to be temporary?
You want to take some time?
Just go on vacation and enjoy it.
I was like, it's hard to walk into an opium den and not get high.
I was like, it's hard. It would be like, I think kind of crazy to assume you're going to get massively, massively rich, generationally wealthy, in the next few months, and that nothing changes.
And then he was like, cool analogy, can you get out of my way now so I can just do what I was doing?
And I was like, all right.
And then nothing changed.
It was amazing. I think I walked into the office one time after...
what happened? At this point, I knew that he was wildly successful.
And I saw him, I don't remember exactly how it was, but I had this feeling, he had his hat turned around on the backwards of his head, and he had like a screwdriver in his teeth.
And he was like, behind the TV.
Like installing a raspberry, what was that thing called?
A raspberry Pi? Yeah, he was like installing this like computer chip to like the TV and I was like, Phreakon, what are you doing?
And he was like explaining to me, like how it'd be cool because this raspberry Pi thing is like a computer.
So he's turned the TV into the computer.
So, and then like the things that he wanted to do, like there was a handful of like amazing things and then it really kind of boiled down to like, isn't this cool?
Like, I was like, yes, it is cool.
And I remember I was trying to justify I'm like, but why are you?
And then he just kept going.
But it's cool. It's cool.
Don't you think it's cool?
And I was like, yeah, you're right.
That's actually the best reason why you should be looking like a mechanic and like doing this.
And it was like, I, we were doing one of our sessions.
It was at like 8 p .m. at night.
That sounded different than how I meant for it to sound, but we were like talking about business at like 8 PM at night at your office and he was like there, like installing this like Pi into your TV.
Yeah. Yeah. And the funny thing is when Firkhan joined the company, this is a good lesson I would say, because it could have gone either way.
So Firkhan builds AppLovin.
I think AppLovin, at the time when he left, was maybe like a hundred million dollar a year business, but it was clear it was scaling fast. And he leaves, and he leaves because he's like, cool, the rest of the job is managing people if I want to stay CTO.
And I liked the beginning when I was building stuff, so I'm going to just build stuff.
So he leaves and he decides to go build, he decides to learn mobile development.
So he's like, oh, I think mobile is going to be big now and so he's like I want to actually learn Android development and he starts building games for fun in his bedroom alone and he does that for a little bit I find him there and I'm like yo I think you're super interesting you should come join us don't be in a room alone no fun building that way come build with us so he ends up joining us and he joins us like the head of Android and within the first few weeks it was like extremely obvious that this guy does not fit in first of all he's smarter than everybody second of all he works harder than everybody
he was there like everybody would leave our company culture was Everybody would leave around 5 p .m. Most people had kids, they'd go home.
He would come in at 11, and he would leave something like 11 p .m. And then he would still be on Slack at 2 a .m., and then he would come in again the next day at 11, 11 .30.
And he would just do that every single day.
And when everybody else would quote me a timeline, like, all right, cool, I'll show you the prototype at the same meeting next week.
He would show me the prototype the next morning.
And so I was like, okay, this guy, he's gonna break our culture one way or the other.
you could tell the other engineers they both liked him but were also a little bit like this guy doesn't come in until lunch he um you know he's pushing updates at 2 am and like we we weren't working then so we weren't involved with it and um you know what's his deal this guy dropped out of college he's not like classically trained so like what are we gonna do with this guy and in my head I was like all right one of two things is gonna happen either this guy is gonna it's gonna be like organ rejection.
He's gonna have to leave because he just doesn't fit.
Or needs to be that like the thing where the husband like the organ like the host takes the guest takes over the body.
I was like, Okay, so I, I went out with him one night and I remember we had a bar and I was just like, Look, I can't.
This is not official.
But you're going to be running this company, and I need you to start building out the team the way you want it to be built and you should work the way you want to work.
Don't try to fit in because we're going to change this whole company with you kind of driving that engineering change.
I was like, this is how a startup is supposed to feel.
You're doing it right and so pretty quickly, I just told him, you hire your own people and they don't have to interview with everybody else or you don't need everybody's blessing to sign off on a hire.
So they would interview them but if he liked a person, he could hire them under his team, and eventually he became CTO, he became my co -founder and he became leader of the company but I had to basically, Amazon has this phrase, bar raisers, it's like you you you hire somebody and then they raise your bar of what could what good looks like he was a clear bar raiser and there was a part of us that like didn't know how to deal with that and the right way to deal with it was to totally lean into it and be like oh that's the new normal for us um you're the new normal you're the new bar bar center of like
what what what our engineering team should look like did the other people quit like who who won i mean obviously he is still there or he was there well a couple people adapted so they were like cool i'm not my lifestyle is not I'm gonna be able to 2 a .m. but I'm gonna crush in my 9 to 5 and I will work at that pace and like cool you're gonna work a crazy schedule I'm not gonna work a crazy schedule but like I'm here for it.
I want to work at that pace I want to be like that effective.
And I want to change the expectations of what speed looks like inside the company.
And so a couple people became that.
And then a couple people, we actually had a legacy business that was making a few million dollars your profit.
And so we spun out the rest of the team onto that business.
I was like, you guys work on that company in that Schedule and that pace and this team is gonna work in this place So we split we basically split the company in half like a like a divorce and like Lord of the Flies Like a happy married divorce.
It was like you guys get custody of those assets.
We're gonna have custody of these assets That's pretty fascinating It's like throwing people out on the different island and just saying like you better figure it out survive and you Losers are gonna go to this dying thing It was a dying.
I mean it was like fine It was, it was, honestly, it was what some people wanted.
Some people, like, not everybody wants to, to like, grind like crazy.
And what this was a very good way to do was be like, there are two, two paths, you keep your same job, your salary, all that stuff.
One is a certain lifestyle.
One is another. This lifestyle is easy, this lifestyle is hard. Self select and the self selection was very helpful.
New York City founders, if you've listened to my first million before, you know, I've got this company called Hampton, and Hampton is a community for founders and CEOs.
A lot of the stories and ideas that I get for this podcast, I actually got it from people who I met in Hampton.
We have this big community of a thousand plus people, and it's amazing, but the main part is this eight person core group that becomes your board of advisors for your life and for your business, and it's life changing.
Now, to the folks in New York City, I'm building a in real life core group in New York City.
And so if you meet one of the following criteria, your business either does 3 million in revenue or you've raised 3 million in funding or you've started and sold a company for at least $10 million, then you are eligible to apply.
So go to joinhampton .com and apply.
I'm gonna be reviewing all of the applications myself.
So put that you heard about this on MFM so I know to give you a little extra love.
Now back to the show.
Dude, he's pretty bad ass, we should have him on again.
Now he's got like his space in Fort Mason, I think it's called.
He's the man, we should have him on again.
Yeah, of course, love talking to Fergal.
What do you think? Is that it?
I don't know exactly where I want to go with this, but I just want to share this with you.
So I've been trying to help certain people in my life like either start businesses or upgrade their business.
Like millions of people who listen to you?
No, no, no, like my like micro, like people who I care about.
You know, like my trainer, for example, my trainer today, he's got a training business where His calendar's full.
He's got more clients on his roster than he can handle.
But, he's trading time for money still.
So he's not scalable.
He can only train so many people per day, right?
So he's doing five, six sessions a day.
He's driving to people's locations and he's training them.
But like, you can't do 12 people per day, for example.
He couldn't double his money if he wanted to.
He definitely couldn't do his goal, which is make twice as much money with half the time invested, like half the with double the time flexibility.
And so he's been starting started like a drink an energy drink company started like a like a apparel company like trying to do these side hustles but all of them are like to the beverage industries like brutal right it's like a brutally competitive business to be in the apparel business just a brutal business to be in.
It might be like get another trainer.
Yes I'm like hey if you thought about getting another trainer or like and in this case I was like what would be like an appealing version is like here's some ways you could scale so I like you could start a studio and he's like oh I would love to have my own space my own studio and I'm like okay that's a way that you could get to your goal if you started a studio and it's been a very interesting to see kind of like how he would approach it versus how I would approach it and so I basically told him I was like look the way I wanted to get in shape and instead of just being like I guess I'll just
wing it I guess me who's never done this will just figure it out I was like no let me get a coach somebody who's already done before and I hired you as my trainer.
I was like I think you should basically have me as your trainer, your business trainer and I was like don't pay me anything, all you got to do is book your, what do you call your first session?
An assessment. Book an assessment.
And he's like all right, tomorrow?
I'm like great yeah let's meet tomorrow.
So we started talking and we started doing this thing where basically I would, we would talk and I would just give them, I was like how do I keep this so simple.
Because at the, in prior times when I talked to him I remember like I was such a terrible coach. I was like a trainer who would come in and try to train all your body parts in one session and, like, be showing you, like, the beginner thing but then couldn't resist showing you the advanced thing and then you're gonna do that.
You're gonna get hurt.
You're gonna pull back muscle.
So I've been trying to be a better coach and so I was like, alright how do I keep this super simple?
And so I leave them every time with one blue sticky note, with one thing.
It's alright. This is the one action.
Do this between now and the next session and we're good.
And it's been very interesting to see how much progress we can make just doing this very simple method.
I'll just share with kind of like how this works.
So the same way that at the dance studio, I was like picking up information on, I was learning about a business while I was there watching my daughter.
I also learned a little bit about a business.
I basically realized, that's something I've been doing for about 15 years now.
And I think most people, if you just started doing that one thing, just start paying attention to the business around you and start doing a little bit of napkin math, right?
Try to figure out how many customers a place has, times the price every customer pays, gives you a good approximation of top line.
You could just Google or ask AI, what's a good profit margin for a fitness studio?
Typically are they 10%, 40%, 50 %?
20 %? Like what is the net profit margins for these things.
And so what I realized is that most people don't, as I've been helping two or three people in my life do this, most people don't approach business this way.
And I think if they did, they would have a lot higher chance of success.
I think that hiring a fitness, like, I was reluctant to hire a fitness coach, but then it made total sense because I remember I was like, well, I was the best at whatever sport I wanted to do in high school when I, and then college, where I played for a little while, when you are basically like a professional athlete, you have someone just telling you what to do every single day, you just do what they say.
And I remember being so reluctant to hire a fitness coach, and then I did, and I started seeing like my body change in like two months.
And then I was like yeah that works, and then I was like, well, maybe, should I get a nutritionist?
And I remember being, again, so reluctant to do it.
And then I used my body tutor and I was just doing exactly what they told me to do.
So I had accountability, but I also had education.
They would teach me.
And I just kinda hit me.
I'm like, why have I always been so reluctant to pay someone money to just tell me what to do.
And once I kinda let go of that, I think I realized, and I've learned this in business as well, there's a lot of creativity that you need to have, But in general, there is a process that you can follow where, in a lot of cases, you will get to be fairly successful.
You still have to invent stuff and you still have to stick with it for years.
But in general, just like with changing your body, it's just like, if you do these five things, you will get 80 % to where you want to go.
You don't need to think, you just need to execute these five things.
And I think what people don't understand, I think you and I understand it a bit, even though emotionally, sometimes we forget it.
but a lot of the listeners understand this which is business is the exact same, where there's a series of steps where you can sort of iterate your way there just like you can with your body with your nutrition and things like that.
Yeah totally the way I think about it is you're going to have some rate of learning, some learning curve right so it might take you six months might take you a year might take you two years, you could definitely get there on your own.
A coach is pretty much just a guaranteed way to speed up that learning curve and that's like the first benefit you get and then the second benefit you get is you're much less likely to quit during plateaus.
Because the coach has some accountability.
A coach has also seen those plateaus many times before and a coach can get you out of through the plateau faster than you're going to get through it yourself.
And so those two reasons, I think I have probably five active coaches right now.
What, what it's kind of insane, roughly, what category are they in?
So you have a fitness, I think you also use my boot body tutor.
So nutrition. So I have exercise, and then I have food, Food Coach, which is probably the one that felt the weirdest to do and now is, in retrospect, the most obvious no -brainer of all of them.
It's almost like a therapist too, food's a weird thing.
It's more of a therapist than it is anything else.
I think when people think Food Coach, oh so they're giving you a meal plan and macros.
It's like no, no, she's helping me figure out why I don't stick to any food plan or macros that I've ever set for myself in the last 10 years and slowly uprooting those and being in my corner along the way I started learning the piano this year and so I ended up getting two different ones to try to do that because one of the other realizations I had is that there's a massive difference between an average coach and a great coach. So like in the same way that in tech there's this phrase about like 10x engineers there is for sure a 10x coach or 100x coach. You're pitting your piano coaches like you
know Miss Linda and like these two old ladies to each other like, you know, miss linda said we should do it this way uh what do you think about that?
I don't even say anything I just show up and i'm better and they're like wow you've been putting in a lot of work and i'm like well had a couple great sessions you know okay so you got two piano coaches that's pretty wild yes uh business coach executive coach like yeah like I don't what do you what do you call it executive coach I think yeah executive coach I think those are all I have right now.
I had a PT briefly for my knee rehab.
But yeah, basically anything I do now, my first step is to, my first step is to start the same day I have the idea.
That's like my rule.
Oh you wanna do X? Great, like same day you need to do something in that area.
You need to go have your first session in some way.
Drop everything and do it.
So I have this sort of like drop everything and do it rule.
And then the next thing that I'll do, is I'll try to find a coach, because I know what coach is gonna speed me up in the process.
And it's like, obviously these things cost money, so you can't, like, always get coaches for everything.
But you kind of can.
Like, there's a guy in our basketball league, this guy, Alex. And he's just nasty on the court.
He's so good. And I'm like, wow, Alex, what did you do?
And he's, he's smaller than me.
He's quicker, but he's not like, he's not, it's not as athleticism is why he's so good.
This guy's just better at basketball.
And growing up, I thought I was training to be good at basketball.
That was like a goal of mine.
It's just, I never had any coaches.
I never did take it seriously.
I didn't know how to train properly." And he told me this story.
I was like, Alex, what were you doing differently?
And he basically was like, when I was young, he's like, I didn't have any money for a coach. But I was at the gym training myself and I saw this trainer training this other kid.
So I went up to the trainer and I was like, Hey, how much for a session?
He's like, I was like, $75.
He's like, Oh my God, no way my parents are gonna pay $75 for a session.
And so he asked a great you with that you would be willing to give me a session for if I helped you with that thing?
For example, do you have another session coming in?
Could I run around and just be a rebounder?
Shag balls for you.
Can I clean up? Could I show up early?
Could I help you with your text messages to your people you're scheduling?
What can I do? And the guy was like, alright, that's endearing.
Fine. And so he lets him basically help him during sessions and then that way he was actually like learning while teaching somebody else and then he'd have his own session at the end, and he's like, cool, give me 30 minutes, give me 40 minutes at the end.
And he just did that and he got so good as a young kid just doing that and then eventually built his own business training while he was getting trained, you know what I mean, and ended up actually turning it into a revenue generator versus just a cost for himself.
Dude okay, so I am so bought into everything you're saying, I do this as well, I've got all types of coaches.
to add to it. The second thing that I do after getting a coach is I put a date where I'm like, I must perform on this date.
And one of the ways that I got that idea.
So like for example, if it's like a fitness thing, it's like, I want to achieve this body fat by this time, or I want to run this race on this date.
Or, you know, I want to be able to do X, Y and Z, lift this goal, but it's not just a goal.
It's a performance, is that what I'm hearing?
I tried to make it a performance.
So for example, if it's just like a five K, Just I want to run a 5k in in 21 minutes That's not particularly fast, but it was hard for me And it was just a really nice thing to work back from so there's an end date so it's it's I find it quite motivating or I want to bench this amount of weight like on this date and Do you remember that TV show on MTV called made where they would teach people how to learn something in approximately 30 days?
And so it was like that show I love that show And so what they would do is they would take like this young woman that she was like I want to do a backflip on a BMX bike and or I want to win like I want to be able to win a skateboard competition like these like kind of like crazy ideas are like I want to be I don't remember if the backflip one always stuck in my brain and they like hired a BMX coach and this little girl her whole stick was like she's like a prissy cool popular girl there's no way she wants to do this nitty -gritty BMX thing you know with the kids from the other side of the railroad
tracks and she ends up doing it and in a competition she did a backflip on a bike And I remember that show we should do an MFM version of made where everyone just it doesn't matter what the talent it doesn't matter what the thing is you just got to pick a thing it could be like I want to go try to like meet a girl but use their language like in a foreign country or like you know I want to go like ask directions in Spanish or whatever like I want to go enter a chess competition just something where it's like you have a very short amount of time, and you have to hire help and you have to kind of jump
off the cliff a little bit to master your skill, or just even learn your skill a bit.
So for you it would be a piano recital, or like I want to have friends over and I want to play a song for them.
Right. Yeah, I think that's great.
I love that idea. It's kind of like we did the My First Muscle Challenge last year.
I think it's a, it's like a cousin of that.
I'm totally on board for this.
I did a thing once that was that was similar in Australia.
We were, is three of us.
And we basically each wrote down a thing that we would love to have done.
But are scared as shit to do.
So for example, ones' persons was to do like a perform a stand -up comedy set, like just go on into the open mic and do five minutes.
One of the guys he had been in a long -term relationship with a girl from his like high school girlfriend, they had just broken up like five years later or something.
And he really, he was like, I've never asked anyone out.
And he's like, I just want to, he's like, I want to be out somewhere.
See someone. No, I think it's easy.
I want to approach her.
I want to ask her out.
And he's like, I just want to like, like not, I just want to overcome that one thing.
And like, he's like, I know that sounds stupid.
We're like, nah, it doesn't sound stupid.
Everybody's got these things, right.
Another, um, Another person's was, uh, to, um, got how they phrased it, but I remember it was something like, you don't have parties, when like the dance circle forms. Yeah they would have gone in one.
And do a thing and then get out.
Yeah and I was like what?
And so we took a hip -hop dance class together with our friend who this girl who she's a great dancer she's like a professional dancer and me my buddy Trevor and her went to a hip -hop dance class just prepping for the circle.
Like the whole time by the way when you go to that class it's two different classes if you just show up to a class just for whatever or you show up thinking I'm this is me going in the circle at some point.
yeah it's the best right?
You're like I'm gonna Julia Stiles this sumbitch we got kind of addicted to it we would start to make up new ones to do every few days so it'd be like i'm gonna go for a walk right now but i'm gonna have like three like i'm gonna have three like conversations like you know i don't know just conversations like on my walk i'm not just gonna smile and nod like i'm gonna i'm gonna basically give a smooth compliment to like you know three people along the way if i notice something i like i'm gonna say it and it's gonna go well i'm gonna have that interaction Or like I'm not going to answer the question.
How are you today with the word good?
exactly exactly Yeah, my friend Noah Kagan used to have a saying where he was like every single day He's like I was like when I was trying to get my business going I would ask for a discount on every single thing that I bought he's like I just needed to get over like the nerves and just be not afraid of confrontation and asking for things.
Yeah, that's amazing Yeah, we had a whiteboard in our living room called Coronina it was fear nation.
We just wrote everything to be afraid of and then you try to cross them out, you pick one each day and you try to cross it out or pick one every couple days and try to cross it out.
We're gonna do MFM made instead of MTV made we're gonna have MFM made.
What's yours gonna be?
That's an interesting question.
I would need to think about it.
I don't think it would be a fitness related thing because that's too easy.
But I would have to pick like an emotional thing like the equivalent of I think it'd have to be The worst. Maybe...
That would be... Yeah, I would rather...
... like punch myself in the stomach 20 times to not go and dance in a circle.
You're like, never mind.
Edit the sound already.
We're not doing this episode.
What do you think? Is that it?
That's it. Amish...
Dying Pets... Firkahn...
A very eclectic episode, kids playing ballet.
It's the buffet you never knew you wanted.
All right. That's it.
That's the pod. Hey everyone, a quick break.
My favorite podcast guests on My First Million is Dharmesh.
Dharmesh founded HubSpot.
He's a billionaire.
He's one of my favorite entrepreneurs on earth.
And on one of our podcasts recently, he said the most valuable skill that anyone could that I have when it comes to making money in business is copywriting.
And when I say copywriting, what I mean is writing words that get people to take action.
And I agree, by the way.
I learned how to be a copywriter in my twenties.
It completely changed my life.
I ended up starting and selling a company for tens of millions of dollars, and copywriting was the skill that made all of that happen.
And the way that I learned how to copyright is by using a technique called copywork, which is basically taking the best sales letters and I would write it word for word and I would make notes as to why each phrase was impactful and effective.
And a lot of people have been asking me about copywork, so I decided to make a whole program for it.
It's called CopyThat.
CopyThat .com. It's only like $120 and it's a simple, fast easy way to improve your copywriting.
And so, if you're interested, you need to check it out.
It's called CopyThat.
You can check it out at CopyThat .com.
