By the way, it's new on a Monday.
Where are you right now?
I actually skipped class to do this podcast.
Let's go. Oh. Sorry, Miss Bickerstaff.
The boys are calling.
OK, this kid right here on the screen is making $20 million as a high schooler.
The high schooler that is making 20 million dollars a year in revenue that is absurd.
Zach welcome to the show, man I think this is actually the make everybody else feel bad when you find out that like a 17 year old kids making 20 million dollars And I school I think a lot of people's initial reaction as well and another group is like ah, man What how much of that per year as profit, Zach?
It's more than 30 percent All right, so impressive, very good.
Fallen we're going to tell the story, figure out how it's going.
Sam, do we need to address your or your letterman jacket?
Are you just in the high school mood?
What's going on? Look, I found out that Zach was coming on and I wanted to look the part, you know, like what's it?
What's that movie, Sean?
It's it like never been kissed for.
They pretended that they're in high school or a 21 jump street.
Yeah. That's us that like this is actually the second group of high schoolers that we spoke with over the last two weeks.
I'm Jonah Hill All right Zack dude welcome to the show you've listened to the podcast before I understand yeah last two years You would you say we maybe inspired you slash were the sole cause of your success.
Yeah, I'd say this is the sole reason for any Alright, so let's explain What start with what your app does because it's like what app is making 20 million dollars for a high schooler So let's explain.
What is your app? Yeah, and when did you start it?
Let's start with that So, CalAI is the app, and it lets you take a picture of any meal and get back the calories, proteins, fats and carbs to track it.
So think any other calorie -tracking app but then heavy AI features involved.
Does it work really well?
That sounds like a really hard thing, like, you know, you were literally 12 years old or maybe eight years old when Silicon Valley the TV show came out.
And that was like, the joke was like, is this a hot dog or not?
Now, the app says a lot more, you know?
Does that work really well?
Or is it like mostly right?
So the scanning is about 90 % accurate on average, which is really good when you look at the data for FDA nutrition labels, they can be up to 20 % inaccurate.
So it's actually really good there, but we only recommend that you use it.
Well, if you're training for Mr. Olympia, let's say, we don't recommend you use our AI calorie tracker.
You could use the food database, weigh your food on a scale.
Well, and the scale stuff like, you know, I'm a weirdo.
I've actually used MyFitnessPal for probably five years almost every day now.
Yeah. And what a lot of people don't realize is when they eyeball their calories, they're probably always off by like 30 or 40%.
Have you tried tracking your food, Sean?
Yeah, actually, I think I came on this podcast a while back and I said this exact problem.
I was like, MyFitnessPal, while it's so slow and annoying to type in every single thing and estimate the weight of it.
So, okay, I'm eating this, how many grams of it?
I don't really know, I didn't weigh it out, and then you get this calorie thing, but also they have like five entries for whatever, for chicken breast, even has like tons of Chicken breast, you don't know which one to pick.
And I remember even saying, I think on this podcast, like I wish somebody just had it where you could just take a picture and computer vision would just know.
And I can't wait for that to happen.
And it sounds like it's kind of happened.
So you started this how long ago?
10 months ago. 10 months.
Okay. So 10 months ago, you started this as a 17 year old.
And can you just give us a sense of the growth?
So in 10 months, you started obviously with zero.
First month, roughly, where were you at?
So the first month, it was a little bit slow to pick up.
We probably ended having done $30 ,000 in revenue the second month.
And that's when we were testing the waters.
Do people actually want a calorie tracking app?
The hypothesis was that yeah, it would make people's lives easier.
But we are almost hitting this interesting intersection between people are very hardcore with tracking their calories, weighing their food on a scale, needing the precision decimal point accuracy.
And then on the other end of people that don't track their calories at all.
So our hypothesis was that there was a middle ground and that's where we threw the capital to test.
And it worked. So then the next month, which was June, we did our first six figures in a month.
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So, okay, amazing. Yeah, I mean, you're saying we talk like every 16 year old you, that's, you've sounded like this, right?
Sean? He sounds more mature than us.
So you you're saying we, Is there a we who's the is it a royal we like it's just kind of media And then did you start this with somebody?
Yes, I have three co -founders So to give you a breakdown one is also in high school.
He's our CTO Henry Lang mac a killer engineer child technology officer.
Yes Like Anderson who I think you guys actually did an episode about one of his apps you max So he has two other apps that had gone in a few million downloads.
So we partnered up.
How do you guys meet each other because you're not in the same high school?
How did you find these other young builders?
Yeah. So Henry and I met at a coding camp when we were both 10 years old.
He lived in Long Island initially, but then he moved to New Jersey.
So we stayed in touch Blake.
I actually found on Twitter.
Gotcha. So you guys get together and who has the idea for the app?
So, it was a mixed ball of Blake and myself.
I was tracking my calories 2 years before starting Calliye on my fitness palette.
Or at least trying to.
I was really skinny growing up.
And I wanted to put on weight, put on muscle, honestly to impress girls in my high school.
And it was super tedious, so I just gave up.
But I knew there had to be a better solution.
The coder in me, the engineer in me knew that there must be an easier way.
And the following two years, all of these AI models started being released.
And so after jumping into the app space, and talking to Blake who had a very similar path of these AI apps, we came to this idea — And having a $20 million a year business is a lot cooler, I bet, than having muscles.
When it comes to impressing girls.
Which one works better?
Honestly, I thought that once — I always had this vision as a kid that I just needed to be successful, and all the girls will be on top of me all the time, but nothing really changed.
It's just dudes like us.
Yeah, honestly, dude, having big muscles, it's also just only dudes.
And by you, we're actually still not sure what gets the women to like you.
We're still trying to figure that out.
Can we pull up you posted a video back when you were how old was he in this video?
That was three years ago, I think.
Like three years ago, so you're like what?
14 15 years old. The video is titled how I'm going to make $1 ,000 ,000 in high school.
Pull this up because I don't want to get your reaction to this, it starts by the way.
It just starts with like great video.
It's an amazing video.
How many views does this video have?
I can't see from like 8 ,000.
Okay. 7 ,000 views three years ago, you posted this, you only have a thousand subscribers on YouTube.
I say only, I just mean like, this video is criminally underrated.
At the time that's twenty subscribers when I posted this!
So you could play this, I dunno if the audio will come through.
I'm going to make one million dollars before graduating high school and this YouTube channel is going to document the whole process.
Here comes the best part.
The mic. The alignment of the text and then watch the microwave.
What is one million dollars?
It's enough cash to give you a luxury lifestyle.
It makes life more enjoyable and stress -free.
It's every kid's dream Wow director Scott Making one million dollars can be broken down.
For example, if you're trying to make it in a year It's just eighty thousand dollars a month or twenty thousand dollars a week or $3 ,000 a day.
All I would need to do is sell thirty one hundred dollar items every single day.
All right, you deposit I'm really making it more simple than I love this video.
I love this video on so many levels.
It's insane I love that you're shooting your shot.
You're calling your shot.
I should say right?
This is babies pointing.
It's in a field So I love that you called your shot I love that you were just having fun with it like you obviously weren't like super polished or like You know going back and editing this to try to make it fancy and I love that your mindset You were like I want to do this and then you sort of broke it down into smaller more digestible chunks, right?
because you can't just make the million dollars in a second.
You're like, I need to make $20 ,000 a week.
I need to make $3 ,000 a day.
To do that, I gotta sell $30 hundred items, that seems achievable.
What was, can you just tell us, why'd you decide to make that video?
Well, from such a young age, and I'm not entirely sure where I could pinpoint this, but I've always wanted to make massive impact on the world.
And usually that is parallel with having a lot of monetary success.
And so my goal was always make a million dollars while in high school.
Part of that was because I was really stressed out about school.
My parents were super strict about my grades and social studies was the one class I hated.
I hated that I had to memorize flash cards and I vividly remember one night where I was sitting there trying to memorize these flash cards about explorers that came to the Americas.
And I was so frustrated.
I broke down the problem and realized that I'm studying to get a good grade, but why do I want a good grade to get into a good college so that I could get a good job and make money and then live a happy life.
So if I could skip all those steps, it would remove the stress that I'm feeling right now.
If I can make money right now so I wouldn't need to worry about job.
I wouldn't need to be stressed.
And then I set out the goal to do so...
You're, you're, you're not wrong.
It's the intelligent man's procrastination.
It's like, ah, should I study these 15 flashcards?
Or make a million dollars?
I think I'll make a million dollars instead.
Are your parents entrepreneurs or are they just, uh, normal?
The house was nice.
That's a nice house.
So my parents have both been lawyers for their career, but then recently, two years ago, My dad left his job at a company to start a financial consulting firm.
I always worry people are going to think, oh, because he started a business, that's where all of this came from.
But I was entrepreneurial and doing things long before he actually left his company to start his.
Do you give him tips sometimes?
I don't. I should offer to Angel Invest in his company.
It'd be his mentor.
All right, so you say my any thoughts on that video before we move on from the video?
It's it's the best you know Sean we brought this up maybe six months ago on the on the podcast I don't know if you remember that and it was still like is this kid like is this a joke like does he actually have it and you know how like real is this and we brought that up saying this is amazing if it turns out to be true and it is true times It's like absolutely amazing that you've been able to grow on a lot.
I think at that time, it was like a Like million dollar ARR app.
Yeah, so I think you were probably at something like eighty thousand dollars a month Yeah, now how much revenue are you doing?
Well last month we just did our first two million dollars Okay, wow, okay, you're in a 24 month million dollar pace and what will the Your first 12 months of full business.
What will the revenue be?
full business. The revenue would have exceeded 10 million dollars from launching in May to coming this month.
And is it entirely bootstrapped?
Have you had any outside financing?
All bootstrapped. Wow and how many employees?
I'm just gonna like I, I'm gonna, I need to ask a bunch of questions so I understand all the info.
How many employees?
Totally. Right now we have 15 employees full time.
Wow, okay, that's amazing.
Wow that's a lot. So how did you to work.
Okay, so you make an app, your coder, you started coding when you were seven years old or something like that.
So I believe that you could make an app.
Yeah. Seems like let's just do a quick summary on making the app.
So how did you actually build this like thing?
Are you basically taking a bunch of AI tools and then sort of, uh, I'm not saying like you're just like a wrapper, but like custom, uh, make custom building them for this use case of tracking calories in an app?
Can you just quickly describe making the app and how long that took you?
Totally. So, a lot of people do look down on apps like CalAI.
They'll summarize them as just an AI wrapper, and think that we aren't providing any value.
And it's true that we started as an AI wrapper.
And I think that that's something all apps should do.
Just like, in e -com, it's very common to start as a drop shipper and drop ship a product.
And then once you find success, actually manufacture yourself, store it yourself, create your own brand out of that, so it's just the proof of concept is the drop shipping for us.
The proof of concept was using chat, GBT and other AI tools kind of as a wrapper app, frankly.
But then after finding initial success, which so the first app, the first version, very, very bare bones, very, very basic.
We were able to take a picture of your food, it would tell you the calories, it would have the daily breakdown.
down. That was it. One feature.
And then after we saw that people liked it, we started adding more features.
How many people did you have using it to determine that they liked it?
So this is important to note, we've grown all through influencer marketing, which is how we've achieved our rapid growth.
And so after working with two influencers, having them post on their stories, talking about the app.
That's when we had the initial feedback.
and saw that people actually like - So let's go step by step.
You make the app, app exists.
Who are the first 10 people, let's say it, family and friends?
Is that where you started with or?
Family and friends, although we just disregarded anything from them because I always think it's biased.
Okay. So you get sent to them.
They're kind of, they say, oh, it's great.
You're like, all right, cool, but we don't really know.
Next, what'd you do next?
So next, we started contacting influencers, fitness influencers, on Instagram and TikTok.
Did my DM get lost in the mail?
Why did I... is this in my other inbox?
What's going on? It will need to get you on it.
But we reached out and most people just don't respond.
It took me over two weeks to get my first response from an influence.
Give us a sense of the pitch.
What's the what's the DM say?
So basically you always want to start, at least from what we've tested.
We've ran a lot of A .B.
tests on this. Pied promo, putting that first, the question mark, and then jumping into our app, let you track calories just by taking a picture of your food.
We think it would fit your audience and would love to work for you, with you.
If you're interested, let us know, and we could hop on a quick call.
And so this works really well because it optimizes for that preview message.
The influencer will see in their inbox.
They only see the first line or two.
It's the paid promos, what sticks out.
And which influencer took, what was your, who was it?
And where'd you get the money, right?
So you're saying paid promo, but your kids, are you like, hey dad, can we get five grand to like seed money to try this.
Like where did the money come from to start?
Sure, so before building Cal AI, I actually built an unblocked gaming website my freshman year of high school.
This website lets students play games in class while their teacher was teaching by passing the website blocking protocols.
and I grew that to 5 million users through TikTok, it was generating money by putting ads on the site, and then I sold it, so that's where most of the money came in that we put into this.
By the way, Sam, that's now the third or fourth person that's come on this podcast who has that same origin story of I was in school, they blocked games on our school.
I'm guessing you guys had like Chromebooks or something like some school computers?
Very oddly, Sean, it was Val, my friend Val who came on and said his son was doing that now.
Well, they went to the same high school.
Oh, really? Saeed Balki said that was his origin story, too.
He wanted to find a way to play games while at school.
And then because of that, learned all these different parts of coding and technology in order to make that happen.
And that was the first taste of money.
Jess Ma, same thing with gaming servers at school.
So you had this, you figured out, all right, we have the school laptops.
People want to play games.
They're blocked. How did you get around the block?
And what was this thing called?
The website was called, Totally Science .co.
And that's how it got categorized as educational, that was the main thing.
But we also had all of these features on the website.
For example, if you press the tilde key on the keyboard, it would redirect to Google Classroom.
So if the teacher was coming, you could quickly hide it.
Oh, nice. Nice. That's great.
Hey, how can you play this is science.
Not all these, this is totally science.
This is the only sign.
All right. So you do that.
That company you sell, you were making how much you sold that for how much?
It made $60 ,000 for two years and then I sold it for $100 ,000 when I was 16.
So this is like the first sign, you know, to have a kid, to have your son from your parents' perspective do 60 grand in revenue and profit or something like that when they're That's like, asking, you know, you're like, are you a drug dealer?
What's going on? How are you doing this?
Did that take convincing on your end to let them know what you were doing was totally legal?
Like at any point, your parents are lawyers, were they like, are you breaking any laws, man?
Are you sure you're on top of all this?
I definitely got question about breaking laws by my dad a bunch of times.
He actually made me put up terms of service that said in all caps, you cannot use this while in school.
This is only for breaks or at home.
And my mom was always shocked every time I actually got a payout from Google.
I think maybe it was that it didn't sound like a real business, Unblocked Games website, how could that make money, but I actually had money coming to my bank account that was under her name because I was too young to open one and she was shocked.
Did you do anything cool with it?
The money? Well, not really, honestly.
I put all of it into CalAI when we launched it, and.
Pretty cool thing. The only thing that I actually spent the money I've made on and this was recent was my 18th birthday party.
I flew my friends out to Miami for a weekend trip.
That's awesome. Alright sweet.
You put the money into CalAI, you got the money, you reach out to the influencers, you You said two influencers start posting and what are they posting?
Is there some science to it?
We just had, you know, rob the bank on talking about TikTok as a distribution strategy about what makes great ticktock hooks and videos and how that game is being played.
Do you know, rob? And I guess how have you guys played that game of short form content to grow your apps?
So totally science and Cal AI were a little different for totally science.
I was the one making the videos myself.
I was recording my screening class saying, Hey, if you want to play on block games, go to this website.
And then I would put a little thing, a caption that says, comment, what game to add next.
And that would gather a ton of comments.
Making the video go viral for Cal AI.
I'm not the one making videos.
No one on the team is it's all influencers.
So we still use the knowledge from well, what I learned from totally science to help these influencers make videos and make them go viral to give ideas.
But for the most part, we just pay the influencer that fits our niche.
And then they're the professionals, they know what goes viral.
As long as we can predict the ROI, which we have a ton of factors and variables we look at, then we let them run with it.
You pay them on CPM or how do you pay them?
So, CPM would be a blessing, and that's the dream for everyone, if you could do that.
Because then you guarantee profitability.
But these influencers, they need to be paid, usually in advance.
Otherwise, they won't do it.
They'll have another brand that's willing to work with them.
So you have to predict before they make any video how many views they're going to get, they'll have to look at their previous videos.
But then you also have to keep in mind, not all views are worth the same, you have to to analyze the comment section and see how strong their community is.
And based on that way, how much you're actually going to pay them.
That's wild. So, is this thing pretty sticky and where do you wanna take this?
So, great, you go viral, you get people to download, I'm assuming they hit some paywall in the app that says, keep track of all your calories, blah, blah, blah.
Is it kind of one of these churn and burn games where it's pretty profitable for the first couple months and then you lose people, or is it a sticky product?
So it's sticky for the power users.
They definitely stay around and I mean apps like MyFitnessPal, they're doing over $100 million a year.
So I know we could get there.
You look at the reviews, Sean.
So he has 65 ,000 reviews.
And it's a 4 .8 out of 5.
So this isn't like an arbitrage like or like a get -rich -quick thing.
Like people really love the product.
Yeah, what's the churn on these subscriptions?
We actually don't know because it hasn't been a year, and more than 95 percent of our subscriptions are annual.
Got you. But they're still using it presumably.
If they're using it, they'll stick with it.
Wow. This is amazing.
So you want to take this to be my fitness pow or you're like, hey, if somebody offered us a buttload of cash, I guess what's your mindset?
Because I'm so curious because if I was 18 years old, I don't know what the hell I'd be thinking.
Even now, I still don't really know what the hell I'd be thinking in this position.
What's the mindset of an 18 -year -old because you got many hits in you.
This may not be the only one.
The same way that you kind of did a similar thing in totally science versus this, but this just had a much bigger market, much more market potential, you might be able to do even more things, or is this something you want to do for a decade?
Yeah and does it feel like you're still breaking the law, like if you, if anyone, well, like if, I don't mean that - He's not breaking the law.
No, what I mean is like when you go zero to $20 million in revenue in eight months, there's some type of like giddiness of like, I can't believe like this is my life.
I can't believe that this is allowed, I don't know.
There's something, there's some type of like matrix breaking idea where you're like questioning, you're like, how is this possible?
Do you still have that mentality or are you like, of course this is possible and this Just step one.
I definitely have the mentality of it feels surreal.
I mean, it feels nuts.
I'm 18 years old and I'm making the company is going to generate over $24 million.
This year, that's crazy.
The fact that I'm on your podcast, my first million saying that it's nuts.
And a year ago, I wouldn't believe it.
So I view this as a stepping stone.
I want to build a company that touches the lives of billions of people.
Something as ubiquitous as the iPhone.
And I think CalAI, if we shifted the idea where maybe it's nutrition tracking in general, and we could link the photos of what you're eating to your health, that could be something that touches the lives of billions, and that could be something I could spend a decade on, but I probably don't want to.
Instead I would want this to be something that sets me financially free where I don't need to think about money, where I'm not incentivized by generating revenue.
And so I can start another company that is purely motivated by impact and scale of impact, something that I'm passionate about and can spend a couple of decades on.
Sam I saw a post today from his partner, Blake, he posted something on Twitter today, he said, I guess he's working on something called 10 X and it sounds like it's an app for for learning like, oh, you can learn anything.
You can learn AI skills.
You can learn the language.
You can learn whatever, sounds like it's a learning tool, which is more in the direction of kind of, good for the world, good for humanity impact style, thing that he's building.
And so it sounds like he's kind of looking, he started with like you Max, which was literally like, probably the most superficial thing.
It's like, how does my face look?
And what, what can I do to make my face look better than his Cal AI and now he's going into like, you know, a learning tool.
It sounds like you might want to do the same.
Was there something that triggered that in you?
Like, did you watch a movie, or did you have like a conversation with a mentor when you were 12 years old?
Like, what made you wanna even, what made you think differently than the average high schooler who's hyper -focused on just their grades and you know, just making friends or whatever is just in their little pond?
It's funny you say movie.
The social network totally had a big impact on me.
However, I did also feel this way before that.
So that amplified it.
That showed me it's possible through specifically software which made me super motivated to learn coding even faster But I have I'm not sure the initial seed where it was planted All right, my friends I have exciting news for that business idea that's been sitting in your notes app the hustle Which is my old company has partnered with indie hackers one of my favorite websites to launch a pitch competition It's called The Hustle's Big Break, and it's a pitch competition with a simple premise.
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All right, back to the pod.
What do you think the app is worth right now?
Right now, I think the app calculating it's or taking its growth into account is close to $100 million in valuation.
Which means you are presumably worth in the ballpark of $30 million.
I think a liquid and on paper is really different.
Oh, I know. But like, but you're totally right.
But like 17, 18 years old worth tens of millions of dollars.
I think is like a fair ballpark.
Would you agree? I would agree.
Yeah, that's amazing, man.
Congratulations. I'm really I'm really inspired by you.
And I would say there's like a handful of people I've discovered that are kind of like you who are super young that are basically AI first.
So you're all the tools you're building.
You build with AI, because why would you not?
You like code them with AI, the app uses AI, the users get a AI type of experience, and you've figured out a growth channel that I think a bunch of old guys like us kind of suck at because you have what I call the bear on a bicycle phenomenon.
So my friend Chris Williamson said this to me, he goes, you want, basically you want to stack two skills that usually don't go together and it may create something remarkable.
So you know, you see a bear, wow, that's a bear, okay.
like, yeah, but I've seen bears.
You see your, you see a bicycle, okay, that's a bicycle, but you see a bear on a bicycle.
Holy shit. Never seen that before.
That's amazing. And for you, that's basically like, you know how to code, but a lot of kids know how to code.
And it's this other piece that you also had, which was the knowledge of, and you even said it in your video, video editing and just making fun videos.
This kind of the TikTok knowledge, and you combined how to make TikToks that will get views with how to make apps that work.
and that is your bear on a bicycle thing.
And so I'm pretty inspired because there's actually like a group of people who are just like you.
And I would say right now is like a very golden window for that group of people to go build things.
Like, and, you know, hopefully people listening to this, hopefully there's, you know, we trigger another 20 to 100 people just like you who hear this story and are like, you're their social network, right?
They're gonna hear this and they're gonna start doing it.
And that set of skills I think is very, very valuable for this moment in time.
I totally agree. And that's honestly why I'm super motivated to go on podcasts like these.
I was super motivated by others before me that I've watched on podcasts.
And so this is almost a full circle moment for me to come on here.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Sam would you be going on podcast?
Because like, you know, while you're here, I'm like, Oh, this is great content.
I'm excited. But then there's like the fatherly part of me.
That's like, shut up, dude.
Just shut up. Why are you on the podcast?
You shouldn't be saying any of this stuff.
because you have such a good thing going.
And you could always tell the story a little later.
You don't need to invite the other Zach Yarigaris of the world who are, you know, they can code.
They can make TikToks.
They got cool haircuts like you and they're just going to do the same thing, right?
So why go on and spill your secrets, why do that?
So I've heard this before that usually you know to know what it takes or people usually know what it takes to be successful, but then they are looking for an easier way.
They're looking for something that.
Is not as burdensome, not as hard, doesn't require as much sacrifice.
And I've been coding since I was seven.
I'm 18. Now. That's eleven years of coding.
I've started totally science.
And before that, I was tutoring kids and coding lessons for almost a decade of my life, I was in the entrepreneur game.
And so I think that yes, I can share all of this information publicly.
But it's only a select few who will actually work towards it and put in the amount of hours required to achieve the result where I want to help those people.
I think helping those people achieve the same success, especially if they were in a situation like mine where they maybe weren't entirely sure where to go but they knew there was a world out there where they could have massive impact at such a young age even balancing school on the side.
And so I completely support those people.
You have a trait that like Sean and I's good buddy, Jack Smith is like the perfect embodiment of this trait.
But a lot of entrepreneurs are, which is your logical, which like a lot of times will be awkward on like day to day level like for example my friend Jack, like he's so, he does things so differently from everyone because his way is actually better but we've all done it in such a way for a hundred plus years that we're like well I don't know, we just do it this way and so like for example, he didn't name his daughter the first year because he was like I guess I have to get to know her before I can name her and I was like yeah that makes total sense it's just like strange to think about.
You have that type of energy, you know, said, well, I'm worrying about grades.
So I can get a good job, or get into a good college, get a good job, make money.
What if I just make money now?
Like, that way of thinking is amazing.
And it's really fun to be around people like you.
And so I want to hear your perspective on a few things this fresh thinking on a few things.
So the first is you have 15 employees.
Do you have any employees who are in their thirties or forties?
And what's it like having to go from being just you and your buddies in a room messing around to at 15 people, you're actually running a real company.
So yes, we do have employees that are in their 40s.
And it's difficult to be honest with you.
It's hard at times to make them call you sir.
I do not make them call me sir.
but it is difficult especially when I have to fire someone that has kids and it can't...
I do have imposter syndrome at times which is something I try to not let hold me back ever so even if I think a certain way I don't I still act how I know I should I'm reading this great book right now called the great CEO within I also keep it on my desk as a reminder and it helps me lead I try to be an inspiring leader that helps people that doesn't lead by telling people what to do and just do it now.
I try to inspire them to want to do the work.
Do your does your staff generally are you guys a well organized company you think or is it a shit show?
I think that we are pretty well organized and that's mainly credited to our COO and the third co -founder.
I didn't mention Jake Castillo.
He is really good at organization.
So one of the things we talked about was like, you know, why come and talk about this?
And part of you was like, well, I want to inspire other people, but we don't want to inspire just a bunch of copycats.
And so we asked you were like, hey, what are some other ideas that if you weren't doing this, you think somebody could go do right now.
So how can the next you, how can the next high schooler get to where you're at $20 million a year in for revenue as a 17, 18 year old.
So what ideas do you have for us?
Sure. So obviously you know, you could teach a man to fish or you could give a man a fish, teaching is better.
So I have a few frameworks, which I think will help even more but I also will give some ideas.
Okay, go for it. So how I usually look at these AI problems or not AI problems, but creating something new in general is that AI has enabled people to basically build on top of and innovate on any tool or company that exists right now.
So the calendar was innovated on and now there are a calendar tools like motion, which help you organize and structure your day a lot easier.
Your assistant. There are note taking tools where people have always taken notes by hand.
People have also recorded lectures, but now there are AI platforms like Turbo learn A .I., where you can record your lecture and then the A .I.
will generate notes for you.
Calorie tracking, there have always been calorie tractors, but now with A .I.
You can just take a picture of your food and it will tell you the calories.
So I try to look at everything that doesn't already use A .I.
and think can a I make this more efficient, make this a better process?
us. And my perspective on coming up with new ideas is generally that I want to find something looking at it from marketing first principles.
Is how I always think.
So almost going backwards and I look for an aha moment that I could capture within some sort of experience and then wrap a whole app around that.
So for Cal AI, the aha moment is take a picture of your food, get the calories, and that's great for marketing material.
They come on, they do that.
But then there's a whole app around that that gets them to stay.
There's another app on the app store right now called Fitness AI, and their ads recently have been around their AI body scanner where you just take a picture of your body and then it will tell you your body fat percentage and a ton of other useful information on your composition.
So that's what draws people in to the AI tool, which is the Aha moment.
And then there's a whole fitness app around that you stay to track your workouts on that app.
So that's the framework I generally like to use.
And so what do you think is that so you're saying, work backwards from the magic moment where AI does a magic trick, And you're like, holy shit, that's cool.
And then build a sticky, you know, for you guys, just take a picture, get the calories.
And then you have the tracking and the charts and the other stuff that's going to keep them, maybe the coaching tips or whatever, that's going to keep them around in the long -term.
Cool. Got it. And the other thing you're saying is, take any app that's popular that we've already been doing and just say, what's the AI version of this?
Is that the brainstorming session you would do, is basically like, all right, Evernote.
What's the AI version of Evernote?
or, you know, our buddy in, our buddy in San Francisco, in San Jose, he had this company called Study Soup and Study Soup was literally for college kids.
They would have paid notetakers who would take great notes in a lecture.
And then you have the slackers and you have the kids that were on top of things.
The kids on top of things were the supply side of the marketplace, they would give their notes and the slackers would buy their notes.
And so, oh, cool. I don't have to take notes in this class because I'm getting them done for me.
And you're saying that you're basically saying that TurboLoan has become an AI version of study soup, right?
Where it's like someone records it, and now you have well taken AI notes for your that class.
Yeah, exactly. So what are some examples?
Yeah, so here's an idea.
I've actually seen something like this, or recently on Twitter I saw something blow up, maybe it was a couple months ago, not so recent where someone put a bunch of their journal entries into chatgbt and then asked what are some insights you could give me to make my life better.
You got to let both do that.
Yeah, well, that's great.
So I think there is the possibility, and I think this would be a great idea to build a journal app, and these journal apps already exist.
So take an existing one, put your and this is the spin.
So you could make it voice notes, you can make it typing, whatever, doesn't matter.
But the key feature that aha moment AI feature you implement is that periodically, you will have these insights generated from the AI on how you can improve your life.
Like, Hey, on Monday and Tuesday, you hung out with Sally and you had a bad day, maybe Sally is the cause of your bad days.
Gotcha. Okay. I like that.
Uh, so AI journal, uh, I feel like with, uh, the kind of younger generation, I feel like therapy is a lot more normalized therapy is cool.
Basically. Is it my G my generation and my parent, my parents' generation was like therapy equals you're broken.
You're you have a problem.
And it was like, you know, more taboo.
The whole idea of Sopranos was a guy who goes to therapy and now his friends are going to murder him because he's so soft.
Yeah exactly, and now I feel like with the younger generation it's almost like a cool thing to do, I don't know maybe I'm speaking out my ass here you tell me if I'm wrong, but it's way more normalized it's not a taboo thing and in fact probably being anti -therapy would be a little bit low status now at this point.
And I feel like but the problem with therapy, of course, is that, it's A, a little bit of a loaded word and B, who's paying $100 a session for this step of stuff when you could have the AI therapists in your pocket, whether they're using your journal entries as the starting point, the magic moment, or not, what do you think of that space?
Do you think there's something interesting there?
I think AI therapists are something that a lot of people have spoken about and I haven't seen anyone do it great.
There are definitely apps already where you could talk to people, these chat bots.
But I think they're all missing the feeling that you are actually being heard, that the feeling you would get talking to a real therapist.
So maybe it's the verbal aspect that's missing and something like chat GPT's voice mode integrating that can now actually make it a better session than just typing.
But that is a good idea that uses the AI spin for sure.
Gotcha. And what are some other ideas you have?
You have two more, it looks like you wrote on here, yeah?
So the first one is some kind of system or pipeline to convert an Android app or an iOS app to the other.
And this is something that would greatly help startups, when we started CalAI, we built it on Swift.
And that's because Swift, usually you can make a much smoother user experience on iPhones.
phones, using something like React Native, which can build to both iOS and Android.
It's more difficult because it's not actually using the native components to make something that feels super polished on an iPhone.
After building it, we had all of this demand for an Android app, and it was problematic.
We had to take away from development time on the iOS app to build out the Android app, and we had to release it a few months after.
It was, it costed us thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars.
And every time you build a feature, you have to build it up twice.
You have to build it on one and then on the other.
Yes, every single time.
So it's annoying. I think with all these AI tools, there is definitely the possibility to build something that lets you upload the code base to one native project And then it will convert it to the other.
Now right now, I think AI can probably do 90 % of the work, but there will need to be a tiny bit of human intervention, so maybe this would be best done as an agency.
It's very AI powered at the moment, but very soon it's going to be something where an AI agent can do it all for you.
Yeah, that's a really good idea.
We used to use something, I had an app years ago, roommates app, a roommate finding app.
And we, what was it called where we use something that turned a web app into an iPhone app?
Mm hmm. There's been a lot of tools like that.
And they were horrible.
Like, it was like, it was really bad, but they were huge companies.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because this is a problem, right?
Like you have to maintain two different, two different, two every feature, you have to build twice.
Every, every platform has its own bugs.
And you basically have to hire double the number of people because the Android guy focused on Android and the iOS guy, focused on iOS.
And so now you have more head count.
And so you always want this thing that's like, but still, you're right.
Like having it be native actually results in a better user experience, more stickiness, more revenue, et cetera.
So if you try to do the web app thing and you just put a web app and you try to wrap it, it doesn't work as well as doing a native app.
And so you're right that basically AI coding is getting so good that you could do 70, 80, 90 % of the code transfer just through AI and then maybe you do it as an agency or you have one person who's doing that last kind of the last mile to get it to work well.
That's cool. What about this remotely configurable onboarding flows?
This sounds like to use a framework, it's a paper cut you have.
So some of the best places to find startup ideas is you're trying to do a startup and in the process of trying to do it, you run into something that's like, God, I wish somebody had just built this and maybe you build it in house or you just keep dealing with the pain and that's a very good source for startup ideas.
Yes, I have heard that a piece of advice to work at a startup to come up with new ideas and it's 100 % true.
So while working on Cal .ai and then a few other apps before Cal .ai while I was learning how the whole consumer app space works, every app, if to build out the onboarding flow, So every popular app on the App Store has one.
It generally will ask the questions that are either required to set up your account or simply to prime you for what's coming, to explain something that's going on in the app, or to ask you questions that set your mind in the right direction, to maybe help you convert when they actually hit you with a paywall.
And. There is no good solution right now to build these.
Everyone has to do it custom in their own code base.
But someone could really easily make a system where anyone can swap out the questions, remotely do AB tests on these, which another problem here is that any time you want to test out something new within your onboarding flow or within your app in general, you have to submit an update to the App Store, which could take a few days.
So building out a system where you can build out the whole onboarding survey questions.
And then also change what the screens are.
See how that affects conversion rates, yeah that affects completion rate drop off rate remotely would be huge.
Are you the type of person that even though you have a full time gig, you are experimenting on new ideas that are unrelated to Cal AI.
So for the last few months, I kind of was.
We were orienting ourselves as an app studio, very briefly.
And the idea behind that was that our real sauce was in our marketing, not in our app development.
And so we could build a bunch of these other AI apps, spin them up, apply the same marketing and blow them up really fast.
But at the scale CalAI is and the rate it's growing, we realized pretty quickly that it made more sense to stay full time on Calli because the same time it would take to build another app and scale it to six figures revenue, we could have added an additional seven figures in revenue to Calli just because everything boosts each other, increasing retention will increase LTV and as we increase retention, we could increase a funnel.
So one plus one can equal three instead of two.
I think that is totally the right move Is there anything Zach is you know Sean and I our parents and there's a lot of people who listen this or who our parents?
is there anything that you seem traditionally obviously you're traditionally successful, but you also seem like You're very thoughtful.
I think that's like yeah full like you seem like you'd be a good son regardless of Regardless of if you who cares about this app, you know, like you you you you're you have your shit together at a very young age emotionally what do you think that your parents did that set you up to have this success or do you think that and this sounds like a douchey thing to say where you just born you know interested into this stuff at a young age you know like there's a lot of like self -directed people.
I have four siblings I am the second oldest and from a young age I was very wired to want freedom And I think it becomes I think it comes from my siblings if I wanted to buy something My parents would have to buy something for all my siblings, so they wouldn't do it I would have to find the way to pay for myself that's what made me start teaching coding lessons at such a young age to earn money and Related to that I actually have a story that when I was 10 years old I I wanted to cook scrambled eggs by myself.
I don't know what it was, but I really wanted independence and freedom.
So the independence to just cook myself breakfast at 10 could have burned the house down.
So my mom didn't let me and I got so mad about this that she didn't trust me to cook eggs on my own because she was taking care of my other siblings, getting them ready for school, that I actually ran away from my house, and I ran probably 15 minutes from my house to a local soccer field and the police were called.
I actually got picked up by them and brought back home.
I was going to come home eventually, but you know, I did run away.
And it's really been the freedom that has been the driving force behind everything.
the yearning for freedom.
Well, but you have that now.
Somewhat, I still feel confined, honestly, by being in high school.
I haven't dropped out and I want to go to college just for the social life, not obviously to get a job.
So I feel, I always feel almost trapped in situations where the outcome is determinant on what someone else decides for me, not something that I can control for myself.
And someone has to accept me into the college.
If I let my grades drop in high school, then they could rescind me, even if I get into the school.
And I hate that, but right now, for the next year at least, I think I have to make that sacrifice.
And then when I'm in college, I want to make a good group of friends then drop out.
So you're gonna be free You're gonna go what's your GPA right now?
My GPA is a 4 .0 and you want to go What is you go the SATs?
Yeah. Yeah. So I took the ACT and I got a 44 It's like two points away from it's like a ninety it's a ninety nine percent tile ninety eight percent tile Okay.
So you're, you're, you haven't like neglected school.
You got a 4 .0. I'm doing this with school.
I'm working hard in school.
I'm not. By the way it's, it's, it's noon on a Monday.
Where, where, where are you right now?
I actually skipped class to do this podcast.
Let's go. Sorry miss Bickerstaff.
The boys are calling.
Are you at school right now?
Are you home? No, I left school.
I'm home right now.
And you told your parents it's because there's this podcast that I want to go on and it's gonna be good for business Yeah How many other people do you know that are like you?
Like is there a community of like a hundred of you guys who are like high schoolers who actually build shit and want to do Cool things?
There's not that many high schoolers, but there are people who are slightly older 1920 I probably now he's already got the mastermind hand pose He already has the visionary hand hand position naturally dude straight out the box.
I I have a handful of people that I'm friends with, but not many, definitely not.
Do you guys have a club, do you have a name?
Like the Grubs? Yeah, it's the cool kids club.
That's, it's, you guys are pretty cool.
So it's a good name.
Always wanted to be in.
Yeah, I've always wanted to be one of the, I've always wanted to be part of that.
If you are a new member, let me know.
Have you considered just like moving to Palo Alto and like hanging out?
Like, you know, in the movie, the social network, Sean Parker gets to act like a college kid without go to college?
Or are you dead set on going that route?
Well, over the summer when things started taking off in June for Cal AI Henry and I decided, let's go all in.
We moved to San Francisco for the whole month of July.
We lived in a hacker house.
We worked out of a co -working office with people years older than us.
So we live the San Francisco start -up life.
It was very productive, but at the same time, pretty lonely, although we could talk to some people.
Yeah, we made friends.
We would get lunch with people.
First of all, San Francisco is not the most fun city, but also just the fact that people were years older than us always made it difficult to relate to them.
Yeah, that makes sense.
We had a, I have a friend that like he got accepted into some program where he went to college at the age of 14 or 15.
And he was telling me, he was like, man like, I wanted to like date girls and like, you know, do that normal shit.
And it was weird. I started fooling around with one girl, and I eventually had to break it with her that I was filler in that I'm like, I'm 16.
And so, like, I imagine it's weird being in these situations where you're like in these.
You're just as mature.
You're more mature than a lot of 21 year olds or a lot of grown adults.
But you're in this situation where I do understand why you feel trapped.
You're in these weird spots.
It's such a young age that, like, you literally couldn't go and do some of this stuff in San Francisco that everyone else is doing because of your age.
But it's pretty amazing.
Like, I hope you enjoy like the time like I mean, I think being 18 and experiencing seeing what you're doing.
This is like 1 out of a billion.
This is like a really special thing.
How much are you paying yourself?
So we haven't paid ourselves anything.
We are reinvesting it all.
And that's not to say that we won't.
We do have profit every month.
It is a difficult situation with the app store because we get paid out 2 months after we earned the money.
So our growth is so quick that the revenue we generated 2 months ago, we have to put it all in the marketing.
to keep growing faster and faster.
I think in a few months, we may start having a surplus where we can't spend it on growth even if we wanted to.
Yeah, that's great.
New York City founders, if you've listened to my first million before, 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 Well, 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 three million in revenue or you've raised three million in funding or you've started and sold the company for at least $10 million, then you are eligible to apply.
So, go to joinhampton .com and apply.
I'm going to 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 look now back to the show Dude this is awesome man, congratulations, and I'm excited to see what happens who were like who do you admire?
Who are you who are you learning from and looking up to like who's who's inspiring you?
Are you just like oh Elon and Jeff Bezos, that's what I that's what I care about What are, are there other people that you're more interested in, uh, personally?
Like you said, you used to listen to podcasts as inspiration.
Who are some of those people that you like to listen?
Totally. So I love your guys's podcast.
It's I'm more inspired by people who are dead than people who are alive.
And maybe that's because I feel like.
There's they're not my competition anymore or they are, but they're not progressing anymore.
So I see exactly where they ended up.
But. Psycho, love it.
Yeah. I get it, you sick fuck.
Yeah. Makes sense. They're not my competition anymore.
Yeah. I've already finished them.
Yeah. People like. I think he's gonna kill us, Sam.
Yeah. Think he can just threaten those low -key.
Okay, so you like learning from dead people?
What does that mean?
How do you learn it from dead people?
I like audiobooks, but I don't actually like reading physical books.
I also like learning about them from podcasts which dead people also like founders you like the David Sandra's podcast founders It's one of my favorites.
I do listen to that.
There's one. I've listened to recently how to take over the world which Let's go So let me ask you a question What what's a thing that people your age are doing that seems weird to us?
But it's totally normal.
So like what's a phenomenon that you're like, yeah, kids love doing this They spend all this time doing this or they spend their money on this or this is a new trend that It seems to be weird to others, but we get it.
It's, it's normal for us.
Yeah. Is by the way, is wearing a Ralph Lauren, Ralph Lauren, polo sweaters.
Is that a new trend that young people are doing?
I think you've influenced Sam.
Yeah. A great sweater.
Yeah. Sorry, go ahead with, uh, what cool young people are doing.
So there's something really interesting, a really interesting phenomenon I've seen recently and it's not a new software.
It's not a new social media platform.
What it is these little things you put on the back of your phone, it's called an Octobuddy, and it has suction cups on it.
So you could stick your phone to a wall, you could prop it up on your table, and watch your videos is the purpose.
I've never seen someone actually use the suction cups how they're designed to, but it's a trend among all girls in my high school I over the last few months I've just seen more and more people have it now everyone does and it's it's fascinating something it's like a TV mount you mount you're you can mount your phone to any any surface basically yeah what it's not used how it's supposed to be isn't that what it's supposed to be well I think it's more of something where now girls look at it like the color of their nails or having long nails on where Girls get different colors, and scared of - It became
an accessory. The stylistic accessory status thing that actually function.
Keep going, tell me what young people like.
Yeah, this is great, what else?
Whenever I meet a young guy, I'm like tell me everything.
Well, that's the main thing that you wouldn't typically notice.
Are your friends drinking?
Yes. Definitely. It's because - Do they like to party?
Do you guys like to smoke weed?
I'm someone who doesn't do any drugs.
I'm pretty against them.
And I don't drink either, But it's I mean everyone around me is so drinking is common.
Very common. Very very You also mentioned this this like turbo learn thing.
That sounds pretty awesome.
What else is like What other?
Who else is like you out there who's basically scaling up to millions in revenue just off of this kind of like a I tick tock type of model So there are a bunch of consumer apps that are coming out or have come out.
And honestly, I I think a lot of it is attributed to Blake and I speaking publicly about this, showing that it's really possible in the app space.
So new apps like Quitter, which is an app designed to help men quit porn with all of these little social, or like by having streaks, essentially to gamify the whole experience, so that's a new one that just came out.
You inspired these guys?
I'm friends with the founder and he was inspired to get into the app space by seeing Calli I really take off he was with me in the early days that's cool it's got five thousand five thousand reviews on on iPhone that's pretty good yeah so they're on track to make over a million dollars this year I think consumer app right now or like the new drop shipping you know Sean said this once where he was like you know Sean was like I'm a content creator, you know, he's got newsletters and Twitter and podcasts.
But these Tiktok guys, it's as if, you know, I am really good at riding horses, but along comes Henry Ford.
And it's just it's just the cars are no comparison, you know, I can't, there's no way my horse and I gonna outrun even the the crappiest car.
This is one of those moments that I'm having right now talking to you.
So like for a long time, Sean and I, our friends will do dropshipping, you know, when we were 25 that was the things, like create like a dropshipping site and people still do things like that.
Seeing what you're doing with tech and influencers is so much better than like you even look Mr. you even make Mr. Beast look old.
You don't mean like chocolate?
Like what? That's crazy.
You don't mean, dude, people used to look at me and Sam when we were like, so we met when we were probably 24 or 25.
We were the prodigies and it was I was like, oh probably that's very generous but like, it'd be like, if there was something on the fringe or the edge about either growth hacking or a clever way to make money, usually it was us who knew it and people would ask us about it.
Like I remember having like the Atlantic, the publisher come to my office and they're like newsletters and I'm like, yeah, like it's a thing.
That's old news now.
These guys are so much better and we are that person now.
I'm going to go to his office and be like, just tell me everything.
It's something that always happens.
It's gonna happen to me too.
I know that every year I age, I am becoming exponentially less impressive and there's someone that's going to come and be the next big thing.
The growth hacker that is in the front of everything, I think it's just about building momentum.
And I'm pretty obsessed with this idea of making sure that everything I work on will 10X the previous thing, so that I'm always moving forward towards a bigger goal.
You actually mentioned Mr. Beast.
He's actually someone who greatly inspires me.
I love the podcast that you guys had with him.
By the way, I've heard this now a couple times from people who are like 18, and they're like fearful that when they're 22, suddenly their accomplishments are no longer cool.
And I just want to say, I get it.
Makes total sense. It's also total nonsense.
And what I mean by that is not only is it's still super impressive, but the real game is when you stop trying to impress people.
And so what actually happens is you graduate out of the I Need To Impress People phase, and the person who is 17, 18, they're still getting that high of being the impressive person.
Oh, everybody's kind of patting on the back.
And actually, the only way to win the game is not to continuously be the youngest, best looking richest person, because you'll never win that game, of comparison.
The only real way to win the game is to realize like, well, I just need to be doing the things that are fun for me.
And like the act of doing them is rewarding and not look for the rewards of impressing people, which is obviously easier said than done.
But that's the real thing to focus on.
And not like this feeling of I'm running on quicksand, you know, because it's, I'm getting older, oh no, or like, uh, I have to 10 X my growth, even though I'm already at, you know, 24 million ARRs.
I sure that's all fine.
I'm not against growth.
But, somebody said this to us while we were hanging out with Mr. Beast, they go be very careful because growth for growth's sake is the ideology of a cancer cell.
And so, you know, growth for growth's sake is not where it's at.
And there's, there's more to the game than that.
And he's like, I'll leave you with that to kind of figure out what is the answer.
I'm not going to sort of try to tell you what I think is right, but I'll point that out because I think for me when I was young, and I know for a lot of ambitious people, it just seems like grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, it's the only thing and it comes from a little bit of a, I don't know, like a little bit of a place of anxiety, I think.
Yes and I've had a similar thought to this where I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I've thought, okay, once I find my success and let's say I'm, quote on quote, financially free, will I even want to start something new or will I not care any more or just want to find happiness elsewhere.
Maybe I have one of the tenants of happiness, which is I'm financially taken care of, but then I want to prioritize relationships and happiness in other aspects so...
You're always gonna be making stuff.
I'll predict the future.
Maybe, you'll take the foot off the gas and relationships in a family and all that stuff.
You are going to be creating stuff for a very, very long time.
Well, that is why I'm going to college.
It's almost to take my foot off the gas a little bit build relationships and then I want to drop out after a semester or two.
I mean, I think that's really smart because you have your whole life to make money, but you really only have this four years to make lifelong friends from college.
So actually, the scarce thing is the friendship and that college experience because there's a window of time that expires.
And so do that because you still have 50 years to make money after that.
What school do you want to go to?
If I got in, then Stanford, is likely the top.
Surely we have listeners, this is going to reach a lot of people, surely there are some people listening.
Dean, I know you're listening, Yatigari, Y -A -D -H.
Yeah, you can find him on Twitter, DM him.
Actually, that's what they should do.
If I'm at a college right now, I'm DMing this kid an acceptance letter, that's how college needs to hustle.
I'm tired of these colleges.
Yeah, you're going to get a DM.
It's always like suck.
You just gonna get DM from Who's your favorite who are your most inspirational follows on Twitter?
I want to I want to basically I find you so fascinated.
I want to be inspired by the people your Yeah, yeah, I want your info diet who who do you inspired by and try to make it people who you think I won't know Mm -hmm.
Okay Who do I follow?
I actually don't usually use twitter for people I'm inspired by.
That's interesting.
What's your main social network?
What do you use when you're bored?
What do you open up?
It is twitter. It is twitter.
That is my main social network.
When I'm looking to be inspired, there are definitely a few people.
David Goggins, for example, he just pumps me up.
So I have people like him that you know inspired by his mindset completely.
I used to actually be in this phase where I was addicted to motivational content.
I curated my TikTok for you page.
I only liked motivational videos and anytime I lost motivation I'll just scroll for five minutes then get back into it.
So definitely those kinds of people but it's mainly those like Mr. Beast, Elon Musk, I followed both of those on Twitter.
My own co -founder, Blake Anderson, who's a few years ahead of me in life and knowledge too.
So definitely learn a lot from him.
Cliff Weitzman, she's a recent friend of mine.
I think one of you know him.
Yeah. Yeah. We know Cliff.
Yeah. So he's super inspiring to myself as well.
That's dope. Sam, anything else?
Don't ask me, Zach, is there anything else that you want to inspire me by?
Like you're amazing.
Anything else that you want to tell us?
Yeah, did we miss anything?
I appreciate that. I mean, it's always hard going on these podcasts.
It's a whole full circle moment.
And also it feels almost bad speaking about all of this.
I try to stay humble.
But then at the same time, I know you have to speak your way into the world.
If I wasn't posting anything publicly, I've had a lot of debate over the personal brand, then I wouldn't have so many opportunities that I have had.
Sean, one of my best buddies, Val.
I think Zach asked him out to lunch or something the other day, like the other day.
And like, was just asking him for advice on maybe coming on this podcast, but also business advice because Val's a great guy and really successful.
And I thought it was funny because actually you remind me of Val a lot, Zach.
But it was funny, apparently Val's kids were like, were you hanging out with our friend Zach?
Like at lunch the other day.
And he was like, yeah, but it was like a very, you know, oddly a business context.
But anyway, Val called me and was like, this guy's Zach is one of the most impressive people I've ever met.
And Val is a very hard person to impress, he's pretty low key.
And so... things is like you have this paradox because you want to keep your asset, your asset is your young and ignorance is bliss you don't know how hard some things are you don't know what's possible you don't have a ceiling on anything.
Because you don't know any better right and that ignorance is a is a real tool the naivete the beginner's mind and so you want to keep that on the other side you have this giant problem which is that there's always kind of like this I forgot what they call it but there's just three three known thing right it's like There's the things you know, you know, there's the things you know, you don't know.
But then the, the real one that matters is the things you don't know that you don't know.
And, and so talking to whatever, smarter people, people who have played the game for 15, 20 years, they will help you surface that last one and that that last area of things you don't, you don't currently even know that you don't know.
That's the thing you should be worried about, but how do you worry about it?
You don't even know, you don't know where to look.
Um, but it's by talking to other smart people that that gets revealed to you.
And so you have this paradox where you want to keep what you got as your big asset, your naivete, your beginner's mind, your, your, your, your useful ignorance.
But at the same time, um, talk to some well -meaning people who are a little bit wiser to try to get figure out, like, you know, um, little, little, a little bit of a, a, a push in one direction or the other, they'll kind of nudge you and that little nudge can totally change your trajectory.
Right? Cause like, I mean, just imagine hitting a golf ball and even just changing by two millimeters.
The angle that you hit that ball, it ends up in a totally different spot.
And so you want to find those people who are your, your two millimeter people, the people that would just give you that slight angle, adjustment in order to make it happen.
And I don't know how you do that exactly the keep both of those, but that's what I would do if I was you are trying to find a way to keep.
I totally agree. I have heard that, that it's much easier to learn from someone 10 steps ahead of you, then 100 steps ahead of you, 100 steps so much is missing.
But 10, you can piece together, they can lift you up this extra steps and help you get from zero to 10.
Yeah, and one other thing you're gonna figure out is that all successful people do not have equally valuable advice.
So you will meet a lot of people who are successful or sound interesting.
But their advice is not great.
And the hard part is figuring out how to parse it.
And dissociate it slightly from the result.
Because their result might be totally dependent on the context.
Because there's a whole bunch of different variables that will lead to that, or maybe just their understanding of your situation.
And so trying to figure out how to parse advice is like an underrated skill.
And make sure that the people you take advice from, that they're actually happy and there are people you admire.
Or who's like - They'll speak for themselves and they're happy for you.
Yeah. Like you'd want their life.
It's a very good point.
at it. All right. Well, on that point, let's call it a, let's call it a day.
I think you got to go back to school now.
Yeah. Lunch is over.
Hey, thank you. Zack, uh, you're the man.
Uh, anytime you want to come on, please let us know.
Congrats, dude. Thank you for having me.
And I'm gonna, I'm gonna use the app.
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna download your app right now.
Start trying. Thank you.
And uh, that's it. That's the pod.
let's travel never lookin back hey Sean here I want to take a minute to tell you a David Ogilvy story one of the great ad men he said remember the consumer is not a moron she's your wife you wouldn't lie to your own wife so don't lie to mine and I love that you guys you're my family you're like my wife and I won't lie to you either so I'll tell you the truth for every company I own right now six companies I I use Mercury for all of them.
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Alright, back to the episode.
