Should You Build or Should You Buy?, Why In-Person Yields Incredible Results (And How To Do It), Why You Must Be Having An Epiphany Each Week Right Now

0:01You have one here on should you build or should you buy which we've talked about but it's Whenever you bring this up, there's probably a new angle you have. No, it was, I was at an event yesterday and people are talking about like how they're building all these things and they're building their business in multiple regions. And I was just like, the German market, because people are talking about Germany because it was at a lot of Amazon sellers there. I'm like, the German market is very different culturally than the US market. It is a very tough market to build a company from scratch when you're already established in the US and they're trying to build something big.

0:39We did it organically in Germany. It was really expensive. It didn't work out the way we wanted. A lot of our competitors have had issues in Germany as well. So we just went down the buy route. We haven't made our announcement yet, but we'll eventually make the announcement in, I don't know, like three months or something like that. But we went down the buy route. And I think people don't put into the equation of you can build or buy, but when you build, there are costs. And whether you're starting up in a new region or a new division, sometimes it's cheaper to buy something that is barely making any money or has just got started and it's off the ground.

1:22And they've been doing it for a few years and they're getting traction. So you're buying it for much cheaper. We didn't go for either of those routes. We went with a company that was more than 10 years old. So they had traction, enterprise brands. You get the point. So it costs more money, but, you know, time is money. And a lot of times it is just hard to build. Like you can build in one market really well. You know, I did really well with Ubersess when I, technically I bought it. Yeah, I actually haven't built much. That was 2017, right? Yeah, something like that. You're actually right. I didn't buy that.

1:59Yeah, so I didn't build from scratch. I've actually done the more buy route for, I would probably say. Yeah, the last like five, 10 years has been more. I would say in your 20s, you tried to build a lot more. In my 20s, it was pure building. I would say - Courses from scratch, Crazy Egg. Everything, majority. Kiss Insights, Kiss Metrics. Yeah. It was all built. It was all built. Hello, Barbie Bob, but that didn't work out. Yeah. But it was almost all built in my 20s. Yeah. In my 30s, I started buying. but I really started buying to call it mid thirties. But you still built MP digital from scratch.

2:33Yeah. Like initially. Yes. Technically I built it from scratch. Yeah. How is it technical? Like the model of MP digital was really different because instead of building a company from scratch, we were just collecting leads. Yeah. I know. I copied you for that. Yeah. And we were sending the leads to other agencies and they already had it. we were just getting quote unquote affiliate fee. Yeah. And yes, eventually we did build it, uh, in house. But the reason I wouldn't consider it as a normal build, like I did in my twenties, because from day one, I just plopped down millions of dollars. Yeah. So you're right.

3:11I did build, but I built with capital I made from all the previous years. But still like you're, you're, you're still, you just have more resources. You're an investor. You're still, and you're still very much in it. Yeah. I'm still in it. Yeah. Yeah. So I would just say, look, the way I see this is like, it's not should or should you not, in my opinion. I think it's just, it just is. And also many things in life are just, it's, there's no solutions, only trade-offs. So there's a trade-off, right? I think if you're looking to do it, like you're expanding globally, probably a better idea to, especially because your logos, those big RFPs require you to have a presence in these countries.

3:47It makes a lot more sense. Like that seems like one of the obvious things to do, you know? Yeah, like I was talking to one of the largest social networks in the UK when I was there a few weeks ago. And they're like, we'd love to work with you in Germany. Do you have a presence there? And I'm like, yes, we do. And they're like, cool. I'm like, they control all the European budgets. And they're like, that person's like, I'm probably going to take over a lot of the US budgets as well. And you're talking about one of the larger social networks, not a, you know, one or two billion dollar company or even a 10 billion dollar company.

4:20you know they're substantially large um and much actually larger than even 10 or 20 or 30 billion um and yeah you know we bought our way i also think it depends on the phase you are in as an entrepreneur i'm in a phase where i spend so much more time with family and kids and i didn't have that in my 20s where i choose to buy because i don't want to go through the grind like i used to you know it's interesting so i don't know if we talked about this last week but i think we did when I was hanging out with our mutual friends that flew in the hangout, right? Because of the passing, but we're all like, yeah, we just don't have it in us to work like we did in our teens or our early 20s anymore.

5:00And I'm like, don't get me wrong, I still love working, but I don't want to work at that level anymore. No, I'm over it. Like I will grind and I'll still put in the hours, but am I really grinding? Yeah. Not really when I compare to my 20s. Like I look at myself as lazy now compared to my 20s. Yeah, but also like we've built up some type of leverage that allows us to, if you build up leverage, that means you can hire people or you can invest capital to do things that you normally would have done when you had more time in your 20s. So it just changes over time. Yeah, and for me in my 20s, I didn't have as much money, so I couldn't have just spent the money to not put in the time.

5:34I had no choice. Yeah, yeah. By the way, so a couple more things from our side. I think we've talked a lot about in person. I talked about going to that Creator Pickleball event. You just came back from New York. you were at an event a couple weeks ago. We always speak at things together. We have HubSpot coming up in like two months, three months or whatever. So I think it's good for us to revisit why in-person yields incredible results and how to do it, right? And so you've hosted events. We host webinars that counts as events as well. And so I think even, so Eric, he also has a company called Carrot.

6:06It's funny. He's Asian Eric that has a company called Carrot. It's K-A-R-R-A-T. The one with Pew Pew? No, no, no. That's Eric Hong. But he's also Asian Eric, a single child too. Yeah, they're all only child, but anyway, including me. But anyway, so he has a company called Carrot Financial, which is like business credit cards for creators, right? So he hosted this creator pickleball event. I think like 200 people showed up. And you know that guy, Stephen Hay, the emotional damage, that guy, right? You know who I'm talking about? Is he the realtor? No, no, no, never mind. Where he like buys houses and flips them?

6:41No, no, no, no. But there's a lot of creators there and they all have a lot of followers, blah, blah, blah, right? That's a good example of how you get everyone together and they all share it to social. And it's good for him because he wants more creators using his credit card, right? So that's the type of event that works for him. But then the events like you and I might do, it might be a dinner with 10, 20 people or something like that, keep it intimate. Or the things you do where you invite a bunch of people that fit your ICP and you do like a luncheon and then you also teach something at the same time and you have like what, 70, 80 people, 100 people show up.

7:12For a luncheon? Yeah. Low end, maybe like 20. High end, maybe like 50 to 100. Yeah. My point of saying this too is like, or if I wanted to, if I'm going to be in San Francisco and it's like, why don't I just have half the dinner people be carrot customers and the other half be prospects, right? You can do this. You've done it for MP Digital too. That works like a charm. Steak dinners always work. Events work. Webinars work. I just did a webinar with Adam Robinson from our B2B like two days ago, right? I think he probably had four or 500 people show up. And I'm like, that's a great partner webinar.

7:48Nathan Latka does the Founder Path webinars where he has like, he's like, he's standing like on a stage. He's got all those monitors behind him and stuff. And he's like bringing people in at super high energy. These are all super high converting things. And at the end of the day, the thing my mom wrote in that keepsake is like, what's the thing that you're most proud of? It's like my friends and my family, right? Like people all want community. That's what it is. They really do. So it fulfills you in different ways, right? Like working and accomplishing goals is a fulfillment, but also having friends around and family around is another form of gratification and fulfillment.

8:23Otherwise, what are you doing it for? Yeah, yeah. But at the same time, it's funny because I was getting smoothies with a friend yesterday. You know this guy. And he was just talking about where he doesn't get value from YPO. I'm like, you know what the problem is for you? You need to hang out with more heavy hitters because he's like, this guy, he's pretty funny. And he's like, yeah, everyone I met in YPO is like a joker, right? I'm like, he's like, yeah, there's a lot of people that like they're in it, but they don't qualify. And then like I end up helping them more than they help me. But I'm like, one, you're very jaded.

8:47But two. Wait, which chapter? I'll tell you after. I'll tell you after you met him. But I was like, you know, it reminds me of another friend who I think he needs to hang out with heavy hitters too. Otherwise, he's not going to get the value from it. He's like, you know what? Like, I just don't want to share my feelings, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, oh, it reminds me of another friend who doesn't like to share his feelings, right? What in the city is he? A beach nearby. A beach? Yeah, you can't name him. I know him. Yeah, you know him. But my point is, it's interesting because on the other side, a friend from a week ago, we were walking, right?

9:24And then this is a guy that was very closed off before too. He joined YPO. I was like, so what have you gotten from YPO? And this is no knock on YPO. I'm just talking about a group, right? He's like, you know what? Hanging out with my forum where it's like, they're all heavy hitters. he's like, it's taught me to open up. I'm like, oh, okay, wow. What value did you get from opening up? He's like, it helps me make better decisions at the end of the day for my business. And it teaches me that you don't have to be so uptight, right? But my point of saying all this is that if you're gonna join groups or like peer groups and things like that, this is community.

9:53You also have to make sure that people are the types of people you wanna hang out with and they're at a level that you wanna be at. Otherwise, it's gonna be a waste of your time. So I don't think it's wrong for him or for someone else we know to filter aggressively. Yeah, because you should. Otherwise, you're wasting your time. And I think it's more important when you have a family because you have less time, right? When you have kids and you're married, you just have a lot less time. So then it's like you filter harder and harder. Like if you look at me, I don't really do any networking anymore.

10:24No, nor have you really needed that. That's the other benefit of building an audience. The network kind of comes to you. You know what's kind of cool at that event? There's like a good amount of people that are like, oh, are you like Eric from leveling up or whatever, right? And it's cool. You know why it's cool? This is why you should focus on creating business content if you're listening to this. They wanted to talk about business. I don't want to talk about this creator this. I don't want to talk about VidCon. I don't want to talk about all this shit. Like you want to talk about business stuff or me to share my business experience?

10:50Happy to do that, right? And that's why it's better to go niche. I agree with that. When I first started my business, the overwhelm was real. I didn't have the tools to help me scale. If only I had Shopify from the start to handle all the behind the scenes work. Shopify is the platform behind millions of businesses globally from huge names like Mattel and Gymshark to the smallest brands just getting started. The best part about it, it has everything you could need. Say you're ready to launch your own design studio. Shopify has hundreds of templates to create a beautiful store that matches your brand style.

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12:58That's framer.com, promo code MS. Framer.com, promo code MS. Rules and restrictions may apply. And you're not only went niche, but you went niche in a massive TAM, right? You went niche with this content in which he gives business advice. And specifically, the niche isn't business advice because it's a massive TAM. it's business advice for startups. I would say, would you agree with that? More loving up is a startup zero to call it 10 million or a hundred million. Yeah, yeah. Right? Yeah. So it's not like if you work at Microsoft, how to scale. No, no. And now it's become much more AI. Like what is just what I'm doing with AI now.

13:32So that's cool. AI and business. Cause there's not a lot of that AI business content. So yeah, there really isn't. Yeah. Yeah. And that's another, I mean, do you still do your podcast where you talk to CMOs? I just cut it off. Why? You don't like doing it. Yeah, you nailed it. We've gotten some leads from it and potential business from it. Our sales cycle for really large publicly traded corporations, which is the main type of people we interviewed, is a very long cycle. You have to go through procurement. They typically already have existing agency relationships. It's just for me, I want to do less.

14:09And when I do work, I want to work more on the business. I don't like working on things like networking, brand building, or any of that. I don't enjoy creating content. I enjoy just like I showed earlier in this podcast, being in the NPD experiments chat, talking about what needs to get done to grow revenue and then logging in and being like, cool, revenue has grown 12 % this year, this month over last month. And that is what satisfies me. And then I go to sleep knowing that I did something. If I don't see growth, I'm just pissed off for the whole day because I feel like it's not productive. It doesn't matter what I do if it's not impacting the bottom line I just feel I'm not productive.

14:49You know, it's kind of similar to you. I actually don't look forward to creating YouTube content. This is a little different because we at least get to talk and I get some ideas from you sometimes. And it's like our chance to catch up, right? And so it's a little different. And then it's like now we finally have some larger sponsors that are circling where it's like, okay, I would consider this, right? If Snap wants to pay us an arm in the leg, okay, yeah, you're welcome to sponsor this podcast. Even though we said, don't sponsor our podcast a week ago. But my point is, I think, well, I lost my train of thought, but it's okay.

15:22We can, what were we just talking about? We're talking about how we don't want to just do stuff anymore. Oh yeah, yeah, right, right, right. Yeah, so I think if it starts to feel like a job, I don't want to do it anymore, right? And so that podcast for you started to feel like a job. Plus, you realize that the amount of time it takes to prep for a guest is a huge pain in the butt. Well, I did not prep, so it was never as good because I wasn't willing to do it. Exactly, because you didn't want to do it. You never felt the vibe, right? And so I do feel like, yes, I don't look forward to making long-form YouTube videos because it does feel a little bit like work.

15:55But when I'm in it, when I'm actually doing it, I do enjoy it. I will say that. It's kind of weird. My hard part about doing a podcast and interviewing other people on marketing, a lot of it was done for lead generation. A lot of it was also done to learn. But with some of the candidates, I was directing them on the answers they should give. Wait, like during the podcast? Yeah, like I was guiding them to the right answer, the correct answer. Oh, so you started asking them questions? I started asking them questions about their business. And I even got some notes from some people being like, oh, can we do a retake?

16:27I think I could have done this better or whatnot. No, no, no, no, retake. And I don't want to do that. But I was guiding them because I was doing research on their company. and I knew how the company grew because you can research a lot on some certain company's histories. Especially if they're like 40, 50, 100 years old, you can really get down. And there's a lot of citations on the internet of what they've done to change and how they pivot and the revenue impact, especially when they're publicly traded. So I'm asking some of these people some questions and they don't know the answers. And I'm trying to give them the answers so they can say it.

17:02But I'm almost spoon-fitting it. And I'm like, you've been at this company how long and you didn't even know your own history and why they pivoted to this model and the revenue impact. And like they talked about it in their earnings calls, you know, X years ago. I'm like, the answer is right there. Yep. Look, and this is this is it's funny because I at that pickleball event, I went to eat with my my CTO. And then I was like, you know, I'm going to go back to that pickleball thing. I'm going to talk to one of the guys that is a great creator because his whole thing is like, I want to interview other creators.

17:31And that was his objective of going to the thing. So I went back to him. I'm like, look, I'm only sharing this with you because he's moving to SF now. I was like, look, I fell into the trap of interviewing all these people. And sure, I get hundreds of thousands of views or so, but it wasn't like what it was five, seven years ago where whenever I created my own marketing, that would actually drive leads. What I'm creating now actually drives leads again and drives business. But what is gonna end up happening is you start to fall too much into this creator world where you start to take sponsorships and then they start to guide you on the content they wanna see you create and you're no longer yourself anymore, right?

18:04And so again, it has to be fun for you and ideally it's relevant to your business. So that's what it is, but yeah. Yeah, and I agree with that. I found for me, it's like I enjoy doing the simple things in life. So for example, every either Saturday or Sunday, depends on the week, this week will be Sunday. Like I take my kids riding a bike. That's great. And then I don't ride a bike, they ride bikes because that'll help them cross the street. Although it's not a really a street, It's more of a residential street, but it's still cars come to making sure they don't fall or picking them up. They actually fall almost every single time.

18:40It's okay, though. But I enjoy that. Like, I'll do that for an hour every, you know, weekend. And that's the highlight. Yeah, it's a highlight. For me, it's fun. And then last week when I did it, did that. Then I took them to Pinkberry. Oh, yeah. And they were ecstatic. The yogurt. Yeah, the yogurt. Oh, nice. And then instead of, I used to give, you know, what we used to do to save money was get one and then we split it in half. And then it would always create an argument. I was like, you know what? I'm just willing to pay the extra$5 and I just get them two, one each. And I just tell the person, fill it up halfway.

19:14Because it's like, they just argue. And I'm like, I don't want to deal with this and ruin my weekend over them getting upset that one has more than the other. Or they didn't get the flavor they want. I'm like, all right. Dude. By the way, have you gone to Awan? What's Awan? type it into your google maps you can take them there it's it was recommended to me awan yeah it's uh it's nearby but ice cream shop in west hollywood yeah yeah look at it see that's pretty good huh yeah let me know how it is so a chef that looks good have you ever been to kit what's kit you haven't been to kit what's kit kit kit k-i-t-h the shoe store no why why would i go to a shoe store you like kicks i don't you always have like shoes no i just buy whatever people would tell me to buy i'm like that's true dude gave you the shoe yeah he gave me these shoes i never wore them yeah from that event because they hurt kit is a shoe store that has overpriced shoes you know i don't think you and i really spend a lot on shoes yeah but they have an ice cream store inside the shoe store and i think it's genius marketing because a lot of people come there for the ice cream and they make cereal based ice cream this is at the century city mall where is this no uh right in rodeo so you know on rodeo drive like there's these steps that you You can go up.

20:23Oh, okay. Right? By like Tiffany's and all these steps that you can walk up. There's this shoe store called Kit. Inside there, there's ice cream. And they can make you any ice cream. And then integrate like candy into it, cereal into it. And it's super popular. Yeah. I love going there for ice cream. So it's free ice cream? No, it costs money. Oh. And it's expensive. It's a good way to drive people in and also get people coming back if the product's really good. It's like you have a great product within a great product store. Yes. so that causes a lot of repeat people to come there and I see them all the time.

20:53They just eat ice cream and be like, oh, I'll buy a shoe and none of these people had the intention of buying a shoe but they're just, while they're eating their ice cream, they're looking around for shoes. But okay, this is interesting because remember when I did that global marketing summit thing in Miami, it was at the St. Regis, Bell Harbor and they had that ice cream thing. So what is the upside of doing that? I would go back there again. It's like, oh, they have the ice cream. The ice cream is good, it's free because they didn't have that before. The hotel's not that bad. Oh, that was great.

21:21It's great, but it's not like the most - It's not like best of the best. No. It's not the Four Seasons Surfside, which is next to it. Yes. It's incredible. But the free ice cream makes it worth it. I would go back. Yeah. Okay, and the fact that we're talking about it right now is also helpful too. Dude, I went back three times. Yeah, that's because your birthday, you didn't tell anybody. Yeah, that was my birthday treat was a free ice cream. Yeah. Okay, here's the final thing before we end. So I'm of the mindset now, the world that we're in, like you're seeing new stuff happen all the time, right?

21:49I'm of the mindset that you need to be having an epiphany every single week. Otherwise, I think you're falling behind. Let me show you what I mean by this. So this is done by Perplexity Labs. I asked it to storyboard for one of our clients, right, just for fun. And I said, make me an eight-minute ad creative and give me like, you know, eight different slides, right? And look, it's like storyboarding. It's Perplexity, right? Yeah, and it's sketched it out. You see this? And normally, you would have to wait days or weeks to get this done. And then I asked it to prompt it, and I started dumping it to VO3.

22:18and it started cranking out the videos. But the first time I did this, I was like, oh, right. That's like an epiphany moment. You need to be having those like once a week. And then I think you're in a good spot. I think you're on track. You saw the gorilla ad that was made from it, right? The gorilla ad? No. The gorilla ad for the dentist? No. It went viral. It was a gorilla jumping out of a plane, doing crazy stuff, lost his teeth. And perplexity made this. Yeah. Wow. But isn't that crazy? And then I dumped this into ChatGPG03. From my understanding, that's what I was told. It was made from Propax City.