The Reddit Revolt, Turpentine, & Shaan's Latest Business Venture

28:15It was very nice. He gave us a little shout out. But basically, what I believe it to be is just a podcast network for business content, particularly some type of like startup-y related stuff. So there's like one on media. Yeah, tech. There's one on media. I think there's one on fintech, a few other things. And he announced it. Have you seen this? What am I missing here? I've seen this. So Eric Thornberg's behind this. Eric's awesome guy. Did he talk to you about this before he did it? Because I feel like if I was going to do something like this, you're my phone a friend, right? No, you didn't talk to me.

28:50You're my phone a friend on that. I've never talked to him. Oh, you never told you. So you don't know each other that well. Okay, gotcha. He's in our friend group, I guess. Okay, so I'm curious what your take is on this, because I think you know a lot about this. I have a strong opinion, but I want you to explain it. I mean, I think you said it well. He's trying to create like what I would say the easiest analog is like the Ringer. So the Ringer was started by Bill Simmons. So kind of like famous notable guy in the sports journalism landscape. Basically was like, I'm gonna create a network of sports podcasts.

29:17I'll have my show. I'll have this guy do NBA. I'll have this guy do NFL. I'll have this guy do pop culture. I'll have this guy do whatever. And so they created a network of podcasts, ended up selling it to Spotify for a few hundred million dollars, 200 something million dollars. And really, that was mostly because Bill had the number one sports podcast. And he's very influential, and Spotify had a strategy there. So Eric's trying to do that for tech. So he's like, how do I be the ringer? How do I be barstool but for the tech industry? Can I basically create intellectual, entertaining, but also highly intellectual conversations about things that people care about in tech?

29:56And then he's looking for shows. So basically, if we were not the badasses that we were, we could be like, hey, let's join Turpentine. We're going to get their back office. We're going to get them helping us sell ads. We're going to get help with production. And we'll get cross-promoted amongst their network. It's very similar to Workweek, which we've talked about on here before. Workweek's doing this kind of with newsletters. And Turpentine is trying to do this with podcasts plus newsletters plus other things. That's kind of the thing. He says his tagline is where experts talk. So it's a network podcast covering tech, business, culture, and trends that are driving the future.

30:35And he's got, I think, three or four shows right now. It looks like maybe five, three that he's doing. And then a couple that other people are doing. But they're all like very like fancy schmancy, like the cognitive revolution, you know, media empires, moment of Zen. And so they're kind of like, I would say, highbrow compared to what most podcasts are. Yeah. So here's my opinion. I don't think anyone that you mentioned or anyone out there is really doing it perfectly. But this is beautifully done. You go to his website. Wow. I thought you were going to be anti. You're pretty anti most media things.

31:15So I'm surprised. Oh, no, it's going to come. It's going to come. You're doing that sandwich thing? Yeah. my bad i stopped you with the bread yeah yeah sandwiches always have it's not it's not love your logo hate everything else like a sandwich is not meat cheese bread it's bread meat cheese bread okay you gotta it begins and it ends with that no i i do like it so here's the thing about these companies i think if he doesn't raise money i think it's awesome i think so long as he doesn't raise money, I think this could be really, really cool. I think owning this outright is amazing. I think that's really cool.

31:59I think when I go to his website, I think he borderlined, like if it was done a little bit the other way, it would be really douchey. But the way that he's done it, it's actually quite awesome. Like for example, he quotes Pablo Picasso and you know, that could go either way. That can go either way. He went the right way. I think when you go to the website. I think the name is nice. It's all pretty slick. It's upscale. It actually looks really good. I think that if you did that a little bit differently, it would not work. What's the quote for Pablo Picasso in there? Do you see it? Yeah, it says, when art critics get together, they talk about form and structure and meaning.

32:36When artists get together, they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine. Cool. I think that's cool. I think it's cool, and it's got a nice little picture of Pablo. I think it's awesome. yeah uh dude on my next company i'm gonna get a quote from benny blanco just i don't know just he got public picasso i'm gonna get benny blanco on the other side we can do bugs bunny next too i mean i think it's good man i think it's good branding i so my opinion is i think it's cool if you own it i think it's cool if so i don't know if you know this you probably don't because who cares but business insiders writer the writers are on strike do you know that yes well a lot of like isn't hollywood also on strike right now i think they're totally unrelated other than maybe they inspired each other i think there was like a contract up and uh insider formed a union or something like that and they are protesting and they're doing this thing called a digital pick line i guess it's called where a digital picket line where they're telling all the customers not to click on Business Insider links now, which is crazy.

33:43I mean, someone who follows a Business Insider journalist is probably not also someone reading Business Insider, I would imagine. So I don't know if that's going to go well. But if you have to, so if you're going to start a media company, I think you have to be incredibly careful not to hire folks who will unionize. I think that is actually an existential crisis to a lot of media companies right now. And I think that's like a real. So here's the takeaways. I think A, it's awesome. So you're going to do this. I think it's cool. I think you should own the whole thing. B, look out for union types.

34:17C, him going B2B, that's 100 % the way to go. And I want to give you an example. Is this B2B? I don't think this is B2B. What makes you say this is B2B? Well, I don't know. I think he's probably going for like high-end customers more so than B2B, right? Yeah, but your ad salespeople can spin that nicely to Salesforce. Like, it's not like true crime. You know what I mean? It's borderline. It's kissing cousins with the B2B, real B2B. It's close. But let me give you an example of a real B2B one. B2B-ish. B2B-ish. Yeah, it's Bish. Have you heard, by the way, did you see that guy who's getting in trouble?

34:55His name is George Santos. He's like clearly, I think he's like from South America, but he was, I'm going to butcher it, but he was some type of elected official out of Long Island. And, uh, he's getting in trouble because he did a bunch of fraudish stuff. But one thing that's funny is he told everyone he was Jewish and he goes, well, I didn't say I was Jewish. I said I was Jew-ish. Like I'm friends with the Jews. I was Jew-ish like, you know, like I'm buddies with them. Have you not seen that? All time, all time. Excuse. He like stole$500 ,000. So he's actually a crook, but like the funniest part, he goes, I'm Jew-ish and you look at him and he's like from Brazil or something like what?

35:37So that's pretty funny. But anyway, I think that instead of going B2B-ish, you got to go all the way. Have you heard of aging media? No. Okay, so type in aging media. It started by this guy named John. John's a member of Hampton, but everything I'm actually about to say, I just kind of stole from a similar web. But I have heard some rumors about them. But basically if you go to aging media, what's what's the uh you've been on his hampton application where he had to write his revenue profits uh names of all his children and social security number you may you may have some info on this he's in the meat like i just clicked similar web on their site no info so i know you ain't getting shit from similar web right now oh yeah yeah so here's why here's i'm gonna explain it to you gotta be a pro but you know listen aging media is their like corporate website so So what's it say?

36:28They have like their brands, like senior housing news, hospice news, skilled nursing news, that sort of thing. So what's the meta tag on there? Is it like nursing home professional? Yeah, media for the senior care industry. Yeah. So click like one of their websites and you can go to similar web. Each website only has something like 50 ,000 visits, I believe. It's like not a lot, but they're doing something like 12 or$11 million a year revenue. and like three or four million dollars a year in profit. And this is a B2B, hardcore B2B site. They make their money through lead gen. So basically, I imagine they'll do like a webinar or something.

37:08And if you like are in the nursing home industry, you give them information. They also have ads. And I think, I don't know if they have podcasts, but they do have newsletters on their site. This is a hardcore B2B. This is, yeah. And I love it. I love it. I love this. You just did this guy such a disservice by sticking four to 40 copycats on him by talking about how good a business this is on here. People who listen to this podcast are like, if Sam or Sean say the N-word, I don't mean the N-word, I mean newsletters. If they say that this is a good newsletter business, the instant copycats, bro.

37:44They saw what you did with the hustle. They saw what I did with Mill Crow. They're instantly looking for a new newsletter to clone. I apologize on behalf of whoever this guy is. I DMed him in Hampton. I go, hey, don't tell me anything, but just can I talk about your company? And I said, here's what I see on similar web. He didn't know what he was saying yes to. No, I got permission. I go, here's what I see on similar web. This is what I'm going to say. Are you cool with it? And he gave me a thumbs up, like literally a thumbs up emoji. That's how I roll. I get that emoji. We're good. That's a hardcore B2B media company.

38:17So anyway, my point with this Turpentine thing, I think it's cool. I like it. I think it's cool. I hope he pulls it off. I've thought about doing this idea, actually, in the past. I ruled it out for a bunch of reasons, but that doesn't mean somebody else can't do it. I think it'd be great to do. It takes a lot of energy, and I'm totally with you that I hope he didn't raise money. In his tweet thing announcing it, he didn't say, like, so happy to have Marc Andreessen investing in this. So I think there's probably a good chance he raised money, but he didn't raise money. So I hope he is taking it that way.

38:48Well, you probably learned from his other company, On Deck. Like that's another company where I think they raised a hundred plus million. I forget, but I think the valuation was$500 million. So I don't know how much they raised, but I imagine it was the nine figures. That's another company where it's like, that could be cool if you don't raise money. Basically, screwing up your cap table is like one of the only mistakes in business that you can't really make up for. um speaking of screwing up your money can i tell you what i did post milk road with uh with the money that we made well i do know that you sent me a text i would have to go look at when that came and you said i've sold all my equities i think it's gonna go i think the market's going down and since then you've it's double it's about doubled yeah a lot So I know you did that with your money.

39:40So what else did you do? So I told you about my next best decision. Yeah. What else did you do besides not make money off your money? For the record, for the record. I've actually, I would be about even from where I was with my equities on that. Because I kept, well, I kept a portion of it, but I also, the stuff I sold has not doubled. You just look at HubSpot stock because you're like, I got HubSpot. So you're like, HubSpot is the market. HubSpot is not the market exactly. so I'll tell you that so let me tell you about what I did so we got this money so we sell Milk Road now there's cash hitting and bank account got a couple options so it's like do we just buy treasury bills make 4 % on that what bank did you use what bank did I use what do you mean you use Chase or one of the other ones that got screwed up there's no upside in the answer to this question did you use one of the ones were you using one of the ones that got screwed up no, no, no, no.

40:35I didn't use Silicon Valley Bank. No. So money's sitting there as I could buy treasury bills. No, that's too boring. Could do what Sam does. I could just index into the stock market. That's reasonable. But I think it seems like we're coming off of a 13-year bull market. Don't really need to put the full amount in right now. Let me just kind of wait and see what happens there. Is there something that can do better than the 8 % that I might be able to get on that. I thought, well, should I just invest it in a new company we start? I don't know. Maybe if we have a great idea, we'll do that. But let me just, let me not do that.

41:13And so I started doing this process where I was like, can I, I worked backwards for basically like, can I get 30 % a year compounding? And 30 % a year sounds like a high number, but we have a few friends who have done it. And the way that they've done it has been through buying private companies. So they buy businesses and they own them. Andrew Wilkinson, I think, is the one that most people who listen to this pod will know because he's been on a bunch of times and talked about this, how they built Tiny from a few million dollars into, you know, $500 million by doing this sort of 30, 40 % compounding over time.

41:44Did you read the Tiny annual report? We'll have to talk about it next time. Yeah, I read his annual letter. Yeah. So, and we have a few other friends that have been doing this as well that are less public about it. So I said, okay, well, let me do that. I said, but I don't want to buy these companies and operate them. So I thought, what if I bought 30 % stakes? So it's sort of like, can I buy a minority position in companies so that they keep running them, but I give them capital. So basically like the founder oftentimes was like not taking a lot off the table or they were kind of always worried, like, should I put this in my pocket and spend this?

42:18Well, I don't know. What if the company needs it? Even if we're profitable, they were kind of worried about that. So I said, here, let me give us some money and then could I help them grow? And so I went through this exercise. I don't think I've told you about any of these, but I talked to about 25 companies. in the last, I want to say, six months. Dude, every company that you talk to DMs me and they say something of a variety of, I was talking to Sean and now we're not talking anymore. But they like message me to like talk to you and I just ignore it. Yeah, you're like the wingman who refuses to wing.

42:53You don't have to tell me which companies. I already know probably half of them. My funnel was this. I was just doing a review of this. I thought it was kind of interesting. So talk to about 20, 24 companies, I think, um, got serious, like did, like did diligence. I would say talk to means like, uh, talk to means like I was interested, you know, obviously we, we looked at a little bit more than that, but talk to was like, oh, this could be interesting. You could kind of squint and see a possibility. Then got into kind of like more serious talks, either negotiated numbers or diligence with about nine.

43:24Got to a LOI stage with three or four and ended up doing one deal in the last, I want to say, six months post-sale. And so this ranged from everything from – so newsletter businesses, OnlyFans businesses, journal apps, virtual events, bookkeeping companies, merch companies, and then a bunch of random stuff that I know nothing about that were like, oh, that sounds interesting. like some company that like does something called laser peening on machines to make the parts last longer. And their clients are like Boeing and stuff like that, or autism clinics that seem to make a ton of money. But I'm like, okay, I don't really know how I would add any value to this.

44:06And in each one, I was like, all right, can I find a good operator where I can acquire minority stake of the business at a good deal and I can help them grow? And ideally, they're the category winner for what they do. And so that was kind of like my process. I want to before I tell you about the deal that we ended up doing, I want to hear any thoughts or questions on my approach here, because there's a bunch of learnings. Yeah, there's no way you're going to get 30 % for that long, right? Do you actually think that's possible? What do you mean for that long? That long means what? I mean, I don't know anything about markets.

44:38I haven't read a Warren Buffett biography, but what's he compounded at every year? Yeah, he's been at 20 % for like 50 years or something like that. But if you got it for 10 years, then you don't. putting billions and billions of dollars to work. And that's very different. Right. Okay. I think that's smart. Do you think you're going to enjoy this? I think you'll enjoy it, right? I'm not sure. So this was a test basically to see like, is this fun to do? It's definitely fun on the learning side. Now that we made the first acquisition or the first, I would say not acquisition, like kind of minority investment.

45:10And it's different than startups. We've done startup investing. Startup investing is very, very different. Startup investing is you look at a business, you're trying to figure out, are these three dudes in this bedroom going to be able to build a multi-billion dollar company? Is this husband and wife couple going to be able to pull off this gargantuan exit? And right now they have usually nothing, just an idea, product, maybe a little bit of traction. It's way more of a lottery. It's a lottery and you put in$100 ,000 and then you do that with 40 companies and you know that 38 of the companies are going to be kind of like just a write-off or cost of doing business.

45:45And two or three of those 30 or 40 companies are going to be your winners. But hopefully, they're winning at 100X or 1 ,000X or more returns. And so it's very lottery-like. And you spend very little time with them. So you're not like – they don't want you advising them. You answer questions when they call. You can proactively nudge them a little bit. But you're mostly hands-off, I would say, as angel investing. whereas if you buy 15 20 25 30 percent of a business uh you're a little more involved um you know you're a little more active these businesses are not like all or nothing businesses they're like oh there's already a good business it's profitable and it's already growing so the question is can we accelerate the growth right so like the one business we bought is i don't know super profitable it makes millions of dollars a year in profits it's uh you know more than 50 percent margins.

46:34And, um, you know, we were able to buy a piece of that. And I think that, uh, that's just so different than every startup investment I had ever done. You know, it's probably not going to become a multi-billion dollar business. I would almost guarantee that, but it doesn't need to, it's not supposed to, it's a cashflow business. And so - Isn't it funny how you have mocked me for like the last eight years about my slow and steady approach. And now you're, you know, look, you're still, at first it was like laughing at 8%. I'm going for 10x every year or whatever. It's coming down. Now, 30 % is really attractive, which I agree.

47:10That is really attractive. Before you know it, you're going to say, No, dude, that's not true. Even in a startup fund, even when you have your winners that become billion-dollar companies, the overall fund, like a great fund, is doing 30 % IRR, or 20 % IRR, 40 % IRR. You're getting more boring. You're getting more boring. No, I reject that. I reject that premise. I would say that. You used to make a live streaming app, and now you're looking at a company that sells parts to Boeing. But cash flow is always interesting. It's always been interesting. And now it's more interesting than it was in the past.

47:47I really didn't have a lot of exposure to these types of business. I lived in San Francisco. You say cash flow, and people think you're talking about like a leaky faucet. Nobody knows what the hell that means. And so once I started doing this podcast, we got a lot more exposure to – like most of the people who listen to this podcast are entrepreneurs all around the world. And so when they reach out about their business, it's like, oh, this guy in Minnesota with this marketing agency that does this per year or this person sells parts and this person does whatever. They're rolling up bookkeeping services.

48:17And so you learn about different types of businesses more through this. And so I've been getting my MBA on non-Silicon Valley businesses for the past two years. Look, the cool thing is, is that, you know, we research stuff. And like, if I really dive deep into a topic, I'll research it for eight hours. And that's not enough to make an investment, but it's enough that I say to myself, oh, wow, this space is really intriguing. You know, I could see myself doing this. You're doing that, but instead of eight hours, you're doing weeks. And so it's oddly in the similar vein a bit. But of course, you have to do more due diligence and actually look at the numbers and get to know the people.

48:54But yeah, it's like getting used to the space. So the most interesting thing is what happened between the four deals that we signed LOIs on and the one that we closed. And I'll try to do this without giving away any info about the companies that we didn't do the deal with. I can talk about the one we did, but I can't talk about the one we didn't. But the things I, the reasons that, the mistakes that we were making along the way. Here's trap number one that we already experienced. I can fix him. like the classic girlfriend mistake, like, yeah, he, you know, he sucks, but maybe I could fix him. It's basically like, maybe I can fix this business.

49:31And when you do this minority investing, you're not the majority, you're not going to be able to fix anything. And so that was, you know, trap number one was getting really far down the road with a business that I thought had a ton of potential before finally realizing I'm not going to be the one to fix it. And fixing it is the wrong approach to doing going into a business like this. That was mistake one. Mistake two was I can totally, I can totally see this working, but working at a small scale. And so you have to remember basically like, as you play the game, it's kind of like, this is how I felt about you, like your Airbnb, which is like, you do one Airbnb.

50:06That's, you basically can't do one Airbnb. You can only do one as a test to see if you want to do a bunch. One Airbnb is like a bunch of headache without the size of the prize being big enough. And so we had looked at one business that was like, yeah, this is what I have, by the way. Yeah. We all make this mistake, but I think you were at least looking at it the right way where you were like, maybe I could do a bunch of these. You talk to people that had 50 of these in their portfolio and you have to do one to know if you want to do 50. And so we got really far down the road with this one that like, if it all worked, it's like, dude, we could be making$200 ,000 a year off this.

50:38It's like, wait, what are we doing? Why are we doing this? Like, yeah, it's a great deal and it's highly likely to work, but it's highly likely to be very small and like not worth the mind share of even doing this. And so we pulled out on that one. The one that we did was basically a company, people probably know. So it was in a, so this one was not - Are you going to name it? Yeah, I can name it now, it's official. So we first looked at the category. So I was super bullish on companies that let you hire internationally. So specifically like how to hire in the Philippines and LATAM. And you know this - Why, why were you interested in that?

51:09What insight did you have? Like kind of scar tissue. Like, dude, you came to my office. I remember you came to my office in San Francisco when I was doing Bebo, and you were like, what's your burn rate? Which, again, is like a question nobody asks somebody else out loud. It's like, you know, that's like asking somebody, asking a woman their weight. Like, ask a founder their burn rate and see how they feel. In my head, I was like, that's bubbly. You had a bubbly burn, man. And I was like,$3 million a year. And that's what we were. We were basically a startup that was burning$3 million a year pre-product market fit because that's what it cost.

51:36We basically had a team of engineers. So we had like, you know, I don't know, 10 to 12. What's that a month? 10 to 12 engineers. it's like 250 ,000 a month I think we were doing like 240 ,000 a month in burn and that's net burn does that assume no revenue we had revenue from one of our projects but like no I was just saying like the overall bill so we basically you hire 10 people that are 200 ,000 each you're doing 2 million plus you pay rent plus you have your cloud bills plus you have whatever else and so that was really expensive and those were all Silicon Valley engineers years and they were below market.

52:12So those people, if they're working for us for 200 K, they could have been making 400 or 500 K at Facebook, but they wanted to be a part of a startup. So I did that and it was very stressful to have a very high burn rate for a company. Like I just didn't like it, but I didn't know any better at the time. And then afterwards, as I got a little more savvy, like with our e-com biz, we'll do probably somewhere like a little under 20 million this year in revenue. We're profitable because 65 % of our team is overseas. So we have our data analysis person, Argentina. Our designer, India. Our customer service, Philippines.

52:48The person who's running our whole wholesale channel, built it from scratch. It did not exist. And now it's like a new revenue unit in the Philippines. And we did the same thing with Milk Road. We were profitable with Milk Road from day one. I remember coming to your office at The Hustle and you had, I don't know, 15 people running around there in San Francisco. And that's a bunch of San Francisco issues. They have to go home and pay$6 ,000 rent. So you got to pay them money. And for us, we had one person in the U.S. for Milk Road and we had everybody else in the Philippines. And so it was, again, lean, mean, profitable machine.

53:17And I was like, oh, not just is this cost savings. Like if you hire someone in the Philippines, they're basically 10 times cheaper than the U.S. So like, you know, you can hire somebody in the Philippines for$1 ,000 a month. So$12 ,000 in a year. That same person in the U.S. will cost you$80 ,000 to$120 ,000. And these are skilled people. Like in Latin, like the guy we have doing our data stuff, he's like, you know, got his MBA. Like these are highly educated, highly, you know, he's like a wizard with like, you know, Power BI and Looker and all these like data tools that I couldn't even start to use.

53:48Do you get to know? Yeah, yeah, of course. I'm talking to him all the time. The one good thing is, especially with the Philippines, this sounds terrible, but I'm going to say it anyways because it's honest. I hate managing people and I love hiring people in the Philippines because they need so little management. Like I. Why does that sound horrible? What did I miss there? Because I think what people want is for you to be like, I'm a good manager and I talk to my people and I'm like, dude, it's fucking great. I only talk like, for example, my assistant, I only talk to her on Fridays. People are like, well, that's kind of mean.

54:19Or like, it's great. They don't want one-on-ones and like career trajectory coaching. And they don't want like the same thing. Like in San Francisco, I had, let's say I have eight direct reports. That's eight weekly one-on-ones I had to do. Well, dude, I've had. That's essentially eight hours out of the 160 hours a week that, you know, that I have that I'm like. you know, I'm spending doing basically like touchy feely stuff, which is fine. I understand it, but it's really nice when you don't have to do that because it's not the baseline expectation. There's a bunch of roles where you don't want someone who's entirely ambitious, like with an assistant.

54:52It's like, you don't want someone that's like, no, I don't want to give you all these other opportunities. I want you to be great at this thing and not bail. Like, I don't, this is what I need. This is the tool that I need. And I want you to be that. I don't want to have to promote you tons and tons of times. I've hired a couple of people for like our hold co basically. And they're, they're cool. They're, they live in San Francisco. They're awesome. They're super motivated to work with me. I'm like, great. What do you want? Like, I want to be you. And I'm like, wait, what? And then I'm like, cool.

55:20Like, you know, someday they're like, yeah, but I'm also spinning up my own newsletter, my own podcast, my own investment arm. Like, I'm like, okay, well, like, that's great. You could do that. But that makes for kind of a shitty person to hire onto my team. because like part of being on this team is being down for our mission, not like your own mission necessarily. And I totally get if you want to go do your own mission, but you got to go do that on your own. You don't get to have both, you know, at the same exact time. You can do one and get mentored for a bit and then go do your own, but you can't do it at the exact same time.

55:48And so it has been very nice to have people that are just like, like literally like our management style is they log in, they say, logging in, here's what I'm doing today. If you have any adjustments needed, you say something. If not, you just don't say anything. At the end, they say, log it off. Here's what I got done today. Here's everything I did. Here's the files. Here's the info. Log it off. So how much are you spending now on these folks? I mean, dude, I have like in my own companies, probably almost 15 to 20 people that are international now. And what's the average salary? It ranges. So like on the low end, 800, I think about it monthly because that's like when I push payroll, that's what it says.

56:28So like, you know, 800 a month would be the low end. And that's, I would say, most common. So that's a customer support, personal assistant, things like that could be that low. And then the higher roles will be like 2 ,500 to 3 ,000. And then there's one guy who's just amazing. And I've promoted him up twice now. And now he gets paid like a US employee because he makes the impact of somebody who's like driving a ton of growth. So I'm like, oh, great. Like you keep getting rewarded. At some point you break through where if you're driving growth, you get rewarded for driving growth. And you also, I got an email.

56:59you have a course on this now too. I have a course on the personal assistant side. Yeah, I just created, it's not even a course actually. It's just, I don't like, I don't go and teach it. It's just a system. It's like, yo, basically the best hire I made this year was I hired my personal assistant and I had thought, okay, personal assistant is, you know, personal assistants like for rich people, for like mega, it's like for Jeff Bezos. It's like mega busy, mega rich. And I also was like, I don't want to have to tell somebody what to do all the time. I'm like, that sounds like its own pain in the ass to come up with shit to do.

57:31And then I heard a few friends talk about theirs. And I was like, maybe I'm wrong. Let me open my mind to the possibility that I'm wrong about this. Three people tell me, three people that I trust tell me that it's like been a huge game changer for them. Let me try it. Send it to me. I want to use it. I basically created the whole thing last week. And I was like, here's my system. So, for example, like, here's my email system. Like, I used to be terrible with email. And now my email system is like super organized on top of shit. Here's exactly what I do. Here's the exact scope of work. Here's how it works.

57:56works. I just texted Ben. I said, send it to me. Yeah. And so, and we have, by the way, there's like a funny offer we did with it, but I'll explain the company that we ended up investing in. So I looked at all the ways you could do this. I've done all of them. So you can hire direct. If you want to hire somebody internationally, you can basically have three options. You hire direct. So you hire somebody on like a job board, Upwork, online job, something like that. Upside, it's basically free. You just pay the software subscription, like I don't know, 99 bucks a month. So you pay a thousand dollars for the year to be to be a pro member on their downside you have to do all the hiring vetting training sifting through candidates yourself like you put up hey i need a customer support person or a personal assistant you're gonna get 200 applications and like good luck trying to find somebody good um you could also go on the high end and use like a managed service so this is things like um growth assistant or athena they're great they do the they do the vetting for you, but there's this huge upcharge.

58:52So those guys charge you three grand a month for somebody that actually costs$800 a month. So you're paying 3x the price or more every single month forever. How big are those companies? How big is Athena? I heard they're huge. They're big. And they're big because this is like a huge ARR thing for them. And people don't really know about it. People don't really realize like you didn't have to pay triple the price every single month. And so that's like, you know, one path. But they're good at what they do. I've tried a bunch of these. The one I liked the best was the one we ended up investing in, which is Shepard.

59:22So people have probably heard of Shepard before. I think the URL supportshepard.com. Why I liked Shepard was it's kind of best of both. So they do the filtering, screening, background checks, all that stuff. So basically you just say, I want a personal assistant. They present you three great candidates. So they present you five great candidates for you. And they're filtered, they're checked, and they're basically like, these are the best of the best. So they save you a shit ton of time, which is like, as any business owner, you kind of need that. And the other side, you don't have to pay the monthly upcharge.

59:50So they'll say, great, here's, you know, you can make the hire directly. And all you pay is the one-time finder's fee for us having found you the candidate. And so it ends up being, you know, 10 to 20 times cheaper than these other ones in the long run, because you just paid, you know, the one-time finder's fee. So I liked that model the best. I was like, long-term, I think this is the most sustainable. Because if I'm making in my business, like I did, 15 hires internationally, I don't want to be paying like this bloated cost every month from there on out. Nor do I want to do all that work myself.

1:00:20So that was the business we ended up investing in. Super excited about it. The branding on their website, so it's supportshepherd.com. You have to be one of the testimonials. You need a testy on there. But it looks good. It's cute branding. So Marshall Haas is the guy who started it. Marshall, I've known Marshall since 2012 maybe. He's the type of guy who whenever he does something, it's awesome. it looks cool uh so like if you follow him on instagram on twitter he's got showmanship he's got showmanship he's got the juice he's got the juice so whenever like for example i think he just bought a new house and i'm like following the bill of the house he also like he likes cars so like i saw him like redecorate his garage he owns like a boutique hotel he did this like e-commerce thing that was like super simple and actually like a really good like you know a successful business, successful econ business.

1:01:12That was just like, it was like a phone case. And like, you know, it was just that. And like when COVID came out, they came out with this little like hook thing, like your captain hook. I was like, you can use this to open doors without having to touch the knob like a peasant. I was like, dude, this guy's great. He just makes these like simple little businesses. And he runs all the reason he did this is he ran his businesses using international hiring as his like workforce. So then he partnered with this guy in the Philippines, opened up an office on the ground there with a bunch of recruiters to do all the vetting locally on the ground.

1:01:41Is he going to the Philippines? His business partner lives there and has the office open there. So that's like how you, you got to commit if you're going to do these types of things. And so he basically partnered with the guy who was doing that. And that's how they created Shepard. And it started off just like, you know, solving their own itch, but turns out like a lot of people have this itch. And so, and myself included. So if he, I file, I've not used it, but I will, I will use it. I would like to use, I'm literally, I just texted Ben, I really actually want your course. I want to figure out how you do this because I want this and maybe I'll use these guys.

1:02:12But if his business is going so well, why would he sell a portion to you? Like my head is I'm greedy. I'm like, get the fuck out of here because I mean, obviously we're going to drive him a little bit or a lot of traffic. The pod will. Is that the only reason why he would do this? Yeah, basically they don't spend any money on marketing at all. And so the way that it spreads is just word of mouth. people coming back. And then the other one is like entrepreneurs who have an audience saying the word. So they first did this with Nick Huber. And Nick has drove them a ton of business because Nick uses it for all of his businesses.

1:02:51And so when he talks about it, they get a bunch of traffic. So I think he saw the success of that. And basically, we have a large audience now, like through Twitter, through this pod, through other things. And so there's obviously a benefit of, I don't know, like the brand association, like, as well as like, you know, the ability to reach, you know, reach a large audience that I think was appealing to him. But I bought in, I didn't get free shares, right? Like I bought, I bought into the, to the equity pool, but I agree with you. When you have a really good business, you're always hesitant. It has to be like the right fit.

1:03:21And so I think the other benefit was he listens to the pod. And so he's seen, you know, if you listen to this, you know how we think and you can agree and be like, this person's great. Or this person's an idiot. You know, if you want to, if you would want to do business with them, if you've listened with pod regularly. You have a very good idea. There's no hiding our personalities on this. Do they have a MFM like coupon code, coupon, coupon? So if you go to my website, if you go to champuri.com slash remote assistant, basically, here's what I got them to do, which is better than a coupon thing.

1:03:47So I was like, all right, if you want to do the personal assistant thing the way I did, I was like, all right, here's my systems, 250 bucks. You get the whole, like all the templates, all the thing or whatever. But I was like, I only want to make money from people who don't take action. And so here's how it works. Basically, if you just buy the course and you don't actually hire an assistant, I keep your money. But if you actually go to Shepard and you hire your assistant, then Shepard will give you 2x the money back. So basically you pay$250, you'll get$500 if you actually take the action and go hire.

1:04:15And I was like, that's kind of a no-brainer offer. I was like, Marshall, we got to do this. Do this where if people want their own assistant and they actually take the action and go forward with it, pay them back, not just what they paid for the system, pay them double. because I bet a bunch of people are just not going to take action, but who cares? I want the people who will take action to be rewarded for doing so. And so that's a pretty sweet deal. Basically, it's like, you essentially get my system for free, plus you make an extra$250 if you actually go forward with it and make your hire. So first, I want, if you're into this shit, I have no stake in this, by the way, but go to support Shepard.

1:04:51I do want them to sign up because here's what I want. I want you to report back and I want to hear if this whole influencer buys companies thing actually is good. So I want the results to be reported back in like a month. And so I am curious to see what the demand is. I bet it's going to be quite good. Number two, what I'm curious to see is if you like this. I don't know if you're going to like it or not. I could see it going 50-50 either way. So far, how do you feel? I mean, look, if this deal works, then this is the greatest thing on earth. Well, this one is a no-brainer, right? But that's not the hard part.

1:05:24This is already a successful company. I'm already religious about hiring internationally anyways, personally in my own businesses. It's like, I didn't have to be convinced that this is a good idea. Like I already knew there's a good idea. The question was, am I going to start my own of these or should I invest in one that's already working that I like that I use? And I was like, okay, cool. Let me just do the second one. That seems like way less work, you know, to do that. So I think this one is kind of a no brainer in that it's kind of a proven business. I am a genuine believer in it. And whether we actually drive extra traffic to them or not, I think it's, it's sort of like, I don't know, like, obviously for them, they want that.

1:05:59And I would like that too. But for me, it was already a working business. What percentage are you, is that too much to ask or to review? Yeah, I don't want to close that here because I think, you know, it's their business. I don't want to, I don't want to give that away too much, but you know, it's a, it's a good chunk. I think, do you think they'll ever sell the company or do you make your money just through dividends? Yeah, just dividends. Like it's a profitable business. It just pays out dividends. Like I got our first dividend check yesterday. It was awesome. You did? You got one already? Yeah, it was fantastic.

1:06:29This is going to be your seized candy, maybe. I mean, if this works out, that's exciting. I'm curious to see if you're going to like this because on one hand, I can actually see you loving this because you get to spend time seeing how things work and you get to use your skill set, which is content to tell people about it. Like this segment that we just did, I'm actually interested. I want to keep talking about this just because I want to hear the story behind it. I think that's interesting. And so it's kind of a win-win in that regard. But I'm curious if you're going to enjoy all the due diligence.

1:06:54Like when I talked to Andrew Wilkinson, he actually, I don't think, does a lot of the due diligence. He's got a team to do that. If you are able to pull that off, I think you'll be in a win situation. So as long as you like doing that. I'm going to try it with two or three. This one I knew was a slam dunk because I'm just like just a total believer in it. What's going to be interesting is what happens with ones that aren't like perfectly in my zone of like, I get it, I used it, I believe in it. Like it's like this one was like bullseye. I don't expect every business to be exactly bullseye. So the question is, what happens when it's not exactly?

1:07:27Is it still fun? Do I still believe? Do I, am I still willing to talk about it? Like this one I'm willing to talk about. Cause I'm like, I literally wouldn't have my econ business work the way it does or milk road worked the way it did if I didn't use the strategy. So I'm like, I could talk about that. Now, what happens when it's like one degree separated from that? Am I still going to want to tell a story on it? Maybe it's not even that interesting of a story and I'm not going to do it. Like I'm not going to come on this podcast and bore everybody with like a story that's not that great so i can't i can't commit to that yet but i don't know if somebody wants me to buy you know a minority stake in their business hit me up let's see let's see what happens i'm gonna try two or three of these and see see how it goes was there anything uh that you learned looking at the 24 other than what you said about the uh like fix me shit like was there anything any other revelations not necessarily about what they had wrong with them or but maybe what they had right with them?

1:08:17Any commonalities between the winners? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I would say that the

1:08:26businesses that I was most interested in were ones that had a clear

1:08:34sales model, I would say. So they knew how they were going to get their customers now and in the future. And I don't want to say moat because it's like you're just trying to be Warren Buffett. It's not that they had a moat, but they had either recurring revenue or they had something that was like they're actually the category leader. They're the go-to leader and that there's some reason why they're not just going to get copied into oblivion by everybody else. Maybe they have an operational advantage. What's Shepard's? I mean, I think branding is actually that separates them here. I think they look cool.

1:09:10Is there anything else? Yeah, I think Shepard's The real advantage is that they picked a business model that's actually more customer-friendly, like I said. So if your two other options are spend a bunch of time, have a bunch of uncertainty, hire somebody unvetted, and you save a little bit of money, or pay a 3x monthly upcharge, you're kind of nuts to do the 3x monthly upcharge for a long period of time, especially if you're going to hire multiple roles eventually in your company. It's just not a sustainable path. So to me, support Shepard's choice on the business model separated them from the current competitors.

1:09:41now somebody else could try to do it but what are they gonna have to do they're gonna have to go set up boots on the ground in the philippines and in latam and really be good at you know recruiting recruiters who are then going to recruit the talent to actually deliver on these roles and hire high quality people because they they don't really like the money's not made in your first hire the money's made when you're like you see the light and you come back to them for your next six hires like what i did with e-com is like i started with customer support and i was like cool i need somebody could do inventory forecasting people in the u.s really expensive for that 140K for that role here.

1:10:12Could I find somebody overseas that could do inventory forecasting? Can I find somebody that could do, can run our Amazon ads? Can I find somebody who could do wholesale as a channel? Like, can I find people that do influencer? Like you start to be like, oh wait, this isn't just about what it used to be, which was like VAs equals low cost labor. Now it's like, dude, they're pretty talented people that could do these things. They got three or four years of experience doing that at another company. And so you're able to just pluck from the remote talent pool versus just your local talent pool. Dude, I'm excited to see how this turns out.

1:10:43At Hampton, do you guys have any overseas people yet or no? Yeah, yeah, for sure. We have like the guy who made our website is overseas and he's on staff. We have our accounting folks who like, they're called Fuel Finance. They're overseas. If you go to, like we have this whole backend thing built where people can log in. It was built by a guy in Hong Kong. yeah we have a ton of overseas and Marshall's a member and so we're gonna actually thinking about starting to use them for some data analytics stuff so yeah by the way like the funny thing a lot of overseas when I was using uh for our e-com thing a lot of e-com people use agencies I uh I'll hire an agency and then they like they're like great let's add can you add these three people to slack and all of the names and you can tell by their names yeah and I'm just like so like for example um design pickle I think is like a 10 million dollar a year business to basically like design unlimited designer on demand.

1:11:37Uh, we tried them out for a little bit. Every single designers in the Philippines. Um, then I hired this email marketing guy. I was like, Oh yeah, just do our email email marketing at flows. He's based in Colorado. Every employee is in the Philippines. I was like, okay, that's another one. Um, I hired a website, a web dev shop. Got owners in the U S entire team is in India. Uh, you know, another one that did the entire thing in Ukraine. And it's like, it's so funny that people are basically, this is now a business model is basically like owner in the U.S. does sales, fulfillment all done by, and they're good.

1:12:09I'm not even saying this like a bad thing. Like they're talented, but I'm like, wow, this is a whole business blueprint, a template that they could use to basically like make the margins work. When are you going to go there? When are you going? To the Philippines? Yeah. When's Neckbeard Nation going to the Philippines? We should host the next live pod there. Do we have a following there? I have no idea. Unfortunately, I don't think we do. I don't think they give a shit. Dude, you got to go there. I've been to the Philippines. It's awesome. Very hot. Tonight and... I've never been. I'll go. Tonight and tomorrow, I'm taking a 15-hour road trip in my Tesla.

1:12:45My first time doing it. We're going to see if I love it or hate it. So I'm going to report back on Wednesday. 15-hour, you said? It normally takes 12, but you have three hours for charging. Dude, I did a charging road trip. It was horrible. Where are you going from? Where are you going to? What's the distance? Austin to St. Louis. Okay. I'm going to visit my family. What do you think? Would you get the X or the Y? Which one are you doing? X, long distance, 350 miles. Is it a new one? Because the thing I screwed up was the one I rented on Turo was like five years old. And it just needed charging every 90 minutes.

1:13:17It was an awful experience. Well, how fast you go? I mean, it's like highway, right? So you're going like whatever, 75 miles an hour. I mean, I speed usually. So I mean, I'll go 85 or 90. So we'll see what's going to happen. It crushes the battery. It absolutely crushed the battery. at least that one that i had it absolutely crushed it we had a terrible we did a seven hour ride in 14 hours because we had to charge so many times well and by the way you know the charging thing it's not like you can't just like charge like there's like certain chargers that are fast and some that are slow you know like don't you just use the thing on the screen that like tells you what to do or tells you where it tells you where the charges are but i'm saying some of the charging stations and some of the spots are fast chargers and some are slow like there's a like it's like a gas pump where one will fill it up at twice the speed as the other So make sure when you do it, you know that.

1:14:02So you go only to the fast chargers and none of the slow ones. The slow ones are like, you'd have to be like, I wanted to go watch a movie so that I could do this slow charge. No, I use, there's this app called A Better Route. I think it's called this guy, like has built this whole like thing just on routing out people's electric charges. And so I'm going to use that. But my wife's flying and I was like, I'm driving. I want to drive. I want to see what it's like. and so I'm driving and I'm going to report back on Wednesday to see how it feels I did it so I I'm going to leave tonight so I'll get a few hours in and then tomorrow that way I can like I plan my life around this pod because I was like it's we record 11 my time like I can't arrive that morning otherwise I'll be like tired I won't have time to research right so I have to plan it so I get there Tuesday night but I need a full night's rest so I can like wake up and like research and shit do plan your life around this pod uh yeah for to an extent right like you know this is uh this is the one unmissable appointment on my calendar everything else yeah it's flexible this is the one non-flexible thing it's no days off i think i mean we've recorded on we missed last week though so i guess we can't really say that right now well wasn't there like an issue yeah we had a sound issue but uh we're like no days off people were like you missed last the last time that was like a technical error but we've done like whatever the most recent holiday is we were recording whatever I think we've done Christmas Eve before.

1:15:20We always record. Big thanks to everybody who listens. This is a fun thing for us to do. Thank you for listening. Yeah, this is like one of the dope parts of our life. And I think it's attracted a bunch of like, I mean, Neckbeard Nation, right? It's attracted a bunch of people whose brain is weird in the way our brain is weird. And I think that's a lot of fun. I want to end with this. So I was at this, I'll tell you a very, very, very quick story. I was at this LA Tech meetup. First of all, our fans are, that sounds weird, but our listeners, they come in all shapes and sizes, man. All colors. I love it.

1:15:54What does that mean? What are you trying to say there? Dude, like I had this guy that looked like he was seven feet tall guy, like basketball player. And I thought he was like a famous guy. And he comes up, he goes, total man. And he gave me like, you know, like the black guy handshake. I'm like, whatever that is. If you're a seven foot black guy, you are a total man. Like you didn't even need to say it, bro. We know. Yeah. He gave me like that, that my handshake, you know what I'm saying? and uh and then i had this like 55 year old woman who was with her kid at the airport say what's up and i just want to say first of all if you're a fan thank you and second of all i can tell like walking by if someone listens or not because if they're wearing like lululemon abc pants or like if they look like they go to like columbia like university and they like make eye contact with you in a particular way i can tell and i would love for you to come and say what's up so long as it's like a quick like what's up total man like you can say something by the way here's the etiquette you come over you fist pound not handshake or hug so let's do nucks that's the way we do it we're not trying to get a little too too much uh i'm not trying to be palm to palm with anybody and so uh give me the nucks you can say uh you can reference it you can know small boy stuff uh total man you could use any of the any of the isms that you want that just means I know you and I'll give you the head nod back like yep you're one of us take the selfie together and then we kind of we keep the show rolling from there but here's the shit that I need to announce to people and we gotta put this in every episode because often times if they see me with my wife they'll say what's up if they see me with my in-laws or up to eat with friends they won't say what's up and every once in a while they will and it makes me feel so cool oh my god yeah The more people I'm with, the more I need you to be over the top with it.

1:17:42Yes, please. My wife doesn't listen to this podcast. She never heard a single episode. So she doesn't think this is cool. She thinks this is me playing video games up in the bedroom right now. So only when she sees someone come up in person, and then even, you know, I was with her mom there, and they were like, wow, what? My dad was there, and he's like, my dad literally goes, he must have thought you're someone else.

1:18:09we are famous enough that like our friends and family actually understand and so if you see us out there please give us one particularly if we're with friends you have to do it that will make my day as long as it's a short thing i was out to eat and like three different guys when i was out to eat i was with my co-workers said what's up and i played it off like oh man i can't go anywhere And in my head, I'm like, I hope there's a four. I hope there's a four. It's so interesting. And my coworkers are like, does this happen all the time? I'm like, I gotta say the most embarrassing version of this.

1:18:46So when we were selling the milk road, I went to meet up with the guy who bought it, Kendall, at a coffee shop. And we're at the coffee shop for a bit. And I see someone kind of like looking like, I think they recognize you, but I'm not sure. And I'm like, come over, just come over right now. because he doesn't listen to the podcast and I'm trying to do this deal. And I'm like, I think it would help if he felt like I'm a big deal. I was like, I think that'd be a little nice little nudge. Yeah, yes. The guy doesn't come over, right? So we go outside. We say, I say bye. He starts walking away and the guy comes over and he's like, Sean?

1:19:18And I'm like, yeah. And he goes, hey, man, big fan. I literally go, I was like, I'm Kendall. I want you to be back. I was like, hey, have you met Kendall? And the guy's like, no. And I was like, Kendall, yeah, this guy just, he listens to the pod. I just wanted you to, and it didn't even make sense. And I was like, I forced it so bad, dude. So bad. Validate me, please. It's like, how do you take a cool moment and make it the most lame? Was me being like, hey, wait, you didn't hear that he recognized me. Come here. Have you guys met? He's like, no, of course not. Oh, my God. I've said that before.

1:19:59I'm like, hey, say what you said again, but do it in front of my in-laws. So I just, this is the public service announcement. If you think you know us or if you think it's us, even if you only think it's kind of us, just take a chance and say what's up and feel free to be over at the top. Like, you know, it's awesome. We love it. It makes me feel good and it more so makes me look cool, which is what I care about more than anything. So anyway, that's awesome. That's the pod. Good episode. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, less travel, never looking back.

1:20:48All right. This episode is brought to you by Mercury. They are the finance platform of choice for over 200 ,000 companies. Shouldn't be surprised because I use it myself for not one, not two, but I have eight different Mercury accounts. I have seven for different companies that I'm a part of. And then I have my own personal account because now they have personal banking, which is a really cool feature. I highly, highly recommend it. Like I said, I use it myself. And the reason why is because the way that Mercury works is beautiful. It's very intuitive. And you could tell that it's actually made by a startup founder.

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1:21:41For more information, check out mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details.