Operators Titans E005: Peak 21 (with President Roman Khan)

38:33You take away a few of them. And all of a sudden, you just feel so much better. Roman, do you ever do a time and a vibe on it? I don't know what else. The kids call it. Yeah, yeah. But you look at where you're spending your time. Yeah, yeah. How do you feel? Yeah, that's actually another thing I got from one of my professors that gave me the same advice about picking industry and geography. He's incredible. His name is Chris Thorne. I really want him to go in and do an e-course for everyone because he would revolutionize people's lives. But every single week, we would have one session with him, and he would give us homework.

39:11And the first session was figuring out, creating a bar chart for this guy who runs a small business in Canada. So I can't remember the case exactly, but it's like some kind of gardening business. So it's three revenue streams, selling the flowers, growing the flowers with people, and then the third revenue stream, I can't remember, but it doesn't really matter. But he made us make a bar chart of where he was spending his time, what was generating revenue, what was generating profits. And obviously, this founder was spending all his time on the thing that was not generating profits, all his time on his passion project, right?

39:47Like this is like very common. We all fall victims of this for whatever reason. So I do this all the time. I have a timestamp tool that I use to measure my time. Last time I did it was probably a year ago. But I actually make my employees do it. So, you know, we at P21 really believe in micromanagement. You know, this is like blasphemy in North America, but like we really believe in it. So we have Slack channels where I get like without exaggerating, if I screen share now, you will see like 300 messages on my Slack because every single person at the company have a daily task channel. So it would be daily-task-mat-vertuli.

40:29Come on. You would have to at 9 a.m. No joke, no joke. 9 a.m. when you're clocking into the office, it's like, today I'm working on, you know, X, Y, Z. And then end of day, 6 p.m., you're recapping like, this took two hours, I didn't get to complete this. This is moved to next week. This actually sounds crazy, but it's actually really smart. I find that the best people who work for me and the most productive people, they have these lists. They just have lists and they're always going – it's forcing you to remind yourself, like, here's the list. I have one too. Check it out. I had a really good friend of mine who was very successful, and he used to walk around with these Post-it notes on his wallet.

41:13And, I mean, I don't know how he wrote. I used to do that too. The tiniest, the tiniest handwriting on the planet. I don't know how he did it. And he was like legendary for his post-it notes, right? But like even, you know, like Connor Roland on our team, he manages a big team at Hexclad, the growth team. And he's actually really, really organized because he's always making notes for himself and he's going back and he's reviewing his notes. And the people who are always like forgetting stuff are the ones that don't do that. And there are people that I know who are actually really good. Like, they're actually really good at stuff.

41:47They're good employees or whatever. But this is what's holding them back. It's like, oh, shoot. You know, I forgot to do that. Or, oh, I forgot to do that. Because they just, like, weren't tracking it. So, Roman, I think this is awesome, awesome discipline. It's creating accountability, guys. Like, Roman, you're calling it micromanagement, but you're teaching accountability. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I mean, like, I think, like, what we do is, like, the direct manager is in the channel. but it also gives me extreme ability to chronologically go through time so for example we had one really big issue with one of our manufacturers for jewelry um I was there was like an emergency meeting I got involved because like the stakes were high going into q4 we didn't have this channel with the head of supply chain and with the as CEO of this business.

42:38And we just go through the channel and I'm able to see the interactions of how it escalated to this point because they talked about it consistently for 10 days in a row. And it's really easy to do an unemotional postmortem of what went wrong on our end and what we could have done better. So I think it's just like, it's good to log everything. It acts as a daily journal. It takes five minutes. So if people say it takes time, If they don't like it, it means that they're not working if they're remote, practically speaking. I'm going to be like politically incorrect, but like that's what it means.

43:11They just don't want the accountability because they're not putting in the hours. So yeah, fascinating approach, but that's what we do. This show is only sponsored by Applovin, S &P 500 mobile gaming ad platform. You guys know that I'm an Applovin defender. I spent in Q4 last year over$3 million on the platform of my own money. We drove amazing results on par with Meta. And now for the first time ever, they're opening up AppLovin to anybody. It's still invite only. You have to go to nineoperators.com slash AppLovin. We'll give you$5 ,000 in credit if you spend$5 ,000. It is a unique way to reach unique people.

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44:27Go to nineoperators.com slash AppLovin to get this ad credit, But also, the Nine Operators team is making step-by-step guides about how to be successful on the platform. We're going to have Black Friday, Cyber Monday webinars. We're going to walk through how to set up and start spending and just the best practices, tips, and tricks. All of that and more is available at nineoperators.com. You're listening to this right now. You run a business. You're interested in e-commerce. You're already spending money on Meta, Google, TikTok, wherever else. Time to add a new ad channel. Get access to$5 ,000 in free ad credit.

44:58get access to step-by-step guides about how to get this set up and get access to our Black Friday, Cyber Monday Q4 scaling webinar. All of that is available because of AppLovin at nineoperators.com slash AppLovin. We want to thank them for the support of the Titans episode formats. Thank you.

45:17You had said that like that when you kind of got caught with your, I'm going to really TLDR this, when you got caught with your pants down on inventory, it's like you had the one leg of the stool, you know, or one leg at the table. If you look at the whole portfolio today and you think like marketing mix and demand gen, what does that look like today? And like, how diversified do you go? Are there places that you're like, where are you looking to like build diversity now in demand gen? So you're not just reliant on one thing. Yeah, great question. So we have maybe, I tried to reconcile it before we got on this call reading the brief, but like I think we'll spend$75 million this year on our own businesses like asset level marketing spend obviously meta is like close to 30 million uh of that like give and take google maybe another 15.

46:10uh and then like influencer has actually come down a lot I didn't realize like we were at wow pumping 20 million 22 million a year on influencer I think this year will be 10 or 11, like roughly. And then the rest is coming from new nascent channels like Applovin. Like I think Applovin this year alone will be massive contributor for us in terms of channel mix. So I think for us right now, the name of the game is, you know, obviously doubling down on our channels and the biggest blocker right now is creative. so for both meta and applovin is just creative we all know that and it's a continuous process and you're trying to get better but the biggest unlock for us now in terms of efficiency per channel is localization it's just like going local in each market and providing an excellent experience like take linear for example 50 revenue is non-us so it's like we're in the globe like we are at the size right now where we should have five rare houses globally, but we do not have that.

47:21So we're in the process of setting that up. Two, we should be translating the website into 10, 11 different languages. We have not done that. Three, we should be localizing ads. Four, we should be hiring local influencers in these small markets. Just pulling these four levers alone should three, four X the business, in my opinion. Localization is so huge, Roman. So huge. So big. We got into the UK and the EU a few years ago now. And the UK has gone pretty well. English, right? Yeah, easy. Still different, but not as tough. And we had some early success in continental Europe. So we sort of hit a kind of wall at some point.

48:12and we're like, what's going on here? Well, what was going on is that we were doing everything in English. And so it was just kind of like, yeah, whatever. So we picked up the low-hanging fruit and then we've just very recently, like in the last six months, said, okay, we're going to localize the Dock region in Germany and we hired a country manager there. and like the improvement is is remarkable so um you you can do it like the cheap route and not localized but you're just gonna hit a ceiling exactly it's gonna come exactly exactly i think like i think that's like the the biggest if you're trying to go from like 50 million to 100 million plus in a really red ocean category like jewelry you have to pull these levers and like go local like that's what we're seeing right now so channel diversification is one like if I were to make an x and y axis channel diversification is like top priority um y axis is like okay localization and geography um and you kind of have to fill out that matrix um yeah I think like for us right now the fastest growing channel like it is for most people on Twitter is app loving I think the most misleading metric you're seeing is like I'm an investor in Norpeam and we use Norpeam for all of our businesses.

49:43I know they sponsor the pod shout out to Austin and his team. Uh, we, we get that weekly digest from Norpeam, right? Like we're, how much is being spent on different channels? I think it's a fantastic report. I hope, you know, Ireland, the producers can kind of snapshot the last week's report in here as people are watching, just so they know what I'm referencing. everyone should sign up to the north beam newsletter even if you're not using it frankly speaking just to get like a you know a sense of where the market is at what's really interesting there is like we'll say that of total budget spend four percent is app loving but we know that like a sub segment a small fraction of north beam's customers actually have access to app loving still like it's still a gated community right like it's still gated so what i'm looking at as a coefficient is for every dollar i'm spending on meta how much am i spending on applovin you know like that's the real relationship to look at it's not looking at how much is applovin off my total budget but it is what is the leverage point between meta and applovin because the you know I got this very strong feedback from Kathy when I was with her at Beanstalk.

51:01She's like, you guys suck at Creative for Apploving. You just suck. It's amazing. Thank you. Thank you for this gift. Feedback is a gift. Because I have a bunch of mentees who are crushing it on Apploving, like spending 100K a day. It's nuts. It's just unbelievable numbers on Apploving. Unbelievable. Unbelievable numbers. And we're not. I'm happy to screen share actually the nearest numbers from last month. I think it'll be useful for the audience. Like what I'm maniacally focused on right now is like, can we be 20 cents on the dollar? Can we be 30 cents on the dollar for every meta dollar? So if we're spending a dollar on meta, can we spend 20 cents on AppLovin?

51:41If we're able to do that, it's game changing. This is a cruel one day click with NorthBeam. The reason I'm focusing on last month is because everyone who knows how accrual works knows that there's some latency in the numbers. So I think looking at last month's numbers is more helpful than in September numbers. So we spent 1.139 million on marketing. Accrual attributed revenue is 1.7. I think we did like 3 million last month, like roughly give and take. Like summer is not a good season for jewelry, but you know, we did 3 million with 1.2 million in spend. Influencer spend has not been loaded here.

52:20So it's understated by maybe 100K, let's say. Don't quote me on this, but like rough estimates. But going to my point of like looking at the relationship between channels, right? So we know that we're spending 600K on Meta. It's going to lift Google by X amount. Like we're always going to have a 50 cent relationship with Meta, like roughly. I think we're objectively probably overspending on Google and underspending on Meta. But that's the rough relationship. What we're seeing with AppLovin right now is like we're spending$121K. Last month, we spent$121K. Roughly a fifth of what we spent on Meta.

53:01So going to the$0.20 mark I talked about and look at the return on ad spend for one day click. So I was at$0.48 with Facebook. With AppLovin, I'm at$0.62. And the only reason the media team was not spending more was because they were being conservative. because the month before we were not spending that much. Like AppLovin has been very volatile, like full disclaimer. I mean, I was the first one on the platform. I swear to God, the first month was like, I was like messaging Kathy, like, yo, what's going on? You're tanking my conversion rate. I actually have to report my numbers without AppLovin.

53:40Like that's how bad it was. Just like, don't worry, if we're training the algorithm, it's going to get better. And I'm seeing it get better month and month and month. Like I'm not getting sponsored to endorse AppLovin. And I just want to make that very clear. I'm just like a very big fan and a shareholder in the company. And I'm already at that 20 cent mark. What I'm trying to say is that a bunch of my mentees, this is why I do MentorPass, by the way, because I learn way more. You learn just as much as you can help. I weigh so much more than I do from like the big guys like yourselves. Like there's very, like with Jason and with you, Matt, I talk about HR issues.

54:17I talk about M &A issues. I don't talk about like how much are we spending on Max on, how much are we spending on Google Ads, how do I set up my feed, right? Like these young kids are all in it doing monster numbers. I've seen a lot of people have a one-to-one relationship. And that's when I know I'm underperforming. Obviously, there are being the game. Some of them are dropshipping, et cetera. So that's an exaggeration. But I think the biggest job to answer your question, Matt, about channel diversification is like the big question I'm asking myself going into 2026 is, can we spend 70 cents of a dollar for every meta on axon yeah sure pinterest like most underperforming dog in the world like i want to be an activist shareholder there because like that should be so much better should be printing for this business for linear for jewelry it's mental like yeah that should be the number two channel it should be higher than google just below meta i should be spending half a million a month on pinterest but i'm not and for the love of me I can't make it work so either I suck or the platform sucks the truth is probably somewhere in between basically in terms of channel identification that's it on Pinterest you don't suck you would think that Pinterest would be would be great for brands like us as well and it has so much promise and it's just like it's just not even close it keeps fumbling so the question for me with pinterest is just like it's a 23 billion market cap company axon is what the apple oven is like what 180 billion or whatever it is like something something ridiculous right and like how can someone who's peddling inventory in apps be so much bigger than someone who has like top shelf louis vuitton quality inventory ad inventory users so badly.

56:13Excuse my English, but it's just like a monster that that company is not 10 times bigger. And it's not because the three of us are not willing to spend. It's just because their algo and everything just doesn't work. It's ad platform. I mean, dude, Roman, I think I was saying this to you. TikTok is another one of those. The ad platform itself just infuriates me. Correct, correct. And I'm like, how come you have such incredible time on app and such a bad ad product? You know, this like coefficient that you're talking about, I talked about this on the other pod before, but when we launched Lomi, we actually figured out that we couldn't spend money on meta unless I was also spending money on TV and YouTube.

56:55Yeah. So we actually found this ratio of like for X dollars I put into television, I could put another Y dollars into meta and I had to step them up together. Like they were attached at the hip. There's a bunch of reasons for that. but I think like what you're hitting on is super valuable for people and consumer. Like the, I think the technical term for this is like media mix, but you don't need to be super fancy about this. Like what you're talking about, you don't look at, look at the data and get a good gut rate. I think you could do that though, Roman, because like even at your scale, you're an incredibly in the weeds operator.

57:32And I actually, I would say that like in all of our groups that we're in, that's probably a consistent characteristic amongst most guys and gals that we talk to right you've got to be an in the weeds operator for a period of time to be successful right like it has it has to be and then and then it becomes trade-offs of how do you delegate and how do you do it right and you still got to be in the weeds to an extent right because if you're not things just are not going to go as well as they should and that's that's the challenge right for for people like us who run pretty big businesses it's like and you also want to give people the uh the ability to get stuff done exactly i wouldn't give them autonomy and give them autonomy and let and and that means they are going to make mistakes but you got to be there for the teaching moment you know that's how i approach it with our team i'm always thinking about how do i how do i make this a teaching moment so it doesn't happen again but uh you We all make mistakes, but that aspect of being deep, deep, deep in the weeds.

58:34It is impressive how many people in the big dog chat and the other chat, our CEOs texting about, how much does this thing cost you? And they know. The big dog chat is so funny. It's so funny, man. It's like, how much are you guys paying for this? Does this agency says they work with Hexclad? Is this true? It's unbelievable. It's amazing. It's unbelievable. It's just unbelievable. We'll text each other about everything. I feel like every nickel and dime, which is amazing. That's how we should be operating your business. Yeah, I find it hilarious when there's like, how much are you guys paying for this tool?

59:12And somebody's like,$732. They don't even, it's like within seconds, they just know. And it's the funniest thing. And I'm like, dude, you're doing like$400 million a year. You know it's$732? dollars it's like this is the only industry where the founder negotiates every single contract you know like every single contract like in our chat like 100 the founders negotiate everything themselves okay so hang on though on this then as you've gotten a lot bigger as like the company's gotten more brands obviously more employees more more everything you've got more supply chain more all of it how do you uh sort of deal with the like i'm a player i'm a coach i'm a gm like you wear a lot of hats right like you're a shareholder you know you're an operator like how the hell do you manage this what's that zoom in zoom out look like there's no synergy between the companies there's no shared there are very little shared resources like barely any i'm struggling to think about what's shared we share our influencer database between the companies just to like you know get better booking rates that's the only significant meaningful synergy that i see in the business um not even finance no not even finance everything is decentralized yeah like trying to save like 50 60k in salaries on like an accountant for one of our businesses it just doesn't make sense.

1:00:43So I think we actually have everything decentralized. It's all run by the GMs. The only thing I really look at is marketing. I was going to say though, I was like the counter to your point there is like you are the shared resource. Yeah, exactly. You're in the weeds in marketing in every one of these brands. And I guess that goes to my question though. It's like how do you also play like coach and sort of GM at the same time that you're like I'm the CMO in these things? Yeah. So each business has a head of growth. As you guys know, hiring marketing talent is very, very hard. So we run a highly functioning daycare.

1:01:22That's what I call it. So we hire people with no work experience for marketing. first graduates they have to pass our analytics exercise which i think uh most people in finance could not um so it's it's like we check for logic and quantitative abilities they pass this test and we groom them you know my head of growth that's been with me for the longest has been with me for eight and a half years something like that like a long time right like not not a new kid on the block so we have like i probably have seven or eight deputies that on average has been with me for more than four years now that i've trained up from fresh graduates so i have that bench now like it's just the biggest ingredient has been time so i lean on them and each business has a head of growth um so i'm not doing all the work but i'll go to beanstalk and i had three big takeaways takeaway number one was like there's a bunch of kids in their 20s doing 100 million plus a year with tiktok shop not insane yeah tell me that didn't make you feel old you're so old so old so you're sitting down with them metab introduced me to one yeah they're doing like they're doing 100 million a year second fucking year of business 30 just insane just insane last year did 30 million right like so talking like crazy numbers so takeaway number one was like let's be serious about TikTok shop.

1:02:47The only brand that's serious about TikTok shop is Raycon. So we're going all in with Raycon on TikTok shop probably. But like all the other brands are not, right? Like we don't have the AOV, we don't have the characteristics. So do TikTok shop well for this one brand. Number two was within TikTok shop, I got to know this guy at Beanstalk. Was his name? Puneet Dada, like Guru Nanda. 300 million in a year on TikTok or something. Something ridiculous like that. Like crazy numbers. And he's like a 70-year-old gentleman who like does all the selling himself. It's incredible. Just incredible. I'll drop a link for the description box.

1:03:27Yeah, you got to send that to us. Yeah, it's crazy. Like I'm going to, you guys have to have him on the operators. He's so charismatic. He's sold two companies already for nine figures. 100 % bootstrap. Now he has his third company crushing it. So you guys should definitely have him on the pod. Do you make the connection all accordingly? Yeah, I will, for sure. You'll love talking to them. Second takeaway was like, okay, partnership ads on Meta. So, and the third takeaway, I can't remember, but, you know, usually what I'll do is I'll go out, talk to a bunch of founders, figure this stuff out, and then the team implements.

1:04:00And we're live with all these things now, right? Like, since Beanstalk.

1:04:06And is there, like, I'm listening to you talk about these kids and, like, what they're doing is insane. Like post Beanstalk, Maytab was showing, like talk, same thing, showing us like, look at the numbers these companies are doing. Is there something that stands out to you, like in your career so far that like at one point you thought this was just impossible and today you're like, oh, no, this is like a completely proved wrong. Like this is absolutely possible. Yeah, I think the Justin Kahn quote summarizes my whole career. Justin Conn, the founder of Twitch, is like, you know, first time founders fall in love with product.

1:04:45Second time founders fall in love with distribution. I think that that is so true. Like first business app launch was bags, horrible product. Second business app launch was like Raycon with Ray when it was doing like$100 a day. We went all in on AirBuds just because we saw the search volume of AirPods, right? Like it was just like, okay, let's jump on this like thing. so I'd say the biggest takeaway I've had now is like you know there is an element of luck but you know having relentless focus on distribution is going to give you a big unlock right like if you look at these kids they're crushing it not because of their product but no it's all distribution it's like they're finding new ways to reach people I would say like that's that's like if you can be early and be first you're going to do really well like the same thing with you know app love and like why is linear growing this year in large part axon played a big role in that right like being first really helps massively are you thinking much about ai and commerce right now yeah we have this huge work stream right now where we have external contractors create AI creatives for us.

1:06:03And the last two weeks, in the first weeks, I've actually seen stuff where I'm like, this is actually going to work in the ad manager. This is actually going to be revenue and profits. So it's the first time I've had that. So we're going all in. Like right now - Is that changing your mind on things a little bit? Yes. Yes, it is. It is. Like for sure. I don't know where I'm going to land on my opinion with AI, but like a couple of facts that I think is going to ring true. Number one, less than one, like 1 % of our ad spend are pure AI creatives. Maybe 3 % has AI amplification, like for lack of a better word, you know.

1:06:51Like let's say call it less than 5%. Do I think that when we sink again a year from now, that will be 30 % to 40 %? Absolutely. I have no doubt that like 30 to 40 % of my ad account is going to be AI creatives. That presents two questions. One, how do we invest in this, right? Like how do we get lucky again like I did with AppLove and Stock? Thank you, Darren, for introducing me to Kathy. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Number two is how do we operate under this like status quo, right? Like what do we do as operators? So number one is like the beneficiaries are going to be meta and app love it.

1:07:34It's not going to be Google. When I saw Nano Banana and Vio, I was just like, they're creating this all incredible tech and they don't have the demand platforms to absorb creative. Like YouTube paid ads, Matt, you're one of the very few people who grab that among my friends. Yeah, I know. YouTube is like an incredibly difficult place to... But when you do, it's huge. It's just insane. I mean, you saw my linear numbers. Last month, I spent$33 ,000 out of 1.1 million or whatever the number was, right? Like 1.2 million. 33 ,000 is like in the grand scheme of things. Like Google created Vio and Nana Badana, but they're not going to benefit from it.

1:08:12Like Meta and Applovin will because like the biggest bottleneck we started the pod with it is creative. Like channel diversification is just creative. Like that is the biggest bottleneck. So, our Fundment would leave, Meta and Applovin, and a couple of other companies will be huge beneficiaries of all this tech. And number two is like us as operators, right? Like, first time I saw the OpenAI demo when they came out with the, you know, ChatGPT, it was the first time I was grateful I was in e-com, because it was like people, you can't edit shit out of this book about it. I was like actually genuinely happy.

1:08:53It's the first time ever. So I think for me, the way I'm going to go about buying certain businesses, that's going to be part of the underwriting methodology. Like this year, I don't think we're going to buy a business, even though it's a great year to buy a business. Really? Yeah, we've been talking to people, but I don't think we're going to buy anything. Why? First of all, I want to swing bigger. I want to swing bigger. That's number one. Yeah, yeah. That's number one. So that really narrows down the field. Number two is I don't think we have a clear thesis on what's going to work. I think that's actually such an incredible lesson for people listening.

1:09:38When you're not very clear on what the next move is, the best next move is don't do anything. Learn to sit on your hands sometimes, guys. It's okay. Was it Naval's got that work like a lion thing? Like sometimes it's just full of lays around, you know, there's nothing to chase. There's nothing to kill. If you lay, if you lays around, that's when you know, you wait for the big swing to come. Yeah. Yeah. Full circle. I thought earlier in the pod, but yeah, it is. Yeah. What Roman, do you, what do you think the biggest problem facing sort of consumer is right now? Or maybe, maybe even forward looking if you've got an idea there.

1:10:20Yeah. I don't know how to answer that question fully, but like maybe we can talk about our data set. So we talked to 1 ,200 companies the last like in 24 months. Wow. I'm losing track, but like talking to 1 ,200 companies, personally, I talked to more than half of them just to give you an idea. So it's like on average two calls a day ramping up until the acquisition of the Utah company in July last year. so of those 1200 companies I would say probably 200 to 300 are out of business already half are like maybe 300-400 additional companies are really struggling are now going to go bankrupt but this is not crazy from a consumer standpoint if you look at just Shopify metrics that's the story of Shopify super low barrier to start super easy to go bankrupt Like my wife learned this when she worked at Square, like Block, sorry, like it's called Block now.

1:11:19When she worked at Square pre-IPO, the biggest thing, like I got so lucky, I got to see Jack Dorsey speak at the Christmas dinner. My wife brought me as plus one, such an eloquent speaker, right? Like incredible guy, like so charismatic, pre-beared, like when he was wearing this like Chinese collar trim. And I was just in awe of him because I think Ferguson just happened. And he's from Ferguson, I think. I don't want to say the wrong thing, but it hit close home to him. He was just such an eloquent speaker. But the biggest takeaway I took from him when he was giving the business update was small businesses go out of business.

1:11:57And I was like, wow, that's so obvious. But yes, small businesses go out of business. That's like the nature of the game. They power the economy, but they do go out of business and they start up again. But that's like where the cradle of entrepreneurship is. So I don't think half of the companies I talk to going into bankruptcy is like this dogma where it's just like, oh, the world is going under, our consumer is dead. What's most interesting is like the top five percentile of companies that I talk to. They're just crushing it. They're like us. They're just crushing it. so my job is to find these companies earlier and pay higher valuation and like get a foot in the door and not be like a venture investor but like be a growth equity investor and buy buy as i grow right like for nutrition kitchen there's a tiny company when i got involved like 1 million 1.5 million us dollars a year in revenue on the back of kobe we scaled to like 20 million run rate like we did 17 million i think in 2022 now it's like flat it's like too small of a business for me to own frankly speaking at this stage of my career but you know i bought into the company over time i bought 12 first now i own 60 but i like bought equity into the business over time i think i just need to do that for larger companies and i think the sentiment in consumer is that you still have these crazy outlier success stories you made a good point you made an interesting point just now actually paying up for something that you you believe is a good value early on that's that's why that's why deals don't happen and don't miss the boat like that people miss the boat if you look at private equity you look at venture um you know a lot of times just like a deal won't happen because they've got a calculator they've got a spreadsheet yeah We should pay this.

1:13:55I remember when Facebook bought Instagram. Yes, exactly. 100 % best example. The number was insane. I remember because I was walking up Third Avenue in Manhattan. And I'm like, what? I'm like, this number is absolutely insane. That's what Zuck is the goat, though. He's the goat. And this is like the inverse of, I'm always saying, take the money. When someone makes you an offer, just take it. Come on. You're going to fight over 5 %? I mean, what are you talking about? It's the same thing. I genuinely feel this. If I was on the investing side and I'm not, and I probably will never be, I've just seen too much of it as a banker, as a lawyer.

1:14:45I've done a thousand deals. And so everything you say about doing deals warms my heart in a way. but like i wouldn't want to have to probably more like heartburn not like it's like my god if just like just like pay up you know yeah exactly it's like it's like it's like my my buddy actually niles at hex glad is looking at buying himself a house right i'm like niles just just pay more like get a great house because it's your your location is great and it's gonna just just pay get something better, like overstretch it. And at the end of the day, you're going to see like it was such a smart move for you.

1:15:25And it's the same thing. People get so hung up on. Stop getting hung up on valuations, both as a seller and as a buyer. Like you just, you miss opportunities. Like if you know it's a good company, like just pay up for it. Just do it. There's, you know, it took me way too long to get to this point. Like we talked about the early in pod, like what Warren Buffett said, like at one point you just have to grow up and pay a higher multiple i think that like really really resonated with me there's like one company i'll send it in the big dog's chat because i'm going to do an spv for it with no fees for my friends but like there's one company that's just like pocket ship that i think is going to be like a hex clad size company it's like i'm doing 50 million now i like the company so much i buy all their stuff it's a consumable I sent the founder an email he tried to sell me one of his previous companies he kind of dismissed me for this company I was like dude let me invest something I was just like flying out and be like yo let's do this now you saw the guy that gave you the money's playbook yeah exactly show up at his doorstep you know just be there every day flowers we're doing this deal whether you like it or not because I just like that company so much At this point in time, I just know it's going to be a banger.

1:16:46It's going to be like a decacorn. It's very profitable.

1:16:52Again, I'm just going to go in with the mentality of being okay paying 15, 20x earnings. I don't really care because you have growth. There were dozens of people, dozens of firms that actually could have done that with us years ago. and they literally, they're all like, wow, we missed, right? And they could have been, this would have been absolute, like the best deal in their portfolio because they got hung up on some multiple - This is the price to pay though, guys. Like to be patient and wait for larger swings means you're just going to miss a lot of them too. Like it's so, it is the flip side to that approach.

1:17:35But I think it's like leaning into, So, you know, I've told like in a big dog shop, maybe don't want to put it here for my family's sake, but like how long I was metastalk, right? Oh, dude, that's so funny. Yeah, my biggest mistake like was I sold at the top when iOS happened. Like I literally sold at the top. I remember messaging a ton of DTC founders being like, I'm out of here. Everyone is like, have capital gains. Like, dude, move to Hong Kong, zero capital gains. I'm out of here. I just dumped all my stock. then I bought at close to the bottom like it was like I'm like godlike trading right like it's like in my obituary now it's going to say first advertiser on Axon prior to that it would be like Roman plot met at the bottom now my obituary is changing I told my wife it's not going to be loving father loving husband no no no it's going to be first advertiser on Axon right like that's going to be my obituary but my biggest regret then was like i was buying at eight ninety dollars 110 dollars 150 dollars and i remember the stock going to 300 and i was like this is not 110 anymore like i'm over paying which is such like i fundamentally believe that stock is gonna go above a thousand dollars this is financial advice you can come sue me if you if it doesn't go above a thousand that's how conviction i have it's just like meta is not going to go away 22 of all global bandwidth goes through that and it's worth three trillion you can't tell me that okay let's say the whole world economy is is a hundred trillion let's say the whole world economy is 100 trillion the internet is at least 30 of it you cannot tell me that meta is only 10 of 30 trillion like you just can't you know whatever the numbers are like i just fundamentally believe that company is going to continue to grow but I'm sidetracking here it goes back to the narrative one thing is to miss a swing number two is you take the swing but you don't swing you just go in and you just do a little patty honestly with meta I should have just been way more aggressive I should have like my house you were so insane already because you did it with App Lovin that's okay i did without exactly exactly jason exactly that was my redemption that's why it tastes so good jason that's why it just tastes so good it's just like next level i was taking my wife you know my my little cute petite asian wife was shaking her it's like i told you so i told you so like redemption roman yeah exactly dude it's learning it's learning from your mistakes too right yeah understand you weren't gonna whiff again yeah but it's just like you know just like taking that bat and going at the ball that hard like there's nothing that tastes so good like being right like you know like just having that taste so just being like yes i was right i got i got a good one yeah i got a good one so like you clearly uh in your current company you want to take bigger swings that is a thing 100%.

1:20:49Is there something else? Just think magic wand. Is there something else in the company right now that you would love to change about it? Wow. Great question. There's a bunch of my brands that I want to sell that I think are just not the right fit for me anymore because I'm not the right owner. Take Nutrition Kitchen. Barely makes up 5 % of my asset level revenue. like why am I in it still like why am I in it still we have 90 plus market share in Hong Kong and Singapore we're the factor like what you have in the US factor we're the factor of Hong Kong and Singapore we're in Dubai too but we're you know one of the smaller players there so that's a business I just simply want to part ways with because it's just like you know I'm not the right owner so that's the number one thing I want to change is like free up a ton of cash by selling these incredible assets because to a strategic buyer, they have a lot of value taking all of that cash and doubling down on something big.

1:21:54So that's the one thing I want to change. And that's actually the main thing I'm focused on, right? Yeah. Dude, that's great.

1:22:03Okay. So before we wrap, I want to move us to the Titan 10. Now, these are 10 questions we're asking every guest that comes on and I want you to answer them like as fast as you can. So part of this is like, do you have these at the ready? Part of it is also like, what's your gut on them? Okay. Okay, Roman, you get a desert island dashboard. This is to manage your business. What are the three metrics on that dashboard that tell you how things are going? EBITDA, free cashflow and inventory days. amazing okay you also get to take a book but it can't be about business uh chasing daylight by eugenio kelly okay why tell me about that it's the former ceo of kpmg usa he gets diagnosed with cancer has like 180 days left to live and he writes about how he's wrapping up his life and it's an incredibly humbling book because it puts everything into perspective and you realize that most of life is there are a few things that matter oh it's so good i'm gonna give that a read thanks man it's really good super cool what's uh what is one contrarian belief about business that you people think you're crazy for micromanaging is bad like I knew you were going to say that too.

1:23:32It's good. I think it's good. Micromanaging is not bad. It's a very healthy thing. Having a bunch of young kids roaming around the office off leash just to be as contrarian as possible is blasphemy, should be illegal, and you should be shot as an owner. I love it. You should really train your young people and keep them on leash. Okay. I'm going to switch to the other one. All right. So on the micromanagement thing, what is the single most important word in leadership to you? Assertiveness. This is so different. I love this. Okay. Then what is the most important word in business? Cash flow.

1:24:18Okay. What's your favorite meal of the day and why?

1:24:26dinner because i have it with my kids love it i had to think about that one actually i had to think about that one no no i'm the same i love having dinner with my wife again it's it's the best all right most overrated growth tactic right now in consumer wow good question um

1:24:50wow that's a tough one i can't think of one to be honest um nothing though rated to you i just feel like you know there's so much noise on x of people saying all this small tactical stuff and i feel like you need to zoom out and just spend more on meta like spend way more meta and uh everything else is noise unless you're doing my next question is like my next question was what's the most underrated is that just spend more money on meta just stop running around in circles just spend more meta once you're at like five thousand dollars a day on meta start looking at other channels but like get to that first right like okay i think that's a big milestone for most people very cool man that's all i got roman that thank you guys i uh i super appreciate the time and it's fun to get some of these like stories and color um yeah Roman, thanks for coming on, man.

1:25:46Jason, thanks for being here and not talking that much. It's kind of refreshing. But seriously, Roman, this was a lot of fun, man, getting all the color from your very storied career. Awesome. Thank you.