Shoveling Sh*t: Entrepreneurs’ Secrets to a $700M Exit with Michael & Kass Lazerow

27:10But I feel like, honestly, a lot of marriages would not survive that. Like you would take it out on each other. You would cut your losses in every way and just start from fresh or you just wouldn't be able to get along anymore. You'd be scared. One person would say, look, Mike, you should get a job. The other person would be like, no, no, we got to start this business and move to a smaller apartment. Like these are real critical things. I mean, so it wasn't easy because we were now, we started golf.com when we were dating. I would not recommend that, although it's not impossible, but Hey, you want to go out on a date?

27:45And then like less than a year later, like let's start a company together. We then just, we got married in October of 99, right before everything fell apart. We're trying to get our feet as a married couple and as business partners and as business people, right? Because we're learning business together as we're trying to learn marriage, thinking about starting a family. And Cass, you may have forgotten this, but there was a woman who really saved me named Nancy Randleman, who's a therapist in Chicago. Yeah. Because I was as unaware of how I was impacting Cass of any person I'd ever met. And so I was both not present, I was shining the turd, meaning like if things weren't going well, it's like, oh, it's going great.

28:31Don't worry about it. I was dismissing her feelings. I wasn't being vulnerable. I was like a young dude, right? I was 25 when we got married. And so I didn't know anything about myself, most importantly. And I would encourage everyone, seek out people to educate you about your weaknesses, to give you constructive feedback, and then take action based on that. And I remember sitting in Nancy Randleman's office by Wrigley Field after I got like parking spot, which was hard on Cubs games and crying because I was not only an awful business person because we were failing, but I was an awful husband.

29:09And Cass kept saying like, stop shining the turd. Like, I need you to be present. I need you to listen to me. And that's been a 30 year journey of self-awareness. But like Cass, at that moment, were you thinking, hey, this is on shaky ground. This might not work out. I don't think the business was why I would have ever had doubts about Mike and me. I think it would have been more about how we communicated, right? So the business, for some reason, and maybe it's because I had blinders on, like I knew Mike was the person who complimented my business strengths like perfectly. and I think being a newly married couple, you know, everything gets amplified when you work together, right?

29:54Because we weren't like just seeing each other at the end of a workday, we were seeing each other 100%. So we were trying to figure that all out all at once, like Mike said, but my doubts were about how we were going to figure out how to get to a better place. It was never about like, oh my God, this business has ruined our relationship. What Mike was saying, though, of like, you know, not really communicating, always maybe being too overly optimistic and you knew he wasn't being forthright. Like, did you ever question whether that would repair itself? yes i mean you always question it and also remember it's easy for me to look back now with 28 years behind us and kind of have more faith but when you're building something and it's only been one or two years or at the time when we got married three years like everything is doubtful right like you have doubts about like oh my god is he ever going to tell me the truth or is he ever going to be present like he said and i'm sure i provided a lot of you know behaviors that caused him doubts.

30:59I don't think back then my doubts were as big as everybody might think they should be. I don't know why, but I think that the bond that we had created over the three years of dating and then getting married strengthened us. And I think Mike knows very well now that I am relentless. Like I am like a bulldog. And when I know that he can improve on something, I want him to improve. And so I think that's how I treat myself. And so I don't think I ever looked at like, oh my God, this marriage is not going to work. I'm going to be like, I'm going to run him into the ground if he doesn't listen to me because I know he can get there.

31:45And were there any points during this time that you had fun, like go out to a movie, go out to a party and just go dancing. Yeah, totally. We had great friends. Like all of Mike's best friends from college, they all were there. And we had belly laughs upon belly laughs, playing beer pong. We would go to shows. That's when I actually liked music back then. Seth was doing ImprovOlympic at the time and waiting tables. So Seth Meyers, I was living with when I met Cass. Yeah, we graduated Northwestern together. He's godfather of our daughter. Yeah, I didn't know that until I read the book. Yeah, and so he was working at the Twisted Lizard, which was an epic Mexican joint.

32:26So good. In Lincoln Park, which we loved. And we would then go see him on Monday nights at ImprovOlympic doing his improv stuff. He wasn't, at the time, good enough for Second City, so he got rejected. Pickups and pickups. Don't forget that one. He had a one-man show. And so we did have some fun. And that fund was replaced by kids a few years later because you can't really do these companies and parent and go out every night. But what's interesting is at the time, when you're in any relationship, you don't have the confidence. And so although right now Cass says that she never doubted some of this stuff, to me, my experience was if I don't get this together, I'm going to lose the love of my life and the best business partner I could ever ask for.

33:12And I couldn't help myself. like a lot of guys and you know so it felt very existential to me like if i don't get myself help and figure this out like you know fast forward and i don't think there's much i can do for cas is like what's called she's pot committed right like we're getting serious 30 years later um and so we've settled into a nice system of communication and trust and fun and you know we We not only love each other, but we like each other. We're going to be empty nesters in the fall, and we're so excited about free time together. But the early days, it was not easy, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs that we're talking to felt the same way.

33:59By the way, I think the reason I dive into a lot of this stuff is I don't think people realize how critically important this is for success. I mean, of course, there are a lot of successful people who have divorces and multiple dramas in their lives and so on. But like, take when you sold golf.com and you guys personally made$3 million. $3 million in New York City and being entrepreneurs, people think that's easy street, but it's not. Like, particularly if you're going to now reinvest that$3 million into starting a new business, you kind of have to, if you get a divorce, your money's gone, first off.

34:35And you're starting from scratch. Like, it's over. Well, don't forget taxes. taxes took half of that right taxes legal kids yeah you kind of have to know how to like leverage that initial dollars into future success which is of course you did take risks i mean you started off buying you know the ace bucks brand and games and and you took risk and so on i just point this out is that this is a very important part everyone has a different story with this but your story is very inspirational on the marriage side. I want to ask, there's one kind of anecdote you talk about in the book, which I thought was fascinating.

35:12Zoom, S-U-M-E, a company you weren't involved in, but they basically were like, I don't know, like a mobile food truck for pizza, something like that. And they raised$500 million. So, you know, this is a chapter that we're talking about kind of different ways to approach markets. And we believe in very large markets and giving customers what they want. People were surprised we did Liquid Death. Well, there's the building block of life. I wanted to ask you about it. Liquid Death is like the best company on the planet. So put a fork in that for a second because I want to ask about that. But Zoom, tell me.

35:48Yeah, and so we love pizza. Who doesn't love pizza? But we also love it as a business. You have companies that you can launch a pizza place for about$250 ,000 in New York City if you are just moderately successful. Average pizza, you'll do a million dollars of revenue at 30 % margin. So you're basically making your money back in year one. And if you market, and we have an idea to market, we're going to open up pizza places. Cass hasn't agreed to it, but we are going to do it. You can then do, hey, your first pizza party for your office is free on us, right? Because a pizza doesn't cost anything.

36:24Now, if you want to approach the pizza space, there are a lot of ways to do it. open up a pizza parlor, right? That's what we're going to do. Number two is you can provide picks and shovels to pizza places. That's what our friend Alir, who started a company called Slice does, and he sells a lot of picks and shovels to independent pizza makers to help them compete with Domino's and all the delivery guys. What's the picks and shovels in the pizza business? You need boxes. You need a point of sale system. You need ingredients. You need all this stuff, which they provide bulk buying for and make it easy, the most important thing they do is they will provide your delivery services.

37:03Because if you're a mom and pop pizza shop, you may not want to go to eBay and buy a truck and deliver pizza. You are better off working with Seamless and all the different sites and tap into their distribution and Slice helps you optimize all of that. And he's built a very big business. He's well on his way to becoming a billionaire. We love Alir. We think he's one of the great entrepreneurs, not only here, but where he was born in Macedonia. And he did something that he knows because his family was in the pizza business and he knows how difficult it is to run a pizzeria and especially a modern one.

37:44The third way to compete in pizza is you create a new product and try to change behavior. So this company, what we're talking about, Zoom, they raised$500 million. So it's half a billion dollars to create a truck that the pizza would cook on the way to your house. So when you got it, it was fresher, okay? They couldn't figure out how to get the pizza to not slide out of the oven when they drove. And literally they should have just put half a billion dollars into a pizza oven and then moved on, right? Lost every cent in this stupid fucking company. So if you can attack a market with a product and service that makes sense and it's a big market, you can create a business.

38:32You don't need to reinvent the world. And that's what that section is about. I love this concept of there's multiple ways to slice a trend, say. So with pizza, you could start a pizza parlor. By the way, you could take a more financial engineering point of view. You can do a roll-up of pizza parlors. You could buy a bunch of pizza parlors in a category or across the country or whatever, and then get synergies that way and go public and so on. Kind of like a Papa John's did. Or you could do this picks and shovels, whether it's software or, hey, we're basically pizza company in a box. Like you started a pizza place.

39:10We'll just handle all your stuff. Just sign up for us. It's a subscription. will get you boxes, sauces, software, the whole thing. And then the new product idea is hard. What I will give the Zoom, and it's spelled Z-U-M-E, what I'll give them credit for is they raised$500 million. And so this reminds me also of April 2000. So at that time, I had just raised$30 million for a company that made wireless software apps. So we were a little ahead of our time. We were talking to everybody about going public, but then of course, like you guys, the IPO market fell apart. and my big regret, I still had$30 million cash in the bank.

39:47I should have just bought a chain of gas stations and just been profitable until this internet thing came back because I knew it would. And I think people lose track of the fact that money has value, that if you raise it so easily, it doesn't mean it doesn't have value. Like you should always respect the money, you should respect profits, you should respect services that provide value and you don't necessarily need to respect what you told investors if you think you have a better idea to stay in business? Like, i.e., buying a chain of gas stations would have worked out better than what would have happened ultimately to me in that business.

40:22Well, we basically are sharing that idea in the book. And so we, you know, these cheat codes that we put together over 50, it's not for venture capital businesses. This is for companies that are pizzerias, salons, service businesses. and it's back to basics. It's, you know, how do you pick a co-founder? How do you create company culture? How do you moneyball people in the right position? Yeah, and so I like the moneyball chapter, which is basically, you know, it's kind of like what John Doerr says, measure what matters. You have to measure, as boring as it is, you have to measure your financial metrics to know where you should double down, where you should back off, where you need to hire, where you need to fire, where you need to get customers and so on, which is basically what you did throughout the business of Buddy Media.

41:10That's right. We were in an event today, and Mike and I shared that one of the great little cheat codes is every time you raise money, lay off people. It's a perfect time to lay off people. It's a time to figure out how to reorganize your life and make sure that everyone there matters as you move forward. It's not the time to sit and within seconds hire people. first see if everyone's doing their job. How do you fire people? I have a hard time doing that. You have to be really direct, James. You have to start off and just say the one phrase that I always say is, unfortunately, today will be your last day.

41:50Just get that out. You have to be kind and you have to have empathy. And if you really want to be a good leader and a good person, you have to then teach them what they failed to do. You have to be willing to have an uncomfortable conversation They might be upset, angry, tears, and really help them for their next job. What if they keep arguing with you? Like, what if they say, no, but I did that. But no, I'm willing to do that. Like, give me one more chance. I can call people back faster. Thank you so much. I appreciate what you're saying. But today will be your last day. Yeah. And I see you're the one doing this.

42:27Mike can't do this. Mike's not doing it. I did it once. And the guy I went to fire got a raise and a bigger title because he did what you just said, James, and he made a very convincing argument. I know. It's hard. Basically, if you're a salesperson, you can be easily sold. And I'm like a salesperson at heart and I'm easily sold. So you have to know this about yourself. Like when I'm looking at a deal, for instance, I'll go into the deal with a friend of mine and I already know I'm not going to like this deal. I will tell my friend, they're going to convince me to invest money in this deal. After the meeting, you have to tell me what I just said because I'm going to forget it.

43:05And that technique has worked for me. It saved me money.

43:24I'm just curious. Why did you invest in Buddy Media? We didn't have a plan that made sense. We didn't know each other that well. You somehow said yes. And I remember thinking like, really? Like, did you really say yes? Like, do you really want to do this? Like, that seems crazy. I'll tell you exactly why. And by the way, I then wrote about it in a book in 2008, well before you guys were successful. I wrote about it in the Financial Times, almost assuming you were going to be a success for all the reasons why I said yes. For one thing, when we met that first time, you wanted to give me advice or even be the CEO of a company I had just started called Stockpicker.

44:00And you gave me all these ideas. And I've told you the story, but you gave me all these ideas. And I stole every single one of them without, of course, hiring you as CEO, or I didn't need to take any investment or anything. And you were cool with it. And all the ideas were great. They all worked. And the other thing is I loved the concept of gaming on Facebook. I had a lot of faith in you as an entrepreneur, just from our meeting and from the reasons I said. But I'll tell you a really important thing, and this motivates the way I invest to this day. Peter Thiel and Mark Pincus were investing. So if someone smarter than me is investing, like as you point out in the book, Peter Thiel was on the board of Facebook and you were setting up a Facebook marketing company.

44:41Mark Pincus was the leader of all Facebook games and had a billion dollar company doing that. So they clearly knew the Facebook ecosystem and they were putting money with you. So I think to myself, what am I going to do? If I ran into Peter Thiel, am I going to say, whoa, whoa, Peter, are you an idiot? How could you invest in, you invested in Facebook. That seems pretty good, but how could you invest it? But like, no, of course he's going to be smarter than me in this. And so to this day, I only really invest if someone smarter than me is also side by side with me. So like if Warren Buffett, I'm just going to make an example.

45:16If he invests in IBM at a hundred and now IBM is at 80, I'm not going to say Warren Buffett's an idiot. I'm going to say, oh, I can maybe buy shares of IBM at a discount to where Warren Buffett bought them. And that's essentially what was happening here. Probably wouldn't have invested in a later round, but in the round that Peter Thiel was going in, I'm in. Well, it's interesting because why I love stock pickers so much was you put that in motion in the public markets. Yes. I was religious about this idea. Yeah. You're scraping kind of all the filings from the leading investors and basically say, hey, do you want to invest like all these hedge funds and all these great investors here it is and it was the beginning of like the big data movement online where you could like create not proprietary but unique data sources and monetize them and i thought that what you were doing was just gonna be hugely successful i didn't know how close you are with kramer and you know how the deal would get done like you sold it right afterwards yeah i sold i basically started and sold it within four months something like that Which is amazing.

46:19But perhaps I, you know, jumped the gun so fast. I'm a seller of businesses. I have never done like what you did. I mean, okay, I've built businesses too over years, but I'm more interested in building and selling and then having the next idea. But of course, that is ultimately what you did now. And you've been running a VC fund where you invest in good ideas. I wanted to figure out, like you mentioned earlier, trends are your friends, essentially. What are the trends you see right now for entrepreneurs? I think actually it's a fairly difficult time for entrepreneurs because let's just say AI is a big trend, but it's very unclear what's going to become quickly commoditized in the AI world.

46:57And this is just one example. I'm saying AI, but there's other examples. Yeah, so it's never been a better time than now to start a company, both because of opportunity and lack of competition for your time. So if you think you're going to go to law school and become a partner at Simpson, Thatcher, any of these firms, it's just not happening. So these firms are going to deal with AI. They have too many partners already. The only way to make it an illegal business or accounting is if you're a business development person who brings in business. And so we're all entrepreneurs. You can admit that to yourself today and get up from your desk and start a business.

47:38or you could ignore that and be left behind because you will be replaced at some point, either by another human or by a machine. And so it's never been easier to launch a business and never harder to launch a venture business. We moderated a dinner last night and these are all AI entrepreneurs building what's called vertical applications. So they're not building the language models like ChatGPT and Claude. they're building applications on top of them like we did on Facebook. And there was one who does like AI interviewing for staffing firms. And I'm like, okay, that's cool. How many competitors do you have?

48:21He's like 38 known competitors who've been funded. The reason they have 38 competitors is because it's not rocket science to build an AI interviewing app. No matter how many features you put into it, it's just not rocket science. Anybody can do it. and not only not rocket science, the AI will guide you through how to build it. So please go to Lovable or any of the AI platforms and just build an app for your family and it'll show you how to set up GitHub, how to connect everything to it. And it's super easy. Now, he also has over a million dollars of annual recurring revenue. And I said, listen, the bad news is I don't think that you're going to get funding as a venture business.

49:01The good news is I think you can build a$10 million business that throws off$7 million a year and you could have the best life you've ever imagined. And so we're having a, it's a crisis of venture capital. Venture capital is dead as we know it. I say that as a venture capitalist today. Entrepreneurship has never been brighter. And pick a problem that exists that you know and solve it. And that's the easiest way. And if the problem is there's no good pizza places on your block, start a pizza place. If the problem is you have nowhere to get a haircut, start a place to cut hair. Now you're telling me.

49:41Yeah. So, I mean, I just think that like, and I'm reminded of this every day because, you know, this morning we met an entrepreneur who we love named Ben Van Leeuwen at an event. He came up after us and, you know, he didn't know how much I knew about his business because I've studied it. Like, he had very little money. he bought a truck off of eBay to sell ice cream in Brooklyn. And he just took like water sugar, milk, sugar, flavoring, whatever it is, it goes into ice cream. And he developed a cult following today. Fast forward, he has 70 stores, very profitable. And he has a life that's just amazing.

50:21I know that store. They're the best ice cream. Yeah. Yeah. And so the other one is pop-up bagels, right? You think you can't reinvent a business. Some guy comes around and invents a bagel that blows your mind off. And it's like, wow, he just did that. But it's hard to ideate. Like it's easy to say, oh my gosh, every problem has been solved. Everything else is niche or too small. What's a big problem that you've seen recently that you would invest in? We like healthcare a lot. I think that one of the things that Mike and I are very excited about is how AI can help with all the different research out there that is clinical and trial research.

51:03And we just think health companies, it's just a huge market right now. Do you agree, Mike? Yeah. I mean, I think every part of healthcare needs to be re-imagined. I think only way we can balance the budget is really getting healthcare costs in order. By the way, Wilbur Ross just told me this yesterday. Wilbur Ross, former Secretary of Commerce, basically said people underestimate how much of a surplus in the economy this could create if healthcare costs are brought under control. Yeah, 20 % of it is administrative costs. And you have on one side all these software companies that are helping hospitals and patients try to figure out what should they be doing.

51:46and then on the other side if you look at kind of how you read like any sort of radiology report like a lot of its machines on the other side you have software companies helping insurance companies figure out how not to pay for stuff and it's like this battle between like payers and providers if you just got rid of the paper in the system it's going to give doctors time back and get you know costs out of the system but i think that's just like the tip of the iceberg how we educate our kids, how we spend our money, how we invest our money. Sports is going through a revolution right now. Co-owners of a few smaller sports teams that are just entertainment properties that have been very profitable.

52:29Okay, so let's take basketball. This is kind of a franchise situation where basketball has been growing nonstop for the past 50 years. So if you buy a piece of a basketball team now, you're going to sell it for a profit five years from now, almost certainly. Same thing for many other popular sports. Maybe there's new sports like pickleball, who knows? But that's out of the reach of the average person. So let's just brainstorm. So solving a problem, what about fractionalizing sports team ownership? And is that something that's possible? Yes, it's happening. It's a company called Commonwealth that basically started as a crypto company and you buy shares in different properties.

53:09They've now won a Kentucky Derby with their horse. So thousands of people own a part of this horse. And two years ago, they won the Derby. Now, you know, that's now going to go to funding golfers and tennis players who need money to practice. And I imagine it's going to be fractional ownership of teams, but the vast majority of teams are not the major kind of NFL, NBA, MLB teams. A lot of the entertainment properties in sports are minor league baseball. We own a pickleball team with Gary Vaynerchuk. We own a high stakes par three golf team that competes for big money under the lights, just par three.

53:53We just won in a tournament too, by the way. And that was a six figure acquisition, right? And now they're getting TV deals and people like the format. They had concerts at night and it's a party atmosphere. It's entertainment. And okay, so what else? I I agree with that on sports and with your perspective on AI. Like what else are you guys in? We love the pet space. Really? Pets are the new kids. I'm all in on my pets. I love them. They're my favorite children. And we love the pet space. I think there's a lot of noise in it right now, but I think people spend enormous amounts of money on their pets.

54:33So we love it. Yeah. And one of the, like, when you look at the pet space, I'm not talking about just doing like products, but like, you know, I've always wanted to launch like an AI pet psychic, like upload a photo or video of your pet, get an instant reading of like the pet, their energy, their thoughts, their future, and just charge like 10 bucks per reading, right? That's really funny. You should try it, by the way. That would take literally one day to create. Believe me. As soon as this book is done, I'm going to be launching a business every day. But I had another business, you know, what was it called?

55:09mama money back, which is like, you just hire detail savvy moms who use AI and the phone to fight for health claim money you're owed. That's a great idea. Mike's been watching me over the last 30 years fight the insurance companies on claims. And it doesn't matter what insurance carrier it is. I know all of the codes and I know what they're going to do. And I know how they pass you off. And I know that whole process. And I've taught a lot of other of our moms to do the same thing. And I was like, gosh, we should just make an army of moms that get money back for people and just take a like small portion.

55:50That's a great idea. There's already legal slash AI sites that fight your traffic tickets. Why not take all your knowledge, put it into an AI combined with the AI already knows all the rules of every company and state. Like you can make an AI that does this. Yeah, totally. That's interesting. There's so many like ideas. Why do you invest in, I love liquid death just because the idea is one of those things where like, damn, why didn't I think of that? Like just put water in a beer can and call it liquid death. Like, is there more to their success than that? I'm sure there is, but why did you invest?

56:22I can tell you when Mike brought it to me, James, I was like, are you fucking kidding me? This is water in a can. and I went to sleep. He's like, just sleep on it. And I woke up the next day. I'm like, wait a second. And we knew Mike Cesario, right? He worked with Gary V for a long time. And just looking at the marketing, because I like thinking about how products make people feel. I was like, this is going to be incredible. This is going to be like American Girl doll, but on steroids. Yeah. And I was all in. It's completely cool is the only word I could think of. It's made not drinking cool everywhere you go.

57:03I love that. People are putting liquid dead tattoos all over themselves. I mean, think about that. Yeah, that's incredible. I don't know where the company stands right now, but I'm assuming that investment is doing well. Yeah, I mean, we're registered investment advisors. We can't talk too much about results, but what's publicly been reported is it's now a unicorn and it sells a lot of water. what we like about all... So we have something in a book called The Go Gauge, which is like we boiled down to all startups to six concepts. Oh, yeah. Thank you for bringing this up. And we use Liquid Death as kind of an example.

57:43And one of the big parts of that is how many customers are there going to be? Not just market size, but like how many actual customers will buy this? Like the golf industry, everyone says it's 80 billion, but unless you loan a golf course, you're not really going to tap into that revenue rate. And we looked at it, we're like, man, the largest non-alcohol market is water. And do we really like Fiji and all these things out of a plastic bottle? Right. And so I saw this can, which is, you know, this is their grapefruit one I'm holding up to the camera, what they call grapefruit. And I saw the white can and I'm like, that's cool.

58:22And then we used to be, we're still in the music festival business, That year before it launched, I took it to Bonnaroo in Tennessee, which we were part owners of before we sold it to Live Nation. And people were taking the cans and after they drink it, they would refill it with water because they loved the can. Wow. And I remember thinking, wow, this is happening. And you had all these hot chicks and young people. And I was just like, man, oh man, this is cool. So walk me through the Go gauge about when is a business a good idea? And you could use Liquid Death. you could use other example, like what's, what are the six things and how do you check the box?

58:58And you have to check the box on all of them. I mean, we think it's better if you do, but I think a lot of businesses don't necessarily see all of them at the beginning, but it's very simple. It's what's the product. You need to be able to say like, what it is in a second. And so for Liquid Death, it was, you know, a health product, water, marketed like a product that's bad for you that is trying to get plastic out of the ocean. So it was on a mission. It's in an aluminum can. Then it's, why is it different? So, okay, like it's got to be different to be like a business. And so for Liquid Death, it was kind of how it marketed and how it made people feel much different than Fiji and the other ones.

59:44People don't get like Fiji tattoos. We thought this was a brand that people would love. and then it's a customer and we love the wellness space and so the third one is like how many customers are there and this is first of all water is a you know 60 billion dollar a year market you have you know beer drinking at an all-time low you have wellness picking up we thought this was just a great wellness product then it comes down to sales and marketing which is the number four, which is just how people are going to find out about it. Liquid Death was started by a creative director, Mike Cesario, who worked at Netflix and Vayner Media.

1:00:25And his whole thing was, I want to do stuff that my customers at the agency wouldn't let me do. And stuff like, you know, he started a country club that only way to get in is you sold your soul to the company, right? that he did a, someone commented online that this stuff tastes worse than back sweat. He went out and hired a comedian named Fat Zach and had people lick Zach's back after the sauna and compare it to a sip of liquid death. And 10 out of 10 Americans thought that liquid death tasted better than Zach's back sweat. It's brilliant marketing. What was the, like, obviously this idea rests completely, at least initially on marketing.

1:01:10What was his initial marketing that you think set it on fire or convinced you that this marketing will work? I mean, the thing that got me is he had a can and on the can, it said something like, inside this can is a proprietary technology that when you drink it, it reaches down your throat, it grabs thirst and it strangles it to death. And then the thirst hops out of your body and it stomps on the thirst to make sure that it murders your thirst forever. right and it was like such a a cheeky thing now we funded it in 2019 it launched in really march of 2020 which coincided with the pandemic we did not think that collab between a water product called death water and the pandemic was a great collaboration but we were able to get through that and the rest is history.

1:02:05So the last two that I'll talk about is just kind of delivery. How are you going to get the product to customers? And then we don't do big business plans for new companies. We just look at the financial model. We say, does this model pass the smell test on a napkin? Well, let's talk about number five for a second. And again, I want to mention our focus on liquid debt. But to sell a bottle of water in a store, you have to get shelf space. And that's very difficult. Coca-Cola has a lot of shelf space in every store. And even Whole Foods, it's done regionally. So you have to go region by region. And there's already a lot of healthy protein drinks, energy drinks.

1:02:45It's hard to get shelf space. And that's the key. As software entrepreneurs, we had a GoGauge before Liquid Death that had five things in it. We added delivery because it's been so difficult at Liquid Death. And if we knew, frankly, if we knew about the CPG space, what we know today, we may have never done the deal because they were making, they were taking Austrian spring water, putting it in a can in Austria, putting it on a truck to get to a train, to get to a boat, to get to another truck, to get to a train, to get to a wholesaler that then sells it to distributors and then retail. So it's been a battle, but now that we are mature and we've onboarded or at least brought into the country all the manufacturing, it's now doing incredibly well.

1:03:39Well, look, I loved the concept of the GoGage. I meant to bring that up earlier in the show, but we were having so much fun talking about other stuff. I'm glad we brought it up, though. And look, I've known you guys for a long time. I've made money because of you guys. Thank you very much. I'm always loyal to anybody who makes me money. And I like to think that, you know, we don't see each other, obviously, a lot, but I'd like to think that we've been friends over this time. Yes. And, you know, your book was great. Shoveling Shit, a love story about The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success. And I'm glad you guys wrote a book because I know, at least, Mike, I know you've been ishing to write a book for like almost all of these 20 years.

1:04:18Cass, I'm assuming you're the same. I'm so glad you wrote this book. And it's a good read. It's not like a boring book about entrepreneurship or business. You have stories, great suggestions, great advice. I can confidently recommend this to any young entrepreneur or seasoned entrepreneur. And I remember my one time we talked, you wanted to write a book. I think this was like 2013 or 2014. You wanted to write a book about the concept of being weird, about a book about weird people. I still think to this day, that is a great idea. Being weird. No, I love that book. And we started it and we did a lot of research because we happen to have a lot of weird friends and friends who have done all sorts of things from Gary to, you know, a friend in the porn business.

1:05:02And, you know, we also know how hard it is to write a book and we wish we had listened to your series on how to write a book. Anyone listening to this interested in a book has to go back. James gives the world an incredible how to both how to come up with the ideas, how to write it. And if we were to do another book, that is our model. So thank you. And, you know, we love you. We love what you put into the world. And frankly, we're proud of you. I mean, you've built such an incredible following by just giving to the world. You just give these ideas. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. And look, I hope eventually we all get together and I hope this book does well and come back on the podcast anytime.

1:05:44I really love having you guys on. So thanks once again. and Mike Lazarell, Cass Lazarell, Shoveling Shit, a love story about the entrepreneur's messy path to success. So many other great stories in there. You got to read the book to see it all though. Thank you. Appreciate you.