Alright, let's take a quick break to talk about success story, a new podcast by the HubSpot podcast Network. Success story features Q&A sessions with successful Business Leaders, keynote presentations and stuff about sales marketing and business, you know, they have episodes. For example, the Dark Side of venture capital sounds interesting Discord was built for gamers and took the World by storm. It sure did. So, listen to success story, wherever you get your podcasts. That sounds like something I want. I don't want my name plate on you.
You know, the, the Villanova like 10th library on campus, but like, just to know that there's, you know, 12 kids in Vietnam attending my school. They're wondering, why does this name have somebody A's in? Its, you know, who is this? Who is this, benefactor silent benefactor who has forgotten where our school at our school, is that sounds like the perfect blend of giving and egomania that. I lived for. I feel like I can rule the world and no way. I could be what I want to put my all into it. Like
Let's Travel never looking back, Neil. I was telling you a little bit about what you're getting into. We record everything by the way, so we just happened to it. But Sean kind of knows who you are. I've been a fan of yours for like ten years. Can I tell Sean and the audience, who I think you are, and you could tell me if I'm wrong and like, what? I'm
missing. Sure, go for it. All
right. So you're Neil Patel. So I know you because you used to have this blog called quick Sprout. I read it, maybe
Years ago, it's probably a fifteen-year-old Blog. If I remember correctly. At first it was mostly about like SEO, but eventually it kind of like warped into being about SEO about content, but just about business in general and you would do like crazy stuff like you would build a business that made a hundred thousand dollars a month in Revenue. By like you just picked like a random Niche and I think it ended up being supplements and you like blog every month about how that was going and use the blog about all types of crazy stuff, but then eventually you also started a company called crazy egg, which I heard was doing many.
The dollars a year in revenue and it was a bootstrap, you own the whole thing, then you and heat and started kissmetrics and raise a bunch of money didn't end up working out wonderfully, but it was like, it could have been actually quite huge. Heaton wrote a great blog post about like we're, you know, we're a couple errors were made but now you've got like a seven or eight hundred person agency. That is also a bootstrap like the rest of your stuff and you just kind of been balling out like for like 15 years in the world of business. Just killing it with agencies. Is that right? Did I get everything mostly?
We
write mostly closed so crazy. It came first heathens, the co-founder on that. He has a taller, you know, he owns crazy egg as well. So it's not just me anymore. And then there's another guy named John Butler, who was also part of crazy egg at the beginning. And then quick Sprout, came later. I started blogging on about business and stuff like that. Kissmetrics then came kissmetrics.
Don't work out quick. Sprout started to have a big audience, relate to marketing. We try to create SEO software on there. I do that with my co-founder Heathen of the time. He's like, all right. How about we create a company out of this? I'll do the software and that didn't work out. I don't want to be part of it anymore. He took it over and he ended up making it Business site directory, you know, informational site, whatever you want to call. It has affiliate offers, which you already know about. And then the last one was the
The Ad Agency, which is correct, and then there's been a lot of stuff in between here and there. A lot didn't work out, but generally speaking, I tend to do one thing at once focus. And currently I spent all my time on my Ad
Agency and that you're, you're at six seven hundred. How big is that at the moment? And it's only like 5 or 6 years old,
right? Yeah. So we're on our fifth year and this year will be end of year, five. We're at roughly 700 people. I think maybe a little bit more maybe by in the year 900 ish. If I had to guess.
Who are these? People the eyes? He's like, 700 Anonymous, Indians in India. Let's go to. Who are these people? We do have some people in
India, but what's funny is
many people. Do you employ in New York? That's what I want to know. That's my agency test. Wondering um, Brazil to the right.
Yeah. We're in Brazil majority of our people are in the United States. By look at Region wise, United States has a biggest head count. We also have offices in Australia, Canada, UK, Brazil, India.
Think we're opening up Germany soon. We're looking at Italy. We're looking at France and a few other regions as well. But our model is is like our Ad Agency in India, markets companies in India. It's not really used to Outsource American work into India.
And what work are people doing. Like what's the service that you're
providing?
All Digital. So like SEO pay per click email marketing conversion rate optimization organic, social paid social, the list goes on and
on and do all the customers come from Neil
Patel.com.
It used to be that way. Then we started getting a lot through word of mouth. I would have never really Guess That Word of Mouth drives
business. How how many it can you say? How many? So most people I would say, like, our audience and be like, oh, yeah, it's cool to have like a personal brand, but me and Sam I figured out. Oh, wow. This shit really does open up more doors than you would have expected. You've been doing this for a long time. So Neil Patel, which is kind of like a personal blog or you're talking about like, you know acts and experiments and strategies.
You've been a figured out. How many can you say? How many millions that brought in and client, bookings? What, for the agency, like, what how big did just the referrals from Neil Patel? Get you before other stuff kicked in like word of mouth and being recognized industry and other things like that.
I think the Neil Patel brand got us to around like 30, 40 million in revenue and then Word of Mouth started kicking in. And then other things, started kicking in and employees started bringing in their own deals because they worked in the space for so long.
And then we saw more and more growth got awards that brought a steals being a minority owned business. That helps believe it or not. There's if you're Indian and you live in the United States, you're considered a minority and
I was about to say, are we on minority? Never hit my door with your, the majority of CEOs out there. So I mean
funny, because we go through rfps, and some of them asked, if you're, what is it, like, MBE certification is
Like that, I forgot what it's called or minority business Enterprise. And I was like, well, I'm not a minority. There's like one plus billion of me in this world, right? And they're like, oh, you're minority. I'm like, what are you talking about? There's like a billion plus Indians in this world. How are we of minority? And they're like, oh, in America, your minority and in some of these rfps, they're looking at says, in there, were looking for LGBT Q. I don't know what the all four of the letters are.
You have the tattoo
money is there
and then women-owned businesses, veteran-owned businesses and the other one was minority and I was just like, wait, there's actually a quota that these big Fortune 500 companies have to hit and they're like, yeah, and I was like, well, I'm a minority that I will. You need the certification that's like I gotta have a certification to tell you that I'm a minority and at first I didn't realize, I was minority, they were telling me. Oh, you're a minority. We reached out to you. We're hoping that you'd be a good.
Bit and I'm like, I'm the minority in the like, yeah, you're a minority of the United States. You'd help us meet our quota. Do you have the certification? I'm like, what are you talking about? And then we went through the process and got the certification.
You gotta get your papers, bro. You gotta get your papers, right? I would have been offended and then as soon as I realized, wait, this is to my advantage. Oh, hold on. I also got solar panels on my house. Does that help? You know, like I'm a domino glasses. What? Exactly. I have a vision impairment called and I'm farsighted this.
Yes, so what else Works in my favor here, you know like it was the certification, just turn the webcam on and it looked at you as like, yep, and that was it that's enough and what's funny is our
CEO or v.p. Operations, one of the titles. I forgot what Tracy's title is, she asked me for this, like, six months before we did it. He's like, hey, I need your birth certificate online at, why do you need my birth certificate? She's ago, we needed for this certification like whatever. And the moment someone that are telling me how Magic Johnson generates a lot of his Revenue because he's a minor
30 and gets a lot of contracts partners of other businesses, white labels. It and uses his name, becomes a quote-unquote owner of that business and then Outsource. All right, tell me about
that. Give me an example. What's an example of the Magic Johnson
formula? Sure. So, I don't know if this is true. This is just what someone in the minority space and telling, so that's the caveat. I don't know if this is true or real and they're saying, let's say if someone has a food company and they have the contracts with a lot of the hospitals that are run by the government, like the VA.
They're looking for minorities to provide it, but there's already a lot of big corporations that provide the food. So, Magic Johnson may go create a business. That's in that space partner with the big supplier. Already provides a food to these hospitals. He'll get the contracts and then work with them to actually put those. Yeah, which one you never hurt. You never heard of this, my my
in-laws, my in-laws own, a moving company and there are minorities. They're black. They're Haitian immigrants and they win deals partially because of that reason, because like Morgan,
Or something like that. They want to move, they want to, they have some type of policy in their company and says we want to get rfps for. We want to get bids from these types of companies.
I had no idea how I obviously I do this exists. I just didn't realize how significant was. I definitely didn't know the Magic Johnson formula, which is frankly genius on his part if that's if that's actually what he did,
right? We don't know that they are but if it's true, but think of it this way, right? It's a quota. So, if I go and I get an RFP, let's say, from Boeing, which funny enough, we lost the RFP because we're over B / what they wanted and race. Let's see. This is very similar to the competition. I have a warrant showing that we were
Agency of the year, so they all right. These guys are good at what they do. We have the case studies and if we're similar pricing like oh this is minority helps us set our quota. Let's go the business here, right?
Yeah. Yeah, of course, you have some Merit to go with it for the first Thirty million dollars of business. You got that? And you must have gotten that by year, 2 or so, if you're growing this fast, what were the main, your three? Sorry
you three?
What was the main service? Like, when I think of, like, because I went to your website and I actually
Submitted a lie to figure it out. There was the maximum. You ask what your website is, and what your budget is, and it's like, zero to 10,000 10,000 to 20,000, and then just 50,000 plus. So, we're you serving like, mostly small businesses. And what, like, what were you doing as simple stuff as like, making their Yelp page. Good. Like, what were you doing?
Yeah, so it's not that small. We do have some smbs like that, but we actually first started off and mid-market our clients would pay us like
I'm up 10 grand a month.
And what would you do for 10,000 a
month?
So nothing was cookie cutter. It was all custom. So like maybe they need SEO. Maybe they need a help on pain management. Maybe they need some cro or email marketing or a little bit of everything. Right? But the plans would start at 120 a year right to the month and scale up from there to 20 a month, 30 a month, whatever
it may be.
What was most in Vogue as the service when you started like the, the trend everybody wanted. And then what's the in Vogue thing today?
When we first started was mainly SEO because that's
what does that mean though? What does that mean? You use h a wraps or something in your employees, like look, which terms they should rank for and then you write an article for them.
So it was optimizing their own page code, helping build links, creating content promoting the content and making sure that traffic converted into leads or sales. Assuming if they weren't services and it was a positive Roi
for the Customs like a tunnel work for ten thousand dollars a month.
It would start at 10. It depended on the keywords, how hard they were touring for and I would go up from there.
And what about? Now? They have I love when you describe people's businesses because you're just like, so, what does that mean? You just Google her name and then it doesn't show up. And then you go write an article with their name and it's like, what's the hustle? Did you just read the New York Times? And they just cut out half the words and then you hit send an email. Like, is that what is that, what the hustle is? Yeah. Nailed it. I mean, I can't be it. Like like, like, you know,
there's there's
always more nuanced and complication in reality. But like, if you
You can explain things in a fairly simple way where it's like, what's HubSpot? Oh, they just make software. So when you people set up your website, you can email them and call them. But you know what? I mean? Like, you could I'm just trying to dumb it down a
little bit and spot, but when you look at the business when I first started massive churn, how to add tons of features, how to figure out onboarding, how to figure out trade. There's a lot of stuff that went to make HubSpot total type billion dollar company right now. A lot of people look at as email, but they do more than email. They do more than a
REM they've added actually if anyone in the space has a ton of traction. They have a history of adding, a lot of those features for free which is a smart model and then God block market share, get them into the ecosystem and hopefully they stick around.
And so what's the popular you should do? The ad reads for us? Yeah. That was amazing. By the way Sam. I think you should make Suburban dictionary which is just you explaining businesses without like any any of the complicated stuff. Like now, what is it and why?
A company called like the thought the poem and female of the three syllable dictionary. Like I explain complicated things, but no word is above three syllables. It's a really cool exactly. What by the way, because I've been brought up on point on that minority thing. Been, you want to say that? I, that sounds pretty sure that you slack to something and you kind of mentioned this too. But like, this is really, really popular in government work because the government is like, very hardcore about hitting their quotas for
Racial minorities. And so around here, like, I actually know a couple guys and basically, what they do is the people I know are all African American. They get the contract. They put their name on the contract.
They then Outsource the entire
thing to like Deloitte or KPMG or whatever. And they take like, you know, fifteen percent of the revenue or whatever. They create a consulting firm, that's like the minority minority ink and then minority and goes and gets the contracts that Farms it out to do. Like, Deloitte whoever, that's
And that's like I lived in. Sorry. Sam keeps cutting off. I lived in Indonesia for a while and they had such a bad traffic problem. Jakarta is like I think the worst traffic in the world like you just going to Miles you might be there for two hours. And so they're like, okay, we need to create like a carpool incentive. So how do we create an incentive? Where if you have three or more people in your car, then you can go in the fast lane. And so this so worked for like, you know, a month. It was like, oh wow, this is great if we carpool.
Cool, we get to go faster. And then this like little industry sprouted up where people would just stand at the edge of the carpool lane, like a hitchhiker, and they'd be like, I'll get your car if you want a third Rider. I'll just hop in and we can ride in the fast lane and then they would get off on the other side and ride back with somebody else. And so they would be a professional like, you know, HOV lane participants. So they would just spend all day riding with you in your car. So you'd be sitting there and someone would just get in the backseat with you. It's just like a random Indonesian person and you would pay them 10, 10 lakh rupees or whatever and then 10 Baht. And then they,
You know, get out on the other side of Mile later. It was amazing. You Neal was what's quick Sprout been ago was quick Sprout. I mean, so that was your main business, quick Sprout, and krazy-8 were your main business for
a while?
It's probably just a Blog and then my co-founder Heath and ended up taking it over, and now it's his
blog.
So what was your main source of Revenue and income? Because like I said, I've listened to you forever. Like you've been crushing. It seems like for financially for like ten plus years. I
don't know if I'm crushing it, but the main source of income was crazy egg for most of my life. And then it ended up becoming the Ad Agency.
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And Sam. You said something at a very beginning. That if I was listening to this, I'd be like, wait, hold on. I want to hear that story. You said something like, Just for kicks, you would like spin up a business that like did 100K a month in Revenue? What's an example of that? Tell that story because that sounds awesome.
Yes, everyone thinks like it's really hard to make money online and then you got the shysters or like, buy this for a thousand dollars and you become rich, which never really happens. Maybe, every once in a while, but for most people, it doesn't so they, I could have business on anything people. Like good, credit nutrition business.
Audience picked. I give them like a lot of different options. They picked a nutrition business and I was like, all right, let's create a blog at a ranking system, traffic. And then funnel people in through quizzes, through emails. And let's funnel them into supplements, rank higher on Amazon, get traction, and see what happens. And it did what?
And that took you like months years, how
long it take, it wasn't months as much more than that. I think it was like. Yeah, right a little bit less than a year. I think was like 9 or 10 months. So it wasn't like one or two months sadly but a little bit less than a year. So it's pretty
good. It was an awesome. It was an awesome blog post. Terry Sean. You got a Google at Google like quick Sprout or Neil Patel them like hundred thousand dollars a month and it was like a, a monthly update. It was pretty amazing.
I don't think they may have deleted it. Now. I don't know if it's still
Line, but, and then, so I took the money I made from crazy egg, and I'll park it into other things. So, it's like stock market for a long time. The stock market had a really crazy run, right? Then you also have things like Investments, a lot of venture funds, Angel Investments. And then sometimes you just get lucky. Sometimes you don't notice the
numbers game.
We had talked about doing a Content series, like this, to grow the podcast. I was like, you know, I think one of the best ways to grow the podcast can be, if we do a challenge like what you described. And one of the ideas is like, what if Sam created his own Sam sticky icky, his own, a condiment brand, and we basically show how we build a DTC brand, like, from from idea to like branding to marketing to, we just do it all transparently to like, like, get people hooked on. Okay. Let me see how you guys actually build this thing. Now, it's a lot of Works, which is why, I think ultimately we didn't.
It. But how well did that work for you? Was that like just kind of like a good content thing or was it like? No. That was like drove a lot of growth for the brand and the blog. I'm curious how well that were. It didn't
drive as much growth for the brand but it did help out every little bit. Like I did crazy experience like spent like a hundred and something or 200 and something thousand on clothes and wanted to see what that did in business meetings, spent money, flying first class everywhere. She wanted to see what that would do. But yeah, I tried a lot.
Lot of different experiments and it's just for shits and giggles and it was also a reason to justify some of my expenses and my first class because I remember my first time, flying first class someone else paid for them. Like wow, this is I've been missing out. This is a lot better than being crammed up and flying all the way to Europe from Los Angeles, you know, an economy. And then I was like, man, let's do some experiments and let's see if I can justify this expense but
You just, you did you say early on that? You just gave heat and so did you invest in heat and Shah's other companies on neera? Yeah. Yeah, so we're both Neil were both investors in Iran, which is Heaton's your cousin right now? Versus brother, in law, brother law. Yes, Ari and he's amazing. He's another, he's a great bloggers as well and Shawn and I both invested in his company called neera, which is either going to be a dud. Do Wars gonna be like, the biggest company ever. I know that the
Like it's like a company that's close. Like they're gonna close like multimillion-dollar contracts. I would guess that's it's like a big ol business. Potentially a big ol business. But did you say that you gave him crazy egg?
So with crazy-eyed, what ended up happening is is what I wanted to do is we were doing business forever together. And then eventually I just said, hey, you can have the monthly distributions and I'm gonna go create another
business.
Why would you give that?
Why?
He didn't ask for it. Nor did he care for it? Nor does he want it? You know, he's never been about money, neither him. Or I have. And we're not rich. I can't actually speak for him. I'm not rich. I've just done well enough and I don't spend as much. Those like, don't really need the money. Does that make sense? Like if you just don't spend money, you don't really need much
cash. Did you just said, you dropped two hundred thousand dollars on clothes. What do you mean? You don't need money?
That was a fair amount, right? But that's not my daily life. Like I'm wearing a
T-shirt wood stains and my kids. But it's up on there, probably like 10, 20 bucks. I don't know what the white t-shirts cost, but they're not really white anymore. So I try not to do video recordings in front of white walls anymore because you can just tell the discoloration from it. Nonetheless. It's
so did. Sam say you live in Brazil. Is that what?
And then I have a division in Brazil like we do Marquis in Brazil for Brazilian
companies.
And you live in Texas. Where do you work magus?
Vegas. Okay, amazing. And so have you, is it easy for you to keep your burn rate down? Because like, I was telling Sam this, I spend like I don't know 25,000 dollars a month now. Just like and I'm not I don't feel like I think Sean you might have fallen out maybe even more than that. Now if I bet you added up because I know what, how you spend. I bet you it's more than 25.
It might be, it might be a little more, but it's not more than 30. I would say. I don't think it's more than yeah, but like yeah, I got two little kids, but I got 20 kids but they're like babies. Like, you know, like that it really food, you know, so, you know, there's diaper sure. But like it's not them, it's me cheering. I would take
30.
He said it's a steep burn rate or it's a good burn
rate. I would take it. I'll trade with you.
Wow. Okay, gotcha. So when you say you don't spend much. What do you say? Is your monthly burner? Because I think for most people listening, right? They like most people don't talk about how much they make or how much they spend. All right, how much you make
sometimes I kneel you actually wrote this
in a blog post. You said you said I spend this was I don't know if you're Irish. I have no idea if you're single or if you have a family and you can
feel bad that if you my friend, all right now,
You used to say in your blog post at it you go fifteen thousand dollars. A month is all. I need. I'm happy that was like 10 years ago, I think. But that's what you used to say 15,000
single and no kids is easy right now. If I had a guess on my burn rate, 120 to 180 a
month. What? That's insane. So what is, how does that break down? So what's the like, what's the bulk of it? Whether so house, probably the biggest one. I have no mortgage.
Okay, so you're spending 120 180 K, without spending anything on your
home property tax property tax for both my homes and HOA, dues is probably close to 200 a
year.
Okay, great.
So
we've got 12.
Okay, like the difference is 25 Grand a
month.
What whole life policy has? That's 25 to the 300 a year. No,
wait. What the hell is a life insurance policy? What could you explain?
That is just a benefit. Like, if I died My Wife and Kids give money.
Like, I like my insurance
policy.
Yeah, I get that. But is that normal? I've never heard like, either. I'm dumb. You're dumb one. Who's dumb here? Am I dumb? Because I've never heard of anybody spending that look again. Last time I counted builds
over time. So it's not like it goes away. Right? Most life. Insurance policies are for call it 10 years. And then you buy another one, mine, just keep going. And you can borrow against it. Just think of it as like an investment vehicle. So that's 25 a month.
Okay. I see. I see.
Cleaners nannies driver. We have a full-time driver. I think that ends up being around 57 a month, 5757
thousand thousand, you know, a driver Uber. But why
more affordable? Go to this company, they charge a hefty premium. I go through this company and I have decals on my
my car. So if I do a meeting in front of a casino, the car can just stay in front of the casino and doesn't have to move. If I'm going to the airport. You can Stir It Up, pull up into the plane or whatever you want to do. And you don't have to go through terminals or anything like that. So that makes life
easier. So part of your strategy as I'm picking this up, is that you live the best life style you want? And it's all expensable, the way you do it.
I don't know if it's all expensable, is probably a
little like, is that what you meant with a decal? Like it's a company. It's like marketing. It's like a like a marketing vehicle.
Say there's a limo company. If I have their decal on my belly of a Japan, I can end up parking wherever I want in theory, not literally wherever I want but in most cases, I can park wherever I want in the car can just sit there and wait for
me. So, all right. So what else? Anything else? You fly private?
He's like, I buy a deadly, Disneyland Fastpass. Just in case I decide to go that day
of time.
What's been, what's been the number one? Like kind of like we're you feel like most people don't. Most people think this is too expensive and not worth it. But for me, I get way more value. I'll give you an example of my life. Right? So I thought I had been right until we started talking. So this is great. I'm feeling so much better about myself. But the one thing I did was I hired a private chef.
So I was like, all right that I think I always thought that's the lifestyle of the Rich and Famous and I thought, wow, that's cool. Because you eat healthy and it tastes great. You don't have to fuss with time and you know, cooking and dishes and groceries and all that stuff. And so to me, it's like a no brand like dude, anybody with any kind of money. You should be like that should be one of the first like fancy car later private Chef now that because I'm like to me the value the reward way. Outweigh the cost. I think most people don't typically make that trade sounds like you've experimented with many ways of spending money. What has been a good reward.
Ward 44 cost trade that you're like, this one is great that most people
don't do.
I don't know. I mean, I'm in a bubble to have a lot of friends who are like me, sadly in which we spend a lot. We don't know what's reality. I know that sounds bad to say, but it's true, right? Hook is not bad housekeepers and best, you don't have to do your own dishes and stuff. Although funny enough. I enjoy doing that and ironing because it's a kind of like meditative for me. It's relaxing and know why watching TV and ironing nannies, helps you get the freedom and you can watch your kids when
And you want to but you can also do meetings and stuff like that. The probably the best expense I ever spend on is private planes. Not because I like it. It's, I don't mind playing commercial, not really any difference for me, but it helps me optimized for X. That way. I can see my kids more that this, sometimes do a lot of meetings for work and just going and coming back the same day, just really in and out really quickly. Like, sometimes I'll be home quick enough. Like go from Vegas to Utah for a car.
Conference speak. Come back and I'll be home quick enough to pick up my kid from school. I like to meet well valuable. That's where
it's all money. Are you saving any money then? Or are you just taking a fat draw from the agency in order to provide pay for this or you able to expense a lot of it to the agency? How's that
work? I don't expense any of it to my company as person cave.
So you're just the agency's, just that profitable of a business. It's doing that.
Well,
Or Investments or savings? I've been well enough in life where I'm
okay.
Why did you do an agency? So me and Sam I was talking about, like, we have many models on this podcast, or example, we don't do public math. For example, you don't say you're rich, you say your post economic. These are things we've picked up from from Guess along the way, one of the one of the model, one of the mottos that we say is, you know, agency stuff. And it's like and the reason we say is not because they like they do. Well, there's not that they suck.
It's like they suck as a business choice. I if I could, I've always thought if I could choose between software or an agency is your software because it's like, oh, it's not a Services business. It's going to work while I sleep and they can scale up and I don't have to open up offices in Poland and Brazil and all these other places, but you chose that you did software and you chose agency. Now, why did you make that choice? And what's great about agencies, that I am kind of, like not getting enough credit for
you're looking at business as in Stoppers more scalable.
Mobile is more desirable by public markets. E^x HubSpot versus Accenture Etc, has way worse multiples than hubs like centers, a bigger company from a revenue ibadah standpoint, but now take a different approach. Okay. Hope spots publicly traded companies. You guys are both HubSpot employees. I'm assuming still. Is that
correct? Kind of,
well, whatever your as is deal is, right, but you guys are pretty much out help sock. Now, imagine creating a business and you don't plan on going.
Blake, you don't care for the Limelight. You don't care for any of that. In business. What's a successful business? Good Revenue growth, and good revenue and profitability. Right? All that really matters at the end of the day, whether you grow or not grow, is how profitable are you? Would you guys agree with that statement? Assuming you're doing something that's ethical, and you're not selling for
no, I wouldn't agree with that. I would say there's a third thing, which is like is this enjoyable and like, do I like my day to day? And with the more people you have?
Most people would say that's just a little bit more headache than then
that's not fall for or Consulting. Anytime you build a big company, you tend to have a large amount of people, whether it's HubSpot or whether it's Accenture. Everyone has when you
can have, you can probably have a much higher Revenue per employee with software versus, let's say, you own a massive landscaping business, you're gonna have to have tens of thousands of
people, but what's the difference from dealing? With how many people does? HubSpot have like 6,000?
I don't know. 5,000 6,000 is probably a lot. I'm guessing on the number, but what's the difference of dealing with 5,000 or 6,000 people? In 20,000 people. There's a point where it doesn't matter. And it's a lot of people either way, like, it's not like, you're a 50 people. You still have thousands of employees to deal with the uni, managers and layers and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, but you're hiring a, some
good or bad, you're hiring a different type of person. So, for example, if your vaynermedia, they're based in New York. They can probably only afford to pay some of their
Lower level employees 70 or 80 thousand dollars a year. And so you just have to get a ton of people like that and have to have higher churn versus say a bigger company. Were you able to pay a significantly higher salary? Because the revenue per employee is much higher. So perhaps there's a slightly different day to day with because of
that. Let's say your vaynermedia. He could be doing it to optimize for profit ones. If I told you his LTV was six, seven, eight years, right? And you have that, then at that point you
So higher high, quality people, and pay my arm and a leg.
Okay, you go. Right? Like, you would an eccentric, they're charging accounts, so much money in their contract, so long and I don't know what vaynermedia's LTV is, but there's a lot of Consulting companies that have ltvs of 67 years for clients and their clients are spending, you know, a HubSpot. Yes, this more Revenue per you can say, potentially in software. You can get two more Revenue per employee, but I know Consulting companies that only take on contracts that are like five six million dollars than upwards. So, you have high margins. And you can
Have a higher Revenue per employee. But either way, no matter what, as you build a big business, you're going to need more people. And it's a headache to manage whether you pay him 70,000 or what you pay my 150,000. It's still more of a headache and the notion that if you hire someone for 150,000, I'm not saying you're saying this. It doesn't necessarily mean they're better employee. Right?
And you're just being different types of
headaches. Correct? Exactly. Engineers, for example, are very expensive in this economy, right? So,
The point I'm getting at is a consulting company. I had the demand for a lot of people want to pay me for marketing, and there was just so much demand. It would have been silly not to do and if I'm not trying to go public or I'm not trying to sell money's money, green is green. As long as you're happy doing what you're doing. Take the cash. Will you ever sell the company?
I
want to say I would never sell the company but I don't care to ever sell the company because I love what I'm doing. We also have good growth to write like I don't know what will grow this year. 60 something percent, which is a bad, you know, with the market going up and down and fluctuating, 60-something percent is my guest at our size, this decent.
Yeah, the part I was actually talking about was a little bit more like I think you're totally right that. Like, if you're going to win big, you're going to end up with a bunch of employees and like, you know, it might look,
Look like 150. Might look like a thousand. It might look like 10,000. But like, you know, in either case you're going to have managerial work and headaches and it's just different types. The part I was really talking about is like, you know, I've now built let's say a media company content. Yeah, and then it's like done educational stuff. So courses which are like, you know different thing. And then there's like a built software company and we ended up selling that one and then it's like and then there's Services which is the client services like like consulting or agency model.
And what I hate, what I what I love about content media is, it's actually pretty fun to create and it's cool because a lot of people consume, it's the kind of you know, you get that like hit but you gotta like you gotta bake the cake every day, right? So like, you know, the hustle or like the milk Road or this podcast like we have to come on and create the content. Again, you know, for the most part we're not doing like, super long Evergreen stuff. So, you know, like with the hustle is a daily newsletter. Milk roads, daily newsletter. It's we are bake that cake every day. Whereas software it was like we
Built one product. And yes, we might, we will improve it over the course of a year, you know, every year we can improve it but like fundamentally. We didn't feel like recreate the product come up with a new viral story or a new great content segments, that would like required like a new genius with software that you come up with one genius moment. And then you sort of refine it, make it work better over time and get rid of bugs and things like that. So, I preferred that part of software which was like making a product rather than making kind of like a disposable, you know, consumable piece of content.
Gravity Commerce company, I'd like to pain in the ass to have Supply physical products that our supply chain constrained and like we have a warehouse. We got Warehouse problems with our e-commerce business. And so I'm like man digital was sweet compared to e-commerce, but e-commerce is quite profitable. Like kicks off a bunch of profits. That's nice. So every business has these pros and cons. I always thought agency was like the part. I always thought was a pain in the ass was like the client services. You are Reinventing the next campaign and the next winning marketing, you know, formula for them.
And you have to keep clients happy all the time. And clients are sort of like never satisfied in a way that like they if software is like you can have a nameless, faceless customers that like, yeah some percentage of them will write into your help desk that's in the Philippines or whatever but like you're not having to like, you know, send account reports to your you know, your big client to keep them happy.
Yeah, but you everyone has their own problems and software. A lot of people have turned to this issue and they can't figure it out or they have competitors to come into the marketplace and just undercut them on pricing for the same features because it's cheaper and cheaper to build software.
Is right? So they all have their own problem to me. I look at it as if you can find the right people. So every time I start a company, I find in people to put in place that have already done it multiple times before, because your risk of failure lower and there'd be no everything to do. So, I don't have to deal with client relationships. I don't have to deal with customer service or anything like that. I get to do what I enjoy doing, which is go and create content, be the face, Etc. And my wife enjoys wish you guys to do, right? She gets to donate the money.
Although we don't really consider his donations. We look at as investing. We're investing in people. Although we really don't ever collect any money back, it's more, so you're investing into making the world a better place, where people's lives are better placed or whatever. It may
be.
What's a Hoover, who were your first three clients at this at this agent?
Because I don't know, they were small
companies.
And right now, who's an example
client?
Like a Fortune 100 software company. Like that is a typical company think of any big large corporation and B2B. That's a great example of one of our customers or even b2c. Actually think of any Fortune, 500 company. That's a prime example of a
customer. What's a in, who's the CEO of your agency? Are
you?
No, I'm never the see I'm a terrible manager of one of the worst manager has ever. His name is Mike gullickson. He was the CEO know. He was the president of iprospect which is Ad Agency owned by dense. Ooh, I believe in iprospect. Maybe they had four or five thousand people is my guests
and what when you how early into the business, did you have a hired CEO or hired leader
day one? I won't start a business without a CEO from day one.
And,
and what did you pay them in the first
year?
First gear is my co-founder for like a hundred grand
and that's because you basically went and drummed up 100 Grand worth of business and you're like, hey Mike, I gotta I got this clients to the give 100 Grand. You want to run this thing for me and help it get deployed.
Know our business, in a start off. That way. I'd probably put in total of five million bucks into the business and my own money. It was bootstrap and not really bootstrapped, if that makes sense. It's kind of cheating and it gets easier and easier as your entrepreneur.
Right, the more, the more successes you have. And I'm not saying I'm Successful, by any means, the more Capital you have to deploy into the next things to reduces chances of failure. And when it's your own money, this is just my thesis and I could be wrong on this. I have no data points when it's your own money on what more careful than when they you raise like 15, 20, 30 million dollars of venture capital, right? You really look at every single dollar but Mike was the CEO from day one. He's a great operator has
Agency experience. Eventually got in a president and then eventually from there. We got in a CEO
and have you guys crossed 100 million in
Revenue yet?
Yeah, we do nine pairs.
That's crazy, man. So, I mean that's just pretty wild that you're able to like parlay this blog. That was all right all always kind of a juggernaut but this blog and to a nine-figure your business. I mean, that's
amazing.
No, it's been a good run. I hope it I'm knocking on wood. Although you probably can't hear kind of crisp, but I hope it keeps going and more. So we're just having fun. Like, for me. What I enjoy doing is building a business. I know I have an expensive lifestyle. I generally don't do stuff for the money. Like I overpay, like how staff, like nannies and stuff like that. When I say, overpay, I drastically overpay not buy like 10, 20, 30 40 %, Like I really mean drastically overpay because I look at
Like if you're cleaning the house, how are you going to live on this? Like I'll give someone six figures to do that. I know that sounds kind of crazy or stupid but like I'm not giving my kids money so might as well, take care of other people in this world who need it more than, but we do
that, you know, I think that's. Did you just say you're not.you're? Not giving kids money.
Yeah. I'm not gonna get my kids
money.
Nothing, leave. Leave nothing.
We have a trust set up. What? They'll get maximum is like if they're on the street and they can't provide and they're going to be suffering, like I will help pay their bills or put them in a normal home. Or like, if my kids, like, I want to be a doctor and I want to go spend all my time in Africa, helping other people out and I won't get paid for this. And I need, you know, x 5 thousand dollars a month to live or 10,000. So I can just go volunteer all my time of like sounds good. I'll pay for that. But like I won't give them money for the
Take it. Like, if they're like, I want to go travel to see Italy or I wanna Honda Accord and like, go buy your own. Honda Accord to go travel on your own with your own dime. Like, you know, I don't believe in just giving people money because I think there's other people that need it more than we do.
Sorry, going to give your kids money.
I really thought about it like my oldest is too. So I think I got some time to figure that out. But I lean more towards, I've kind of heard both arguments. Like I know somebody who they some people are like, you know, you know, I know there's some people that I'm definitely on the camp of I do this for my kids. I want to leave my kids with a whole bunch some like that that may be the worst thing you could do for them. Not because it means that we're doing but like
Yeah, you take away, you know, agency in a way, right? Like you want people to like it's not that it's good or bad. It's actually just, it's just way lower on the totem, pole of priorities. It's like, I just want to focus on that. It's like, if I'm going to leave them something, it's gonna be a certain set of character character, traits and skills and like, mentality. That's what I'm trying to leave money is like, I don't know, 15th on the list of like, I don't know, we haven't even gotten to think about that yet. But I've thought a lot about what are the character traits and mentality and like mindset and skills that I think I can help build. And
That's the focus. That's the one that matters. That's the that's the gift. If whatever else comes from Beyond that I don't know. We can figure out its like the foot. It's like the footnote.
So like we're very similar Mike my I have a two-year-old and a less than one year old, right? And I look at it, as you want them to be productive units of society, right? You want them to be ambitious hungry, caring, thoughtful happy, like, whatever it is. There's a lot of characteristics that you may want children to be, but I look at his like, they don't need money evenly.
My wife and I, we go over our expenses and we look at what we spend on travel. And we do some of this because it's easier but like, my wife and I are actually considering cutting out all private and just going commercial. Now the main reason our expenses are high is due to covid. So if it wasn't for covid, I would just be going in a normal airport. I didn't know how covid-19 to impact with young. Kids could afford it. I was like as to start flying private and we haven't gone back to commercial yet, but we're thinking about going back because like, my wife and I look at the money as they can. We spend all this.
US money on travel and airfare, and hotels. If we donated the money, people would have a better life to be really needed that
much.
What do you do when you donate that like, what's a good way to donate in your opinion? So there's like, you know, ranging from not donating to donating to one thing to donate to a bunch of things to like getting involved or seeing the impact or like, you know, I know people who if they donate to Africa, they'll actually their family will take a trip every year so that they're more connected to the people. And they actually see the impact, and they, take their kids with them. So, they see the impact, like, what have you found? That's a good way to give
the we have a balance. It's my wife and I team up.
This is going to sound bad, but I don't like volunteering my time. My wife loves volunteering her time. I think it's very inefficient for me to volunteer my time. I should make the money versus volunteering my time because the money for the hours spent if we donated the money would have a much bigger impact to the cause then if I actually spent my time, I don't my wife. Yeah, my wife loves spending the time and like from going to soup kitchens or whatever. It may be so she picks the causes. We have a few thesis has so like one piece.
This is we are not really thesis but rules one rule is we don't like money going to organizations that have tons of high overhead. We actually want our money going to the causes. So if it doesn't go to the cause then we tend to not pick that organization. The second thing that we look for is organizations who are like self-sufficient, right? It seems like how can this continue going? Even if someone Wasn't Man?
Like a great program. For example, is my wife likes donating to women's education. We used to donate also to men's education as well. So you find these people in these Villages, you say. Hey, you can't afford to go to school. Get a degree will pay for you to go to college, go get a degree, come back, teach kids in your village for a few years, whether it's under a tree or anything people can learn anywhere, right? And then, you know, go to move on with your life and do whatever you want. But at least you're giving back to your own community.
Tea and what we found is, when we started giving because we've been doing this for so long now watching not that long but when I mean long I'm talking about like 10 11 years where we've been donating and it's picked up quite a bit over the last like five six years. When we started giving the money to men, a lot of the men. We saw very low conversion rate from them actually coming back and teaching people in the village. Well when we gave the money to women for their education, a lot of them came back and fulfilled on the promise because it's not like you get a signed contract.
Right. It's just like Hey, we're going to pay for everything, come back help people out with in your village, which country. We've done this in both India and Africa so different parts of Africa and India. And then another program that we've done is like growing gardens where a lot of people who have AIDS, don't take the right, don't take their medication and aren't doing. Well. They're getting their given the medication for free but if your body doesn't have the right nutrients and rejects it. So what we'll do is we'll do programs like growing gardens will give him money.
Any they grow food and then not only do they eat nutritiously or well, they'll be more likely to take their medication and you're also growing enough food. So that way other people in the village can also eat those like. But my wife picks all the causes. She vet some she loves it. Like she'll go. This is Wednesday and to day she'll end up going to a function scouting out more nonprofits and organizations. I won't go like I think it's a waste of time.
Like if I go make more money she can donate. It. It's a better Roi than if I go spend three or four hours mingling when she could just do that. And I can go make more so that way we can donate more
other than your own private businesses. What have been your best financial investments? That's allowed you to donate and make a lot to give
away.
Stock market has done really well companies like apple Amazon, Google Facebook and on Facebook's down, but they still have been a tear if you just bought the stocks early enough, because some of these companies have grown 30-40 percent a year in the public markets, compounding rate. And it really adds up angel Investments have done really well for me, and I would say, probably those are the two biggest stock market still has done. Well, although in the last six months. I've taken a beating because I'm in 100% tech companies, like, I don't do
Stuff. I like everyone's like, all you need some oil and you need this. I'm like, I'm just gonna go All Tech and people are like, oh, you're silly. Look how much you lost. But if you look at the whole time, when I first got in, I've done well and I invest in what I understand and I'm 37. So, who cares? The, you know, another 10 years. Everything should rebound. As soon as you pick the right
companies, what's your portfolio look like in terms of percentages?
I probably wouldn't have private
businesses.
My public portfolio. I, if I had to guess I probably don't even have more than 20 stocks. Amazon II won't be able to name them all, but Amazon, Google Facebook. Apple, Microsoft, HubSpot Salesforce, Adobe. Atlassian, Shopify. I'm missing some as well.
If your liquid of your of your liquid, net worth. How much is in public equities versus
other?
Liquid state versus whatever else. Yeah,
just non-agency. If I think eight your agency is their agency. The only company that you own a significant stake in if yes exclude that. Then what's your portfolio? Look like
know? I have quite a bit of other companies because started using a lot of the cash to buy other companies for like 3, 4, 5 x ibadah, and then you just fix them and grow and then just cash flow, I would. So, if I look just at Cash invested in other companies that aren't mine.
Fine. Like not companies. I'm buying that or anything like that. I would probably say 80 to 90% is in
stocks. What companies were you
buying?
Any that we can find that we like like we were suggest it was the software company, bought it for 120, put three million into it. It took I think less than seven or eight months to get two million a month in Revenue, what time's the deal to called ubersuggest atrus competitor? That one did well. We just bought another owning a lady named Lisa.
Crazy
and then we but we just bought another one. We haven't announced it. We bought it for 8.6. I think a month ago month and a half ago. So we'll see that it does 100,000 a month. We think we can grow within 12 months to probably like
For 500 Grand a month and profit. So forget Revenue, we just will look at it as a
cash flow.
So, do you have rules around that? Like, okay, I have to be able to grow it, using Neil Patel.com, or has to be the marketing Niche. So the agency benefits, know, it's like, would you buy like brick, you know, like a fucking
laundromat or if I can grow it? I won't do too much brick, and mortar better than best. In other people's brick and motor. Like I have a friend who does a lot of brick and mortar businesses. Like one of my buddies has a roofing company and I was like, oh cool. You can buy after three exits, good size.
And I can show you a few things and we can probably increase the profit by like 60 percent within 12 months. It's like he's just good cash flow. Right? Like if you're getting like 30, 40, 50 percent Returns on your money. It's great. And then you have to keep in mind because of my my history and I've been doing this long enough. I also can get that at really cheap terms and large amounts of debt. Like I can get data like 3.6 percent Plus silver. So if I'm buying a business for five extra,
X, in many cases because of the economics of my whole portfolio, you know, some businesses. I put down like, on the one that was 8.6 2.6 was paid over 12 or 18 months is something like that. We put 6 ml up front, I could have got a loan for that. I was thinking as is easier to put the 6 million, not deal with the paperwork, but sometimes we'll just do loans on the 100% of a zero down.
Right. And what do you like? Okay, so you do what you do now. So you have your time and it's pretty much probably fully allocated. Let's say to the agency and then some of these other things. If somebody was smart, but didn't have your, you have a bunch of visibility. You kind of know where your industry is going. You see adjacent opportunities, but hey, I'm not going to go do them. I don't have the time. What are opportunities that you see that? You think somebody listening to this? Who's just like smart Hustler, like
So, I got more time than I have ideas. I got more time than I have money. Where would you go? If you were that person, what would you, what would you suggest for them? To look at, as like, you know, opportunities that you see?
Today? I would look for opportunities in anything that they're good at and I know that's not the answer that you're looking for. But what I found that the issue is when people go look for opportunities that make some money when you're not passionate, you don't put in the time and energy required to actually make a successful. That's a big issue. We see, maybe some people have it in them where they can make something successful because they'll just
Tough it out, but most people we see, we'll just quit cuz they just hate what they're doing.
And so, but I think a lot of people don't know what they love to do. They don't have like they don't if they already had what they love to do. They wouldn't be, you know, looking for opportunities. So, you know sort of like a by definition problem there, right? So somebody who's thinking about, okay, I don't love what I'm currently doing. I'd like to, I want to get to where this guy's at but which is basically like seems happy and successful, right? He seems a he he said he loves what he's doing. I'd love to do that. But what if I don't know, right? It's like when my sister was going to college, my dad asks her, if she's like, 'what should I major in his I gotta know, what's her favorite subject? And she was like a lunch.
Like, you know, I don't have a favorite subject. I love any of these subjects. So what am I supposed to do? Like, a, my just out? I'm just not wonderful. It's them
until you find what you're passionate about, because if you try a lot of different things, you'll typically, find something that you're naturally good at. Usually what you're naturally good at. You also tend to favor and what you like, and then just double down on that. But if you're looking for Industries with opportunities, I see a huge slowdown in e-commerce. Not know, see the e-commerce Market shrinking. I'm not saying that but the growth in the e-commerce Market isn't as
It was once used to be right when covid first kickoff. So you're going to see the multiples go down to buy, e-commerce shops e-2c Brands, right? So great opportunity for buying and go fix them up and grow them and scale them another great opportunity right now is free. So I look at the whole software Market as really backwards. Okay, and which right now, it doesn't matter if your hubs water, canva. Eventually, someone can just create a me to company and just undercut you on pricing. And what?
I learned is if you can create a software company that already has a brand that has a free product and you just make it really good for free and you just adding more and more to it. A great example of this is photo P. So there's this company called photo P. It's a love it Photoshop. And it's like, they make very little to no money. So I had a bunch of my buddies who is greater outreaching, and I told him, I want o to P. Offered him 10 million. He said no offered him 20 million. He said, no, I can take photo P. Make it a
A really good, canva competitor undercut them on pricing, whatever, be worth 10 20, 40 billion, whatever they are. No, but I probably can casual that thing to like or five million a month in ibadah, right? It's like, who cares what it sells for what it's worth, and then I can make that.
But you're saying you're saying make it free and you saying a cash flows like a motherfucker. So, what, how do you take a free product in cash flow? We said, how would you set a camera up a can of a knockoff?
Kevin knock off. So you make,
you make almost 99% of for free of charge for one percent, but that 1% is enough for you can drive in the revenue. So you don't ever make as much as like a canvas or like a mail chimp or a HubSpot. But hey, if you can make millions of month in profit is still good.
What's your mom's there? So when what's the calculus when you were thinking? So like let's say photo P. According to similar, web has 10 million uniques a month or something. What was your math? Is that right?
Yeah, it is, right.
We researched it. But yeah,
so like what was your Calculus to get to 4 million and ibadah month? Like, what would, how many people would you need to run it? And what was the, what's the calculus? Oh,
sure. So I can probably get the thing from 10 million visitors I can. So let's say about it for 20, right? He wouldn't sell it to me for 20. I've never Outreach to him, but I had a buddy Outreach to him or me, who just does all my Outreach. So, let's say, I bought it for 20. I would put another 10 into it. So now I'm out 30 million dollars.
I'm really good at growing traffic. And I know I can grow the team to roughly 40 million uniques a month. I just have a, I don't know how but for some weird reason. I know traffic really well and how to calculate what I can get it to and all this kind of stuff. Right? And I've done enough research of competitors of what features Drive x amount of traffic just looking at so many competitors in the space. So, let's see if I get it to 40. What is it called? 40 million.
And what one of the one or two things that you'd get it to 40 million.
Like SEO,
basically do more SEO, more virality, increasing the quality of the template increasing features. Adding a i in there, like click a button. We can automatically detect backgrounds, remove it filters for social media, because a lot of people use them for social media, but the list goes
logo generator website as a lead gen shit like
that, right? So then, so let's say you got up to 40 million right at 40 million. I can easily monetize. Let's call it like
One percent of the traffic. Let's get even more conservative like a half, a percent 200,000 people. If I have 200,000 people hypothetically paying three dollars a month. Okay, that's 600,000. The reason I give you on average three dollars in certain countries. You may want to charge different pricing like India and stuff like that. So it's more affordable. So three dollars a month and at three dollars a month, if a customer stays for 10 months, that's six million dollars from probably run the thing with less than a million million.
Then a half and burn each month.
So the new thing. So then for a million-and-a-half burn you would
need to use once you have tons of Revenue right? When you don't have tons of Revenue your burn as much lower on a monthly basis.
Yeah, so that how many people than if it's they're looking at 30 people you need to run that
operation.
I don't even think 30 but let's say 30 total. So I think I can actually run the thing for under a million dollars a month.
Right, so I'm just trying to do the math in my head. But I mean you the revenue was like, Wonder, am I under million to there was like, six hundred thousand or something right?
Six hundred thousand a month. But if a customer stays for 10 months, you're looking at six million dollars
because interested,
no, no, okay, if they're paying three dollars a month, if you have 440 million, not 4 million, but 40 million, you're converting a half a percent. That's 200,000 paying customers a month.
If they pay three dollars a month, that's kind of thousand they last for 10 months at six million dollars a month, and I'm are over a year. You're making somebody to million dollars in Revenue.
That's crazy. You're very interesting person. You just I think I dig you because you've got your hands so many different things.
I honestly don't at
this point. I don't want anything. I come up with ideas. I have really good operators for granted execution. Like, go do this. It'll make money. Here's a play with going, just do
it. So how many businesses do you own?
I don't know. I don't really count. I would look at
over, 110 over over under
20.
I don't know, 20s probably getting close. So probably under if I had to guess
and how many of those 20 and how many of those 20 companies have more than five employees, full-time employees.
I don't know. I don't really count employee head, count, Eileen. Oh my Ad Agency head count because they do reports and I get in my board meeting decks as I got like, oh, we got 700 people.
And you own 100% of most of these companies. It seems like you're not raising external Capital. You might, I don't want to give your CEO.
Anything. I was give Equity to profit, share. I you have a partner, who runs things will get equity, and then I'll do profit. Share.
What's the ideal setup for profit sharing and equity for your
partner?
Partner given maybe 10% of the business. They run a plus a really nice salary. When I mean, nice salary industry or more than industry and then you have a pool for employees like another 10% pole. So then you losing people, 20%, I'm left with 80 myself. I put up all the money if it does. Well, great. If it doesn't. I lose the money. No one else is on the line. If it does well, known has to pay me back the money. Everyone just takes their distributions of moment. It turns possible from a monthly standpoint. Does that make sense?
They don't have to have to pay back any of the other stuff.
And then dude, also do give them 10% the distribution or do you make that even heavier
for them? Well, if I'm losing 20% in total, which is my deal structure, then twenty percent of the profits gets distributed on a monthly basis.
That's crazy. I love hearing about this, but he thinks Sean.
Yeah, I think it's dope. I had just seen you kind of from afar for a while that I got. I know he didn't, you know, Loosely, like we're friends. But so, you know, I didn't know a lot of the story. I know I knew Sam has talked about you before on the pot. I think it's or maybe off the pot. I'm not sure, but a salmon told me some cool stuff, but I didn't know a lot of this. So for me this was do because I got to learn a bunch of new things. Sometimes when we have a guest like, dude. I've already listened to 10 of your things. I've been following you for five years, you know, so it's like, I already know a lot of
And I'm doing sort of like translation work for the audience. I'd like to tell about this. Hey, tell him about that thing. You did verses in this like I genuinely wanted to know a bunch of the stuff and I thought you know this interesting to people right that I wanted to talk to you Sean who are like Neil. So, I mean, there's Neil. So I want to kneel, I like finding these people that like are doing really well and a lot of people know about, but there's also this whole other world of people who have no idea who they are Neal. You're one of those folks. I've been I'm an OG reader. So
I've known you forever. The other one is Syed. So Syed, we talk about scientists Bunch on here him and Neal I think are very similar, which is very generous, but also like pretty Cutthroat when it comes to business and it has their hands in just dozens of different things and they're just quietly crushing it and not even talking about it and
very generous person to I know he has a school. I think, in the same city. I have a school in or a different city. I don't know. He actually went to go see his school, but really generous guy him and I have
Build schools in third world countries and stuff like that. But
yeah, it's just like you to do. You guys are. I don't know if you're like this Neil, but I know it seems like he's like this where he like has this, you know software business that's making who knows tens of many tens of millions in revenue and probably that much in profit. But any like buys a gas station or a like he liked. But I just it just like, dude. Are you kidding me? Like, you're a, you're like a tech Tycoon. And you also own like 30, gas stations. It just kind of funny. Here's the thing, some of those businesses.
If
like 3x ibadah, you get 33 percent Returns on your money. If you have good operators and you can put technology in place in marketing and you can go to maybe 50 times irr. That's great. It's just a question of. Can you scale it up and you can you do ones that are large enough.
I know, I'm just saying. It's cool that you know this stuff. That's what your
eclectic. Yeah him. And I I can't speak for him. But I'm a little off, right? But the madness or the methodology I think is great for cash flow. It's terrible if you want to be
I'm going to create the next Airbnb and take this thing public and be like on the Forbes list. Like it's not what I do.
Is that, are you motivated to become a billionaire? What's your motivation Factor? What, why are you motivated by?
Well, I won't ever be a billion. I'm not saying I have the opportunity to but even if I did, I would never be there because we donate our money. And when I was being donate, like not wait till you're dead to donate. Like actually donate on an annual
basis.
How do you figure out? How do you figure out how much you want to give? Because there's always like when I think about it, I think like, well, I could also invest this money. It's going to grow. I'm going to give more later but then, I'm not helping somebody now. And so what's the right number? What's right percentage? Basically for me to be giving on an annual basis. How do you figure that out for yourself?
Whatever my wife wants to give?
What percentage does that come out to?
We don't have a percentage. Keep in mind, businesses are so large. I can get loans for anything on almost any type of a business. I can't go by business for
Million-dollar a billion dollars, but if I wanted to buy a business for 100 million dollars, I can go get a loan on that like literally for most of it.
So I you know, I don't have to worry anymore about. Do I need more of it to invest. It's just we find the right causes and is it going to make a big enough impact? That's more, that's more about how we look about donations. We don't really look at it from the aspect of my donate X dollars. You're too high of a percentage. We look at is we actually think it's going to make a big impact in the next year or short run or two years. We don't want to wait like 10 20 years, the see it impact. We also don't want to put money towards like things like cancer research, I think cancer.
The important, I know a lot of people who have died from cancer, but I don't have enough money to make it bent into cancer versus, you know, solving some of the basic things out there. Like, I can make an impact on things like education in a region. I can't make an impact on cancer. I just don't have enough cash for that.
What is your school said? I have a school sounds tight. I want to
school. I never seen it. We have a school. I think it's in Cambodia and we've done a few others, but I don't really keep track. My wife does and you know, the bigger thing is. It's not my school's most of the kids school and are they learning and getting value from it in
this area? I remember the first school that I bought at forgot about. Yeah, I was gonna say when I buy my school. It's for sure. Going to be my school. They might attend.
My sister in Cambodia. Yeah, a couple like that. Get a couple schools in his couch, cushion back here. Just I just forgot about it. I just it's a little scene. I played in a while ago.
I remember when I was on college campus. I saw like, you know, whoever the Rothschilds are, like, the Rockefellers name plate or whatever on the like, the the library, at Duke campus. I was like, who would do this? Why, what's the point of this? You know,
like it's, um, it's already nice. Cause I don't have that kind of money. My school's.
I didn't understand the appeal until you said, you basically describe a school. You have and forgot and I've never visited it. I was like, ah, that sounds like something I want. I don't want my name plate on. You know, the the Villanova like
10th library on campus. But like, just to know that there's, you know, 12 kids in Vietnam attending my school. They're wondering, why does this name have somebody, a sin? It's, you know, who is this? Who is this, benefactor silent benefactor who has forgotten where our school? It's cool. Is that sounds like the perfect blend of giving and egomania that I live for. So that's pernil. We usually. So we don't have guests on often and when we do we typically never just ask them questions like this. We'd like it's more of a conversation where we're bringing.
Storming stuff. We asked you tons of questions because you're just a very fascinating person. I hope you'll come on soon. And you could actually brainstorm like the another ubersuggest or something like that, you know, like actually go through some of those. I hope you'll come back again because this is awesome.
Yeah, so funny, I was to do that everyone like, aw crap. I should have never told people how much I spend a month should have. Never told people I donate money, and I was just like it goes against a lot of what my wife, but I did wear more of don't tell anyone anything live our lives, and
Do whatever
makes you happy. You only told it because it's not like you're bragging. We like kind of begged you to tell they like we're kind of got under here. Like yeah, tell us. Go go. Tell us. It's not like you're like Brad. I don't think that's bragging. It's not gonna bring it. Just
feels weird to talk about expenses, right? Because there's so many people who struggle for like clean water or shoes, right? As I. Yeah. So,
yeah, but this is interesting. Those people, those people if they ever listen to the podcast, they've already been filtered out by our douchiness in other
Episodes, so don't worry those. Anybody who's sensitive that probably gone by now, but also, there's actually, a lot of like, actually pretty passionately believe this. Like not only am I curious from like a who I want to know. I want to learn, but like, actually pretty strongly believe that the way that people are like, treat money is a pretty taboo thing. Actually, is like a net, like a huge net negative on most people. So, like, you know, people don't know what other people make therefore, they don't know what, like they don't know when they're underpaid. They don't know what's possible.
Sybil they don't ever like sometimes the most valuable conversations I have with somebody. It's just somebody for whom. They do something like something is very normal to them and it would be abnormal to me, but it has now expanded my world view of what's possible. And what could be normal for me. Like, oh, maybe it could be normal to actually, like, give more donate more have a school. Actually that sounds like something. I actually got to go talk to my wife about today is like something we should go do that. Like it's not because you weren't bragging about it. You highlight you just kind of we're honest about how you live your life, which is no there's nothing.
The wrong with that. This that's great. I my opinion and it expands other people's worldview for something. Maybe they want to go do or something that they haven't considered and like it's really weird to me that we keep the stuff under wraps. And if somebody's just honest about like the way they live their life. It's sort of like there's like all these like - taboo around it and like fuck that. I don't like that at all and it's been like when Sam first met me I think this I think I've told the story before but like the second day I met him and then like the next day. He messaged me on Facebook Messenger was like so like how much you make and he was like nah,
We pay yourself. He's like so then what he and then I like I was like, whoa, that's like super forward and he's like when he told me why he was like, I'm trying to figure out how much to pay myself as an entrepreneur. I have no fucking clue and like my investors think I should make this much but I don't know if is that normal and like I kind of asked you and dance around it or like I'm just asking like five friends, what they make and the same role as I am. It's like startup CEO and like that'll help me. Figure out. What's normal. What's the range of like possibilities here? And then after that, he was like, so what do you do with the money? Like, what do you invest? He's like, well, that's a lot. Like you investing that.
I was like, yeah, he's like what are you missing in else? Are telling him and he's like, cool. I'm investing in this and now I got new ideas about what I could be investing and it really became very obvious to me in that moment. I was like, oh shit, you're in a massive Advantage. If you have a few people, you trust that you can talk openly about this sort of thing with and the podcast was, basically taking that doing it at scale is like, all right. Well, what if me and Sam were pretty honest about like the shit we do and like what if we could get guests to be honest about the shit they do. They're like that's I should pretty valuable resource for people who don't have five. They don't happen to have that lucky group of five friends.
All motivated entrepreneurs who are also open and honest about what they do. It's like, well not everybody is located in a place where they have five people geographically around them that they can trust to talk about that stuff. And so the Pod kind of like serves as that, so that's my justification for why you shouldn't feel bad about sharing that information. Did it work? Neal do do not feel bad. But if you want, we'll bleep it out or
whatever you feel is what it is. I still feel bad about it as what it is.
I thought it was a great speech.
I forgot about that. Thank you deal.
I still feel bad because I look at money as like a tool to help other people. And I'm not saying that's right or wrong. That's how I just do. But I also know I spend more than I should and I probably should cut back and live a more humble life, and spend a lot less.
Fuck that, dude. I'm inspired by how you spend and how you live and it, you know, you've done some good in the world by inspiring me. Thanks for coming, dude. I really appreciate it. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to travel. Never looking back.
