Final Thoughts on Abundance Mindset

All right, I own forty ten million dollars in revenue. We acquire And this year will generate around twenty million dollars of revenue. We manage U And that makes thirty million dollars per year of revenue for the company. Those are three ideas It didn't even exist in my cone of vision. You know, I didn't even know that people do businesses like that. I feel like I can rule the world I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like a day on the road. Let's try. All. How does it feel to be in real life? This is strange. This is weird. It's been there's normally a put side by side of the last time we were in person in San Francisco doing it on the red chairs So when you started this thing, and then n I came on two or three months later, we had these bright red chairs that we bought off Amazon for one hundred and fifty dollars. and it was just us sitting on chairs And I hated it because you could like see like a cry shot. Yeah I think I might be doing it now' like sitting like this. And then we had a like a camcordner We would have a guy in the room and we'd be like, Hey, are we good to go? Is it all good audio video? he'd be like I think so It was like I think so is like not what you want to hear from guysy who said was my ever intered.. And it was one camera. H ever done audio auding before? No. But I hear you. Yeah I hear you great. What do you think of New York? Have you been to the Bga yet Yeah, we went to Bodega, yeah. So I talk about Bodega culture. I don't know if you've like seen anything that I' been have you seen any that I' been imped you? I have to like stay out ofodega 'cause I just start chatting it up for too long. It the last, right? Like, dude I've been here for seventy five minutes talking with this guy. It did like like the cashier. Yeah It' the best. I'm friends with so many Bodega owners and You could do a full MFM just inside of Bodega I think we should have done that actually. And like it's the pure definition of entrepreneurship because you could clearly tell like, oh, one day someone asked for cereal. now they have ten costco sized things of cereal and they're individually packed into an ice coffee cup and they just sell cereal now. Yeah. L that's just what they do. There like, does this go with our mission statements? L, no, we sell cereal now.ight. I don't know the license to sell food. even though it says, don't repackage just for individual sale, We sell cereal now. R. And that's what I love. All right. So today we're doing something a little bit special You said you were coming and I reached out. I basically just slacked like the Hampton Channel go, Who in New York has like an odd business that we can like impress Sewn with. And so we picked three different entrepreneurs They I tried to find three businesses that were off the beaten path a little bit because that's why people like watching MFM. you guys like watching or seeing like kind of strange businesses. So hopefully it can open up your mind being like, oh, there's a million ways to get done whatever I want to get done and build a big company. Right. So I picked three.. Okay. So they're going to come on. what are they going to do? we told him, we just bumped into him. We just told him, Hey, come in here and don't start with words This MFM you got to start with a number And don't make us dig it out of you. justust give it to us. You know the stick. you know what? We like to bra. We like to know. We like you to not be humble and brag about that. we want you to brag a little. so They're going to say a number, they're going to say what they do and then We're going to get to know their business because we're nerdy about businesses. And then at the end, you know, we will ask them two things. We'll ask them What adjacent business opportunities are there? Like what other businesses do they see because of where they are in their tiny niche that We don't have enough exposure to. that other people might go run at and then to like, how can we help them? Like what's what's the burning question? if they just had me and you for like, you know, ten minutes What would they want to talk to? Well, so that's what we're going to try The first guy. Ben we could bring him in. What's up much How you doing? All right, welcome to the podcast. Thanks. so I've known Alex for years for a year. Yeah, a year. A year. We're a very good friends, so I'm gonna be biased. Okay start us off with a big number U I own forty publications, forty magazines, ten million dollars in revenue. forty magazines, ten million in revenue. Yeah. What sorts of magazines are we talking? Real estate advertising Real estate advertis. Okay, G giveive us an example. All right. So, you got to carry one. You don't have one on.ane. Yeah. Real estate agents basically pay us to promote their listings. So magazine is like a lookbook of all of the listings that are on the market at that time in their neighborhood. And it goes to a lot of different like locations Like do you have different forty meaning forty forty meaning. Basically, we've divided the country into forty Locations, yeah, zones. So we're covering all of the U.S and Canada How big is a magazine? Like how many pages? Anywhere from like a hundred to two hundred? Well who's the reader?Ccauseuse Realtors are the ones advertising or what? Realtors are advertising. What's the reader? We have a mixture, but basically we mail the magazine out and we'll mail it out based on property value, income, things like that. With the goal of being A real estate agent has a bunch of listings in New York City or something, I don't know, on Dayton, Ohio. And you want to show the resident of the homes on this block that they should either use this real estate agent or buy some of the nearby homes. Yeah, either or. Okay. Yeah ye. aggents definitely are using it to pick up listings. like they want to be able to say, look or I'm going to advertise your home, things like that But they also want to sell the listening they have. And what's it called? Haven lifestyles. Haven Lifest up, okay How did you come up with this idea All right, so I started it with my business partner, Ryan We were college roommates. I was a couple years out of college. I was actually a bill collector for like five years through college and after a bill collector. I was a bill collector, which I actually I think really helped with sales. Just having to call people all day for money, being rejected.re you like the muscle? Like, what is the no collector actually doing? Dialing them up? It was it was a credit card. It was Victoria's secret. It was literally Victoria's secret credit cs. But yeah, anyhow, I did that I actually, I was a supervisor. I got dug into some HR nonsense that I couldn't believe and like having to basically defend myself And I texted my college buddy. I'm like, dude, you want to do something? And he's like, yeah, let let's start the magazine. So that's where we started. Why the idea of the magazine? He was doing it. He had a small publication in Annapolis, Maryland, and he said that basically agents had reached out to him and like, why don't you do something in DC? we want to advertise in DC. So We just launched one. Who's the biggest? How many companies do what you do? Most There's a lot of small publications. So like each city you go into, I have like a publication But we have them across the whole country and And you do ten million in revenue. say how much profit Yeah, like two point five. Okay. And the biggest one in the space is how big I don't know if it's public. I don't I mean, we could be one of the biggest in the space. Like there's not most of them are franchised. How many years have' you been doing this? ten. Okay, so it's been a slow build. You've been steady at this revenue for a while. What It's been a slow build that has jumps. Give us your one. What was your one like? three hundred K. And that's just me. G on meeting individually, like just grinding it out. Okay. And my business partner handl one. you know right away, like this is it. I'm gonna do this for a while or were even after year one, were you still like, I don't know. I never thought ten million But I thought enough to support myself, yeah. We launched an initial publication, likeike we just did a free version of the magazine. like just let us put you in and I'll show you what it's gonna look like And then I went around and had meetings all week. I like, here it is. And I mean, literally the very first meeting, the guy' like, I don't do it. Okay, cool, like, I'm twenty five years old. All right. And just meeting after meeting was like that We got to a meeting where gu like, what can you do for ten thousand? which is way more than we were charging. like how many covers can I get? So' just like all of a sudden like, I'm calling back to my business partner every few minutes, like, dude, there's another, another. like there's something here. But I kept my other job for like eight months. But so it's more like a brochure It's a magazine because it's got a lot of pages, but it's a brochure. I mean, you're just showing off other. You're just brochure.' magazine. You're just sending a magazine unsolicited, correct? There's not y yet..'s true.'scribe junk mail sure, Junk. it's not a subscriber magazine. Also, I should say, I mean' calling Victorory's Secret just underwear. Yeah, exact A huge portion is online at this point. L we do drive most of our traffic online, but everyone is paying to be in the magazine. And who is doing So let's say I want to be in the magazine and I say like, yeah, I'm in. Who does the artwork? Who actually makes the pages? We handle it. Most of our designers are fans W Philippes, Yeahah, basically And how many of them are there Because they to have forty magazes and how often it quarterly or monthly They're all every once every six weeks. We print thirty different magazines a month. Why did you just say every week, we've got seven go? Most of it's online Most of the exposure. So when you're talking about subscribers, junk mail, whatever, So like we mail copies out, we do that based on, like I said, networth, things like that. And then we're also driving another, you, ninety percent of our readers online. What you' then looking for people that have like recently been looking for homes, things like that. How many people work there So I'm confused. This is a dumb question. I don't really understand how junk mail works. So I can just mail anything emailbody anyone. So you just look up like, hey, addresses like which zip codes or neighborhoods have a certain profile Yeah. And then you download from some site all the addresses. Yeah, it's all through the post office. Like you basically can pick postal routes and they'll deliver. It's actually cheaper when you do that. How many magazines do you send a year U, like half a million So this is the post office's business model, right? Like Yeah basasically, the post office is pretty much funded by guys like you who are using itike We have to make sure it stays within certain dimensions. It can't go over a certain amount of weight or where The post office is basically Facebook ads. Yeah exactly. It's Facebook. It's selling you are the product. It's selling your address and your mailbox without you benefiting or agreeing to it others, what would it take to get you to one hundred million in revenue It's definitely possible. No asking the like Asian mom way. Why aren't you at one hundred million Um, yeah, I mean, it's a good question Hey, I want to tell you something pretty cool. We have a database of all of the unsexy business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast. So hundreds of episodes, the team at Hubspot went through, they pulled out all the unsexy ideas. So not the super high tech ones, but the simple relelatable, interesting, profitable ideas that we have brainstormed and they're all available for download for free. Just click the link in the description below. Thank you to our friends at HubSpot for sponsoring this podcast and putting together this free resource for you guys Back to the show It's kind of a question I would have for you too, because I know you always say you get to ten million I know you can get to a hundred million, so like how? Uh, I think there's a few different ways. I don't think there's like one like switch flip of a switch. I think there's a lot of other verts we could be hitting Other than real estate agents. Like home services that sort of thing you're talking about? Yeah yeah. which we do within our publication, but I think if it was specific So' market told us about the business, magazine compomany, AK. You send it to people? What's the burning question? Like where could Smart friends help you. Yeah. I mean, honestly, I do think that question of how do you take this from ten to one hundred Can I take a stab at helping you? So First I always want to know, what's the default growth rightate? Maning? How much did you grow last year to this year? What do I expect if nothing changes? like ten percent ten percent. Okay, so to get to one hundred or is a real goal? one hundred What was a real goal? My rle go is to double profit profit. Okay. You might not even need to grow top line. We grow profit faster and we grow revenue. Yeah. It seemed like when Sam was asking you like Wh's the biggest at doing in this newre kind like, we might be the biggest One thing that I can immediately tell that's very different about you than the way both bothoth me and Sam are reverse engineer type guys. We like to understand what's working for others how big o other people are to give ourselves like, we create this almost like box And I feel like you don't do that as much. Is that? Definitely a reus, Yeah, yeah. But you're happy. Yeah Super happic.. What I mean is likeike. To be clear, we have a sickness Yeah. and you seem fine, but we'd like to infect you with our sickness. He doesn't. Yeahah. But if you did want to change, here's what I might do. I think what I would do is maybe it's not like direct like, oh, who also sends homelistings sells to realtors, But just the general model of mailing out magazines or informational stuff to homes and generating a big business off the back of that, Who else does that? That's not exactly your space. wealth management companies that grow this way? or is there some other category that grows this way? I think the most I mean, it's a little different, but I think the most intriguing are like neighborhood publications. So I don't know if you've heard of stroll But Revolution is that one? I don't think it's revolution. There's stro, there are others. Is this like what's going on in your area?? Years ago I talked about this. I think it was called Revolution. It was a neighborhood publication that's a franchise model that back then, I think we were in real life when we did this actually, it was like north of a hundred million. Yeah.,' definitely over a hundredillion tells me that if you did have dedicated home services that would be much And maybe there's a way to do it more informationally. So instead of the one you do right now, you're just like, here's the home for sale. It's kind of like utilitarian. If you just said, like, hey, here's all the home service providers, that wouldn't be that great but if it was like Let's say it's winter and it's like Here's the five tips every homeowner should do for like listical type of content, right And then on the inside, there's providers, but like you just do something that's actually like to add The front cover is basically like Free a give. It's useful information entnterertaining useful information about home service or home care. Yeah. And then ins size, you obviously have homecare providers where if people don't want to do it themselves, they could hire pros to come do this stuff for. I wonder if you could get good at that But I would just kind of if I was you, I would start with a not an answer but a study. I I would go get real familiar with what are all the other players doing in the space? Who's big, who's not? Who used to work there? Go talk to them, go learn from them. kindind of go on like like a one month expedition of that. and I think you'll know so much more him and our buddies. we talk about hiring all the time. I'm like Go recruit someone who's at the bigger company and just have them come and work for you.. Why is there a world where instead of forty could be eighty markets It would be dicing the Well, we could go international. We're already in Canada. So there are markets that make sense for us to go into. But as far as forty to eighty, you would then break down the forty into eighty. It's the same geographical area. It's just going be more because I mean, we're literally covering the whole. US U But I do think if you break it down, it's going to resonate more. Like there are areas that we have full states combined together because it's just not like Ohio, Indiana, it's just not that sexy of a market. Would you ever sell this I would, it's not necessarily my goal. I'm pretty happ been doing it forever. Yeah D is craz. might be too happy It's crazy talking to like an emotionally stable person. Yeah. you wanted to double profits and I wonder what would happen. Again, I think this is more psychological than strategic. I think people underrate how much of entrepreneurship is psychological and not strategic I wonder if you just decided that instead of twenty five percent net margins, you're going have thirty five percent net margins in the next six months what would happen differently? Because I think you I think right now my read is that you would like for there to be more profits. But you don't really have like a I have to have more profits by this date. And if you literally just changed the way you talked about it and thought about it, I'm sure that the answers would become pretty obvious to you as you started. Is that true? Like do you have a a goal and a date where it's going to happen by Yes, but it is it is more recent change in the m mindset. So what is the date? we could hold you to? It was one year from a month ago. So it's I got a let to double Yeah double profit too be at a double double as in double the run rate at that point. So get to four million in run rate profit five five. How's the first month been in terms of a if we were saying like out of twelve months. You've already used whatever eight percent of your exact time. Are you like doing what you needed to do to create a bunch of momentum or or not really. It's like, Yeahah, I think so. The main thing The easiest way to double profits right now, I think is retention. We already work with ten thousand plus agents every year But we don't get them to advertise that many times So I mean, literally double retention and we're fine. You have the inventory yourre. Exactly. We have the clients, like we have people that are agreeing to advertise with us. Do ask them multiple times? Yeah, we ask them every cycle. Why don't they just do it again if it's a moneyak. A lot of times they just it's like, you know, I've got a big listing, Great, now's the time. and then they just drop off presell them on like inste of just one time, you say, I'll give you a discount if you do it for twelve months. Yeah, yeah, we have like fif thousandteen hundred people to do it for the year So they're just on auto debit So there's a decent amount doing that But I think there's a lot of things we can do to improve their experience where they're coming back every month or just I just need them to advertise one more time basically. I wish you would have brought us one in the last in the last u, okay, let's say this year How many of those agents have you personally talked to on the phone? Zero Should I? Yeah, Yeahah, okay U not necessarily to sell them, but like Even just take your hundred top spenders. You should call every single one of them and figure out What do they love? What do they hate? Why aren't they doing it more? How do you get them are they actually it' just been outside out of mind? Oh, yeah, I will do it And you will learn a lot just by taking a roster of your top hundred. I also learned this in our recent business that's done pretty well. I asked the CEO. I was like, hey, like this has g pretty well. What did you do? And he goes You know what I did? I came in and he goes, I tiered out our key clients as tier one, tier two, tier three. And he created a A definition for each she goes, tier one is somebody who's they would do me a favor. I have them on a texting relationship. they know me, I know them. they would do me a favor you know quickly N two is I got their email. We've traded some emails We like each other acquaintances. Yeah, we're friendly acquainances Tier three is like, we're transactional. Like when they need me, they call me when I need them, I call them We haven't really talked much because that transaction is infrequent. Yeah. And then there's tier four, which is like worse than. And he's like when you do that and you just score yourself like, o what what would a really healthy relationship look like here? What would a really weak relationship look like here And then you look at your top hundred and you realize, shit, we have no tier ones. couple tier twoos and everybody else is tier three or four Then it's like a wake up call. Nothing bad's gonna to happen by talking to your top hundred customers, but a lot of good can happen from going and talking to them. Yeah, I like that. And you could do that in thirty days. You could talk to all hundred and thirty days. What do you think? Are you impressed? Did you ever know that something like this could exist It's so simple of a business too, right? Like Yeahah, it's pretty simple. I mean it's they didn't even subscribe. I'm used to media businesses where it's like first I win their hearts and minds and I get them to listen to me regularly or read me every day. Then I get to make money. He's like, read this. Yeah, read. haveave you incredible Why are we doing jg? You know Lindy AI tool Yeah ye. Flo, the guy who started Lindy's inhamon, and he wass like, Alex Daniels has the most impressive AI setup I've ever seen. Oh, and that's been like a little bit of a claim of fame that he had. C give us a little sauce real quick. What are you doing U, we used Lindy. to basic to run the sales process. So they don't have sales peopleople We do have salespeople, but they aren't they've shifted, but they've really shifted to a different focus basically, which is where I'd like them to be more of that customer experience and like getting people to come back But Lindy is able to respond to the Every email that's coming in, follow up with it, upsell them, just go through the whole process But yeah, it was it was a big Lindy, which is what Flo was talking about is crazy. That's awesome. All.re you. What you' done is awesome, dude. All. Thanks, guys Hey, let's take a quick break. You know that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written, everyveryone's aligned and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content That someone is usually you, and it's due tomorrow. Well, the Breeze assistant from HubSpot can help It works right inside HubSpot. You can draft a campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice, all using your actual customer data So you don't create just content, you create content that converts. Check out hubspot. com, the Aentic customer platform for growing businesses We need like a name for this Dragonst, the shark tank, the The swimming pool. Denim dungeon, let'sgeon. What's up? What up, brother? How's it going? How Your name and the impressive It is with the big number. Great. I'm Josh. I run Team Outsider. We acquire family owned campgrounds and this year we'll generate around twenty million dollars of revenue twenty million in revenue. Okay, so explain like I'm a idiot because I kind of am. What do you do exactly so? Yeah, so we acquire campgrounds typically from families who are looking to retire and at campground, the majority of it is like a hotel, right? So we're renting different spaces. Some people come in their RV's, so they have effectively a traveling hotel room We also have tent spaces and cabins that we rent to people who don't want to stay in a tent and don't have an RV Do you camp? When's the last time you went camping ten years ago, butah, I appreciate it. Iven't been camping in like twenty years. So a campground is literally just a piece of dirt, right? It the ground We have amenities. so all of our campgrounds have stores. We typically have a cafe where we'll sell ice cream and sometimes burgers and. cabins, basically or We have cabins as well. Yeah. We have swimming pools, lakes, at one of our campgrounds, we have a go cart track. Okay So it's a very outdoorsy hotel, essentially. Effectively, yeah Okay, we're looking at one here What's like the most popular one you guys have They're all reallyop popular in their local communities. The first one we bought, which is right near Granty Town in Yellowstone is really popular because that's a major tourist destination We have one right outside New York City, called the Neververssink River Resort. It's a couple hours away. so that's really popular with folks who live around here So give us give us the story. What makes a guy want to buy a campground? How do you even realize that's a good opportunity for. Yeah. so I met my partner in college, Cody, we studied together and started a business together which was tremendously unsuccessful, but showed us that it was really good relationship. And so we stayed friends post college, got some working experience, and then realized we wanted to do something together again. We were looking for a business where two non technical founders could hopefully have a winning situation and we wanted a market that was large enough to participate in and interesting One where there was an immense amount of fragmentation with ownership onene that was operationally complex and one that was meaningful, where the team members would feel good working there and where the customers would feel good about being part of it as well. So how many do you own? Currently we have sixteen and there are about four thousand sites amongst those in ten state. And did you raise money Yeah. so the first one we did with our own cash and an SBA loan. So it just kind of was the Yellowstone one. How much was that About three million. And how much money of yours and loan did you put? The loan was eighty plus percent. Yeah. The rest was cash. sorry, so that was an already operating site. Everything we buy is existing cash flow. It's been there generally for decades. Most of these are staples within their local communities. So let's walk through that first one. So you find this property It's doing what buy it. It was generating around half a million dollars of top line of total income. T line. And then the cash flow on that's what? About thirty five percent Can you do that for me? Yeah? We Call it one hundred and fifty. Okay And you buy that for three million bucks Okay, so that's that's the entry. And then you do that knowing, hey, we think we heard that one hundred fifty to two hundred fifty. What was the inside at the time. Yeah, so that one didn't have a lot of digital marketing It It was like a mom and pop thing. All of them are. everythingthing's on paper and they've been doing it forever and they're like, kids don' want this sh. do you want it? Exactly. So we are oftentimes a succession plan for these sellers. And so these are multiyear relationships. We've got a couple under contract right now. One of them I've been talking to the seller for five years And generally what happens is we maintain the relationship and when they're ready to sell, we get the call, hopefully. And what we going to do to make it better and what does better mean? Yeah. So there are a few things we can do. One of them is introduce just professionalized systems. So digital marketing, a better website, voip systems for the phone to be able to make sure that the training is happening the right way. marketing mean like Yelp in Google reviews Google reviews, but also paid ads, a better website. Oftentimes there's no digital reservation systems. We'll introduce that. Got it So that's kind of on the technology side. I think I missed it. So you're like, I wanted to do something with my friend. And then you had to like Business school explanations is like high fragmentation, bl,ah, No, no. Where were you sitting when someone was like, shouldhould we buy campgrounds? or you met a guy who was rich that bought campgrounds? you're like, we should do that shit. Like what actually happened? Great question. So our backgrounds were in hospitality and real estate. Okay. So there's obvious confluence there. And then Cody lives in Boseeman, Montana and is an avid RVer. So he said, hey, the thesis sounds interesting. Why don't you fly out here and let's drive around the country, meet some owners, team members, guests and see if this is something that actually has a little bit of a spark to it. So I flew out from New York I spent some time on the road, meeting different campground owners and team members and gus and just fell in love with the space. And how much money have you raised in total now? We have raised R sixty million dollars. You raised sixty million bucks from v What do you say fifteen ish properties? We've sold a couple, but we have sixteen currently. And what is it all worth North of one hundred million. Does that mean that forty million is you and your partnner' equity? No, we've raised outside capital. So at this point, we have family offices we work with, we have a select group of accredited investors we work with, and we have a few institutional partners we've work with as well. I guess what I'm saying is the twenty million in revenue, or if you value it, don't know about real estate, However you value it, how do you get personal cash flow or net worth from it Like most real estate operators, it's promote based and different deals are different depending on the investment partner, right? So we are back end incentivized largely for most of these typical private equity structure where there's a preferred return, there's a return of capital and then there's a split depending on kind of who the investor profile is. And so when you do that first one, you go buy for three million, it's doing half a million in revenue, one hundred fifty k of cash flow. What happened? What was there like success story of that would. obviously was successise, you wouldn't have sixteen more Well We were able to refi a couple of years later. So took all of our cash out. you brought the the NOI up to what? The NOI and that one went from closer to closer to three hundred at that point. Okay So you doubled the profit on the thing. Reca refinance it out, use that capital to go buy the next one. Exactly, exxactly That's pretty awesome. Why are campgrounds? If I wanted to go to real estate, why would I choose campgrounds instead of whatever? retail shopping, multifamily office, whatever. What would be my advantages if I was going into this strong yield, it's operationally complex, which means there's opportunity to drive value and really attractive depreciation characteristics that are similar to manufactured housing, for example. You can depreciate roads and the infrastructure. There's very limited land value in a lot of these more rural markets limited building value So the depreciation characteristics are also really attractive to people who are tax sensitive. Will you do this for forever Ifope so Like just I love it L likeike looking down ten years or twenty years down the line, where do you hope to be business wise? Yes, look, I think the larger opportunity as more of life moves online believe businesses that get people together in the real world going to be more valuable and different types of experience oriented real estate that can speak to that thesis But campgrounds still have a lot of runway. We still have a big pipeline of properties we'd like to be a part of. and so hopefully we're doing this for forever Who are the big dogs in this space? Yeah, so there are two very large REITs in this space that initially were into the manufactured housing side of the business, but recognized both from a depreciation perspective and also the infrastructure is very similar, right? You rent had campground REI There are manufactured housing reIs that have a large portion of campground exposure. Oh That's interesting. Yeah. So that was one of the ways when we were researching this that we got a little more comfortable with the idea. When you're buying you're buying out the operator. and then you put a property manager, property management companies. we're the manager. You are the manager. Yeah. So initially, we didn't think we were going gonna go that rad. Initially, so Cody, my partner went and managed our first location for the first year Scrub toilets did the whole thing. we thought learn how to hold a shovel and dig a hole And then you can hire a third party to manage it like most real estate sponsors do. And what we realized is A, you can't outsource culture. So that was going to be really important for our success And B, if we wanted to scale, there weren't really at least at that time, competent third parties that could scale with us. So We made the decision to build an opco and house and they have been managing our properties ever since. Your branding' cool. It's awesome. Yeah appreciate it. And when I was looking at, I was like,, I would love to go see this. Is there a world where you would buy buuy of them in a similar region and create a membership, you know, like K is it KOA Yeah. KA.pe actuallyally KA franchise in certain markets. So how do I explain KOA to someone, I mean, I don't know Dons of camp Gownes. Okay. They've got five hundred fifty flags across the country. They own about fifty of themselves, but they are a franchise No, they're is it like' very. it's a memership or it a brand It's not a meership. You know what you're going to get. It's a brand you know you know what you can got. Yeah. like when I do road trips, and I want tona camp, it's like Something might be a lot nicer, something could be a lot worsse. But KOA I just I know what I'm rolling up on. Like I was roll talking to a kind of like a famous guy and he was like, an hour outside of cities, there's something called was it postcard cabins or something like that It's like, oh I love going to those, my kids It's like what's the story there? Then I looked it up, it's like owned by Marriott or something. They sold to Marriott last year. It's a little bit of a different model. They were focused on very remote single units in destinations where you didn't have to see your neighbors. We are more community focused. So a lot of our campgrounds have seasonal guests, which basically means these are people who reserve the right to a specific space for the duration of the season pay before the season starts and come every year Grandma's there aunts uncles are there Kids are there, everyveryone's been raised there, All the friends are around, so it's very sticky and communal. But is there a world where you do brand it so it's similar to each property has maybe a different stick, but it's all under one brand? Potentially down the road. I think real estate brands are inherently tough to scale. and until we have meaningfully more scale, that's probably not the right focus for us. But as regional concentration starts to happen, which's already naturally happening Perhaps that's something to ex. So when I hear you I know nothing about real estate. When I hear you describe this, I think, that sounds awesome. You're outdoors all the time. Obviously that's not the case. What's the day to day work? Are you just like calling these places trying to make a deal. Writing a lot of handwritten letters, a lot of cold calling, a lot of checking up all We found like a letter with a cookie converts better than like, you know a call? A lot of it is luck. The challenge in this space is effectively our sellers are behind the front desk most of the time, which means in season They're exhaust and they don't want to take a call. So the bottleneck of the business is just getting in touch and wooing finding people who want to sell. Building relationships and being the trusted succession plan because they care they don't care it's not just a money thing for them. Exactly. These are their friends that they have been personally servicing for oftentimes decades. And so whoever's taking over that relationship is a really important. Is there like likeamp campground owners like publication or summit or their podcasts? Yeah, there are Facebook groups and conventions and hosting them all the time with like the same thumbnail image of across all of them. So everyone like starts saying like, oh, this is the guy He seems like a good guy A bit of that, we're trying to figure out how to do it in an authentic way And that's a tough balance. because there's a level of mistrust around being overmarketed to in this space. So A lot of it is catching them on the right day when the campground's a little bit less busy and they answer the phone and we can start a relationship and And you know, years later, when they're ready to sell, we got the call. This sounds pretty awesome. Is this How many hours a week do work A lot Yeah. you grind? Yeahah. you're in grind mode. Yeah, absolutely. But I love it. There's a lot of real estate people, they choose real estate because while real estate is work, there's a way to do it or a state you can reach that is not about grinding and it's about you have a lot of flexibility. you got cash flow coming in or you flip a property and you can take time off. You know, you could do all kinds of things U Sounds like you're approaching it more like company building than Company building and it's a hospitality business. Right We've got Tens of thousands of guests every year, three hundred and fifty people on the team. so there's no No easy break period. Is there our people you employ to run a campsite, are they paines in the asses? Like are they hippies or are they metath addictics? No, we have some amazing people that work with us. disincentage to them. ple you answer this question. The majority of our team is incredible. They're aligned with our mission, which is to be the most hospitable team in the world, which when you're trying to replace a mom and pop operator is really important because the hospitality that a family provides It was awesome Really tough to beat But we do have some fun stories of team members that haven't been the right set. We had a a situation where we found out we had employed a convicted bank robber if we had robbed nine banks and I had to go personally fire him in person and was that like? Terrifying. Yeahah, actually was incredibly nice and reasonable, but to drive in, I was very scared. had another situation where we found out through a guest Some people in the team had been cutting down our trees and selling the wood for cash in a Facebook page. Wasn't a great situation. And again, these are total outlier situations. They're just fun for conversation Hey, why do you live in New York? Why do this in New York My family's here My wife's here, my son's here, my parents are here, my in laws are here So, you know, when you have kids and the grandparents around it, But my partnnererss in Boseman and look let's hit real quick. what's the burning question? If you had a burning question, something that we can give you kind of a quick mayaybe a different insight on than as an outsider, what would be helpful? Sure. As you think about what we do and trying to scale culture to a team of hourly employees across ten states with this workforce, what is something that we could do differently to keep people incentivized to deliver the level of service that We're trying to deliver If you can solve this in ten minutes, I will love you forever. Well actuallyually, I'll give you a quick story. So my first business was a restaurant business, which has the same problem frontline workers in hundreds of locations if you do it right And we met with the founder of Chipole and he said If you can get a frontline worker to care about the customer, like treat this the way you're treating this first location. You'll make billions of dollars. The problem is that's the hardest thing in the world to do. And Chipola actually did some pretty interesting things where like bothoth in the naming of like they have general managers, the general managers get comp. If any employee you ever have becomes a general manager, even if you don't no longer work at Spola, you get ten grand in the mail. Like They do lots of things to like build a culture where they get people to stay longer than they would normally would, to work their way up the ranks, to actually think like an owner of that place. And so I would just study I'd make a list of the fifteen companies that have already solved this problem. I would study what works. I'd look for common patterns and I would try to hire people who are there in the early days, either as consultants or as a full time person. Often you can find retired people who you're not gonna to hire them, but they kind of want something to do and they're sitting on this wealth of knowledge because they helped scale, you know, whatever cruise lineure. and you know, and now they're just retired. And I think, that's what I would do if I was going to solve this problem. My real life answer is I run away from businesses that have that problem because I just I'd rather pick a different card. but you've picked this hard. Yeah. goodood luck. read Obviously, you've read Will Guudera's Unreasonable Hospitality we had him on the podcast and he told two stories that was interesting I was like, okay, this works good in a fancy restaurant.ere else does this work? And he told two stories. The first one was he was like I worked with a dealer, a Ford dealer, like a car dealer and I worked with them, I go, lookook, let's just find like a forgotten moment where we could blow someone away And they go he goes, let's go sit in the car. Let's look around. He goes, what's in the glo box? And the dealer was like, nothing. We don't keep anything there. He goes, I got it Let's put a fifteen dollars Starbucks gift card in the glove box of every card. and we're going to put a note that says we wanted to whenever you' going to open this glove box, we wanted to surprise you with something special. And that's all its set. The second example where he got his team to do it He told the story of a UPS store owner Not exactly a high margin or wonderful business necessarily, but he was like every week the owner had a competition to whatever person did that was considered the most hospitable thing, they just got a twenty dollars bill. That was it. And he was like just doing that one contest, it changed the whole culture because now everyone was competing on who can be the most hospitable and just like one little trick Grown up to just like kids we just like stickers. And he told these two stories and I was like, Ohh, those are so small. And he was like They tracked like referral business and it definitely worked. So he gave you should listen to that podcast. It's my first million Will Gaderre. It was really cool. A amazing. for. But yeah, that guy's awesome. and it gave you like some actionable tips. Yeah, fantastic. Thank you. R right on. Thank for grs on everything. Thank. Thanks for coming.ci you guys. All right, see you to go camping Yeah, it's pretty awesome billaire venture capitalist who's one of the greatest investors of all time. hisis name iss Bill Girley, he recently wrote about the single most important principle when it comes to building a company. It wasn't fundraising, it wasn't product market fit, It wasn't even hiring Bill said that an engaged peer network might be the most powerful growth tool available, but it's also one of the most underdiscussed and underutilized Keep in mind, Bill is a seat investor to Uber, Zillow, Open Table, and so he's had a front row seat into how some of the best companies actually operate. And after decades of watching what separates the winners from the rest, he lands on this. Who you're in the room with is the most important thing to whether you're going to be successful and build a great company or not. Now, most of you founders who are listening to this, you treat a peer network as something that's a nice to have, something that you're going to eventually get to do, but you actually never get around to making it happen. My company Hampton, we have changed that We build curated groups of highly vetted founders in cities across the United States, Canada, and England This isn't a surface level networking event It's not a mastermind full of strangers. It's a peer group of eight other entrepreneurs who will challenge you, hold you accountable, push you to grow, and you'll meet with every single month in your city Apply at joinhampton d. com slash mFM and I will reply in the next twenty four hours to help figure out if there's a good group in your city that's the right fit All right, the last one It's got to be funny. How's it's up? All right, welcome T the hot seat, the denim den. Denim denim. Is it live right now? D denim, we're live. ye. All right, you wan to give us the big the. All right, the big number. I'm Brian. I run a company called autopilot. We manage one point eight billion dollars And that makes thirty million dollars per year of revenue for the company. We started about three years ago for the company autopilot. And one number that kind of blows my mind, I think it's a testament to How much people want to invest in retail traders, it took Bill Ackman and Ray Dallio about ten to fifteen years to start managing a billion dollars. and the fact that like autopilot this Tch company that plugs into your Robin account, your Swab account can manage one point eight billion do To me just blosed my mind. I'm shyed. That's crazy. I didn't realize how big you guys were. So what's the business do Yeah, so the business we're most popular for launching the Nancy Pelosi stock tracker on the to I thought your big number was going to be forty four percent. That's Nancy Pelosi's annual returns. are you don't? What are her anual returns? What does Nancy Pelosi do In the last three years, she's up around two hundred and forty percent. check the app for the actual performance. I have to say that for SEC compliance. But she's outperformed the spy significantly. So I think the spy in that same time is up around thirty to forty percent and she's up two hundred and forty percent. In your app, I can invest alongside picks because she's a politician exactly. So she's not a politician anymore. So her well, she retires in January of twenty twenty seven. So we have that much time to opy her trades and follow her trades, but basically I can follow anyone. You could follow anyone. So you could follow her, you could follow different politicians. We also take thirteen Fs from different hedge funds And that was the way that we kick started the marketplace. I think every startup has like that chicken egg problem they have to solve For a marketplace, you have the supply side and the demand side. And if you don't have anyone to follow that's good, you're not going to get people to come follow that person But if you don't have anyone to follow, no one's going to want to launch on your platform. They're like, why am I doing this? So? We were like Chris and I we got together and we werere like, let's just mananufacture the supply side, let's take publicly available information. becausecause the whole premise of autopilot was Anyone can become a head is that anyone can become a headge? Eactly instead of like having a substack new newsletter where you could follow my content I can charge a certain amount and you could follow my tradees. So is my portfolio that I think is good. Exactly. Got it. And I think there's a lot of substpects. I'm sure we've all like read some of them But you don't know like the performance of this person. Maybe the right and the' winners. They write a very convincing case. they talk about how last time they were right, but you only know their They might win wrong like three or four other times for that one. And so with Autopilot, you have a track record of success. You could see people's winners, their losers, their performance, their entire performance, and then you can see how many dollars they' following them, their content, et cetera. many of you raised Y ra is about sixteen million. One, six. Yeah, one six, sixteen And thirty million in revenues seems like company. Yeah. What's that worth I don't know. we're going out to raise sereries B. the valuations that different venture firms You know, floated rs between three hundred four hundred million whichich is crazy. But that is venture money.ot sure what it's actually worth Hold you U thirty one You start this business What was the first idea you had here? First idea is what So the first idea we actually started six years ago was an idea. it was a company called IrRis. Iris for the eyes so you could see into other people's portfolios. I was trading on Robinhood. And you've been thinking about this idea for like six plus years Yeah Yeah. And I think like like we all kind of Any retail trader, I don't know if you guys invest in the stock market yourself on an app. Yeah. anyyone's like There's stocks that just fly and it's kind of obvious. Like I remember buying NVID or buying Tesla and you're like Some things are just obvious to younger people, but if you just Like, don't do the research, you're not going to get those asymmetric gains. Yeah But most people don't do the research. Yeah, most people don't. and I think most things I think are obvious are wrong. And time when I invest, I lose but That is fair. and there I do of like the inverse Kramer effect. no. But I think there are certain people who just have a knack for it. And I think we were talking earlier about how most people should just invest in index funds. I would say, I think that's true for the most part because a lot of people want to do it themselves, especially I think there's this advent of DIY. But I think the goal is for autopilot for you to find someone who you have confidence in and can see the track record of success you put like ten percent to twenty percent of your net worth, not all of it, but in about ten percent to twenty percent in these high risk high rewards strategies. You know what's fun Wait we're doing this Ray Dalio thing tomorrow. We're interviewing him. and he started as a newsletter. It was like a one thousand five hundred dollars a month newsletter that's smart. And then someone was like, Hey, if you think you're the man then why don't you have your own ph? And know he's like Maybe I will. And we are the biggest Yeah the biggest one. So my question is like why doesn't I think you know Motley Fool. So Motley Fool does nine figures a year in subscription revenue. So if you don't know, Motley Fool, you give them a one hundred dollars or some amount of money and they give you stock picks But they also have a fund where they invest in their own picks. And I think they have over a billion AM. It's all public. You can look it up. So will like every financial blogger who like is a picker, like be being an autopilot person Yeah, I think that's going to happen. We have there's going to be way less of them because everyone's going to be able to see who's legit and who's not. Let see exactly. And so we have a six thousand person waitlist to like launch a portfolio on autopilot. So we do a lot of due diligence. we look at the track record of success. We'll look at we'll analze their actual portfolio. because for example, if you run a newsletter, but your actual portfolio is bad, we don't really want it on the platform. Who's the most famous or successful person that launch their You're not like you're tracking the policy. There's a guy named Peter Wolf. And so I checked out his personal Robinhead account and I was like, this guy's up percent How do you check someone's personal right? just by like I would go on a video call and I would look at it. but right now we have tech where he could actually connect his Robinnet account to our platform and we could analyze it. And two hundred percent. Overver over three years. And I was like, all, two over three years years time, right? Th three years I'm in the bura, and it's like what is it doing a downturn? But I liked the way he was thinking about what he does to hedge against risk. And I was like, you know what? L launch on the platform. guys are kind of like You're you are like the editorial team. Youre you're the American Idol You're letting them sort of audition You're picking, right? Yeah. So you're picking the pickers Then they launch the portfolio, people then pay upfront to do it or people just copy the trade and that person gets a commission. Yeah There's like a subscription fee very similar to a substate. How much? The pilot we call them pilots, they could set it. It ranges from one hundred bucks a year to five hundred bucks a year. And so they do that, how much are the top people making as the top people are making around one to two million dollars per year on Autopots Whoa, which doesn understand. That's outside of their stock pr. That' autopilot. That's just their autopilot. And so they and so that's like That means they have how many subscribers like ten thousand subscribers, hundred thousand It depes how much they charge. but for example, Pure Wolf has around two hundred twenty million dollars following him on autopilot Oh so you see like how many dollars it backing you? Yeah. And so again, for example, this is the stat that we pull Bill Ackman who traditionally raised a lot of money really quickly when he graduated at Harvard. It took him about five years to raise sixty million dollars. This guy in autoppe within one year raised two hundred twenty million dollars. So you're basically, it's kind of like, Justin Bieber was YouTube native Yeah. right. He was a YouTuber first and became Justin Bieber. And you're basically saying like The next Bill Ackman, the youer generationations is Ray Dahio He' going come from He's going to come ourars or from you Do I put my money into Peter's fund Yeah so what would happen is you connect your roobinhood account whatever brokerage you have and it automatically follows his fund. So when he makes a trade, we send a notification to your brokerage to automatically buy or sell that security Copy trade. But it's giving the money to the guy. Yeah and that's the money of your roobinhood. Yeah. And that's how we are able to operate from a legal standpoint. Whenever you're giving custody of assets away to someone The SCC gets really involved, is that a brokerage, you have custody? That's when a lot of regulation p. How's the business? autopilot. We've been running autopilot for three years, but entire So business, like structure is six. So autopilot has existed in three awesome years.. What's going to happen in six years when you have three shit years If we have three shit like stock market sh realities things. I think what we see is the retail investor right now Persevere longer than they used to Three years is a long time I would say if it was like three years downturn like consistently, I feel like the whole world will There'll be a lot of questions for the whole world. but that happenens Well it happens to like Robinhood and these other guys, right? Like what do you mean? I think three years straight it hasn't really happened, but I think you'll see like one and a half years happen. so I think I Robin Hood almost died But they they didn't because they had raised billions of dollars. Yeah. And they had an emergency funding round. Yeah. So like it was a near death. When was that during the was during game stop They're about to go under and I think they had raise forty billion dollars like immediately and or not sorry, four billion dollars immediately Because they needed liquidity? There's something with like being a brokerage and like the DTCC, not too familiar with it, but they're like, you need to post up this money. we don't have it. Are people nervous to invest are venture guys that nervous to invest I think what we've seen in Venture is just the AI wave And it's just not Fintech was sexy in twenty twenty, twenty twenty one right now with our metrics I think it would be very exciting for Fintech. Like we have some friends on Fintech. L a lot ofintech companies make like no revenue. Like, you know, you could be like What's the thing called wealth frront? And you could have billions of dollars in AUM and like your fees are so tiny that So you're making thirty actual million in revenue. think Yeah GMV, like the paid up. So right now, because we've launched our own portfolios where we take a hundred percent of the revenue, like the policy portfolio is ours. So we get a hundred percent of that revenue Our GMV revenue is thirty million, but our autopilot AR is around twenty two million Okay, so you have more real revenue then like remember Annker was doing Carry and like He had like a billion in AUM, but the revenue was like literally a million. Yeah. I think Yeahah, I know that's that to me always blows mind. I think the thing that's interesting about us is When you look at other traditional asset managers, they just put your money in like ETFs and like mutual funds and there's no real alpha they're trying to get you. So they can't really charge that much money because you're like, whyy would I go to them? Why don't I just go to Wealth frront that charge like zero one percent And so with autopilot, the reason you pay so much is because these people are the hope is that they outperform the market And so I think the average income that people pay in allut the pay is around three to four percent Does Nancy Pelosi hate you Probably, I would say. Did you guys interacted? Like We' never no cease and desist even from her like? No, no Wow, they they're. Oh Oh she's getting ex. I mean, the goal is when she retires hero We try to have her actually join the f. have a commercial. That'd be incredible. We did sponsor the UFC and got a fake Nancy Pelosi. Did you see this? This is no happenit. And so the goal was this was the UFC before the election, and Trump was supposed to sit row one at the UFC And we were like, wouldn't it be funny if we sponsored the USC and it shows invest like a politician right in front of Donald Trump. And then we have a fake Nancy Pelosi right by him. Like you bought a ticket. or yeah, we were was part of the sponsor So we had the ring sponsor Yeah. we had the r like a politician. Yeah. Yeah. And then they hired a look alike Nancy Pelosi and they had her walking in, they had like the you had like kind of social content of her entering the arena. Did you have to actually buy that ticket? You had to buy that ticket That ticket row one was sixty thousand dollars No way. How much you spent all the whole mking buy? Aout four hundred fifty thousand dollars. Did it help Um, it didn't help directly. I think the brand affinity was there. Would I do it again? Probably not. It would have helped if Trump was actually showed up That was a weeke went there was an assassination attempt. so that makes sense. There was And I was like, Dang, he's not here, but I'm glad he's safe But I think if he did show up, I think the media that would have been picked up, the earned media would have been insane Hey it was Balsy and sometimes you got to do what you got to do. That's I think it's. We're talking about it now, right? It earned that attention fair that happens when you do a unique over the top thing. so that's amazing. We're trying to think of the next stunt but Almost how hundred people work there Rurn out thirty thirty five So you're doing eight hundred thousand of revenue per It's about a million dollars per employee.. Walk me through the like, what does this look like if this is actually big? becauseause some of the weird ideas there' a weird idea. Yeah. And weird ideas have a lot of potential, even th on the surface, they take a little time to like I just under it was kind of like a common sense idea. Like I don't know, growowing up I was, man, why can't I rob an account just like Follow this other guy's Robininet account, automatically liked I don't want to just give my funds away to someone else. L I want to be able to do stuff myself, but I also O of like on vacation without worrying about when to sell or when to buy. I think the solution to me was just the most obvious. But I think the ultimate goal of autopilot is to become the world's largest asset manager. When you look at Black Rock, they actually do this for institutions. Black Rock connects all these financial institutions compompanies will go on a tool called Black Rock, Aladdin and buy different portfolios. So it already exists at the institution level. they buy different portfolios Black Rock will create their own portfolios based on different risk. so like If you're Walmart and you're, you know, heavily invested in, you know Groceries this quarter, you could actually like hedge your bet on Black Rock Aladdin. If you're a Facebook employee you could actually find a portfolio on autopilot that hedges like tech. And that tool that Black Rock created makes around six billion dollars per year. and Black Rock's one of the largest asset managers. And so I think with Autopilot, one of our goals is to get that same tech and build it for retail investors. How do you get those How are you going to hire those people come to the platform. L two sided marketplace? Yeah. And so then the pilots come and they're the ones with the ideas you verify, you know, their employment where they've worked. But really the goal is where anyone could just publish those portfolios and get paid and then us as the marketplace, we take a cut of that revenue. What would be the burning question? I have a bunch of Large macro questions on AI, but I also have questions because you guys have been running companies for ten plus years. One of the biggest things is hiring How do you find people that are highly motivated, what questions do you ask? Because one thing that I've noticed is when you hire especially more senior level people, their ability to beS is greater than my ability to detect PS. And I think there's certain questions or certain things that you could look at that you guys probably have more experienceced that would actually really help A of probablyie get to the next step. Well, for one, having like a person audience is like definitely that's probably one of the biggest perks is that you're able to like If you cold email someone, they're like, Oh, I've heard of you or I know of you at the very least, that best. you have a lot of people who apply. But whenever I would hire for people who roles that I didn't know what the hell I was doing, I definitely would have like an outsider hiring committee. So I would have outsiders interview people all the time. And that helped me a lot. Yeah that was one be one of. I've co probably three or four They're all related. The first is I find a lot of my hiring mistakes where I didn't actually even understand what I was hiring for. I wasn't clear enough. Sometimes that comes from I do the work for a little bit and I'm like, o, okay, what the person's going need to do is X,Y,Z As you scale, that happens less but still writing down not like a generic like I think a lot of people outsource the job spec to either Chat GPT, a recruiter. It's super generic. It's going attract a generic candidate. and it's not actually clear what are you What are you trying to get somebody to come change in your company? What do they need to be world class at? What sort of problem are they going to have to solve? And be really, really clear. that's the first thing. Second is kind of yours on outside help So I have a buddy who He's better at hiring than I am. And so what I would do for any executive hire is I would the favor be like, hey like once I've done the screening, will you talk to these? will you talk to my favorite kind of three or four candidates and give me your take. And it really wasn't about who he picked It was me becoming a better her or an interviewer by understanding the delta I like, I thought this person was great He sniffed out their bullshit really quick. Why did he do that? And I'm watching the call And I'm realizing like, oh, he dug in in a different way, asked a different style of question, didn't accept their first answer at face value. I got to start doing that And so I got better by doing that, not just because they helped me pick this person, but because I realized where I was weak in the interviewing process I also think there's two really good pools to hire from One is You want people who've either done it before or never done anything but cant do anything 've done it before is Who's solved this problem before? I always start there. Because if I can find somebody who's already done this before That's going to help me a lot And I mean specifically. so it's not just like, oh, he worked at a successful company They do enterprise sales, and we don't even do enterpr sales. It's like, no, they solved they did this exact thing. Be this We've talked about this a lot in the pod where it's like it's so fun to hire young people. They don't have any experience. It's so fun, right? because that's what you were recently. But like nine out of ten times, if you're just like, hey, you did that there, do that same thing here. right. And that tends to just be So we will map out which companies have solved this problem before? Who was the person that was there at the year when they had this problem where we are Who was that person? And then were they the real shot caller on the team or were they just doing something? but there's somebody else who was amazing. I like go to that level of detail there. So that's one pool you got to get good at and the other pool is like, Basically, diamonds in the rough, like unproven talent that you can almost be a stock picker on and be like, okay, I think this person's like a ten exter. And I build the company with those two pools of people. And you build systems so that you consistently are sourcing from both of those. Yeah. onene thing those people are you the CEO of the business How much time per week do you spend recruiting right now? Right now, about twenty percent That's pretty good. Most people I mean it's warld day a week basically. Most founders who have like hiring problems, if youve asked them my question, they're like I I't really it used to be that and now I'm like seeing how important it is. And if you listen to like a lot of the most successful founders that were in a scaling phase They spend like thirty plus percent of their time just on recruiting Are you guys profitable? Yeah So you're at twenty million in revenue or thirty millionty million thirty million revenue. a positive, not like gap profitable but sureure. So your're default alive. What's the growth rate going to be this year over the next year About two hundred and fifty percent. I would think almost your entire job is collecting people. What sorts of people do you need to be hiring now A lot of software engineers, product people growth people, marketing people, really anyone. But I think people just people. I think the thing is Um is just maintaining that high bar. and we've just hired a lot of people and rops are actually very quick to get rid of people. If they like come in and within like two to three weeks, they haven't really done anything I just immediately am like, you're getting out of here. Is that imp that impacts culture, which is why you got to get the hiring right? It impacts culture, but I think everyone who's been here Anyone who we tell people if you're here for longer than three months, you don't have to worry So I think after the three month mark, people are like, okay, I'm chilling, but Before that, everyone's like freaked out. Are you gonna only hire in New York? Yeah. ye. it Yeahah, yeah, we've I think, especially with AI the salaries that we're paying people. like we we just Just offered a guy like three hundred and fifty k salary And I'm like, this is crazy because I've never made that much money. I still don't. But yeah, I think the goal is with AI each person. is much, much more effective. So a good person with AI could be ten, twenty times more effective than an average person with AI. That's crazy. Yeah. My CTO used to say it to he's like you're one person. No, you're three people He says you're three people. He's just say it all the time. And people like it's funny. It's like I might start. It's real simple. It's people just realizing what you mean. It's like you need to be able to the work of three people because you got to be smart about What you don't do D't do the bullsit Automate stuff. you know, figure out like a faster path, you know, that's your job is to be three people And when we used to do off sites, we would say every day is two days Two days of stuff needs to happen every day And so I think when you do that, you set set a different bar for for your team on how how they operate. Yeah Dud, thanks for doing this.. this is aw awesome. We I messaged him roughly two hours ago. and I was like, where are you? Yeah I saw the post I'm like, it was him. I got to get in my first place. Wh a dream? Can you be here? Well, you guys are one of the great like growth hack stories. Like this what you guys did with the Pelosi tracker? you have another tracker, do you have other trackers? Yeah, we've like, you know, the Lable tracker. Who's the best Um, right now, Leopold He's up in amount. He like a twenty five year. He was like a twenty two year old. He was her open the eye. now he's like twenty five. Um, he left openpenAI and then started funding up like ten billion dollars or something. aroundround five billion. So so he's a billionaire now I think any raaced outside capapitol? I think of a lot of a lot of it was friends and family. Daniel Gross and Natt Friedman and like Smart money was immediately behind him. How much did he raise I think originally five hundred million, not that much. And I was at like upward of five billion dollars. But what he did which was super sm smart.X in two years? Yeah, he looked at what companies, what was the bottlenecks of openpen AI And he was like, okay, well SSDs, like a lot of people are thinking GPU's Here's like SSD like Micron. And so he just started buying all of like the other bottlenecks that no one was focusing on and now they're just like skyrocketing and isn't like his Somebody is like the chief of staff at Anthropic He's got some information flow as well. That's pretty good. Yeah. I mean, he's brilliant. Have you read his like situational awareness paper? No. Iike I said do this. I did this and it was very, very useful. Take the PDF for situational awareness. It was like on my list of like, what a situational Wh his hedge fund name? He published Oh published a white paper or blog posting PDF like before he launched the hedge fund or right after I think it was actually maybe before and this is how he attracted the money He launched this thing, which is basically he had a very strong point of view on like what the next ten years of AI looks like very bold predictions it was like, and then Huge tension between China and America. And then because of that, this, it was like super specific predictions of how the puck where the puck was going So he published this thing And a lot of smart people are like, ye, this is like one of the smarter takes of what's going on I think that attract him more capital more aware. situational awareness was the name of his name publication and I think it's the name of his his his whatever his company is. to take it Give it to you Victor and your slack. Yeah. I say, Viictor, break this down into the ten key ideas. predictions and hypothes that he has Explain it and just explain it to Victor did a wonderful job. He like just chewed up this PDF for me. It explained it step by step. and I asked follow up questions and it was just great. And I was like, so did that play out? Was he right about this? Did he trade on that? And it just it just answered every single question so is a guy like him Victor, by the way, is like AI that sampled me onto that I am now hooked. I ended up investing it. Thanks for telling me. That' I told you about it. You should't told me that. Well, was that Absurd valuation, but like it's that good that I was like yeah. Wh I told you I told him about this tool. He's like I don't know, I don't trust these tools. These are stupid. And then two days later, he go like why these tools over this tool. I made him feel dumb. I was like, whyy do you trust a random starter with all your stuff And then I heard about a little more and I was like, let's try it out. and I tried in one of my slags. and I was like, this iss amazing. Now, it's in every business Yeah, That's good.. But I'm curious about the person personal side on this. is he like low key right now? Is he trying to hide out? No, he posts on Twitter Really He he's like with a He's like greater friends of Dworcese. So he's done the Dworese Pot a couple of times. where I mean, is he cool Yeah. Do you think like Peter Teal's cool? Like, you know, like So do you think a lot Jazburger', he's geni's cool. Yeah, like that energy. Yeah, he has that. It's great I love I love it. Yeah. You can follow what you think that's cool I'm saying ye, That's not the word I would use. I love it. Yes. I think he's awesome. And so you can replicate his. You could follow his top fifteen picks on autopilot. And how you know his picks So he follows the thirteen F. And so it is There's a lag. There's about a forty five day lag, but even we only track with the lag. In a thirteen day F, how big does your fund need to be? Oh one hundred million dollars. Oh, okay Damn so he's the guy right now. He's guy. He's the guy. Do they dou podcast You actually get them. There's a couple We were trying I think we were reaching out, yeah. And it's stuff like this that makeakes me Like very advamant of like people should always invest in index funds, but there should always be like ten percent to fifteen percent of your like net worth on high risk high reward stocks or portfolios. And so This is where autopilot doesn't right now want to take a one hundred percent of what you have, but just percent tencent to fifteen percent. Your liquid net worth, whereere is it allocated? Who are you following? Right now, I follow basically like twenty different pilots on autopilot right now. So right now of your one hundred percent net worth. So of my hundred percent net worth, it's like ninety percent on autopilot. A lot of it is in Oh I w to know the truthiness. So you said you connect with their brokerage account. Y, but like People have many different accounts. to connect to all of them. You could But you don't know if this is tracking all of them or it's just tracking something, right? Me as the user, I don't know if you have everything that this person has done Yeah So winners and losers. So what it is the people will go on our platform and create a model portfolio. And so you only see the history of the model portfolio from when the pilot joins. to now. So it's not like actually following their brokerage account Oh okay But what we do have is we have what's called Skin in the game where the pilots will also put their money on autopilot following their own portfolio. and so you be like wow, Peter Wolf as five hundred thousand dollars following his own trades verified by Auto G you got got it. Are you having fun I would say right now I'm having fun. I would say the last three years have been it it's hard I would say getting from zero to one million in revenue was the hardest thing I've ever had to do Getting from one to thirty was actually a piece of cake. What do you think the the next threshold will be? I think we're on track to hit hundred million in revenue by March next year. I think it's going to be difficult Bun Ray. reoccurring revenue, not run rate rightight now. we're at like a seventy million run rate. but we want to get like I passed on investing in this like twice. already do it? But it seems like a really hard thing to get off the ground. It was very hard Well, I'm a degenerate and they were listen to myM, I think, so like they knew that I you've talk to Chris a couple times. T talk to Chris I really admired the market. So I think I just reached out giving respect. I was like, Hey, I think it's brilliant what you guys are doing with the Plus checker on Twitter and the UFC I you guys were doing a really good job. withithout the marketing, we wouldn't be here just because of how hard this stuff is today. What your what was the first rounds valuation The first round was seven million. R? Yeah. But that was twenty twenty one there was a lot of Yeah, man Yeah Well, either way, I'm a fan and I think what you guys are doing are great man. I appreciate you coming on. This is awesome All right, we appreciate you Thank you guys. We'll talk to you a little bit That was awesome Good picks. Yeah. was that was fun. I hope this is a Hampton plug, by the way. I definitely just went into the New York channel and I just said, Yeah, who's interested? becausea I't want to tweet it out ' because I wasnt what were gonna to get. I'll do the plug for you. If you're an interesting business owner and you wantan to be in a community of other interesting business owners, join Hampton and maybe you too can be on MFM someday too I didn't realize how big autopilot was. I thought It's been scaling a lot. Like it wasn't that big like six months ago. Well he I knew it was thirty million in revenue. I thought that meant like GM GMB. because those businesses, not his business, but that category of business is usually pretty shitty. Right. Like numbers could be huge, but the actual business, but not his. That's insane Yeah, he's doing well. That was cool, right You know, one of the things with Probably the biggest thing for me since I started my first milling until today was I remember pre my first million T years before that. the full ten years I felt like opportunity like success was this this needle. You had to do this this hay stack where it was this narrow thing. this thing I to search for in this room. It was so hard to find and I needed this brilliant idea And if I just Is this the brilliant idea? Where is the brilliant idea that I need perfect execution? I remember opportunity just felt so scarce And then one of the things if you move to San Francisco, you meet a bunch of people. We start doing this podcast It's like, you just realize, oh, dude, there's Thousands of different tens of thousands of different ways that I can win opportunity as ever. It's really about picking what's the right fit for me. It was a total like fromrom lack to abundance mindset shift on suuccess, likeike where does success live? And like what I like about a thing like this that we did today is Those are three ideas didn't even exist in my my cone of vision. you know, I couldn't I didn't even know that people do businesses like that. And there's also parts of their business and their lifestyles and personality that I want to like like I love and I want to steal. R. But I don't admire the whole thing. Like for example, Alex, I'm like Oh man, he's so calm. like Like, o, I need to learn from that. I don't necessarily want to trade what I have for what he has, but like I want to steal this from him and he wasn't in a rush. Yeah better and for worse, but mostly for better. And same with Brian, huge business taking off. I don't want to do all those stunts. I don't want to raise VC, That's pretty awesome. And I admire the creativity. Yeah. And then' like Josh's outdoor business. I'm like, that's awesome. I don't want tona raise money, but like it would be maybe fun to own one. Like you know, like there's really so But I should go camping Yeah. No, but there's like small things where like, you know, I think People sometimes in the comments tease us about like having, I hate people say, you have these guests that are out of touch. Whenever I hear that I'm like No, you're out of touch with his life. Yeah, that's about you. You're out of touch. No what I mean is I' like, I am equally impressed by like here a billion dollar company versus a five million dollar company're They're both equally awesome Somebody Jesse Eer said this at one of our events. He it was like an intro. what does somebody? what do people? what should people know about you Like Hey I'm Jesse Hitler. B bl blah blah., did this He goes, My thing is I root for everybody because when you root for everybody, can never lose. Andbody sat down and I was like No I kind of likek that Ftune cookie shit. he just did, I like. Is Jesse Iter really a cool black man? No, he's the best. It's cool black guys like him. But ye it's like, whoa. That's like the next level. in the same way of like when you roof for everybody you can never lose or something like If you think you can learn from everybody, you can never lose, right? So it's like, Great tomorrow we're talking to Rade Hllio. There's gonna be some awesome things to learn from him. Again, parts, not the whole. We're not trying to do what he's doing, but I'm still gonna to pull something and I can get I'm going to win and I'm going gonna have some fun in that hour Just in the same way I got wins and learnings and fun in this hour. I think the new slogan should be can we get you know high high and low low because I get like equal joy. we'll go we'll like pop into a pedega. I'll love that shit. And now we're gonna go hang out with like the eighty of the richest person in the world. I'm gonna love that equally,. All right, that's it. That's the pod I feel like I can rule the world I know I could be what I want to Days off on the road, let's travel, never looking T' take a quick break to talk about a podcast. Because if you're listen to this you like podcasts And what's better than one podcast? Another podcast. And let me tell you, another podcast you should check out. it's called Success Story If you like hearing about different success stories and hearing Q and A sessions with successful business leaders or hearing keynote presentations or just checking out conversations about sales and business and marketing tactics, is a great podcast for you. So check it out wherever you get your podcast