#170 - Mike & Kass Lazerow Return — “Shoveling Sh*t” and the Truth About Building Companies Together

0:00 Mark, they don't like it. They don't like, this is just not how we do things. If we don't like something, we're just gonna quit. It's okay, and you will be just an employee over and over and over and over again, and that's fine. But if you would like a life that affords X, Y, and Z, this is what you have to do. All right, so Mike and Kass Lazerow welcome to the party.

0:42 um I just had a great 15 minutes sitting here talking to you guys. I want just podcasts to be real life interactions and conversations with people, not interviews, right? So we just talked about Mike's hat and his hat says death. And I'm like, man, we better touch on this really quick. So then the podcast people don't think like we're bringing some, I don't know, life and death situation here, even though entrepreneurship can feel that way. So it's Liquid Death, which is a beverage brand, but it's really a lifestyle brand. Sell ton of merch. This is a hat. It actually does say Liquid. It says Liquid up here. Cas got this for me for the holidays. This was my big holiday gift. I'm not wearing it.

1:22 So was there some other infirmary going on with getting him to? It's okay. So hey, this book that you guys put out, I think you hit New York Times bestseller was like in June of 25, June or July. Just go to your social media, you were pumped. It's like, do you guys really need another success in life? Huh? Well, I think the way we look at it is if we're going to write a book about doing hard work, we got to work hard and we want to win. what's winning look like when it comes to writing books? Because everybody thinks they want to write. To me, it was getting on the New York Times Best Seller. It was actually USA Today. That was the goal. We were told we couldn't do the New York Times because of the title, Shoveling Shit, a Love Story.

2:07 And we wouldn't sell enough and, you know, it's kind of a niche entrepreneurship book, but people loved it and we sold a lot and the New York Times put it on the list, so we're excited. So if you guys just made a habit of just doing things that people said you can't do. Well, it's really fuels us. I will say that. Like when we started all of our companies, we'd go, you know, to Sand Hill Road and go to the biggest VCs in the world and they'd say, oh, wait, you guys are related? Like, you're married? We can't, we don't do business. And we'd like, fine. It just fueled us. VC world now you guys putting that VC hat on because you funded over 100 businesses, right?

2:47 So what have you taken from that experience of getting all the no's? Did they make the right decision to say all those no's or have you learned a way to say some yeses from maybe living through that experience in life that they wouldn't? made the worst decision. I mean, we returned the fund for many of these funds. I mean, when you sell for close to a billion dollars, those early investors who are investing like sub 100 million, know, sub 20 million, we're talking about 80 times your money. So did they make the right decision? No. Everyone who said no. those are the people I remember. I don't remember who invested. The people who invested, people are like, yeah, I was in your company.

3:27 I was like, were you? But everyone who said no, I remember and I see them all over the place. You're not a competitive person by nature, but you remember the notes. do I hold grudges but you just remember when people reject you. Dating, business, whatever. That's a lot. That's why when the first person liked me I'm like let's get married. That sounds great. Super great. So if you don't have, you don't hold grudges, but you remember them. That's a very, when you remember them, there's a chip on your shoulder or there is a little bit of grudge. Like I had, that's one of the things I've had to conquer in life is not hold those grudges against everyone that did me wrong or could have treated me better.

4:11 You know, I took control of my life once you do that, but it's hard. So it's weird to hear someone say, cause I like it, I'm all in. I mean, it's a weird thing to basically remember and not hold grudge when you think about it. But at the same time, we're all doing our jobs, right? I pitch the company as an entrepreneur. They have money that they're allocating, which isn't theirs. They're basically managing other people's money, the VCs. And most VCs maybe do eight to 10 deals a year. So for us, we'll look at a thousand deals to do eight, right? And so when someone passes, they're just doing their job and making a bad decision.

4:53 They're not saying that you're a bad person. They're saying that it doesn't fit what we're doing. And so it's a little different than if someone like personally offends or does something that like screws me, right? Then like you're dead to me. Like those, I remember not that it's a grudge. It's like shame on me if like it happens again. also say the same thing with when employees, we didn't have a lot of employees who left Buddy Media, our last company, um but with Gov.com, if we had anybody leave, he was like, bye, see ya. Like, don't let the door hit you. He never wanted to celebrate people leaving. It was just kind of like, you're gone.

5:33 Do you so then going back? Thinking can you find opportunities maybe now as you can see yourself VCS? Like you don't like the term like the term. I'd like to be like an entrepreneur partner. So we're not VCs in the sense that we're not trying to aggregate tons of assets, right, under management that we then manage and make. We're technically, but we're not building that as like our next business. We happen to invest in tech. lot of the money is ours, even in the funds. And we also own businesses. We get a lot more enjoyment out of owning businesses and helping entrepreneurs succeed.

6:19 So the investment stuff, it's easy to write the check. But where it gets fun is when the entrepreneur starts reaching their dreams. And there's nothing better than investing in someone the very first check and see them have a multi-billion dollar exit. I'm forgetting a lot. Probably it's early. really, really helps the companies. And I think that I do, but like, think when it comes to like monetization, sales, networking, business models, that's you. And so I think that's the rewarding part is helping that puzzle. And when you are just a VC, you don't get a lot of like validation or credit, like they don't listen to you as much.

7:06 So we like if we can actually help and certainly we're not going to like impose our views. But when you can help and be there for an entrepreneur and see them succeed, it's uh as if you have succeeded too. oh touched on, I wanna come back a little bit later and talk about it. One, about dreams. There's something weird about entrepreneurship and just dreams. There's something fascinating about the combination of the two. And then also how you guys now evaluate, if people buy the book Shoveling Ship, how you evaluate this go system. And these six steps. So I'd like to talk about that a little bit to say, not just about how you evaluate companies, but is that how entrepreneurs should build their companies. So I'd like to speak to that.

7:47 But I wanna touch on first, so in the book. You dedicated it to your kids. Yeah. Why I've never I don't think I've ever heard to your kids because you have three right? Usually it's a I don't. Maybe I've read a lot of books, but I don't remember it standing out like it did when you guys said it. Thanks I think there's probably a small part of guilt that still remains to for both of us that they took the brunt. That's that's what it says. Like you took the brunt of our entrepreneurship and they also propelled us forward. Right. And so we wanted to thank them and acknowledge that we weren't there as much, which is great because when they all three saw they still they kind of were like, what do mean?

8:34 Like you were there, which is a great feeling. But we also wanted to acknowledge that like we didn't just do this for ourselves. Why do you think you have that feeling if they all were sitting here and say, what do mean? You guys are awesome. And it was, was fan. Why do you think you have that? I mean, you probably don't have as much as I do, but moms just, we can't win. It's a mom guilt. You cannot win. Yeah. 100 % of time you are not doing enough. You haven't figured it out, all of it. There's not one mom. I think people can, I think moms can compartmentalize, but I don't think there's a mom in the world that's thinking like, I am doing it great.

9:15 Like you don't wake up like that. Do you think this is the same issue we deal with as entrepreneurs who really want greatness? Yes, in a different capacity, I think. You know, with being an entrepreneur, you have to be ready to be like a failure all the time, right? Because you're literally failing until you succeed. That's really what it is. It's just you're just maneuvering the boat to get to the to the land, right? That that's the promised land. So, yes, it's suffering. Like, I think being entrepreneurs helped us suffer being parents. Right. um But it didn't make us better parents, if that makes sense.

9:58 It's not like I really thought that I could bring it all my team leadership to kids and then it just doesn't work and you can't put your kids on a pimp you can't fire them all that kind of stuff can't do a 360 review how great would that be I'm gonna try to little do little stuff and they were just it just doesn't When you look at having kids, companies, farming, right? These are like exercises where you're growing stuff, right? Yeah, like you're going from like seeds or just an idea, you know, to like growing a crop, growing a company, growing kids. Kids are the hardest because your levers aren't as much like there's shit involved in all of it, right?

10:44 Shoveling shit, like literally on the farm, you're shoveling shit. Company, you get to work, shit hits the fan. Kids, diapers, right, obviously. Yeah, with companies, you can pivot, right? You can go different direction. You can fire people. You don't have those levers with kids. You're not going to fire them. You're not going to pivot like, oh, here are your new parents, right? You may change locations and stuff. And so you basically. Kids drain your money, drain your energy for hopefully an ROI at some point. Which we're waiting for. And we have a 24 year old, so we're still waiting.

11:26 There's no ROI on kits, so I like to have perspective of goals that I can actually see happening. Maybe it's grandchildren. I don't know. You don't think ROIs ever like laying back just like you guys are on some vacation, just the two of you and you look over something good happened. You got some good news. It's just a little fist pump like. There are many wins, but it is like I think you hit it on the head like it is like entrepreneurship. There's the it's a long grind, right? With parenting and yes, there are little mini wins like I remember I was not into like the baby phase and you have to wait like 10 weeks for the kid to smile at you. Like that's that's crazy town.

12:09 But like, yeah, parenting. But entrepreneurs in general, we focus on the stuff that's going wrong. Right? So real entrepreneurs aren't out there like celebrating little wins in the back of their minds like, this is screwed up. We got to figure that out. I need a new person here. I need to up level. need to kind of fire. need to be and with kids, it's the same thing. Like you're only as happy as you're like these happy kid. Right. So you could have like two of them doing incredible, but one is like kind of really flailing. And that's, a parent, that's what you're diving into. That sucks. That's self-imposed. Instantly, the moment you have a kid, it's like, listen, we we're 24 years in so far.

12:51 But it's funny, in the book you all talk about that what you found is, is that it's important to focus on your strengths. So you're forced to look at the weaknesses and the failures and everything, but in business, you make the argument for you all, right, to lean in and focus on your strengths. Yes and no. I think we lean in and look at our strengths but I think it's more that we complement each other, right? So that his weaknesses and my weaknesses aren't amplified. It's that our puzzle piece is perfect match. m going to be that way? No. I mean, you never know because we're building, you know, entrepreneurs building businesses.

13:33 You don't know what's going to happen. You tell yourself stories. You kind of have a vision and anyone who says they know what's going to happen with a marriage and a relationship is bullshit. We got married when I was 25. I didn't know shit about shit. they read the book, you're going to find out the totally like unromantic way that you propose. You all pick up the book and read it. So and that she said, yes, she's an amazing. She's an amazing woman. m say this. I think early on we figured out, like, I remember doing this, like, talk with you. And I think it was, I think it was at, um, little street apartment where I said, okay, it was like a Saturday morning.

14:15 We'd just moved in together. And I think that's where you really like learn everything. Like, and I said, okay. And I came out with like a mop. We lived in the apartment for a week and like the toilet scrubber. like, which one do you want? And he's like, wait, what? And I remember him saying, look, I'll do this stuff, but I hate doing laundry. And I was like, oh, OK, cool, great. I'll take over laundry. And then we got to having kids. I was like, I hate the mornings. He's like, well, I hate the nights. So that kind of worked out. And we saw how we were doing it. And then he would say something like, you know.

14:56 um I can't do anything that has multiple sequential tasks like this in a row. I can do three big things a day. And I was like, okay, great. Well, I can do all this work for me. Just give that to me. And so we slowly figured it out. did the same thing in business. And so I think, man, you just talked about communication at the highest level, which is essential to running these businesses. And I found that communication, personally, I know what you guys think, but communication is most important when things are going to shit. Yes, it's not always stop. it's when you over community Yeah. So you two have been making these practical decisions about your whole life from the beginning.

15:36 When people pick up the book, uh it's fascinating because you are giving exposure to really what entrepreneurship really is, your personal life and how that molds with uh raising kids and with growing all these businesses. you decided to take your honeymoon. Two reasons why you went where you went. You're like, well, we could go to the Caribbean, but then that's kind of hurricane season. And then if we go to La Jolla, we can get more work done. I just shook my head when I read that in the book. I'm like, come on guys, right? You're taking your honeymoon where you knew you could get more work done. You've been making those practical decisions together since day one. Yeah, we had so it was an interesting time where we had golf.com.

16:19 It was, you know, before the dot com crash 1999. We also I also had a public company. My first company had like merged with another one to go on public pre dot com crash. And we were starting to feel there was an opportunity to sell golf.com, which we eventually did to a company called Chipshot and that to buy it back and all this stuff. And so. We knew that we could do other trips in our life. This wasn't the end all be all, but we really wanted to get golf.com over the goal line with this acquisition and we spent a lot of the time on that. we didn't have money for a big honeymoon at the time.

17:03 Can you call family? for honeymoon? I mean, we could have, but it didn't seem like an existential thing to call family. I think you're talking about these practical decisions. I think it's almost like practical decision making. Things that we didn't, we just didn't have a high value put on. We have to go to Tahiti, right? And we have to do that. We were so kind of just grounded in, we'll be okay, we'll figure out another year to do a honeymoon, right? You already focused on building the businesses then at a big level. I you already were, you were in business. But did you understand that making that practical right decision to not put money on a credit card, not ever extend yourself for a honeymoon, that this could hamper us on having some cash?

17:52 Did you know that? I think we both came into the relationship like he was taught by your, I think Harold, your stepdad, that you don't ever buy anything unless you can pay for it fully, period pencil down. And I think we just had that, I mean, theory our whole life. Can you have a different approach now? Because you go out in the world and there's people, you'll have, without quoting names, somebody that says, pay cash for everything, but then to really grow substantial wealth, you need to use leverage and you need to borrow some money. that's different. mean, business entrepreneurship, like we happen to build software companies that needed investment, right?

18:33 So we kind of are taking on other people's money, right? That we owe them. What's the responsibility when you do that? So, mean, when we went out and raised money for our funds, we basically did two things. One is we warehouse some of the deals in the fund. So we did the deals personally. And those turned out to be great. Liquid death, scope lease sold for five billion in cash. The other thing we did is anytime we asked for money, we put in our own money. And so our first fund, you know, we had a big piece of the fund was the partner money. which I love. So I don't mind losing money if we're all in it together.

19:15 Right? So we win together, we lose together. And so something doesn't go well. It's like, yeah, like, I feel awful that I lost your money. We've had deals, we've lost money. I lost five times the amount, right? Plus my time for managing. So we went into it with all the right intentions. It didn't work out. That's what happens. Right? The great thing about the math of investing is you can only lose one time your money. You can make a thousand times your money. And so it's not about what you get wrong. It's about do you get enough right to create real wealth on the investing side?

19:55 When you're an entrepreneur, we were all in, right? Like none of this would be possible if Buddy Media doesn't sell for close to a billion dollars because then you have real capital to do what you want. You have freedom. time, you buy back time, you could do what you want. And you have playing chips to kind of play the game. Having said that, we still don't love leverage. We still love debt. We would rather be able to sleep at night. We would rather like how much do you need? Right. We love making money. We're capitalists, but we're not going to leverage our future. God forbid the world falls apart or like turns against us.

20:36 We don't want to be in a position where we're stressed again. so, it's just the way we lose. Yeah, early on and every day. It never went away. with kids. you just. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, everyone has their own Michigan, right? I think we're better at it. definitely think, I think one of our superpowers is being able to do a lot of stuff that most people can't do at once. So. you know, having, you know, health issue in the extended family and having to like travel to see that person like when my dad was in the hospital and still running a business and still being accountable to the 300 people that we had.

21:26 ah And then, you know, Vivian, our daughter, breaking her elbow in three places, things that I think would slow most people down. We are very good in crisis. We are very, very good with stress. that evolve? do you think we go back to where we start? And what was our adolescence like? But is that developed early? develop a distress tolerance. And I think, I mean, don't get me started, know, I have big thoughts on this. Like the world right now, we are producing kids that do not have distress tolerance, right? So I think you can develop that, but I do think where you start and what you're exposed to really, really helps.

22:12 So having a dysfunctional family plus being an athlete, not just like a regular high school athlete, but like very, very like six hours a day, here's your training regimen. That made me be able to take on losses. I had losses every single day. There was a funny piece of content you guys put out recently. I love it when Mike says something and you're like, are you talking about? And then if it really strikes him big, he goes all in for it. And he went all in on this thing like, I'm not hiring Ivy League grads. Yeah, well that's just crazy. We're going through a phase where like we had hired and some of our companies had hired people from Harvard specifically.

22:56 And what happened was there was this dynamic of like, what are you going to do for me? I went to Harvard. And I think what we realized is we want people who have showed up and team players know how to prep, know how to get on the field and deliver. And so If you went to Harvard and played on the football team, lacrosse, field hockey, whatever, let's talk, right? Because that has, you you have some grip. But if you just like were a classics major at Harvard and you're coming into the world expecting like big pay, a job, and you're not willing to kind of work in the mail room, like we just don't, it's just gonna be hard for you.

23:37 Yeah, right. And I think I'm sitting here thinking like, I'd be that's your thing. So I'm going to him own it. Right. But I would I'd be right there with you. I'm like, yeah, man, you're on to because of the quote to you just randomly said from this school, that school, they're all state schools that you quoted. Right. And so but what I would say is not even pushing back. We're finding that more there, too. And so. I thought, all right, how do we carve through this as leaders and entrepreneurs and people who are investing in businesses? I thought about your old past, and it seems to me that you had a ton of experiences starting at an early age. You did a lot of things. Some people say, oh, if you're an athlete, if you're this...

24:19 I just reflect on my own. I try to find these patterns of what makes these people that come from such unique different places, different backgrounds, but why are they having the same outcomes? And for me, I did a lot of things too. And I'm like, he played in the band. And so I'm like that combined with all these other things too. uh He also had a life and death experience. Right. So that counts. And he also was the only one in his family, if I'm right, that worked at age 12 on. And that's grit. That's it. And then we learn this resilience because what I think is my thesis. Tolerance.

25:00 Yeah. My thesis about doing a lot of things is you either learn resilience or you figure out you just want to be an employee. And if you start developing this resilience at 15, 16, 18, you're going to start compounding quick and you're going to wake up coming out of whatever school you come out of, whether you do or don't, and you're going to be well prepared for what's out here. You're going be able to say, this is people ask me all the time, do you think entrepreneurship is it can can you can you turn into an entrepreneur? And I think it starts at an early age. Did you get enough resilience? Did you you do enough to come up with that tolerance that I'm going to go after something and if I don't get it, I'm going to try harder or I'm going to pivot or I'm going to go over here and I'm going to bet on myself.

25:43 Yeah. You guys talked about, you found that it's not necessarily the business you're in. It's the founder that you go into business with. And I would make an argument if you were a solo opener, it's probably the first few employees that you decide to bring onto the company too. It's more important, the work that they're doing together versus the actual work. Can you speak to that? Cause that doesn't, a lot of people would hear that. What are you talking about? It doesn't matter the business. I mean, you're really the people person. So. Again, you said it very well that whether you're a solo founder or you have co-founders, it's like a marriage. It's like a family, right?

26:23 And, I get so much shit online about saying like works like family. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying that that relationship is as valuable and as like precious as a family relationship, a marriage. Especially if there's two of you, you better know what you're getting into. And so we were lucky enough, obviously, to figure out. out how to divide and conquer since living together. when you decide, I see so many founders being like, yeah, he's my best friend. Or yeah, I called one of my old high school friends and we're thinking about doing this. I'm like, okay, did you sit down and have really uncomfortable conversations? Why would you do this? How hard are you going to work?

27:04 When you're at your worst day, what do you have to do to reset? I need to know what it means so that I'm not resenting you for taking off and going to the gym or something. And what are your morals? What are your values? What's going to happen if you have kids or somebody gets sick? What's your focus going to be like? And we're talking the reason why I think you probably invoked family and those people that are giving you shit about it, they haven't really been in the throes of it. They haven't. Because if they haven't, they've succeeded. They know it's a truth, right? But if you think about family, you think about like blood. There's an ingrained commitment. Even for the crazy person in our family, if it's us or if it's them, we're just like, you just show up.

27:48 And if you're gonna have a really successful business, you have to do that for each other. And so like you said, even if you're a solo founder, those next three hires and how you depend on them, that management team, leadership team, how do those people fill in the gaps that you have? Because they better fill in the gaps and you better not be afraid to hire people who are smarter than you. You think that's threatening for a lot of people to think about? Because Mike will say this all the time, that entrepreneurs have ego. We do have ego because we are, it's crazy what we do. Like Mike will say, what's that thing you say? we're center stage to watch, like everyone can watch us fail or get punched in the face every day.

28:31 So you have to have a little bit of ego to say like, no, I can do this. I can do this and you all can't. and we had to do this in the midst of everyone telling us we couldn't. I think it gets formed by default and then it doesn't serve us well. Because you start a company, you tell everyone. It becomes your identity. If you're lucky, you get known in your industry. Or like us, we were the largest startup in New York City for a very hot time. There weren't a lot of companies. And so I remember we raised like $100 million because we had to like, we're going for it, right? Vassus Company, the $50 million in annual recurring revenue. Media. And I kept thinking, man.

29:12 we're gonna be the biggest flame out ever. Like even when we sold, we're like, we're done. This imposter syndrome, what we hear about, but we didn't have a term for it then. because it's like you've done it. You're waking up to the thing that you've done. Why would you think that? I think it's fear. think it's like, we are motivated more by like the fear of failure than this pot of gold. Like it was never about necessarily the money, even though we're capitalists. It was about like freedom for me. Like I don't want to sit behind a desk and freedom to live the life I want. My dad went bankrupt. He had a lot of money issues, like not having money.

29:54 not having your health, not having a good relationship, those things really suck, right? And I saw them all early on. I losing. I hate it. I hate it more. I know this doesn't make sense more than I like winning. I hate losing. What do you do when you lose? Well, I mean... uh to even acknowledge it, to think about it. I think I go through every step. I look at, did we make a good business model decision? And if it didn't work, I love that. I hate that we wasted the time, but now that's when the work happens.

30:34 And good entrepreneurs are like, yeah. OK, great. So we can check that off the list. And we're closer to getting the data that we need. So we're going to figure this out. And now let's dissect it. And I love dissecting things. What's funny is when um I get to get you some water. appreciate it. Ah. I just talked to someone two or three days ago. you we have these key employees. We can say every employee is key, but there's just some that do more. And I sat down with her and she's amazing. She's 26 years old and she's this Alabama grad. But she grew up on her parents used car lot in Northern California. When I heard that, when I heard it, I was like, let's go.

31:16 But I just said, hey, I can acknowledge that to everyone else, I'm completely unreasonable. I acknowledge it. said, but I'm not going to internalize that. And I'm not going to allow it to have me change because all of this was created with a vision. And so I know that being unreasonable at times will look like this guy's crazy, but here's my level of unreason. The moment we fail. get up and go again right now. Like right now. And I don't need to wait for a week and break the whole dang thing down. It's like let me take the lesson, the one thing that I could really identify that I failed at and let's start again. And I might fail 10 times micro like that, but most likely I'm gonna get to the finish.

32:01 That's what an entrepreneur is. They can handle those many failures. day. Right. Feeling, and also going, but I'm still going to make it. Absolutely. This is still our goal. And turning around to investors and employees and the board and saying, oh, no, no, this is great. This is our vision. This is our story. This is how we're going to get started. both arrived at this place where failure is actually growth? When did that consciously occur? Well, part of it is growth. Part of it is life. Like, look at anything that matters and there's failure involved.

32:42 Right. 50 % of marriages fail. Like 90 % of businesses fail eventually. Your health is going to fail. Right. So failure to us, it's not that we celebrate it. It's what can we learn and how do we do it better? Like, how do we just get, like you said, back on and not letting it cripple us. People who are crippled by failure are not crippled by failure, they're crippled by their identity, their ego, their reaction to failure. You can own the failure, right? Like, think about the greatest failures in our lifetime. Like when we were doing golf.com, Tiger Woods, right? He gets beat up by his wife with a club because he's cheating on her outside the house, crashes the car.

33:27 If he just got in front of it and said like, I'm not happy in my marriage. Let's just like go our separate ways. He's Tiger Woods, rich, good looking, good at golf. He could date anyone, right? And people wouldn't have judged him. Wouldn't have judged him. He'd be the Will Chamberlain, right? It's the fact that he couldn't, like, there's a gap between what he thought he was, what everyone else thought he was, and really who he was as a person. And so own that failure. If the company's not going well, pivot. If it's really not going well, you don't see a path forward, return the capital to investors and move on. That's a hard one. how many times have you heard, every once in a while hear that, I'm gonna wind down a phone, I'm gonna stop.

34:10 It's rare, isn't it? Well, I mean, no, we're doing it right now with a company. I'm not gonna name the company. The team did a great job. The market turned. They've been very capital efficient. There's still a lot of money left in the bank. And so they made the mature decision to say, like, we don't think a dollar invested is gonna produce anything close to a venture return. So we're gonna return capital to the preferred investors, which are like the VCs. That is hard to do. But deep down, if you don't see a path forward after many pivots, which this company did, you have to make decisions because is it better to do it for five years and then fail?

34:51 Because most entrepreneurs don't have a lot of money, but they have a lot of time. Don't waste that time. Invest your time like it's money. So how do we know if we're a Henry Ford or not? You know, the guy's pretty much bankrupt at 40. You mentioned it earlier, the go gauge, right? What do you do so that you know this is actually working or are you going to keep telling yourself stories? You have to have a framework to actually move forward in the business, communicate it to the other employees, but most of all, you have to have your success measurements, right? So you write that down before you've told yourself stories.

35:34 This is what success looks like. you want to go through the six pieces of the cocage? No, want see if you remember. No, no, no, I do remember them, but you're... we have something we in the book for entrepreneurs called the go gauge, which is how do you green light ideas either a startup idea or you're running a business and you have a new idea that you want to either as a subsidiary or a new product. It also became our lens as investors is kind of the same, right? Like is this worth our time? Is this worth our money to invest? And it all starts for us with product. So what it's the product and you should be able to say that in like less than one sentence, right? So it's like free to play mobile games, like whatever it is.

36:16 Why is it different than what's out there? How are you going to market it? Meaning how are people going to find out about it? How many people are there to buy it? So what's the market size? But we look at it as like how many buyers and what are they paying for it? Right. The fifth one came from liquid death, which is all the operations. Like how are you going to get your product to your customer? We were putting it in cans in Austria, putting it in a uh truck to put it on a train, to put it on a boat. We were losing money at one point on every can being sold. So we're like, we need to be a little smarter. I'm like. the unit economics and that. And then the six is just on the back of an envelope is the financial model makes sense.

36:59 And the financial model to us is like not business school. It's basically like, what are you selling it for? What does it cost you to produce it? Right? What is it going to cost to do the business like the operating expenses? And what's left over is profit. And if you can't get the unit economics to work, you're not going to be able to get your P &L, your income statement to work. And if that doesn't work, there is no cash flow. There is no healthy balance sheet, and nothing works. And we've learned that all the hard way because we didn't go to business school. And we've had to learn, neither of us did. And we have to learn like, how do we work so that we don't tell ourselves stories so that our ego doesn't convince our gut when something is not working that, oh, no, no, keep going.

37:46 That's, that's the hard part is I think as an entrepreneur, can you get your ego in check in the most important moments? And like you talked about our honeymoon, we didn't have an ego to be going to this big honeymoon. We didn't have the money. Yeah. So you're a guy that believes everything happens for a reason. I read that and I went, okay. it sounds like when you, because you guys read the book yourself on Audible, right? So um you said it. And I was like, this could be, this is an interesting deep dive here. Yeah. I mean, I think you have to believe that things aren't just random, that you're that you're part of some like randomized experiment.

38:34 Um, yeah, things happen and there's meaning you can get from it. Now, does everything have a reason like part of a grand plan? No, but from everything there are lessons and there is meaning. And you could say, I almost died twice. I flatlined. I have an artificial heart valve. Well, that created a mentality of like, what's the worst thing that can happen? Like I'm alive. So this company goes under whatever. If we're homeless, whatever, I'm at least alive. And I think that as entrepreneurs, this idea that you found your purpose or your business is your purpose is powerful because it's propels you to get out of bed.

39:23 There are days, most days where you're like, my God, things aren't going well. Like I have five clients who are canceling. got employees who aren't happy. My product team says it's gonna take three more months to launch something that's like critical. Why do you get out of bed? Because your purpose is to push this thing forward, right? And so, know, we shoveling shit a love story, we included the love story because if it's just shoveling shit, like we didn't want to write a book that's like entrepreneurship sucks. We want to write an honest book with a 50 kind of like cheat codes that we learned along the way that is entrepreneurship sucks and there's no better way to spend your day.

40:10 And those are two things that it's hard to hold if you're not an entrepreneur. But if you're an entrepreneur, it's basically like I hate every day right now. And there's nothing else I'd rather do. I'm so glad I'm not working at a desk. How do we, something I've struggled with is, that's a similar belief I have about, I just feel, since we're in New York City, and one of the speeches about, I like the luckiest Lou Gehrig back in the day, today, I feel like the luckiest man in the world, you have to feel that being an entrepreneur to get through this, right? And I feel, and so I think that I do feel like it because, I get to make the calls, make the decisions, I get to go all in, I get to affect this change.

40:55 But how do you have this leadership conversation and honesty around it with people who are employees in your businesses? No, it's if we think that this is the greatest thing that's ever happened. Well, that's culture. So that's different. So I think there's a difference between the entrepreneurs and then everybody else, right? And that's where culture comes in. And if you don't create this, what I call in the book, a positive cult, they are not going to drink your Kool-Aid, that this is the greatest thing, even if we get punched in the face 80 million times for the next five years.

41:36 So cult's a positive thing. Cult is a positive thing. you are, I mean, I think it is. And the first four letters of culture is cult. This is what we're getting at. So you have to figure out a way that, and listen, I believe it all starts with everybody gets a slice of the pie. So that doesn't happen. I know it's surprising. People say, oh, no, I thought that's like table stakes. No, I have six companies right now that they're not, they're picking and choosing who gets equity. If you want to make the best decision in the world, align everybody that they all get a piece. So like Mike said, everybody wins, right? So every single employee, it didn't matter if they were 22 or had been there all five years, including some vendors, including some cleaning staff, they had equity in our business.

42:30 That was what was. there's no right answer for everyone, right? We believed in kind of this like equity model. The best New York City entrepreneur right now, Gary Vaynerchuk, doesn't. He pays well and not everyone has equity, right? That's his model. is an agency. There's not just an agency to be friends. It's a whole... You cut that out, he's gonna get mad at you. It's much more. He's a global conglomerate. I'm that the majority of his people, and so it's an agency model where I believe it's a little different. The margins are different.

43:11 So when you have a big company and you're shooting the moon, There's a lot to go around in there. I mean, honestly, there's a lot. venture-backed There's a lot to go. That's why I mean like might cash out at $2 billion and you can hand out $150,000 here, $175,000. There's a lot to go around. your argument on agency model, that's the world I come from. There's not as much. The margin is smaller. But you'd make an argument, so what? Figure it out. Well, no, I so they're different. There's not one way for every company. So we now own companies as well. We have a service business. OK, so we own a company that's not doing it. Kass's way. Yeah. Right.

43:52 No one else has equity. Well, that's a service business. That's an agency model. It's like. But what we did was we created what I called branded the shared success matching program where we basically say we are going to reinvest profits into you through these like accounts where we match money that you put into the account that then bests over time. And so it's not equity, but it's sharing the profits in a structured way. Now. for people who are making a hundred grand a year, which is a lot. That's all I was gonna say. 100 grand a year. If you have a traditional environment where two people get together, no matter if you're married, you get together.

44:36 If you combine $100,000 a piece and you're making 200 grand, guys, you're still living the American, the idea of the American dream. if you add like $25,000 of profit that's added to that, that is more tax efficient that you get over time, it's basically, you know, that match is the same as investing your money getting 33 % of a year, And so that it stays there for five years, 10 years. m Now you want to stay with us. Yeah. Because we actually see you. It's a trade. It's a trade in the trade. And I said to the one I created the program and cast, you know, massage that and we presented it to the team.

45:22 You know, I basically said, listen, this is what it is, is why we're doing it. We want everyone to feel peace. But at the end of the day, it's a trade. If you give us your loyalty and it's a very competitive industry that's in the service business. We will take care of you and we'll reinvest in you out of the profits. And that's it. Give us loyalty and you get it. that again, we believe that everyone needs some kind of slice. And that's when magic happens. Where'd that come from? Did that come from you just want to run a great business and keep people or is there something deeper? Because for kids was not equitable. for you. And everyone was treated differently.

46:03 You never knew kind of how you were going to be treated and alliance games and things like that. So no, I mean, that came from me really wanting teams to work. And could I make big teams work? Could I make no mean girl rules, no cliques? I fired two people on the spot because they were being mean girls. And they weren't girls. Yeah, on the spot. oh gave them one warning. said if I see how you treat others, you're So and once that's known throughout a brand and a culture, it's like, hey, listen, I probably don't need to talk about this too much more.

46:44 Right. It manages itself. Yeah. Right. Because it's the rumor bill. And it's okay. That person really made my job harder. And now my boss recognize it and that person's gone. So something else from shoveling shit, there's so much there if people go and buy the book. But I grab these things, I've never got your questions, because I hate when people ask them to me. I'm always like, am I being recorded? What's going on? But you made this statement that you can only do one great thing at a time. Yes, I believe it. So I'll give you an analogy. You look at celebrities who are in a movie, like just say it's like a superhero movie and they're ripped.

47:32 Every single one of them said, I did that for 12 weeks. It was brutal. I had a trainer and a person right here giving me food. And then that was that. I couldn't do it anymore. You can only do one. great thing at a time. But here's the secret and this is what I would like to tell all the other mompreneurs out there. Our 80 % it's not like if I give everything to my my company that means everything else is zero. It means that they're just going to be at 80 % and that's okay. But if you want to do the great thing you got to go 100 and more. Yeah, this idea.

48:13 What happens to your brains when you hear people say, you've got to give 110 %? I think you do have to give, you know, 200 % to your core focus area. So we're all about focus. You asked the question earlier, which is great. It's like you have a vision. How do you like get everyone else on board? And all this comes down to focus. And we in the book talk about the V2 mom or focus exercise of like, what's your vision, your values? What do you need to do to hit that vision? What are the obstacles and how are you going to measure success? You have the measurements. That's the last M. And that's a living, breeding document, which you not only internalize, but you communicate with your team, you do it with your team.

48:56 So everyone knows like what you're doing. And so if you can kind of focus an organization, put in 120%, 200 % behind that, you're going to do whatever your vision is. You will eventually reach it. The issue is are you focused on the right things? Are there things that you haven't focused on that are gonna trip you up? Right? So like we are all about surging the focus, right? Putting the wood behind the right arrow, going all in and just willing it into existence, knowing that you can only do one or two of those things a year as a big organization.

49:36 communicating. One of the other things is part of that culture is if you don't know why you're part of this team, I mean even at 300 employees, that's a problem. That's a leadership problem. you've come up with here's what we're going to focus on. how your work levels up to the company. so like he would say, okay, here's our new V2 mom for the next 12 months or the next six months, whatever it was. My job was then to take every leader and say, okay, please go tell this, you know, to all your people. That doesn't, that's not it. It's we did it in quarterly team meetings. Whenever I saw someone standing around at the lunchroom, I'd be like, Hey, do you remember what our V2 mom is?

50:17 And they would laugh because they knew that I was trying to make sure everybody knew why they were important and what their impact was going to be. you have to over... For any company, like, you know, say I'm at a hundred thousand square feet of real estate, vision, two million, you know, square feet under management by the end of the year, values, trustworthiness, hard work, like you figure out your values. Okay. To get to two million under like management. What's the most important thing you got to do? What's second? Now you may have someone who's like property acquisition. head, right? I don't know the business.

50:58 That person who owns number one, they have their own V2, mom, if here's the five things that they need to do to nail number one, number two, make sure current like, you know, are happy, right? Okay, who owns that? Whose neck are you gonna ring? What are they? And so these things cascade in this pyramid. And the person down here should be connected to your vision up here. And if they're not, it's like, why are they here? If they're not helping us get to two million, you know, and whether it's retained or like, they may be in the collections group, they may be in like whatever, they need to know how they fit. If they don't, they don't have a purpose.

51:39 They're just showing up to work, collecting paycheck, going home and watching Netflix. So what is leadership then? If you said you should be able to break down what you do, what your business is, so what is leadership? Leadership is focusing an organization and providing the resources needed to make that focus happen. So if you say we want to do this, but you don't have the resources to do it, you're not a leader. A leader kind of sets the course and make sure you have resources. And part of that is like, the right people in the right positions, which change over time. Some people don't make the traveling squad as you grow. Hmm. What's been your approach to developing talent?

52:20 Do you find it or do you develop it? Because there's this big debate right now in the world. Are the leaders found or are they developed? Well, let's talk about how do you define a leader or a manager? we talking like... some of your content. It's good. No, I'm talking about your people. He spoke to, know, I'm part of that's it. It's like you have these four or five key people that are now responsible for these departments inside. I think you're born with certain skill sets and I think you can see it. I'll give you an example. Our good friend Mike Jandel, right? So we call him MJ. He came to us from, what was it?

53:01 Six Sigma, which I was like, okay, whatever. I don't even know what that early 20s. 20s. Or oh mid 20s. But here's what he had. He lost his father at an early age and he had the Jandal Turkey Farm. I'm not, dead serious. He run his family owned turkey farm. These are dirty. They're dirty. They're white. talk about shoveling, okay? um He knew how to, by, I think it was like 15, he was running, know, like half the farm staff that were like in their 40s, right? So I think you have it in you and your job as a leader is to moneyball those strengths, moneyball those skills into the right place.

53:49 And that's like, that's the puzzle that I enjoy is to say, okay, now we need this, are they in the same, are they in the right spot? For MJ, I just knew it from the minute I I met him. I just knew that he was going to be an incredible leader. I think others can grow into some of it, but they need support staff, right? Where you're always saying like, hey, did you communicate this? Did you do this? And you pair them with the right people around them. Are we talking about the it factor? And we're all trying to figure out what it is. Is that it? You're like, I just knew you had it. mean, it's it and it. knew, so like I look at people as are they going to be a worker or are they going to be able to manage the people?

54:29 And very few have the skill set. And also by the time you get a certain, like you don't want them doing it. think that is? we articulate, well, so somebody listening to this that thinks they want to start a business, because you actually said in the book, one in five people are either thinking about a business or they're starting one, right? And so these are important things to know, because they should evaluate, I have these things? of people are not managers. They cannot communicate well. They're not going to be the leader. um Think back to childhood when you were playing kickball. Who got picked? You got to think and back into that kind of gritty experience.

55:12 got to see. I always liked promoting people. I liked having flat organizations where my biz ops team would run a team that was new. and I'd see who was going to do their own job and the one that they wanted. Who was actually the one that could communicate the best? Because then you actually get the right person and the right job. heard you say that. There's so many things in the world now, it's very rare you hear something novel. Very rare. It's kind of like that's just a reproduction of the thing. But when I heard you say that, went, hmm. It was on a piece of content you put out. And I went, that's not it. Because what we used to hear was, you won't get paid for the job you want until you're doing more of the job and you get paid for something.

55:56 It's zig-zig where it's all these people. You have to do more than you're paid for, so one day you'll get paid for more than you deserve. And this is an iteration of it. But I thought about that, and I went, that's what we're looking for. for. You're looking for someone to do their job. That's it. And have and the one they want. That's it, because what I always find out is, what I found before I was an entrepreneur, I was in some management companies, and I found out when I would reflect on people that I would promote, I promoted them based upon their past performance of their old job, and that's a bad metric, because we all get promoted, usually, one level above our capabilities, and you don't know until they're failing. The way to fix that is if you currently see them doing the job. When I heard you say that, went, that's a little different. That's really good.

56:36 That's a good metric. people willing to. it shuts people up. Yeah, because when they say like I'd like to get my promotion like they were are we getting raises this year and all this stuff Yeah, I haven't seen you do anything but just what's there. Yeah, which is awesome But this is what it's worth. But if I see you stepping up and really helping out in X Y & Z There's a difference you a tough leader? I think I am. I think I demand a lot, but I'm really fair and I communicate very well. And I will always be honest. And if you end up getting cut by me, I'm going to make sure you know exactly why and what you have to work on.

57:18 All right, so have a few more minutes, but I this will lead into something currently happening in society. So we talk about transparencies on us with all of your employees, right? We talk about over communication. It's not going over well now with the new generations. I'm actually seeing it's not going over well because they can't the stress. And I don't know. And what I want them to do, everybody listening to this, like don't, don't take it personal, but the reality is this is the real world. And if you want to succeed and thrive in it, you're going to have to be in an environment where you're reflective on your ability your skills, your outcomes, and you're really self-aware. Everyone thinks they're self-aware, but yet hardly anyone is. Self-awareness isn't what I think about me. It's what's the outside world seeing.

57:59 Am I self-aware of really what's going on here? So, that's it. What's truly, honestly happening from me showing up here? But that all comes down to, in my humble opinion, distress tolerance. We have created kids who get eighth place trophies. So how do we help them fix this? Now can we? Or they're just gonna have to just fail through it and just, well, it's gonna stop for another decade. One is we have to have companies hiring young kids in office. They can't be doing internships and their first jobs working from home. They will never learn unless they are in an office learning affect, learning moods, tension, politics.

58:40 How do you, you know, manage up? How do you manage down? We have to start giving the skill sets by leading by example. That's the first thing. The second thing is you have to understand and care enough to communicate this. I've had arguments with kids between the ages of 20 and 26 over and over again. They don't like how I talk. They don't like it. They don't like, this is just not how we do things. If we don't like something, we're just going to quit. It's okay. And you will be just an employee over and over and over over again. And that's fine. But if you would like a life that affords X, Y, and Z, this is what you have to do. You have to be able to hear uncomfortable things and say them.

59:25 Remember, the three of us had to pick up a phone. Hi, this is Kass. How are you doing Mrs. Davis? Is Sarah home? May I please? how was your day? You had to have conversations. They don't know how to communicate and that's on us. Yeah, I think the other part is, it's this resilience piece, right? It's like when we're coming to New York City and I'm reaching out and we're putting this together and dinners and books and all this, you know, my first ask was like, I'd love you guys to come to Cincinnati. And it was a nice response, but it's like, hey, a couple of things. We're really busy, but also like it's like 50 grand for us to show up. Right. Right. And I look at that. I don't want to hear that, but I'm like, OK, what now? Right. OK, what now?

1:00:06 Sorry, that is what it is. Like, OK, what? And remember, being an entrepreneur, you have to learn how to ask for money. Yes. Well, being great entrepreneurs, might maybe not like Gary never ask for any money. You just do it. But if you do, you can get so many notes. So many. So many. what we have to do is hopefully create an environment and you're going through this. That's it. And where you actually, the challenge is, and I'm trying to figure out, you're looking at them and saying, hey, like I believe in what you're capable of what you can do, but you're just gonna have to work through this. You have to, because at least you're in an environment where there's a group of people that truly care about you and we want good outcomes, but there's no easy ways to solve this shit. And it's getting harder and harder to find those environments.

1:00:47 Like the idea of apprenticeship, whether you were an accountant or lawyer or even doctor to a certain extent. Is it margins are shrinking so much we don't use the capital? do it. It's laziness and margin. think 2020, you know, when we had COVID and it basically, we got to a point of, of it is okay to work from home and not see people in person. And it worked. We were so afraid of it before. Remember every, but all companies had like maybe half day Fridays, right? And like, Oh my God, PTO. done a work video call before COVID.

1:01:30 Unless you were at a law firm doing a deal or something. how you looked mattered, what you were dressing like mattered. and just hair pulled, that's not, that wasn't okay. done matter anymore. And so I think we've gotten away. I think it's good for certain people. I think it's great because I think there's a whole uncovered workforce of moms that could do great work more than part time and deliver. And if we're going to fix working, like how do companies work? We need to get these kids back in the office. We've had one of our sons has had every internship. He's a senior now in college. Every internship has in remote, every single one.

1:02:13 That's just the most ridiculous thing. not an internship. It's not. No. What does he learn? mean, he did good work, but like that's not what we want and like same thing about college. College isn't basically to like go master economics or whatever you're studying. It's to figure out how you deal with people in a community, right? In community. How do relationships work? How do you do group projects? How do you take care of yourself? We're not showing them how to do that. Well, it's never So we're at a time when it's gonna be impossible to get ahead as a young person in corporate America. career paths are dead.

1:02:56 And the reason is you were hired as a young person to do a lot of busy work that no one wanted to do, right? Whether it was create decks, put together a report, do this. I'm using AI for all that. So it's like I have 10. 20 young people working for me doing financial reports, doing analysis, doing PowerPoint, doing research. And so your job as a young person is to know how to manage virtual employees so you can start and be the most productive person at the company. You could do anything. Just tell me what you want me to do. I'll do decks. I'll do a financial.

1:03:37 I'll be a financial analyst. If you don't know anything, you have a brain. right? A language model. Pick your favorite one. You don't need to know anything. You don't need to know anything. You just ask, right? You create a brain, an external brain, and then you automate tasks. People you're working for and be like, this is like baby Jesus. Like, who is this? You are right though. We've we've taken away, we're about to take away all of that grunt work. But I'm saying like in companies, you're not getting, I'm not saying like getting cups of coffee was good, but like you're not doing that anymore. Think about all the management consulting firms.

1:04:18 They've laid off so many people at that junior level because they just don't need it. advice are you giving to your kids? Well, so our oldest is 24. He has an AI consultancy for small businesses. So he helps them set up a brain, all their data so they can like talk to it and be productive. And then he launches virtual employees, small businesses. These are businesses that could never hire like a chief AI officer. have. Yeah, it could be 10. It could be smaller. We then have a senior who is hungry to work in sports and he is basically has a mentality of all work in the mall in the mail room.

1:05:02 And but we tell them, especially those two, because our daughter wants to be in medicine, she wants to be in research. But we tell her the same thing. She's got to understand how AI is going to power medicine. But we tell them is understand sales. It's a great skill set. It's never going to go away. And understand people. Right? That's network. Build your network. Yeah. Which is important like and our kids have the benefit of having a network a lot of people don't Right, like they grew up in New York City like they grew up with Gary Vaynerchuk at Sunday brunch, right like they Have seen stuff and I think people who haven't have to reach out have to show up and say How can I help you and never before young people have the power to help?

1:05:52 Because if you know how to automate, how to like use some of these tools, you walk into kind of a used car parts, like retailer and say, wouldn't it be great to get all of your SKUs, what sold the day before, what you're running low on an inventory and who are your top sales people just emailed you in the morning with five recommendations to optimize your business. just like Walmart works for their tire center. So now you can compete at that. Like, would you like that? Yeah, of course. Okay, well, I'm 22. Pay me 10 grand a month and you'll have it in a month. Our oldest helped his friend spin up basically AI generated websites for small businesses.

1:06:34 His friend Nikki. And Nikki is an EMT, full-time EMT, right? But he wanted to make more money. This is what they know. for-profit school, how do you like optimize your enrollment? Yeah, right to get the right kids in the right kind of classes like all of this. No old people know it. So when we started out. No one knew the Internet when we started, right? So when I started back in 9493 with my first business, no one knew social media. We jumped into that. No one knew like Web 3. No one knew AI. So Our whole career has been like being a little early, not too early.

1:07:18 There are people doing AI and machine learning 20 years ago. Good for them, right? Like, thank you for inventing all this stuff. But once things, you start to see people you respect interested, for me it's, what are my smartest friends interested in? Like, what are the developers interested in? What are people like Gary interested in? So when Gary shows up at our office at 34 years old, He says very flat out, I've worked for my dad my whole career. I have no money. I can't afford an office. Can I use your conference room? I have this vision for a social media agency. Now it's like a full agency to just do what I did for my dad's store, six million to 70 million for other businesses.

1:08:03 We're like, I'm like, yeah, I'm like, talk to this person who runs the place and cast say yes. But like. No one knew social media and Gary took it. No one knows AI. Are you the person who could take it and run with it, whether you're 25, 35, whatever? I know we're out of time. We have to give. I want to say this again. know what time it is. I don't even know where we are. It's very hard and it's ambiguous and it's kind of not tangible for kids to be like learning AI and then go help people out, right? So I would argue let's do a little more action, you know, actionable things.

1:08:44 Let's have companies actually care to bring in employees and teach them. Yeah, when you touched on was, well, then you got. Did you guys ever read the book? I was called like the ultimate gift. You didn't listen to it or read it, didn't know about it? Okay, and so at the end of it, I'm pretty sure it's based on a true story, I think it is, right? But at the end of it, this guy who had built a billion dollar net worth and his whole family just was expecting it, they didn't work for anything, they were all spoiled, but at end of it, he had this grand nephew and The great nephew was spoiled, but he said, you have to do this for an entire year.

1:09:27 And he made his interning run, but you have to do this for whole year. You have to do all these things. But at the end of it, he said, I now see what my job is and what my great uncle wanted me to do. And it was take this thing I've learned and go out and do it in the rest of the world. And so, what I've learned in business, we're not gonna be able to force any other businesses to do something they don't wanna do in the metrics. So, you guys are gonna have to do it. If you're really that passionate, now it has to be a model where you make some money around it, or else you're not gonna put your time into it. The great thing about AI is it's not what we read about open AI and like entropic raising at a 300 billion dollars.

1:10:07 The reality is AI is for our search firm, helping us find better candidates faster so we can deliver for clients. It's about automated automating some of the back office. So we don't have to spend all this time closing books. Someone that's not as intelligent as you guys are on the tech space and you found all these companies like, but it just makes me better. Yeah, it just makes me better. me smarter than I otherwise wouldn't be. just jump into ChatGPT. Go to YouTube, search for, if you're in the real estate business, AI for Realtors. And just watch, just learn, and do an analysis of your day.

1:10:53 How much of it is spent busy work. You can even ask Chef GV. It's incredible. can hook up your calendar and say like, what am I wasting my time doing? how I grow daily when I engage with it. Let's say I engage, I'll just take an hour, not all at one time, but if I would take an hour and engage, my learning probably increases by 20 or 30 % versus the way it did the day before. only that, but what about the fact that you can launch searches and go do something else? incredible and come back 20 minutes later and here it is. And you that would have cost us. We probably wouldn't even know where to find the resource. But what can happen now? I'm like that probably would have cost me a hundred grand.

1:11:36 I love it. It's a little scary. mean change is scary. I mean it is whether we have to accept it. It's happening either way. will happen too. We will learn to adapt. What are you guys, so Shovell and Chit, this has had massive success. You have to be proud of the book and the story that you're being. so excited. Like it couldn't have been, it couldn't have been better received. We had a plan. We did a V2 mom for it and we executed and we got the results. Like that's what we're most proud so am I allowed to say what's next? Yeah, sure. What's next? No, that's You know, we want to move on to the next thing and it's like man How long are you allowed to stay here and run this?

1:12:20 We know what's next. mean we We have our own V2 mom for this year, right? We Yeah, and so we have we're to continue to support entrepreneurs in whatever that looks like off our own balance sheet We have you know the funds we buy businesses and start but like for the most part by and we're having a lot of fun with just like the speaking and the podcasts and we don't have a podcast takes a lot of work. We like going on other people's and that's we've gotten. Well, that's we're also very interested in longevity health. of the businesses are in there and now that we're empty nesters, so to speak, even though they'll come back.

1:13:05 There's a new phase for us and being able to travel, meet with people, speak to groups. uh It's a little weird that people will pay us to show up now. write a book and it becomes a bestseller and people want you. like, same schmucks we were before the book. I think for me it will be fun to finally have the time to be with other people that are like us, like this opportunity, like next time we're in Cincinnati, we're coming. 100%. that's the cool part is we spent a year talking on other people's shows and finally finding more people like us. And that will be fun. Like I have this dream, won't happen this spring, that we get what are they called?

1:13:47 Winnebago's or tour bus and we just. Whatever. You're gonna do this Kass. You're gonna fall into that trap. We've seen people do this and they sell it for 50 % of what they paid for it. no, we're renting. You rent a tour bus with a driver. We want to go visit our new friends and old friends. Yeah. Yeah. And just show up with the dogs and hey. like literally fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, fly, You know what? I want to go see people. I want to do things with our dogs. What took so long to do it? Because I thought about too. So here's what I thought about. I thought about as we're starting to travel around and go meet more people, what you just said is, is it's my why to go be around people that are thinking similar, that have similar mindsets, understand that have this.

1:14:36 I'm like, I want to be in rooms now. I don't want to be the smartest guy in the room. I want to fill rooms with other people who have done big things and I'm inspired from just being in them. let me ask you, here's another icky truth about being an entrepreneur. When we were in the thick of it, we didn't have a lot of friends. oh And so now that we uh launched kids, for the most part, now we want to actually those. Yeah. Like I think. We had friends, but they're the same ones from high school, from college. I meant like. A little bit sad. That's the second. it's sad because you haven't been able to, there's an exchange in everything and doing this business.

1:15:22 there is because if I did show up as a friend, I'm gonna be a 20 % friend and no one wants that. And then what happens is not being around for two or three or four years, the phone stops ringing. The texts stop coming. can't do this. Or you're the parents who never made friends with the other parents at school because you were never at the parent events, right? So you go to graduation, you're like, who are all these other parents? They seem to be best friends because they've just been hanging out with the kids going on vacation. place. And so now what I look forward to is can we now develop more friendships, right? And we have the time. to spend time around people that you, the people that I spend, I actually had a conversation with my significant other.

1:16:06 We gotta come up with a better term for not married, we've together 18 years. Yeah, and so we actually had this conversation. We're going to Annamarie Island next week for four or five days, house on the beach, but I was like, you know what, I'm going to work, but come along. But I was like, this house is huge, and it's just an amazing location. And I was like, man, I'm calling some of my people. There aren't many people to call. so I think, here's what I told her. said, We could call them and they would say yes, but I don't want to spend time with most of those people because I don't want to have to have context around everything. I want to walk in, give a fist pump, what's up y'all, let's go. And you don't have to understand and learn and worry about what you're going to say 100%.

1:16:51 It is just comfortable. those are, they go away in this world of entrepreneur. It's a little sad, but now you're in a moment where you can create those again. Yeah. And But you also pick up meaningful relationships through work. And that's what I'm, I didn't want to discount all the friends that we do have. Yeah. But I want to be able to go see those friends. you know what I with my friends? I sell them places in Florida now because we have this brokerage in six states. So, but they want to hang out with me. That's like guys, I can only come in to hang out when I'm down there doing business and I can go to lunch with you one time. But if you're a cool person, they want more. I can't give you more. I wish I could. Right. Yeah, and I and you know, we have dogs and yes, we like playing golf and we fly fishing.

1:17:35 So why can't we do? Make it around our front. a hundred percent. That's exciting. So that's what's next uh Shoveling shit do For one and done. Okay. Um, thank you guys. like these good, honest conversations. I'm pumped to follow it and say, what do they invest in? Because if you come up with some more liquid deaths, you come up with some more of those. I mean, that thing hit big. That's a big business. We have others that are, like we have a few companies that are so much bigger now that we started at the beginning. excited. So we'll hang around and just figure out how it's done a bit.

1:18:17 Guys, I prefer not to eat more imposed than already happened. All right, guys, thank you. it. Okay.