Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / Congrats on the revenue. Sorry about your money.

Transcript

Congrats on the revenue. Sorry about your money. · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

0:00
Most founders are accidentally running a casino, not a company.
0:03
They're bragging about ROAS celebrating revenue spikes and
0:07
somehow still bleeding cash. Because if you don't know how
0:10
much you should be spending, ads isn't a strategy, it's gambling
0:14
with better graphics. AI is about to flood the world
0:17
with growth tools that promised the moon, but they still can't
0:20
ask the right questions. AI can do the math, it just
0:24
can't build the equation. So if your business is growing,
0:27
but you can't explain why you're not making money, are you
0:30
building a company or a very expensive coping mechanism?
0:33
Welcome to AI for founders. I'm Ryan Estes.
0:36
This is for founders building with AI, especially if you sell
0:39
real products, run paid media, or you're staring at AP and L
0:42
like it's written in ancient Sumerian.
0:44
You're going to learn how to stop guessing.
0:46
Set profit foundations first and then scale like you actually
0:50
mean it. And now meet Adam.
0:52
He took an E com brand from zero to 60 million in sales, then
0:56
built Pentane software that basically encapsulates his brain
1:00
and tells operators what to do to get profitable.
1:03
Even Wilder, he plugged in an agent so you can literally ask,
1:07
how do I hit 5% net profit this month and get a direct answer in
1:10
seconds. Founders, if you want your
1:13
business to run like a system and not a mood, go subscribe to
1:16
the newsletter at AI for founders.co.
1:18
If your calendar is in chaos, your margins are in chaos, your
1:22
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1:25
join 27,000 founders who want signal and not noise.
1:29
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1:32
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Here we go. Awesome.
2:01
Adam, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining
2:03
us. Ryan, thanks for having me.
2:06
I'm really excited to talk to you largely because you know you
2:09
spun a $60 million E com brand into a new software and kind of
2:15
a done with you service called Pentane.
2:18
Give us the overview of kind of what people can expect with
2:20
Pentane. Pentane is almost a decade worth
2:24
of my experience operating an e-commerce brand from 0 to, as
2:29
you mentioned, up to about 60 million in total sales.
2:32
It's all of that experience doing that from the position of
2:34
CEO while doing all the paid media and managing PNLS and
2:38
doing all those things. It's a software that
2:39
encapsulates, quite literally encapsulates my brain in telling
2:45
you how to operate your business and changes to make in order to
2:48
improve your. Outcomes incredible and for
2:50
folks that are maybe have dabbled in e-commerce or maybe
2:53
people are very expert with it, you know, you really actually
2:57
need to develop a proficiency in in your ad spend very, very
3:02
quickly because especially if you're dealing with real goods,
3:05
you have like inventory that's waiting to be sold.
3:08
And if you do not actually figure out how to hit that
3:11
algorithm just right, that could be your your business right
3:14
there really fast. You know, I'll I'll take it even
3:18
I'll take it a couple of seconds beyond that.
3:19
Would you try not to dominate the whole show?
3:22
The the you are correct. That is a challenge.
3:25
But below that is is a deeper challenge that causes a lot more
3:29
problems. And that starts with, it sounds
3:32
simple. It's actually not that simple.
3:33
It starts with how much should you be spending?
3:37
Because you could be crushing the algorithm and hitting at 8
3:40
1/2 ROAS on your website and still be losing money.
3:44
And that that's a problem. That's not an ad system problem.
3:47
That's an ad budget problem. So we need to, we need to like
3:50
really set a foundation of how to make money and then build all
3:54
those other things on top of it. Dealing with your average order
3:57
values and your conversion rates and your click through rates and
4:00
all those things that are super important.
4:01
They have to be built on a solid foundation.
4:03
And that's the part that that a lot of particularly early stage
4:05
operators miss. And you know, until they're,
4:08
they just can't figure out how they're making $3,000,000 in
4:10
revenue and not making money. Yeah, well, there's like A and
4:14
there's a sophistication and like a confusion maybe about the
4:17
tech stack around e-commerce 'cause if you're like a a giant
4:21
Shopify store, then you have different plugins that are doing
4:24
maybe e-mail conversion and you're doing retargeting
4:26
campaigns. So sometimes just like even
4:28
your, your basic KPIs of, you know, lifetime value and
4:32
customer acquisition and, and these things can be a little bit
4:35
cloudy as well. You know, and, and particularly
4:38
we're getting into an age where there's just going to be an
4:40
explosion of apps being developed and also, you know, AI
4:45
products that are promising the moon.
4:47
So like at what's the playing field like right now?
4:50
And it may be kind of being specific on what Pentane
4:53
actually delivers for the monthly subscription, which is
4:56
an amazing price, 199 bucks a month.
5:00
You know, the, the application marketplace is obviously it's
5:03
changing. It's changed since we started
5:05
this conversation, right? It's changing so fast.
5:08
If I look back at the experience of bottle Keeper like what we
5:11
needed to run that business at scale doing 10s of millions of
5:15
dollars a year with only a handful of employees.
5:17
We needed Shopify, we have a say at our ad platforms.
5:20
We needed an accounting system, we were running QuickBooks.
5:23
You know, we needed some infrastructure to deal with
5:25
business to business orders and ERP system.
5:27
Like we didn't need a whole lot more than that.
5:29
We needed Clavio. That's who we use for e-mail and
5:32
SMS stuff. And it it seems like today, and
5:36
I hear this from E com operators all the time, and it's the same
5:38
in B to B. Like there are so many apps and
5:40
so many things that people are just constantly trying to jam
5:43
into your tech stack that they're really kind of shutting
5:47
down their openness to applications and software.
5:54
So I mean, in the world of AI think that that will change a
5:57
lot to the extent that you you'll be able to just create
6:01
when you're small enough, your own sort of bespoke systems.
6:04
And we should certainly get into that.
6:05
The difficulty though, is that even when you're creating your
6:08
own bespoke systems, they have to be built on an on a safe
6:12
underlying framework that has the data that you don't
6:17
necessarily want to put into AIAI, like your bank account
6:20
information, your PN LS, your very like sensitive financial
6:24
documents, every line item that goes through your bank account.
6:27
Like you probably don't want that to just go into an AI
6:30
system. So, So what Pentane provides is
6:32
like, first of all, it's that underlying foundation, the
6:35
second part that's really, really important.
6:36
And this we get into like the the longer term vision with
6:39
Pentane. But and where I think this world
6:42
goes in AI, the B to B SAS kind of world goes in AI.
6:45
The second thing is it provides an underlying framework on what
6:49
to do with that information. The problem is that 2 or
6:52
$3,000,000 or in a lot of cases $15 million operator, they're
6:57
really good at what they do, but they don't know the questions to
7:00
ask. Like AI can do math, but it
7:03
can't set up the equations very well.
7:05
That's super important. So unless you, what Pentane does
7:08
is it provides the underlying framework to hold that sensitive
7:11
information, not AI can't touch it, but it also when you, when
7:16
we plug an AI into it, which has happened a lot recently, I'm
7:19
sure we'll get into that. We need a framework that gives
7:25
the AI the instruction on what to do with the information, how
7:27
to use it in a way that is smart and profitable and good for the
7:30
underlying business, because it can't be hallucinating on that
7:33
stuff. 100% on that. You know, to your point, yeah, I
7:36
think that that kind of shut down moment where there's just
7:40
so much. I mean, every single day it's
7:42
like Zuckerberg is saying, like all you got to do is give me one
7:45
e-mail address, we'll make all the creative and we'll do 1000
7:47
ads and test it is. And then another thing's telling
7:50
you a different thing. But really it boils down to like
7:52
what are we doing today? What are the questions from the
7:55
data that we can ascertain to like optimize what we're doing?
8:00
You know, so let's kind of start with that framework of like
8:03
right now, today, what are the kind of major advertising
8:07
platforms that e-commerce users are are working with and kind of
8:12
what is maybe best practice of of low hanging fruit that you
8:15
can see that people should start to think about addressing these
8:17
questions. You know, from an advertising
8:21
standpoint, the stack isn't changing a whole lot.
8:24
You know, we have you have your sort of like underlying systems
8:27
of meta and Google, you know, which both of which encapsulate
8:31
multiple different platforms, but they live within the same ad
8:34
ecosystem. You know, TikTok is, you know,
8:38
hear great things, hear terrible things.
8:40
I'm sure it's somewhere in between that Amazon put that in
8:42
entirely its own bucket and ecosystem with Amazon ads.
8:45
But you know, outside of that, we, you know, we have some
8:48
clients that have have started to test some like app lovin and
8:51
different things just trying to test new ways to acquire
8:54
customers. But again, like if we go back to
8:59
the bigger question and where companies get in one of the
9:06
places companies get into trouble and there are a few, is
9:09
is just arbitrarily just making up an amount of money to spend
9:15
and hoping that it works. Yeah.
9:19
Like it, it can't work that that doesn't.
9:20
That is not a strategy. That is gambling.
9:23
It's effectively you're just gambling and that's OK.
9:25
Like if that's what you want to do, well, let's just be honest
9:27
about what you're doing. It's just gaming.
9:30
This episode is brought to you by a dangerous idea.
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founders.co. Now back to the show.
10:26
Well, you know, and that's The thing is like, if, if I'm
10:29
betting on ponies, let's say I it's best to like have an expert
10:34
that you can actually ask questions.
10:35
If you don't know anything about horses and now you're suddenly
10:38
professional gambler, it makes it a little scarier, you know,
10:42
And I talked to go to talk go to market with founders all the
10:46
time on this podcast because largely I'm interested in how
10:50
they're going to do it. And a lot of times they're like,
10:52
it's either like, well, the product's going to be great and
10:54
it'll sell itself. It's like, uh oh.
10:56
Or they're like, oh, we're going to do meta ads And you're like,
10:59
yeah, but like who's controlling the budget and the creative?
11:02
Like it's, it's so big and people that have tried this know
11:05
it know like the, the difference between well performing and, and
11:09
sometimes honestly, what do they call it?
11:12
Like like a Chad send or something.
11:15
You, you just get lucky and it happens for you.
11:20
But but honestly, like if you are like, hey man, we're going
11:23
to use ads. We have the budget behind it,
11:25
really kind of setting down the foundation of like the questions
11:28
to ask and how you're going to execute.
11:30
It's probably the most important step, you know, particularly
11:33
with your offer, which I think is really interesting, is like
11:35
Pentane as a software product is going to have dashboards that
11:38
are giving you amazing information to help qualify your
11:42
decisions, but you're also doing a done with you package now.
11:46
It is that basically to help ensure success or is this to
11:49
kind of inform the direction that Pentane's going just so you
11:53
have one-on-one communication with customers so you really
11:56
understand them or a mix of both?
11:58
It's both, you know, part of it just comes out of we need, I
12:02
mean, we have customers that are asking for it and I heard enough
12:05
customers asking for it. That was said, we probably
12:07
should figure out how to how to create some offering like this.
12:10
We call it the mastery plan. We, we spend a week, an hour a
12:13
week together. Just keep diving into any and
12:15
everything that you want to. But the other part is, you know,
12:18
if we can, if the business can generate some income, income
12:22
learning in a really deep session like that.
12:26
Learning what we we need to do next, what we need to build,
12:29
what are the problems that we need to solve in a really
12:32
personal, intimate way, like that's exceptional.
12:35
Yeah, totally. It's.
12:37
Both sides. But it was really we did that
12:38
because of a a need that kept coming up. 100% they're like,
12:42
love the product, love the product.
12:43
Can I please just get you on the phone?
12:46
Yeah. I mean, you know, it's funny,
12:48
like with Pentane, and this will change over time.
12:51
It will evolve over time when when you are a Pentane customer
12:55
like you work with me directly, we do it directly.
12:57
I just can't spend an hour a week on the you know what I call
13:00
with you like deep diving into your patent infringement
13:02
strategy, which I have a lot of experience in.
13:07
You know, the whole point of the system and the whole point of
13:09
this chapter of my life is to be as helpful as possible.
13:14
And, and I have directed that towards helping other early
13:17
stage E com operators answer questions that are really
13:21
complicated or frankly, like I said before, and most quite and
13:24
in many cases they, they don't know the questions to ask.
13:27
So it's, it's incredibly important to me that the, the
13:30
product as that evolves is really directive and guiding.
13:35
And it's not just here's a dashboard or a data set or
13:37
whatever, like go figure it out. That's not helpful.
13:39
It has to, it has to be a lot more directive than that.
13:42
Cool. And then that kind of brings us
13:44
to kind of your ideal customer. Is it somebody starting at 0?
13:47
Is it somebody who's doing a million annual revenue?
13:50
Who who's the best person for the product?
13:52
Most of our customers are doing a million in revenue up to I
13:58
mean we have we're about to onboard one that's doing a
14:00
little over 20 that that's outside of the range.
14:03
I would say it's usually 1,000,000 to 15.
14:05
However, I had a call this morning with an operator, a
14:09
founder that's launching their brand in a month and she's being
14:13
really proactive and wants to be ahead of the curve.
14:15
That's not typical, but the system absolutely supports that.
14:18
It's a you, you usually the, the sort of trajectory of the
14:21
founder is like we, we have a problem.
14:24
We come up with an idea to solve that problem.
14:27
We think maybe other people have the same problem.
14:29
It turns out other people do have the same problem.
14:31
Other people start paying you for your solution and now you
14:34
have a company and you're the founder.
14:35
And then you go and you build and you get to a million or two
14:38
or three million in revenue and you don't understand how you're
14:40
not making money. And that's the point that you
14:42
come back to me or to a thing like to pentane.
14:46
We're really the only company that does anything like this
14:48
today to try to get answers to those questions that are
14:52
directive and guiding. But it's like you have to feel
14:54
the pain a little bit. So it's pretty rare to have
14:56
somebody that's like way ahead of the curve.
15:00
I wish more people were. I mean, we have, it can be
15:02
really helpful right at the beginning, really just help with
15:06
all those painful mistakes or. At least a lot of them.
15:07
But that that painful moment is particularly acute because it's
15:12
after the founders. A moment of despair.
15:15
This is not going to work. Then you get this like
15:17
unbelievable traction. You're like, boom.
15:19
You see the spike and you're like, Oh my gosh, we're moving
15:22
units. Everything's great.
15:24
You go look at your balance sheet and you're like, we're not
15:26
making money. Boom, back to the Valley of
15:29
Despair. It totally is it.
15:31
I mean that that's a really good description that you, you spend
15:35
a year or two or five or whatever it is in this pain zone
15:39
at the bottom and then something happens.
15:41
You stay in it for long enough to let that lucky thing happen
15:43
and you hit an inflection point and you take off.
15:45
Then they go shoot, I got to hire people.
15:48
I mean I can't keep this going. I got to hire people.
15:50
So then they go and add 3 people and they rent an office and
15:54
their, the revenue they're doing $100,000 a month, which is like
15:57
dream money to them a year ago. And then to be clear, that's a
16:01
lot of money, but like, it's unheard of to them a year ago.
16:03
And then, you know, two months from now they get their PNL and
16:06
they lost 30 grand like, and they have no idea why.
16:11
So that's yeah. And it, you know, then I can
16:13
tell them exactly why. I mean, it's really, it's a math
16:16
problem. It's a math problem.
16:17
But you have to understand the math and you have to know how to
16:20
build the equation and the questions to ask.
16:22
And it's extremely common because, you know, the platforms
16:25
are hungry and they're going to you're going to keep feeding
16:27
him, especially if you see that traction.
16:29
And so, you know, it's, it's a lot for a founder spending, you
16:33
know, that zero to 1 is, is excruciating in its own right.
16:36
And then one to five has its own challenges, which, you know,
16:39
this is really it where you start really buttoning down and
16:41
being like, OK, we need specialization in, in certain
16:44
areas and you start moving towards it.
16:47
Now one maybe I don't know if it's a competitor to to
16:49
advertising would be like influencers spend.
16:53
How do you kind of take into consideration like money spent
16:56
with influencers and kind of their reach and their return and
16:59
all that with ads? Inside of Pentane in like the
17:03
underlying infrastructure, when we connect, you know, when the
17:07
system connects to a QuickBooks account for a customer and it
17:10
pulls in the the needed financial information in order
17:13
to do the math and understand how to tell them how to make
17:16
money. There are three primary buckets
17:18
that the expenses in the business get put into.
17:21
There are fixed expenses, which are operating expenses.
17:24
These are things that we pay whether or not we make money.
17:26
It's our payroll, our health insurance, our office expenses,
17:29
our legal fees, accounting fees, like that's it.
17:32
We pay whether or not we make a dollar.
17:33
When we make more money, they don't necessarily go up.
17:36
We have variable expenses. These are sales related
17:39
expenses. These are directly tied to
17:41
revenue. It's like your cost of goods,
17:43
your shipping and fulfillment to the customer, your advertising
17:46
fees, all of them are technically variable expenses.
17:51
And then in Pentane, we have a third category and, and this
17:54
becomes really important later on and that's advertising
17:57
expenses. Now I just said that advertising
17:59
is a part of variable and your accountant will tell you that
18:01
that is the case. And it, it is true.
18:03
But we in Pentane, we pull the paid media, the things that we
18:06
can ramp up or down quickly. So things like Meta and Google
18:10
and TikTok, if we want to stomp on the gas, this is how we do
18:13
it. We pull those into an
18:14
advertising bucket and that allows us to use that as look at
18:18
it more as fuel than it than as an expense, which is really,
18:21
really important. So influencers and bust benches
18:25
and urinal cakes and like all the weird places people
18:28
advertise, which we, you know, we never did urinal cakes.
18:31
We did like airline magazines and all sorts of stuff with
18:33
bottle keeper. Those things would sit in that
18:35
variable expense bucket which are sales related.
18:38
Yeah, OK. Interesting.
18:41
Now I, I would love to talk about the, your kind of 12 month
18:45
plan for Pentane as far as like features and, and how you're
18:49
thinking about it. Maybe to frame it.
18:51
Well, you know, let's just get into kind of open claw.
18:53
That's kind of like a, a moment in time.
18:55
We're probably 3 weeks into all this open claw madness.
19:00
You know, we're probably four or five days since, you know, they
19:04
were acquired by open AI or the handshake deal with Peter and
19:07
Sam. I don't know exactly what
19:08
happened or what the details are, but how are you kind of
19:11
like looking at open claw, kind of what this is suggesting from
19:16
like agentic support and kind of how that might inform the
19:19
product of how you want to move forward?
19:22
When I, I went through this process about six months ago
19:26
and, and it's something that I do relatively regularly, but I,
19:29
I like videoed it as a like an hour long process I went through
19:33
and I, I laid out on video with the dry erase board hanging off
19:36
my Montana sign back here. The vision for the company like
19:41
step by step, appreciating that it doesn't follow a straight
19:43
line, but like step by step to two years out.
19:47
And at that two year mark, what I expected to be able to do was
19:51
have this wide-ranging ecosystem and the technical capability for
19:56
a user to be able to literally have a conversation with their
19:59
data, to be able to talk to their information and have their
20:03
information be able to talk back and tell them what to do.
20:06
The next step beyond that being like.
20:09
If you want us to do it for you, we can go do it for you.
20:11
The next step to that being like, you trust the thing, just
20:14
click the go button and we're just going to go do the stuff.
20:18
Open claw. I mean, I have that now.
20:22
Yeah. Let me be clear.
20:23
Like I, I went from this is a year or two out maybe to I had
20:27
Carl, who's my open claw chief of staff build this thing in an
20:33
hour. And I, we're beta testing that
20:36
now with 7 customers that have their own, his name's Charlie.
20:40
I'll probably change the name to something cooler.
20:41
Maybe I'll just leave it as Charlie.
20:42
I don't know. They have their own app.
20:45
You know, it's, it's a web app, but like they have their own web
20:47
app that's connected to their Pentane account via API.
20:49
So that thing can't go in and look at their stuff.
20:51
It can only pull out what it's specifically being requested
20:54
for. So that's that important
20:56
security layer that lives in there.
20:58
The math that it's doing is coming out of the system.
21:01
So it's not doing math. We don't let it set up
21:03
equations, but you can literally say, so Charlie, say Charlie,
21:08
how do I generate a 5% net profit this month?
21:12
And in 10 seconds it will come back and say, well, based on
21:15
what you have going on, you need to cut $22,000 a month out of
21:18
your fixed expenses. I look at your PNL, the line
21:22
around your payroll, it's a, it's $27,000 a month.
21:25
You can probably get down to $22,000 a month.
21:28
Look at these things, you need to take your prices and test
21:31
increasing them by 5% because that adds margin to your like.
21:34
It literally just tells you exactly what to do and it's
21:37
based on my brain up. It's based on this multi hour
21:41
profit master class and dozens and dozens and dozens of hours
21:44
of me talking about how to operate profitably.
21:47
It's based entirely and exclusively on that framework.
21:50
So it literally tells you exactly if you and I were on a
21:53
call talking about your business and I was looking your PNL, it
21:56
tells you exactly what I would tell you.
21:58
Incredible. It's it's mind blowing.
22:01
It is so fast tracked our production.
22:03
It's it's, I mean it's like hard to over exaggerate how wild it
22:09
has been. Yes.
22:11
It it truly is and I can. This is just like the most
22:14
interesting use case to me because now basically what it
22:18
allows you to do is turn your IP or your knowledge base or your
22:24
brain into a nobody can reproduce what you know, right?
22:29
I mean, everyone's gonna have their own experience, but like
22:31
exactly what you know and what you spent all this time building
22:34
of like how to build a profitable system.
22:36
Now you can basically train an agent to now act upon that.
22:41
So it it's to say that any of us, I was speaking to a
22:43
professor that has kind of a local based AI product.
22:48
Great guy for folks a little bit worried about privacy and but
22:52
he's been a professor for 40 years teaching on AIAI.
22:55
So he has his knowledge base that like he can contain and
22:58
like basically create revenue from it.
23:01
So, you know, I'm very curious of like how you set about like
23:05
basically introducing yourself to your agent and then
23:08
introducing your agent, what their role is going to be?
23:11
Was that a, a conversation through Claude?
23:13
How were you basically like, welcome to welcoming this entity
23:17
to the world? You know, I got like most, most
23:22
probably did. I discovered Claudebot.
23:26
I think it was actually still called Claudebot when they went
23:28
through all their multiple name changes, the IP stuff on a
23:32
YouTube video because I watch a bunch of tech stuff.
23:34
So it got suggested and I and I watched it and you know, I watch
23:37
a lot of stuff around AI. Most of it, to be very clear, is
23:40
absolute garbage. You go and redo the things and
23:42
it's like, that's not true. I mean, that you're, this is
23:46
click bait. This was the only literally like
23:49
the only one that I can actually think of that I went in to
23:51
implement the thing and it was different.
23:53
Like, you know, in the video took the guy 5 minutes to set it
23:55
up. I mean, that's, there's, there's
23:57
just no way. So, you know, it took me, I'm
23:59
not a developer, but I'm very technical.
24:01
I'm like a toddler developer. You know, I'm familiar with
24:06
different guy. I own a tech company.
24:07
Like I'm familiar with different ecosystems and things.
24:10
So I set up, I didn't want to do it on my local computer, so I
24:12
set up an AWS instance, server instance, which I didn't know
24:17
how to do. I just asked it what I asked
24:19
Claude Opus like how to do that, and it said go here, click this
24:22
thing and you know, you figure it out.
24:24
And that's not easy. I mean, you're in a different
24:26
terminal. I mean, that's I think why why
24:28
the Mac Mini's got so popular is because it was just a little bit
24:31
familiar to them that they're like, OK, we can, we can tackle
24:35
this here. Totally.
24:36
And had I had a Mac mini in my house when I was doing it,
24:39
there's no question. But I, I'm impatient and when I
24:42
see something that I want to try, I want to try it right now
24:44
and I will stay up all night figuring out how to do it.
24:47
And so I did, I mean, I, yeah, I didn't stay up all night that
24:49
time figuring this out. It took a couple hours to get us
24:51
to the point where it was functional.
24:53
And then I just, I just like verbal vomited and data dumped
24:56
into the thing, everything that I wanted it to know, which was
24:59
a, you know, a transcript from the last 50 podcasts that I've
25:03
done, a transcript from. We have all that stuff
25:05
internally like it's kept somewhere.
25:08
So it wasn't hard to get to a transcript from the profit
25:09
master class that I did recently for Pentane, which is free.
25:13
I mean, you can get it on our website for free.
25:16
And we just, you know, we went through this evolution and I
25:20
learned part of that through this the YouTube video I watched
25:22
it, you know, gave you some guidance on sort of how do you
25:26
want its personality to be? Which are you want it to be fun,
25:29
you want it to be friendly, you want it to be serious and you
25:31
get to prescribe all those things and then it just becomes
25:33
a big trial and error. I realized quickly like the
25:35
memory isn't great, so I wanted to improve the memory and I just
25:39
told it what to do to do that and then it just goes and does
25:41
it. It's this insane layer where now
25:43
you're not. I was building things in cursor,
25:46
which is like fine. I was able to create things that
25:48
I would have had to pay 10, twenty, $30,000 in development
25:51
fees to do. I was able to do on my own and a
25:54
couple of nights on the couch. Now I don't have to do that.
25:57
Now I just talked to Carl and he knows exactly what I want and
26:01
how I want it and has all my keys and everything to deploy to
26:04
Versal. So just the stuff just gets done
26:06
and it gets done so quickly and it's wild.
26:09
It's so weird and and honestly kind of like destabilizing in a
26:14
way. What?
26:15
What about it Spooks you? I mean, there's no, I think for
26:23
most people, most people would agree that when you get this,
26:29
these things going, the amount that it knows about you and
26:34
understand, like truly understands you is it's like
26:38
hard to wrap your brain around. Like, I mean, I had to build AI
26:42
needed a LinkedIn post thing. It's like, OK, here's go look at
26:45
my LinkedIn. Here's go look at all the posts,
26:47
find the ones that do better than not and create a LinkedIn
26:50
post thing. Because my wife helps with a lot
26:52
of our social media stuff, which is incredible because I hate
26:54
doing it. And, and I wanted to create
26:58
something for her to be to like make content easier that's in my
27:01
voice and in my tone or whatever.
27:02
So it created an app that it deployed, which now lives on a
27:05
website that my wife has access to where she can just give it
27:09
some ideas like we did. A post went out today where I
27:11
like fixed our dryer. I like I'm moving so far away
27:14
from technology it's funny. I I like sold my fancy Yukon or
27:18
my Denali truck. Bought a 1994 Land Rover
27:20
Defender that has like no computer system whatsoever.
27:22
Nice. We have, we had like a Samsung
27:25
fancy dry washer dryer that like sings a tune every time that
27:29
accomplishes anything, which is so annoying.
27:31
That died and it was going to cost as much to fix it as it did
27:35
to replace it. So we bought like a 10 year old
27:37
Speed Queen industrial washer dryer set that has no computer
27:40
system because I figured it would just run for forever.
27:42
Yeah, it died it it stopped heating.
27:45
So I pulled the panel off, tested a thing, bought a $9 fuse
27:49
and that works again like it. I wanted to post on that.
27:53
So she went to LinkedIn, our LinkedIn app did a post on that
27:57
and literally wrote me. It is outrageously creepy how
27:59
good this thing is at writing like you, and we've never been
28:02
able to do that. That was a huge problem at
28:03
Bottle Keeper. I've never been able to do it.
28:07
Yeah, it's, it's fascinating. I have yet to to deploy Open
28:15
Claw, largely because I'm still afraid of the privacy.
28:18
But I did see that there's kind of a Click to the cloud
28:21
integration now that's fully encrypted and all that.
28:24
So it's like, OK, that's cool. You know, whatever, you know,
28:27
Sam Altman's going to slap on it to, to make it a little bit more
28:30
consumer friendly probably when I get involved a little bit.
28:33
But you know, I am very, very interested in, you know, not
28:38
even necessarily pre digital data sets, but like pre or not
28:43
pre Internet, but pre digital, you know, there's a lot of
28:48
companies and particularly just like with individual people's
28:51
knowledge base, the experience of their whole entire life.
28:54
And like how that shows up and can inform a very specific agent
28:59
in a very specific product is really interesting.
29:01
And this is like a an exact use case because they're it's able
29:04
to distill your expertise with the product.
29:08
You already have to make it available for everybody at
29:11
scale, which is unbelievable. And it's really interesting too
29:15
that you're kind of like de digitizing your life.
29:19
And I think that this is also going to be a product of a kind
29:22
of this agentic movement that we're in right now, which is
29:25
like, hey, where do I really want technology?
29:27
Well, I just wanted to move seamlessly.
29:30
You know, if Alexa and Siri were really smart, you could just
29:33
actually talk to it, which is coming, obviously.
29:36
Yeah. It can manage the whole suite of
29:38
things. But then it's like, yeah, man,
29:39
do I really want like my car to like be hooked up?
29:43
Do I want Elon to be able to turn my car on and off?
29:45
I don't. I don't know.
29:46
Do I want to have like monster truck tires on a classic Bronco?
29:50
Yeah, I know. I want that, you know, so why
29:52
don't we make that happen to have one of each?
29:54
Maybe. But it in particularly like how
29:58
it kind of ties into ecom because you know, Elon said last
30:02
week he's like, he's like basically if you're typing on a
30:05
computer, your days are numbered.
30:07
But if you're moving atoms, you might still have 10 or 15 years,
30:11
you know, So E com is about moving atoms, which is an
30:14
interesting description on how he would just describe cups or
30:18
whatever, you know, So you know, in particular like which there
30:24
are real logistic challenges, you know, when you're looking at
30:27
AI and how it can enhance maybe with other products for
30:30
e-commerce. What do you see kind of like
30:33
either new technologies or to, to benefit the technologies that
30:37
exist now for moving atoms, let's say.
30:41
Yeah, I think, you know, if, if I look at the bottle keeper
30:46
experience, I wanted to build that company in a in a way that
30:50
could scale with no employees. And we did that very effectively
30:53
for the first three really three years.
30:57
And I mean we did over 10 million in revenue, most eight
31:00
of which was in that third year with no employees.
31:03
That was possible then. This is 2014 fifteen 16 because
31:10
technology was at a place where you could connect systems
31:13
together to share information. And if they couldn't directly
31:16
connect together, you could use Zapier or there were a couple of
31:18
different versions. Zapier was the winner at the end
31:21
of the day, which now looks silly in the world of AI, but
31:25
you could you could ZAP the things through and make them
31:28
communicate. So we were, I was able to build
31:29
a a platform where all these systems would talk to each
31:33
other. And that allowed us to achieve
31:35
pretty good scale with like nobody touching it.
31:37
Like you set it up, it requires maintenance and that's fine.
31:40
But nobody touching it, I mean, today, I mean, I don't it would
31:45
be entirely different. I'm not sure that we would have
31:47
needed any employees like ever. Yeah.
31:51
And we could have achieved significantly greater scale
31:53
because we would have had a lot of additional resources.
31:59
We would have had a lot of additional cash in the bank that
32:03
I was having to spend on things like legal and spend on things
32:07
like creative and on tech and website development things.
32:12
I mean in 2017 we spent $500,000 in legal $500,000 and we did $8
32:21
million that year. Like that's I that wouldn't have
32:25
gone to 0, but I guarantee you we could have cut that down by
32:28
at least half in today. Was that.
32:30
Was that litigation or was that like like patents and things?
32:33
It was both. Most of that was litigation, but
32:37
let's be clear that litigation, so now far down the IP rabbit
32:42
hole you want to go like litigation wasn't litigating in
32:45
court. Litigation was sending form
32:48
letters to people that were infringing patents to execute a
32:51
very defined strategy that we had in order to like shore up
32:53
our patent portfolio. Was that for overseas folks?
32:57
No, it was all domestic. It was.
32:58
In the. No kidding.
32:59
Oh yeah. Bold.
33:02
I mean, our, we had, yeah. I mean, our our strategy was
33:07
because Amazon wouldn't uphold a patent unless you had a court
33:11
order, which is like, OK, how the hell do I get that?
33:16
Yeah. We, you know, I can tell you how
33:18
to get it. Yeah.
33:19
And, and Amazon was our, I mean, by the time we got our first
33:22
patent, we had probably 4030 or 40 at least patent infringing
33:27
products on Amazon. Now they weren't calling it
33:30
bottle keeper, but they were making our exact product and
33:32
just calling it something else. And Amazon didn't care.
33:35
They're like, great, you want us to do something about it, go get
33:37
a court order. Yeah, so we went.
33:40
Sued. The Amazon or the individual
33:44
operators? Yeah, you don't want to sue the
33:45
the giant gorilla in the room. You want to sue the teeny tiny
33:48
gorillas. No, we went and picked out 10 or
33:50
15 of of the little operators. It was all like people selling
33:53
it out of their garage. They weren't big legitimate
33:55
companies. They were buying it on Alibaba
33:57
and went and sued them not to get money, not to like ruin
34:00
their lives. It was literally to make them a
34:02
stop. And, and when they go through
34:04
the court system to get what's called a consent judgement, the
34:07
consent judgement is the court saying that they agree that they
34:10
violated your patent and then the defendant agreeing that they
34:13
violated your patent. On that document is a court
34:15
order number. That court order number, you
34:18
then use an Amazon and they will hold that up because then it's
34:21
saying the courts validated your patent.
34:24
It's not Amazon making a decision whether or not your
34:26
patent is valid. So it was this big, huge, very
34:28
painful, very expensive process, but it made a massive difference
34:31
in that a long term. I love that you were able to
34:35
resolve that. I know this is like a massive
34:37
pain point all over the place, especially overseas and
34:40
domestic. That might be the first time
34:41
I've heard that, but that's the the variable cost you don't see
34:48
coming. But also, if you have a patent,
34:50
you actually have to enforce it in order to keep it.
34:53
There's no point in having a patent if you don't intend to
34:55
enforce it. Yeah.
34:56
And and then is there some leeway around finding design
35:00
patents? Because I've heard that the
35:02
problem is, is that like for a technical patent, you have to
35:05
have a technical person looking at it, which is why you need the
35:07
court injunction. But like a design patent, you
35:10
can basically just eyeball and be like, yeah, it's the same
35:12
thing. Is there any protection?
35:14
There. Yeah.
35:15
Let me pull the important caveat that I am not an attorney.
35:20
Talk to an attorney like. This is entertainment.
35:23
Yeah, a specifically intellectual property attorney,
35:25
not a real estate attorney or a contracts attorney.
35:28
You it's very, very nuanced design patents, which we had a
35:32
number of go through the court systems faster.
35:35
So yes, it is easier in a utility patent.
35:38
In our First Utility patent, like the, all of this is built
35:41
off of their first bottle keeper utility patent, there were 19
35:43
claims and all of those claims are very technical.
35:47
They're about the utility use and function and where a line
35:49
lives and what it does and the angle of the shoulder and the
35:53
like. All the things design patents
35:56
are much more straightforward in that they're, they're easy,
35:59
easier to understand, and they do move through the court system
36:03
a lot faster than a utility patent.
36:05
Well, if you end up in a in a litigation issue.
36:08
So we would get them not necessarily because they were
36:11
tremendously valuable, but because it was just another
36:15
stick that we could use to, you know, play whack A mole, which,
36:19
you know, it's kind of what happens in the life of the
36:21
business after that. But yeah.
36:22
Interesting. Nice.
36:24
I love that rabbit hole. Thank you.
36:25
It's great. Oh yeah, I.
36:26
Spent a lot, I spent a lot of time there.
36:28
We had 40, we had 42 patents when we got acquired and that
36:32
was all spun from one patent. Another important note.
36:34
And then we, we should move on. And again, not an attorney, but
36:37
that's what you need to do. If your attorney doesn't know
36:38
what this is, you have the wrong attorney.
36:40
When you get your, when you file a utility patent and you, you
36:44
get notification that that patent is going to publish, you
36:46
need to keep the patent open. There's this thing that you
36:49
file, it's called AI think it's called a continuation of
36:51
progress. It's the CIP.
36:54
Keeping that patent open gives you the ability to amend it over
36:57
time and get a second patent. So as patent infringers design
37:01
around your patents, you can actually generally encapsulate
37:06
those changes in your open patent and then it files as a
37:09
new patent that has those things.
37:10
This is like a how a tool company starts with one tool and
37:14
by the end of it, that single patent has become 300 patents is
37:17
because of this process. And that's how we got to 42
37:19
patents. It's all based on one or two,
37:22
probably 3 actually because of the product line.
37:23
We had three patents became all of that and we basically owned
37:27
the space of if you put something into a metal container
37:30
at the end of that mix. Amazing shout out to friend of
37:34
the show and past guest sense. IP dot AI is actually AI product
37:39
where you can do patent search and patent filing for, for folks
37:44
that are looking to get into to a product because that that's
37:47
also like, I think where a lot of infringement happens.
37:49
Maybe if you, you give them a, a generous case is that maybe they
37:53
did develop something independently and they just
37:55
didn't do the research to see that like they're actually are
37:58
stepping on people's toes. So there's there's product for
38:00
that. Now let's talk about content for
38:04
for advertising, what's working? How is the consumer starting to
38:10
adjust to AI generated content and as far as an advertising and
38:14
maybe what are some recommendations you might have?
38:18
I have seen over the last I think it probably started a year
38:23
ago, but I I do think it is accelerating that consumers as a
38:27
whole. I think just like humans as a
38:30
whole, at least in the United States.
38:31
I imagine this is happening elsewhere.
38:33
Are really knee jerking back to personal.
38:35
Yeah. You know, because of all the AI,
38:38
like nobody knows and you know, we're probably on the forward
38:41
end of it because we're in TAC and like we live in this space.
38:43
But like my parents that are 70, like they are terrified of AI
38:50
and that's maybe the other end of the spectrum.
38:52
Like we're the first movers, they're the last movers.
38:54
There's a lot of space in between that.
38:55
But I, I do think that generally speaking, people are getting
38:59
really concerned about not unders, not knowing that the
39:02
content that they're seeing is real or not real.
39:05
The result of which is that the businesses that are the smaller
39:10
businesses that are doing really well that don't have the 9
39:12
figure scale where things they're, what they have to do is
39:16
entirely different than the company doing 3,000,000 a year
39:18
in revenue. They're really being personal.
39:21
They're telling their founder stories a lot more aggressively.
39:25
Yeah. And I, I think that is the right
39:27
move. I mean, that's why I'm spending
39:28
a lot more time on a camera and doing podcasts and hosting my
39:33
own podcast and producing profit master classes and things.
39:37
Part of it is to be as helpful as possible, but part of it is
39:39
also so that our consumers and the companies that I want to be
39:42
able to help see that there's like a human behind it with a
39:45
real human story that you can't get, you know, talking to a a
39:49
bot or an AI or an agent. Yeah, or an AI generated ad that
39:53
looks real. The uncanny valley.
39:55
You just don't know. It's insane stuff that you see,
39:58
like, I mean, I don't know what what percent of it do do we see
40:03
scrolling through Instagram or LinkedIn.
40:05
That's entirely AI 10. Is it 40?
40:09
I mean, it's a lot. Significant, yeah.
40:11
Yeah, and we have no idea. Yeah, well, and it's, it's
40:15
heartening to hear that because, you know, I'm out here making
40:17
content too. And I identify as that old beat
40:21
up washing machine that just needs a fuse change.
40:23
And it's like right back in the game, that's me, you know, but
40:28
I, I think that's true across the board.
40:30
You know, I, I, what I've seen, at least anecdotally for myself
40:33
is if something's approaching that uncanny valley, it still is
40:36
true that the closer to real it is, is proportionate to how much
40:40
I'm going to hate it when I figure out it was fake.
40:43
You know, so there's like a switch that throws at you.
40:45
Like, not only do I not want that, but now I hate that thing.
40:49
You know, where I've seen AI deployed successfully is where
40:52
they're making fun of AI with the tool.
40:55
So it's kind of winking at itself because I'm with you,
40:58
man. I, I am so gung ho on this
41:00
stuff. But we live in a really small
41:02
bubble. And most folks, they just hear
41:04
the headlines of, you know, all these doom and gloomers that are
41:07
just saying like, hey, man, this is coming for everybody's job.
41:09
We don't know what's going to happen.
41:10
It's going to destroy the world. And they're just like, no, you
41:13
know, so they really want to reject it.
41:15
So there's probably maybe a creative ploy in there where you
41:17
can use humor to like poke fun at it and then use it.
41:21
But it is it, it seems very risky right now.
41:23
You know, I think the safe bet, especially if there's a great
41:27
founder story behind it, you know, I agree.
41:30
It's like, you know, get out in front and, you know, carry that
41:32
business on your shoulders when you're talking to founders and
41:35
operators. Or is there hesitancy for them
41:38
to be like, if they ask you, hey, what, what should I do with
41:41
content? And you're like, you should be
41:42
in the content. Does that spook them a little
41:44
bit? It hasn't yet.
41:48
I mean, I think this exact conversation I was having this
41:51
this morning with this company that that's really just getting
41:53
off the ground who's talking about their content strategy and
41:56
everything. And it you know, it's like on
41:58
the on the one hand, to your point, using AI to touch up a
42:02
product photo or even just fully create a product photo, like I
42:06
don't know that anybody cares about that.
42:08
The point at which you start having humans in there that are
42:11
doing human things that aren't actually humans and it's
42:14
indiscernible from reality gets tricky.
42:19
I mean that, that's where, that's where it's weird, But I
42:21
mean, I, I think that from an ECOM standpoint, most of the,
42:26
you know, at least the companies that we are working with are,
42:30
are largely pretty open to being personal.
42:33
I mean, this didn't happen yesterday.
42:34
This thing's been going on for a couple years now.
42:36
So it's, it's a, it's a relatively obvious path to go
42:41
down. But I, you know, I don't know,
42:47
it's like if AI, if AI is ultimately, which I don't think
42:50
this is, I think this is an unrealistic outcome that's in
42:54
line with like the AI is going to take over everything and
42:56
we're all going to be, you know, like utopian zombies.
43:01
If AI is creating all the content, isn't it just a race to
43:04
the bottom? I mean, they're all doing
43:05
effectively the same thing. They're all optimizing for the
43:07
same outcomes, which is, which is just such a, a whitewashed
43:13
end result. It can't work.
43:16
So it's like so, so I think I think it just naturally comes
43:18
back to human. I think it comes back to
43:21
personal and I think that's good.
43:24
I think that's important. I agree.
43:26
I totally agree. All right, you ready for the
43:28
quantum round? Totally.
43:30
All right. So this audience loves ideas,
43:34
business ideas, product ideas. What is hot right now with E com
43:39
that you can see if somebody really invested time to do it
43:42
right? What's a product or a product
43:43
category worth investing time in if we're moving atoms?
43:47
As a as a as a physical product company, physical.
43:50
Product company. I think that something that I
43:58
have been interested in, I'm not going to do this because I don't
44:01
have time for it, but I really want to do it, is the
44:09
manufacturing used to be really difficult and creating products
44:13
and prototypes used to be really difficult and it's not anymore.
44:15
And this changed during Bottle Keeper.
44:17
We went from having to mold prototype products, which is
44:21
expensive, cost 1010 grand to create a mold to create a
44:24
prototype for a product and two years later we could 3D print
44:26
prototypes. Now they were awful but they
44:28
showed the product in action. 3D printing today because of the
44:32
toys my kids are coming home with at school that their
44:34
friends are printing them like in second grade.
44:38
I think there is a tremendous opportunity to wildly disrupt
44:44
the, the need for, for physical products that can be printed in
44:50
3D. And what I mean is like, for
44:52
example, with this 1994 Land Rover Defender, there's one
44:55
company in the United States you can get products from one
44:58
they're in Vermont. They're not bad.
45:00
They're they've been around for a long time.
45:02
So it's got some legacy stuff built into it.
45:05
They're buying from China cheap plastic parts to replace.
45:11
You can buy that the Land Rover OEM version, but then they're
45:13
the the alternative is like these cheap plastic parts that
45:15
come in from China. I think there is a tremendous
45:19
opportunity to to to have an up to be able to just print and
45:22
build those things yourself. And I think that there is there
45:25
is enough user need across the world of like literally pick a
45:30
silo, whether it's cars or it's sports equipment or whatever
45:35
that that 3D printing as good as it is now being able to use all
45:38
sorts of different materials on inexpensive at home systems, you
45:44
know, you have like a bespoke. Manufacturing mine totally.
45:51
Yeah. It would be interesting
45:52
especially. I mean, you could create, you
45:54
know, open claw agents to scan your room with video and
45:59
photography and and figure out novel ways to put things
46:02
together. I'm thinking like what I'm
46:04
looking at on my desk, like I have two arms for my camera, my
46:07
microphone. It's like just build one that
46:10
works within the parameters of my thing exactly the way I want
46:13
it. Customization products is going
46:16
to get really. I'm the exact same.
46:18
Like I got the light and I got the thing and like, I want this
46:21
to be to come in from the top. I don't want to buy another one
46:24
because I'm not going to do it. But like, if I had the capacity
46:27
to solve these problems myself or have a much, you know, less
46:31
expensive version, you know, and I want to be really clear that
46:35
like I do not and will never support like ripping off the
46:38
person that invented the thing. I.
46:40
Very personal to me totally get that I'm talking about commodity
46:43
kind of things that we you know, we still have to order like I
46:46
live in Montana. If I order something on Amazon,
46:47
I don't get it in 45 minutes. I get it in a week.
46:50
And I'd rather to be clear, not support Amazon.
46:53
I'd rather support the, you know, the kid doing a start up
46:56
in his garage or the 3D printer. Maybe that business doesn't
46:59
super scale, but like who cares? Make you can make a ton of money
47:04
doing that on your own with three quad bots.
47:07
You know, they're like in six months there'll be a different
47:09
version of this. It'll be called like Flippity
47:11
Dippity or something, who knows? But but like that world where
47:14
you just have things that you talk to in natural language that
47:16
just run the show. Fascinating one, one reason that
47:21
you're my hero. There's many, but one is is
47:24
because you did the thing that I want to do and still want to do,
47:29
which is take a novelty product and blow it up and sell it.
47:33
It's amazing. Not not that bottle keeper.
47:35
Is it a great utility? But at the end of the day, it's
47:38
something cool. It's just something fun.
47:40
It's not trying to like solve world world hunger.
47:42
It's like, dude, here's something cool that like,
47:44
brightens your day. You know?
47:47
There's a product out right now called Nedo's.
47:49
Have you seen this? No.
47:51
Oh my God, this is red hot. I'll.
47:52
Write it down. This is red hot.
47:54
If you can go, how do you spell? How do?
47:56
You spell. It's like.
47:57
N EE DOHS. And it's just like a it's a
48:00
squishy fidget. You know, I had kids in high
48:04
school, so like I got my finger on the pulse.
48:06
Yeah. So anybody out there, if you
48:08
find nidos somewhere, buy them and sell them immediately
48:11
because you're going to be able to flip those for a fortune.
48:14
But again, it's just it's like fidget spinners and pet rocks
48:18
and chia pets and nidos and like these kind of products.
48:22
Any ideas? Do you have any ideas like that
48:24
or like the self filling 100 water balloon system?
48:29
Like this is the kind of stuff that I I love this.
48:32
Is there anything out there that any ideas you have maybe in the
48:35
bottle area that need to come forward?
48:40
I saw so you know, jump houses like little kid jump houses
48:47
wherever. I mean that was like the the
48:48
thing you rent for $500 that you can buy a 70% size of that
48:53
online for $100 in on it forever.
48:56
You bet. That infrastructure that those
48:58
things create allow for multi level experiences and those
49:03
things also because they're full of air float.
49:05
I want somebody to create a boat version of that to use on a
49:08
lake. Not put out on the ocean
49:10
necessarily, but like put on a lake that sits like a boat.
49:15
Yeah that just runs on I mean battery lifes have changed
49:18
dramatically. So like just runs on batteries
49:20
for an hour, 2 hours. I don't know if there's probably
49:22
needs to be some like safety infrastructure in there, but
49:25
maybe it just fills and you know, it doesn't require the
49:28
never ending fill that our jump houses do, but.
49:31
Oh, jump house boat. Yeah, like that structure.
49:35
It fills, it plugs. It's like a huge boat.
49:38
Yeah, that way. Like a barge.
49:41
Yeah, so if you're you're fishing with your family, you
49:43
can just dump your kids on that for a few hours and be like,
49:46
cool, I'm gonna be A at the inlet.
49:48
Yeah, I mean, we spent a lot of time on on lakes around Montana,
49:52
and they're awesome. And we sit on the side like we
49:54
have paddle boards and that's cool.
49:55
But it would be epic to just like, you know, sink a
49:59
kettlebell to the bottom, tie her rope to it and just have
50:03
like a cool huge barge that packs down, you know, to some
50:07
reasonable size to play on with the kids and jump off of and be
50:11
idiots with. Amazing.
50:13
And you know, you, you've mentioned Montana for folks
50:15
watching the video, you see the beautiful state illuminated
50:18
behind Adam here. I would love to know and I, I
50:22
really respond to to Montana cause we've talked about this.
50:25
I've got a family place up there at basically, you know, I'm a
50:28
Colorado boy in, in Colorado, Montana basically the same
50:32
thing. It's Montana is like Colorado
50:34
plus Griz, you know, which makes it a little spicier going into
50:38
the Backcountry there. But how does like having a a
50:41
Montana based company kind of affect culture and ultimately
50:45
the product itself? You know, the world is flat at
50:49
this point, so it doesn't really matter geographically for the
50:52
most part, who you are or where you are.
50:55
I mean, it has a tremendous impact on me and how I operate
50:59
in the fact that it is. I grew up in Flagstaff, AZ,
51:02
which is it's probably more like Colorado.
51:05
It's like high altitude snowy bears, but we got brown bears
51:09
and they're not brown bears. We got black bears and mountain
51:11
lions and stuff. So I had a lot of freedom and
51:14
being in as a kid and now being in Montana, it has opened up
51:19
particularly hunting and archery hunting things that are just
51:23
like really, really, really difficult.
51:25
It has opened up this whole new exposure point to me of, of
51:30
going out and intentionally doing really hard things that
51:32
has made me a dramatic better, dramatically better dad and
51:37
husband and no question business operator.
51:40
And so now as a result of that, I talk about that a lot.
51:42
That's a big part of the Growth Mavericks podcast.
51:44
It's like, how do we build durability?
51:45
What are the things that we can do intentionally to go get
51:48
uncomfortable? Because the more that we do
51:50
that, the more comfortable we are being uncomfortable.
51:52
And that's what entrepreneurship is all about.
51:55
Like the companies fail when the founders quit, they don't get
51:57
murdered. The companies don't get
51:58
murdered. Let me be clear, they just the
52:01
founders that for a lot of reasons, there's a lot of
52:03
reasons it can happen, but the founders quit.
52:05
So how do we, how do we keep the founders in the game for as long
52:08
as possible to let that first big inflection point hit?
52:12
Because it it can take a long time.
52:14
You mentioned archery hunting. I know fishing, rifle hunting.
52:19
What? What do you do?
52:20
What? What hard things are you really
52:22
interested in doing? I do in the summer, I do a lot
52:26
of long distance Alpine trail runs, which is hard, inherently
52:32
hard. I mean, I sort of like just seek
52:34
out that pain and discomfort a bit.
52:37
I mean during part of that is also getting in shape for
52:39
archery season, which starts in September here.
52:41
Most of the time I'm out hunting archery, I'm by myself.
52:46
So, you know, pulling big things for miles back in the country,
52:49
doing in the back country, doing multiple trips is inherently
52:52
difficult and has some risk. Obviously you do everything you
52:55
can to mitigate that with big brown furry things running
52:59
around in the woods in areas now in Montana.
53:01
They haven't been in a long time that they are back into.
53:05
Yeah, dude, what? What do you take with you on
53:07
trail runs to? Are you, are we talking bear
53:10
spray here? Are you carrying a sidearm with
53:12
you? On trails, I'm generally
53:14
carrying. I'm always carrying bear spray.
53:16
Yeah, but you know those trail runs aren't at 3:00 in the
53:20
morning. When I'm packing in during
53:23
archery season I always have a a cider 10mm.
53:26
Yeah, 100%. Man.
53:27
There was a case in a like a pretty well populated State Park
53:32
up in by Estes Park maybe six weeks ago where a mother and her
53:40
three lion Cubs were praying on people.
53:43
They actually got a lady. They hate her.
53:46
So now I'm scared of cats too. Dang it.
53:50
I had a cat run at me at about that like 3:30 in the morning
53:53
walking up a trail in the pitch black dark.
53:55
And if there was enough moonlight out that I had my
53:56
headlamp off. And it's these two eyes, you
53:59
know, if you're not looking at the camera that are like 6
54:01
inches apart, which is not a raccoon or a skunk or a
54:05
whatever. And it was a big body moving at
54:07
me quickly on a trail. And I yelled.
54:10
I mean, they're with the exception of that like it's
54:12
extremely or they're terrified of people.
54:14
So once they kind of figure out what you are and you know that
54:18
you're loud, I yelled and it stopped.
54:20
I mean, I was ready to send some arm some rounds downfield, but
54:26
on it, it jumped off the trail. But yeah, it got my blood
54:28
flowing a little bit. Nice.
54:30
Are you a Hoyt guy? Matthews, Guy.
54:33
I should have Matthews have AB3X that I really enjoy.
54:37
Yeah, cool. I just got a new Matthews rig in
54:39
the fall. I'm gearing up for this season.
54:42
The lift? What's that?
54:43
Is that what it's called? Is it the lift?
54:45
I think it is, yeah. And it has kind of things about
54:48
it. The the pale blue kind of
54:50
pattern. It's it's pretty sweet.
54:51
I only, I only shot a half dozen times.
54:53
So I'm, I'm getting excited for next season 8.
54:56
The the hunting cabin that I grew up hunting for for years
54:59
and years and years burned down last year.
55:01
So, you know, the, the archery season is a little bit more
55:06
forgiving with the weather. Yeah, no cabin.
55:11
Yeah. Cool.
55:12
You know, I, I know that Big Sky bravery is important to you.
55:15
If we're talking about hard things, give them a shout out
55:18
and tell, tell folks kind of what they do.
55:21
Big Sky Bravery is an organization that started here
55:23
in Montana in, in the Big Sky area that we take active duty,
55:29
special operations, men and women, in my case, men out into
55:36
the Montana wilderness for five or five nights, 6 days in
55:41
between their deployments. So these are generally, you
55:44
know, men that have been in the services for 15 to 20 years,
55:48
sometimes more, operating at the absolute tip of the spear, doing
55:52
things that we'll never hear about or know about in places
55:55
that you never want to be. And they do it 280 days a year
55:59
for decades. And they have families and they
56:01
have kids and they, they, they all pay a big toll.
56:04
So Big Sky Bravery is a way for, for us to, to get them away from
56:08
that and out into the, the epic beauty and, and exceptional
56:13
wilderness that Montana provides.
56:15
We run them in the winter as well as in the summer.
56:17
And it's just, it's such a unique opportunity.
56:19
We, we create these incredibly deep bonds really, really
56:22
quickly, which doesn't happen generally between civilian and,
56:26
and this level of, of special operator.
56:28
It's really, really special experience.
56:30
And we, we offer those for female special operations
56:33
personnel as well, and also for the wives of the, the men in
56:37
special operations when they come out and do a task force,
56:39
their wife can come out and do 1 separately.
56:41
So my wife participates in that as a volunteer because the, the
56:44
work that they do keeping the family afloat while dad's gone
56:47
280 days a year and places on again, they don't, they don't
56:51
have direct communications too. They don't know really know
56:53
where they are most of the time. They're, they're warriors just
56:58
like the husbands are. So it's really.
56:59
Incredible. And this is all expense paid for
57:05
the soldier and their family to come out to Montana and and do
57:09
big trips. Are these hunting fishing trips?
57:12
So in the winter, they're largely skiing trips.
57:14
I ran a I'm a task force director, so I ran a task force
57:17
in January. We skied in Big Sky two days.
57:20
We did Backcountry snowmobiling with Big Sky Search and Rescue.
57:23
So it was off trail, which is epic one day.
57:27
And then I actually for the first time did dog sledding,
57:29
which is really fun. But yeah, there's a lot of stuff
57:33
built into that experience. And then in the summer we have a
57:36
lot more flexibility. So I'll run one the summer as
57:39
well. And we'll we'll spend time.
57:42
That's when we we, you know, get into interesting Harry
57:44
situations with camping in in hardcore grizzly territory where
57:48
there's like a grizzly bear every mile running up on side by
57:52
sides and shooting long distance.
57:54
And it's like dudes doing dude stuff.
57:57
But it's a really unique setting for that.
58:00
And they're all different. They're all, they're all
58:02
special. Yeah, it's really cool because,
58:05
you know, obviously there's great programs, the Wounded
58:07
Warrior Foundation and things like that for for service
58:10
members that have been injured or if they're dealing with
58:14
mental, emotional things. But like for the well, the
58:17
people that are deployed, the people that are, you know,
58:19
working on the front lines here. What what if Fun and like good
58:23
spirited organization. Incredible.
58:27
If people are curious, check out Big Sky bravery.org.
58:30
You can donate directly right on the website websites gorgeous,
58:34
seems super cool. And what's the now?
58:38
I can tell you're incredibly physically fit.
58:40
Are these guys like super jacked and like on a different level
58:43
with cardio? How are they dealing with the
58:44
opposite? You know it, it's funny.
58:47
So they come from a lot of different special operations is
58:49
like an umbrella that has men and women that come out of
58:53
different parts of the military. Some of them you have heard
58:57
from, many of them you've never heard of.
58:59
And yes, they're many of them are like the most elite physical
59:03
specimens you can imagine. The kicker though, is that
59:06
they're coming to us from sea level.
59:08
So it's like no matter how insanely in shape they are, I
59:12
mean, they won't ever stop. Like we have to pull them off
59:15
the ski mountain 'cause they like quit.
59:17
Isn't part of a vocabulary that that's but.
59:20
They're starting to confuse. But like, yeah, they, they're,
59:23
you know, they don't ski 30 days a year, they don't ski 30 days
59:26
in their life. So they come out from from sea
59:29
level to, you know, 8010 thousand feet and then do hard
59:33
things at 8000 or 10,000 feet. I mean it, it's humbling for all
59:36
of us. But again, the the go do hard
59:39
things during the day and then the the downtime we have
59:42
together at night over, you know, breaking bread and having
59:44
a drink is is really, really special.
59:47
Incredible. I love it.
59:48
OK, kind of wrapping up here. If you were entering college
59:50
today as a freshman, what would you study?
59:54
Math or science? Why so?
59:57
Because it will teach you how to solve problems.
1:00:00
You may not need to know how to do the math because AI will be
1:00:03
able to do the math. But the, the mere learning of
1:00:05
how to do math and solve, I mean, that's what calculus is,
1:00:09
that's what algebra is. That's what organic chemistry
1:00:12
is. Physics is, is starting here.
1:00:15
You're starting at A and you need to, you need to get to Z.
1:00:18
And there's a couple different ways to get there, but you got
1:00:20
to fill the stuff out in between and that is.
1:00:23
Having the ability to solve complex problems is not
1:00:27
something that AII mean it. It will give you such a
1:00:32
tremendous advantage no matter what it is you go and do.
1:00:34
Yeah, 100%. I love it.
1:00:37
Adam, This has been absolutely extraordinary.
1:00:40
Ladies and gentlemen, check out pentane.com, PENTAN, e.com.
1:00:45
Adam, what's the best place for people to connect with you
1:00:47
online? I would say probably LinkedIn.
1:00:51
That's where I'm I'm spending most of of the time screaming
1:00:53
and yelling, but. And I will link your profile
1:00:58
here. So wherever you're listening to
1:00:59
this, check the show notes, follow, Adam, great follow.
1:01:03
Definitely check out Pentane. And if you're an E com operator
1:01:07
and this really resonated, reach out, you know, reach out to
1:01:10
Adam, reach out to me, let me know what you're working on.
1:01:14
Other than that, Adam, thank you so much for joining me.
1:01:17
Super fun Ryan. Thanks for having me.
1:01:21
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