Latest / Trailblazers by Erica Wenger / John Hu: How I Built A $40M Business With 30 Employees l Trailblazers Podcast Episode 44

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John Hu: How I Built A $40M Business With 30 Employees l Trailblazers Podcast Episode 44 · Trailblazers by Erica Wenger

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Today on the show, I am so excited to be joined by John Who.
• 0:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: John is the co-founder and CEO of Stan, one of the fastest growing platforms in the creator economy.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: What started as a solution to his own frustration with monetizing content has grown into a platform that helps tens of thousands of creators turn their knowledge, audiences, and personal brands into real businesses.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Raised by a single mother who balanced a demanding career, entrepreneurship, and community leadership, John developed an early appreciation for hard work, calculated risk-taking, and self-reliance.
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Before starting Stan, he began his career Goldman Sachs, but his path eventually led him into the creator world, where he saw a massive opportunity to give everyday entrepreneurs access to the same tools and opportunities that were once reserved for a select view.
• 0:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Today, Stan supports more than 90,000 creator entrepreneurs and has facilitated over $600 million in sales on the platform.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: John has also become known for building in public, openly sharing both his wins and challenges of entrepreneurship with his audience.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Whether he's talking about startups, AI, or surfing,
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: A passion that has shaped much of his leadership philosophy, John brings a unique perspective on building companies, navigating uncertainty and creating opportunities for others.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's welcome John!
• 1:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much, and I will say surfing is my entire personalities.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's really funny that the team included that in the bio.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's so good.
• 1:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: As surfing always been the thing, or is it more of just like a new, we're like an L.A. start-ups, we got to do like the thing.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I am a meme of an L.A. tech bro, but no truly surfing actually.
• 1:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I grew up in North Carolina, L.A. and Lock.
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I never grew up surfing, but when I eventually went out to California, post-New York and post-banking, I remember a good friend took me out, and I always tell people that surfing for me was love at first sight.
• 1:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: But you never forget that first wave.
• 1:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: the feeling of that.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: You feel like a feather yet somehow simultaneously you're like flowing and flying and I think you chase that high the rest of your life.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's the best.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I grew up in Manhattan Beach, if you know it.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's the world of time.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll pour it out.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Elporto.
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: So do you go to that little surf shack where they have a food and you can rent kayaks and surfboards?
• 1:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, okay, that's like my home.
• 1:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so it's the best.
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I absolutely love it.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious, like, what's your philosophy with surfing in the workplace?
• 1:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, I joked about Patagonia, but like, his whole thing was like, my people go surfing, tell me what's like, how do you think about it?
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: To people go surfing in the morning, to guys do like surfing off sites,
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so we have incredible office right on Venice Beach, probably like five blocks away from one of my favorite local breaks, which has been a breakwater.
• 2:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I promise I'll make this helpful for every business center, how they think about succeeding in their business, but the team always jokes that they always know the mornings I go surfing because there's just a bunch of wet footprints from the elevator into the office because it's me walking with my wet suit and when my surfboard to go shower in the office in the mornings.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Essentially, I mean, you've mentioned Patagonia a couple of times, I really look up to what Ivan did with that business.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: The mission of Stan is to empower anyone to make a living working for themselves, and maybe we're naive in this, but we really want to prove that you can build a business that both does good and does well.
• 2:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Which I've learned over time as the business is scaled to 40 million plus and revenue, and hopefully a hundred of millions plus soon, is that's exceptionally difficult to actually do the two at the same time, because it's actually two different values, that's a times.
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Point being to all of that is, I think we're very intentional about how we work, which is, you know, you have SF tech saying like 996, if not like 997 right now, which to be clear, I do think some version of that is very, very true and we play the same.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think we also still recognize that the end of they were not machines yet.
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: We are human beings, and so I'm always super cool the team going surfing whenever they want to, or taking,
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: time off whenever they want to assuming that we're playing at the top 1% high performance level.
• 3:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, Yvonne's methodology on that might people go surfing is very much the one that we try to embody.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I myself take a month off every year to go surf through Bali and do deep work and create a work then and we like to make sure that the team models that as well.
• 3:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, so much of this race for great talent at the best startups is letting them be them.
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like I think, you hear a lot in the venture world that you know, you can do a lot more with a lot less.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: And instead of having 100% teams building your app, you can do it with five.
• 3:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so let's say that is true, you want to keep those five people and you want to keep them happy because they know so much information about your company.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I love that you're like prioritizing the people as well.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And to be clear, I don't want to sound like L.A. We were soft in this.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: For example, we hit 30 million revenue with 30 people.
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this was way before the whole AI thing, you need less teams, and in less people.
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: The reason why we were able to do that is because we only hire exceptional talent.
• 4:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like this model breaks down at scale, if you're not hiring a plus talent, and if you're not curating your team consistently, where you can trust that your teams can take that time off if they are responsible adults with high integrity and exceptional, and also very hungry and growth mindset.
• 4:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: but it only works in that way.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can't just, you know, live this idealistic life where Evan can take as much vacation as possible unless people are putting food on the table.
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I will make that really clear caveat where I think we've learned through a lot of trial and error that over time as you hire more people and you don't have as much control over the culture and the quality bar.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're oftentimes people that can take advantage of that, that aren't fit for your culture, that is high performance that allows you to then go spend a month and
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: 100% I think that's such an important caveat because a lot of people like listen to this and they think well Then why is my company letting me go do that?
• 5:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, you have to be outputting and insane amount and have very high trust Talk to me on like what are the other stuff that you guys like do well?
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So obviously you guys are making a bunch of money and you're building an exciting business and we'll get into all of that But other than like a great culture are there other things that you're prioritizing?
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: That make you do well as I'm kind of leading the witness here But something that I see is you're helping a lot of Creators completely support themselves
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: like economic mobility for the creator class, if you will, which I think is sick.
• 5:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do you think about doing well beyond just great culture and like high trust and letting people go do the surfing thing?
• 5:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do you think about other ways of doing well?
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, I think in general, if anyone wants to be successful in life, they have to really think first principles, which is once again a meme of Silicon Valley technology.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I say that very intentionally here, which is all of these things that you're seeing around great culture, great outcomes, great revenue.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's actually a singular input that drives all of that.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: The thing that we do best, and if we ever stop doing best, all of these other things will fall apart, is specifically our care and love for the mission, which we define as our North Star value, which is creator first, or entrepreneur first, or founder first.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: What we do better than anyone else in our space is we deeply, deeply care about our customer.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I will give you the example, the tangible business school case study, of when I started Stan.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: If first started just as a quote unquote, link in bio is Shopify for content creators.
• 6:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I started that in my dorm room in grad school, at business school at Stanford, where they will tell you time and time again, first move advantage is super important.
• 6:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But when I started this business, there were a hundred other link in bios.
• 6:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was multiple private equity back businesses in the space, right?
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It had raised hundreds of millions of dollars that we're competing with.
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And C. Oster's health like why today has stand succeeded when the others have pretty much flat line or struggle or gone under.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Very keenly I'll tell you, there's two main reasons.
• 6:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: One is we just cared so much fucking more than anyone else.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will still live breathe and bleed this greater entrepreneurial experience.
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: We deeply feel the pain of it.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: We like so much of the team or some of the most successful caters out there.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we understand this, this mission we understand, this journey so much better than anyone else.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And also, we're not just serving customers, we're serving our friends.
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that passion leads into everything, that passion leads into making sure that your product is actually the simplest and easiest to use.
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's most intuitive, right?
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because you're not using clunky software built by someone like corporate nine to five person who's privately backed to doesn't give a shit about you.
• 7:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it also leads into the marketing like speaking the language being in the zeitgeist you know it better than anyone exactly and then that you think about that That trickles out into making more revenue having a great culture because things are succeeding people are winning And so there's so many standards that actually built upon this like core first principle that we do better than anyone else And if we ever stop doing that then we will lose which is being deeply creator and founder first
• 7:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: One thing I've learned talking to GPs on the show and in my own experience as a GP, your back office is a signal.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: How fast you close deals, how clean the LP experiences, how your K-1s land, and besters notice all of it.
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: The more buttoned up you are, the more likely they are to give you more money in the future.
• 7:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's why I want to talk about Sidecar.
• 7:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sidecar is the SPV platform built for fund managers who want institutional quality execution without hiring a full back office team.
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: They'll review your deal with an hours, handle full secondary transaction support, and give you transparent pricing upfront.
• 8:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: No platform carry.
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Also, your LP relationship state private, which is super important, it is not a marketplace.
• 8:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you're running a professional fund, your infrastructure should look like it.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sidecar makes that possible without the overhead.
• 8:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Check them out at sidecar.io slash partner slash trailblazers.
• 8:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this brings up a really interesting question.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have, you know, let's call it over 200,000 followers on TikTok.
• 8:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: You've a $40 million ARR business, not 30.
• 8:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I saw the recent updates.
• 8:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Are you more of a creator or founder?
• 8:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do you think about it?
• 8:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: I define myself as a creator, creator entrepreneur.
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so when I think about the most successful people in their class across any spectrum, I often think about it from the artisty entrepreneur spectrum.
• 8:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I tell the team about this all the time.
• 8:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so on the one side of the artist who is an artist to their own triggering, so let's use a Vincent Van Gogh or an Amy White House, who may or may not see commercial success in their lifetime, but are deeply talented, deeply creative, and then on the other side of the spectrum you have someone who's incredibly left brain.
• 9:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: So let's call it a basis or an Elon Musk, right?
• 9:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So very much on entrepreneur in that way.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, I often find that the people who are most successful nowadays and commercially generally in terms of their consistency and repeatability is going to be someone like a Taylor Swift.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Who yes is deeply creative, clearly and tune emotionally with her audience, but also people don't give her no of credit.
• 9:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's a fucking killer.
• 9:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like the way she showed up for that tour, how thoughtful she is in her marketing, she's so good at what she does.
• 9:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's every single day to execute, and so I would kind of define myself as a class of this newfound generation of creator entrepreneurs, who yes have all the left brain mechanisms to build and scale a business, but also see business as there are as their way to express themselves as their way to make an impact in the world.
• 9:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's how I personally define myself.
• 9:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
• 9:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Entrepreneurship is deeply creative.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like I creativity means bringing something from nothing, and that is the definition of entrepreneurship.
• 9:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm right there with you.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: One thing that's interesting about your comment about Bezos and Musk is that, and he will even throw Zuckerberg in there, is that they're all very, well known, they're all very famous, and they have this like public facing persona, for whatever you want, Elon Musk has his quirks,
• 10:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: deeply technical, deeply like nine, nine, seven culture.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Again, I'll call it quirky.
• 10:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: But he has this public facing persona.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of the best founders of our time now, whether you want to call it building in public, whether you want to call it, you know, sharing their ideas with the world.
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: They have a presence that people know about.
• 10:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's your take on the future of the next great founders needing that public presence?
• 10:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you're someone who builds in public.
• 10:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're someone who has been building alongside, you know, your customers, which is amazing.
• 10:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I find a lot of the best founders, even when they're not building for the creator economy, do have that public profile.
• 10:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what's your take on and what the future of the best founders are going to be?
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the reality is that no one can buy from you or support you if they don't know you exist.
• 10:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And people nowadays are like, oh my god, you need to build a personal brand as if this new novel thing.
• 10:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Personal brand has been the thing since the time of Jesus or since the time of any famous person back in time.
• 11:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not a novel concept.
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's been rebranded by the gurus.
• 11:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: At the end of the day, when you think about someone like Elon or Bezos, Elon over time has been incredibly intentional over time about curating his reputation and scaling it through buying an entire media platform.
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: But at the end of the day, there's so many different reasons why I found or should potentially build their personal ran.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I will say once again, people are too focused on the vanity of it of the output to the follower count, the reputation on the kind of stuff.
• 11:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: You have to recognize that someone like Steve Jobs or Elon or Bezos, they never started out trying to build a personal brand.
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: They had the inputs of building something incredible and great.
• 11:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I would really, really push founders to focus on creating something of genuine value for society and then trusting the process on that.
• 11:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: But of course, at the same time, ideally, if you have the time and resources and energy and also you ski towards this kind of personality, you should also ideally be maximizing the distribution of that input.
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's where you, that's just basically building a great business is how can I build a great product?
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then how can I build a great marketing distribution engine that maximizes the impressions and the quality and impressions of that input?
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that in this case, in this new age world, where AI is basically commodifying everything, when you think about what has value, it's those things that are most scarce.
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I would argue that one of the things that will become more and more scarce over time is durable quality human connection, which when you think about what is a personal ban at scale, it's just durable quality human connection at scale.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Once again, I would use Jesus or Muhammad as an a great example of that, or Gandhi.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right?
• 12:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Personal ban has always been here, always will be as long as we as humans exist.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I completely agree with you.
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's such a great way to think about it.
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's your take on the future of the creator economy?
• 12:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you're an interesting person to ask this to, because you guys are using a lot of like A generated content.
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: When we'll get into what you as you're building now, which is really exciting, there is a strong technology driven piece to a lot of the future of content creation.
• 12:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then you talk about the importance of human connection and authentic human connection.
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I'd love to get your take on like what percentage is human, what percentage is AI, how do we do this sort, whole AI play in a way that is deeply authentic,
• 12:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
• 13:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: So first I would say, I don't really think about the creator economy.
• 13:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: To me, it's just the entrepreneurial economy.
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like the creator economy was just the first subset of all entrepreneurs recognizing that, hey, we now have this equalizing medium in which I can put my face in front of millions of people completely for free, and this is the new age form of distribution.
• 13:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that was, that's kind of how I think about the space evolving in general is now it's just not just the creator economy.
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's like everyone's economy to build a business for themselves, which is really sick.
• 13:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But in terms of how AI changes that,
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would actually make a very polarizing argument today, which is almost all of the content you consume at this point is AI-generated.
• 13:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's actually just a spectrum of how AI is involved.
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: As in, you ask any content creator that you follow, I would guarantee you 95% of them use at least chat to your cloud in some version of their process.
• 13:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: In some version of helping them script, at least being a thought partner, helping the researcher, some form.
• 13:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, the degree of expertise at which they're using AI to maximize their output and their distribution is very, of course.
• 13:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, what I see happening over time, cynically, is that we will get a massive amount of AI slot into the market, and it will inflate supply.
• 14:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: But my understanding is that the algorithms are incentivized, so the TikToks and social medias of the world are incentivized, of course, to continue the only service quality content.
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to assume that there will be some sort of bottleneck on and some sort of taste-making on the quality that we'd end up consuming, but I think the people that will be most successful are the ones who maximize figuring out how to take their humanity and distill that down into the most resonant points.
• 14:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: So in the same way that like Disney has Mickey Mouse or some sort of IP you need to recognize what you as a human being you need to have your IP and what part of your IP resonates the most with the market or your audience.
• 14:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then you use AI and the same way before I would scale a team like I pay for a content team that is costing millions of dollars a year and the same way the Gary Vee does or Stephen Bartlett does are the hormones you do in that process and the same way that I've scaled a team to scale my content you would just look to it for AI to scale your output as well.
• 14:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, how I think about AI and and and contractors and human beings come together is just how do you actually use AI to amplify your superpowers as as opposed to a place you because there will be a I slop out there, but the way that we will win against the AI slop is very much so by leaning into what we have that they don't which is our deep humanity are so what have you and so I see AI in all of these different ways amplifying your distribution of that.
• 15:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: totally make you move faster and better.
• 15:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd love to get your take on what you think AI is going to be most helpful for.
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is it generative AI content?
• 15:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is it analytics on what's actually going well?
• 15:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is it new ideas?
• 15:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is it, you know, other accounts that you should be collaborating with?
• 15:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd love to get your take on the power of AI and where you think it's going to be most effective because I will say I'm someone where I look at my content and I'm like,
• 15:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't really know why, I mean, I could give you a gut answer, but probably a lot more effective.
• 15:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: If that transcript is uploaded into AI, maybe my facial expressions are analyzed, right?
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm curious, where do you see AI having the most potential to help content creators?
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would say all of the above, and let me give you some really specific examples, so we're building this new age and called Stanley.
• 16:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's basically an AI million-dollar content team in your pocket, and the reason why we've done this is because we've just having worked with all the top crew entrepreneurs and built these workflows ourselves with teams.
• 16:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: We understand these workflows deeply, how do you successfully scale a personal brand?
• 16:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, with Stanley, this initial beta core, they've seen an initial increase of 50% gave in it in just their first month.
• 16:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: The reason why is a bunch of fold because AI is a superpower in whatever direction you channel it.
• 16:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: So for example, every morning, I wake up with a daily brief for my AI agent Stanley, where he texts me all the top-performing posts in my niche from accounts that I follow on my watch list that are competitive creators that are in my niche or formats that are outperforming that are viral that I should repurpose specifically in my unique voice.
• 16:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so if you wake up at that every morning, it's kind of a superpower because you're already seeing validated data from the market of, hey, John, this is a 20x out performer that matches exactly the trailblazer podcast and specifically the things you talked about, this is your lens, but then beyond that, you're thinking, okay, that's the quality idea, which is a large piece of what they're not a piece of content reforms, but then the other side of this business for us is media businesses is to maximize our distribution aka our output.
• 17:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so what Stanley is doing from there is after I sign off on an idea, he can either take all of my favorite photos that he knows he has because he has access to my photo of him and make a carousel for me to sign off on.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just in the same way my current team puts that together and now Stanley does that for us.
• 17:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: I sign off on the copy and I can output that.
• 17:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the same way now, he's also auto editing people's videos, so he's probably 80% as strong as my team, right now my human team at cutting our talking head videos, so now he's actually, I just have to literally set up my phone, talk about what I want to talk about, which is either an idea source by me or not, or Stanley, and then Stanley edits that, writes the caption for me, I sound off it and he goes on publishes and schedules it.
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I say all of the above because AI can be used across the entire creative stack and what people should be thinking about doing is where do I disproportionately skew so am I really good at it am I really good scriptwriter and I would have AI specifically be your thought partner in that lane because that is your best piece and then everything else in that process like I assume you don't love editing stuff yourself I don't edit stuff myself exactly because it's not part of your creative stack that you should be doing yeah Stanley aka some sort of AI agent should be doing that work for you
• 18:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: totally.
• 18:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this is the thing that I struggle a lot with with marketing and go to market.
• 18:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'd love your take.
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think to be successful, I know, to be successful, you have to be different to stand out.
• 18:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: So as an example, way early on, brecks had a bunch of billboards all over SF and that was like, whoa.
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I started having billboard ads.
• 18:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's crazy and that really stood out because it was you know on the 235 or whatever when you're going into the city Then everyone does billboard ads, and I went to SF last week and there were billboard ads of every single AI startup So now it's like, okay, that's pretty you know saturated.
• 18:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: We got to find something else and then you know I saw yesterday there was someone who had like a plane flying in the sky with her and I'm getting I'm simplifying it But this idea that like with marketing
• 18:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: you stand out when you have the novel insight and then it gets saturated and then you see what the novel insight gets saturated and so like what's your take I think AI can learn a lot of what's working what's already kind of saturated but this idea of like completely net new marketing ideas that maybe you haven't thought of it a lot of the times it does have to come from other humans.
• 19:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I'd love your take on like how can you stand out when let's say maybe everyone is doing like a dancing tick-tock and you're like, well, maybe I should do a singing tick-tock.
• 19:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, kind of what is like the alternative that will make people pay attention versus doing what the crowd is doing.
• 19:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think what you're speaking towards is our human ability to create novel insights and create novel approaches in their four-command attention, and I would say time and memorial, this has been the case for any go-to-market channel.
• 19:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, right, so paid ads in the area that is a Facebook, there's a ton of alpha, and then we saw that channel absolutely collapsed from a cack perspective, right, with like the caspers of the world going under.
• 19:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Although I would argue it still doesn't take away from the total value of the channel, like paid ads is still obviously a helpful channel, billboards are still obviously to some degree helpful channel, in terms of how I think about finding the novel insights while also still maximizing the success of your business, this is exactly where AI comes in, which is, once your job is a founder and entrepreneurs scale of business, I believe is to find the novel insight, and then systematically reproduce that into a channel that performs for you, so that you can go off and find the next novel insight.
• 20:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think until AGI has in total omnipresent view of the world in a data model, the entire world and all these ways to create net new things, I think our jobs in this world of AI is to number one find the novel insight to validate it and then use AI and teams to basically replace ourselves from all of that and productize that and systematize that channel so that we can go off and find the novel insight.
• 20:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think that is the fun that we would ideally unlock given this world of AI.
• 20:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: and giving you that time back to figure what that novel inside is, I think that's absolutely right.
• 20:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's talk about the messy middle of building an audience.
• 20:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: You've got your newsletter and one tool, your podcast and another, your website hosted somewhere else entirely and your community is scattered across multiple apps.
• 20:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: You have to pay for four different subscriptions and then they still take a cut of your earnings.
• 20:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Set Sound familiar?
• 20:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Behive is just fix this with their latest update.
• 20:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's one platform where your newsletter, your podcast, your website, your paid subscriptions, and now your community can all live together.
• 20:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Everything talks to each other because it's finally under one roof.
• 21:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And here's the part creators like myself love most.
• 21:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: when you earn on B-Hive, you actually get to keep all of it.
• 21:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: So there's 0% taken from your subscriptions, 0% from your digital products, and publishers on the platform have actually made tens of millions in revenue and kept every single cent.
• 21:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: So if you're tired of stitching tools together, and ready to actually own your audience, go to B-Hive.com and use the code Trailblazers30 for 30% off your first three months.
• 21:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's B-Hive, B-E-E-H-I-I-V.com code Trailblazers30.
• 21:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I have a confession.
• 21:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: I used to be a compulsive note taker.
• 21:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Every single meeting, I'd be half listening and half scribbling and still leaving with gaps on next steps, details that were shared and more, but Granola completely changed that for me.
• 21:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's an AI powered note pad for meetings and it's connected to every single call on my calendar.
• 21:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Before each call, it shows me a well-researched brief, so I knew who I'm meeting with and the full context going in.
• 21:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: During the call, I jot down whatever stands out, maybe it's a key word or a decision I make, and granola handles the rest.
• 21:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: It'll transcribe in the background, on the call, and then turns my rough notes into clean, structure takeaways, the second we hang up.
• 22:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's also no boss joining calls.
• 22:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: It just works in the background.
• 22:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: I use granola for several things.
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: If I finish a meeting with the potential investor in my fund, I'll ask granola, what could I have done better to get my point across?
• 22:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: If I'm meeting with a founder I like, I'll ask Granola to point out any major green flags or maybe red flags I may not have already caught.
• 22:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: For people with a lot of the meetings and decisions that require endless context, Granola is a game changer.
• 22:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Actually, we're running Granola on today's episode, so you can read the full show notes at Granola.ai-slash trailblazers.
• 22:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: New users get three months completely free that's Granola.ai-slash trailblazers.
• 22:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: I want to talk a little bit more about Stan, and those early days.
• 22:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Specifically, I heard that when you got started, you cold-emailed Stephen Bartlett a million times.
• 22:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 22:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you finally got onto investment in your company.
• 22:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: Tell me more about that story.
• 22:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: If there's anything I know how to do, is I know how to rip the phones off the wall.
• 22:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I actually, my job before Stanford Business Law, I was at Norris Winterburners on the Growth Equity team.
• 22:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in that sense, we went after very profitable growing companies.
• 23:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when you know Growth Equity in that sense, and that stage of private equity, I was a 24-year-old kid trying to convince a 40-year-old founder entrepreneur who was doing $100 million in EBITDA to take our money.
• 23:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, what does, what value does he have?
• 23:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: What value do I have that I could give him?
• 23:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And like, what does our money mean?
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I got really good at sending dozens of cold emails and just like being super hungry to get after it.
• 23:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I say all that to say, I think over in the value of a quote email when well read into the right person can really genuinely change someone's life.
• 23:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I've learned the value of persistence through this where I was always very intentional about thinking about, okay, in terms of how we scale stand, what is the most effective distribution channel?
• 23:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: We've already established now and it's been obvious now for years to the market that creators are the new TV channels, is how I describe it to the team.
• 23:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so when I think about our audience of Entrepreneurs, so the folks like me who grew up consuming certain forms of content, dire VCOC, even but it's one of the top podcasts that we all kind of consume.
• 23:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the same way, the Hormozis and Gary V, who are all investors as well, who came in this round as well, are kind of the ownership over this particular audience demographic.
• 24:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so,
• 24:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was always very excited about bringing them in in some capacity.
• 24:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, one has to build a business that's interesting enough for them to want to invest in pay attention to you in the first place And so yes, I sent them many emails over years to try to get their attention and I got no response as one rightfully should because I don't have a great business yet But it was this last year actually
• 24:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I knew it was time to like pour fuel in the fire.
• 24:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: We clearly had something where we knew we were helping truly so many people truly affect their life outcomes and we also had a business that was working on top of that from a profitable unignowing perspective and so that sense is like okay now it's time to pour fuel in the fire.
• 24:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so to get into Steven, just so everyone knows how many outreaches one should think about doing for something that they're serious about.
• 24:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I probably tried 10 different angles.
• 24:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I probably sent over 25 messages of the course of three months.
• 24:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you will never guess how I got in because it's not an obvious one.
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Basically I started first with the typical coding mouse to him and anyone else I could find in his network.
• 24:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Specifically I found his manager, I found his agent, I emailed them.
• 25:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I also went through his partnerships team because I was thinking, okay, maybe I can position this as, hey, we'll sponsor your podcast.
• 25:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I talk to the partnerships team, I've got to go in a couple of times, they just had too much interest.
• 25:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I also did one other thing, which is, I found his VC fun website.
• 25:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you as someone who owns a VC fund, I'm not sure if you have an interest form on your website.
• 25:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: We do.
• 25:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I would say for most people, that thing never gets checked.
• 25:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, it's just like, it's just a win.
• 25:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've agents checking it now, by the way.
• 25:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's the UK state, I believe.
• 25:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So before it was like having been a VC before, I remember submitting a forum being like, wow, I'm such an idiot.
• 25:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm going to do this even though I know what is ever going to be back to me.
• 25:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, no one ever got back to me, until Christmas Eve of two years ago, I got an email, a massive email that said, hi, thank you for submitting your company in this form.
• 25:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: We actually lost all of the submissions, could you actually resumide if you're still interested?
• 25:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I was Christmas Eve Day and I was with my mom and you know, as you're supposed to quote unquote take time off, but here I am plugged into email and like thinking and obsessing about my business.
• 26:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so it's always those moments where you're like, I just got to push a little bit more.
• 26:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember really not wanting
• 26:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I pushed myself through and I submitted a forum and two days later the day after Christmas I could finally get a message back from Stephen on LinkedIn, which was one of the 15 different platforms that hit him up on and he said, John, I just got in your business, I'm obsessed with it, shoot me a number at this WhatsApp.
• 26:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so the story there is basically, you got a hustle for a year to get someone's attention, you never know which shots can land, you got to take the shots, and I'm very grateful for Stephen, Gary, the Hormozis, all the creator entrepreneurs who have trusted us to be on the captive and want to build this mission with us.
• 26:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: love it and you know for better or worse Christmas Eve you might have to like whip up that laptop shoot an email over you know it's not ideal that's really helpful I want to talk a little bit about your mom um because you brought her up briefly and I think you know children of single moms are built different um I'm one as well what did she want for you and for your career
• 26:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: was she ever, did you ever have expectations around what you should do?
• 27:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, just looking at your resume, we've got Sanford MBA, we got gold, man, we got growth equity.
• 27:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we've got like all of the traditional check marks of like a very, very successful ambitious person.
• 27:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then you start doing creator stuff, you want to start your own business, you know, I'll speak for myself.
• 27:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: single parents are like a lot of the times you're like no no no no no like you gotta go do more you gotta go build you got to do the things that I thought you were going to do Talk to me a little bit like what she wanted for you and maybe her reaction when you told her that you were going to start Creating videos and starting companies.
• 27:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean that's definitely a little bit different than what your resume suggests Yeah, so I'll tell you funny story about my Asian immigrant mom reacting to me dropping out of Stanford Business School and how that went in terms of becoming a TikTok creator.
• 27:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: So
• 27:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I remember telling my mom, basically, you're in a Stanford that, hey, mom, I'm going to drop out and try to start a business for myself.
• 27:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you know anything about Asian American immigrants, the Holy Grail of Asian American Immortacy is getting a grad school degree, and specifically getting a grad school degree at Stanford.
• 27:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: This was like, I remember getting a call from the Dean of Admissions before I got in, letting me know that I got in.
• 28:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I saw remember sitting in my bedroom, like, truly tearing up.
• 28:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because it wasn't just about me.
• 28:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was about all of the sacrifice.
• 28:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: My mom had put in to even get me to this point Then I could like deliver her that success.
• 28:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was so deeply meaningful.
• 28:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Still is to this day And so of course she was really confused be-wildered and upset that I was gonna drop out of Stanford Business School because to her like
• 28:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, John, you need to get a grad school degree to be of like a safe, secure position.
• 28:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whereas I'm coming from the blends of like, no mom actually being a Stanford dropout is kind of like you get to have your cake and eat it too.
• 28:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: You get the, you know, stamp of approval, but also you get the cool factor of being a dropout.
• 28:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: She obviously doesn't understand that at all, but specifically in that she's really upset at me for a while and she's really confused or understandably.
• 28:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then a couple weeks later she actually texted me out of blue and she's like,
• 28:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, John, I actually, I think I understand why you're doing this, because I realize it's the same thing as when I was trying to get out of China myself, where after the cultural revolution, because none of us had gotten to go to school, I found I got to go to university and work so hard for that, and all my peers who also got to need university to work so hard for that.
• 29:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there was something about me that I wasn't that wasn't enough like she worked on top of that to get to a foreign exchange Program where she actually got to do a PhD in Milan and Italy where most of her peers were just satisfied with having gotten to go to college in the first place And she realized that that for her was actually the same for me of like I had worked so hard to get to Sanford business school But that actually wasn't fully what I wanted there was actually something a little bit more
• 29:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so she was like, I think I understand that in the same way that I had this desire and drive to get out of the country and actually, you know, build a life for us outside of China here in the States for us You have the same thing now with building your own business and for the first time in my life, truly as an agent, I was like, holy shit mom, I think you understand me And it was really beautiful
• 29:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: until a year later, actually, it was early June out of nowhere.
• 29:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm deep in the muck of building a business, burning a ton of cash, not sure if we're going to make payroll, super stressed, you know, the first year of business is awful.
• 29:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: First three years, honestly, they're hard.
• 30:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a grind.
• 30:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 30:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Out of nowhere, I just get this random drive by shooting with text message from a while where she's like, John, today would have been your Stanford graduation.
• 30:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: You stole this from me.
• 30:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can't believe you would ever do this for me.
• 30:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm so deeply disappointed in you.
• 30:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And she meant it with all the love possible, right?
• 30:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's like such an Asian mom thing to, you know, have like, love.
• 30:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tough love, right?
• 30:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, Mom, what the fuck?
• 30:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, I'm trying so hard right out of to survive.
• 30:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: And you're just just pouring a more album.
• 30:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Really?
• 30:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just like absolute drive vibe.
• 30:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I say all that to say,
• 30:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, at the end of the day, our parents just want what's best for us and for us to be safe and secure in their definition of that.
• 30:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: At the end of the day, I think the irony that I feel nowadays is that my mom sees how hard I'm working now and how hard I'm hustling when I face time and she's like Johnny looks so tired or John, it pains me to work this hard and it's funny.
• 30:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I laugh to myself and I'm like,
• 30:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Mom, who the fuck do you think gave me this work ethic, right?
• 30:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, you modeled this, like you were such a tough resilient woman.
• 30:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: You raised me alone in the south with no connections.
• 30:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, can you imagine moving to a country and speaking the language kind of, but not having a single connection, having a kid to raise?
• 31:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, she hustled in her nine to five.
• 31:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's mechanical engineer, like, only woman on her shot floor of men.
• 31:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's been in the same company for 40 years crashing it.
• 31:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's still working at 74.
• 31:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Full-time.
• 31:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that asked mom.
• 31:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Super badass.
• 31:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, did a ton of stuff in the community under own little small business on eBay that was a drop showing business before that was ever a quote.
• 31:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm quote thing all that to be said is I'm very lucky I would say almost entirely everything that I have is probably because of her because of the value she gave me in which she role model.
• 31:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, it's funny, it's like that the relationship we all have with our parents, which is we have so much to think with them, but also like they can just be like kind of annoying, so I was like, Mom, it's truly what I'm trying to do my thing, like let me do my thing.
• 31:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love it, I love it.
• 31:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: The tough love gets you far though.
• 31:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: I've been thinking about this a lot, and I think the boundaries and the nose and the intensity, it's also that you become the adult you are today, because what would be the reverse, right, is that you just kind of don't go after your dreams, and you don't work that hard.
• 32:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: She would hate that, she would hate that even more than hating that you didn't graduate from Stanford.
• 32:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's amazing.
• 32:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: How old were you when you guys came over here from China?
• 32:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was six months old.
• 32:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 32:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Brave.
• 32:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And where in the south did she settle?
• 32:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So we've spent our first five years in Kentucky, which was actually really fantastic if anyone's from the Midwest, you know how deeply kind most people are in the Midwest.
• 32:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And how did you even find Kentucky?
• 32:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, from China to Kentucky?
• 32:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's a bit of a... Yeah, so she was... She was actually a company called Ingersoul Rand, so they moved her first to plant there and then they eventually shut that plant down and that's when we moved into North Carolina.
• 32:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we moved to just north of Charlotte, North Carolina, which is, I would call like upper middle class suburbs, where really no one looked like us, and we were definitely in a very different wealth demographic than most people.
• 32:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were, you know, living on the lake, relatively wealthy.
• 32:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so people during that era where I spent the next 20 years of my life, next 15 years of my life weren't the nicest to us.
• 32:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, that shapes who you all are, and who you become, and all that kind of stuff, so I'm grateful for it, and long-term.
• 32:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what did you want to be when you were that age?
• 33:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: When you were growing up in North Carolina, you have this mom who's hustling so hard.
• 33:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: You look different from everyone around you, but you can't see wealth, because like you said, nice houses on the lake.
• 33:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: What were you thinking you wanted to be when you grew up?
• 33:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Dude, I just wanted to be like accepted and happy.
• 33:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just wanted to not be bullied at the end of the day, right, when you're a kid.
• 33:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that does shape you as a human being, right?
• 33:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you're already an Asian-American in this society, you're told this model, minority myth of like, hey, you have to do X and Y things to be accepted.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so then you have that on top of the Asian-American pressures to just perform and so it was always It was always driven to me that I should be a successful as possible in my career for the sake of like validation or acceptance And of course, then you get to this point and realize that none of that's true And all that kind of stuff and you work through that and you go to great therapy and you do psychedelics You're like, wait, everything's a lie.
• 33:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I should just do what I actually want to fucking do But yeah when you're kid I think so many of us are told if you do certain things then you'll finally be happy in life Or like you'll finally get to put food on the table.
• 33:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'll finally be there for loved
• 33:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And all these ways, and I think I very much show was a victim of that experience as well, but I'm very grateful for it now.
• 33:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do you feel about yourself now?
• 34:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, as someone who's deeply ambitious, you have big shoes to fill with this company, you've taken a lot of responsibility, you've a massive following.
• 34:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do you identify yourself worth?
• 34:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do you think about, you know, what you want out of your life?
• 34:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for helping me reflect in this moment.
• 34:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, take your time.
• 34:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think my fully honest answer right now in this very moment, and this will change its different seasons of life, is I think I'm optimizing for two things.
• 34:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: One is I'm optimizing for being personally happy and fulfilled, and two, and I think it's 4951.
• 34:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: The second piece of the latter is being deeply proud of what we've done, as in the mission.
• 34:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I am working so hard right now.
• 34:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: The team and I are working so fucking hard right now.
• 34:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: because we are so hellbent and truly building something that genuinely helps millions of people.
• 34:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: pursue this path because we're so passionate about what this experience can give to people.
• 34:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not only the financial security, but also the sense of self-agency and confidence in a time where I think society deeply needs this, so the systems are breaking out the seams.
• 35:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I can't wait to look back on being like holy shit.
• 35:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: This new product is standing in the middle of the boat, fundamentally blue people's minds.
• 35:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like I love right now where an exclusive beta with folks.
• 35:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love being on a call of someone and they go holy shit.
• 35:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is actually really good.
• 35:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like you can see the magic moment.
• 35:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like I love doing, I want us to build something that truly is that exceptional, truly like people look back and like that company stand, fundamentally lifted the success of everyone.
• 35:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like they did a good thing.
• 35:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And ideally, they did it in a way that proves that you can actually do good and do well in this modern day system of capitalism.
• 35:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like I really want to do that.
• 35:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's probably my priority.
• 35:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in that ideally I would also be a happy whole human being, which of course there's certain time constraints on entrepreneurship which prevent you from doing that fully, but I think that's I think that's what drives me at this point.
• 35:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's it's very much showing not that things that I thought as a middle school would actually make me happy healthy all which is some version of like fame money success those things like truly
• 35:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've learned our such demons on the other side, like they don't interest me, in fact, oftentimes many of those things are actually Dutchmen's to me succeeding in the mission or being personally happy.
• 36:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: So...
• 36:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: through distractions a lot of the time.
• 36:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, also the luxury of have found some financial success, some sort of fame, I would ever skill you want to refer to, that you can now look back and hindsight and go, oh, I still have the same things.
• 36:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I still have the same struggles.
• 36:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: What are the things that you bring you joy and bring you happiness?
• 36:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, obviously surfing.
• 36:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know surfing?
• 36:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just lit up a reality of service.
• 36:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: What if you're serving?
• 36:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, duh.
• 36:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like nothing makes you smile bigger than the surfing.
• 36:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the way just lit up.
• 36:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: I love it, but what else brings you happiness?
• 36:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, when you think about that second bucket, right?
• 36:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: You obviously working very hard, but outside of that, what brings you happiness?
• 36:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: My loved ones, my friends and family, I'm very lucky to have really great loved ones in my life who don't give a shit about what I do in my day job.
• 36:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just like, should not be in risk me all the same.
• 36:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, we are just like the friends that we are.
• 36:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that and traveling with them and mostly surf trips with them.
• 36:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then, I'll be honest, I just love a slow morning.
• 36:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love a fucking slow day, where you're not plugged in, you're not racing in this AI psychosis of like, oh, I got a build build build build build build build.
• 37:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you're just being a human being and you enjoy expressing like whatever it is that you wanna do that day.
• 37:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think my fight to actually be more successful in my business right now is actually to create more of that space.
• 37:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So those are the two things that come to mind.
• 37:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think for higher achievers, you can think that the more productive you are, the more output you have, the better it is for your business.
• 37:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: But actually those slow mornings, maybe you read a book, maybe you get to have a really long conversation with someone or just let yourself think.
• 37:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: That actually can be the game changing decision for your business.
• 37:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's hard to, I mean, I'm speaking to myself, like sometimes very hard to let that go.
• 37:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: That desire to just crank crank crank and not let yourself relax.
• 37:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: about two years ago actually we hit a plateau in a natural way that any business will struggle to scale at some point and I took it really hard really personally because I defined myself worth by how well the company was growing and we had always been kind of this rocket ship.
• 37:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in that moment I did what I think any entrepreneur naturally do is they they double down the buckle down even harder and I worked even harder.
• 37:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: The problem, of course, at that moment, was I didn't realize at the time that what I needed to do was not do the same things.
• 38:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I needed to evolve my identity and do new things.
• 38:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not just a founder, but a CEO of a company that scales a business.
• 38:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And in that moment, the counterintuitive realization that I wish I had had at that time is if I just let go and like fucked off to Bali for a month and just like thought about the business and gotten space for the business rather than so stressfully working inside the business,
• 38:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I could have just like, in one search session, paddled out, had an insight, had a breakthrough that would have gotten us to so much more success, so much faster than me grinding and being in deep pain for way too many months that I actually didn't need to be.
• 38:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So.
• 38:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: How do you zoom out when things are really intense and you feel like you're hitting a wall?
• 38:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Other than surfing, what are the ways that you can zoom out and really get that 360 of what you need to do next?
• 38:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I force myself, or I ask my team to kick me off slack in email, and then I force myself to take a day off, because I often found that the times where you feel that most manifest is oftentimes actually despite how much you want to stay plugged in, because you feel the fighter flight, that's actually the moment you want to most zoom out and plug out.
• 39:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: The 2026 primaries are taking shape, and if you have a strong opinion about how they're going to go, Calshy lets you actually trade on it.
• 39:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Calshy is the largest prediction market in the US, federally regulated and available in all 50 states.
• 39:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: You're not betting against a house, you're trading against other people in a live market, taking yes or no positions on real-world events.
• 39:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Elections, federal interest rates, economic data, you name it.
• 39:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right now, in Calshy you can trade on the California government race, send it outcomes, and it does another major political storylines as they develop.
• 39:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: As the probability shifts, you can buy in or out of your position in real time.
• 39:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a completely new asset class, and honestly, one of the more interesting ways to have skin in the game on what you're already walking closely.
• 39:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Download the Kelshi app, that's KALS-H-I, and use code trailblazers to get $10 when you trade $10.
• 39:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: or go to calsheet.com slash r slash trailblazers to accept this $20 offer.
• 39:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: With calsheet, you can trade on anything.
• 39:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: 18 plus only restrictions and eligibility requirements apply, event contract trading and bulbs risk and may not be suitable for all investors.
• 39:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: Crisis values and available markets may differ from those mentioned.
• 39:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: For more information, see calsheet.com slash regulatory.
• 40:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so a quick experiment, think about the last long message you typed.
• 40:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Could be a slack thread, a prompt into cloud, maybe it's a detailed email, it probably took you 10 minutes, maybe even 20 to get it right?
• 40:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now imagine you just set it out loud instead.
• 40:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is the whole pitch for whisper flow.
• 40:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: whisper flow is voice to text that actually works in every app on every device.
• 40:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: You speak naturally and it outputs clean, formatted text that's ready to send.
• 40:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: No set up, no integrations, no fixing your transcription errors.
• 40:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it works across Gmail,
• 40:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: And unlike the built-in dictation on your phone, whisper flow removes all filler words, mid-sentence corrections, and jargon.
• 40:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: What I personally love about it too is that it perfectly matches my style.
• 40:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I often type in all lower case letters, so it'll type like that.
• 40:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I also say things like LMK, which means let me know in shorthand, and it'll auto adjust it from let me know to LMK.
• 40:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like many of you, I also do a lot of brain dumping into LLMs.
• 40:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: So instead of typing it all out, I actually just speak my windy train of thought into whisper flow, which is infinitely faster than trying to get my fingers to keep up with the pace of my thoughts.
• 41:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you do any serious writing, or just send a lot of messages and emails, using whisper flow is a no-brainer.
• 41:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Get one whole month of whisper flow pro, completely free, at ref.wisperflow.ai-sash trailblazers.
• 41:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: You guys have helped so many creators on your platform.
• 41:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: 600 million dollars in payouts is no joke.
• 41:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's the single biggest creator payout you've had so far?
• 41:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And tell me that story.
• 41:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Dude, so many cool stories.
• 41:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: So many different animations.
• 41:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's so cool how many people are different people are different like interests that we get to serve.
• 41:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll tell you one of my favorite stories recently of someone we've gotten to support.
• 41:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Her name is Sarah Perl.
• 41:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: She lives here in New York City.
• 41:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's a badass and she will be listen to her name now because I promise you she will be even more successful in the future.
• 41:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sarah Pearl, her original handle is a hot high priestess, millions of followers on TikTok.
• 41:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I met her during the tail end of COVID when I first started staying, and I met her, specifically on a Zoom call, and she was running back from her junior year college classes.
• 41:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: She was doing spirituality and terror, and she was looking to monetize, she probably had a million followers that went, she was very naturally gifted and making content.
• 42:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, yeah, she was literally a junior in college, and over the course of the next two or three years, I saw her crush her first million dollars.
• 42:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's now compounding that much, much more quickly.
• 42:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: She's made millions of dollars now, specifically in the niche of Spiritraud in Tarot.
• 42:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then also now on top of that, has built her own app.
• 42:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's called Stella.
• 42:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's going to be really fantastic over time too.
• 42:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's like basically a co-starb of personalized VAI, and like a journaling medium through which you can really hopefully make really positive change in your own life.
• 42:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Point being is why I love Stan so much is whether it's Sarah's story or it's like Stone Fretcher's story who at 18 also made 100k is first two months or it's Eddie Abbey who at 65 is made 2 million pounds doing fitness for seniors like there's so many random niches that we could support what I love about what we get to do is what we know is despite how much society right now and social media is telling us how fucked up the world is because it is.
• 42:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's so this little pocket of hope in the world.
• 43:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's the little stand-preneur ecosystem.
• 43:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's this little hope like this shining like light through the cracks of the American dream still exists and that if you do have passion You have work ethic and you're willing to actually put in that work You can still make it.
• 43:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I deeply believe that to be true and stance customers Exist is a proof point for that
• 43:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's beautiful.
• 43:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I also think this idea of being so deeply authentic and being able to monetize your most authentic self is so powerful.
• 43:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, so many people squeeze themselves into being like a teacher or being a doctor or being a firefighter.
• 43:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Whatever the thing is, and those are all incredible jobs, but sometimes you're doing it because you think you should and because it's stable and because you knew about it growing up.
• 43:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: But being able to make and then say no matter of money, teaching exercise to seniors, I mean, that is probably that person's deepest deepest passion or spirituality and terror.
• 43:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, passions and hobbies, what if a feeling way to live life, too, right?
• 43:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, not all money is the same.
• 43:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you can make money in a way that is deeply bringing you meaning, what a beautiful gift to give to people.
• 44:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know?
• 44:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's amazing.
• 44:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I could keep asking you questions all day, but we are going to get to where a lightning round.
• 44:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: OK. Our trailblazers trade-offs.
• 44:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let me know what comes to mind first.
• 44:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: OK. That's it.
• 44:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Book in hand or podcast in the ears.
• 44:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm laughing because I'll do the two at the same time sometimes.
• 44:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's really like tech founder, off-to-vest, optimizer.
• 44:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm really embarrassed over admitting that.
• 44:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're talking like one and a half.
• 44:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I used to be like a two X-Podcast guy.
• 44:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not like a one and a half, 1.75 X guy.
• 44:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
• 44:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: On top of also consuming literature at the same time.
• 44:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if I were to be held down.
• 44:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's terrifying.
• 44:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, I'm actually scared for you.
• 44:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so you're sitting on your couch and you have a podcast in your ears and then you have a book on you.
• 44:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, are you like walking or are you working out?
• 44:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, how are you?
• 44:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm very confused.
• 44:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: What is the situation when you need to be really optimizing that much?
• 44:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to maximize content consumption and ingestion and learning therefore in the little amount of times that I have.
• 44:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I would say I also to be clear to split them up when I'm driving a 1.5x of podcast when I actually have some space and one practice I'm trying to do better of is shutting off all my electronics and just reading a book before bed.
• 45:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 45:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm also doing that.
• 45:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there are times that I'm definitely trying to consume content audio from an audio
• 45:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry for you.
• 45:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I would encourage you to do 10 minutes and then 10 minutes.
• 45:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just saying, that's how most people do what it does work.
• 45:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's probably, but you know what?
• 45:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Be you.
• 45:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a board you.
• 45:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Higher, slower, fire fast.
• 45:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Both.
• 45:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can't have a great culture of that both.
• 45:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot about the Japanese practice of cultivating a bonsai tree.
• 45:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: When it comes to talent and keeping organization healthy, right?
• 45:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Every single day you're actually supposed to clip a bonsai into the same way that you need to be ruthless, and you need to be very straightforward with your team around.
• 45:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, this is a high performing sports team.
• 45:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like these are the standards.
• 45:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: These are also the centers that are evolving because we're growing company with growing and changing needs.
• 45:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, but very much so you want to hire slow, although when you have a strong gut instinct after you've hired a ton, I think you can hire a little bit faster and you can take bets on people, um, but you definitely got a fire fast.
• 46:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: You got to let go of people fast, which is really hard to do, um, especially for people, please, or when you start.
• 46:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, because it's not just about your organization's success from your own selfish perspective, it's more important.
• 46:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's that person's bringing down the rest of your team.
• 46:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't fuck with people who bring it out of the rest of my team because my team puts in the work.
• 46:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, what's a sign for you that someone's got to go?
• 46:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, dude, bad attitude.
• 46:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: A can versus a can't do attitude.
• 46:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's so clear.
• 46:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love this, I think it's a Henry Ford quote.
• 46:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's those who believe they can and those who believe they can't are both right.
• 46:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so for founders, you better fucking make sure you're working the former because the latter will absolutely tank your business.
• 46:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Cause what I've found is like a single bad person or a bad egg will spoil the whole lot.
• 46:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I need one of the bad attitude immediately out.
• 46:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, no, I don't fuck with you.
• 46:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Totally.
• 46:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: For two reasons, one big mission, you had a lot to do, and the other, like, your energy is very positive.
• 46:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think a lot of cultures are actually the embodiment of the founder a lot of the time, and so it's also just like a culture clash because of you.
• 46:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think that's a lot of it.
• 47:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: 10 small wins are one big moonshot.
• 47:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: The younger version of me said one big moonshot, I realize now that you need 10 small wins to actually build to that one shot.
• 47:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Love it.
• 47:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Being earlier, being right.
• 47:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Can I always just get both of the alphabet every time?
• 47:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: No.
• 47:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, that's not it.
• 47:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's not who those game were, but it's hypothetical.
• 47:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you know, I'm not holding you to it.
• 47:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, once again, the younger version of me, be early, fucking go for it.
• 47:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: The more mature version of me is be right.
• 47:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 47:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, it goes to your point about like first mover advantage, thinking that like Lincoln Bible stuff wasn't going to work, you know, but yet you were able to get it to go.
• 47:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: What's the best teacher?
• 47:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: A mentor or a mistake.
• 47:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: A mistake.
• 47:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm so grateful for the mentors I have and they share their mistakes with me so that I can ideally go around that curve.
• 47:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: But for example, like hiring, you can read all the advice you want about hiring and people can all tell you how hard hiring is, but you can't really get better at hiring until you just get wrecked a bunch of times.
• 47:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, learn from experience.
• 47:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, can I get two shots?
• 47:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 47:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: One is Michael Ovitz, uh, the founder of C.A.
• 48:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: He, I've been very lucky.
• 48:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's been an angel investor in business since day one.
• 48:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, dude's a killer.
• 48:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Dude's still is a killer.
• 48:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, he saw me so much about client service.
• 48:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's something that I always had a practice for having started in banking.
• 48:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: But C.A.
• 48:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: completely flip the model of Hollywood from like, you know, the talent serves the agency to now the agency serves the talent.
• 48:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's how we treat all of our clients here at Stan.
• 48:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I give every single team member at Stan, the copy of Unreasonable Hospitality by Logan R. The classic Fred Yellowbook.
• 48:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, you know, for those who don't know, it was one of the successful restaurants in the world as number one for a while.
• 48:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: They just did absurd things for their clients.
• 48:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, for example, there was one client who was eating and said, oh, I got to go soon because, you know, my car meters running out.
• 48:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, they said, you know, sort of like, where's your car park will actually go fill the meter for you.
• 48:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Point being is is Michael's taught me a lot about that, as well as how to pair that with a killer sense of competition.
• 48:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then the second one I'll give a shout is a more recent mentor.
• 48:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Amen al Abdulah, he's my CEO coach, you'll see my line on Twitter would have you.
• 49:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: He works with a lot of other top entrepreneurs.
• 49:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's taught me a lot about how to think about a business as a flywheel.
• 49:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so the key learning for everyone here, if you don't get to work with Amen, is, as the CEO of the founder, you should be thinking about your business in the sense of what is my next bottleneck that I need to unblock to keep unlocking my flywheel to spend more and more and more.
• 49:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, very good for Amen.
• 49:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's amazing.
• 49:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's hard to find a great coach.
• 49:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think when you do it changes your life and you have to hold on to them for your life.
• 49:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 49:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: So here's a problem I hear constantly from operators.
• 49:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: The data exists.
• 49:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: The answers are somewhere in there, but getting to that actually pulling a useful insight without bugging the data team or learning SQL takes way too long or just does not happen.
• 49:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hex solves that.
• 49:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hex is an AI analytics platform where anyone on your team can ask data questions in plain English and get real answers backed by your actual business context.
• 49:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: No sequel required.
• 49:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the best part is that Hex shows you exactly how it's data agents think, so you can see where the logic comes from and trust the output.
• 49:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: The more your team uses it, the smarter it gets.
• 49:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: From seed stage founders running lean to larger works dealing with serious data complexity, HECTS is built to scale with you.
• 50:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's game-changing for people like me who want to understand what's going on under the hood, but we are not the data experts.
• 50:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's funny too because I feel like every time I look over my operator friend's shoulders, whether they're in product, or marketing, or ops, they often have a HECTS dashboard pulled up.
• 50:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a great tool.
• 50:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Trailblazers listeners get an exclusive 30-day free trial at HECTS.ai-slash trailblazers.
• 50:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is the future of AI abundance or chaos?
• 50:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think we're in a very dystopian place right now where I think society lacks a vision for what an abundant version and a healthy positive version of AI could be.
• 50:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think the onus is on people like you and me and those listening to figure out what that is.
• 50:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because if we let the, let's call it the current tech elite, do what they're doing.
• 50:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think they're thinking enough about the outcomes on a long term scale.
• 50:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think they're optimizing for their metric, which is profit and power.
• 50:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think we all need to be much more intentional about how can we actually make this an awesome thing.
• 50:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: We're of course we have an abundance of profit, but also an abundance of happiness.
• 51:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because otherwise, actually feel pretty cynical at times about where all this will happen.
• 51:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, for me, it's a lot about meaning and fulfillment.
• 51:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And how do we find that when a lot of jobs are being overrun?
• 51:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: What I will also say is I think we focus a lot like you said on the tech elite, the business leaders, that are all the classics we you and I know, the anthropics, the open eyes, the proplexities.
• 51:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: But actually, the media has a lot of influence.
• 51:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think that's also something that's so special about being a creator or working in media in any way.
• 51:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: That changes the narrative.
• 51:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes even more than actual businesses themselves.
• 51:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: I know you're a person.
• 51:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Killer product or loyal niche audience still product okay tell me more at the end of the day Killer product will always find its audience and the thing that is most scale on a business is the product Right if you have product like growth you have something that will continue to scale with you Not even needing to be there.
• 51:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah Vc or bootstrapping Depends on the business if you're building something where capital intensive let's say a network face effects based business or let's say a data center Then you probably need capital unless you're Elon Musk and even then he's still very intense about raising for good reason
• 52:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, but I would argue that most people nowadays I would say 95% plus of businesses probably should be bootstrapped.
• 52:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Why did you decide to raise venture instead of have a really lucrative lifestyle business?
• 52:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, we've only ever raised that $5 million seed round and you're super profitable since then.
• 52:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, having come from the practice of growth equity, it was always strange to me watching founders go public where they put their, like, blood sweat and tears in a business and they own like 7%.
• 52:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of wild to me.
• 52:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, what?
• 52:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's some charts that show that you can like, you know, exit at series D and exit at C to make the same amount of money.
• 52:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, right?
• 52:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: The found because they just get so diluted.
• 52:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 52:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's very strange to me, but of course, maybe they're optimizing for a different intention.
• 52:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so the nominal amount of money I took on at C doesn't really affect how I run the business too much, but it also provides a healthy guard rail where four runner ventures was our lead investor, your Echem specifically.
• 52:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Their relationship with her.
• 52:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: She helps hold me accountable.
• 52:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think having a board to some degree is a very healthy practice for a business.
• 52:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: as long as the founder kind of understands the balance between the two and when they stab the conviction versus not, and how to use a leverage aboard it in the right ways for a business.
• 53:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, I feel like I've gotten the best of both worlds.
• 53:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've gotten the institutional capital, the wisdom, the network, and the accountability, but also still maintain control of the business and make sure that it's our vision.
• 53:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: And doing it your way.
• 53:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think that there's a lot of ways that the media and tech in general will push you to raise and you've been very authentically yourself through this, which is awesome.
• 53:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Never post on social media again or never fundraise another dollar again.
• 53:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: Sort of ease into the last question a little bit too.
• 53:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I would definitely want to have the ability to post on social media over fundraise because if you think about it, what is fundraising?
• 53:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just a proxy for cash in the door.
• 53:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: But actually, people for some reason glamorize raising VC funding as if it's like the end all be all.
• 53:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, it's like when you raise money, then you actually got to be able to build a business.
• 53:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: The easiest way to build a real business is not by raising capital.
• 53:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: The easiest way to build a real business by building a real business, by marketing aka through your social media channels, and therefore always having cash in the door and being able to find customers.
• 54:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think the former very much show allows you to always do a lot of the ladder does not necessarily allow you to do the former.
• 54:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is AI overhyped or underhyped?
• 54:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Short term, a little bit overhyped, but long term massively underhyped.
• 54:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And what do you most excited for in the next year or two?
• 54:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm honestly really excited about what we're going to do with Stanley, like he's really going to change the game for so many people.
• 54:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think he'll unlock the 90% of people who've always wanted to start posting content, but don't know how to get started, don't know what a good idea looks like, definitely don't want to edit a video, like Stanley's going to do all that, it's going to be really sick.
• 54:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I always think about that, like, I spurged an allergy.
• 54:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're like 1% of people create, like, you know, the note of 10% of people, or, yes, it's called 9% of people, or the ones who just, like, comment.
• 54:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then there's like a huge 90% that just consume.
• 54:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: They don't actually engage in any way.
• 54:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, what does it look like to like move down that stack?
• 54:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's very exciting.
• 54:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: John, thanks for being here.
• 54:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Really appreciate it.
• 54:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: This was awesome.
• 54:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much for listening to the Trailblazers podcast.
• 54:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: If you found this conversation Bible, please follow along on socials, share with a friend, leave a review, all the things.
• 55:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Most of all, please subscribe to our channel.
• 55:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: It helps more Contrary Builders find us and supports the work we're doing here.
• 55:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: To learn more about what we're doing, you can visit Trailblazerspod.com, or my venture capital firm, parkrangerscaped.com, or just follow along on socials at Erica Under School Winger.
• 55:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Until next time, keep trailblazing.