Latest / AI for Founders with Ryan Estes / He built a $1M SaaS alone

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He built a $1M SaaS alone · AI for Founders with Ryan Estes

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  College didn't get expensive, it got unnecessary for anyone who
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  wants to make real money in the next 10 years.
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  Because the future isn't learn more, it's learn fast, get
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  licensed, get paid. And America has about 700,000
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  registered apprentices. That's roughly .4% of the
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  workforce. So basically nobody.
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  Meanwhile we've got over 1,000,000 electrician jobs open,
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  licensed workers are retiring, and the data centers are sucking
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  power like a black hole. It didn't incentivize
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  apprenticeships. It basically said if you want
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  the juicy tax credits on big renewable energy projects, you
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  need apprentices on the job. Andy Seth saw that mess up
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  close. The tools were trashed.
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  The bureaucracy was thicker than a Denver winter.
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  So during COVID he taught himself to build software
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  apprentice under a real dev build apprentice dot IO.
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  Then he did the scary founder move.
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  He niche down hard and it worked.
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  He hit 1,000,000 ARR with 0W2 employees, SAS margins, 7 day
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  sales cycles. Not because he hustled harder
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  because he found the hidden lever.
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  Businesses don't buy training, they buy revenue and compliance
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  that doesn't ruin their life. So here's a founder idea.
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  Stop building better education. Build less paperwork.
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  Every regulated industry has a compliance bottleneck begging to
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  be turned into a software ATM. So ask yourself this question.
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  If your product disappeared tomorrow, would your customers
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  miss the value or would they miss the relief?
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  Welcome to AI for founders. I'm Ryan Estes if you're a
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  founder obsessed with leverage, niche strategy and finding
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  markets where demand that is literally written into law,
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  you're going to want the full breakdown and you're going to
• 1:39
  want to check out our newsletter.
• 1:41
  If you like founder stories with receipts in real numbers, get on
• 1:44
  the newsletter at AI for founders.co.
• 1:46
  It's the closest thing to Business School that won't
• 1:49
  charge you rent AI for founders.co.
• 1:52
  This is your next unfair advantage that might be 1 e-mail
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  away. Go subscribe at AI for
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  founders.co. And if this made you think,
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  leave a review like you're rating a roller coaster you
• 2:01
  survived and include one word again, founders quickly.
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  Reality check. Being great at what you do isn't
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  the bottleneck. Being known is the bottleneck.
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  And the fastest way to become known, trusted, and repeatedly
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  referenced is still the same. Go on podcast.
• 2:17
  Kick Caster helps founders get booked on shows your customers
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  already listened to. Not random podcast, not my
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  aunt's mindfulness hour. I mean the shows where buyers
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  hang out, where deals start as conversation, and where your
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  credibility compounds because here's what podcasts do that ads
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  can't. They make you sound like the
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  person who's already won. You get 30 minutes to explain
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  your thinking, tell the real story, and build trust at human
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  speed. And if you're thinking I don't
• 2:44
  have the time to pitch shows, perfect.
• 2:45
  That's the point. Kick Caster handles the
• 2:47
  targeting, outreach, booking, and coordination.
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  So you just show up and perform. If you want inbound leads that
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  don't feel like pulling teeth, go to kickcaster.com and let's
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  get you booked. That's Kick Caster by MO Burst.
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  Andy, Seth, thank you for joining me.
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  You're welcome. Good morning on this cold
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  morning here. In Denver it is.
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  We are nuts off. I know it's unbelievable.
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  Absolutely. Because it only if it's true.
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  Yeah, yeah, we're back at the AI Clubhouse.
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  What's your first impressions? Dude, this thing's kind of it's,
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  it's shocking because the outside, I thought we were about
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  to drop some acid and go raving, but I was like this warehouse, I
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  don't know. Or, or you're about to do
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  something naughty. Yeah.
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  Yeah, from outside, Beautiful. Inside, it's absolutely
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  stunning. Yeah, totally.
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  Well, there's still time, you know, and I think that's what
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  appealed to me about this place in the in the beginning is it's
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  like this is looks like every creative place I've ever had,
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  you know? Oh really?
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  This is what your brain looks like.
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  This is what my brain looks like.
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  Only only like micro smaller than this.
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  But yeah, it's got, it's got the antique furniture.
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  It's got, it's a garage. Yeah.
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  You know. Oh.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's unexpected, I will tell you
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  that. So that maybe that does resemble
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  your brain micro and unexpected. It's the only thing micro cool,
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  man. I I'm excited to talk to you,
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  man. I've known you for years, been
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  an admirer of your work, your transition from agency and
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  creative work now into product. And we're going to talk about
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  apprentice. But I kind of wanted to start
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  with something else, something that I've been thinking about.
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  So I've got a new respect and admiration for Mike D and I'm
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  talking about Beastie Boys here, OK?
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  Fun fact, his brother was Screech.
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  Are you serious? Yeah, what was Screech's real
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  name? But whatever Screech from Saved
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  by the Bell is. His name was Adam Diamond
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  Diamond. He's Paul Diamond.
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  Dustin Diamond. Dustin Diamond.
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  Dustin Diamond and Mike Diamond are brothers.
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  Crazy. I know, right?
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  Screeching Rest in peace, yeah. So, so anyway, to my to my
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  estimation, Mike D only had a handful of really good raps, you
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  know, he said. He said I might get respect.
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  I get respect. The cash in your jewelry is what
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  I accept and then MCA comes dropping in totally.
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  And MCA, you know, fantastic ad rock fantastic.
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  But I was always like Mike DS kind of the weak chain.
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  But I've been going back into the catalog of the Beastie Boys
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  very deep because, you know, I, I would say licensed to I'll.
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  I think I was in fifth grade when that dropped.
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  Life changing as a fifth grade completely.
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  Yeah. Completely unbelievable.
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  I think Fresh Prince came out with his first one that year
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  too. Anyway.
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  So as a fan all the way, I would say until like I'll
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  communications know every rhyme just front to back.
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  And then they had hello nasty. That's kind of like I just kind
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  of drifted. Yeah, but what I found as I've
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  gone back to the catalog is they have all these deep cuts of like
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  B sides and instrumentals. Yeah.
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  Oh yeah. Like amazing instrumentals and I
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  knew they they'd always put those on the records, especially
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  in like check your head and beyond, but it never really
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  connected that it's like MCA plays bass, add rocks on guitar
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  and Mike these plays drums. I don't think I knew that
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  either. Yeah, I don't even think I knew
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  that they had instruments, to be honest.
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  I thought they were purely sampled.
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  No, so all those like instrumental cuts, that's them.
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  And then they have money Mark, who plays keys and then
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  different DJs that do cuts and stuff.
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  So I was listening to it and I was just imagining them play it.
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  And I think it was because like Sabotage came on and I was like,
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  Oh yeah, like Mike DS playing guitar, you know, or not, not
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  Mike D, but Add Rocks playing guitar and singing Sabotage.
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  And then I was listening. I was like, dude, YD is a nasty
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  drummer. Is he?
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  Yes. I don't know.
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  It's never even occurred to me. I'll go back and listen now.
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  It's incredible. So it's like it's kind of those
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  like DC Gogo beats and like really playing like hip hop
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  beats with like rock drum kit. It's not easy.
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  Yeah, that's pretty cool. It makes sense though, because
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  that gave him a lot more options, right?
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  Because back then they had to sample other music typically
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  like disco, the break beat, right, which is where break
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  dancing came from. So they were sampling those
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  break beats and then trying to flip them and do all kinds of
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  things. I bet Rick Rubin was probably
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  having a field day with that because I believe he produced
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  them on Def Jam there and and I bet he had a lot to work with
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  there because if you can do instruments and sample back
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  then, totally. Yeah, that's pretty cool.
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  I didn't know. Totally, Yeah.
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  And I mean, Paul's Boutique might be the the most exquisite
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  sample based album of all time. I mean, it's ridiculous to
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  listen to now of like how many samples.
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  And this was really when they were just like cutting in vinyl,
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  you know, and cutting tape it like they didn't have like, I
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  don't think MPC was out yet, you know?
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  So they're like literally sampling in real time. 4 tracks?
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  Sure there's 4 tracks. To be able to record the samples
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  and then put together the the song, yeah, it's pretty awesome.
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  It's so cool, you know? I mean, I don't know, I've been
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  feeling nostalgic because I grew up with the Beastie Boys.
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  And when Check Your Head came out, that was like, you know, it
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  was probably like a junior in high school and they had like
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  changed. They were like into kind of like
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  skate culture. And then they brought some of
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  the punk out and and it was just like, dude, this is so good.
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  So. And I just feel like suddenly
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  I'd always been disrespecting like Mike D always coming in
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  with, always announcing his name with his raps.
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  Yeah, his tags, he was early on the tags, yeah.
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  Totally, he was early, but now I really admire his drumming.
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  So yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, go check
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  out Mike DS drumming on some of those later B side albums.
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  I will. Thank you for letting me get.
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  That out? Yeah.
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  OK, good. I'm glad you got it.
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  So let's let's lead in with the introduction of apprentice.
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  But what I'm really interested in this conversation too is this
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  transition, because I remember when you were working it and you
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  really worked hard for traction and now you've got product
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  market fit and you're just absolutely flying.
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  And a really important part of the the story too that I think
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  people will will take away is you kind of taught yourself to
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  code in the process. Yeah.
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  So how do you want to dive into this?
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  Yeah, well, I think maybe what would be pretty interesting for
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  other founders is, you know, when you're a self didact
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  somebody who wants to teach yourself things and you're
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  willing to basically say, like here's the skill I need in order
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  to improve my business and you just go build, you go learn it
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  and do it. I think a good entrepreneur has
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  at least enough self-awareness to recognize that you lack in
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  some areas that your business needs and then you have enough
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  agency to go and figure out what it is you need to go build.
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  I have been doing service businesses for so long.
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  I had some good successes, fortunately.
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  God bless on that. But I also wanted to try to
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  build a business that was product and I had never done it.
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  And as an Indian, I was like, well, obviously it's going to be
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  B to B sass, like that's obviously what I'm going to do
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  or doctored. But it was one of the two,
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  right? Either be be a doctor, doctor or
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  engineer. So I was like, I'll be an
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  engineer. That'll make my that'll at least
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  my parents will know what I do because up until then they're
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  like, I don't know. What is this?
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  Yeah. So when COVID hit, you know, we
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  all kind of took on projects, if you will, and I thought this was
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  a pretty good time for me to learn how to code and the way to
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  learn to code. At that time, visual programming
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  started to really hit. We didn't have vibe coding but.
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  It was like no code stuff. Or it was called No code, but it
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  definitely wasn't no code. It it was it it was a good user
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  interface that allowed you to drop elements into pages, but
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  you still had to learn how they work together.
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  You had to create database structures.
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  You had to do a lot of things. So bashing.
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  Yeah. And so I decided to teach myself
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  on a platform called Bubble, and I hired a guy who was a
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  programmer by trade. That was what he did.
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  And he moved over to Bubble and he's out of Switzerland.
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  And I hired him to apprentice under him.
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  And I figured if I can learn from somebody who's truly
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  skilled in this, I'll at least pick up some skill.
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  Worst case, best case, I might actually turn something out that
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  is worthwhile. And so the way I learned was to
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  build a project and the project was to make the apprenticeships
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  I was running in my marketing agency to make those just easier
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  to operate. It was really hard to run them.
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  And so I knew that was the project.
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  And so going through this process of apprenticing, I built
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  a platform that could operate apprenticeships a lot easier.
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  And it, as I built it, I was realizing I, I'm pretty sure
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  this could go, I could at least take this to market.
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  I didn't do it the right way, which is I didn't build an
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  audience and figure out what they need first.
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  I knew what I needed. I think there's some argument to
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  be said where if you know you have an itch to scratch and it's
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  something that you operate, you know you can go after, and
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  that's what I did. From there, though, it was hard
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  to figure out where my market would be for sure.
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  But unfortunately that that has now come over the last about two
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  years. Yeah, yeah, it's well.
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  And plus you had this, you were doing something very novel,
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  which was using apprenticeships in like really efficient ways,
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  you know, And what I always admire too is that like the the
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  apprentices were working at a very high level because you
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  actually really did develop them.
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  But it really came from like a sense of service that you were
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  helping folks that were maybe not traditionally accustomed to
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  marketing agency life. You're pulling people from kind
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  of outside the box, but like, hey, you can do this.
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  Here's an opportunity. Let me show you how to do it.
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  And you were very early in that. Like when I think about
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  apprenticeships, I really think about Europe.
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  You know, Europe does it really well.
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  But in America, you, we don't really have that process unless
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  you're like a tattooist, you know, or, or, or like some other
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  kind of trade. Trades.
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  Yeah, construction trades. Yeah, for sure.
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  So before we keep going, I'm, I'm really interested about this
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  switch to you. You mentioned agency and I kind
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  of, I heard somebody was describing what agency really is
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  and they said it's a irrational confidence.
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  That's entrepreneurship. Isn't it?
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  It is at some point you're like, look man, I can do it.
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  If somebody can do it, I can do it.
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  I know it's going to be hard. It's really smart to go find
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  someone senior and like you know, apprentice under them.
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  I suppose it's kind of like your your model in itself.
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  Did you start directly diving into the apprenticeship project
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  or did you do anything like on the side to kind of get used to
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  the tools? Well, I was running
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  apprenticeships in my own company for years and I did
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  purchase tools to help me with it.
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  Who are now they're competitors to some degree.
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  They don't offer the full suite that we do, but from a a portion
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  of what we do, they, they actually are competitors, but I
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  actually purchased them first. In fact, if you go to the
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  compare page on my website, one of them, I straight up wrote a
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  letter and it's like I got receipts.
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  I've purchased this competitor. They sucked ass to the level
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  that I had to build my own shit. That's how bad it was.
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  So it was really difficult to run an apprenticeship as an
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  operator. And apprenticeships are are
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  notoriously complex and burdensome.
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  That's why we don't have that many in the United States right
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  now. We have 700,000 roughly
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  registered apprentices in the United States, which represents
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  0.4% of the workplace. That's basically nothing.
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  And by the way, that's propped up by billions and billions of
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  dollars from the federal government, without which we
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  probably wouldn't have almost any.
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  So when you think about the complexities of apprenticeships,
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  there are many. The tools that were out on the
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  market were trying to automate things or not even automate
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  trying to report on whether this person has progressed to this
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  level of their learning and whatnot.
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  They were very learner focused, which is good.
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  The intention is you're trying to get people educated and train
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  them up, But you also have to make this work for the business.
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  Otherwise why does anyone care? Yeah.
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  And that's where everyone fell down.
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  The entire ecosystem of apprenticeships is basically a
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  worker protection agency. Apprenticeships are voluntary
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  for companies to say, I volunteer to say monitor my
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  training, monitor my safety and monitor the how much I'm paying
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  these guys. And if you, if I volunteer into
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  the system, I can get like a little bit of government grant
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  money. So that voluntary system isn't
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  that compelling, right? You're saying like monitor me
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  for being a good employer there. It's very employee focused in
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  order for this to scale. Truly the product market fit
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  isn't on whether this works for employees.
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  The product market fit on apprenticeships nationally is
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  whether this works for businesses.
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  And we have a massive problem around that right now which I'm
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  working on solving. Amazing.
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  So when I'm thinking about it, and I'm glad we're talking about
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  this because I don't really know the logistics of it and I don't
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  know about the grant portion. I know apprentice has a very
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  specific market that is compelled for financial reasons
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  that they have to comply, which is amazing.
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  But if I'm thinking about it and kind of your description of the
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  landscape before you really entered, it sounds like the
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  ideal apprenticeship might be kind of like the NFL draft where
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  like you, your your teams, you all have a a lottery for who
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  gets a draft picked. And then what you can do is, you
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  know, those top 10 or whatever, whatever round it is that you're
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  able to pick up like a young guy, you know, who proved
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  himself in college, But you get them for cheap.
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  You know, free agency is expensive.
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  You know, Von Miller signing one year, $50 million deals at this
• 16:49
  point. But you can get like a young guy
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  quarterback and it's like we, we paid them 8 million, we got them
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  for four years or whatever the extension is.
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  So it's beneficial to have a good draft pick if you're the
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  ownership, because you can get really good guys for cheap.
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  Now the problem is, is that you're going to wash through a
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  lot of guys in order to get, you know, a real gem, somebody who's
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  going to have like a 10 year career, things like that.
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  So is it similar with like apprenticeships where you're
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  like, OK, it's a great value for the employer if they can really
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  develop that like guy who becomes a.
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  Starter. Not right now, yeah.
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  No, I think, I think the math around that is propped up by the
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  government. The math around it, the
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  government will say for every dollar invested in a in an
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  apprentice, it's, I forget the stat, but it's something like
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  $1.57 is returned to the company.
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  That means specifically on those who complete.
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  So to your point, that's survivor bias.
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  Sure. Over 50% don't complete right.
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  Why is that? Many reasons, but primarily they
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  don't want to do the work. Yeah.
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  Most of the apprenticeships are in the trades.
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  Yeah, and the trades are tough. Yeah.
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  Straight up, so they don't complete because that's it's a
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  hard work, Yeah. So the numbers by the government
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  are propped up to make the case that they should receive more
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  funding. OK, so we're kind of diving into
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  how bureaucracy works. Yeah, you mean it grows
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  exponentially and never wants to go down?
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  Correct. So it doesn't work on that
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  level. Where it does work is we have
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  for the first time in American history, we have a law at a
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  federal level that mandates the use of apprentices on certain
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  types of construction projects, specifically renewable energy
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  projects. If you're building a solar farm,
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  data center solar farm, for example, which is all day long
• 18:39
  right now. Dude, data centers all day long,
• 18:41
  yeah. So if you're building solar for
• 18:43
  that and you're building battery storage for that, by law, if
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  it's over one MW, which is every one of them, they can get tax
• 18:50
  credits that whoever invested in it, 5X the tax credits that they
• 18:55
  normally would. They can get 30% of their cost
• 18:56
  of goods sold as tax credits if they pay a certain wage, it's
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  called prevailing wage. And if they build it with 15% of
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  the total hours being done by apprentices.
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  So this law basically said you have to use apprentices.
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  If the investor of this project wants these tax credits, the
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  investor wants those tax credits, you bet.
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  So what they're doing is they're saying, OK, we're going to
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  securitize the tax credits. We're going to put auditors to
• 19:23
  make sure that everyone complies with this law so that I can sell
• 19:27
  the tax credits on a market, kind of like carbon, carbon tax
• 19:29
  credits. So this is a, they package the
• 19:32
  tax credits up. If you're an investor on a
• 19:34
  project of a solar farm, it's usually like 4 guys in an
• 19:37
  office. They're the people that develop
• 19:40
  the project. Often times they don't have a
• 19:42
  cost of goods sold that they can offset the this tax credit.
• 19:46
  So they sell the tax credit as revenue.
• 19:48
  Interesting. So they, they make money on the
• 19:50
  tax credits, which there's a marketplace for this.
• 19:53
  It's not even like great. There's full on marketplaces for
• 19:55
  the tax credits but then traded. Like a commodity or something?
• 19:58
  Correct. Really.
• 19:59
  Yeah. Yeah, interesting.
• 20:00
  When it's securitized, that means like it's a security just
• 20:03
  like a stock or right, it's a security.
• 20:04
  So it's traded. So who's left to meet the
• 20:08
  requirements are all the construction contractors.
• 20:11
  They're not getting a bite of the tax credits, but they get
• 20:14
  the projects. So they have to deliver on these
• 20:16
  apprentices in order to to get these projects, though, they
• 20:20
  have to have a program. And because these trades are not
• 20:23
  used to having apprenticeships and they're non union, 90% of
• 20:27
  all contractors in the United States are non union.
• 20:29
  Depends. There's two surveys, but 85 to
• 20:31
  90%, they don't want to use unionized labor to meet these
• 20:35
  apprenticeship requirements. So what are they going to do?
• 20:38
  We're literally the only game in town right now now.
• 20:41
  So I mean, maybe that'll change, right?
• 20:43
  But right now that's this is the option.
• 20:46
  As a result, they are winning very lucrative business.
• 20:51
  So the business case isn't on training someone who's going to
• 20:55
  be productive. Maybe they finish, maybe they
• 20:59
  don't, maybe they're productive. Heck, there's people that are
• 21:01
  registered as apprentices who are already productive.
• 21:04
  So why did you need to? They've already been trained up.
• 21:07
  So the side of this equation isn't productivity.
• 21:12
  The side of this equation is revenue.
• 21:14
  Yeah. So it's a if there's a body in
• 21:15
  that position, then they could get the tax credit.
• 21:18
  If, if the contractor can deliver 15% of their scope of
• 21:23
  work through apprentices, they can.
• 21:27
  They're the they get to win that project.
• 21:29
  They bid on projects and say yes, we have a program that will
• 21:31
  do this. Interesting.
• 21:32
  So is this these are not government projects or are they?
• 21:37
  They're all. They're not government projects.
• 21:39
  They're they're they're they're looking for tax credits, which
• 21:43
  the government will issue once the project is done if it met
• 21:46
  all these requirements. Interesting.
• 21:48
  OK. And then what is the incentive
• 21:52
  for the federal government to to give out these tax credits for
• 21:55
  like what? What is their interest in
• 21:57
  apprenticeship programs? So this is the first time, like
• 22:00
  I said, that this is the first time in American history where
• 22:03
  we've got a bill that mandates the use of apprentices.
• 22:07
  What we have had is a requirement to pay what's called
• 22:11
  prevailing wage. Prevailing wage.
• 22:12
  Think of it like if you surveyed all these different counties all
• 22:16
  over the country and you said, hey, what do you guys pay for a
• 22:19
  craft laborer? What do you pay for an equipment
• 22:21
  operator? What do you pay for an
• 22:21
  electrician? And you surveyed this all over
• 22:24
  the country and you kept serving and kept serving and kept
• 22:27
  serving. You'd have a database full of
• 22:28
  what does somebody of this occupation cost?
• 22:31
  This is known as prevailing wage.
• 22:33
  And so we have this database as a country.
• 22:36
  And so there are projects historically that say you have
• 22:39
  to pay the prevailing wage of that county when you're using an
• 22:43
  equipment operator to build heavy industrial buildings, for
• 22:47
  example. Interesting.
• 22:48
  What I I wonder why the market just wouldn't dictate that is
• 22:51
  that to protect people that are vulnerable, that would be like,
• 22:54
  hey, they're just getting John over there.
• 22:56
  He'll do it for 10 bucks an hour.
• 22:57
  But we know. It's even it's even the
• 23:00
  opposite. Prevailing wage is often lower
• 23:03
  than what guys are actually paying, I'm sure.
• 23:05
  So why would we do this? One word, unions.
• 23:08
  Yeah. Who are they surveying?
• 23:11
  They're asking the unions. What do you pay your guys?
• 23:14
  So the private companies more often than not are paying more
• 23:16
  than the unions. But it's not marketed that way.
• 23:19
  The unions market that we pay more.
• 23:21
  Yeah. Now I'm not anti union, but I do
• 23:24
  work for non union so I can talk very openly about what I see out
• 23:29
  there without feeling like I'm biting a hand that feeds me the
• 23:33
  the hand that feeds me. 100% of my business is bootstrapped,
• 23:36
  100% is funded by customers. I have no government loans, I
• 23:39
  have no government grants, but I work inside of a government
• 23:42
  system that is, that is almost entirely funded by the
• 23:45
  government money. Unbelievable.
• 23:47
  So interesting now. And we also happen happen to
• 23:50
  have a government system now that changes radically daily,
• 23:53
  you know, So what was with this particular like entitlement?
• 23:58
  What was Elon and Doge's response to like this
• 24:01
  apprenticeship program, the federal government, were they
• 24:03
  looking to slash or what were they?
• 24:05
  Well. So let me string this back.
• 24:08
  We have historically the ability, the OR the requirement
• 24:11
  to pay prevailing wages. The this Inflation Reduction Act
• 24:14
  added the requirement to also build with apprentices.
• 24:18
  That's the part that's new. So how do people react to this?
• 24:23
  Well, the Inflation Reduction Act was basically a rebrand
• 24:25
  during the Biden administration of the green, I forget Green New
• 24:29
  Deal or whatever it was called. Sure.
• 24:32
  And. So.
• 24:33
  You have those who are saying, look, we don't need to do green
• 24:36
  energy, we don't need to do clean energy.
• 24:38
  And then you have those that say we do.
• 24:40
  Wherever you stand in the debate doesn't really matter.
• 24:41
  The fact is, like we have private companies that are
• 24:46
  building solar out the ass, and they're building it because they
• 24:49
  need energy to power their data centers.
• 24:51
  So whatever you think of it, the market is saying we're building
• 24:55
  it. Yeah, I mean, they're talking
• 24:57
  about doing data. Centers in space now like
• 24:59
  there's the. The need for power.
• 25:02
  In data centers is so vast. I mean, Elon said right?
• 25:05
  Like. That's the currency of the
• 25:06
  future. You might be right on that.
• 25:08
  So what do they think about this?
• 25:10
  Well, I mean, Elon's come out and said pretty clearly, like,
• 25:14
  let's get rid of all subsidies, even for Tesla for, you know,
• 25:18
  all of the he's like, we can compete on the open market.
• 25:20
  So that would insinuate let's get rid of the tax credits.
• 25:24
  And I think the the Trump administration too, has changed
• 25:28
  the rules on the Inflation Reduction Act.
• 25:29
  Where before the tax credits were gonna be through 2032, the
• 25:32
  end of 2032, now there's new rules that sunset it by the end
• 25:35
  of 2027 that has to be placed in service by then or beginning
• 25:39
  construction had to be the end of 2025.
• 25:41
  So there's like, he shortened it by about five years but kept
• 25:44
  batteries alive. But solar he reduced, wind he's
• 25:47
  reduced. And so from a business
• 25:50
  standpoint, I don't look. This is just the way the winds
• 25:53
  blow. Like you gotta maneuver it.
• 25:54
  I don't care whether I agree with that politically or not,
• 25:56
  makes no difference. It's like the question is, how
• 25:58
  do I keep making money off of it?
• 25:59
  Where's the opportunity, right? And so the opportunity.
• 26:01
  Is solar farms. People that are building solar
• 26:03
  farms are re categorizing themselves as battery storage
• 26:07
  and the battery storage is still extended to 2032.
• 26:10
  I love it. Yeah.
• 26:12
  I love it, you know, and it's it's fascinating to see like,
• 26:15
  you know, any time there's new legislation at all, then there's
• 26:18
  always like these like markets that spring up around it, you
• 26:22
  know, and it's very hard to get rid of them.
• 26:26
  Thank God, you know, because, because there is all this
• 26:29
  infrastructure that has lobbying power that like then is reliant
• 26:31
  on that. So like my favorite one is
• 26:33
  there's like tax credits you can get as that are pretty
• 26:37
  significant as an alpaca farmer. Yeah, I've heard about this
• 26:40
  like. Alpacas are like.
• 26:42
  Those, I don't know what it's like a camel or something.
• 26:44
  Yeah, but there's like AG, AG. Credits, basically all kinds of
• 26:47
  AG credits, yeah. And they're they're fairly.
• 26:49
  Domesticated, so you could probably get a half a dozen
• 26:51
  alpacas and get like a substantial tax credit.
• 26:54
  And that's because in World War One, they needed the wool to
• 26:58
  basically make the uniforms for the guys.
• 27:00
  So they're like, Oh my gosh, we need, we need more alpaca
• 27:03
  farmers. So here this, they put it on the
• 27:05
  books and it exists to this day, you know, so I love running into
• 27:09
  old guys and they, they talk about, you know, their, their
• 27:12
  summer home and they, they mention alpacas.
• 27:14
  This happened a half dozen times.
• 27:15
  I'm like, oh man, I'm not. I would wonder how much, how
• 27:20
  much is being claimed for that. But when you look at clean
• 27:23
  energy and the tax credits being claimed for that, the projects
• 27:26
  themselves are billion dollar, multi billions of dollars a
• 27:29
  project. So the credits are in the
• 27:30
  billions. And that's why it's got it's got
• 27:34
  the awareness of the president and the administration.
• 27:37
  And I think they don't want to encourage so much building
• 27:42
  around solar through tax credits.
• 27:46
  They're effectively say, hey, if the market wants it, go build
• 27:48
  it. Yeah, so we'll see.
• 27:51
  The market does want it, but they want the tax.
• 27:53
  Credits too. 100% you know and. The problem is it's just the
• 27:57
  instability has got to be a little bit gut wrenching because
• 28:00
  you know, with, with the, the, the Elon's whole doge thing and
• 28:04
  it's like, OK, cool. Obviously in this country we
• 28:06
  have a, a problem with spending and the, and the deficit.
• 28:09
  It's like, let's address that. Finally.
• 28:11
  There is so much abuse and corruption and like fraud and
• 28:15
  neglect and like all that. Let's clean that up.
• 28:17
  So there's like a step in that direction.
• 28:20
  And then almost immediately after that it, there's the big
• 28:22
  beautiful bill that's 2 trillion more dollars in spending.
• 28:25
  So you're getting like this, like, you know, this kind of
• 28:28
  thing, you know where it's like, well, where do you stand?
• 28:30
  Well, honestly, there really is no position there.
• 28:34
  It's just kind of, however, you know, he's feeling that day.
• 28:38
  Yeah, you know, Yeah. Well, I think as a business
• 28:40
  owner. It's our job to figure out how
• 28:42
  to make those moves. Like that's the game we're
• 28:44
  playing. We're not playing a game where
• 28:46
  we're stationary. We signed up for a you throw
• 28:49
  everything at me and I'm coming too.
• 28:51
  And so when it comes to bureaucracy, the apprenticeship,
• 28:54
  the national apprenticeship system is riddled with
• 28:57
  bureaucracy. It is one of the most
• 28:59
  bureaucratic systems, similar to what Doge did.
• 29:03
  I did something too. The Doge used something from the
• 29:07
  Obama administration I believe and rebranded it.
• 29:09
  I forget what the the the department was called, but they
• 29:12
  basically rebranded an existing department so they could already
• 29:16
  have all the infrastructure and laws that they needed to do the
• 29:19
  work that they did. They didn't stand up doge brand
• 29:22
  new because they would need congressional support for that
• 29:24
  totally, so they rebranded something that already had
• 29:27
  passed. Similarly in the bureaucratic
• 29:30
  apprenticeship system, I've studied the laws by state.
• 29:34
  It's a state by state system and it's a federal system like
• 29:36
  taxes. I've figured out different legal
• 29:40
  frameworks to utilize in ways that aren't necessarily intended
• 29:45
  that way, but they aren't explicitly not allowed either.
• 29:48
  And so it's not Gray. The law is pretty specific.
• 29:51
  If you if the law says you can't do something, you can't do it.
• 29:54
  But if it doesn't say you can't do something, Now we're talking
• 29:57
  about interpretation. And so I utilize similar things
• 30:01
  that Doge did to cut bureaucracy.
• 30:03
  That piece is important to get apprenticeships to scale.
• 30:06
  If you don't cut the bureaucracy, companies don't
• 30:09
  want to do it 100%. So, you know, if Elon's up there
• 30:14
  and just bragging with the chainsaw of all the slashes he's
• 30:17
  making, obviously you, you have to have pause and you know, the,
• 30:21
  the, the space very well. What is kind of the Moat that is
• 30:24
  there that, or why did Elon not slash that program like you?
• 30:28
  Because we are talking about billions of dollars of
• 30:31
  subsidies. But then that means that it has
• 30:33
  to have some kind of return. Otherwise might It might have
• 30:35
  been on the chopping block. I think Doge didn't.
• 30:40
  Go after the national apprenticeship system because
• 30:43
  there's not direct fraud and abuse.
• 30:47
  What you have is incompetence and you have layers of legal
• 30:53
  frameworks that intersect, specifically licensing, let's
• 30:58
  say of an apprentice, an electrician apprentice in Texas
• 31:01
  who wants to go work in Louisiana.
• 31:03
  He or she can't just go. They have to have licensing to
• 31:06
  do that. And so while The Apprentice
• 31:08
  should be able to go, the unlicensed or licensed
• 31:11
  apprentice can't go. So you've got these complex
• 31:13
  systems. I think one of the reasons that
• 31:15
  it wasn't there is they didn't slash it because there wasn't
• 31:17
  necessarily abuse and spend. What there is is a lot of money
• 31:21
  going out to nonprofits and intermediaries in this space who
• 31:25
  are just shitty at what they do. Point blank, they stand up, they
• 31:28
  use that money and they say we're gonna hire 20 people
• 31:32
  instead of I'm going to use this technology.
• 31:34
  I'm, I got two guys to do this work.
• 31:37
  Well, from a government standpoint, they want to see,
• 31:38
  oh, 20 people will be employed through the, through the money
• 31:41
  that we're pushing out. Very Keynesian economics.
• 31:44
  But that's not what a good business would do.
• 31:46
  A good business would say, how do I do this with the least
• 31:48
  amount of employees? Yeah, exactly so.
• 31:51
  So that is a a good metric though, because then they can
• 31:54
  show growth. They can.
• 31:55
  I mean, that's very important to presidential elections,
• 31:58
  especially correct, where it's like, hey.
• 32:00
  There's. 30,000 new jobs, you know, it's not that there was 3,
• 32:03
  but like they're doing 10X, right?
• 32:05
  There's no like, hey there. Was 30,000 jobs that we did with
• 32:07
  4000, right? Yeah.
• 32:10
  But that would be better. Business that would be better
• 32:12
  for business. Owners that perked my ear, but
• 32:15
  everybody else was like, wait, that just required me to do math
• 32:18
  like what are we doing now? Fascinating.
• 32:21
  Let's talk about inventory. Just you know, you were talking
• 32:24
  about wages and you know, I know how much some of these guys like
• 32:27
  the the what are they the the line guys, electrical line guys,
• 32:30
  those guys are doing quarter mil a year, you know, working
• 32:33
  probably 2025 hours traveling around, you know, doing winters
• 32:38
  in Mexico, having a great time like and largely it's because
• 32:41
  this kind of skilled labor is actually really hard to come by.
• 32:45
  So what are you seeing kind of like maybe the new guys coming
• 32:49
  up Gen. Z folks and like is there is
• 32:52
  there enough inventory for people to even satisfy the
• 32:54
  requirements they need for all these, these internships?
• 32:58
  Well, when? It comes to electricians, our
• 33:00
  company, our country. Let me restate that When it
• 33:02
  comes to electricians, our country is in dire need.
• 33:05
  We have over a million open positions now and it's only
• 33:09
  going to grow. We are seeing the licensed
• 33:12
  electricians are retiring and there are not enough people
• 33:16
  going in and completing their apprenticeships.
• 33:21
  So if you are currently a licensed electrician, I know
• 33:24
  guys that I work with them literally all day every day.
• 33:26
  They are getting licensed in 30-40 states.
• 33:30
  They are going everywhere because the demand is so high.
• 33:34
  And when you have these projects where there's any type of state
• 33:37
  or federal funding, an apprentice has to work under a
• 33:40
  licensed journeyman, a licensed electrician for example, or a
• 33:43
  master electrician who has the license.
• 33:46
  Almost no one right now. I mean, not no one, but there's
• 33:49
  such a need for people that are licensed electricians.
• 33:54
  They're just getting advanced in their.
• 33:55
  Career without the license, Is that what's happening?
• 33:57
  Oh, no, there there's. There are those who have
• 33:58
  licensed, we just don't have enough.
• 33:59
  We haven't brought them in. So, so the supply is dwindling.
• 34:02
  The ones that are where they are retiring, they're older and
• 34:06
  there's just not enough people going into it.
• 34:08
  But it is incredibly high paying.
• 34:10
  It's great work and kind of in the trades, a little bit funny.
• 34:13
  Like most trades, people make fun of electricians, you know,
• 34:16
  like they get dirt under their fingernails and electricians got
• 34:18
  clean hands like me and you, you know, So they kind of make fun
• 34:21
  of them. But they bank.
• 34:22
  Yeah, they do bank. It's interesting, and I've been
• 34:25
  having this conversation more and more because my son's 17
• 34:28
  and, you know, we're talking about options now.
• 34:30
  He's a good football player, so probably, he could definitely
• 34:33
  play like D2. He's a great football player.
• 34:36
  So. But he's just kind of done with
• 34:38
  school, you know, And he's like, Dad, I don't want to be like
• 34:41
  you. I don't want to be behind a desk
• 34:42
  all day. I'm like, yeah, I get it.
• 34:44
  I feel that. I think I had a stretch for 48
• 34:48
  hours where I didn't go outside last night.
• 34:50
  I went outside and was just like, breathe some fresh air for
• 34:53
  a minute. Well, if he's interested in.
• 34:54
  In electrician, I mean, there are, there's no shortage of
• 34:58
  jobs. Yeah, yeah.
• 35:00
  And so that's. What we're talking about, it's
• 35:01
  kind of it's kind of trades opportunities and what's the
• 35:04
  difference? Yeah, what's the difference in
• 35:06
  like which kind of trades and like what's you know, what's
• 35:11
  paying the best, what has the best upward mobility?
• 35:13
  It sounds like electrician would be electricians.
• 35:15
  Definitely it's. The way, yeah.
• 35:16
  And I would say if he could be an astronaut, that's just going
• 35:18
  to be hot. Yeah, no kidding.
• 35:21
  Think about it like at some. Point.
• 35:23
  You're going to need an electrician in space.
• 35:24
  Yeah, somebody's going to have to build those things.
• 35:27
  So like, who's putting the solar panels on the satellites?
• 35:30
  Yeah, it's almost like not Goggins.
• 35:34
  It's almost going to be some kind of like new kind of cowboy
• 35:36
  that's like wrangling like satellites.
• 35:40
  You know you got it's. Going to be an incredibly
• 35:42
  specialized skill. So if I were in your shoes, I
• 35:47
  would do what you're doing, which is looking at the highest
• 35:49
  paying occupations. But also where is this going?
• 35:53
  Because a lot of the guys that are going into trades don't have
• 35:56
  that guidance. They haven't got the father or
• 35:58
  the mother that's going to provide that guidance to them.
• 36:00
  So they're ending up in positions that may not be as
• 36:03
  thought out. It's fine for them.
• 36:05
  I'm not saying it's not, but I'm saying if you're putting your
• 36:08
  mind on top of this, like you see where things are going,
• 36:11
  yeah, electrician makes a ton of sense.
• 36:13
  Totally. And there's always.
• 36:14
  Going to be a hierarchy in a company like that because it's,
• 36:17
  you know, as a dad, you think about electricity and data
• 36:20
  centers. It's like, bro, you don't want
• 36:22
  to be there when they throw that switch on.
• 36:24
  Let somebody else do that. Well, an electrician is.
• 36:27
  High voltage, so they, you know, there's resi electrician, but
• 36:30
  there's commercial electrician and commercial is where the high
• 36:32
  voltage work is. That's where you want to be.
• 36:35
  Yeah, yeah, because that is such a specialized craft that's who's
• 36:39
  getting paid, not resi electricians as much.
• 36:41
  It's just scary when. The juice goes on, it's not
• 36:45
  when. You know what you're doing,
• 36:46
  Yeah. Yeah, right.
• 36:47
  I mean, I I actually. Had a conversation with my 10
• 36:49
  year old son this morning and, and I said to him, we're talking
• 36:53
  about scuba diving. I'm a master diver.
• 36:55
  And so he was, we're talking about diving and, and he said,
• 36:58
  well, is, do you worry about dying?
• 36:59
  You know, if you don't do the, the calculations correctly about
• 37:03
  how much oxygen you have in the, the, the depth charts that you
• 37:06
  have to calculate, you know, your safety stops, etcetera.
• 37:08
  I said, no, if somebody said to you, I'm going to ask you a
• 37:11
  question and you're going to die if you get this wrong and they
• 37:14
  say, what's 1 + 1 with confidence, you'd say too, you
• 37:16
  wouldn't be worried about dying, even though that's the
• 37:18
  consequence of getting it wrong. It's math is like that.
• 37:21
  And so when you learn something where you understand it, you get
• 37:24
  it. And an apprenticeship, we'll
• 37:25
  teach you that you're not worried about it hurting you.
• 37:29
  You're with confidence, walking and saying like, I know how this
• 37:31
  works, I got it, we're good. I got it.
• 37:33
  We're good. I appreciate that, you know, but
• 37:37
  the other thing is too that, and I like that we're talking about
• 37:39
  our kids because, you know, there's also this perception
• 37:42
  like, Oh, I could just go do the trades and I what I, what I'm
• 37:44
  telling him is I was like, dude, it's not like that's an easier
• 37:46
  job. It's not like you don't have to
• 37:48
  study. It's like you're going to have
• 37:50
  to be on top of it. So for sure, yeah, you're not
• 37:54
  getting around. Studying, homie.
• 37:56
  No, exactly. That's not.
• 37:57
  This is just a matter of like, what lifestyle do you want when
• 38:00
  you're working Exactly. Yeah, you're definitely.
• 38:02
  Going to have to. Learn.
• 38:03
  You're going to have to learn. You're going.
• 38:04
  To have to go to school as like, you know, if, if you want to
• 38:07
  work in construction, I would study construction management.
• 38:10
  And I always point because we moved down to Sterling Ranch and
• 38:13
  they're building homes just like it seems like every single day
• 38:16
  they're putting these homes down there.
• 38:17
  And so like it'd be like Sunday at 5:00, we're watching the
• 38:20
  game. And I just point out the window.
• 38:21
  I'm like, see those guys? I was like, those guys didn't go
• 38:24
  study construction management. So they're working on Sundays.
• 38:26
  I was like, so you know, there's a perception that it's easier.
• 38:30
  I was like, bro, wait, no, I would it's.
• 38:32
  Definitely not. Definitely not.
• 38:34
  I mean, why, why did we not do construction?
• 38:37
  Because it's hard. Yeah, Yeah, it's.
• 38:39
  Hard and I did I did do construction was like oh man my
• 38:42
  knees are not agreeing with this.
• 38:44
  Let me learn to early. On Yeah.
• 38:46
  Exactly. OK, cool.
• 38:48
  Let's go go back to the the transition to you had because
• 38:50
  it's COVID, you're getting a new project.
• 38:53
  Yours was computer programming, mine was alcoholism.
• 38:58
  And and so you're working on a tool that's be helpful for you
• 39:01
  to manage apprenticeships. Now somewhere on there you start
• 39:04
  to you identify this opportunity in the market that doesn't
• 39:07
  exist. And so you pivot, you go all in
• 39:09
  on that. Like what was that moment like?
• 39:11
  And maybe walk us through how you started to then find your
• 39:14
  first customers. Yeah, so I built a.
• 39:16
  Platform without knowing who I was really solving the problem
• 39:19
  for, which is not what you're supposed to do, but I knew I was
• 39:21
  solving it for me as a business owner.
• 39:23
  Yeah. So my thesis was if I could find
• 39:26
  other business owners that wanted to do this but didn't
• 39:28
  want it to be so hard, they would buy this.
• 39:30
  It turned out to not be right. And then I moved into well,
• 39:34
  where's the money flowing from the government?
• 39:35
  They're funding billions of dollars.
• 39:37
  Who are they funding? Oh, they're funding colleges,
• 39:39
  universities, training centers, associations, intermediaries,
• 39:42
  basically all nonprofits who are supposed to convince companies
• 39:48
  to do these apprenticeships and they'll provide the education.
• 39:51
  So I was like, oh, I'll sell my platform to the education
• 39:54
  providers. Great.
• 39:56
  The education providers, I'm sorry, are some of the worst
• 39:58
  customers I've ever experienced and I have worked with, I owned
• 40:01
  a wealth management company, which I exited in 2015.
• 40:04
  I have worked with some of the highest net worth people on this
• 40:06
  planet, the the worst buyers. Are those who have not had to
• 40:12
  earn the money and go hustle it themselves.
• 40:14
  When you get grant money and that grant money gets handed to
• 40:16
  a program director, they don't know shit.
• 40:19
  So they don't know how to run apprenticeships.
• 40:20
  They don't know how to buy. They don't know how to solve
• 40:23
  problems because they haven't had the problem yet.
• 40:26
  They don't have the feedback. Either they don't have the
• 40:27
  feedback, they're not worried. About the bottom line.
• 40:29
  Like literally this needs to happen or I'm not or Christmas
• 40:32
  doesn't happen. Correct SO.
• 40:34
  I was selling and I had like, I still have colleges and
• 40:36
  universities on the platform. I'm not saying they're all
• 40:39
  shitty. I'm saying that they from a
• 40:41
  buying perspective, had never experienced the pain, have
• 40:45
  incredibly bureaucratic cycles for purchasing.
• 40:48
  So I had six months sales cycles.
• 40:50
  The the the spend, the average customer value was 3 to 5K
• 40:54
  annually. It was it was just it's a
• 40:56
  horrible business model. At the end of 2022, the
• 41:01
  Inflation Reduction Act was passing and some contractors
• 41:04
  started coming into my lead funnel saying, hey, we are going
• 41:08
  to need apprenticeships. We're thinking about like, how
• 41:10
  can this platform help us? But the questions they were
• 41:13
  asking were business questions. They weren't asking the
• 41:17
  questions that these these intermediaries and education
• 41:19
  providers were asking because they're all focused on how do we
• 41:21
  help somebody learn? These business people come in
• 41:24
  and saying how do we run this thing so that we can make money.
• 41:26
  We're trying to close these deals and I need these.
• 41:28
  People, right, And so the. Questions were like first of all
• 41:31
  things, I I wanted to work with business owners to begin with.
• 41:34
  That's where I started. I just had to pivot because I
• 41:36
  couldn't find them. All of a sudden here comes this
• 41:38
  law that's about to pass 2023. January is when it passed and
• 41:42
  these guys are coming and saying hey, what, how do we do this?
• 41:45
  So I started selling to some contractors here and there, but
• 41:48
  then I started, went back to the education providers and said
• 41:51
  there's a bunch of construction guys about to come on because of
• 41:54
  this bill. They're going to need your
• 41:56
  education. Use my platform to run this shit
• 41:59
  for them because they're not going to know how.
• 42:01
  I couldn't get one person, not one who already bought my shit,
• 42:05
  to say, yeah, we want to take on the compliance nightmare of all
• 42:08
  the bureaucracy that these contracts is going to have to go
• 42:10
  through. They just wanted to play safe
• 42:12
  and be education providers. They just want to teach.
• 42:15
  They don't want to do. And I said, well, fuck that
• 42:18
  thing, Yeah. How do I build this?
• 42:21
  Shit. So I went to, to looking around,
• 42:23
  I, I kind of knew how the infrastructure I built a program
• 42:26
  was called a sponsor. I registered as a sponsor in
• 42:29
  Texas. And then I got vetted over the
• 42:32
  course of a year for these things called National guideline
• 42:34
  standards. I built out occupation.
• 42:36
  I built all the things that these guys would need.
• 42:38
  So when they come in, my sales cycle is 7 days, bro Nice.
• 42:41
  My average customer value is 23 K Nice.
• 42:45
  Annual occurring revenue, right? So we're talking a night and day
• 42:48
  difference business wise. At the core, it's the same tech,
• 42:52
  but I had to then add pieces that were functionally for this
• 42:56
  group and I started moving away. So yeah, I've still got colleges
• 42:59
  and universities. They're looking at this new
• 43:01
  functionality. Like what do we do with that?
• 43:03
  They're probably not even looking, bro, honestly.
• 43:06
  So if they, if they, if they cancel today, I could care less.
• 43:10
  Honestly. It's not like I didn't care
• 43:12
  then. I was just trying to figure out
• 43:13
  how to make this little side project work and see what they
• 43:16
  wanted. And it turns out that their
• 43:18
  feedback just wasn't very valuable.
• 43:19
  Oh, they don't even have. Feedback.
• 43:22
  No, their their entire focus is purely on the learner.
• 43:25
  That thing dropped, by the way, so we're good, yeah.
• 43:28
  So their entire focus. Is on a learner, it is not on
• 43:30
  business. And why?
• 43:31
  Because they themselves aren't in the business of business,
• 43:34
  right. Interesting.
• 43:35
  OK. So did you see this legislation
• 43:38
  passes and goes into effect 2023, you start getting
• 43:41
  customers. Did you sniff that out?
• 43:44
  Did you know that was common? Like how did you kind of
• 43:46
  discover that? No, it was because the.
• 43:48
  Contractors were coming to me and you were like, wait, what is
• 43:50
  this? Exactly.
• 43:51
  Yeah, there's, there's very specifically.
• 43:53
  One group of, of guys who own they were like in their early
• 43:57
  20s and they came to me and they're like, hey, we're, we're
• 44:00
  gonna go into the solar thing and we gotta do this apprentice
• 44:03
  stuff. Can you, can you tell us?
• 44:05
  And they start asking questions and I started answering these
• 44:07
  things. They bought my software and they
• 44:08
  go, hey, man, businessman to businessman, like you're under
• 44:11
  charging. And I was like, why?
• 44:13
  They're like this? You're about to get flooded if
• 44:16
  you go into the space. So it opened my eyes.
• 44:18
  I talked to some friends and I looked at the law and I
• 44:21
  realized, oh, this is a mandate. They don't have a choice.
• 44:25
  So if you got a law that beat backs the demand, it doesn't
• 44:28
  mean they have to use my services.
• 44:29
  It means that they had to do something.
• 44:32
  That's kind of a crazy place to be from a business standpoint,
• 44:36
  right? You're just I'm just on the
• 44:37
  other side of a law man. This is.
• 44:39
  Like my favorite kind of stories too, because entrepreneurship is
• 44:42
  so hard. It's so hard.
• 44:45
  It's just like a boot is on your neck every single day.
• 44:47
  It's brutal. But every now and again, you're
• 44:51
  building. You feel like there's something
• 44:53
  here, and then you just get that little block and you're right in
• 44:57
  the right position right at the right time, and boom, it
• 44:59
  explodes. But then you got to have the
• 45:01
  nut. Sack to do something which
• 45:02
  nobody wants to do, which is say I'm going to change my entire
• 45:05
  company's positioning, marketing, everything about the
• 45:08
  functional, functional aspects of the tech platform going all
• 45:10
  in. Towards a completely.
• 45:13
  Different market before you were like open to everybody, cool
• 45:17
  with everybody. Nope.
• 45:18
  I said fuck em, I'm going over here.
• 45:20
  And if they don't come, the other ones don't come.
• 45:22
  Fine with me. That's the hard part.
• 45:24
  It's that moment where, yeah, in hindsight I look at this and go,
• 45:27
  damn, that shit was like, I'm a genius.
• 45:30
  Nah, dude. Like I, I debated that for well,
• 45:34
  I think not that long, probably about one month, but I heavily
• 45:38
  tossed that around and it was like, fuck it, I'm just going to
• 45:41
  go. It's a lot harder said than.
• 45:42
  Done. I mean, yeah, it's kind of a
• 45:44
  trope of like, oh, you got a niche down, but like also
• 45:47
  keeping your options open, like feels good because you're like,
• 45:50
  well, if I can be everything to everybody, I'm kind of nothing
• 45:53
  for everybody. But once I niche down, like I
• 45:56
  could definitely flop. So you know, that is a big
• 45:59
  decision. And I mean in the scheme of
• 46:01
  things like a month is is lightning quick to be like
• 46:03
  right, I know what I have to do probably on day one and then
• 46:07
  it's correct 429. More days of like.
• 46:09
  You gonna do this for real bro? Like, Well, yeah, because.
• 46:12
  Also, you run a marketing agency, so it's not like, OK,
• 46:15
  we're gonna make a commitment. You're like, oh man, I gotta
• 46:17
  redesign the website. I got everything is redone.
• 46:20
  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
• 46:22
  And you're trying to figure out how am I gonna keep the business
• 46:24
  I got? Yeah, because you.
• 46:26
  Know. You know, at that moment you
• 46:27
  gotta keep the. Lights on, I can talk.
• 46:29
  Shit, right now, yeah, I can be like, yeah, if I get, if they
• 46:31
  don't wanna come with me, I don't care.
• 46:33
  Yo, back then I wasn't saying that back then I was like, I
• 46:35
  need these fools to come along. Yeah, 100%.
• 46:38
  Like, what was that conversation like?
• 46:40
  Like, hey, the website's changed a little bit.
• 46:42
  Nah, I love you guys. Oh yeah, I didn't say.
• 46:44
  Shit, that's the that's the approach I went because here's
• 46:46
  what I thought. They didn't look at my website
• 46:48
  after they bought. Yeah.
• 46:49
  What'd you go to my? Website for.
• 46:51
  Yeah, they're just in the tools. I was like, I think I could get
• 46:53
  away with it, that's why or whatever, but that was at least
• 46:55
  enough for me to make the move. Yeah, 100%.
• 46:59
  Amazing, man. I think we're probably at that
• 47:02
  time where we're about to enter the quantum round, the quantum
• 47:06
  round. Are you ready for the quantum
• 47:07
  round? All right, let's go.
• 47:09
  You have a very interesting and cool niche and it's brand new.
• 47:13
  What are some other opportunities now?
• 47:15
  And I'll frame this like this, like, you know, we're all
• 47:17
  founders. Listen to this.
• 47:18
  We love business ideas, we love chasing shiny things.
• 47:21
  We love zero to 1,000,000 as soon as possible.
• 47:25
  You know, is there another opportunity that you see kind of
• 47:28
  in this niche with, you know, government subsidies and
• 47:31
  contractors and the way that like, we're kind of going into a
• 47:35
  new era of American manufacturing and like the the
• 47:38
  growth and production that's going to happen inside the
• 47:41
  United States right now, it's just about to explode.
• 47:43
  Yeah. Anything else that is kind of
• 47:45
  tantalizing to you? Well, there's a.
• 47:47
  On the business side of things, so I had a milestone last year.
• 47:50
  I had a million ARR with 0 employees.
• 47:52
  So that was, yeah, that. Was a big moment.
• 47:55
  For us. For us meeting me, myself and I
• 47:57
  and God, so like it's zero employees.
• 48:00
  Now I do have people that have contracted with me, consulted
• 48:02
  with me. You know that I'm not saying
• 48:04
  literally alone, but I'm saying I have 0 W two people.
• 48:08
  Incredible so. That.
• 48:11
  That was a big milestone and a challenge for me as an
• 48:13
  entrepreneur. Can I build a business that gets
• 48:16
  to 1,000,000 ARR with no employees?
• 48:18
  What's the profit margin? I mean, it's SAS.
• 48:20
  Bro yeah 80. That is the better.
• 48:22
  Than 80. Yeah, he's screaming so
• 48:25
  incredible. So that was milestone one.
• 48:28
  Milestone 2 is now 3 mil as far as my eyes can currently see.
• 48:34
  I can keep this going without somebody.
• 48:36
  I'm sure at some point I'll either need someone or I'll want
• 48:42
  someone and I have a three exit. Business right now, no more
• 48:45
  employees. I I.
• 48:48
  Think. I don't know, but I think I
• 48:51
  think so. I think I know there's things
• 48:53
  that I can automate that I haven't yet just because there's
• 48:55
  not enough pain and I'm, I'm working like 30 hours a week.
• 49:00
  It's not crazy. So from a business standpoint, I
• 49:04
  think I've got some runway ahead of me and I'm curious to see
• 49:08
  what would it be to run a single person company and not hire and
• 49:13
  just say I'm not. I mean, I, I made that
• 49:15
  commitment to get to 1 mil and trust me, there were times where
• 49:18
  I was like, oh, I should probably hire somebody and I
• 49:20
  found my way. Yeah.
• 49:21
  I found my way through it though.
• 49:22
  And, and now it wasn't even drowning.
• 49:25
  It was there's complexities, right?
• 49:28
  And complexity feels like struggle.
• 49:30
  And when you go through struggle, you want a life, you
• 49:32
  want a life, you know, life reserve raft or whatever just to
• 49:35
  get off. And I was trying to get off, but
• 49:37
  like, you have to be able to do it.
• 49:39
  I did it mentally and then through some tech.
• 49:41
  But that struggle moment the instinct is let me find someone
• 49:47
  to do this. The correct instinct is.
• 49:50
  How do I not do this at all? Second.
• 49:53
  Instinct. Is how do I make this better as
• 49:55
  a project? And then the third instinct is
• 49:58
  how do I find a person? So I had to reverse the instinct
• 50:03
  was eliminate. Then could I just fix this with
• 50:05
  a project and Sprint it and or else if I can't then I've got to
• 50:11
  find something and I so far haven't, I haven't made it out
• 50:14
  of the cycle of I've I've done the project and it's worked.
• 50:17
  So I've not had to go to a person.
• 50:19
  That's a great framework. How, what percentage of these
• 50:21
  tasks did you just eliminate? You're like, do I really need to
• 50:23
  do this? And you're like, actually I
• 50:24
  don't. Does it feel like a lot of them
• 50:30
  were you? Like, yeah, it's just really
• 50:31
  hard for me to. Quantify.
• 50:32
  But because there's such micro decisions, what I've done with
• 50:37
  this apprenticeship system, both technically and legally, because
• 50:41
  I'm operating in a legal framework, is identify what's
• 50:43
  the minimum effective dose of running an apprenticeship
• 50:46
  program. And there's so much you can
• 50:50
  build on top of it, but you would only build on top of it
• 50:53
  because you were incentivized to.
• 50:55
  And the reason why bureaucrats do is because they're
• 50:57
  incentivized to. I'm actually incentivized to
• 50:59
  build the least amount to make this functional.
• 51:02
  Sure, right. So the decisions were well, so
• 51:06
  and so is doing this over here. Well, why do they do that?
• 51:09
  You know, for example, when they issue apprentice certificates to
• 51:12
  say this person starts their apprenticeship On this date.
• 51:15
  Well, some companies were issuing it with, well, they're
• 51:17
  starting this date on this project.
• 51:19
  And I was like, why did they write the project name?
• 51:21
  Oh, it's so that they can create more work for them so that when
• 51:24
  an apprentice goes from one project to the next, they got to
• 51:26
  reissue the cert. Well, that's workload that
• 51:29
  justifies the headcount, that justifies the grant.
• 51:32
  I was like, oh shit, well, what if you just didn't have the
• 51:34
  project name? They could just go project to
• 51:36
  project. There's no legal requirement.
• 51:38
  Oh, then I just won't do that. So it's stuff like that, Yeah.
• 51:41
  You know, dude, incredible. And then as far as financing, is
• 51:45
  it totally bootstrapped? Yeah, 100%.
• 51:46
  Unbelievable. And then?
• 51:48
  As far as updating the the code base you learned under kind of
• 51:52
  you had an apprentice, are you still contributing to the
• 51:54
  software? Are you still building the
• 51:56
  software? So the guy who was my.
• 51:58
  Who I apprenticed under, who was my master programmer is my
• 52:01
  developer cool. So he he joined the company in
• 52:05
  the sense of he, I'm one of his few clients and we basically he
• 52:11
  develops everything. So because he's been with me
• 52:13
  from the start, he taught me. So I don't do any programming
• 52:17
  anymore. I, I prototype.
• 52:19
  So I'll build the prototype, I'll vibe code it usually
• 52:21
  through lovable. I'll get customer feedback on
• 52:24
  that, refine the prototype, and then I'll send it to him.
• 52:28
  I know exactly what we've built because I built the original
• 52:31
  version. So when I hand him a prototype,
• 52:34
  I know exactly how to configure that prototype in a way that
• 52:37
  drops neatly into what we've already got.
• 52:40
  Amazing. I I love lovable.
• 52:42
  Have you done any remix projects in there?
• 52:44
  No, I am thinking. About getting.
• 52:46
  So they have the ability in Lovable that you could share
• 52:49
  like a link with me. I could share a link with you,
• 52:51
  and I'd be like, hey, dude. And you bring it in and then you
• 52:53
  just hit remix. And then now you could take what
• 52:56
  I built and just do whatever you want with it.
• 52:58
  Oh, interesting. Yeah.
• 52:59
  I'm thinking about getting. Like a little group together
• 53:01
  that just remixes lovable projects just for fun, you know?
• 53:04
  So I'll reach out to you if you're a lovable guy.
• 53:07
  I don't know if I'm a lovable guy, but I'm a lovable guy.
• 53:13
  Incredible. OK, We talked a little bit about
• 53:15
  college. If you were to go back to
• 53:16
  college now, understanding where the puck is going, what would
• 53:19
  you study? You can add out log pauses
• 53:26
  right? What would I?
• 53:27
  Study. I don't think I would have gone
• 53:33
  to college. Yeah, Yeah.
• 53:35
  I by the time I graduated in college, I graduated in 2000.
• 53:39
  Yeah, I had sold a web design company in 97 and I sold golf
• 53:43
  store.com in 99. Just the domain.
• 53:47
  Oh, I had a full on business. That was online golf retail.
• 53:49
  It was the first online golf retail in the in the world.
• 53:52
  Yeah. So college was an Indian
• 53:57
  necessity. It was not what this boy was
• 54:00
  doing. Yeah.
• 54:01
  It was anti climatic. Yeah.
• 54:03
  So my own situation, even then, I, I wouldn't have gone to
• 54:08
  college if it wasn't like my parents kind of making me today
• 54:14
  if I could, just on my own free will.
• 54:16
  There's no chance. Yeah.
• 54:18
  There's because the game I like to play isn't learned in
• 54:21
  college. There is, there is benefit.
• 54:24
  I'm not saying there's not. It's just the game I wanna play.
• 54:27
  You know, I, I and you had that. You had that in high school.
• 54:30
  Yeah, I did. Yeah, yeah, I went to to your
• 54:33
  point, I went to Culver Military Academy in Indiana.
• 54:35
  I was super fortunate they had a program where they would take
• 54:38
  low income youth out of the city and I grew up in a motel in Los
• 54:42
  Angeles and so they gave me a scholarship to come to this
• 54:45
  Military Academy in Indiana and I thrived.
• 54:47
  I it was an unbelievable experience, but being away from
• 54:50
  home, living in barracks, being in a military system at A at a
• 54:55
  high education leadership institute basically was college,
• 54:59
  but in my opinion, even better. So I had already done the things
• 55:04
  that one looks for in college as a high schooler.
• 55:07
  Cool. It's it's interesting.
• 55:09
  So we're talking about agency, we're talking about irrational
• 55:12
  confidence. Like you think it's just innate,
• 55:14
  you think it's built in or you think there was things about how
• 55:16
  you grew up that like kind of it was a necessity to develop that.
• 55:21
  Well, I think that. When you struggle through
• 55:24
  anything in life, you build some level of character.
• 55:28
  You start to understand a little bit more of what you're made of.
• 55:32
  It isn't true. That if you struggle, you're
• 55:35
  going to have the character that thrives.
• 55:38
  I have board shared enough low income schools and seen
• 55:43
  thousands and thousands of kids come through that system who
• 55:48
  have not got the grit that it takes, but have had the struggle
• 55:51
  that it that they could have used to form themselves.
• 55:53
  So it's not like it it's going to happen.
• 55:57
  It's not a, it's not a preconceived conclusion that if
• 56:00
  you've struggled in life, you're gonna have the grit to succeed.
• 56:03
  But there are those who utilize that.
• 56:05
  And I think there's an outsized number of entrepreneurs who have
• 56:08
  had struggle in their life that built some level of character
• 56:12
  through that. Yeah, a chip.
• 56:14
  On your shoulder goes a long way.
• 56:16
  Like I I was always looking for a mentor and never had one, you
• 56:20
  know? So it was.
• 56:22
  Kind of like that thing where it's.
• 56:23
  Like, well, you know, I, I know I'm not the smartest guy in the
• 56:26
  room, but I feel like I'm smarter than these people, so
• 56:29
  why not me, you know, and just like moving forward.
• 56:32
  So yeah, I I used to say. Like who or what pissed you off
• 56:35
  so much you decided to start your own business?
• 56:37
  Yeah, exactly. That's the.
• 56:38
  Chip exactly like sometimes doing things out of spite feels
• 56:42
  better, feels better than like a big win.
• 56:45
  You know, it's like revenue numbers, never you you can like
• 56:48
  you rest on those, the big ones and you're like that feels good
• 56:51
  and then you're like it's not enough.
• 56:52
  But it's not as satisfying as like sometimes you get to prove
• 56:55
  somebody wrong. Just like the the juicy spite is
• 56:59
  a great motivator. Yeah, I, I.
• 57:02
  I'm not gonna comment too much on this, but because I I
• 57:05
  resonate way too much with that. No, I'm just, no, I feel you.
• 57:08
  I think actually spite's an incredible motivator.
• 57:10
  It's probably not the healthiest place to be coming from, but it
• 57:15
  gets you up. Yeah, sometimes you.
• 57:17
  Sometimes. You need that, you know, I think
• 57:18
  it's like passion is one thing for some people, but it's maybe
• 57:22
  maybe a little just chip on your shoulder.
• 57:24
  There's another that. You don't know me energy like,
• 57:27
  you know, you sit there wallowing in bed like how am I
• 57:29
  going to do this? And you think of that one person
• 57:30
  or that one thing, that one e-mail, you're like, oh, you
• 57:32
  don't know me. You don't know me.
• 57:35
  You don't have to find out you're about.
• 57:37
  To find out though, yeah. Exactly.
• 57:39
  Cool. Is there another entrepreneur or
• 57:43
  CEO leader that you admire and follow?
• 57:51
  Well, I'd say that currently I've been learning a lot from
• 57:56
  the team at RB to b.com, what's his name?
• 58:01
  Adam Robinson. So I, I actually just sent his,
• 58:04
  him, his head of sales, Diana Ross, their head of growth, P
• 58:09
  Crowley and their head of AI Rob.
• 58:13
  I sent them all an e-mail just kind of showing them the
• 58:16
  progression of the business because I've been learning from
• 58:18
  them very specifically. They published in public kind of
• 58:21
  things. But like, they're building.
• 58:22
  Public and they launched a community and I was very active
• 58:25
  in that online community. Cool.
• 58:27
  They've given me an incredible blueprint for building AB to B
• 58:31
  SAS platform yeah and and they doing currently I think
• 58:34
  25,000,000 in ARR across retention.com and RB to B.
• 58:39
  And they're doing it with I, I don't know the total headcount,
• 58:41
  but I know it's like 6 people over at RB to be and I think
• 58:44
  that's at like 6 million or something like that.
• 58:45
  Yeah. So they've got a great blueprint
• 58:47
  and I'd say I admire the fact that they're willing to share
• 58:51
  the numbers. They're willing to share the
• 58:53
  playbooks, They're willing to even share like the horrible
• 58:57
  hard of laying people off of their business, having product
• 59:01
  market fit and then not having product market fit.
• 59:04
  That's I even know that and that now I know that's a thing I've
• 59:07
  got currently product market fit, but I might slip out of it,
• 59:10
  you know. So it's like it's not a
• 59:12
  destination. It is definitely like a wave you
• 59:15
  ride, but you got to connect to the next set.
• 59:17
  And if you don't connect, you're paddling back out totally.
• 59:21
  Yeah, he is. I love that you said that.
• 59:24
  You know, one thing that I saw that Adam do that I did that I
• 59:26
  was like, I really liked is he was doing battles with his
• 59:29
  detractors. Oh, yeah.
• 59:30
  So there was like people in the comments section that were
• 59:32
  ringing him a new one for basically, you know, whatever
• 59:35
  tracking he needed to do to bring stuff into into Slack.
• 59:38
  And he was like, oh, battle me, dude.
• 59:40
  And so like they would just get on a video calls and just and
• 59:43
  publish it Totally. I'm like, dude, that is awesome.
• 59:45
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's yeah. He's, he's a different, he's a
• 59:48
  different breed that way. But he's also got a few money
• 59:51
  and, and I think that's an important thing about getting to
• 59:53
  FU money is you can use FU to say fuck the world, but he's
• 59:57
  using FU money to say actually, I'm just gonna like show you
• 1:00:00
  what it looks like, 'cause if this shit don't work, I'm good.
• 1:00:03
  Yeah, I'm good. Absolutely, and you know, really
• 1:00:07
  being able to walking that line of understanding that this is a
• 1:00:10
  game. And if you the more you treat it
• 1:00:12
  like a game, the more you understand the rules and the
• 1:00:15
  more you can like be successful. But also there is an emotional,
• 1:00:20
  an enormous emotional consequence to all this stuff.
• 1:00:24
  You know, you're working with people's lives.
• 1:00:27
  So on one side it's like a total game, but boy, the stakes are
• 1:00:29
  really high, you know, so it's like, you know, I was talking
• 1:00:32
  about this with Zia the other day.
• 1:00:34
  It's like, you know, there's kind of like a, a, a Zen
• 1:00:37
  platitude that's like, you know, big decisions treat lightly and
• 1:00:40
  small decisions to treat greatly, you know, and it's
• 1:00:43
  easier said than done, especially when big decisions
• 1:00:45
  like have massive consequences for ultimately it is about like
• 1:00:49
  those little details, like if you can iron those out and
• 1:00:53
  that's messy, then the big things kind of take care of
• 1:00:55
  themselves. But yeah, they do a great job.
• 1:00:57
  Yeah, he does. Yeah, he's.
• 1:00:59
  He actually did a, a, an amazing.
• 1:01:01
  I mean, it was like a one-on-one basically talk in this community
• 1:01:04
  and it was about shit posting. And I have such a draw.
• 1:01:08
  Like I'm so pulled to shit post because I deal with bureaucracy
• 1:01:12
  every day and I have currently resisted shit posting not
• 1:01:18
  because I couldn't absolutely blast, but because I've watched
• 1:01:22
  Adam go through it emotionally and publicly.
• 1:01:27
  The public part I could handle. It is a question of do you want
• 1:01:30
  to invite that into your nervous system?
• 1:01:33
  Totally. And I and I've decided I don't
• 1:01:35
  want to invite that into my nervous system, not right now.
• 1:01:38
  I'm actually really enjoying what I've got going.
• 1:01:40
  I've got a lot of love in my life.
• 1:01:42
  Like life is beautiful. I don't wanna just ramp myself
• 1:01:44
  up. And it will.
• 1:01:46
  Yeah, I know it will. Yeah.
• 1:01:47
  I mean. They're you cannot feed the
• 1:01:49
  trolls because they multiply and like if you, if people have
• 1:01:52
  dealt with like online trolls coming at you, it's not fun,
• 1:01:55
  man. It's not fun at all.
• 1:01:58
  It is kind of like a consequence though of, of being more public
• 1:02:01
  and like it is building in public and creating audience
• 1:02:04
  around what you're doing. It's well, there's a, there's a
• 1:02:08
  another. Company called Gusto, have you
• 1:02:10
  heard of them? They do payroll, I think so,
• 1:02:12
  yeah. I think they have a big
• 1:02:12
  headquarter here in Denver and I use Gusto for for my own payroll
• 1:02:17
  to pay what payroll Employee of the month again.
• 1:02:20
  This guy, I use Gusto, but I used Gusto.
• 1:02:23
  In my other business and the founder of Gusto started this
• 1:02:26
  payroll platform in California and his is positioning market
• 1:02:32
  wise was if we can figure out California's laws, we can make
• 1:02:37
  this thing work anywhere. And he talked about California
• 1:02:40
  bureaucracy, but he never mentioned the California, the
• 1:02:44
  Californian bureaucrats. So it was an interesting
• 1:02:48
  distinction. I watched his, I looked at I, I
• 1:02:51
  listened to all his old podcast from like 2000, whatever.
• 1:02:53
  So he didn't call people out, correct.
• 1:02:56
  But he did make find the enemy. He identified the enemy, which
• 1:02:59
  is bureaucracy. Yeah.
• 1:03:01
  And so I've taken that tact. Yeah, I've decided to go that
• 1:03:03
  whereas Adam was very willing to call out the company and the
• 1:03:07
  owners and the people in the comments, like one-on-one.
• 1:03:10
  He's mono Imano and yeah, balls to him.
• 1:03:12
  Like, I know. Yeah, but you got to be down for
• 1:03:14
  that fight. Yeah, I'm fighting something we
• 1:03:16
  all agree on, which is bureaucracy sucks.
• 1:03:19
  Totally So. So no one's in the camp of
• 1:03:22
  bureaucracy. The problem is bureaucrats don't
• 1:03:24
  think that they are right. They don't think that they're.
• 1:03:26
  Bureaucrats totally. It's like it's like I was
• 1:03:29
  talking to my son about this it's like it's like we're
• 1:03:33
  talking about Rage Against Machine and and shout dude, I'm
• 1:03:36
  going to a concert tonight at gothic.
• 1:03:37
  It's cover bands, a tool cover band, a Rage cover band and a
• 1:03:41
  filter cover band. Oh my God, dude, you're.
• 1:03:43
  About to rage. It is going to be.
• 1:03:45
  It is. Going to be dad fest 2026 but it
• 1:03:49
  you know, he was talking about like the messages he's starting
• 1:03:52
  to like listen to the lyrics and I was like I was like that's all
• 1:03:54
  true I was like but do you know how many people have been
• 1:03:57
  murdered by the American soldiers listening to Rage
• 1:04:00
  Against the machine It's. It's got to be a.
• 1:04:04
  Lot so the machine that they're raging against, that machine is
• 1:04:09
  using that. You know what I mean?
• 1:04:12
  So it's like. In in some aspect, it's like
• 1:04:15
  it's, it's a fire hose. It, it, the, the direction it's
• 1:04:18
  pointed doesn't really matter. It's pointed left, pointed
• 1:04:20
  right. It's like, dude, if you're
• 1:04:21
  creating a fire hose, man, like you're, you're, you're inspiring
• 1:04:23
  that to come back to you. OK, Andy, dude, I think you
• 1:04:27
  might be my hero this year. You got, you got one man.
• 1:04:32
  Business $1,000,000 ARR bootstrapped with no competitors
• 1:04:38
  in a growing category. Yeah.
• 1:04:41
  Unbelievable. Don't say it like that bro.
• 1:04:44
  God, thank you, thank you, God, thank you so much.
• 1:04:47
  Absolutely. You know, big thanks.
• 1:04:51
  But also, like, I mean, this came about because you were
• 1:04:54
  shooting at the center of the target.
• 1:04:57
  Like if you're just shooting, you're going to miss the paper.
• 1:04:59
  But if you're shooting at the middle of the target, you've
• 1:05:01
  done this for long enough that you knew what you wanted.
• 1:05:03
  You knew what you didn't want. And you know, yeah, maybe
• 1:05:07
  there's a little bit of luck, but there's a whole lot of
• 1:05:09
  skill. Man, I I really admire what
• 1:05:10
  you're doing. I really appreciate you spending
• 1:05:12
  time with me. Yeah.
• 1:05:13
  Appreciate you. Apprentice dot IO is where
• 1:05:17
  people can check out that. What's the best place for them
• 1:05:20
  to follow you online? Oh, LinkedIn.
• 1:05:23
  I'm, I'm going pretty heavy on LinkedIn right now.
• 1:05:25
  I, I don't know if that's like the place, but I'm going there
• 1:05:28
  and I love reading Twitter. I'm on Twitter, so if you're
• 1:05:30
  there, follow me there. I might start posting that.
• 1:05:33
  I don't know. Have you have you started
• 1:05:35
  working Twitter at all? Yeah, I came back to Twitter.
• 1:05:37
  I've been putting content there. I haven't had anything pop Yeah,
• 1:05:40
  you know distribution right now on all the social channels.
• 1:05:43
  Seems like I'm actually having bet most success on like YouTube
• 1:05:46
  Shorts recently in the last. Couple of weeks, but yeah.
• 1:05:48
  Cool. Yeah, I'm on, I'm on.
• 1:05:50
  Twitter, I mean the the. Platforms reward different
• 1:05:53
  things, right? And X is basically, I think it's
• 1:05:56
  supposed to reward quality of thought, Yeah.
• 1:05:59
  And so I think it's, for me, it might be a good testing ground
• 1:06:02
  to put thoughts out there and ideas out there in ways that
• 1:06:06
  maybe work and don't work right. So if nobody sees it, nobody
• 1:06:09
  sees it, it's fine. Totally.
• 1:06:10
  Yeah. I I.
• 1:06:11
  Actually like the the filter Elon's got on X right now is
• 1:06:15
  great because he's really all the prominent building public.
• 1:06:18
  People are like getting a lot of distribution, which is great.
• 1:06:22
  So I'm thinking I've had this X accounts this like 2008.
• 1:06:25
  I think I'm just going to kill it and then start fresh.
• 1:06:28
  And maybe I'm thinking that's going to be a place where I'm a
• 1:06:30
  little more candid about sports. My feelings about you know, Mike
• 1:06:35
  D, you know your. Deep.
• 1:06:37
  Down thoughts. Oh, got it.
• 1:06:39
  Yeah, I need a place for like. I tried the founder content.
• 1:06:42
  I'm doing that everywhere else. I'm like, Nah, you know what?
• 1:06:44
  Maybe I just need to talk trash about the Broncos because that's
• 1:06:47
  the one place like where if you want to troll, go sports troll.
• 1:06:51
  You know what I mean? You could just.
• 1:06:52
  Talk to ask for people and it's it's a game.
• 1:06:56
  It's a game. Cool.
• 1:06:57
  I want to give a shout out to the AI Clubhouse.
• 1:07:00
  This is in Denver. If you guys are listening in
• 1:07:02
  Denver, please check it out. You can go to id345.com to learn
• 1:07:07
  more about that. There is an open vibe Coding AI,
• 1:07:11
  augmented engineering meet up every Wednesday here between
• 1:07:15
  5:00 and 7:00. It's open and free for
• 1:07:16
  everybody. But other than that, Andy, thank
• 1:07:18
  you so much. Thank you.
• 1:07:19
  I appreciate you, man. Yeah.
• 1:07:20
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