Latest / Earn Your Leisure / Sold a Company for $75M & Didn’t Get Paid 🤯 The Business Secrets They Don’t Tell Entrepreneurs

Transcript

Sold a Company for $75M & Didn’t Get Paid 🤯 The Business Secrets They Don’t Tell Entrepreneurs · Earn Your Leisure

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: When I did the podcast with you all, I was
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: telling you probably the most impactful interview I've done in
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: my career.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: He wrote, As well as real, he wrote, I heard.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Was shot at Troy talk about the tax.
• 0:13
  Speaker 3: Letters, talking about finance. But we talk in a language
• 0:17
  Speaker 3: that is common.
• 0:18
  Speaker 4: To the people that's from the communities that we grew
• 0:20
  Speaker 4: up on.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: You all are the bright spot.
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Dordship for black Americans. This is the knowledge
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: that actually matters. I flaud both of you for this.
• 0:30
  Speaker 5: Thank you.
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: Isn't it a country issue. It's not an American issue,
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: It's a world issue.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: You came to earn Lisa.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: All right, guys, welcome back, ey l We have a
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: special guest, a friend of our somebody that we've worked
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: with for several years, and somebody that has been doing
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: a lot of work behind the scenes and now stepping
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: more into the forefront as far as champion creator equity
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: ownership things that's very near and dear to our hearts.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: So Jeff fromer CEO of Own, which is an equity
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: creator platform launched in twenty twenty five. Right, and before that,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: you had Malca and you sold that exited that.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to a public company. It was pretty good.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's when we met you.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we met.
• 1:26
  Speaker 5: Before we had sold Actually when you guys came on
• 1:28
  Speaker 5: All the Smoke.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it was Barnes of Stack.
• 1:32
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you're still running. Those guys have been killing it,
• 1:34
  Speaker 5: absolutely killing it. Now own the boxing world, which is amazing.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: So let's let's let's start the story first, and Foremo,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: thank you for coming to appreciate it. Sure, so let's
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: start with the Malca because that's what we that's where
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: we met you, and at that time we wasn't familiar
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: with what Malcolm was. But you guys were pretty powerful.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: You I want you to explain it because I might
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: misword it, but you you kind of had ownership and
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: all of these podcast like All the Smoke, Mike Tyson's podcast,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: all that, all that.
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: Mary Owen was there too.
• 2:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we had a ton you know. Look, but it
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: didn't start there.
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 2:08
  Speaker 5: In twenty thirteen twenty fourteen, Lewis, you know, had this
• 2:12
  Speaker 5: idea to build the production company of the future, and
• 2:15
  Speaker 5: we had this thesis of Hollywood level content at the
• 2:18
  Speaker 5: speed of culture.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Right, could you be really fast?
• 2:20
  Speaker 5: Could you be inexpensive, you know, and could you create
• 2:23
  Speaker 5: something really premium and back then, you know what was
• 2:25
  Speaker 5: happening is is the legacy production companies. You know, we're
• 2:28
  Speaker 5: being paid fifty thousand bucks to spend two weeks producing
• 2:32
  Speaker 5: a piece of content for Snapchat that would be seen
• 2:35
  Speaker 5: today and gone tomorrow. And we're like, that's crazy, right,
• 2:38
  Speaker 5: And so kind of two.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Guys and a dog. I was.
• 2:42
  Speaker 5: I was working at Adobe at the time, helping media
• 2:44
  Speaker 5: publishers go through digital transformation. I had always had this
• 2:47
  Speaker 5: passion for creative and we got going and you know,
• 2:52
  Speaker 5: fast forward, you know, ten years, you know, we grew
• 2:55
  Speaker 5: to a little more than two hundred full time employees.
• 2:58
  Speaker 5: We built a film division into we made eight future films,
• 3:01
  Speaker 5: from Back in Time to Netflix to the to a
• 3:04
  Speaker 5: documentary to stuff on Amazon and Fox.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: We bought a talent.
• 3:09
  Speaker 5: Agency, so we got a chance to represent professional athletes
• 3:12
  Speaker 5: on and off the field, and then kind of saw
• 3:14
  Speaker 5: where the puck was going around the idea of making
• 3:17
  Speaker 5: content where you can tell a great story and then
• 3:20
  Speaker 5: you have the talent that helps amplify that story. But
• 3:23
  Speaker 5: you needed to own distribution, right Obviously, you guys get it.
• 3:27
  Speaker 5: You know, when you talk, people listen, right, And so
• 3:29
  Speaker 5: if you were just a creative agency or production company
• 3:32
  Speaker 5: and you just make a piece of content. You're not
• 3:34
  Speaker 5: in charge or in control of how successful that can be.
• 3:38
  Speaker 5: And so, because we had so many editors and animators
• 3:41
  Speaker 5: on staff, we were one of the largest production companies
• 3:43
  Speaker 5: on the East Coast. Showtime came to us and asked
• 3:46
  Speaker 5: us if we could help them build a digital property,
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: and that helped us kick off our studio in LA
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: in twenty sixteen, which ultimately we grew to about fifty
• 3:54
  Speaker 5: celebrity first shows, from Mike Tyson's Hot Boxing to All
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: the Smoke with Barnes of Stack, work with kg, we
• 4:01
  Speaker 5: did stuff with Theo Vonn and we were reaching you know,
• 4:04
  Speaker 5: around one hundred million people a month across you know,
• 4:06
  Speaker 5: audio and video. You know, we had this idea around
• 4:09
  Speaker 5: always on and everywhere. So you know, today everyone's talking
• 4:12
  Speaker 5: about clipping, you know, like, oh, make some piece of content,
• 4:15
  Speaker 5: clip it, push it everywhere. We were doing that in
• 4:17
  Speaker 5: twenty sixteen, you know, organically. You know, that's how you know,
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: people find you. They're on social they might see a SoundBite,
• 4:24
  Speaker 5: they might see something that's a one minute snippet, and
• 4:26
  Speaker 5: then they keep seeing those little bits, you know, like
• 4:29
  Speaker 5: where is that long form story. I want to hear
• 4:31
  Speaker 5: from Sean and Troy about what they're building. And that's
• 4:34
  Speaker 5: how we drove a lot of our fans organically to
• 4:37
  Speaker 5: our long form YouTube page. And you know, look for me,
• 4:41
  Speaker 5: and I think for every entrepreneur out there, you want
• 4:43
  Speaker 5: to think about a flywheel, and you want to think
• 4:45
  Speaker 5: about when you no matter what you sell, if you
• 4:48
  Speaker 5: acquire a customer, right that is earning that person's trust,
• 4:53
  Speaker 5: and if you can only provide them with one solution
• 4:57
  Speaker 5: and one product that they can buy, you're not really
• 4:59
  Speaker 5: capital on that earned trust that you have with them.
• 5:03
  Speaker 5: And so what we did was we just started to
• 5:04
  Speaker 5: ask our customers in the early days when we were
• 5:07
  Speaker 5: making content, like what else do you need? What other
• 5:10
  Speaker 5: vendors are not doing a good job, what problems are
• 5:13
  Speaker 5: you trying to solve? And that led us to you know,
• 5:16
  Speaker 5: getting into talent, building a distribution network, and really creating
• 5:20
  Speaker 5: a flywheel so that once I acquired one single customer,
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: I could land and expand across all the other media
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: opportunities that they really needed as a brand marketer to
• 5:30
  Speaker 5: tell their story to a mass audience.
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you built a pretty strong portfolio. I'm wondering. Now,
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: I'm sure everybody was wondering why leave right at the
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: time where we feel like, especially talent led shows are
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: reaching a climax. You're seeing it, you've been in it
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: for a long time. Why I decide to say, all right,
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: it's time to move on to do something different.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: Look, you know we bootstrapped the business.
• 5:54
  Speaker 5: That means we didn't raise any outside capital, you know,
• 5:57
  Speaker 5: and I think if anyone's out there trying to figure
• 5:58
  Speaker 5: out how to grow their business, you know, you have
• 6:01
  Speaker 5: two choices. You can look for outside capital, venture investors
• 6:04
  Speaker 5: or angel investors that are going to give you money
• 6:07
  Speaker 5: to help grow a business with an expected return. Or
• 6:10
  Speaker 5: you can go to a bank, right and a bank
• 6:13
  Speaker 5: can look at your balance sheet and say, you know what,
• 6:15
  Speaker 5: I'll give you a line of credit or I'll give
• 6:17
  Speaker 5: you a loan.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: And that's what we did. And so that's how we
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: grew the business.
• 6:20
  Speaker 5: And as we grew the business, you know, you start
• 6:23
  Speaker 5: to create you know, awareness and sparks.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: This is like twenty nineteen, twenty twenty.
• 6:27
  Speaker 5: You know, we had some conversations with some really powerful
• 6:30
  Speaker 5: people who knocked on the door and said, hey, we'd
• 6:32
  Speaker 5: love to talk to you about acquisition, and we'd love
• 6:34
  Speaker 5: to talk to you about, you know, how you could
• 6:36
  Speaker 5: be more strategic and a larger hold co. And you know,
• 6:39
  Speaker 5: then in twenty twenty one, we had a knock on
• 6:42
  Speaker 5: the door from someone who, you know we at that
• 6:45
  Speaker 5: time was a client we trusted they had a similar
• 6:49
  Speaker 5: vision to us, and you know, financially, it just made sense.
• 6:53
  Speaker 5: And I think when you build something, you don't necessarily
• 6:57
  Speaker 5: come out the gate saying, oh, I want to exit,
• 6:59
  Speaker 5: or I knew exactly what the outcome is going to be.
• 7:02
  Speaker 5: You just build it right and you just keep figuring
• 7:06
  Speaker 5: out are you happy?
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Are you having fun?
• 7:09
  Speaker 5: And you know, is this the right decision to take
• 7:12
  Speaker 5: the next step either jump into a pool of a
• 7:15
  Speaker 5: public company and get to learn from people who have
• 7:19
  Speaker 5: experienced that you can never have imagined sitting at the
• 7:22
  Speaker 5: same dinner table with. And you know, when we got
• 7:24
  Speaker 5: that offer to be acquired, at the time, it just
• 7:27
  Speaker 5: made a lot of sense. And I think looking back,
• 7:29
  Speaker 5: like today with Netflix buying shows like you guys, there's
• 7:33
  Speaker 5: so much opportunity for what you have built today, way
• 7:37
  Speaker 5: more when we were in twenty twenty one, right at
• 7:40
  Speaker 5: the time of sale, and I live life with no regrets, right.
• 7:44
  Speaker 5: I think everything is both earned and learned right through experience.
• 7:49
  Speaker 5: But at the time, man, when someone's offering you life
• 7:53
  Speaker 5: changing money, right, and you you.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: Know, my dad was a cop, my mom was a teacher.
• 7:57
  Speaker 5: You know, my wife emigranted from poland didn't come with much,
• 7:59
  Speaker 5: like lived in a one bedroom apartment. Like that's the
• 8:02
  Speaker 5: thing where you got to say, what if you know?
• 8:06
  Speaker 5: What if I don't?
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: What if I do?
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Well, let's take it back a little bit. What exactly
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: did MAC could do for these for these shows? Did
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: you own the shows?
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 8:15
  Speaker 5: For some of the shows, like you know you want look,
• 8:19
  Speaker 5: you know, ownership inequities right, really important, and so for
• 8:23
  Speaker 5: a lot of the shows, we had ownership in the show,
• 8:26
  Speaker 5: so you can go own the show.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Co owned the show with the talent. In return, you
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: took care of all of the media stuff. You shot
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: the episodes for.
• 8:34
  Speaker 5: Them, We provided production, We provide social media, marketing, social
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: the talent. And this is like the same thing if
• 8:41
  Speaker 5: you're building the business, right, Like, if you're a creator
• 8:45
  Speaker 5: or a talent out there, you have a superpower, right,
• 8:48
  Speaker 5: and that superpower is making engaging content and telling incredible
• 8:51
  Speaker 5: stories and keeping fans to kind of hang on every
• 8:54
  Speaker 5: last word of yours. The question is is who's doing
• 8:57
  Speaker 5: the work, who's doing the operations behind the scene. And
• 8:59
  Speaker 5: so for Malka, we were the work. We were the engine.
• 9:03
  Speaker 5: You know, talent could show up, We built the studio,
• 9:06
  Speaker 5: we had producers, we had production, we had editors. You'd
• 9:09
  Speaker 5: walk in to be food like. We had a facility.
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: Like you want to be able to show up, do
• 9:14
  Speaker 5: your best job and make sure someone is out there
• 9:17
  Speaker 5: making the best content for you and putting money in
• 9:20
  Speaker 5: your pocket, right, And so that's what we did. And
• 9:22
  Speaker 5: in return for that we had we had skin in
• 9:25
  Speaker 5: the game. We were both aligned and incentivized the talent
• 9:29
  Speaker 5: and my team and Malca the ownership to make the
• 9:33
  Speaker 5: most successful product that we possibly could.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: So you own, you owned a lot of the shows,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: You did all of the leg work for the artists.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: All they did was just coming and just record. You
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: sold the company. How much you sell the company for
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: seventy five million?
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: And then that.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Gets split with the with the people that you owned
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: the shows what as well or no.
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: The ownership of the shows was on the revenue side.
• 9:59
  Speaker 5: So when you think about like equity of the shows,
• 10:01
  Speaker 5: you know, like the ownership of the show was still
• 10:04
  Speaker 5: owned by the talent. Right, So you know, when I
• 10:09
  Speaker 5: think about building a network in the future, right, if
• 10:13
  Speaker 5: I was to go out and do it again, I think,
• 10:17
  Speaker 5: you know, having all of the talent have equity in
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: the larger hold co makes a lot more sense, so
• 10:25
  Speaker 5: that everyone understands that they're not you know what I
• 10:28
  Speaker 5: would call I see individual contributors. Right, They're all a
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: part of a network, and you have some weighted value.
• 10:35
  Speaker 5: So if I said, okay, hey, I want to do
• 10:37
  Speaker 5: a roll up of you know media shows. Right, Okay,
• 10:42
  Speaker 5: everyone has it's called a million followers each, there's ten
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: of them, so everyone has ten percent of the larger
• 10:47
  Speaker 5: hold co. Now we can structure repshare individually on each
• 10:50
  Speaker 5: individual show. Maybe you know, this creator and this talent,
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: you know, they want seventy percent and we're negotiating how
• 10:57
  Speaker 5: much to spend on production. Each individual show could have
• 11:00
  Speaker 5: its own little, you know, kind of economic box.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: But as a whole.
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: As a whole, you want everyone to feel like they're participating.
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: But let's say Joe Rogan comes in and he's got
• 11:10
  Speaker 5: ten million followers, and we're like, all right, well, if
• 11:13
  Speaker 5: everyone had equal on their one million and we all
• 11:16
  Speaker 5: had ten and Joe comes in, everyone should get crunched
• 11:18
  Speaker 5: down because now there's twenty million in the pot and
• 11:21
  Speaker 5: your one percent.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: Is no longer ten, it's five.
• 11:23
  Speaker 5: And I think, you know, you guys preach this all
• 11:25
  Speaker 5: the time, but like in life, you should get out
• 11:27
  Speaker 5: what you put in. And I think for people that
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: are thinking about either incentivizing employees or building a media
• 11:32
  Speaker 5: co you should create incentives that say, Okay, look, everyone
• 11:37
  Speaker 5: is not equal, and if you put in a lot
• 11:40
  Speaker 5: more and you're driving success and you're growing whatever metric
• 11:42
  Speaker 5: that is, when that exit happens, you should participate more
• 11:46
  Speaker 5: than someone who was just sitting leaning back and not
• 11:48
  Speaker 5: participating as much.
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: You know, I mean congratulations on the exit at the time.
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: Talk about the process of going through that, because I
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: feel like everybody who's talked about it, it talks about
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: the stress, Talk about the learning lessons, the hardships that
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: you learned of being in that process of saying yes,
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: we built something, and I know it took a lot
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: of effort to get to that point. Yes, there's some
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: life change of money, but there's certain things that you
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: have to have in order to exit, right, Like, what
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: does that that process look like?
• 12:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah, first of all, most you know, you know, I
• 12:19
  Speaker 5: sold my company for seventy five million dollars, but today
• 12:22
  Speaker 5: I'm still in a lawsuit from the majority of that capital. Right.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Not every exit has a happy end loss with money line.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Right, people that purchase the company, people that purchase the company,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: you want to talk about that.
• 12:35
  Speaker 5: All I can tell you is that I've sold the
• 12:38
  Speaker 5: company in twenty twenty one, of which ten million was
• 12:41
  Speaker 5: in cash that me and my partner split, and the
• 12:44
  Speaker 5: rest was in stock. And as of today, we haven't
• 12:47
  Speaker 5: gotten a single dollar worth of that stock.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 12:50
  Speaker 5: And again, if I go back to life as a
• 12:52
  Speaker 5: lesson learned, right, when you're building something right, you're building
• 12:58
  Speaker 5: it with friends, you're building with partners. You know, someone
• 13:01
  Speaker 5: becomes your work wife, right, Like you're in the trenches,
• 13:04
  Speaker 5: and when someone knocks on the door and wants to
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: buy the thing that you've birthed, Right, it becomes this
• 13:11
  Speaker 5: really existential like conversation about like is it the right opportunity?
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: Are we selling too early? Is it selling for the
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: right price?
• 13:20
  Speaker 5: But the bigger question that you need to ask yourself
• 13:24
  Speaker 5: is who's buying it, who are they and.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: If you don't know them and know what they're capable of.
• 13:31
  Speaker 5: Right, I've talked to so many exited founders who have
• 13:35
  Speaker 5: gone through exits that had earnouts and the majority of
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: which those earnouts do not get paid, right because if
• 13:42
  Speaker 5: you actually don't have mentors or people that have gone
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: through it who understand the system, the system is not
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: built for founders. The system is built for lawyers and
• 13:52
  Speaker 5: for public companies who understand the pressure that they can
• 13:55
  Speaker 5: create that if they don't want to pay somebody. Right,
• 14:00
  Speaker 5: even if everything is on your side, you will spend
• 14:05
  Speaker 5: millions and millions of dollars trying to fight for the money,
• 14:09
  Speaker 5: the thing that you have earned and rightfully so, but
• 14:13
  Speaker 5: you have to prove that you've earned it, and you
• 14:15
  Speaker 5: might get milked. You know where that cost to actually
• 14:18
  Speaker 5: you know whether it's just on Like for me, I
• 14:22
  Speaker 5: don't really care at this point, having gone through what
• 14:26
  Speaker 5: I've gone through the outcome other than I'm forty and
• 14:31
  Speaker 5: kind of like scarface.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: All I have left is my word in my bond.
• 14:34
  Speaker 5: And so if someone is going to try and take
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: that away from you, indifferent of your life savings and
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: what you've spent ten years building and that you've earned.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: I can earn that back.
• 14:43
  Speaker 5: But what you can't take from me is the respect
• 14:47
  Speaker 5: that I have earned from my peers and from the industry,
• 14:50
  Speaker 5: so that when I talk people trust that. And you've
• 14:53
  Speaker 5: tried to dilute and muddy that simply so that you
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: can not pay what was contraction obligated. Right. And so
• 15:01
  Speaker 5: for founders out there that are going through the idea
• 15:04
  Speaker 5: of selling right, just know that what's going to happen
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: is is you're going to be put through the ringer
• 15:10
  Speaker 5: of due diligence. They're going to look under every hood,
• 15:13
  Speaker 5: They're going to go through your financial statements, and you've
• 15:15
  Speaker 5: got to get really really organized, you know, like your
• 15:18
  Speaker 5: books got to be in order, right, and like you
• 15:21
  Speaker 5: also need to know a lot of these terms that like,
• 15:24
  Speaker 5: you know, we're not taught in high school or college.
• 15:27
  Speaker 5: You know, like you know gap accounting and the store
• 15:30
  Speaker 5: you know, like all these terms of things that like
• 15:33
  Speaker 5: someone's gonna want to go through or some person who's
• 15:36
  Speaker 5: paid to tell the buyer you know, this is what
• 15:40
  Speaker 5: their EBITA is or their profit margins are. Like even
• 15:43
  Speaker 5: if you have a CFO, even if you have an accountant, like,
• 15:46
  Speaker 5: don't be naive, invest yourself in learning a little bit
• 15:49
  Speaker 5: more right, and once that, like you know, that wash
• 15:54
  Speaker 5: comes through and you're just getting beat down looking over
• 15:57
  Speaker 5: every little thing. What you need to remember is that
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: you've got to do the same thing on the other side, right,
• 16:05
  Speaker 5: You really have to understand who the other side is
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: that's buying you. Because if you're going to hand your
• 16:11
  Speaker 5: baby off to someone, you know, whether you stick around
• 16:14
  Speaker 5: or something breaks or it doesn't work out, you want
• 16:17
  Speaker 5: to make sure that you're gonna get that baby taken
• 16:20
  Speaker 5: care of, right. And that's that's one of the regrets
• 16:23
  Speaker 5: that I have, which was I didn't spend enough time
• 16:26
  Speaker 5: through the excitement of potentially selling my business of understanding
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: who was on the other side buying it.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: So when we hear these stories that people exited their businesses,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: that may not always be what it seems. That's what
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: you're saying, pretty much like you you could hear somebody
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: that's the only bit it's for one hundred million dollars,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: but that that can be tricky if it's not the
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: deal isn't done correctly.
• 16:52
  Speaker 5: Listen, there is a lot of reasons why lawyers make
• 16:55
  Speaker 5: a lot of money.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Both going into the deal you need you can't, you know.
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: You it's almost like you get what you pay for, right,
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: Like you know, you get a doctor who you know
• 17:06
  Speaker 5: you're getting a vasectomy, and like you know, you got
• 17:08
  Speaker 5: some guy who's gonna do it for twenty five dollars
• 17:10
  Speaker 5: outside of you know the back alley, you know, like
• 17:13
  Speaker 5: you may lose a ball here and there, you know,
• 17:15
  Speaker 5: like versus you want to get it done right, you know,
• 17:17
  Speaker 5: and so you know you just want to have you
• 17:20
  Speaker 5: want to have protection, right, and yeah, like I think
• 17:25
  Speaker 5: like you look at like a cobby lame and you
• 17:27
  Speaker 5: see these headlines, oh, like a billion dollars, like and
• 17:29
  Speaker 5: then you look under the hood and that business that
• 17:31
  Speaker 5: bought it is basically a shell company doing a million dollars,
• 17:34
  Speaker 5: and like he's never going to get a billion dollars.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: That's it's not worth a billion. There's just no value.
• 17:39
  Speaker 5: There's no real money there, right, Like you know, you
• 17:42
  Speaker 5: sell the business for like there's so many stories where
• 17:45
  Speaker 5: like oh, this company sold for four hundred and fifty
• 17:47
  Speaker 5: million dollars, but the investors, the vcs had a pref
• 17:50
  Speaker 5: stack that was like three x and so the founders
• 17:53
  Speaker 5: end up with nothing right.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: So you're like, oh, four hundred and.
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: Fifty million dollars, you must be living in the Hollywood Hills,
• 17:59
  Speaker 5: and like driving for are You're like, I made nothing
• 18:01
  Speaker 5: because the way in which you got to that exit,
• 18:04
  Speaker 5: you didn't realize that there were so many people that
• 18:06
  Speaker 5: took change along the way that like what was left over,
• 18:09
  Speaker 5: there was nothing left right. And so in my case,
• 18:13
  Speaker 5: you know, we bootstrapped the business. We didn't know what
• 18:17
  Speaker 5: equity was.
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: We were in LLC.
• 18:19
  Speaker 5: It wasn't until the time of exit that we actually
• 18:21
  Speaker 5: gave our employees some participation in that exit, which today
• 18:25
  Speaker 5: when I look back, I go, Man, if someone I
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: wish I had Jeff when I was building my business,
• 18:31
  Speaker 5: you know, and if I have any advice for anyone
• 18:33
  Speaker 5: you too, included is like find the person that has
• 18:37
  Speaker 5: gone through it right, you know, like I wish I
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: had mentors and people that had gone through it with
• 18:42
  Speaker 5: I can lean on. Now I'm in this like post
• 18:44
  Speaker 5: exit founder's community, and man, just having an open question like, hey,
• 18:49
  Speaker 5: is anyone just people want to chime in and help,
• 18:51
  Speaker 5: you know, And I think if you don't have that
• 18:53
  Speaker 5: today and you think about the questions that you would
• 18:55
  Speaker 5: love to ask someone that you can't get answers to today.
• 18:58
  Speaker 5: Stop what you're doing and go find those people, because
• 19:01
  Speaker 5: I guarantee you they'd be willing to help if you
• 19:03
  Speaker 5: just ask them, Hey, I'm going through this. Can I
• 19:05
  Speaker 5: spend five minutes like people want to help? You know,
• 19:09
  Speaker 5: what advice would you give being what you went through?
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: Would it be not to take stock options? Would it
• 19:14
  Speaker 5: be just to get all cash up front? Like if
• 19:17
  Speaker 5: we were selling our business right now, what advice would you.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: Give us cash?
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: Is king get the cash?
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: If a cash in the bank's really hard to take
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: it away.
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: As you were saying it, it made me think of like
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: it in sports, right, like especially in the NFL particularly,
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: It's like the signing bonus is the money that you
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: get right the contract. If you get hurt, they get
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: on the void, they can cut you. It's not guaranteed.
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: It feels like if you get the cash up front,
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: that's the money that you're going to get guaranteed stock option.
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: Maybe we'll see what happens.
• 19:43
  Speaker 5: I've talked to so many founders that would tell you
• 19:47
  Speaker 5: assume that you don't get the money in there and out,
• 19:51
  Speaker 5: you know, and if you are the other side structuring
• 19:54
  Speaker 5: the deal. Yeah, and I now know what I know.
• 19:57
  Speaker 5: If I was to buy your business, I wait it
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: all on the back end, right, because guess what, I'm
• 20:05
  Speaker 5: going to incentivize you to work your ass off to
• 20:07
  Speaker 5: hit those numbers. But if something happens, knowing what I
• 20:11
  Speaker 5: know now, I probably could just put enough pressure on
• 20:14
  Speaker 5: you guys that you would fold. And then when you
• 20:16
  Speaker 5: think about the dollar amount that it's worth, it would
• 20:18
  Speaker 5: cost you more in legal fees and you just wouldn't
• 20:20
  Speaker 5: be able to fight. And that's what we're going through.
• 20:23
  Speaker 5: That's the game, and it's an unfortunate It's an unfortunate game.
• 20:27
  Speaker 5: You know, you said you were in a group of
• 20:29
  Speaker 5: post founders. This is interesting because we've had plenty of conversations.
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: I didn't even know this story, so like I'm hearing
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: this for the first time, and I'm like really intrigued
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: by it. What is the common like conversation around Is
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: it because you don't hear these stories, you never hear
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: these stories.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: You don't hear those stories.
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: Is it either?
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Is it fair?
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: Is an embarrassment?
• 20:48
  Speaker 5: It's embarrassment? Yeah, right, you know you read a headline.
• 20:51
  Speaker 5: It's like Marcalmedia sells for seventy five million dollars or
• 20:54
  Speaker 5: so and soon makes four hundred fifty million dollars, and
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: like you go out with your friends for dinner and
• 20:58
  Speaker 5: you're like, you know, like, oh, he'll pick up the tap.
• 21:02
  Speaker 5: You know, he just made seventy five million dollars. You know,
• 21:05
  Speaker 5: but you don't know the truth. You know, you don't
• 21:07
  Speaker 5: know what's really going on behind the scenes. You know,
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: you don't know that I've spent five years in a lawsuit.
• 21:13
  Speaker 5: I haven't been able to buy my mama house, my
• 21:15
  Speaker 5: sister house. I haven't be able to buy myself a house,
• 21:17
  Speaker 5: you know. And like, for me, that pain that I
• 21:20
  Speaker 5: feel is something that drives me to build the next
• 21:22
  Speaker 5: thing right and like more importantly, it drives me to
• 21:26
  Speaker 5: share with other founders how to not fall in the
• 21:29
  Speaker 5: pothole that I fell into.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: You know, yeah, yeah, so okay, so you so you
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: and then what's what berths on? Like going through what
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: you went through? Was that the reason why you birthed it?
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Or like what's the process of actually starting that co If.
• 21:44
  Speaker 5: You ask one hundred founders, you put them in a
• 21:47
  Speaker 5: room and you say, what do you all need more?
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: Of they would all tell you the same thing. Customers
• 21:53
  Speaker 5: sales solves all problems. And if no one knows you exist,
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: you die. So how do you acquire more customers today?
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: Well, I can. Am I going to put up a billboard?
• 22:05
  Speaker 5: Or am I going to put an ad in the
• 22:06
  Speaker 5: newspaper or I'm going to you know, I don't know,
• 22:09
  Speaker 5: advertise in some show. If you're a startup, your attention
• 22:12
  Speaker 5: is on your phone. Our attention is with people that
• 22:15
  Speaker 5: we trust, right, Attention is currency. Influence isn't some kid
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: dancing in the middle of street. It is when you talk,
• 22:23
  Speaker 5: does someone listen? And I don't care if you are
• 22:25
  Speaker 5: building a B to B SaaS product that's trying to
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: compete with Salesforce or Oracle, you know, or you're building
• 22:31
  Speaker 5: the next drink you know to compete with Prime and Gatorade.
• 22:36
  Speaker 5: Someone out there influences your customer. And my belief is
• 22:41
  Speaker 5: is they were invested in your success, you'd be more successful.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: So how do you.
• 22:48
  Speaker 5: Use your most valuable currency, which is your equity, your ownership,
• 22:52
  Speaker 5: as an incentive to drive growth? You know?
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: And I kept talking to founders.
• 22:57
  Speaker 5: You know, Look, I put money in my pocket from
• 23:01
  Speaker 5: the cash and I've been living off that. I haven't
• 23:04
  Speaker 5: made a dollar in the last three years, you know.
• 23:08
  Speaker 5: And I was still writing checks into founders as an
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: angel investor, believing in what they were building. And what
• 23:16
  Speaker 5: I actually what I actually saw was I'd write a
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: check and that founder would take my money, give me equity,
• 23:23
  Speaker 5: and then turn around and pay a bunch of creators
• 23:26
  Speaker 5: with my cash to go promote their products. And I
• 23:28
  Speaker 5: thought there had to be a better alignment to the
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: outcome of this business which I'm now invested in, to
• 23:35
  Speaker 5: the output that they're being paid for creators. And so
• 23:37
  Speaker 5: I said, why is influence not investible just like cash?
• 23:42
  Speaker 5: If it is the most valuable currency that we have,
• 23:45
  Speaker 5: how can I help founders. I don't care if you're
• 23:48
  Speaker 5: building a coffee shop, you know, on a street in Atlanta,
• 23:51
  Speaker 5: or you're building something you know that wants to compete
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: with the biggest brands in the world.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Right, if more people know that you exist, you'll win.
• 24:00
  Speaker 5: So use your currency to get the people who believe
• 24:03
  Speaker 5: in it to be a.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: Part of the success. Right.
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: But when I looked at it, you hear about Ryan
• 24:09
  Speaker 5: Reynolds and fifty cent and you know, Haley Bieber and
• 24:12
  Speaker 5: like all these great exits, and it's like the idea
• 24:15
  Speaker 5: of ownership shouldn't be reserved for the one percent.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: It shouldn't just be celebrity for equity.
• 24:20
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: But when you.
• 24:21
  Speaker 5: Peel back the onion, the infrastructure just wasn't built at scale.
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: And the harder something is, the more it costs, the
• 24:27
  Speaker 5: less people do it, right, And so what I wanted
• 24:30
  Speaker 5: to do was build the infrastructure for the next generation
• 24:34
  Speaker 5: of attention first brands. Right, there's platforms out there like
• 24:37
  Speaker 5: Karta and Pulley and other platforms that like, hey, like
• 24:41
  Speaker 5: you're building a company, you're raising from investors, like, use
• 24:44
  Speaker 5: our platform. They're a better spreadsheet, right because as as
• 24:48
  Speaker 5: as someone who's building a business, if you raise capital.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: Those people need a system of record.
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: Right. I put in one hundred grand, what's it worth?
• 24:58
  Speaker 5: In the next round someone puts in five million? What's
• 25:01
  Speaker 5: my one hundred ground now worth?
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: Am I diluded? Like someone's got to track that? And
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: ten years ago.
• 25:06
  Speaker 5: Those systems, like most SaaS systems, were expensive and you
• 25:10
  Speaker 5: had to pay a lot of money for them, Right,
• 25:13
  Speaker 5: But today I bet some kid could vibe code KRTA
• 25:18
  Speaker 5: on Lovable in like ten minutes, right, now as you
• 25:21
  Speaker 5: get more sophisticated Series A, Series B, like you need
• 25:24
  Speaker 5: some more sophistication. But right now, if you're a startup,
• 25:27
  Speaker 5: an LLC or a C court and you're trying to
• 25:30
  Speaker 5: launch your business, right, how do you let more people
• 25:34
  Speaker 5: know that you exist. All the top venture firms A
• 25:37
  Speaker 5: sixteen Harry Stebbings, they're all trying to talk about distribution
• 25:41
  Speaker 5: as a differentiator.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: You guys are distribution.
• 25:45
  Speaker 5: I'm sure brands have come to you and said, hey,
• 25:47
  Speaker 5: I'd love for you to talk about my brand, and
• 25:51
  Speaker 5: someone on your sales team or yourself might say, okay, hey,
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: it's going to be fifty grand, we'll do a couple
• 25:55
  Speaker 5: of ad reads right here and there and there. But
• 25:57
  Speaker 5: what if that person who's asking you to promote their brand, like, man,
• 26:01
  Speaker 5: this could be a home run, This could be the
• 26:03
  Speaker 5: next big thing. If you believe in it, ask for ownership,
• 26:08
  Speaker 5: you know, because at the end of the day, as
• 26:10
  Speaker 5: a founder, all you're trying to do is shorten the
• 26:12
  Speaker 5: distance to trust. And you guys, have earned that trust
• 26:15
  Speaker 5: with your audience. So if you could tell your fans, hey,
• 26:18
  Speaker 5: I believe so much in what Jeff and Ohm is
• 26:20
  Speaker 5: building that we were willing to invest and become an owner.
• 26:25
  Speaker 5: Then the fans will lean in and say, oh, this
• 26:27
  Speaker 5: isn't some paid promotion because you only own what you
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: believe in. You only invest in the things that you
• 26:32
  Speaker 5: know are true, right and authentic to who you are.
• 26:36
  Speaker 5: You know, and I just don't think you guys have
• 26:38
  Speaker 5: to reach into your pockets. I think you could reach
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: into your audience. And that's what hopefully you've done with
• 26:44
  Speaker 5: what we're building.
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: There's so much there and I think it's very important
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: right we go.
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: And even in the conversation we've had, it's always been
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: stressing the idea of equity, equity equity. How does a
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: person a creator know that they're at the point where
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: they can ask for equity and how should they approach it?
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: Because I think that falls into a place where it
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: gets tricky for them. They're like, well, my community is
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: this big? Like are there metrics that they should meet
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: before they get to that point?
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 27:11
  Speaker 5: First of all, like, you can't feed yourself on equity, right,
• 27:14
  Speaker 5: So I think about it as an end conversation on it,
• 27:17
  Speaker 5: or conversation right, Like if someone is offering you cash
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: right and wants to pay you to promote something that
• 27:24
  Speaker 5: you believe in, take the cash and see if you
• 27:28
  Speaker 5: could do more and get more.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: Right, That's number one. You know.
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: The other thing is is like you'll never hit a
• 27:34
  Speaker 5: home run if you don't swing for the fences. So
• 27:37
  Speaker 5: if I said, hey, if TikTok or Instagram or YouTube
• 27:39
  Speaker 5: like died tomorrow, what do you have to show for
• 27:42
  Speaker 5: your influence. If the answer is nothing, the question is why.
• 27:45
  Speaker 5: It's because you haven't asked to own anything, right, And
• 27:49
  Speaker 5: so I think about it as like at eighty twenty
• 27:52
  Speaker 5: or ninety ten, Right, if you look at a portfolio, like,
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: do you have some small stakes and a bunch of
• 27:57
  Speaker 5: companies that you are passion about? Right, you can invest
• 28:02
  Speaker 5: because you are passionate. You might just want to be
• 28:04
  Speaker 5: a part of something because you want that to exist
• 28:06
  Speaker 5: in the world, right, But passion isn't purpose, right, Passion
• 28:10
  Speaker 5: isn't profit Right, Like, you might really want to build
• 28:13
  Speaker 5: a kiddy litter company, but your audience could give two
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: shits about that, So it doesn't mean you should go
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: out and build it with the expectation that you know your.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: Audience is right for that.
• 28:23
  Speaker 5: Right on the other side of that, I talk to
• 28:25
  Speaker 5: so many creators every day that have twenty million followers
• 28:30
  Speaker 5: and fifty thousand, and you'd be surprised about the ones
• 28:34
  Speaker 5: who have fifty thousand or one hundred thousand that are
• 28:36
  Speaker 5: making two three million dollars a year. Right. They figured
• 28:40
  Speaker 5: out how to monetize their audience by providing value. Right,
• 28:45
  Speaker 5: You don't sell ads. If you provide value, people will
• 28:49
  Speaker 5: pay for that value, you know. So, so don't think
• 28:53
  Speaker 5: that like just because you have a small audience that
• 28:55
  Speaker 5: can't become life changing income. I talk to two founds yesterday.
• 28:59
  Speaker 5: They're just on my mind to creators yesterday. The build
• 29:02
  Speaker 5: it up pasta an olive oil company. Right now, they
• 29:06
  Speaker 5: don't have any digital marketing, they don't have any operations,
• 29:09
  Speaker 5: they don't have any infrastructure. Right, but I guarantee you
• 29:12
  Speaker 5: they're going to do seven figures this year, right, just
• 29:15
  Speaker 5: off the back of the fact that their audience loves
• 29:19
  Speaker 5: what they've built. Right. And so I think that if
• 29:24
  Speaker 5: you are thinking about building something, I see creators as
• 29:28
  Speaker 5: the co founders and capital of the future.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: Let's just look at AI. Right. AI will create.
• 29:35
  Speaker 5: A baseline for millions of entrepreneurs who have an idea
• 29:40
  Speaker 5: to solve a problem or to build something. But what's
• 29:43
  Speaker 5: going to happen is is every single one of them
• 29:45
  Speaker 5: is going to compete for attention. So all three of us,
• 29:49
  Speaker 5: we all have the same idea. We're all living in
• 29:51
  Speaker 5: different places in the country. We all tell Lovable, we
• 29:54
  Speaker 5: all tell cursor, we all use claud code. We build
• 29:56
  Speaker 5: something that it's just the perfect solution to the who wins. Well,
• 30:05
  Speaker 5: I don't win because no one knows I exist. I
• 30:07
  Speaker 5: don't have an audience. Maybe I'm smarter than you guys
• 30:10
  Speaker 5: on business, you know, maybe I know operations better. But
• 30:13
  Speaker 5: like you've got millions of fans that you could say, Hey,
• 30:17
  Speaker 5: you guys been in the comments talking about this problem.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: I've been listening. Listen and listen.
• 30:21
  Speaker 5: You know what.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: We decided to build it.
• 30:23
  Speaker 5: Go check it out. First thousand people will be for free.
• 30:26
  Speaker 5: You know, we're creating a community. We want to hear
• 30:28
  Speaker 5: your feedback. You are both listening device and megaphone, and
• 30:32
  Speaker 5: you have a competitive advantage because you have distribution, and that,
• 30:37
  Speaker 5: in my view, is one of the last two remaining.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: Motes left in this world.
• 30:41
  Speaker 5: In a world where AI will democratize access to entrepreneurship
• 30:44
  Speaker 5: and content creation, which is distribution and trust, and those
• 30:49
  Speaker 5: two things are not the same, right, Like you guys
• 30:51
  Speaker 5: may have distribution, people may tune in and listen.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: To you, but do they trust you, right?
• 30:56
  Speaker 5: And that's where I think a lot of the knowledge
• 30:59
  Speaker 5: creators people are doctors or you know, teachers, might have
• 31:03
  Speaker 5: small niche followings. Those are the ones that will really
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: monetize their audience way more than some entertainment creator who
• 31:12
  Speaker 5: dances and makes funny things and has ten million followers.
• 31:16
  Speaker 5: But the thing is is once they try and provide
• 31:18
  Speaker 5: value to their audience that isn't a giggle or a laugh, right,
• 31:21
  Speaker 5: that audience doesn't know them for that, and so it's
• 31:23
  Speaker 5: hard for them to take a passion and turn that
• 31:25
  Speaker 5: into a profit.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: Right. You're right, sorry for these long No, I mean
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: you was spout on right there.
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: We've seen it time half the time where you watch
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: celebrity A.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: You know, we know them for this.
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: They try to venture off into that and it's like
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: nobody supports it and they're like, well what happened? Or
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: big corporations will say let's throw money at celebrity A
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: and try to transition into this unless it and then
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: it doesn't work and they're like what happens.
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they don't know them form that the trust isn't there.
• 31:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah, And look, I teach founders all day because that's
• 31:54
  Speaker 5: the business that I'm in. My job is to give
• 31:56
  Speaker 5: founders and operators a superpower and that's super power is
• 32:00
  Speaker 5: trust and distribution through a network of creators who are
• 32:03
  Speaker 5: passionate and believers in the things that you're building. Right.
• 32:07
  Speaker 5: But the problem is is like what are you famous for?
• 32:11
  Speaker 5: What is your influence? I always use the example of
• 32:13
  Speaker 5: like everyone be like, oh I wish Zendia was the
• 32:16
  Speaker 5: face of my brand. I'm like, great, I hope you
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: have twenty million dollars to let the world know that
• 32:22
  Speaker 5: she exists because she's not a native content creator. It's
• 32:26
  Speaker 5: like back in the day, everyone wanted an athlete on
• 32:28
  Speaker 5: their cap table.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: That's cool, they got capital, right.
• 32:32
  Speaker 5: But until Lebron James talks about your brand, his dollar's
• 32:35
  Speaker 5: worth the same as mine.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 32:37
  Speaker 5: And if a creator isn't unfortunately opening people up into
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: their lives, into their daily routine, right, which a lot
• 32:45
  Speaker 5: of people are now, even like a doctor creator who's
• 32:49
  Speaker 5: known for oncology or dermatology is taking people through their
• 32:52
  Speaker 5: day so they can talk about what they eat and
• 32:54
  Speaker 5: what they wear and then what they put in their body. Right,
• 32:57
  Speaker 5: that means that they can diversify that truck to cross
• 33:00
  Speaker 5: things that they could monetize not through ads, but solving
• 33:04
  Speaker 5: problems for their fans, right versus you know, someone who's
• 33:08
  Speaker 5: famous like Timothy Challonmey would be great, but like you
• 33:11
  Speaker 5: really need to have an engine if you're going to
• 33:13
  Speaker 5: put someone like that inside your business to tell the
• 33:16
  Speaker 5: world that he's a part of it, right versus you guys,
• 33:20
  Speaker 5: you have a platform. You can get on here and
• 33:22
  Speaker 5: you can talk to your fans and they they're they're
• 33:24
  Speaker 5: leaning in. What are you going to tell me that's
• 33:26
  Speaker 5: going to change my life? Right?
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: How are you going to help me?
• 33:29
  Speaker 5: And that trust is why I say it's earned, you know,
• 33:32
  Speaker 5: and I fear I have, like this huge fear that
• 33:37
  Speaker 5: much like the wealth gap in this country, the creator
• 33:39
  Speaker 5: gap will be the same. Right because if you think
• 33:43
  Speaker 5: about it, and let me know if this is too
• 33:45
  Speaker 5: long of a rant, but just like just be me.
• 33:48
  Speaker 5: I've been meaning to say this somewhere like AI will
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: democratize access to content and because the platforms won't deny
• 33:57
  Speaker 5: who is real or not because they're monetized so much
• 34:00
  Speaker 5: through ads.
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: With virtual influencers.
• 34:02
  Speaker 5: Right, what's going to happen is is everyone who's created
• 34:05
  Speaker 5: brand equity in a PREII world is going to continue
• 34:08
  Speaker 5: to grow and lift. And I reckon it to like
• 34:11
  Speaker 5: Samuel L. Jackson's voice, right, you know that voice. So
• 34:15
  Speaker 5: if you're watching an animated film and you hear it,
• 34:17
  Speaker 5: you're like, oh, there's Samuel L.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: Jackson.
• 34:19
  Speaker 5: But if you don't know the voice, right, and eleven
• 34:23
  Speaker 5: Labs can create any voice for basically zero dollars, then
• 34:27
  Speaker 5: every other voice is worthless, right, And so everyone who
• 34:32
  Speaker 5: is a voice actor goes to zero. And in the
• 34:36
  Speaker 5: world of creators, trust is earned over time, and so
• 34:39
  Speaker 5: those people who have earned it, you see their face,
• 34:41
  Speaker 5: You recognize their face. In a world where you're going
• 34:44
  Speaker 5: to hundred x the faces in the platforms and a
• 34:49
  Speaker 5: thousand x the amount of content that you can see
• 34:52
  Speaker 5: with everyone making clips and all these virtual influencers, it's like,
• 34:55
  Speaker 5: you're going to stick to who you know, right, and
• 34:59
  Speaker 5: that value you Like you guys who have been here
• 35:01
  Speaker 5: in the pre AI world, your IP and worth.
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: Is going to tenax.
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: So don't sell yet, don't get out the game just yet,
• 35:09
  Speaker 5: I'm telling you the wave, the monetization wave is coming.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: So do you think that creators that are not in
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: it right now, they're not going to be able to
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: make content once AI influencers. What you're essentially saying is
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: AI influences is going to kind of wipe out a
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: lot of human influencers except for established brands, because those
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: established brands already have a following, so they've already done
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: the leg work, so they'll continue to go, but everybody
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: else will kind of get hit in the tsunami.
• 35:44
  Speaker 5: I think about it like I'm on the side of
• 35:46
  Speaker 5: humans only, right, But let's just use and until we
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: as a society decide that we will not accept virtual
• 35:55
  Speaker 5: influencers holding up a product that they say they've tried
• 35:58
  Speaker 5: and has helped them lose fifty pounds, right for us
• 36:01
  Speaker 5: to say, you're not real? Why are you selling me
• 36:06
  Speaker 5: something when you have no real experience? Like, we have
• 36:08
  Speaker 5: to make a decision as a society. Is that is
• 36:11
  Speaker 5: that correct or not? If I'm a marketer, I've got
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: to make a decision do I want to lie to
• 36:18
  Speaker 5: my potential customers? You know, because right now, if I
• 36:22
  Speaker 5: create a ugc Army, I might make one hundred or
• 36:26
  Speaker 5: one thousand creators a part of my affiliate army. I
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: want to go source them. I want to go find them.
• 36:32
  Speaker 5: They're real humans. I seed that product out there, they
• 36:35
  Speaker 5: try it, and they have real feedback, and they jump
• 36:37
  Speaker 5: in front of the camera and they make something that
• 36:40
  Speaker 5: hopefully drives sales because that's how they earn money as
• 36:43
  Speaker 5: an affiliate. Right. Other people who are just getting into
• 36:45
  Speaker 5: the content creation game, you know, the way you cut
• 36:48
  Speaker 5: your teeth is you get one hundred or two hundred
• 36:50
  Speaker 5: bucks to make, like, you know, a thirty second video,
• 36:52
  Speaker 5: and like that's how you learn how to create viral
• 36:54
  Speaker 5: hooks and what your fans really want, what the algorithm
• 36:57
  Speaker 5: cares about. But I can make one hundred thousand variations
• 37:03
  Speaker 5: of that video for like a few hundred dollars today, right,
• 37:08
  Speaker 5: and you wouldn't be able to know if that person's
• 37:10
  Speaker 5: real or not, and if it works, I can instantly
• 37:16
  Speaker 5: make a hundred more. Right. And if I want to
• 37:19
  Speaker 5: create what I call hyper personalization at scale, I mean,
• 37:22
  Speaker 5: we have so much data on all of our consumers
• 37:25
  Speaker 5: that the next time you open up Instagram, you might
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: see if an ad that says.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: Hey, what's up?
• 37:30
  Speaker 5: Was up Troy, like I know you, you know you
• 37:33
  Speaker 5: live here and you got two kids and you do
• 37:35
  Speaker 5: all these things like here's this product, like I know
• 37:37
  Speaker 5: you were just shoping. You're like, holy shit, this person
• 37:39
  Speaker 5: like knows me and and wait a minute, that's Michael.
• 37:42
  Speaker 5: That's like Mike Tyson talking to me and his voice
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: with his face. But that's what the Cobby lame thing is.
• 37:47
  Speaker 5: It's about hyper personalization at scale. So there's like virtual
• 37:51
  Speaker 5: influencers that are competing with humans that we've got as
• 37:53
  Speaker 5: society decide, are we going to deny this creator economy
• 37:57
  Speaker 5: from being able to break through the noise? Right? And
• 38:01
  Speaker 5: then it's like, you know, imagine you're shopping on the
• 38:05
  Speaker 5: Skim's website and Kim shows up and she's like, I
• 38:08
  Speaker 5: don't like that dress on you because you could digitally
• 38:10
  Speaker 5: try it on. It's a model's been trained with her
• 38:12
  Speaker 5: voice generative AI can show you who she is, and like,
• 38:16
  Speaker 5: that is a world that will exist. And the reason
• 38:19
  Speaker 5: why it will exist is because when Kim tells you
• 38:21
  Speaker 5: you look fabulous, right, and you know it's not Kim,
• 38:26
  Speaker 5: You'll buy anyway, right, you will?
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: You know this is really interesting. So there's a couple
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: of things. Right, Obviously, we need to figure out the
• 38:40
  Speaker 4: creator economy because it is evolving, and then the equity
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: conversation is definitely a part of it. Is there a
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: world where you're pairing both, right, Like you obviously speak
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: to founders and you speak to creators. How do we
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: get that creator to say, hey, I know there's a
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: founder who's looking for somebody just like you, right, or
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: a founder to say, I know that the exact creator
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: you need to push that product?
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, how does that work in your world? So what
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: I built at home.
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: Is infrastructure to allow partnerships to happen at scale, to
• 39:16
  Speaker 5: allow founders and creators to build these audience first companies together.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: Let's call it the church. There was no church. To
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: get married.
• 39:22
  Speaker 5: You call CAA, you say who's on the roster. I'm
• 39:24
  Speaker 5: building this cool company. They just tell you who's in
• 39:27
  Speaker 5: their box, and then you spend six months negotiating and
• 39:30
  Speaker 5: spend fifty thousand dollars in legal fees. Like that doesn't
• 39:32
  Speaker 5: scale for the ninety nine percent of us who are
• 39:35
  Speaker 5: trying to build something. So we built the church. Then
• 39:38
  Speaker 5: the question is like, how do you facilitate more dates?
• 39:42
  Speaker 5: So we built a marketplace. There are millions of operators
• 39:46
  Speaker 5: out there that are building things that have the operational excellence,
• 39:49
  Speaker 5: the infrastructure, the project management, the heart and grit to
• 39:53
  Speaker 5: build something, but they lack distribution, they lack trust. So
• 39:58
  Speaker 5: how do you find the creators who want to be
• 40:02
  Speaker 5: co founders, who want to be ambassadors, who want to
• 40:04
  Speaker 5: be invested in the success. And so today we have
• 40:06
  Speaker 5: over ten thousand creators who have raised their hand, and
• 40:09
  Speaker 5: when they come on board, they tell us just one thing.
• 40:11
  Speaker 5: Because I can scrape anything about a creator online, I
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: can build really rich audience personas to know when that
• 40:18
  Speaker 5: creator talks, who listens, and what product will they buy?
• 40:21
  Speaker 5: So I should know what product they should partner with.
• 40:23
  Speaker 5: But what I don't know from a creator is what
• 40:26
  Speaker 5: are you passionate about? Like what's the one dream company
• 40:29
  Speaker 5: you'd love to build or start?
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: You know?
• 40:31
  Speaker 5: And what's happened is is that when you when you
• 40:34
  Speaker 5: get that piece of information and then you map that
• 40:38
  Speaker 5: to the audience that they talk to that engages with them,
• 40:41
  Speaker 5: and then you have thousands of operators on our platform
• 40:44
  Speaker 5: on the other side, and you find the two that
• 40:45
  Speaker 5: are like, holy shit, that's exactly what I was dreaming
• 40:48
  Speaker 5: of building. Last week, we had a conversation with the
• 40:50
  Speaker 5: creator has five million followers, and she spent one hundred
• 40:54
  Speaker 5: thousand dollars of your own money trying to build this
• 40:56
  Speaker 5: product for six months and just couldn't make it work
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: because her super power and where she spends her time
• 41:01
  Speaker 5: is storytelling. But when I got her on the phone
• 41:05
  Speaker 5: with the two founders that were building this incredible product,
• 41:09
  Speaker 5: you know, and we were going to give her some
• 41:10
  Speaker 5: cash and some equity, she was like, listen, listen, I've
• 41:13
  Speaker 5: dreamed of building this. This is exactly what I always
• 41:16
  Speaker 5: wanted to exist in the world. Can I lean in?
• 41:19
  Speaker 5: Can I be the co founder? Right?
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: And right now, there's no place to find those partnerships
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: to marry people who are building things with incredible stories
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: to tell, with the incredible storytellers that want to build.
• 41:33
  Speaker 5: Right. We need more coos in the creator economy, right,
• 41:38
  Speaker 5: You need more operators. Don't think that Jake Paul and
• 41:41
  Speaker 5: mister Bees don't have someone behind them that is driving
• 41:44
  Speaker 5: the operations of this empire, right, So how do you
• 41:47
  Speaker 5: do that for the middle class? That's what I'm going
• 41:50
  Speaker 5: after is we want to be able to create the
• 41:52
  Speaker 5: marketplace where creators who want to stop renting their audience
• 41:57
  Speaker 5: for brand partnerships and want to start building brands for
• 42:01
  Speaker 5: their audience. You can go find the people that they
• 42:03
  Speaker 5: can go build with. And for the operators who know
• 42:07
  Speaker 5: that there is a gap in the market and know
• 42:09
  Speaker 5: the incumbent is a shit sandwich and they can absolutely
• 42:12
  Speaker 5: take market share from them, but just don't have the
• 42:14
  Speaker 5: capital or the resources to reach the audience and the
• 42:18
  Speaker 5: customers at scale. There are creators and athletes and celebrities
• 42:22
  Speaker 5: and musicians out there that are hungry to build, and
• 42:25
  Speaker 5: we have them on our platform, and that's what we
• 42:28
  Speaker 5: want to be able to do.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: Create matches.
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: Maybe they turn into a date, maybe they turn into
• 42:33
  Speaker 5: a marriage, and if they do, great, We built the church.
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: You don't have to spend fifty thousand dollars trying to
• 42:37
  Speaker 5: figure out how to get it done.
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: How do you structure those type of deals? Is there
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: more of an ass from the creator right, like you
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: may have to do this, do this, do this, do
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: this right in that scenario, Like what would be an
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: ideal like or hypothetical.
• 42:52
  Speaker 5: It's a great question, and that's the biggest gap. And
• 42:56
  Speaker 5: I think two things. One is like people are bad negotiators.
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: Right Number one and two is they don't know the
• 43:01
  Speaker 5: levers that they can pull. So I tried to create
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: a framework, and I think about it as three buckets.
• 43:06
  Speaker 5: Is someone an advisor, an ambassador, or a co founder?
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 43:11
  Speaker 5: And you should think about the time commitment that you
• 43:15
  Speaker 5: put into something should be directly correlated to the compensation
• 43:18
  Speaker 5: that you should expect to pay. So if I said, hey, guys,
• 43:22
  Speaker 5: I want every week on your podcast for you to
• 43:25
  Speaker 5: talk about Home and every time that you show up
• 43:28
  Speaker 5: to an event, I want you to wear a Home
• 43:30
  Speaker 5: shirt and you can never talk about any other equity
• 43:33
  Speaker 5: management platform.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: And I'm gonna give you no cash.
• 43:36
  Speaker 5: And a quarter point, you'd be like f that, right,
• 43:40
  Speaker 5: Like that's just not worth my time. Right. But if
• 43:43
  Speaker 5: I said, hey, I'm going to give you a retainer, right,
• 43:46
  Speaker 5: I'm gonna make you a co founder and you're gonna
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: have twenty percent of the business, you could say, hey,
• 43:51
  Speaker 5: like I'm gonna.
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: Sells brought to you by Yeah Home Dot.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: Hey this is great, it's check out Jeff Brummer.
• 43:59
  Speaker 5: No, but like that's it, right, And so you want
• 44:02
  Speaker 5: to think about what are the levers that you can pull?
• 44:05
  Speaker 5: And I try and advise people to think about think
• 44:08
  Speaker 5: about your So I made a post on LinkedIn if
• 44:11
  Speaker 5: anyone is out there listening, I'm big on LinkedIn just
• 44:15
  Speaker 5: because I'm trying to provide all the value that I
• 44:17
  Speaker 5: wish I had when I was building. And I think
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: about things in three layers, trust, distribution, and amplification. So
• 44:24
  Speaker 5: think about your brand, your business as a movie poster.
• 44:30
  Speaker 5: Who are the Avengers team that's standing in the front.
• 44:34
  Speaker 5: Who could best represent your brand and give your brand
• 44:38
  Speaker 5: the trust it.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: Needs to accelerate its success?
• 44:41
  Speaker 5: Right? Who are the one, two, three, five people put
• 44:45
  Speaker 5: that Avengers team together?
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 44:47
  Speaker 5: Those are your anchors, those are your co founders. I
• 44:51
  Speaker 5: call that your creator advisory board, right, And the way
• 44:56
  Speaker 5: to think about that team is what is the incentive structure?
• 45:00
  Speaker 5: And on the own website we share this framework. But like,
• 45:03
  Speaker 5: what is the incentive for someone that maybe is way
• 45:06
  Speaker 5: out of my reach? Like I could never get Troy
• 45:08
  Speaker 5: Mashad right, But like if I said, hey, I want
• 45:11
  Speaker 5: you to talk about my brand, do all these different things?
• 45:13
  Speaker 5: Like you know what, I'm putting this creative advisory board together.
• 45:16
  Speaker 5: You guys have always talked about ownership. I would love
• 45:19
  Speaker 5: for you to join this advisor board. All I ask
• 45:22
  Speaker 5: is that once a quarter, you spend thirty minutes with
• 45:24
  Speaker 5: me to give me the insight that you are hearing
• 45:26
  Speaker 5: from your audience about equity and ownership, right, and you
• 45:30
  Speaker 5: start to build a relationship. And you know what happens
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: is people do more when they're invested and believe in something,
• 45:39
  Speaker 5: and then they'll talk about it right behind this army
• 45:43
  Speaker 5: of creative advisory board, I would think about, Okay, who
• 45:47
  Speaker 5: are my amplifiers, you know? And I think about that
• 45:50
  Speaker 5: as paid partnerships creators that yes, you want to put
• 45:53
  Speaker 5: some money in people's pocket. The best way to build
• 45:56
  Speaker 5: a relationship with someone is to give them some money. Right.
• 46:00
  Speaker 5: When you start feeding people, right, people start coming back, right.
• 46:05
  Speaker 5: They know that, Like you're a part of that food chain. Right,
• 46:09
  Speaker 5: So who can you have some paid partnerships with? And
• 46:12
  Speaker 5: then who is the army of UGC creators and affiliates? Right?
• 46:17
  Speaker 5: And if you have a good creator advisory board, what
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: I would say is like, even if it's one or
• 46:20
  Speaker 5: two people, go find a community of affiliates that will
• 46:24
  Speaker 5: just work on like CPA or just paid performance, meaning
• 46:28
  Speaker 5: like if I'm driving sales of a consumer tech app,
• 46:31
  Speaker 5: or something on Amazon or drink whatever it is, doesn't matter, right,
• 46:35
  Speaker 5: you want to just pay them when they perform, right,
• 46:39
  Speaker 5: But to recruit them. You know what would be really
• 46:41
  Speaker 5: cool if you got you know, Mark Heimen or Eva
• 46:44
  Speaker 5: longor or mister Beast or someone with some cultural cachet
• 46:48
  Speaker 5: that can jump on a webinar with a hundred of
• 46:50
  Speaker 5: these people to hear from you the founder and that
• 46:53
  Speaker 5: creator storyteller, to draft off that excitement and go, holy shit,
• 46:57
  Speaker 5: did you just hear what Troy and Mishad we're talking
• 46:59
  Speaker 5: about with home Like man, Like now they can go
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: out and make better content because they can reference in
• 47:05
  Speaker 5: the video like, oh man, you know tryum or shop
• 47:07
  Speaker 5: and you're doing this, this and that and like that
• 47:09
  Speaker 5: through their audience and fans lean in and so structuring
• 47:13
  Speaker 5: these deals means that you need to know two things.
• 47:17
  Speaker 5: One is is like what's going to drive a business impact?
• 47:20
  Speaker 5: Like if you had that Ferrari on your wall waking
• 47:24
  Speaker 5: up and every day you dreamed of hitting it, or
• 47:26
  Speaker 5: if you want to lose twenty pounds. You can't just
• 47:29
  Speaker 5: set out a goal without knowing what the next milestone is.
• 47:31
  Speaker 5: So set smaller milestones that are going to help you
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: get there right and think about how to reverse engineer
• 47:36
  Speaker 5: those milestones to the person that has your audience's attention.
• 47:40
  Speaker 5: And can you say, hey, look, I want you to
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: do these five things right and then.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: Figure out what are all the levers? Right?
• 47:48
  Speaker 5: Get knowledgeable, category, exclusivity, white listing, you know, do you
• 47:53
  Speaker 5: know should I?
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: Should I? Is it paid promotion? You know?
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: Like are they going to show up, like when they
• 47:59
  Speaker 5: jump on a podcast? Can they talk about it in
• 48:01
  Speaker 5: their Lincoln bio? Does it say hashtag owner of you know,
• 48:04
  Speaker 5: whatever your brand is. These are little levers that can
• 48:07
  Speaker 5: really make a difference if you put them in an agreement. Right.
• 48:12
  Speaker 5: So there's a lot more behind that, but you know,
• 48:14
  Speaker 5: I think those are just good frameworks for folks to
• 48:16
  Speaker 5: learn and listen.
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: What's to create a stock option pool?
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 48:20
  Speaker 5: Look, I think when you're building a business and just
• 48:24
  Speaker 5: just remember Silicon Valley and public companies are not stupid, right,
• 48:30
  Speaker 5: they call them golden handcuffs. They have an ESOP and
• 48:32
  Speaker 5: employee stock option pool, right, And if you work in
• 48:35
  Speaker 5: Silicon Valley and you work for a hot startup, it's
• 48:38
  Speaker 5: all about the options, right. You hear the graffiti artists
• 48:41
  Speaker 5: that Facebook made a million bucks, and you know, the
• 48:43
  Speaker 5: secretary of this company made a million bucks. Like, when
• 48:46
  Speaker 5: you work for these startups, you're making a salary, but
• 48:48
  Speaker 5: what they're trying to do is to get you to
• 48:50
  Speaker 5: stick around and work your ass off long enough so
• 48:54
  Speaker 5: that they can have an outcome.
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: And ideally you participate in that.
• 48:57
  Speaker 5: And that's what an esop is, right, and so why
• 49:01
  Speaker 5: shouldn't the middle class have that?
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 49:05
  Speaker 5: So for me, I think about this problem around the
• 49:10
  Speaker 5: eight percent of businesses in this country who don't use
• 49:12
  Speaker 5: ownership as an incentive. Right. That means thirty million businesses
• 49:16
  Speaker 5: don't use profit share, rev share or equity to incentivize
• 49:19
  Speaker 5: their employees the same way public companies and private companies do.
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: Right, So how do we solve that?
• 49:24
  Speaker 5: Well, we're not going to solve it tomorrow because the
• 49:27
  Speaker 5: education gap is what holds us back. People don't know
• 49:29
  Speaker 5: what ownership is or why I even want it, what's
• 49:32
  Speaker 5: it worth? You know. Robinhood just recently democratize access to
• 49:36
  Speaker 5: fractional ownership in the public markets, right, and now people
• 49:39
  Speaker 5: can start to understand. You know, I can buy a
• 49:41
  Speaker 5: share of Apple for ten bucks, and I can learn
• 49:44
  Speaker 5: about it, whether or not, I'll make a huge impact.
• 49:46
  Speaker 5: I can start learning about it. So for me, the
• 49:49
  Speaker 5: creator stock option pool solves two things. One is, I
• 49:53
  Speaker 5: think every company that's being built today will be built
• 49:57
  Speaker 5: attention and distribution first, right, and that means that you
• 50:00
  Speaker 5: should set up an ESOP to incentivize the employees that
• 50:04
  Speaker 5: work for you. But you should also set up a seesop,
• 50:07
  Speaker 5: a creator stock option pool, to give the people who
• 50:10
  Speaker 5: influence your customers the opportunity to earn equity. And the
• 50:16
  Speaker 5: reason why I started with influence for equity when I
• 50:18
  Speaker 5: built own is because influence is the most performative. If
• 50:23
  Speaker 5: I invested in your leisure and I wrote you a
• 50:25
  Speaker 5: check for one hundred grand, there'd be a value of
• 50:27
  Speaker 5: the business and I would get some equity based on
• 50:30
  Speaker 5: that value. But if you guys invested your influence, which
• 50:34
  Speaker 5: is currency in my business, you have to do something
• 50:38
  Speaker 5: to earn it, right. You don't get the equity on
• 50:41
  Speaker 5: day one. So we're gonna say, okay, every week you're
• 50:43
  Speaker 5: going to do a post, or every quarter you're going
• 50:45
  Speaker 5: to show up to an advisory board, meaning you're going
• 50:47
  Speaker 5: to do something to earn it. And if you do that,
• 50:50
  Speaker 5: then you should unlock that value and if you don't,
• 50:52
  Speaker 5: then you shouldn't. So a CESOP is the ability for
• 50:56
  Speaker 5: founders to reduce the friction between having to go through
• 51:00
  Speaker 5: board approvals or how to set up a pool, or
• 51:03
  Speaker 5: how to give a manager of a talent. They're twenty
• 51:05
  Speaker 5: percent of the one percent all of the things that
• 51:09
  Speaker 5: would have cost fifty thousand dollars and just so much
• 51:11
  Speaker 5: time and unnecessary energy to use a founder's currency to
• 51:15
  Speaker 5: incentivize growth. And so I think every company in the
• 51:18
  Speaker 5: future will have a creator advisory board that a Vengers
• 51:21
  Speaker 5: level team of people that can give trust to a
• 51:24
  Speaker 5: founder and a startup at the very early stages and
• 51:27
  Speaker 5: help accelerate the go to market, and a creator stock
• 51:30
  Speaker 5: option pool which allows them to say, look, if you
• 51:32
  Speaker 5: believe in what we're building, I'll set some milestones and
• 51:36
  Speaker 5: I'll put that Ferrari on the wall and I'll tell
• 51:39
  Speaker 5: you how to hit it, and if you do, then
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: you'll get it. And I think ownership, if I can
• 51:45
  Speaker 5: do it for creators and teach them about why they
• 51:48
  Speaker 5: want to be owners, you guys influence culture and conversation.
• 51:52
  Speaker 5: And if you move that education gap more downstream, then
• 51:55
  Speaker 5: more people will start to understand what ownership is, what
• 51:58
  Speaker 5: equity is, the start to ask for it. And it
• 52:02
  Speaker 5: won't just be for Silicon Valley back companies and for
• 52:05
  Speaker 5: VC back companies, it will be for all companies. Where
• 52:09
  Speaker 5: someone who's walking into a bar says, you know what,
• 52:12
  Speaker 5: maybe one day, if I work my ass off, I
• 52:15
  Speaker 5: could just own a small piece of this. And if
• 52:18
  Speaker 5: you tell that person what they need to do to
• 52:21
  Speaker 5: get that, I guarantee more businesses will be successful because
• 52:26
  Speaker 5: when you own it, you treat it differently. And I
• 52:28
  Speaker 5: think ownership is the next great economic boom in this country.
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: He says something very important. People suck at negotiating.
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: So I wonder what advice, what tips you can give
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: to people who are in this space, who have gone
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: through negotiations, who haven't gone through it yet. What should
• 52:46
  Speaker 4: they look out for, What should they put at the forefront?
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: How should they go about negotiating Because it's tough, right,
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: Like people have an inflated, sometimes deflated valuation of themselves
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: and that works against it them.
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: Negotiation tactics, Yeah, how should somebody to go about that?
• 53:04
  Speaker 5: I think I think first is know your opponent, know
• 53:08
  Speaker 5: what they want? What do they want? What are they
• 53:13
  Speaker 5: negotiating for. Right, most people just want more money? Right, Okay, great,
• 53:20
  Speaker 5: what do you want?
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 53:22
  Speaker 5: Write those two things down? What does this person want?
• 53:25
  Speaker 5: What do I want? Then? Right?
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: What if it doesn't work out?
• 53:31
  Speaker 5: I think you need to understand what success looks like
• 53:35
  Speaker 5: and what success doesn't look like. Without those two north stars,
• 53:40
  Speaker 5: it's really difficult to even mentally.
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: Create a framework in your head.
• 53:43
  Speaker 5: Right. And then I think negotiations shouldn't be treated like
• 53:48
  Speaker 5: a transaction. It should be treated like a partnership. And
• 53:52
  Speaker 5: I think a lot of times, and maybe it's just
• 53:54
  Speaker 5: because of COVID, and I feel it like people are
• 53:57
  Speaker 5: starting to negotiate over the phone or via zoom. You know,
• 54:04
  Speaker 5: if this thing is really valuable and the partnership is
• 54:07
  Speaker 5: worth its time, get on the plane or go meet
• 54:10
  Speaker 5: for a coffee and sit down. Human to human reaction
• 54:15
  Speaker 5: and understanding how to how to see the other person
• 54:19
  Speaker 5: and what they're looking for means that like, you want
• 54:22
  Speaker 5: to work with people that you like working with, you know,
• 54:26
  Speaker 5: and if you have the choice, work with people that
• 54:29
  Speaker 5: want to work with you, and so, indifferent of what
• 54:32
  Speaker 5: you're negotiating for, just make sure you know the stakes
• 54:36
  Speaker 5: of the what if and the whatnot right, go build
• 54:40
  Speaker 5: that rapport? And then I told someone yesterday this and
• 54:43
  Speaker 5: I'll and this is like I think, maybe not a
• 54:45
  Speaker 5: big speaker, but like time kills all deals, but time
• 54:52
  Speaker 5: also creates urgency, which creates action, right, So it's like
• 55:00
  Speaker 5: it's like scarcity. Right. I'm fundraising right now for home
• 55:05
  Speaker 5: and you know I've asked friends because I didn't fundraise
• 55:09
  Speaker 5: for Malca. We bootstrapped the business, so I didn't go
• 55:11
  Speaker 5: through this understanding of it is a process to fundraise.
• 55:15
  Speaker 5: It's just like negotiation, and those two things are really
• 55:17
  Speaker 5: the same, which is what is going to get the
• 55:21
  Speaker 5: other side to take action? Right. Sometimes if someone asks
• 55:26
  Speaker 5: for just something so ridiculous, don't try and negotiate, Just
• 55:33
  Speaker 5: be like, okay, hey, it's not going to work out
• 55:36
  Speaker 5: if they know where your line is and their line is.
• 55:38
  Speaker 5: Sometimes if you just take your hands and just throw
• 55:40
  Speaker 5: them up and just wait, the person that really wanted
• 55:44
  Speaker 5: it will come back, right, And time can accelerate urgency
• 55:52
  Speaker 5: to action if you're too far apart, and if you're
• 55:56
  Speaker 5: really close, you got to create some momentum to them
• 56:00
  Speaker 5: that will drive the other person to take it now
• 56:02
  Speaker 5: or not right. And sometimes like I do a lot
• 56:06
  Speaker 5: of celebrity negotiations and creative mitigations. I always say, you
• 56:11
  Speaker 5: have to talk to two people, just like you have
• 56:14
  Speaker 5: to hire two people. I would say, if you're going
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: to hire one person, hire two, right. Why do I
• 56:20
  Speaker 5: hire two? Right? Is because one will drive the other
• 56:25
  Speaker 5: and if one doesn't work out, I already have my backup.
• 56:27
  Speaker 5: So the best case scenario is both work out and
• 56:32
  Speaker 5: I couldn't afford them. But because they're both doing the job,
• 56:35
  Speaker 5: they've created the value and now I can and if
• 56:38
  Speaker 5: one doesn't work out, I'm not three months behind, right,
• 56:42
  Speaker 5: And no matter what, knowing that they're both in the
• 56:45
  Speaker 5: same role, competing with one another creates urgency and creates
• 56:49
  Speaker 5: more action. And so when I have two deals that
• 56:51
  Speaker 5: we're negotiating, we always are working on two people, right,
• 56:55
  Speaker 5: because honestly, you need to know what the market value
• 56:58
  Speaker 5: is and if you're just negotiating with one person, you
• 57:00
  Speaker 5: don't know what other people would take. Right.
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: So so hopefully those are some tactics that could be helpful.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: So like on explain a platform for people like you
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: go in you're a creator, like walk us through from
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: A to Z the benefits on the creator side, and
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: also on somebody that has a company that's trying to
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: attract their creator.
• 57:20
  Speaker 5: Yeah, let's talk about it as for a founder or
• 57:23
  Speaker 5: for a creator. So for a founder, if you're starting
• 57:25
  Speaker 5: a business and you want to use equity as a
• 57:28
  Speaker 5: currency to drive growth, use them. We want to be
• 57:32
  Speaker 5: the infrastructure to turn your equity, which is your most
• 57:36
  Speaker 5: valuable currency, into something that actually creates value and doesn't
• 57:39
  Speaker 5: just sit in one of these static better spreadsheet ledger
• 57:43
  Speaker 5: tools that have existed for the last decade. Right as
• 57:46
  Speaker 5: a founder, you're actually not looking for creators. I think
• 57:51
  Speaker 5: you're looking for customers. And so what I did was
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: I looked at all of these other influencer marketing platforms
• 57:56
  Speaker 5: out there, and they all have ten million, five million,
• 57:59
  Speaker 5: and we have thirty million creat on a platform.
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: And like, you go in there and they're like, who
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: are you looking for? And I go, I.
• 58:04
  Speaker 5: Don't know, but I can tell you that my customer
• 58:06
  Speaker 5: is a twenty five to thirty five year old female
• 58:08
  Speaker 5: who lives in the middle of the country, who shops
• 58:10
  Speaker 5: at alo, makes fifty thousand dollars a year, and really likes,
• 58:13
  Speaker 5: you know, taking good care of yourself. If that's your customer.
• 58:17
  Speaker 5: Then tell me who your customer is and let me
• 58:19
  Speaker 5: go find who influences that person. Because at the end
• 58:23
  Speaker 5: of the day, someone might be great for your brand,
• 58:26
  Speaker 5: but their audience isn't your customer, So you should first
• 58:29
  Speaker 5: reverse engineer. Who is my customer? Tell om that. So
• 58:33
  Speaker 5: when you go into our platform, we ask one question,
• 58:35
  Speaker 5: who's your customer? I want to know who is your ICB,
• 58:38
  Speaker 5: who is your ideal customer profile?
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 58:41
  Speaker 5: Then we want to run similarity search across our network
• 58:44
  Speaker 5: of creators to say, okay, who influences that customer and
• 58:47
  Speaker 5: then run AI scraping against all of their content based
• 58:50
  Speaker 5: on context of your brand, your tone of voice, your competitors.
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: You go to market who is a good fit for
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: my brand? Right?
• 58:58
  Speaker 5: So who influences my customer and who's a gift fit
• 59:00
  Speaker 5: for my brand? So that's the marketplace. So as a founder,
• 59:03
  Speaker 5: we want to be able to provide you the infrastructure
• 59:06
  Speaker 5: to manage your investors, your advisors, your creators, and we
• 59:09
  Speaker 5: want to be able to find you those people who
• 59:11
  Speaker 5: influence your customers, who want to be invested in someone's success,
• 59:15
  Speaker 5: and put them on your cap table and let them
• 59:16
  Speaker 5: earn some skin in the game by helping drive your
• 59:18
  Speaker 5: business growth. For a creator, right when you come on
• 59:23
  Speaker 5: the platform, our job is to find you more brand deals,
• 59:26
  Speaker 5: right and we want to know very simply, what is
• 59:31
  Speaker 5: the dream company that you'd love to start or invest in.
• 59:35
  Speaker 5: Because we have two pieces of signal. One is, once
• 59:37
  Speaker 5: you come on board, we run a ton of agents
• 59:40
  Speaker 5: to look at who engages with your content, who watches
• 59:43
  Speaker 5: what do they look like? Build these really rich audience
• 59:46
  Speaker 5: personas so that we can find the right brands that
• 59:49
  Speaker 5: are looking for a person a creator who talks to
• 59:52
  Speaker 5: that customer. But then separately, if you tell us that
• 59:57
  Speaker 5: you've always wanted to build a blank well maybe we
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 5: don't have that person on our platform today, but we
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 5: will go out and find them on your behalf. So
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 5: our job is to facilitate for creators more matches, more revenue,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 5: more brand opportunities, whether you do want to.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: Rent that audience.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 5: In the beginning, it's great to go on a few dates,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 5: see if it works, test the waters, you know, you know,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 5: get the first or second base whatever it is, and
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 5: then you go, you know what, I want to work
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 5: with this person.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: I want to build this thing.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 5: I think this could be the next home run or
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 5: if at a bare minimum, right, I know that I
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 5: can help make it grow, right, And I've talked to
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 5: so many creators that lived in that what if scenario.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 5: Man like you know, Magic Mind came to me and
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 5: they couldn't afford me, but they offered me equity, and
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 5: I was like, what's equity?
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: You know? And then they sold for seven hundred million dollars,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: you know.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 5: Or like Notion and Gamma came at the early stages,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 5: and you know, I was one of the main people
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 5: that helped them grow to the first thousand users. And
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 5: man if I only ask them for a quarter point,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 5: you know, like if Sequoia is and fifteen million dollars
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 5: into a business, so that forty cents of every dollar
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 5: that they put in as a VC across the industry
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 5: goes to marketing, and then that money is going to
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 5: go ninety percent to creators because that's where the eyeballs are, right.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 5: VC is basically investing in the creator economy. Right, So,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 5: as creators, my thesis is, if you believe in it,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 5: ask for ownership. And one other thing which I think
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 5: is really important is I called it own because ownership
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 5: is not just equity. You have to know if a
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: business is going to be built to exit. Some businesses
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 5: are going to just print seven and eight figures, you know,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 5: And like it's really important to understand, like if you're
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 5: going to take some skin in the game, what does
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 5: skin in the game look like?
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: You know? Like most businesses fail.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 5: I think most of them fail is because the people
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 5: that bet on those businesses weren't really able to help
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 5: those businesses. I think community, Like, I've got a bunch
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 5: of investors. Most founders, if you interview them, they do
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 5: a really shitty job of activating their community. And if
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 5: I gave you know, a founder this Avengors level team,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 5: are they really going to take advantage of them? Are
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 5: they going to know how to activate them?
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 5: Or are they going to be heads down building a product,
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 5: trying to figure out product market fit, scaling operations, solving
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 5: all the other problems. And so we want to put
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 5: a reasoning agent a I imagine if you had the
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 5: best business coach in the world sitting inside your business,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 5: who knew who your investors were, knew who your advisors were,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 5: knew who those creators were, that could help you build. Right. So,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 5: so for me, home needs to be the operating system
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 5: for you know, the attention first business of the future.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 5: Give people the tools that were previously reserved for the
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 5: one percent, unlock the middle class of both the businesses
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 5: and the creator economy so they can build the millions
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 5: of seven and eight figure businesses in the future, and
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 5: then help them both drive growth by activating them, teaching them,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 5: allowing them to understand that, like, you know, you can't
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 5: just today expect.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: People to find you.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 5: You've got to figure out how to cut through the
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 5: noise and that and that's why we've been building this
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 5: this brand.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: This is a subscription. It's a subscription.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's really inexpensive. You know again, I want a
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 5: million brands to be able to build seven and eight
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 5: figures on this. You know, it's ninety nine bucks a
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 5: month for founders that are just starting and trying to
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 5: figure out.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: The who and the why.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 5: Right you just maybe you've been working at a job,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 5: you know, for ten years, and you've always had this
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 5: dream you're an incredible operator. Maybe there's someone out there
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 5: who's got a one hundred thousand, two hundred thousand followers that's
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 5: been dreaming to building the same thing. We want you
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 5: to be discoverable right, and then for two ninety nine,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 5: we give you everything. We give you the infrastructure to
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 5: be able to use equity. We're the equity management platform.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 5: We give you a says to the marketplace, you can
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 5: do research. The best thing I always found is like
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 5: people like, you know my cousin Susan, She's got five
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 5: hundred thousand followers.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: You know she'd be great for my brand.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 5: I don't know, look her up on our system and
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 5: contextualize her to your brand. Right. Context is the most
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 5: valuable asset. It's like, when she talks, do the people
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 5: that buy my product listen? That's what you want to answer.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 5: She might have five hundred thousand followers. Don't look at
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 5: vanity metrics, They're useless. Right.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: When you guys talk, do you know who your audience is?
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 5: Like?
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: Do you actually know?
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 5: Like if I said who right now, if you could
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 5: describe your audience, who is he or she?
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: Do you know?
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 5: Who?
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: Our audience is between the ages of twenty five to
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: thirty seven, sixty percent male, forty percent female, probably making
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: the average of anywhere between seventy five to eighty five thousand.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: Most have at least a bachelor's degree, how many more metrics.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: Do you want?
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 5: I think that's pretty good. Let me ask you a
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 5: different question. What product or three products do you think
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 5: they would love for you to provide them? What would
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 5: they buy that you could offer them? What are they
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 5: hungry for? What problem could you solve for them?
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: Education around finance.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 4: Our audience loves events, live events around education of finance.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: Obviously investments being that, and then having a community. How
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 4: can they be a part of a community that can
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 4: discuss more about ways to better their life and the
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 4: community inside of the world of business, entrepreneurship, finance, investment.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 5: You guys know that because you know I talked to
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 5: twenty fifty founders and creators a week, and most people
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 5: either don't know who their customer is and don't know
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 5: who their audience is. I'll ask you the same question
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 5: I ask creators who come onto the platform, which is
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 5: what's the dream company that you'd love to start or
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 5: invest in?
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: To start or invest in? Yeah, I think there's a few.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: I think a company that's dedicated towards like how to
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: make stock trading easy through AI, that's something that I
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: think is revolutionary. Like if somebody could just pick stocks
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: for you in a dream world. Right, If a dream world,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: if you could just wake up and just have chatbot
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: that literally is just trading stocks for you, that's obviously
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: going to change everything. Right, So whoever really fine tunes
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: that idea, I mean, that's going to be revolutionary.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 4: I'll go with a company that currently exists. I think
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: Meta would be incredible owning Meta or having some partnership
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: and equity stick inside of that because of the user base.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 4: How many companies have access to three billion people?
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think two things. One is on that.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 5: I think there's massive disruption to create a human's only platform.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 5: I think we are hungry to go back to what
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 5: Facebook started as, which was human to human connection of friends. Right.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 5: I think LinkedIn and Meta, you know, we've created these
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 5: advertising machines. And I think if you watch The Social Dilemma,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 5: the documentary which came out a few years ago, I
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 5: think it will remind you that ultimately the data that
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 5: we collect and why we don't pay for Facebook and
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 5: why we don't pay for these social platforms because you're
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 5: worth way more to the algorithm and to the companies
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 5: than you could ever pay as a subscription to never
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 5: see an ad to the marketers who are willing to
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 5: sell you a product, and so I think there's massive
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 5: disruption there. I also think, like with what you want
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 5: to build, Like if I found an operator out there
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 5: who's dreaming of building it, would you guys be the
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 5: co founders of a new finance app that helps your
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 5: community do AI trading? Yeah?
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, it's aligned.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 5: Okay, then that's my commitment. I will find you someone
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 5: who is building this already, because that's what our platform does.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 5: Is I think that idea knowing you guys, knowing your
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 5: audience is perfectly aligned. And I think that will if
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 5: it doesn't already exist. And I think you guys will
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 5: have some skin in the game for that.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: I heard it here.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: I keep me to my word.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 5: I told you before I got two things left, I
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 5: got no money.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: You guys know that. You know I got no money.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 5: You know, uh, maybe you know I you know, with
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 5: this situation with the lawsuit, you know, you can have
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 5: a glass half full or a glass half empty view
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 5: of life, right, And I've had to come to the
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 5: conclusion that what should happen will happen.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: You just have to believe that, you know, And.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 5: I think if you believe wholeheartedly that you are destined
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 5: to do something bigger and you have passion, or you
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 5: feel like you're stuck in this life and you know
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 5: that you're not living up to your potential, then just
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 5: believe that what should happen will happen. But on the
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 5: other side of that, don't think that it will happen
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 5: to you. You have to go out and get it
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 5: done right. And so, you know, I believe that what
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 5: happened to me and what I'm going through was a
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 5: lesson that I would have never learned. And I feel
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 5: like in the last five years I've grown more than
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 5: I could have ever imagined over the next twenty. Right,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 5: And the question is now, am I just gonna let
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 5: this happen to me? Or I'm going to take this
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 5: learning lesson? Am I gonna go out there and do
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 5: something with it?
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: You know?
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 5: And I think everyone should think about that when they
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 5: go through trials and tribulations or a death of a
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 5: family or a failure or whatever it is. It's just
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 5: like it's like that old saying, just like, get up
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 5: one foot in front of the other, just take another
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 5: step forward, man.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: So how can the people find you like what's the website,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: what's the old information Instagram or everything like that.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, listen owm dot AI own.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 5: I called it own because I want more people to
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 5: be owners, and we built an ownership management platform. You know,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 5: I think the American dream is no longer about owning
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 5: a home. I think it is about being an owner.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 5: And much like what you guys preach about the idea
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 5: that you should be able to get out in life
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 5: what you earn. Right, if you are coming up as
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 5: this next generation, and the World Economic Forum thinks that
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 5: you will lease your car, you'll rent your home, You'll
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 5: own nothing and you'll be happy, I say, f that right.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 5: But if you don't have money, or experience or influence,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 5: you don't have a business where you can invest service,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 5: what else could you get access to? To this new
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 5: American dream? It's sweat. I can I work for it?
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 5: Can you let me work for ownership? Right? Because you know,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 5: if you rent a house on your street, you know,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 5: maybe you don't take as much care of it as possible.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 5: You know, the people that own it live in that community.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 5: And I want more people to have that feeling if
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 5: they don't have all the other things that maybe the
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 5: next generation won't and listen, you know for what.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: I've gone through.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 5: You know, follow on LinkedIn and if you want to
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 5: send me an email, I'm just Jeff at owm dot ai.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 5: You know, I wind up giving away my time for
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 5: free very often, and it's mostly because I think I'll
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 5: get it back and because I just enjoy helping and
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 5: being useful. So here to help check us out on
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 5: dot ai. We want to make more owners. We want
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 5: to help every business and founder be successful. And I
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 5: guarantee you that there was someone out there, whether you're
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 5: a creator or a founder, that is looking for you
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 5: and they are eager and hungry to partner and build
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 5: something great together.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you guys
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: for rocking with us. To see you next week. Pete,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: thank you for the peace.