Latest / The Hannah Hammond Show / How To Prepare Your Company To Sell | Jesse Burrell

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How To Prepare Your Company To Sell | Jesse Burrell · The Hannah Hammond Show

• 0:00
  Welcome back to the Hannah Hammond show.
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  Today I'm sitting here with Jesse Burrell, Co founder and
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  CEO of Batch Data, formerly known as Batch Service, which is
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  a all-encompassing proptech software company that helps real
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  estate investors get the data that they need to identify
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  possible sellers. We'll we'll dive into all the
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  things that the data does, but we're celebrating a recent exit
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  of his He sold off a couple verticals of his company to
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  Propstream, who is another data provider and they're now also a
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  client of his other verticals of the company.
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  So I'm super excited. I have you on the show.
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  I, I read that you bootstrapped batch data to 35 million in
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  revenue in just a few short years.
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  But then you had in 2022 when rates spiked up and different
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  changes happened in the economy. You had some severe challenges
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  there, but then was able to rebound and then ultimately sell
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  it and just closed on it less than a couple months ago.
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  So First off, congratulations and welcome to the show.
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  Thank you. Thank you for having me.
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  Appreciate it. So you started as a real estate
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  investor and a wholesaler doing flips and a signing contracts.
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  You know, for those who don't know, wholesaling is where you
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  get a property under contract at 1 price and then you sell it to
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  someone who's going to flip it and you are able to sell it at a
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  little bit higher price. So you started kind of doing
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  that world and then it sounds like you had a problem that you
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  wanted to solve for yourself. And that was in how do I find
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  good quality data and in an efficient manner to really
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  identify where the sellers are in the marketplace so you can
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  make money. So like what initially got you
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  into real estate investing? And I don't know if you want to
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  go back into any of your earlier years, but like what, what got
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  you into that? And then and what was that
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  incident that sparked you to think I'm going to go build a
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  tech company instead of just doing deals?
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  Yeah, just a couple questions there.
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  First, I was, I actually wanted to be like a PGA teaching pro.
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  So went to ASU, got my degree in that did internships and
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  realized quickly working out all these nice courses.
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  I was like, I think I want to like be a member here, not work
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  here was ultimately I always just had bigger passions and
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  ambitions, but I loved golf and I love helping people through
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  golf. And I went to AS UW P Carey
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  school business. So they had this, you're getting
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  this business degree at the same time you're getting your Class
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  A. And towards the end, I just
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  realized how long it took to make money in golf and it kind
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  of just working in it took away from my passion of playing it.
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  And I was like, I don't know. And the entrepreneurial, I took
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  like small business or small business classes and all that
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  stuff in my upper management court classes at WP Carey.
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  And I was working either at a restaurant or working at a golf
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  course kind of during college. And I was later in college too,
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  to where I got my associates. And then I went back to school
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  at 25 at to get ASU. So like, I was broke throughout
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  my entire 20s, never had more than a couple $1000 in my bank
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  account. So I was just trying to like
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  figure it out. And I was working at this
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  restaurant on Scottsdale and Chaparral no longer there.
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  And this girl got a job working for a real estate investor in
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  like 2012. And he was out of California
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  flipping all the houses here in Phoenix.
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  And they needed someone else to help with their property
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  management and helping them look for fix and flip.
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  So I was basically like an acquisition Rep for them.
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  I just, she's just like, maybe you like it.
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  And I was like, sure, I'll try it.
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  And that's literally just, I had no rhyme or reason.
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  I didn't have some passion for real estate until I started
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  learning it and getting into it. But yeah, I just a friend said
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  it was cool. And I was like, sure, I'll, I'll
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  do it with you. It was that simple.
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  Yeah. No, that's awesome.
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  And and So what, what year was that?
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  When, how old were? You now?
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  How old was I then? Yeah, how many?
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  Years ago I was like 20, this like 12 years ago I was 28.
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  So I was just finishing my last year of college and I started
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  working with them is I was trying to figure out what I
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  wanted to do, some type of sales thing.
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  I just knew it wasn't golf and it wasn't working.
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  Just it takes forever to make any money in golf.
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  And there's just such a corporate hierarchy to where
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  you're just making $40,000 a year for forever until like you
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  could get that opportunity. And I was just like Nope, not
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  for me. Yeah, it's funny, I used to be
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  super. I still am super passionate
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  about riding horses and that that same thing.
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  I remember my trainer saying, do you know some of the things that
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  are hobbies in your life that you really love?
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  If you turn them into work, it takes it can take your love away
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  from it. So I kind of experienced that
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  too growing up. And that's why I used to want to
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  be a professional horse trainer. And then my my trainer was like,
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  don't do that. Go make your money and then use
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  your money to have fun riding horses.
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  But yeah, that's a that's a good path to take.
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  And So what did you did you start to see the issues in the
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  data side of the business when you were working for that
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  company? Or were you just kind of
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  absorbing everything and you? Yeah, I just spent the first
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  year absorbing everything, got my license.
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  So what I got really good at that first year was that's when
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  you can still find in Arizona specifically because I got
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  hammered so hard during the recession.
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  Like I'm just on MLS looking for shitty houses.
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  So pre foreclosures, short sales, just beat up houses to
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  where I could find value in fixing them up and reselling
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  them. Or we'd fix them up and then
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  sell them to one of my bosses or the owner's friends That would
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  turn it into like a like, they basically turnkey property.
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  Like they'd, they'd flip it, they put a renter in it, they'd
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  sell it to him. So my job was just to identify
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  those, but they were nice enough to bring me on site, show me all
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  the rehab costs because like you get really good at real estate.
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  If you know where you need to buy, you know how much cost to
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  fix it, you know how much cost to sell it.
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  I spent my whole first year doing that and then, and then I
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  went out on my own. I got, I just got my license,
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  then just started doing it myself.
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  And I had a kind of a network of investors that were always
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  looking for deals. And then I soon after it just
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  got harder and harder. And that's when I learned
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  wholesale or I guess I like to more call it direct to seller
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  marketing is like, you know, sending out mailers, you know,
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  cold calling, doing all those things, going direct to the
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  seller instead of looking on the MLS 1st.
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  And then that's when wholesale became a thing for me.
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  And then I partnered with my first partners in real estate
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  investing, Danny and Jared. So they we kind of did our thing
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  and then they started dating and that messed everything up to
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  some degree. And.
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  They kind of want to do their own thing.
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  And now, you know, I introduced us all together and they're
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  happily married with a one year old.
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  So I'm glad to to be a part of that journey.
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  And then, as I said, I went out on my own, had a little team and
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  that's kind of when the whole looking for better data came
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  about and I was going to a lot of local masterminds.
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  And that's where I met my now partners, Annie and Evo is the
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  head of that mastermind was like, Hey, I think you guys
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  should like connect and link up. And he was Evo's the one that's
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  really good at systems and finding data and doing all these
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  things I was really good at. They needed help kind of with
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  their turnover with their employees and stuff like that.
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  Like they weren't great with like leadership comp plans, the
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  marketing side of things. And we just kind of started
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  helping each other. And then he's like, Hey, I found
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  this really good data provider to get better phone numbers, you
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  know, do you want to try them out?
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  And I was like, sure. And then I'm the one that had
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  the big, big network of people. And then I was like, Hey, I
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  think other people would want this, like, how much like, what
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  can I get if I could help you sell it?
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  And he's like half. And I was like, cool.
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  And before we knew it, batch skip tracing started.
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  And that was like our first product in the batch service
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  ecosystem. Wow.
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  That is. And what year was that, 2018?
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  2018 was when we started batch skip tracing and then soon after
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  we started developing which is what what is now called batch
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  leads in one of the products that we sold.
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  OK. And so when you did propstream
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  exist when you started the company?
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  Propstream's actually been around since like 2007 with like
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  cd-roms. They've been around forever.
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  I didn't even know that until, you know, I knew they've been
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  around for a while and they're kind of the OG of like the list
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  and data provider in the, you know, wholesale investor space.
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  But no, the guy that founded that has been around forever and
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  and he's exited too. And there's still people that
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  have been there since like the beginning that I got to me that
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  were that are really cool people.
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  That's. Super cool.
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  And and when you started the batch service with your your new
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  partners, were you still running your wholesaling company on the
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  side so? They had a wholesale, I had a
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  wholesale. We kind of dated for a year.
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  To be honest. We're kind of just, we had this
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  little thing that we were doing together as kind of a side
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  hustle that was making us a bunch of money.
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  And then it was just becoming more and more difficult.
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  We kept running into the same deals that were negotiating.
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  And then finally I was kind of pushing because I felt like it
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  really worked. But they're both from Bulgaria.
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  They're very, very family oriented.
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  They didn't want, I just think they kind of wanted to do their
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  own thing and it was kind of a family business.
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  And I kind of nudged my way of being like the stepbrother, I
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  guess. And it just works.
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  It's always worked and I felt it works.
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  I'd had a different partnership and I just knew the value I saw
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  on them. I knew the value that they saw
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  on me. And after I read Rocket Fuel, I
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  was like, these are the guys like let's do it.
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  And then we decided to go all in, combine the investing
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  operations and then get an office together and kind of
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  start building all of it. And then the middle of 2020, we
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  actually shut down the real estate investing arm because we,
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  you know, fell ass backwards into this whole prop tech thing
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  that we didn't know. We're like, the more we learned
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  it's like, OK, this is scalable, this is sellable.
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  This side really isn't and makes a bunch of active income.
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  But you know, what do we want to do long term and kind of put put
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  our blinders on and and the focus was to figure out a way to
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  sell the company. And luckily we're we're halfway
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  home. I guess we still got another
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  side to grow and sell. Yeah.
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  That's so awesome. And what was that a difficult
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  decision for you to make to shut down the other arm?
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  Or was it pretty clear you're like, OK, we see the scalability
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  in this, This is no longer serving our true north.
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  We're just going to go ahead and close shop.
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  I think it was it was tough for me because my identity and as I
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  said, I was 2829 and I just had never really made much money.
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  And this is what became had me become a millionaire.
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  And so like I was my ego and identity was really tied to like
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  what people aren't going to see me as a real estate investor
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  anymore. Like what does that mean?
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  I like in retrospect, it's not a big deal at all.
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  But at that time, all my friends are still doing it, you know,
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  Pace, Jamil, Steve Trang, Brent Daniels, like those, that was my
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  crew. And obviously they've went to
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  all do their different things. And I'd say real estate
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  investing is probably like the least important thing for all of
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  them. You know, Pace and Jamila are
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  huge influencers and Steve is a coach and Brent is more of a
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  coach than I'd say a wholesaler. And but at that time, that is
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  what they did and that's what I did.
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  So it, it, it took time for me to want to get there.
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  And I mean, we did shut it down in retrospect, that awful time,
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  that's when like everything went crazy, but that's when our
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  company went crazy too. So everyone had money, everyone
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  spending more money on marketing.
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  So it, it was just tough for me. But now it's like it's people
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  want me to go like talk on real estate and I'm like, I haven't
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  done real estate in like 5 years.
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  I'm like, what do you want me to talk?
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  I could talk about the data behind it and the trends, but
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  like doing deals, it's just not what I do anymore.
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  I'd invest in syndications and I'm and have hard money and then
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  I have a couple commercial assets, but like that's not my
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  active income anymore, right? And how was, I mean, because you
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  didn't come from a tech background and then you started
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  and sold a tech company. So how was that process for you?
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  Because when I think of starting new companies, if it's a
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  vertical that I know nothing about, I the first thought I
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  have is OK, I need The Who because I'm not it, right?
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  And so you identified The Who pretty quickly that were were
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  operational and and good at data and kind of had those ideas that
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  sparked your visionary role of like, oh, I see the vision of
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  where we could actually take this and I'm going to put the
• 11:54
  right team in place to actually execute on that vision.
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  So what were some of the key deciding factors when you
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  identified those key partners? Like how did you find them?
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  You said a mastermind, but what what questions did you ask?
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  And you said you dated for a year before, like officially
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  partnering with them. So I guess what advice do you
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  have to people that don't have their, who yet like they're
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  second in command, their COO, that person to really take their
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  vision and execute on it? And how do you vet, you know,
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  find and vet potential partners before you kind of marry them?
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  Well, I'd, I'd advise, you know, reading rocket fuel because
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  that's a good book of talking about visionaries and operators
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  and you could be partners or they could be high level C-Suite
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  people for you. But actually none of us knew
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  anything about tech. So Evo is just, I think he has a
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  photographic, he's just brilliant, like truly.
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  So like he just dove in and kind of learned it and then started
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  and then he found The Who. So he found the right people and
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  we were building this, this thing that was just going crazy.
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  And, and you know, our, our head of product and our old CTO,
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  who's now the CTO of prop stream.
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  They just loved what they're doing.
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  And me, Evo and Annie were so excited about it.
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  They're like, we'll know, like you set this up wrong, your
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  infrastructure is wrong, like let let us help.
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  And they kind of just came on as consultants.
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  And before we knew it, we had these just, they were expensive,
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  but we were lucky. We had right place, right time.
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  We're making a lot of money like off the jump.
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  So like that was definitely a benefit to what we had.
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  And being bootstrapped, it was like we were very profitable
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  very early. And then we still had the
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  wholesale income that was like bringing us an active income.
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  So we were able to just reinvest, reinvest into those
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  people. But for partnerships, it's
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  really fine. Find your counterpart, find
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  someone who is very different than you.
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  If if you're a visionary and the person that you partner with is
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  a visionary, you guys are going to be fighting over someone's
• 13:50
  going to have to ultimately take a role that they're not great
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  AT. And most of those partnerships
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  end up failing. And I just see all the time with
• 13:57
  new people that have a buddy or a friend like, oh, let's go do
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  this together. We're both really good at it.
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  Well, are you really good at the same thing?
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  Because typically those are when partnerships end up failing.
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  It could be 6 months, a year or two, three years later.
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  But you have to have very different personalities and very
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  different roles, I think, for it to work the majority of the
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  time. I don't know what your opinion
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  is on that, but. Yeah, yeah, 'cause it's right
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  person, right seat and we all have our own unique gift and our
• 14:22
  unique ability. And if I think the second in
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  command, it's a different, it's a different personality.
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  It's somebody that is the that operator, that detail oriented
• 14:31
  person that wants to execute on a vision.
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  And then the visionary has to to have the vision and, and push
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  that, you know, drive that vision forward and try to keep
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  everybody rowing the boat in the same direction.
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  You know, culturally throughout the organization, keeping the
• 14:44
  culture tight, keeping the team tight, working on hiring the
• 14:47
  right people and all that. But I think I agree, if it's the
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  same skill set, then you have a big missing piece.
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  I remember when I worked as an engineer for Caterpillar before
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  I, I was in real estate already, but before I launched my real
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  estate brokerage and then my lending company, the owner of
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  the company told me that his leadership team all were in a
• 15:08
  different quadrant like on their disk personality test, like they
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  all had their own box and he specifically hired them that
• 15:14
  way. So they each had a unique gift
• 15:16
  and ability in every area that it was needed for the company.
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  Because if you're unbalanced and you have too many people that
• 15:22
  lean one personality type, 1 skill set, One Direction, then
• 15:25
  your company's going to be like a, you know, a stool that is
• 15:28
  missing a couple legs. Yeah, I agree.
• 15:31
  Yeah, that's cool. And so I mean, OK, you, you were
• 15:37
  bootstrapped, you partnered with these two people, none of you
• 15:39
  had a tech background. What were those early?
• 15:42
  And then you grow grew so fast. Like what were some of the key
• 15:45
  things that made you guys so successful in your point of
• 15:48
  view? Like some of the good decisions
• 15:50
  that you did really well that allowed you to scale so quickly?
• 15:53
  Like how did you market it or what?
• 15:55
  What was kind of your edge and growing it so fast?
• 15:57
  We were very early on because this was, you know, 2018-2019 to
• 16:01
  where just one, we were building a product for solving our own
• 16:08
  problems, especially those first two 3-4 years.
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  And still, you know, we shared an office with Brent Daniels,
• 16:13
  Pace had an office with us, Jamil was in every day.
• 16:17
  So I have all these people that are very high level and doing a
• 16:21
  ton of deals in the business. Once we stop, they're still
• 16:25
  being like, this is what we need next.
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  Like we have our best affiliates or best customers helping us
• 16:32
  with our product road map, telling us what they need,
• 16:34
  what's missing in the market, what's going to make us better
• 16:36
  than prop stream or deal machine or or whatever company there.
• 16:40
  And and then, you know, we paid them a handsome affiliate fee to
• 16:44
  promote us. And this was before that was
• 16:46
  something popular and that was a huge part to just get our brand
• 16:49
  out there and be a brand staple. So we partnered with the right
• 16:54
  people at the right time that were absolutely blowing up.
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  As I said, a lot of this was really good timing, like to
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  really grow, scale and sell a business.
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  A lot of it's good timing, but the good timing was early
• 17:06
  because we're going to talk about shitty timing in a little
• 17:08
  bit and, and when market shifts, you know what mistakes we made.
• 17:12
  But it was really leaning into the affiliates and just really
• 17:17
  building a purpose built product to where people could actually
• 17:21
  take action with their product. Did you, I love the affiliate
• 17:24
  approach and how did you guys come up with an agreement on
• 17:29
  what they are compensation would be like for the affiliate
• 17:31
  program? And then also, did you do paid
• 17:37
  advertising alongside that or did you just get it fully
• 17:40
  supported by the Yeah. We were doing we were doing paid
• 17:42
  to, we hadn't hired the right sophistication of people to
• 17:47
  really be like really high end paid marketers.
• 17:50
  And as the business grew, it took us a couple hires, but we
• 17:55
  finally found someone that was truly brilliant.
• 17:58
  We got to actually get someone that came from Zoom info.
• 18:01
  If you know what Zoom info is, I've heard of it.
• 18:03
  It's kind of like it's a data aggregation company, but it's
• 18:09
  for like business to business. So like, let's say you wanted to
• 18:12
  go into your prospecting, like for our B to B side, we use Zoom
• 18:16
  info. So it was like, Hey, we want to
• 18:18
  look at Caterpillar and we want to find their head of marketing.
• 18:22
  We could go into Zoom info and they'll have like their e-mail
• 18:24
  and some of the contact information.
• 18:26
  So like, so they kind of there was an adjacent kind of
• 18:29
  connection of real estate data versus the data they had and
• 18:32
  that company's public now. And we hired one person and they
• 18:35
  said started picking off all these great people from there,
• 18:38
  bringing them over to our side. And that's when we started to
• 18:40
  get much more sophisticated with how our paid spend was, how our
• 18:44
  ads were set, how our customer journey was going to look like.
• 18:48
  And that's when I think it really turned in, turned from, I
• 18:52
  guess just kind of like this right place, right time thing
• 18:55
  into a business that actually had the right people looking at
• 18:58
  the right data and helping make strategic decisions, continued
• 19:02
  to have the company grow. How did you find that person?
• 19:05
  Like how cuz I'm at a scaling stage of my company, HP Capital
• 19:09
  is a new company and I'm scaling rapidly right now and just
• 19:14
  trying to figure out like how did you, how do you what worked
• 19:17
  for you in identifying and securing and retaining the best
• 19:20
  talent out there? A.
• 19:21
  Lot so Charles, Phil Jibin, they all started as like consultant,
• 19:28
  hot expensive consultants that like we found through Upwork or
• 19:32
  through it was all through kind of like a network effect.
• 19:35
  And then they're like, wow, this is really cool.
• 19:38
  And we just kind of use them more and more And before we knew
• 19:40
  it, they wanted to be a part of the team full time.
• 19:42
  Now they were expensive, but we could afford expensive people at
• 19:45
  that time. So we just found the right
• 19:48
  people and then we had and then we also opened up, you know,
• 19:53
  vesting for, you know, high level employees to where, you
• 19:56
  know, if we go sell which but we just sold part of it.
• 19:59
  So there's a bunch of people that just got nice payday.
• 20:01
  So they worked really hard. They believed in the vision.
• 20:04
  We made it, made sure to compensate them right with their
• 20:07
  salary and also compensate them to want to stick around long
• 20:10
  term and have vesting in the company.
• 20:12
  And when and if we sell, you know, they're going to get
• 20:15
  something. And that was something that I
• 20:17
  think we did really well was to make sure that we could keep our
• 20:19
  really, really good talent because.
• 20:22
  Maybe as stuff shifted and we couldn't give this many raises
• 20:25
  and 22 and 23 happened, those core people all stayed.
• 20:29
  They're all good at hiring people.
• 20:30
  So we lost some ICS, we lost some managers, but I didn't lose
• 20:34
  the best. And that was all because of the
• 20:35
  vesting that we put in front of them.
• 20:37
  They were willing to ride and die with us through the thick
• 20:40
  and the thin. Yeah.
• 20:41
  Did you structure it as like phantom equity or was it real?
• 20:44
  It's phantom stock so it only got triggered when we were to
• 20:47
  sell. Yeah, cuz I think about phantom
• 20:50
  stock too, cuz I'm, as I mentioned, I'm in this phase
• 20:53
  right now. So I'm still figuring out how I
• 20:54
  want to structure. Like do I want to give any
• 20:57
  equity to any team members or employees or do I not, Or do I
• 21:01
  want to do real equity or phantom equity?
• 21:03
  Do I just want to do a profit share type bonus or some sort of
• 21:06
  structure that way? And just trying to figure out
• 21:08
  that intricate balance of recruiting and retaining top
• 21:10
  tier talent. And so did you tell them from
• 21:14
  the beginning like we're building this to sell?
• 21:17
  And so that was the plan from day one.
• 21:19
  And did you have like a timeline that you're planning on selling
• 21:21
  and everything? They knew that once we started
• 21:25
  hiring, hiring those people, that's when real estate
• 21:28
  investing was done. This is where we're going.
• 21:30
  This is where we're focused. I started networking around, we
• 21:35
  started talking to investment bankers 3 1/2 years ago knowing
• 21:38
  we're not trying to sell, but like you need to Start learning
• 21:40
  what metrics are people going to like?
• 21:42
  What are they not going to like? What holes do we need to plug?
• 21:44
  Where do we need to focus? Like if you are planning to sell
• 21:47
  even in three to five years, start interviewing and talking
• 21:50
  to those investment bankers because part of their job is to
• 21:54
  start consulting and nurturing you and giving you advice
• 21:57
  because you know they want to see you succeed.
• 21:59
  And if they're giving you that right advice and there's a good
• 22:02
  chance that you're going to end up going with them.
• 22:04
  But for me as them being a resource, it was very invaluable
• 22:07
  3-4 years ago knowing that it's something we wanted to do.
• 22:11
  So like once it was time to go, we knew what to expect.
• 22:15
  We had we knew how we needed to be buttoned up.
• 22:17
  We knew the amount of time it would take.
• 22:19
  It took about nine months to a year just to prep to go to
• 22:22
  market or to go to be ready to sell it.
• 22:24
  We had to do like a quality of earnings.
• 22:27
  We have to have all these different things buttoned up.
• 22:29
  We have to have everything documented, all the like,
• 22:32
  everything has to be buttoned up.
• 22:33
  You come come to market, not buttoned up and people start
• 22:36
  requesting stuff and you don't have it.
• 22:38
  They're going to be like, how? Like how much of the truth are
• 22:41
  they really telling us? What where are they not else
• 22:44
  button up? So it's just all these, you have
• 22:46
  to just have everything dialed in and they're a great tool to
• 22:50
  make sure you're set up for that.
• 22:51
  How do you identify investment bankers to talk to?
• 22:55
  I just have a vast network of people and I just always ask
• 22:59
  questions and always ask like that's what I was looking for.
• 23:02
  So I started asking every friend I talked to in every way, and
• 23:05
  one of my buddies out of Do you know who Logan Fulmer is?
• 23:08
  I don't. Think.
• 23:10
  So he's like, he's pretty big dude out of San Antonio, but his
• 23:14
  partner had ended up selling his accounting business for like
• 23:21
  $100 million and connected us with the person that helped him
• 23:25
  sell. And they connected us with
• 23:30
  they're kind of tech arm of, of that business.
• 23:33
  And then we even reached out once, you know, prop stream sold
• 23:36
  and we found out who they sold to.
• 23:38
  And, you know, talk to those guys a little bit like it's just
• 23:41
  being intuitive. And but you need to find the
• 23:43
  right people that could sell specifically in the market that
• 23:47
  you're selling. Like you don't just go find some
• 23:49
  random investment banker like who specializes in whatever
• 23:52
  business you have. And and finding those, I bet you
• 23:54
  for you it's not as hard as you think to start being intentional
• 23:58
  and asking everyone about it. Yeah, Yeah, I actually did reach
• 24:01
  out to somebody just through my network the same thing, you
• 24:04
  know, they were offering to buy a a commercial mortgage
• 24:06
  brokerage and I was just picking his brain on what what's the
• 24:10
  EBITDA or how, you know what, how they value these companies,
• 24:13
  what's important to them if servicing is an important piece
• 24:15
  because of the recurring revenue and all those stuff.
• 24:17
  So, but yeah, it's always interesting to begin with the
• 24:21
  end in mind. I think it's so important to
• 24:23
  begin with the end in mind because if you don't know where
• 24:24
  you're going and erode will get you there, which is nowhere
• 24:27
  really. And that's cool that you guys
• 24:29
  were planning for that and ahead of it and kind of got things
• 24:32
  organized and from an organizational structure.
• 24:35
  How did you grow your team? I believe you had 35 people when
• 24:38
  you sold. Is that right or?
• 24:40
  Sold. No.
• 24:42
  Our peak, we had 250 people. Oh.
• 24:44
  My gosh, that's crazy. You have 35 people now. 40 I
• 24:49
  think I, I've said a lot of things I finally like we have 41
• 24:52
  people as of today. I checked, but we had about 140
• 24:57
  before we so prop stream acquired about 100 of our
• 25:01
  people. We retained about 40 of them.
• 25:04
  So yeah, we were at about 140 people when we sold two months
• 25:06
  ago. So never been.
• 25:09
  I feel like 40 is small and I'm like thinking to six years ago,
• 25:12
  I'm like 40 people is a lot of people to me.
• 25:15
  I'm like, oh, this is cake. Yeah, it's, it's a lot to me.
• 25:18
  I I feel like managing people is the hardest part of business in
• 25:22
  my personal life. 100%. Like hands down it's.
• 25:25
  It's people problems and it's life problems that people have.
• 25:29
  Like I've learned more than anything.
• 25:31
  The best advice I would give is when interviewing people now, I
• 25:36
  want to know a lot more about like their personal life.
• 25:38
  Is it put together? Is it a wreck?
• 25:40
  Like it's someone could be brilliant, but they have so much
• 25:44
  personal stuff going on that they cannot focus on where it
• 25:48
  could be problems with the wife or having, you know, a multitude
• 25:52
  of kids to where you there's you have a bunch of young kids and
• 25:55
  it's just hard. Or it's, it's just you go out
• 25:59
  drinking too much or you're just not prioritizing your career.
• 26:03
  And my best people are the people that have their shit
• 26:06
  together. Like honestly older younger age
• 26:11
  really isn't a thing is like is this their priority and is your
• 26:14
  career your priority? If it is, they typically
• 26:16
  outperform someone more talented than them.
• 26:20
  Yeah, because your priorities are everything.
• 26:22
  And that's what I talk about a lot on this show is like, how do
• 26:25
  we reach? And that's why I like
• 26:27
  interviewing people not just that have been successful in
• 26:29
  business, but successful in all areas of their life, have
• 26:32
  healthy relationships with themselves and with other people
• 26:35
  and with their kids and their spouse and their friends, their
• 26:37
  colleagues, their team members. And who are healthy physically,
• 26:41
  who take care of themselves and have a healthy body and, and
• 26:44
  mind and soul and like prioritize well-being and
• 26:47
  self-care. And then also who are hustlers
• 26:49
  and drivers and can continue to build something great.
• 26:52
  And I think, and Jamil and I talk about this all the time
• 26:56
  because we're really good friends, but we'll talk about,
• 26:58
  you know, it's some people think it's like contrarian or
• 27:02
  distasteful to talk about business and peace, like
• 27:07
  meditation and happiness and all this in one conversation.
• 27:10
  But just like you said, I think it's the, the most important
• 27:13
  link to a successful business or just life in general is being a
• 27:19
  successful, happy, grounded, connected, loving, passionate
• 27:22
  person. And a lot of people, yes, do
• 27:25
  build massive companies driven purely from pain, But what kind
• 27:28
  of life is that? And like, is that even something
• 27:30
  that you could really call success?
• 27:31
  I. I agree because yeah, me and
• 27:35
  Jamil have been close for, you know, quite a long time.
• 27:38
  And he's actually when it like when shit really hits a fan and
• 27:41
  we don't talk as much as we used to because you know how busy he
• 27:44
  is now He's like in three different countries or whatever.
• 27:47
  He's in California and Calgary and here occasionally.
• 27:50
  And we actually talked yesterday for like first time for like
• 27:53
  half hour and in a little bit. But when I've had like big
• 27:56
  problems, he's always one to help calm and center me.
• 27:59
  So like if I ever say like, Hey, I I need you right now, like
• 28:02
  he'll call. And I had, I had to go through
• 28:05
  some shit this last year personally.
• 28:06
  And like we weren't, we haven't been as close as we once were,
• 28:10
  but like we're still close. Like we just don't talk as much
• 28:13
  as we once did. But he's still been there for me
• 28:15
  and I've been there for him because he obviously had his
• 28:17
  personal shit going on the last couple years too.
• 28:20
  And I'm just so happy to see him.
• 28:22
  He just seems like he's in the best place I've ever seen him.
• 28:25
  And so I'm, I'm very happy for him, me.
• 28:27
  Too. I'm so happy for him and he's
• 28:29
  just one of the most like his energy just grounds you and
• 28:33
  makes you just feel like everything's going to work out.
• 28:36
  We're going to get through this. But I want to talk about, we'll
• 28:40
  segue right into some of the big challenges that you face because
• 28:43
  I know we just talked. You had amazing growth, you were
• 28:45
  bootstrap, you were very profitable.
• 28:46
  You were able to identify great key players early on, grow your
• 28:49
  team, all these things. But what happened in 2022 that
• 28:55
  almost took you down and take us through that emotional journey?
• 28:58
  Yeah. That was that's pretty crazy.
• 29:00
  So because like when I say scaled to 35,000,000, that's in
• 29:04
  a year. So like our first four years we
• 29:06
  did $100 million in sales. So like we went nuts.
• 29:10
  It went from 500K to 4 million to 18 to 35 to I think 30 to 35
• 29:16
  again that next year. And then it just kind of fell
• 29:19
  off a Cliff with they changed. So like batch leads, like we
• 29:23
  really, really nailed our ICP for the investing part of things
• 29:28
  is that's when you can do a lot of, you know, outbound cold
• 29:31
  texting and we had the best phone numbers and emails and and
• 29:35
  then we also had badge Tyler. So it's like you call text could
• 29:37
  do all these things in our ecosystem and people were just
• 29:40
  going rampant and just getting all the deals like to lock
• 29:43
  anything up at that's when the hedge funds were buying
• 29:46
  everything, right. So like if you just got a deal,
• 29:48
  they're paying retailer above you just had to have someone
• 29:50
  willing and able to sell right around retail.
• 29:53
  And real estate investors at that time were making money and
• 29:57
  we benefited from that greatly. But as it got more and more
• 30:00
  adopted, more and more homeowners know started
• 30:04
  complaining to all the carriers and everything.
• 30:07
  And then regulations were changed by the carriers.
• 30:10
  There's no like official laws put in place, but people are
• 30:13
  also suing. You could sue for any reason,
• 30:14
  even if it's legal or not or Gray or whatever.
• 30:18
  And as that those changes happened, we were one of the
• 30:20
  biggest in the space. We're sending out like 30
• 30:22
  million text messages a month through our app.
• 30:25
  So and as that change, you know, the response rates change and
• 30:29
  they started flagging everything.
• 30:31
  So that in turn started a whole lot of churn because that's what
• 30:35
  we're really known for. And then if people are sending
• 30:38
  out less text messages, they're buying less phone numbers from
• 30:41
  us. So it was like this whole
• 30:42
  snowball effect and it was manageable and we still had a
• 30:46
  lot of other things to offer. But right after that, that's
• 30:49
  when interest rates went way up and just everything kind of
• 30:53
  stopped and we're like, uh oh. And we were scaling employees
• 30:57
  this entire time. So like our operational
• 31:00
  expensive expenses got crazy expensive and it was just like
• 31:04
  month over month. I'm just seeing net profits go
• 31:06
  down and down and down. And we really just tried to sell
• 31:10
  our way out of it cuz I didn't want to let anyone go.
• 31:12
  We had a great team, we had great people.
• 31:15
  And it finally came to a point to where it's like we had to do
• 31:17
  a round of layoffs And it was like, for me, it's, that's a
• 31:20
  part of business, but like, it was just really hard for me to
• 31:24
  do that. And then we eventually had to do
• 31:27
  another round of layoffs to, to get like, our revenue was just
• 31:30
  different than it once was. Our products were different than
• 31:33
  they once were. And we had to kind of get our
• 31:36
  our headcount to reflect, you know, the revenue that we had
• 31:40
  and it was tough. Yeah.
• 31:42
  How did you handle doing those layoffs?
• 31:44
  Like were you the one to do it? Were your partners the one to do
• 31:46
  it? Did you have other management
• 31:47
  that handle it? And how did you, how did you
• 31:49
  guys decide who to let go and, and how to let them go?
• 31:53
  And. Well, the first time we, we just
• 31:56
  saw it. So the first one was a little
• 31:58
  bit different is, you know, we just, it was changing.
• 32:01
  We had to let some people go. So that was getting the whole
• 32:04
  leadership team together, us making a unified decision of
• 32:07
  like kind of each department having X amount of dollars that
• 32:10
  they had to save and each department had a different
• 32:13
  amount of what we had to do. But we kind of came to an
• 32:16
  agreeance as as it our first team to kind of do this.
• 32:21
  The the second layoff we did me, Annie and Evo did everything.
• 32:26
  We did not draw out of the company for 16 months.
• 32:29
  I didn't take a dollar, none of us did.
• 32:31
  And you know, when we did that second round, we had to lead
• 32:36
  with that and let everyone know be like, hey, this is the
• 32:39
  sacrifices that we've made in the background to try and get us
• 32:44
  to get ourselves out of it. And that was the tougher one
• 32:49
  because we had to let go of, we had to make some hard decisions
• 32:51
  and had to let go of some people that have been with us for a
• 32:54
  long time. And, you know, we, we had to get
• 32:57
  right and we had to get lean and we had to be strategic of who we
• 33:01
  kept and how we kept them. So that was tough.
• 33:04
  But I know that the three of us probably waited too long and
• 33:08
  maybe even sacrificed a little too much on the financial
• 33:11
  aspect. But it just shows like the type
• 33:14
  of leaders that we are and what we're willing to do because it's
• 33:18
  hard going into work everyday, working your ass off.
• 33:21
  Then also having people bitching about how they need a raise when
• 33:24
  I'm like, I haven't taken home a dollar out of this company in a
• 33:28
  year. So it's just, but to be honest
• 33:32
  with you, that's business and that's a part of it.
• 33:36
  And if you can't stomach stuff like that, then being a business
• 33:39
  owner might not be for you. Because like everyone sees the
• 33:42
  highlights online, but sometimes behind the scenes everything
• 33:47
  isn't always what it seems, especially with a lot of the
• 33:49
  influencers out there. Yeah, it's, it never is, right?
• 33:53
  I mean, I think it's entrepreneurs, successful
• 33:55
  entrepreneurs having a massive, incredible ability to handle
• 33:58
  immense amounts of pain and like lean into it and welcome it
• 34:03
  almost into their, their life and not see it as such.
• 34:05
  A they, they welcome the pain, but they don't suffer from the
• 34:09
  pain. Like they use the pain to fuel
• 34:11
  them to get better and to grow out of it.
• 34:14
  So what when you're going through that time, I mean,
• 34:16
  really dark times, profits are going down, having to lay people
• 34:19
  off the market socks, you're going through all these
• 34:21
  regulatory issues. What, how did you get through
• 34:24
  that? And then very shortly after have
• 34:27
  a very nice exit. Like what happened there?
• 34:30
  The market started to shift. We just wanted to simplify.
• 34:33
  I feel like we got like once we got up to 250, we were like
• 34:37
  bloated and we thought more employees meant more revenue.
• 34:40
  That is not true. It actually made more chaos,
• 34:43
  more people having to approve things.
• 34:45
  So like that was a great learning lesson for future
• 34:48
  businesses or the business that I have now is like, have the
• 34:51
  right team, have the right people, have them be able to
• 34:54
  actually contribute. Like even the big tech
• 34:56
  companies, they're not having a bunch of middle management check
• 34:59
  boxes off of like, OK, we approve this.
• 35:01
  We approve that. Have just people that go get
• 35:04
  shit done. And that was an expensive lesson
• 35:07
  that I learned. But have the right people that
• 35:10
  have the right team and everyone's actually doing where
• 35:13
  people aren't just sitting there managing someone like be able to
• 35:16
  do the work. Even if you're a manager,
• 35:17
  there's still work that you should be doing and impacting.
• 35:20
  And that was a, that was a pretty big lesson learned.
• 35:23
  And we just, you know, the market started to get a little
• 35:26
  bit better. People started spending again.
• 35:29
  We worked really hard on repackaging our pricing, showing
• 35:32
  more value of our product. I mean, we just scrapped and did
• 35:35
  everything we could to get back to starting to see that curve go
• 35:39
  back up. And luckily as that, as
• 35:42
  everything started getting better, that's when our
• 35:44
  conversation with Prop Stream started happening.
• 35:47
  Our B to B side have been growing like crazy for the last
• 35:50
  couple years. So it was so tough seeing this,
• 35:52
  the side that I still own, the enterprise side, just growing,
• 35:55
  growing, growing. It was more of our legacy
• 35:57
  products that got hammered because we had so many people
• 35:59
  and things change so much. It's just we had to lose a
• 36:02
  bunch. We had to kind of bottom out and
• 36:04
  then just kind of start building our way back up.
• 36:06
  And that's just that's just business that then they everyone
• 36:09
  in the tech space got hurt. So I always say, you know, I
• 36:12
  don't think we're as good as we thought we were at the
• 36:14
  beginning. But like when everything came
• 36:16
  crashing down, all of that was out of our control.
• 36:19
  We did everything we could to strap and then get ourselves to
• 36:22
  the other side. And that's really what I told my
• 36:24
  partners is like, just weather the storm like this is like, we
• 36:29
  can't control how these regulations change and we cannot
• 36:32
  control how these interest rates went crazy super fast.
• 36:35
  Like how do we dig our way out of it?
• 36:37
  And what I mean, cause the regulations are still there the
• 36:40
  for texting and stuff, right? Like they're, it's a nightmare
• 36:43
  to try to send out any text blasts or whatever.
• 36:45
  So how did you guys overcome some of those regulation things?
• 36:48
  I mean what shifts did you make to ultimately write it back up
• 36:52
  outside of just the market got a little better and and more
• 36:54
  revenue start coming in or was that the only thing and you?
• 36:57
  We, we pivoted our off, we stopped offering it like we shut
• 37:00
  it down like no one would buy our company with these
• 37:03
  regulations in place. So it didn't matter.
• 37:06
  So I think that first year it cost us $10 million in revenue
• 37:10
  by shutting it down like it's almost $1,000,000 a month.
• 37:13
  All of our profit. I was like, OK, let's go build
• 37:16
  it back up, let's retool batch leads.
• 37:18
  Let's a lot of people were cold calling more so batch dollar was
• 37:22
  growing. So having multiple products is
• 37:24
  definitely helpful when stuff like this happens and the B to B
• 37:27
  side was growing. So kind of some of the other
• 37:30
  sides of our business, we're helping offset some of the
• 37:33
  losses. We're taking in batch leads.
• 37:35
  And we kind of just retooled batch leads, really started
• 37:39
  focusing on AI and derivative products of how people could
• 37:42
  just find deals faster and how they don't need to do all these
• 37:46
  things if they're identifying the right property.
• 37:48
  You don't have to go text message 50,000 people a month.
• 37:51
  Here's 1000 people that you should be calling.
• 37:54
  That's how you can go find your deal.
• 37:55
  So we really lean into to AI and and kind of retooling our
• 37:59
  platform to make sure that people are still having success.
• 38:02
  OK. And what can you give a quick
• 38:04
  overview of what all the services are, including the ones
• 38:06
  that you sold and then the ones you still have now and just kind
• 38:08
  of real quick, like what they do to help solve a problem.
• 38:11
  Yeah. So our first part was batch skip
• 38:13
  tracing and that's just where people could go upload their
• 38:15
  marketing list and we give them phone numbers.
• 38:17
  That's it was still around until like a week ago.
• 38:21
  We just kind of put that into batch data, which is our B to B
• 38:25
  offering to where we help empower other solutions.
• 38:28
  So like prop stream, for example, the data that we
• 38:32
  aggregate and the algorithms and the propensity scoring that we
• 38:36
  have, we license that to other people like us.
• 38:39
  So investor lift, you know, they use all of our data on their
• 38:43
  back end to show all their information for the bed bath
• 38:45
  count and houses and phone numbers.
• 38:47
  And so like that's our B to B side is just fueling all all
• 38:51
  those companies like that. And then batch leads and batch
• 38:54
  dialer is what props we bought. And a dialer is just a
• 38:57
  predictive outbound dialer. Batch leads is where you have
• 39:01
  this whole entire ecosystem of where you could go look at
• 39:04
  lists, pull lists, filter lists, keep all of your outbound
• 39:08
  marketing data in there. It's kind of a little bit of a
• 39:11
  CRM. You could even call out of it.
• 39:13
  There's just a whole bunch of marketing things that you could
• 39:16
  do in there and just go identify people that you want to try and
• 39:19
  buy their house for or even home services uses.
• 39:22
  You know, they could identify clients that they want to reach
• 39:25
  out to for a roof or for solar or for whatever, whatever.
• 39:29
  Do you guys do commercial real estate data?
• 39:31
  A little bit, but that's where I mean Co stars just the best.
• 39:36
  Like honestly, like they have proprietary data that they hold
• 39:40
  that they don't license. They're like fuck everyone so.
• 39:43
  Yeah, but they they make it a little bit difficult to extract
• 39:46
  it. So it's a very manual process on
• 39:48
  that side of things, so. Like Krexie for example, we all
• 39:52
  their phone numbers come from us.
• 39:53
  Oh wow, that's awesome. So a lot, lots of different
• 39:57
  place I was just giving examples in like real estate investing
• 39:59
  space, but we have Daikin, one of the biggest HVAC companies in
• 40:03
  the world. Just bought data from us they I
• 40:06
  don't even know for what, but they wanted all the real estate
• 40:09
  data in the US and they have some smart people chopping that
• 40:13
  up to maybe I'm assuming they're doing some type of study or
• 40:16
  targeting certain houses that they want to go after.
• 40:18
  But some of those bigger corporations do some crazy
• 40:23
  stuff. But like HUD reached out to us,
• 40:25
  they're we're working on putting a contract together with HUD and
• 40:27
  some government agencies. And we have this really cool
• 40:32
  investor report. It's called Investor Pulse
• 40:34
  Report. It's went pretty viral.
• 40:36
  And we sat there and tracked every single investor from
• 40:41
  someone buying one house a year to the institutional buyers
• 40:44
  where they're buying the most, where they're holding
• 40:46
  everything. So like a lot of news news
• 40:51
  channels and like big influencers in that space, we
• 40:55
  kind of showed that like Black rocks not killing America, but
• 41:00
  some people will still find data in there to say like, hey, these
• 41:02
  institutional investors are are buying all the properties and
• 41:05
  dragging the prices up. Investors purchase less than
• 41:09
  like 2% of real estate overall. Yeah, it's that's nothing.
• 41:14
  Correct. And like BlackRock is like .2 or
• 41:17
  something like that of all the houses that have been bought in
• 41:20
  America. So, but people still find ways,
• 41:22
  but there's certain markets that have driven it up.
• 41:25
  So we're able to publish this data and get a lot of exposure.
• 41:29
  So like on the B to B side, like PR like is awesome and having
• 41:34
  getting your name out there. So it's like we're publishing
• 41:36
  our next report next month, but we try to do something different
• 41:40
  because think of like how Zillow will publish something, then
• 41:42
  every all these publications pick them up and stuff.
• 41:45
  So we're trying to be known as like, hey, we could build some
• 41:48
  cool reports to check out our data.
• 41:50
  Yeah. That's cool, that's smart to get
• 41:52
  your continue to get your brand out there.
• 41:54
  What when you were hiring and growing the company scaling,
• 41:58
  like in what order did you hire people?
• 42:00
  Did you hire from the top down where you built out a leadership
• 42:03
  team first or did you hire from the bottom up of the, you know,
• 42:06
  we need the the executors and on the ground floor and then you
• 42:11
  hire management and then you hire AC suite.
• 42:13
  What did that look like for you? Well, at the beginning, yeah,
• 42:16
  it's just we hired, the first couple people we hired were just
• 42:22
  some sales reps. We had someone doing some Google
• 42:26
  marketing. But as I said, the affiliates
• 42:28
  was the big driving factor at the beginning for batch skip
• 42:30
  tracing and batch leads. So we had one person that was
• 42:33
  doing, you know, Google, Facebook, Instagram ads.
• 42:38
  And then we just tired, we brought from our wholesale
• 42:41
  company. We started bringing over some of
• 42:43
  those guys as we're winding that down because guess what they
• 42:47
  did? They did wholesaling so they
• 42:49
  could go talk to our customers, they could identify with their
• 42:51
  customers, they could show the product to our customers, show
• 42:53
  them how it's valuable. So we hired hired a ton of sales
• 42:56
  reps first sales and support is really where we started.
• 43:01
  And we had one marketing guy and and then that's when we soon
• 43:05
  started hiring some sales managers.
• 43:07
  So yeah, we kind of went bottom up.
• 43:09
  And then we started hiring some director level people that we
• 43:14
  were hoping to get to the C-Suite.
• 43:16
  And as you get to different levels of, I guess your
• 43:20
  business, some people can get you to where you need to go, but
• 43:23
  not where you need to go next. And we had to go through a
• 43:27
  couple layers, especially on the marketing and sales leadership
• 43:30
  side of things. We had to go cycle through a few
• 43:33
  people, but we were very lucky with our CTO and then our Chief
• 43:36
  product officer. They were basically with us
• 43:39
  since the beginning. So we've been very fortunate to
• 43:42
  have great people on the product side, leadership the whole time.
• 43:47
  So it was just more my job to find the right sales and
• 43:52
  marketing people and then found an amazing, he ended up being
• 43:57
  RCGO. So he was basically the right
• 43:59
  hand of me. So chief growth officer, he's
• 44:01
  basically the mini me. He made my life easy.
• 44:03
  He's actually leaving in two weeks.
• 44:05
  I'm so sad, but he's he's ready to go do his own thing.
• 44:09
  And then our sales leaders absolutely incredible.
• 44:12
  And he's transitioning from our head of sales to chief revenue
• 44:16
  officer and revenue and growth officer, virtually the same
• 44:19
  thing. Growth officer typically is a
• 44:23
  little bit more marketing background.
• 44:24
  Revenue officer is typically more sales background.
• 44:26
  So he, he, I don't care what title he has, like you could
• 44:30
  pick one. He's like, I want this one, you
• 44:32
  know, for his long term growth and what he wants to, what he
• 44:35
  wants to do. So it was definitely, I would
• 44:38
  say bottom up for us. And I feel like with bootstrap
• 44:42
  companies that how that's how it typically has to be because you
• 44:46
  can't go afford a $300,000 salary when you're just getting
• 44:49
  started. Remember the first time I paid
• 44:51
  someone 70 grand for a salary, I thought I was like the biggest
• 44:54
  baller ever. Eight years ago.
• 44:55
  I'm like, can't believe I'm paying someone this much money.
• 44:58
  And and now that's a entry level position for us.
• 45:01
  I know it's crazy to think of how many mouths we are
• 45:04
  responsible for feeding every day and some level obviously
• 45:07
  people can find another job, but I always think of that.
• 45:11
  I know when I had pace more be on my show, he talked about
• 45:13
  that. He's like, fuck the revenue.
• 45:15
  How many mouths am I feeding? Like that's my metrics I saw.
• 45:19
  That clip. Yeah.
• 45:20
  And I love that. I just love that so much.
• 45:22
  It's like, what, what impact are you having that's beyond just
• 45:26
  profit and revenue? And that's why I think, you
• 45:29
  know, the mouths we're feeding and the people that believed in
• 45:31
  us. That's why we made that
• 45:34
  sacrifice and not drawing out of the company for so long because
• 45:36
  like I take a great pride and you know, the people that work
• 45:39
  for us in the culture we've created and the level of blood,
• 45:44
  sweat and tears that they put into us.
• 45:46
  Like people knew things weren't going great, that we were like
• 45:49
  scratching and clawing, you know, to dig our way out of it.
• 45:53
  And they're right beside us doing it.
• 45:54
  So it really sucked to have to let some people go.
• 45:57
  But sometimes that's just that's just what happened.
• 46:01
  And I did everything I could to not have to do that.
• 46:04
  But it is what it is. It's.
• 46:06
  Part of the game. Unfortunately, that's the not so
• 46:08
  fun part of, you know, owning a company and scaling a company.
• 46:11
  But it happens, yeah. It's not ever fun to let people
• 46:17
  go, but at least when it's, you know, you're doing it from the
• 46:21
  right intention. And that's what is the most
• 46:23
  important thing. Yeah.
• 46:25
  OK, so let's transition into the sale.
• 46:27
  So how did you identify, you know, like even approach the
• 46:31
  conversation or did they approach you with one of your
• 46:34
  biggest competitors? And then what was that process
• 46:37
  from? I think you said you started a
• 46:38
  conversation in October and then you sold in July.
• 46:40
  So less than a year, which is pretty quick from a sale
• 46:44
  perspective. Actually, I don't know anything
• 46:45
  about tech. I don't know if that's long or
• 46:46
  fast, but it sounds fast. So, yeah, how did how did you
• 46:49
  engage in that conversation and what was that process like for
• 46:51
  you? Yeah, it was A, It was an
• 46:54
  interesting 1. So as I said, the B to B has
• 46:56
  continued to grow and you know, prop stream is our biggest
• 47:00
  competitor or was now they're my favorite company ever.
• 47:05
  But you know, me and Evo were talking and like, hey, they're
• 47:08
  going to get data and skip tracing somewhere.
• 47:11
  People are going to like what they're going to like.
• 47:12
  It's, it's not just the data and the phone numbers.
• 47:15
  When you're, you're choosing what product that you want to
• 47:19
  use part of it's the UI, the UX, how it's set up, how the
• 47:21
  customer journey is. There's so much more that goes
• 47:23
  into, you know, a batch leads in a prop stream, then the data and
• 47:29
  you know, the phone numbers. It's a big part of the
• 47:30
  foundation, but you know, that's a multi 6 figure contract that
• 47:35
  they'd sign with us. So we just reached out to them
• 47:37
  saying, you know, we have really good data.
• 47:39
  You know what our competitive advantages is like, hey, is this
• 47:42
  something that you maybe be interested in?
• 47:44
  So I just reached out to them to try and sell them batch data.
• 47:47
  And I was meeting with the CEO and I was like trying to
• 47:51
  convince him so badly that like there wasn't some angle here.
• 47:55
  I jokingly said I was like, I'd sell you batch leads and dialer.
• 47:58
  You know, we're really focused on growing this side.
• 48:01
  And then he looks up and he goes really.
• 48:02
  And I was like, I was kind of kidding, kind of like, I don't
• 48:05
  know. I was like off.
• 48:06
  He said sell anything for the right price.
• 48:08
  And I was like, what do you mean?
• 48:11
  And he's like, it's just funny you say that.
• 48:14
  And I'm kind of like trying to dig further.
• 48:16
  And he's like, we, we had a conversation with our leadership
• 48:19
  recently and you know, we're, we're looking for some inorganic
• 48:22
  growth. It was a pure luck of timing
• 48:24
  thing. And we, I was like, I was like,
• 48:28
  let's talk more, let's table this.
• 48:31
  And then me and him got on a couple phone calls to just like,
• 48:34
  I wanted to know more about what their long term vision was, what
• 48:38
  their culture looked like, how he thought of the space.
• 48:42
  And we were just very much aligned of like how he they're
• 48:45
  really good company. They treat their people good,
• 48:47
  they empower them. And I was like, OK, I was like,
• 48:50
  this could maybe make sense because like, if I sell this
• 48:53
  piece off, I want to make sure this is a majority of my
• 48:55
  employees, make sure that they're going to a good home.
• 48:58
  They're not trying to lay a bunch of people off.
• 49:00
  They're not trying to fire people.
• 49:01
  They're not trying to, you know, do some big, you know, thing to
• 49:06
  where they bundle this up and then go resell it.
• 49:08
  Stewart title is who owns prop stream.
• 49:10
  So they're publicly traded. I didn't know that.
• 49:12
  So we actually sold to publicly traded company.
• 49:14
  So we'll get into that. I get.
• 49:15
  My data from Stewart. And they, I guess so Stewart
• 49:23
  doesn't buy to flip, they buy to keep.
• 49:26
  So like this is going to get absorbed in, this is a big part
• 49:29
  of Stewart titles business. So like knowing that they're
• 49:31
  going to bring this together and just continue to try and grow
• 49:35
  it. That was another thing that
• 49:36
  really excited me, Annie and Evo and it was the weirdest
• 49:41
  negotiation ever. I don't know how much I should
• 49:44
  even get into, but it was it was just really ass backwards.
• 49:48
  It's like they wouldn't let my partners get into it.
• 49:51
  I was the only one talking to Brian, who's the CEO prop stream
• 49:54
  and then Brad who is like the decision maker for Stewart.
• 49:58
  He's basically the number 2 to the CEO Fred over there.
• 50:02
  And he'd like they'd schedule meeting with me.
• 50:06
  There's no agenda. So like Brad would not let me
• 50:08
  prep or bullshit him or come prepared with like certain
• 50:12
  things or angles. And Brian's like, you have a
• 50:15
  great business, just be honest. And they want to know about how
• 50:18
  how this revenue went down, how it's going back up.
• 50:21
  And I was just like 100% brutally honest of like, this is
• 50:24
  what happened. Here's the plan, here's how
• 50:26
  we're growing again. And I think that gained his
• 50:29
  trust to be like, all right, like this dude's not full of
• 50:32
  shit. Like they had a bunch of revenue
• 50:34
  dip. This is what they did to change
• 50:36
  it. This is why it's starting to
• 50:37
  grow again. And that's kind of what started
• 50:41
  them to get a little bit more serious about it.
• 50:44
  And did they make you an offer or did you tell them a price?
• 50:47
  They made me give them a price actually.
• 50:51
  So because we weren't on market, we weren't, you know, doing all
• 50:54
  those things and they basically came back and said, you know,
• 50:57
  we're, we're interested. We don't want to waste any more
• 51:00
  time. Where, where do you need to be
• 51:02
  at? So that was that was a tough,
• 51:05
  that was tough. It's like, OK, where am I
• 51:08
  leaving too much on the table? Where am I getting too greedy?
• 51:10
  So got with our investment bankers, we kind of ran through
• 51:13
  scenarios, came back with a number and they said that sounds
• 51:18
  good. Like the first number you said
• 51:21
  they agreed to. Not, not quite.
• 51:23
  They like they're like that's in the ballpark, like we're let's.
• 51:27
  And then they came with an offer to us that was very similar to,
• 51:31
  I think it was within $1,000,000 of where we're at.
• 51:33
  And what did the due diligence process look like?
• 51:36
  That was insane because they are publicly traded.
• 51:38
  So I mean they're running through everything with a fine
• 51:42
  tooth comb. Every single thing is our
• 51:45
  compliance good with our dialers?
• 51:46
  Our compliance good with batch leads are our contracts and
• 51:49
  appliances this in compliances, you know, how do they transition
• 51:54
  our employees? It was it was a lot.
• 51:58
  I just luckily Annie, who's really our COO, she's like the
• 52:02
  most button up person I know. I love her.
• 52:04
  She made this for her. It was brutal.
• 52:07
  But for me and her brother, I think she made it easy.
• 52:10
  She shined us in a good light and they never once had to
• 52:13
  question like, is this a mistake that we're making?
• 52:16
  So like I'm the one that got them to the table and to say
• 52:21
  like, Hey, we want to do this, but if we weren't buttoned up,
• 52:24
  it could have fallen apart quickly.
• 52:26
  That's that's the toughest thing is if just because someone says
• 52:29
  yes, once you get into that due diligence, if they see cracks,
• 52:33
  they're going to start questioning.
• 52:34
  And I'm very lucky to have a partner that has always kept
• 52:38
  this button up or from on the entire back end, from finances
• 52:43
  to HR to SOP and everything put together to where they asked for
• 52:48
  something. Here you go.
• 52:49
  And it's all buttoned up with the bow.
• 52:51
  So. That's awesome.
• 52:53
  That is awesome. I I need to find my second in
• 52:56
  command desperately because I am not the buttoned up type and I
• 53:00
  definitely need that that person sooner than later.
• 53:03
  It was crazy like we literally, so we had this whole
• 53:06
  announcement. I had to just basically say I
• 53:09
  was doing all hands for my company.
• 53:11
  I they, they, no one could know what's going on, right?
• 53:13
  Because like Stewart's publicly traded, like no one could know.
• 53:16
  Then people could buy stock or, you know, do do weird stuff.
• 53:18
  So like we're on there, this crazy NDA and like a mad dash to
• 53:24
  get everything buttoned up, everything signed.
• 53:26
  So it was Tuesday morning, July 1st, like 8:00 AM that we have
• 53:30
  this all hands meeting. It's midnight the night before.
• 53:34
  We're still not signed. We're like, what the fuck is
• 53:37
  going on here? And I think it's like 12:15
• 53:40
  Eastern Time because like the lawyers were all Eastern Time.
• 53:43
  It finally like the release of signatures happened.
• 53:48
  It was crazy. Wow.
• 53:49
  I was just like, are we going to have to cancel this?
• 53:51
  Like Brian, the CEO of prop streams in town were at dinner
• 53:55
  together like just like checking our phones, asking our lawyers
• 53:59
  and it was just a mad dash to like it was it was so stressful.
• 54:06
  What? Was the why wasn't it signed?
• 54:08
  It's just every little detail it's think of, you know, a
• 54:11
  commercial real estate transaction times it by 100,
• 54:14
  like not even really 100 that. Sounds horrible.
• 54:18
  That the employees like what's being held back when when they
• 54:22
  transition our employees from their to to them who's paying
• 54:25
  for the PTO? How does it get trans like
• 54:28
  that's just one thing of 700 that needs to be in a contract.
• 54:33
  It's crazy. That's.
• 54:34
  Crazy. And did you hire like M&A
• 54:36
  consultants or these were your investment bankers so?
• 54:38
  No, you have your investment bankers and then you have your
• 54:41
  lawyers. So we, we hire these lawyers
• 54:46
  like 2 years ago to help, as I said, the whole getting ready,
• 54:49
  help us with our, all of our contracts and compliance.
• 54:52
  Is there any gaps? Is there problems that people
• 54:55
  are going to see? So like we identified,
• 54:57
  interviewed 567, you know, companies decided who was the
• 55:01
  best for us. They started kind of prepping
• 55:03
  with us. So like once it's time to go,
• 55:05
  they know everything they need to know about our business too.
• 55:08
  And then they're helping consult us.
• 55:09
  Like Kroll's kind of Kroll was our investment bankers, they
• 55:16
  kind of help you on the negotiation and then some of the
• 55:18
  terms and like, hey, this is not typical.
• 55:22
  Like we should push back on this and then the legal will kind of
• 55:26
  say some of the same things, but they're real going through you.
• 55:28
  Like you need to understand what you're signing, signing.
• 55:31
  And this is like like disclosures and non competes and
• 55:37
  just all, all the things and stuff like that.
• 55:39
  Is it's a pretty cool thing is like the one thing I do have
• 55:43
  that some most of my friends don't is like I've went through
• 55:46
  an exit and to a publicly traded company to where it's just like
• 55:49
  you can't teach this that experience that you had.
• 55:52
  And I feel like not a ton of people get to go through it.
• 55:54
  Yeah. I can't even imagine going
• 55:56
  through that. What?
• 55:58
  What did it feel like when you closed I?
• 56:01
  Cried seriously, just those last 2 1/2 years, just all that
• 56:06
  stress, all that hard work, all that not taking home money, all
• 56:11
  of it just like came out of me at once.
• 56:13
  Yeah, it's crazy. And then when the wire hits the
• 56:17
  next day, that's when the smiles come.
• 56:19
  Yeah, yeah. And you're like, look at your
• 56:21
  phone. I look at like they're like, how
• 56:23
  do you guys want blah, blah, blah.
• 56:24
  We're like together because like we're all equal partners and
• 56:27
  everything and like, you know, do you want to divvy it out to
• 56:29
  you? Together is good.
• 56:31
  We want to see it all together. So it was just like, it was like
• 56:34
  918 Tuesday morning and like everyone's there and like
• 56:39
  Brian's there and I just like, look up at him.
• 56:41
  I smile and he's like, I got your wire.
• 56:44
  Yeah, I did. It was cool.
• 56:48
  What a feeling, yeah. It's just, it's all that hard
• 56:51
  work, all that sacrifice, all that doubting, all those long
• 56:55
  nights and just like, am I good enough?
• 56:57
  All the the, you know, lacking of self belief during just all
• 57:03
  that shit going wrong. Just as like, OK, I'm not so bad
• 57:07
  at this. Yeah, made it.
• 57:08
  Yeah. What were some of those
• 57:11
  emotional roller coasters like that you?
• 57:14
  I mean, my initial stem into entrepreneurship and business
• 57:17
  and building wealth and all that stuff always stem from the root
• 57:20
  that I'm not good enough. Like I got to protect myself.
• 57:22
  I got to provide myself. I got to prove myself.
• 57:23
  I got to all those things, right.
• 57:25
  And so I can only imagine what it was like for you going
• 57:28
  through that whole process, like coming back up from a very
• 57:30
  difficult time and then going through this very difficult sale
• 57:33
  that you don't know if it's actually going to close.
• 57:34
  Like what were some of the emotions that you were feeling
• 57:37
  and habits or thoughts or routines or things that helped
• 57:40
  you get through those limiting beliefs?
• 57:43
  I don't know, just always being doubted has always been a big
• 57:46
  part of my why I guess I graduated high school a year
• 57:50
  late. The 1.9 GPA, it took me I guess
• 57:55
  a total of nine years to actually graduate college
• 57:57
  because I got like an A a I'd mess.
• 57:59
  I was just that's just a shit show in my early 20s.
• 58:03
  I honestly wanted to chase girls and drink at that time, and that
• 58:08
  was, I guess more of my priority to some degree.
• 58:12
  I just didn't know what I wanted.
• 58:14
  And ultimately, looking back at it, it was just until I found
• 58:18
  the right people and the right circles that I was always
• 58:23
  ambitious. I just wasn't around ambitious
• 58:25
  people. And that's why every successful
• 58:28
  person talks about, you know, the five people that you're you
• 58:30
  hang around the most. It's the truest thing ever.
• 58:32
  I know it's so cliche, but once I started, you know, hanging
• 58:37
  like Danny, who brought me into real estate, like she works her
• 58:40
  ass off. So like, she was that starting
• 58:42
  point of like, oh, this is what hard work looks like, but this
• 58:45
  is the type of money you can make from hard work.
• 58:46
  I was like, OK, I like this. And then, you know, starting my
• 58:50
  own thing and then getting in that circle with Pace and Jameel
• 58:53
  and Brent and Annie and Evo and Steve Trang and having all these
• 58:57
  other big ambitions. I'm like, I could do that too.
• 59:00
  It's just, and they believed that I could do it.
• 59:03
  So it's just like having people that are crazy ambitious, but at
• 59:06
  the same time, I'm like, I'm not falling behind you like, let's
• 59:10
  go, like let's go do this. And we were all rooting for each
• 59:13
  other. So it was just getting in front
• 59:15
  of the right people in the right circles.
• 59:16
  And because I saw all these people, especially when I was in
• 59:19
  my mid 20s when I was trying to get my shit together, I remember
• 59:22
  like meeting this agent that didn't seem very bright and he's
• 59:25
  making like 300 grand a year like selling residential houses.
• 59:28
  I'm like, I just thought to myself, I'm like, what, what is
• 59:31
  he doing that I'm not like he doesn't seem like sharper than
• 59:34
  me. He doesn't seem more ambitious
• 59:36
  to me. And I just learned as time went
• 59:39
  on, he just put got put in a right opportunity or put himself
• 59:43
  in a right opportunity to go have that success.
• 59:45
  And I just didn't know how to put myself in that place yet.
• 59:50
  Once I did it, I just, I just went hard.
• 59:54
  Yeah, and you, did you have a difficult childhood upbringing
• 1:00:00
  or was it a good childhood? Comparatively, my parents are
• 1:00:06
  still married. They've always been good to me.
• 1:00:09
  I'd say we're middle. We're middle class.
• 1:00:11
  My dad had a partner when I was a teenager, like embezzled money
• 1:00:15
  in his business and almost bankrupted us.
• 1:00:17
  And so we went through some hard times on that type of thing.
• 1:00:20
  But I had pretty bad social anxiety.
• 1:00:22
  I miss like your high school, but they were like super
• 1:00:25
  supportive. So it was just like, I just had
• 1:00:28
  some personal shit going on. And honestly, I just, I don't
• 1:00:33
  know. I just, I don't know.
• 1:00:35
  I just did not. I always was very, I guess
• 1:00:41
  competitive and like wanted to be great.
• 1:00:43
  But like, I think I just, I didn't want to put the work in
• 1:00:46
  when I was younger. I was just, I was just a kid
• 1:00:49
  that wanted to fuck around. I like wanted to be a
• 1:00:51
  professional poker player when I was 18.
• 1:00:52
  I always had like all this weird shit I wanted to do and but I
• 1:00:56
  never think I really like gave my full effort to even do that.
• 1:00:59
  Like it was enough money for me to like have fun work part time
• 1:01:02
  at a restaurant, go chase girls. Like, I think that was just
• 1:01:05
  like, I just wish I grew up in this generation where you have
• 1:01:09
  all these knowledge and resources and people to look
• 1:01:11
  into. Like, I'm 40.
• 1:01:13
  Like we didn't have the YouTube. We didn't have like these type
• 1:01:16
  of people that were, you know, good examples are like, this is
• 1:01:19
  what it takes to be successful. Like, I just, I didn't know.
• 1:01:22
  Yeah. What?
• 1:01:23
  Where did the? Because I had really bad social
• 1:01:25
  anxiety. I had anxiety, depression,
• 1:01:27
  eating disorders, suicide. Why I was, Yeah.
• 1:01:29
  I've had those those thoughts too.
• 1:01:32
  It was scary. I started getting panic attacks
• 1:01:34
  out of nowhere, like crazy panic attacks and then I'd have panic
• 1:01:37
  attacks thinking about having panic attacks and it was in
• 1:01:41
  high. School.
• 1:01:42
  Yeah, and like it started with weed.
• 1:01:46
  Don't do that at all anymore. Like I get them from that.
• 1:01:49
  And then like I got one sober and I was like, what the fuck?
• 1:01:54
  And and then it scared me so much.
• 1:01:56
  I think it just like snowballed into me like or like I'm going
• 1:01:59
  to be out and I'm going to have a panic attack and everyone's
• 1:02:01
  going to see that I'm having a panic attack.
• 1:02:03
  And then then I started identifying it with stuff I
• 1:02:05
  didn't love to do, like flying or like going to big events.
• 1:02:08
  And so I just, I had to go to a lot of therapy and like kind of
• 1:02:13
  work through it. I think it was just being
• 1:02:15
  adolescent with all these crazy hormones going through me.
• 1:02:17
  Like now I'm pretty fine. And if I'm anxious, I'll just
• 1:02:20
  like let myself be anxious, let it pour through me.
• 1:02:26
  But it was, it was pretty tough. My mom was scared I missed a
• 1:02:28
  year of school, like, and then I got on medicine.
• 1:02:32
  But like, if I forgot to take my medicine, I'd freak out because
• 1:02:35
  like, I'm like, this is the only thing that makes me better.
• 1:02:36
  So like, I was like, I need to go somewhere to where like I
• 1:02:40
  could learn how to deal with this problem without being
• 1:02:43
  medicated because like, if I didn't take my medicine, I'd
• 1:02:45
  freak out. So I'm like this.
• 1:02:47
  This isn't working. How did you deal with it?
• 1:02:49
  How did you get through that? Therapy and learning and
• 1:02:52
  breathing exercises. The older I've gotten in my
• 1:02:57
  30's, the only time I really be anxious was from alcohol, like,
• 1:03:01
  you know, the next day. So I really don't even drink
• 1:03:04
  anymore. I haven't been drunk.
• 1:03:05
  And well over a year to where I started taking my health better
• 1:03:09
  and releasing those endorphins and that anxiety through that.
• 1:03:12
  I work out every day after work. People are like morning people.
• 1:03:14
  I have to do it to relieve all my stress for the day.
• 1:03:17
  So between 3:30 and 4:00, it's like I don't answer my phone.
• 1:03:21
  I don't do anything. My wife knows it's just, it's
• 1:03:24
  like I had to change my habits to make sure that like all
• 1:03:29
  everything could be clicking, especially on the health side of
• 1:03:31
  things like drinking, not doing drugs, being healthier, reading
• 1:03:35
  a lot of books on how I could be better as a communicator, as a
• 1:03:38
  person, self improvement stuff. I just, I dove really hard into
• 1:03:42
  it and I think it's so funny when people like, it's a bunch
• 1:03:44
  of bullshit and I'm like, like, because you haven't done it.
• 1:03:47
  Right, it's not bullshit because I, I did all those same things
• 1:03:50
  too and the, the physical exercise every day was a huge
• 1:03:53
  help, but they are the therapy, plant medicine, EMDR books,
• 1:04:00
  workshops, like literally everything.
• 1:04:01
  And a lot of a lot of what really helped me it came down to
• 1:04:05
  forgiveness. Like I really, I had a lot of
• 1:04:09
  hate, not hate, but resentment towards, you know, a lot of
• 1:04:11
  anger and resentment towards a lot of people that I didn't even
• 1:04:15
  know I had because I just, you know, shoved it down and kept
• 1:04:17
  doing the thing and kept working on the next project or the next
• 1:04:20
  business or the next deal or whatever.
• 1:04:22
  And that's when I was able to really tap, peel back all those
• 1:04:25
  layers of the onion and tap into a lot of the things that I
• 1:04:28
  didn't even know were still inside me and release that.
• 1:04:31
  That's what started to remove my anxiety, my depression, my.
• 1:04:35
  Was that from childhood stuff for you?
• 1:04:37
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, mine wasn't.
• 1:04:39
  That's what was weird for me. Mine wasn't like I didn't have
• 1:04:42
  these crazy bad things that happened to me.
• 1:04:44
  I just started having these weird panic attacks.
• 1:04:48
  Well, and that's did you ever study doctor Gabbermate try.
• 1:04:51
  He's a trauma therapist. And so he reframes what trauma
• 1:04:54
  means because he said there's, you know, there's severe trauma
• 1:04:56
  and then there's the primary trauma that all of us have.
• 1:04:59
  And I talked about this a lot on the show.
• 1:05:00
  But he says the primary trauma and all people is not feeling
• 1:05:05
  seen, heard or protected by their parents when they're kids.
• 1:05:09
  And it doesn't necessarily mean to need to mean you had a rough
• 1:05:12
  upbringing or you were abused or neglected or starved or poor or
• 1:05:15
  anything like that. It's just, you know, having a
• 1:05:18
  narcissistic father or mother or being bullied in your home or
• 1:05:22
  not feeling safe in your home or, or not, you know, having
• 1:05:26
  very religious parents that maybe didn't really see you and
• 1:05:29
  pushed things onto you. And, and it's not that they
• 1:05:32
  intentionally did anything to hurt you, but it opens up a
• 1:05:35
  wound from a very young age that causes you to kind of, I don't
• 1:05:38
  know, have this, this wound that opens the door to more traumas
• 1:05:41
  and makes you kind of feel unseen, unheard, unprotected.
• 1:05:44
  And that's what leads to addictions, anxiety, depression,
• 1:05:47
  and all those other things that happen as a result of that.
• 1:05:50
  Yeah. And I think, you know, yeah, it
• 1:05:53
  was so weird because even when I was like, I remember 5-6 years
• 1:05:57
  old, if like we got less than 1/4 tank of gas, like I'd freak
• 1:06:00
  out and make my mom go get gas. So like, I think I maybe just
• 1:06:03
  had like some anxiety thing my whole life.
• 1:06:05
  And then I remember a few times I'd get in trouble.
• 1:06:08
  Like we go to a big basketball camp and I think I get like
• 1:06:10
  overwhelmed and then like I wouldn't want to go or be there
• 1:06:13
  and I get in trouble for it. And I remember talking to my
• 1:06:15
  parents, I was like, you know, I'm having like an anxiety
• 1:06:18
  attack and I'm getting punished for it, you know, like, doubt
• 1:06:20
  this was few years ago of like, but it's like, I can't blame
• 1:06:24
  them. They didn't, they didn't know.
• 1:06:26
  They're just like, we signed you up for this thing.
• 1:06:29
  You wanted to do it. And then you're like, no, But
• 1:06:31
  like, I think a parent today would ask like, well, why?
• 1:06:34
  You know what I mean? I think back then, you know, 30
• 1:06:37
  years ago, like, people weren't educated like that.
• 1:06:40
  Yeah. They didn't have the tools or
• 1:06:42
  the resources, the knowledge. So it's like I'm.
• 1:06:44
  Not mad at them, but I'm like knowing and looking back and
• 1:06:47
  that could have maybe spawned some of those things that kind
• 1:06:49
  of crept up or built into me. But I don't know, we're all
• 1:06:52
  crazy at the end of the day. And how and obviously somebody
• 1:06:57
  that has anxiety and multiple other previous diagnosis is
• 1:07:01
  myself, entrepreneurship doesn't exactly ease the anxiety.
• 1:07:05
  And yet we lean into that and we're like, let's go build a
• 1:07:08
  massive company or five companies or do this or that.
• 1:07:10
  So how do you still, because anxiety, if you're an anxious
• 1:07:14
  person, it doesn't really ever completely go away.
• 1:07:17
  Like it kind of lives in you a little bit.
• 1:07:18
  You kind of have a buzz all the time and may intensify or not.
• 1:07:22
  But how do you in those like really high stakes games that
• 1:07:25
  you play? How do you handle the pressure
• 1:07:27
  without breaking just like the typical routine of the workout
• 1:07:29
  and all those things? Or is there something like when
• 1:07:31
  it really gets high stakes that something that you go to to
• 1:07:34
  handle that and get through it? I, I think it, it fuels me and
• 1:07:37
  like heightens my awareness, to be honest with you.
• 1:07:39
  But I, I think that the biggest problem I have is in personal
• 1:07:44
  and professionals. Like I'm still working on it and
• 1:07:46
  I'm reading some books on it right now, but it's like I'll
• 1:07:48
  get so worked up or so frustrated, I'll just like lash
• 1:07:51
  out and that's like something I still need to work on.
• 1:07:53
  And it could be, it's typically the people I love the most too
• 1:07:56
  to where it's like, it could be deflected frustration and then
• 1:08:00
  they say something and then I'm just like, so like that's where
• 1:08:03
  I could still definitely like work on things.
• 1:08:05
  But I think if I just like it doesn't come off as like panic
• 1:08:08
  attacks, but if it builds up too much, then I think I just like
• 1:08:10
  lash out or I'm really short and that's like I'm reading.
• 1:08:13
  Have you read crucial conversations?
• 1:08:15
  Great book. It really helps you kind of
• 1:08:17
  learn how to understand how you feel, why you feel, how to
• 1:08:20
  reframe kind of crucial conversations.
• 1:08:23
  And it's something I'm trying to definitely get better AT and or
• 1:08:26
  learning when I am really worked up of like, OK, maybe you just
• 1:08:29
  need to like be alone and and chill the fuck out, to be honest
• 1:08:32
  with you. So none of us are perfect.
• 1:08:35
  I've definitely gotten better, but like my anxiety now, it's
• 1:08:38
  not as much as like like panic attacks anymore.
• 1:08:42
  It's more of because like, if I start feeling anxious like that,
• 1:08:46
  I'll just like, I used to fight it and that's what would make it
• 1:08:49
  worse and worse and worse. Now it's just like, all right,
• 1:08:51
  run. Like, go ahead, do it.
• 1:08:53
  Like run through me. Like that's fine.
• 1:08:56
  I'm OK. Like I'll do some breathing
• 1:08:58
  exercises, calm my down. Why am I anxious?
• 1:09:02
  It typically was, especially when I was in my 20s.
• 1:09:05
  It really stemmed mostly from from alcohol.
• 1:09:09
  I'd get those booze Blues the next day or I'd be really
• 1:09:11
  anxious or I'd feel really uncomfortable and like
• 1:09:14
  identifying the things that made it worse.
• 1:09:16
  I was like, why? Why do I do this to myself?
• 1:09:18
  So I've really focused on trying to be trying to be better and
• 1:09:21
  healthier. Yeah.
• 1:09:23
  Yeah, I'm actually doing a speech next month, a talk on
• 1:09:28
  living life in the Green Zone and how to keep yourself in a
• 1:09:31
  state of flow where you are in a expansive, energetic state.
• 1:09:36
  And that was the first coach I ever hired when I was 25.
• 1:09:39
  And that was deep, dark into my very challenging days.
• 1:09:42
  And but at that point where I was like, I can't live like this
• 1:09:44
  anymore. I don't want to live like this
• 1:09:45
  anymore. You know, I have money.
• 1:09:46
  I'm still miserable. How do I not be miserable
• 1:09:49
  anymore? And I hired this coach and he
• 1:09:51
  was an energetic intelligence coach.
• 1:09:53
  He calls it 9 Q. It's like the 9th intelligence
• 1:09:56
  or whatever. And he taught ME3 tools to stay
• 1:10:00
  in a peak state because you said the outcome can only be as great
• 1:10:03
  as the energetic state in which you initiate the action.
• 1:10:06
  And so if you do anything from a poor energetic state, which
• 1:10:09
  anxiety is a low, poor energetic state, anger, poor, low
• 1:10:13
  energetic state, boredom, stress, fear, all those
• 1:10:16
  scarcity, all those feelings, you're going to get low quality
• 1:10:19
  outcomes. So you're basically wasting your
• 1:10:21
  time to even take any action from that state.
• 1:10:24
  And the repercussions are great, right?
• 1:10:28
  If you're talking to your spouse and you blow up on them or your
• 1:10:30
  employees or anything, anybody, right.
• 1:10:32
  And so he taught me those tools and I really, it allowed me the,
• 1:10:36
  the first tool is the energy audits.
• 1:10:38
  So I started to track my day every single day, an hour, an
• 1:10:42
  alarm on my phone every hour to check in with myself.
• 1:10:45
  Where am I? What am I doing?
• 1:10:46
  Who am I with? Where am I at?
• 1:10:47
  How do I feel? And is this making me contracted
• 1:10:50
  or expansive? Making me feel contracted or
• 1:10:52
  expansive? Yeah, it was so helpful.
• 1:10:55
  And then I, I started to have that awareness of like, OK, what
• 1:10:57
  actually puts me in a positive state and what takes me out of
• 1:11:00
  it? And I just removed, I delegated,
• 1:11:04
  removed or changed anything that made me feel contracted.
• 1:11:07
  And then as I started to be in a better state because of the
• 1:11:11
  things I was doing that put me in a better state, I created, I,
• 1:11:14
  it just continued to perpetuate, right.
• 1:11:17
  And then the second thing was the morning integrity setup.
• 1:11:19
  So like before starting the day before, looking at the phone and
• 1:11:22
  the fires and the emails, getting yourself in that peak
• 1:11:24
  state of mind and having that routine.
• 1:11:27
  Like I go for the sunrise morning walk and I listen to the
• 1:11:29
  birds and I feel the sun and it feels so good and makes me feel
• 1:11:32
  so alive. And I run to the gym with my
• 1:11:35
  house music on and I work out and I feel amazing.
• 1:11:37
  I listen to my audio book and walk on the way home and these
• 1:11:40
  things that get me into such a peak state of mind.
• 1:11:42
  So when I'm ready to look at the fires, I'm, I feel so good.
• 1:11:45
  I can handle them better. And then the next thing he
• 1:11:48
  taught me was it's called the daily win review.
• 1:11:51
  What's working, what isn't working and what needs to
• 1:11:54
  change. And so I'm always like
• 1:11:56
  recalibrating with my true north.
• 1:11:58
  Where am I going? And are the things that I'm
• 1:12:00
  doing today essential for me to get to where I want to be?
• 1:12:04
  And so I make sure that I'm not scaling the wrong mountain
• 1:12:07
  because I've done that where I'm just so in the weeds of the
• 1:12:09
  daily grind. And then I look up one day and
• 1:12:11
  I'm like, I don't want to be on this mountain.
• 1:12:13
  What the hell did I just climb? How did I get there?
• 1:12:15
  Yeah, but yeah, that like they're such simple tools, but
• 1:12:19
  that awareness and the tools to. And then he taught me how to do
• 1:12:22
  an energy reset. So when you recognize you're not
• 1:12:25
  in the Green Zone, you're not in a peak state of mind, what can
• 1:12:28
  you do to get yourself there? And so like for, you know,
• 1:12:32
  eating food, drinking water, going for a walk, talking to
• 1:12:34
  somebody that always makes you laugh, like calling Jameel, you
• 1:12:38
  know, and these little things. And so you get, once you have
• 1:12:40
  the awareness before you go into that big client meeting or that
• 1:12:42
  deal that's canceling or that difficult due diligence,
• 1:12:45
  whatever, you could be like, OK, let me do a quick reset.
• 1:12:49
  And sometimes they're quick. Sometimes they're not as quick.
• 1:12:51
  If something devastating happened, you probably you need
• 1:12:53
  a little bit longer to reset you're.
• 1:12:55
  Doing a speech on this. Yeah, I'll make sure you send it
• 1:12:58
  to me. I'll want to see it.
• 1:12:59
  Or if you have some notes, send them over to me.
• 1:13:01
  We'll talk about it after, OK? Cool, Yeah.
• 1:13:03
  But it's it's been. I think that's one of the most
• 1:13:06
  important things in not just entrepreneurship and business,
• 1:13:09
  but in life. It's learning to master that.
• 1:13:11
  Yeah, I just think personal and professional, like they're
• 1:13:15
  they're so closely tied to each other.
• 1:13:17
  Like once I started working out once I like really working out
• 1:13:20
  and like really taking care of myself.
• 1:13:22
  Like as you said, your energy is better, how you feel about
• 1:13:24
  yourselves better and how you treat your employees is
• 1:13:28
  different. How you just all of it kind of
• 1:13:31
  compounds on both sides of my opinion.
• 1:13:33
  So like, I, I think how you do anything is how you do
• 1:13:36
  everything. And I, I think that's for the
• 1:13:37
  personal, I think, I think they're so blended together,
• 1:13:40
  especially for an entrepreneur, but even employee, I think, I
• 1:13:43
  think they go so hand in hand for people like, like employees
• 1:13:46
  and people that work for Someone Like You could be ambitious and
• 1:13:50
  rich working through a company as well, Especially if you go to
• 1:13:52
  the right place that could give you equity in a business or, you
• 1:13:55
  know, a big corporate place that you could grow and grow and grow
• 1:13:58
  and grow and all the stock options you get.
• 1:13:59
  But like most of those people are buttoned up and put
• 1:14:02
  together. Not all of them.
• 1:14:03
  There's some functioning Alcoholics out there and some
• 1:14:05
  people that are able to, to do it, But are they actually happy?
• 1:14:09
  Is having money and being happier are two very different
• 1:14:11
  things? So what's next for you?
• 1:14:14
  What what drives you to keep going?
• 1:14:16
  I mean, you could probably just go chill out on a beach
• 1:14:18
  somewhere, but yeah, what? What's next for you on your
• 1:14:20
  journey? Yeah.
• 1:14:22
  I mean it's, it's not close to over.
• 1:14:24
  We still have batch data. I plan to grow that, hopefully
• 1:14:29
  have a successful exit with that in the next couple years.
• 1:14:32
  And in the meantime, you know, selling to prop stream is not
• 1:14:38
  like here's the keys, I'll see you later making sure that, you
• 1:14:43
  know, I want this to be Stewart's best acquisition ever.
• 1:14:46
  So I'm doing anything and everything I can to make sure
• 1:14:49
  that I'm supporting the team that was brought over,
• 1:14:53
  supporting the team that was already there.
• 1:14:55
  And, you know, making sure I'm Brian Temper, who's the CEO prop
• 1:14:58
  stream, making sure I'm his right hand.
• 1:15:00
  I'm go to a couple conferences with this them this year.
• 1:15:03
  I've been on a lot of podcasts promoting how great, you know,
• 1:15:06
  these two companies coming together and what it's going to
• 1:15:08
  mean for the wholesale community.
• 1:15:09
  So I am actually busier than I was before we sold.
• 1:15:13
  And it's it's been fun, It's been great.
• 1:15:16
  And it's, it's nice to be rewarded for, for a lot of hard
• 1:15:20
  work over a long period of years.
• 1:15:22
  Yeah. And what it what is like, what
• 1:15:25
  does legacy mean to you? Are you shooting for some?
• 1:15:29
  I mean, are you building to sell and then you ultimately want to
• 1:15:32
  retire? Or do you have a bigger mission
• 1:15:34
  or plan in place in the back of your mind?
• 1:15:37
  That's something I'm still figuring out.
• 1:15:38
  There's a, I've been listening to a lot of podcasts of founders
• 1:15:43
  that have exited and there's a lot of different ways to do
• 1:15:46
  everything. And for me, I'm not great at
• 1:15:50
  staying still. But I, I don't know.
• 1:15:54
  I don't know how much I want to work or don't work.
• 1:15:57
  I know I want to find a balance to spend more time with my wife
• 1:16:01
  and family and child or children and I just don't know yet.
• 1:16:06
  So like my legacy is like, how can I live the best version of
• 1:16:11
  what I want? And I don't think it's
• 1:16:13
  necessarily money related. I think is how can I get the
• 1:16:17
  most fulfillment for me? And I want to be able to once
• 1:16:21
  I'm done. So I'm the next company, I'm
• 1:16:24
  definitely going to reset and take time to figure out what
• 1:16:28
  that looks like because I think for some people it's just
• 1:16:32
  building. For some people it's like, you
• 1:16:35
  know, there's a lot of like big actors that took 10 years off to
• 1:16:38
  go spend time with their family. Like everyone's why investing
• 1:16:42
  for them is so different. That's why it's like everyone's
• 1:16:44
  like trying to get advice from everyone.
• 1:16:46
  My advice to anyone that starting company or go creates a
• 1:16:49
  ton of wealth, like be very intentional with like what that
• 1:16:53
  means. Are you building a lifestyle
• 1:16:54
  business? Are you building something grow
• 1:16:56
  to sell, to spend all of your time with your family?
• 1:16:58
  Are you building something to just build the next thing?
• 1:17:01
  Like understand what you want because like what makes you
• 1:17:05
  happy is different than what makes someone else is happy.
• 1:17:07
  So don't try and think that you look up to this person and you
• 1:17:11
  need to be just like them. Like find your intention, find
• 1:17:14
  your like what centers you, what fulfills you, what legacy could
• 1:17:19
  be so many different things. It's not always like money and
• 1:17:22
  having this big trust to pass on to a bunch of shithead kids that
• 1:17:25
  will never appreciate it, to be honest with you or grandkids,
• 1:17:29
  you know what I mean? It just entitles them.
• 1:17:31
  So you know, my legacy is like, how can I like my biggest fear
• 1:17:35
  is like my children, they're not going to have to go grind like I
• 1:17:40
  did, But like how? How do you instill those traits
• 1:17:43
  in them? And that's a lot of the stuff
• 1:17:46
  that I'm reading. That's my biggest fears I'm
• 1:17:48
  gonna have this entitled asshole.
• 1:17:49
  Yeah. Like, like, how do I not do
• 1:17:52
  that? You.
• 1:17:52
  Should join a long angle. It's a mastermind I'm a part of
• 1:17:55
  and it's a bunch of tech exited entrepreneurs.
• 1:17:58
  Pretty much all of them. That's who's founded it and it's
• 1:18:01
  actually free. Yeah.
• 1:18:03
  So there's like a net worth requirement, but it's free.
• 1:18:05
  Nobody pays. And then they have an annual
• 1:18:08
  conference that you can pay to go to or whatever.
• 1:18:09
  But there's, I was in a class called Life after the exit at
• 1:18:14
  the last conference of theirs, and it was really good.
• 1:18:17
  And just seeing the darkness in a lot of founders after the exit
• 1:18:22
  in that period of identity crisis that a lot of them go
• 1:18:26
  through. And then there's also classes on
• 1:18:29
  how to not create horrible children when you have a lot of
• 1:18:32
  wealth. Yeah, I've.
• 1:18:33
  Been a little lucky to where it's like I get a couple bites
• 1:18:36
  like I peeled part of it off, sold it.
• 1:18:38
  So like if I sold all of it. And so it's like I'm able to
• 1:18:40
  start kind of like really thinking about what I want to do
• 1:18:44
  knowing that I'm building to sell this next side.
• 1:18:46
  So it's like I could really, and I have I'm lucky to have two
• 1:18:49
  partners too that are going through something similar to
• 1:18:51
  where like we're always and that's how we grew batch.
• 1:18:54
  Like we just had to learn, learn, learn.
• 1:18:55
  And now me, Evo and Annie are just consuming all these
• 1:18:58
  podcasts and books on like, and we may all want different
• 1:19:01
  things, but it's least like, what are a lot of things that
• 1:19:04
  are people doing? What did they do wrong?
• 1:19:06
  What they do right, like post exit, it's crazy that all the
• 1:19:09
  problems that it creates, it's like everyone's like oh, you
• 1:19:11
  have all this money and I was like, but some people need their
• 1:19:14
  purpose to go inspire people or like pace like I need to go feed
• 1:19:18
  1000 miles and have all these and put like that's a big why to
• 1:19:20
  him. But like, everyone just has such
• 1:19:23
  a different. Why?
• 1:19:23
  I think the biggest thing I've gotten is like, really pausing
• 1:19:28
  and asking yourself all those questions.
• 1:19:29
  And so you're just not going into the next thing and not
• 1:19:32
  being that crazy ambitious person.
• 1:19:34
  Because one thing I have heard is a lot of these people will
• 1:19:37
  just throw themselves in the next thing.
• 1:19:39
  And if you're not truly, truly, like crazy passion, it's like
• 1:19:42
  something that you have to do, you'll end up stop doing it
• 1:19:45
  because you already have so much money, you're not doing it for
• 1:19:47
  the money anymore. So a lot of people just burned
• 1:19:49
  up money starting new businesses because they didn't know what to
• 1:19:52
  do. Yeah.
• 1:19:53
  You have to have that that passion and that drive and that
• 1:19:56
  just relentless commitment to it and because.
• 1:19:58
  It's not the money anymore. And that's like that's what got
• 1:20:01
  you there the first time. But like, you have it now, so
• 1:20:03
  you could sit there one day and be like what?
• 1:20:05
  How the fuck am I doing this? Yeah, like, no, I'm done.
• 1:20:08
  So if it's if you don't have a huge why behind it?
• 1:20:10
  I've heard a lot of people failing on their second big
• 1:20:13
  venture. Yeah.
• 1:20:15
  Well, it's been awesome to get to know you.
• 1:20:17
  I look forward to getting to know you more.
• 1:20:18
  And thank you so much for coming on the show.
• 1:20:20
  Thank you.