Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lavell Juan - Built a NASDAQ Company (Brag House) at 30 | How to Build Movements Not Companies

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Lavell Juan - Built a NASDAQ Company (Brag House) at 30 | How to Build Movements Not Companies · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  Why is it so hard to connect with Gen Z?
• 0:02
  Gen Z is a really interesting market, and the reason why we felt that it's really so hard to connect with them
• 0:08
  because they engage in content very, very different than the majority of people.
• 0:14
  Being able to reach them, even getting some of that is very attractive, but it's not an easy thing.
• 0:19
  What if the line between struggle and success was just one choice?
• 0:22
  Lavel Huang knows that line well, from growing up with little more than a dream
• 0:25
  to becoming a powerhouse in the world of entrepreneurship and branding.
• 0:29
  I tore my killies, and I couldn't play anymore.
• 0:31
  Coming back to New York City completely depressed.
• 0:34
  One of the things that I did was really just play video games.
• 0:36
  And it was just interesting, and I said, oh, you know what?
• 0:38
  Gaming could be social, but could also do a lot more.
• 0:42
  I feel like you have to kind of take risks.
• 0:44
  If it made sense, it was engaging, if it had a strong community, and it produced revenue,
• 0:48
  those are still the basic things.
• 0:50
  His journey is anything but ordinary, transforming obstacles into opportunities that
• 0:54
  few see coming, but it wasn't just the wins that defined him.
• 0:57
  It was the moments when everything could have fallen apart.
• 1:00
  Those moments shape Lavel Huang's vision, his grit, and his relentless drive to uplift others.
• 1:05
  I made tons of mistakes along the way, but doing all those things kind of
• 1:08
  gives you a sense of confidence, can't be scared to fail.
• 1:11
  Every step of success or work ethic has led me into exactly what I do right now.
• 1:17
  Honesty is really big thing, and that's a hard thing for people.
• 1:20
  If you can master that and saying it's okay, I think you're fine.
• 1:24
  So, Lavel, why is it so hard to connect with Gen Z?
• 1:38
  Gen Z is a really interesting market, and the reason why we felt that
• 1:42
  it's really so hard to connect with them is because they engage in content
• 1:48
  very, very different than the majority of people.
• 1:52
  And what I mean by that is that close to 90%, and I found these,
• 1:57
  I quote these statistics because they were staggering when I first
• 2:01
  researched the market, but 90% of them were considered court cutters,
• 2:06
  over 50% of them use ad blockers, and interestingly for us,
• 2:11
  close to 90% of them play video games that weekly.
• 2:15
  So, there's a lot of people have tried to throw
• 2:19
  the very traditional marketing and say, look at this,
• 2:22
  and here's some influencers and throw all these things there,
• 2:26
  and between being savvy, between being very technology focused,
• 2:32
  and also just being very influenced by their peers,
• 2:36
  authenticity is a very, very, very important thing to the generation,
• 2:42
  and so, but obviously people want to reach them because, you know,
• 2:47
  they have a $360 billion spend or disposable income in market cap.
• 2:52
  So, you know, being able to reach them, even getting some of that,
• 2:56
  you know, it's obviously a very attractive,
• 2:58
  but it's not an easy thing.
• 3:01
  So, what we did with Break House, and interestingly, you know,
• 3:05
  the first way we did it is that we actually got ambassadors,
• 3:09
  and I don't talk about that a lot, but we got five ambassadors,
• 3:12
  and I was in the whole point was to build this digital platform
• 3:18
  on the intersection of college sports, which, you know,
• 3:21
  from going to my background, it's really important to me,
• 3:23
  college sports, gaming, you know, and I do use gaming
• 3:27
  different from esports, because one, the market cap is different,
• 3:32
  you know, esports, the $3 billion market, gaming is a $300 billion market,
• 3:36
  but also, if you look at really what gaming is, the actual definition of gaming,
• 3:40
  it's the 99% of people who casually game, who enjoy gaming,
• 3:46
  who is part of their life, not the competitive, you know,
• 3:51
  people who game out in teams.
• 3:53
  So, we created something on the intersection of gaming, college sports,
• 3:58
  and social interaction, because that's obviously very important.
• 4:02
  And the reason why we picked those things is because those are three
• 4:05
  cultural forces for Gen Z, and then we actually got ambassadors,
• 4:10
  and the ambassadors came and they were like, we love this,
• 4:13
  and we actually listened to them.
• 4:15
  So, when, you know, people used the term authentic,
• 4:19
  which is used more, more now, than it was used five years ago,
• 4:23
  when we started, it is really something that's important to us,
• 4:27
  and it's kind of why we built the platform for them, around them,
• 4:32
  and that's one of the reasons why it's been very sticky.
• 4:36
  So, I think that's kind of how we've been able to do it,
• 4:39
  and happy to talk about more of the specific features of it,
• 4:42
  but that was kind of the genesis.
• 4:44
  Tell me how, because you didn't pick an easy business to start.
• 4:47
  So, this is not like an easy business, it's like obviously a little bit passionate,
• 4:50
  but at the same time, it's like passionate, it'll take you so far.
• 4:54
  So, where did you come from that you wanted to build something around the intersection of gaming,
• 4:58
  and sports, and a younger generation?
• 5:01
  Like, what was the inflection point that made you say,
• 5:03
  hey, I want to build this particular business?
• 5:07
  Because your background is interesting as well.
• 5:08
  I think that you had a legal background, obviously,
• 5:11
  had a college sports background.
• 5:13
  What was the thing that prompted you to, like, build this out?
• 5:16
  Great question, and I'm separating the two parts.
• 5:20
  You know, so college sports was always really big to me,
• 5:23
  and one of the reasons why I was big to me,
• 5:25
  I had to play baseball at UT, and one of the reasons why I was big to me
• 5:28
  is because of the community.
• 5:30
  It's like, you were part, you know, I'm a New York City guy,
• 5:32
  and went to this big school, and I was kind of, you know, lost,
• 5:36
  but you have a community.
• 5:37
  You have a camaraderie with people that are there,
• 5:40
  and that community motivates you, helps you do things.
• 5:44
  So, that was something that was really, really important to me.
• 5:48
  The first part of the story is I tore my killies,
• 5:52
  and I couldn't play anymore.
• 5:54
  And I remember coming back to New York City completely depressed,
• 5:58
  and one of the things that I did was really just play video games.
• 6:02
  I had a depression, but what it did, and this was kind of my first really kind of taste of it,
• 6:09
  I was also working with other communities,
• 6:11
  and I kind of felt what I had lost with being on a team,
• 6:16
  working with other people, and it was just interesting, and I said,
• 6:20
  oh, you know what?
• 6:21
  And, you know, through other things, you know,
• 6:23
  that was kind of the first thing where I was like,
• 6:25
  you know, gaming could be social, but could also do a lot more.
• 6:30
  So, you know, fast forward, went to law school,
• 6:34
  you know, and then kind of got back on the entrepreneurial stuff
• 6:36
  after, you know, private practice at a law firm on Wall Street.
• 6:40
  And then I remember, you know, looking at EA sports,
• 6:46
  and I always played, and they're one of our partners, so.
• 6:50
  Now, but I always remember playing college football, and of course,
• 6:54
  I played Texas, Pokemon, and I was like playing all the characters from there,
• 6:59
  and then, you know, show my age, you know, in 2014,
• 7:04
  they stopped, and they said, oh, like this image,
• 7:07
  we spring court decision, you can no longer, you know, have the game
• 7:11
  because they couldn't use athletes' images.
• 7:15
  And that was devastating to me.
• 7:17
  But the reason why it was so devastating is because it was a community.
• 7:23
  That was, I was tapped into the community.
• 7:24
  You played against people, you had that passion,
• 7:28
  you had that rivalry, you had that everything was there in a video game.
• 7:34
  And then from a business perspective, because, you know,
• 7:37
  I was a nerd, I looked at all their filings,
• 7:40
  and they made billions and billions of dollars just with that game.
• 7:46
  So I said, by taking that out, you lost that market cap,
• 7:50
  you lost that community of millions and millions of people being engaged.
• 7:56
  And I said, wow, that's really, you know, I was like, I was like, I can't believe that's gone.
• 8:01
  And I kept telling myself, someone way smarter than me is going to
• 8:08
  pretty much try to reinvent that, but make it even better.
• 8:11
  And they're going to say, hey, you know what?
• 8:14
  College sports is such an important thing from a community standpoint for stickiness,
• 8:19
  for revenue, you know, put that into a game, and people will connect.
• 8:25
  That's the social part.
• 8:26
  Someone is going to do that.
• 8:28
  So I waited.
• 8:28
  It's got every year.
• 8:31
  I finally left the law firm.
• 8:33
  I did two successful startups, and which I, you know, I exited very well.
• 8:37
  And I just kept waiting.
• 8:41
  And I kept waiting.
• 8:42
  Nothing happened.
• 8:43
  Nothing happened.
• 8:44
  And in 2018, I said, you know, I just sold one of my other companies and I said,
• 8:51
  I'm going to do something that's really important to me.
• 8:54
  If no one else is going to do it, I'm going to create that because I miss it.
• 8:57
  And the whole point of it at the time was to create an ecosystem,
• 9:02
  to create a digital space.
• 9:03
  And I remember that space because I was engaged into it.
• 9:07
  Everyone I knew was engaged.
• 9:08
  So we looked for it every single day.
• 9:10
  We talked to each other, we coordinated.
• 9:12
  We found ways to talk.
• 9:13
  I'm going to create that, but I'm going to make minds more vertically integrated
• 9:17
  that everything is in one platform, but it has all those same attributes.
• 9:21
  And that was the genesis for what I said.
• 9:24
  And I said, okay, so I, you know, I actually took, you know,
• 9:27
  everyone, our company started in 2020 pretty much officially.
• 9:31
  I went to my co-founder and I was also my best friend and I said,
• 9:35
  hey, great idea, but what people don't know is in 2018,
• 9:40
  I actually built a lot of the technology, really tried to understand it.
• 9:44
  And then in 2019, going in 2020 is when we brought on the ambassadors to kind of take a look at it
• 9:51
  and say, hey, what do you guys think of this?
• 9:54
  And then we launched and we pretty much went viral after that.
• 9:58
  So there was research.
• 9:59
  It wasn't like, you know, one of those stories that you just like
• 10:02
  launched something and everything goes, goes, well, you know, I did do a lot of research.
• 10:06
  It never is.
• 10:08
  But it's always, it's always up to that.
• 10:09
  It's always up to that.
• 10:10
  But it, but it did go viral after that.
• 10:13
  And then we went from five ambassadors to, you know,
• 10:17
  having probably 25 to 50 students on each campus pretty organically.
• 10:23
  And I think again, that's the power of, you know,
• 10:26
  building something strong in the community.
• 10:28
  And you'll hear me say this kind of throughout the entire, you know, show is like
• 10:33
  being authentic.
• 10:34
  Again, and the reason why I use these things more more is because if you want to
• 10:38
  going back to your first question, what do Gen Z value?
• 10:42
  They are very smart and they can see if you're an influencer
• 10:48
  and you're saying buy this because you're an influencer and you have a million fans.
• 10:52
  But if you do something that they think is authentic,
• 10:55
  and again, TikTok and they're like, you could be, you could be famous in the next day.
• 10:59
  And they'll be like, great, we like that, that person.
• 11:02
  And it's very interesting because, and I can see why companies have such a hard time
• 11:07
  because it's not a one fit all.
• 11:10
  So what we did is we put this community together, almost let them build a community.
• 11:14
  But we took attributes that were really strong to them.
• 11:18
  So we took college sports again, whether you played sports, whether you just were in college
• 11:23
  sports, I mean, so where you're just in college, you appreciate that community.
• 11:27
  Jess Club, just hanging out with friends like you, it was a community.
• 11:31
  So we built on top of that kind of community that's there.
• 11:35
  As I mentioned, only 90% over 90% of, you know, of Gen Z college students play video games weekly
• 11:42
  in a very casual way.
• 11:44
  And so we used that way to kind of really connect them.
• 11:47
  And then we built out fun things, you know, it's no secret that, you know,
• 11:51
  uh, draft kings and fandom, all those things are really big on college.
• 11:56
  So I was like, well, I'm not going to be a gambling platform.
• 11:59
  But why don't I gamify that kind of particular action and make it fun for people?
• 12:03
  So we came up with bragging.
• 12:05
  And bragging was really just being able to make these, you know, no, no monetary value
• 12:09
  with the actual brags.
• 12:10
  But you take brag bucks, you make predictions and you win a pot.
• 12:16
  And they're like, oh, it's awesome.
• 12:18
  And people love that.
• 12:19
  They love that so much that we actually then put a way that it can actually earn, you know,
• 12:24
  things of value more kind of like a loyalty.
• 12:27
  But again, this was a very crafted, um, you know, obviously there's always a lot of luck
• 12:32
  and stuff, but we did have a very methodical plan.
• 12:36
  And we were actually guided by the actual community.
• 12:38
  And we put that together.
• 12:39
  We started seeing the stickiness for it.
• 12:41
  And then as we started growing, you know, a lot of brands, and this was organic.
• 12:46
  Started reaching out to us because they saw that we were able to capture, you know,
• 12:51
  three times, five times more of the community than they would for my traditional ad.
• 12:57
  Tell me about, you mentioned like community and the importance of community.
• 13:02
  Just so people can, because it's so obvious to you, but for other people, it may not be so obvious,
• 13:08
  even though I think the ability to build a community is a super power for any business.
• 13:12
  But tell me the difference between building a community versus building an audience.
• 13:16
  I think by, so when you build a, in the way I thought about, think, think about this.
• 13:23
  If you build a audience, I'll start from the former, you know, it's kind of a, you know,
• 13:29
  you're building some type of content that people are going to enjoy.
• 13:34
  But it's all based kind of on that, you know, and that content, you know, could be good,
• 13:40
  could have times when it's not good, but it's just kind of based on that.
• 13:44
  And I feel like that's, you know, a little outside because you're just focusing on this area.
• 13:51
  If you build a community, you automatically have this, you know, again, I'm using the word
• 13:58
  stickiness because people are now connecting with people that they feel everyone wants to connect
• 14:04
  with someone they feel comfortable with, period. That's just, you know, it's human nature.
• 14:08
  So if you build this community that everyone feels safe and that's always a big thing for us,
• 14:12
  you build this community that you give experiences that you won't get anywhere else.
• 14:18
  You know, again, we give casual people the experiences, you know, some of our events,
• 14:22
  you, it was the proudest moment I have is I saw these students win and they were like
• 14:27
  celebrating like they were Michael Jordan and I was like, this is amazing. So you give these
• 14:31
  experiences, you build that community, the audience is going to come automatically and no matter
• 14:38
  what the community changes, I mean, no matter what they actually create their own content.
• 14:45
  So a lot of these things again, we have a, you know, full production inside, you know,
• 14:49
  brag house, but a lot of the stuff you can't make up. It's kind of like how people respond to
• 14:54
  some of the key words they say, some of the funny, you know, interactions they have,
• 14:59
  there's going to be an audience to watch them. We recently did something, you know, we did
• 15:04
  students and in our partnership with Learfield, we tested out a few platforms, we did a student one,
• 15:12
  they had every type of group supporting them, watching them, bragging on them, you know,
• 15:20
  that audience was, is now built in. Then we did something for college athletes and it was just
• 15:27
  college athletes because we're going to be working with NIL and they loved it, but it was a
• 15:31
  completely different audience that was now supporting that group. And I think that is the beauty
• 15:37
  of it is that if you start with the community, which is what we did, you now always have a particular
• 15:44
  audience because the content you're going to create someone is going to want to be part of that.
• 15:49
  And I think that is kind of like why we keep seeing success and we keep replicating everything.
• 15:54
  I'm just looking at some of the notes about how you actually built this. So you basically outright
• 16:00
  refuse traditional ads unless they're naturally created. So you've tripped like this is the
• 16:08
  strategy and this is working very well. One thing that you said, I love this quote, you can't buy
• 16:15
  community the same way you can't buy culture. These take long intentional builds and then it creates
• 16:22
  something that money can accelerate, but you can't and then you said, I don't think money can
• 16:29
  replace it referring to a community and culture. Can you expand on that a little bit more like why
• 16:36
  to play devil's advocate even though I fully agree with you? Why can't you buy community? Why can't
• 16:42
  you buy culture? Again, it goes to the sophistication of how the new generation interacts. They always
• 16:49
  goes back to the same thing. And I've seen what people have done is the traditional media,
• 16:57
  they're like, yeah, we don't want to do that. That's annoying. That's boring for us.
• 17:02
  So it's almost to a point where we, and I'm speaking to say we have Nijenzi, I'm not Nijenzi,
• 17:08
  but when Nijenzi is like, we want to be part of something. Instead of going to what the masses
• 17:18
  are going, we want to be part of something. That could be a movement, that could be what our
• 17:22
  friends are doing, that could be something we like, but we want to be part of something. So what all
• 17:27
  the other traditional things have done is they said, we're going to put this and when influencers,
• 17:32
  they said, well, you know, they really influence by their peers. So they pay professional influencers
• 17:37
  and they were like, and then Nijenzi was like, well, that's the same difference. So they just kind
• 17:42
  of see through all of these different ways. And then it changes. So you can spend all this money,
• 17:51
  get two percent, five percent, whatever, even a good number of people to respond. But then next
• 17:57
  week, there's going to be a different expression. There's going to be something different. So when
• 18:00
  you going back to the first way, you said, when you build with the community, first, the content
• 18:06
  is created. People are now falling because they trust their own community. So first thing was
• 18:11
  starting with a safe place for them. And that's the reason why you have all these brands, you know,
• 18:16
  throwing money at all these digital ads, but they don't have a central hub. What we created was a
• 18:21
  central hub where people and we put that community there. And that was the most efficient way
• 18:28
  because no matter it changed, no matter what the community is, could be athletes, could be chess
• 18:33
  club, could be cheerleaders, soccer club could be anything. You know, we had women's swimming team
• 18:40
  on, you know, in the University of Virginia. And they had such a strong community behind them.
• 18:45
  You know, and I remember one thing I say, and this is a, and I reused this story. One of our early
• 18:51
  interns, she was like, well, you know, I love this. This is great. I think this is needed,
• 18:58
  but I don't really game. And I don't think I'm going to have anything to offer. And I was like,
• 19:03
  well, you know, I disagree. I think everyone has something to offer. And she was like, I know,
• 19:08
  but I don't, she was like, I don't really game my boyfriend games. And I just, you know, I kind of
• 19:12
  don't, and I said, well, let's, you know, do an interview. And you just tell me why you like
• 19:16
  Bragghouse because you said you like Bragghouse. She did the best interview I've ever heard. And
• 19:21
  then she finished the interview and said, I'm really like, this is a community we're building
• 19:26
  together. And I really like the levels done blah, blah, blah, Bragg on. And Bragg on was such an
• 19:33
  important slogan. And I give her full credit for that to this day because, and I was like, look
• 19:39
  what you did. You created an expression because, and people followed everyone in our community
• 19:44
  inside followed it. Everyone in her University of Virginia followed it. You know, people started
• 19:50
  saying it all the time. And again, that's what money can't buy because that expression may not
• 19:56
  be the same today. I like like it was before as it is today. There's a new expression, but you also
• 20:02
  have a now a new audience who's now following. And that's just something that just, you know, money can't
• 20:08
  buy. Scaling is difficult. Scaling without losing what you've built, especially from like a community
• 20:15
  first perspective is I'm assuming very difficult. And you probably took it to the extreme because you
• 20:20
  went start up to Nasdaq and public trade company in seven years. I have to ask, this is obviously not
• 20:27
  your first rodeo. You said you had two companies before this. And you obviously were a securities
• 20:34
  lawyer before. So you knew how to navigate to a degree. But this is not, I think, the normal path
• 20:39
  for somebody seven years into building a company to take a public. So obviously the question is,
• 20:46
  why, what was the strategic importance of that? But also less less than why from like a company
• 20:52
  strategy. I'm more curious, how do you scale that quickly and go public while still maintaining
• 20:58
  the thing that makes your company in Bragg House so special, which is like this intimate community
• 21:03
  feel because that's something that again, you don't want to lose. You don't want to lose that as
• 21:08
  you turn into like another quote unquote big company. It's a great question. And I will say,
• 21:16
  probably that was one of the hardest things. Just to be honest with you, because at the same time,
• 21:21
  it's like, we created this community, but then we have to obviously build revenue models
• 21:25
  on top of it. So we need to have a real business there. So what we did is kind of really thought
• 21:33
  about, and we spent a lot of time thinking, how do we continue to grow? How do we get these
• 21:42
  models there? And at the same time, not lose what we've been talking about the entire time,
• 21:49
  community and authenticity. So what we did is I again, realized and I always kind of go back to my
• 21:55
  research, because it's my default to what I know really well. And I kind of said, well, you know,
• 22:03
  what is, you know, what do these, you know, I know what brands want. Brands want these students,
• 22:08
  they want new customers, you know, it's really an easy math there. They have a cost of acquisition.
• 22:14
  And if we can lower that cost of acquisition, which we do five, ten times better than anyone else,
• 22:20
  that's attractive for them. But what are the, what are the extra consumer? Because again,
• 22:24
  it's like you, you people start getting you money, they start paying you, and you're still
• 22:28
  you're focused there. And I'm like, and digital advertisement was kind of the main revenue source at
• 22:32
  that point. And I said, okay, well, what do the actual community want? So we started looking at
• 22:38
  that part of it. And I said, well, you know what? They don't mind being, you know, sold to or,
• 22:46
  you know, saying, hey, you know, but they don't want to be marketed to just blankly about everything.
• 22:52
  If they, what they want, they want what they want. But they're also then becomes the the
• 22:59
  quandary. Well, what do they want? So what I did is I said, hmm, let me just ask them. And I think
• 23:06
  that was kind of, and I did it inside the platform. So what I did is I created these kind of data
• 23:11
  models. And this is where the luck part comes in. I won't lie to you, but I created these data models
• 23:18
  to understand more what they want. So I created dynamic surveys that adapted to every user. I created
• 23:25
  these Braggbuck integration, which were like activity based rewards. So they did this and it kind
• 23:30
  of worked on behavioral insights. And then I had activity triggers, which just shows, you know,
• 23:35
  usage and all that stuff. And then I, and then we gamified the entire A, B testing experience. So,
• 23:42
  you know, how they respond different colors, different ads and stuff. But we gamified that into
• 23:46
  this game, Bragghouse, you know, people are still doing that. And then I took all that stuff and I
• 23:50
  said, all right, let me just categorize these behavioral insights, kind of figure out, you know,
• 23:55
  what they want. And then I said, okay. And what I realized that we were producing. And again,
• 24:00
  a little bit luck. Don't get me wrong. I realized that we were now identifying data
• 24:08
  that was very different than what everyone else was having. So what I mean by that is the data
• 24:15
  that generally people's like, how many likes, you know, what are your names, all that kind of stuff.
• 24:19
  We were, we were collecting behavioral data. And that was something that I realized soon
• 24:28
  was very different that people weren't, but people didn't have this kind of data. And I think
• 24:33
  mentioned before, like if, if Nike or anyone could say, we like this campaign, we want this
• 24:38
  campaign, we will not buy this. That's a, that's a million if not billion dollar thing to know
• 24:45
  how someone do that. But at the same time, then our actual audience is protected because we don't
• 24:52
  just run ads or do anything like that. We curate personal things. And if we know what they want,
• 24:58
  we now can communicate that and say, Hey, they, you know, this is what they want. They want these
• 25:04
  experiences and, you know, watching football or they want to do this. And now it's a quid pro quo
• 25:10
  because the audience doesn't feel like they're being oversold to. But now you're giving something
• 25:14
  even more valuable, I would think, because we were giving direct access, which is great. But now
• 25:20
  we're giving information again about an audience that's so hard to reach. So now that they can craft
• 25:27
  these brands can craft these better campaigns, smarter campaigns. And they can say, Hey, you know,
• 25:33
  what I heard you like this group of Nike sneakers, let's just give you that instead of selling you
• 25:39
  15 ads that you're, you're going to block anyway. So in that way, it became, yeah, they all
• 25:44
  have that blockers on exactly. And that way it became a more quid pro quo because the, the audience
• 25:49
  was happy. They were like, this is great. They were doing what they were doing. They were playing,
• 25:53
  you know, it's amazing because you know, a lot of companies jet blue, a lot of companies are
• 25:57
  going to do surveys. People enjoyed doing our surveys because again, and I break it down to
• 26:03
  the simple dichotomy. Gen Z want to be heard. They want to be understood. And I can't tell you,
• 26:10
  it was like a hundred out of a hundred people who said, Hey, yes, please, you know, because we asked
• 26:15
  them first, you know, we don't sell data or anything like that. You know, we just say, Hey,
• 26:18
  and we just said we respect, respect all the privacy. And they're like, yes, please, please,
• 26:22
  please, I want to fill the survey. Please tell me what I need to do. And now we have something
• 26:28
  more valuable. And again, it's all driven by the community. If people could literally poll,
• 26:33
  which is what we do, their entire, you know, Gen Z population, ask them what they want. That's
• 26:40
  valuable. But again, it started very slow, I don't know, you slow, very methodical in building
• 26:47
  the entire thing there on top of that. So that became a very, very powerful
• 26:55
  way to scale because now, you know, it didn't just revolve around content. We didn't have these
• 27:01
  have to have these super big activations. We still do. And our scalability, I think, is increased
• 27:06
  now because of our partnership with lear field communications, which, you know, now in essence,
• 27:13
  we have this billion dollar conglomerate that owns the meteorites to all these universities.
• 27:18
  And because they own the meteorites, all the universities, we're the sole platform that
• 27:23
  their students engage to connect them to traditional sports. So in a way, it's like my dream,
• 27:29
  what I wanted to build. Well, that's how you say, no, but that is, that answers the question. So
• 27:34
  how do you scale without losing the soul and the intimacy? It's like, you give people what they
• 27:40
  want, which sounds so obvious. But I think so many brands just throw shit out of wall,
• 27:44
  hope something sticks. And that's that gross marketing feeling. Exactly. The people feel.
• 27:50
  Exactly. That's it. That's it. That's that gross marketing feeling. It's exactly what it is.
• 27:55
  There was, I was just scrolling through TikTok. And there was an interview with like Tom Ford.
• 28:01
  And he was saying it was like a, you know, one of his 30 second clips. And he was saying how
• 28:05
  he hates the word marketing because a product, if the audience wants it, should really do the
• 28:13
  marketing itself. If a product is something that people want, people will buy it. So if you have
• 28:18
  a great product, and it's in line with what they actually want to purchase, yes, you can
• 28:24
  help them be aware of it. But he was saying he hates the word marketing because marketing
• 28:28
  seems to just cover up the fact that you have a shitty product that nobody wants,
• 28:34
  that nobody finds useful. And you're just forcing them to agree with that statement completely
• 28:39
  to see that it exists. And that's just like he just, I hate the word marketing for that reason.
• 28:43
  If you have a good product that people actually want, I'm paraphrasing obviously is much more
• 28:47
  eloquent, but if you have a good product that people want, you shouldn't have to, you shouldn't
• 28:51
  have to like just berate them with ads nonstop. You should pair product with person. They buy it.
• 29:00
  It's very simple, very simple. And this is really what you've done. This is really, and I think
• 29:05
  that also, I mean, I don't know if you knew this, maybe you maybe you did understand the opportunity
• 29:12
  when you started building this out, but the access to that data is like you mentioned, it's not
• 29:19
  just like a million dollar opportunity. It is like a multi billion dollar opportunity to get access
• 29:24
  to how that particular audience segment thinks and feels and pairs, like that's huge.
• 29:30
  I remember, like I said, it was, it was designed that we created to understand it because exactly
• 29:35
  what you said, give them what they want. They'll be loyal to you. And, you know, and then, you know,
• 29:41
  the revenue models will be intensified, you know, again, to my statement that I said, money will
• 29:46
  build on that and it'll just make it better. But I'll share a funny story with you. So, you know,
• 29:51
  one of our brand partners, we always provide this report. And a report says, hey, you know, we've
• 29:57
  connected X amount of new users to your platform. Every company has a different RRI, you know,
• 30:03
  some download my app, do this, whatever we did that. And then once we had these data models,
• 30:08
  I started putting that in the report. And the report was like, you know, students from the
• 30:14
  University of, you know, Arizona, you know, are really looking for this type of product.
• 30:21
  You know, they're really excited. You know, they don't really like this type of product that's
• 30:25
  here. This is something that's really going to help the students. And this is the time that they
• 30:29
  think would be better that they can consume it. And I put all these kind of things down there.
• 30:33
  And I remember, like the brand partner was like, wait, where did you get this? I was like, oh,
• 30:39
  it's just, you know, internal. We kind of like, could we just have this on a regular basis?
• 30:44
  And then I was like, wow, that's pretty important. And so, so that's, well, you, I mean, like,
• 30:52
  this is not your business, but like you could with the data that you have, that could be a whole
• 30:58
  business model. Like it could totally be that's how that's how important understanding the behaviors.
• 31:03
  And the fact that you do it in such a way, like, listen, the world is, is, is getting more aware
• 31:12
  of how data is actually being used. I mean, it started with like Cambridge Analytica and now GDPR
• 31:17
  and CTA and, you know, Europe's very strict. US not so much, but I'm assuming over time,
• 31:23
  the US will get even more strict and sort of keep up with Europe to a degree. But you can't
• 31:29
  just harvest data without consent and just sell it to companies. And the fact that you have found,
• 31:37
  like, a way to get people to want to give their data, I mean, that's also like incredibly smart.
• 31:44
  Thank you. Very smart. I think more companies, I don't think enough companies, well, I mean,
• 31:50
  you work with some of the biggest brands on Earth and they find your data valuable. So obviously,
• 31:55
  a lot of companies don't really understand how to get that data from from their consumers. I'm
• 32:00
  like, I mean, I'm not talking about the metas of the world that have unlimited amounts of data,
• 32:04
  but the average consumer brand, I don't think has really good, really, really good intel on what
• 32:10
  their customers want to buy, especially if it's a younger generation that, again, doesn't want to,
• 32:17
  yeah, doesn't want to give that data up because it feels like you're giving it to a company
• 32:22
  that's selling to them, but I feel like with your platform, I feel like they feel like telling
• 32:30
  the platform, telling Bragg how it's what they want actually makes the whole experience better.
• 32:35
  So they enjoy it. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that was always the plan. And that was definitely
• 32:40
  by design because we knew that if we kept this community happy, just kept growing it. And again,
• 32:46
  this was to be something, you know, again, when I first started creating this ecosystem and this
• 32:52
  digital platform for them, because again, that's what I remember it. I remember this digital space
• 32:58
  where I played games and it made me feel so safe and I enjoyed that. So I said, if we create that,
• 33:04
  you know, and I think the other thing that I probably didn't mention, but I think you said it,
• 33:10
  is that in addition to giving them kind of the product and then what the product is also part of our
• 33:14
  platform. So we also make sure that they're enjoying it. We make sure that they are, you know,
• 33:20
  again, we're building on things like college sports and stuff. But, you know, part of the Learfield
• 33:25
  partnership, the reason why they approached us is because they were like, you know, when I was a kid,
• 33:31
  and even now, you know, Yankees made the playoffs, I can sit and watch four or five hours of
• 33:36
  baseball. No one does that. As a 10th age. So they're losing, even the colleges, you know,
• 33:44
  billion dollar conglomerate is losing this core engagement of the audience, which when you lose
• 33:49
  engagement, you also lose spend. So what we've done is we've taken that experience and also said,
• 33:55
  hey, how can we make this more fun? And that's a little creative. And for example, one of the things
• 33:59
  that we're really proud of is, you know, we work with every single sport of each college.
• 34:06
  So every single sport, there's a Bragghaus activation where students can enter. And we tried it
• 34:12
  out a couple of betas with baseball. And what we did is like, well, how can we make this fun? You
• 34:18
  know, it's like, you know, we can do MLB baseball, but how can we make it fun? So we said, you know
• 34:22
  what? Students are enjoying playing Fortnite. Let's just make up baseball rules, did a full
• 34:29
  production around baseball. And, you know, how many kills you have that could be strikes,
• 34:33
  it could be runs. We did this really fun thing. It was beyond well intended over, you know,
• 34:39
  it oversubscribed to it. Everyone loved it. And the RI only, you know, it's like, you know,
• 34:44
  the RI for that was a test model was really just to connect the students to traditionally what the
• 34:52
  baseball game was going on. And we've heard that it was, you know, we're still getting in data for
• 34:58
  it, but we heard that it was probably more attended than any other baseball game virtually. And people
• 35:03
  kept the scores. They know, and that was something that we wanted to do. And again, if that's the way
• 35:10
  people are consuming, and it's important to understand that. So it's like, the way people are
• 35:16
  consuming now is digitally, I'm going to use Brickhouse. And I'll know everything that's going on
• 35:22
  with this game, with the soccer game, but I'm not actually watching the game. This is how I watch
• 35:27
  the game. And that's fine. You know, that's just what because now people are interested. They have
• 35:32
  fans and stuff. So, you know, that's something that I think, you know, we, we work really hard too.
• 35:37
  And I think that's ever changing as well to make sure that we're giving the community what they want
• 35:43
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• 36:01
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  the right way with Indeed. So your lear field partnership. You have access to like hundreds. I
• 38:52
  think 200 plus campuses. This is the numbers that I have. You may have even more at this point.
• 38:58
  But a partnership like that. It could bring bureaucracy. It could bring
• 39:04
  it could bring corporate ideology. It could bring even corporate constraints. So when you bring
• 39:10
  on a partnership of that scale, obviously massively beneficial to the business. Speak about it,
• 39:15
  but also speak about how you manage bringing on something of that scale into again,
• 39:21
  a community driven trust driven brand and platform. Yeah, I know it's a great question. And it's
• 39:27
  definitely something we dealt a lot with earlier. I will say that lear field has been so far.
• 39:36
  I've been so over a year now an amazing partner. And the reason why is because and I appreciate
• 39:42
  this because it's hard to let go of the reins when you have that much bureaucracy and you control
• 39:47
  these media rights. But part of the partnership they came and they said, create what you need to
• 39:53
  create. Obviously they check the system, make sure everything was safe and was built correctly.
• 40:00
  But they really give us the autonomy. And that has been a key way that we've been successful for
• 40:08
  it. So what we do, just kind of recapping that is that in every single university,
• 40:17
  Bragghouse creates and we call an activation, but in our platform, people can use it just
• 40:23
  every day anyway, but we'll create an activation almost like a sporting event. And that will be
• 40:29
  that people can engage and the goal, we've tested it out for baseball, preseason football,
• 40:37
  and we're going to be doing a kickoff activation for playoffs for college football.
• 40:46
  But every single sport, there will be a Bragghouse activation that people can enter.
• 40:52
  And we craft that, we do that completely ourselves. It's a 50-50% partnership. So they bring in
• 40:59
  their clients, their partners, they bring in, we bring in our partners, whoever wants to partner
• 41:06
  with that. And again, the way we're doing it, because we believe that that's the only real way to
• 41:12
  connect is a genuine way, is people aren't paying for like something to happen on one day.
• 41:18
  They're really paying to be part of this activation. So they're almost going along with the ride
• 41:24
  of what we're producing. And that is, they see RRI much, much better. So our partnerships are like,
• 41:31
  hey, I want to be a year with you guys. And there's being incorporated into all the different
• 41:38
  activations and productions the way we see fit. So that I think is kind of one of the,
• 41:47
  what I believe is going to happen is I believe that with this opportunity and scalability,
• 41:52
  Bragghouse will be the sole platform throughout every single college for people to interact with.
• 42:01
  And I think, you know, at a certain point, you go above even what, you know, it's just meant to be,
• 42:08
  and you have a bunch of other, you know, you have, it'll be the sole engagement at a certain point.
• 42:12
  So that's at least what I think the goal is for it, and I can kind of see that happen just
• 42:16
  from our current engagement. Just to understand you as an entrepreneur, this is one of,
• 42:21
  this is one of my favorite quotes. You said it on past podcasts. And I want to understand what
• 42:27
  this means because I think again, we're very much like kindred spirits. We think alike, but you said
• 42:33
  life's an adventure. Your career is part of your life. It's just one big adventure, but make your
• 42:39
  career dangerous. So what does the idea of a dangerous career mean?
• 42:46
  So it kind of goes with two things. One, and I'm going to say this, you know, but I also
• 42:54
  caveat it too, you got to take risk and you got to, you know, I think if your risk, call and
• 43:00
  calculate it, call them, you know, that you, like all the risks that we've taken,
• 43:07
  we've really thought about them. We didn't just say, let's just wing in a prayer. It's like,
• 43:12
  you know, I said, I took a year to build out the technology, test it out. I used to go to bars
• 43:18
  in New York City just to say, hey, could we have people play Bragg House on this, you know,
• 43:24
  just to see if people even liked it. So, you know, I feel like you have to kind of take
• 43:30
  risk. I, you know, it kind of goes back to your earlier statement. I didn't want to, you know,
• 43:37
  if I was going to do something and put everything into it, I didn't want to do something that kind
• 43:42
  of everyone else did or just make one product better. I wanted to do something that was very,
• 43:46
  very different. And I thought that that, you know, if it, again, if it, if it made sense,
• 43:53
  if it, you know, did all the things supposed to do if it was engaging, if it had a strong community
• 43:57
  and it produced revenue, I feel like those are still the basic things. So I've always did that.
• 44:02
  And I've always kind of said, I'm going to just go to the edge of creativity with that
• 44:09
  say, which I will caveat though. For me, I probably can go to the edge and to the point of like,
• 44:16
  either this is going to work or not work. My wife gave me a little bit of advice, which I thought
• 44:20
  was pretty awesome. She said, I never want to stop your dreams because you're very creative,
• 44:26
  keep doing it, but maybe set a goal somewhere that you need to accomplish these five things.
• 44:32
  And if you have accomplished these five things within whatever period of time,
• 44:37
  then just re-analyze and do the analysis over. So that's my only caveat to that. I thought that
• 44:42
  was very helpful because I'm also someone who really, really has no problem playing dangerously,
• 44:46
  because I just believe in it. And I think you kind of need, I do think you kind of need that
• 44:52
  passion to really do it. So that's kind of what I meant by that because, but you also need to
• 44:58
  balance yourself with people. So my co-founder is the opposite of me. He's not dangerous.
• 45:06
  He's risk adverse. And he's our chief operating officer. And, you know, I told him, you know,
• 45:13
  it's like, I was like, oh, we're, we're going to go public. We're going to do this. We're going to
• 45:16
  build this. We're going to get these clients. We're going to do this. And why I forced him, I think,
• 45:22
  almost to think outside of what the realm of possibility is because he's so gifted at putting an
• 45:29
  organizational structure on it. So I just, so my job is literally to think even bigger every
• 45:36
  single day to a point where it doesn't even seem like it's, it's reachable. But I believe it's
• 45:44
  reachable, but I also believe it's reachable because we methodically planned it too. So that's kind
• 45:49
  of what I meant by that. I love it though. No, it's like that. It's like that ying in yang of like
• 45:56
  dreamer and an executor, right? Like the visionary and the operator and it does take both.
• 46:01
  Like you can't just have one. And I actually think that it's important to have it in your company.
• 46:05
  I mean, this is a whole other conversation that I, I bring it up on the podcast once in a while,
• 46:10
  but like having, having that balance in your house and having somebody, you can be like a
• 46:14
  sounding board for all your crazy ass ideas, like in like a spouse or partner or a girlfriend or a
• 46:19
  wife or a husband or boyfriend or whatever, like it is so damn important. Like it is so, so, so
• 46:26
  important. Like I think that that, I mean, like having the right partner at home can make a break,
• 46:31
  like really. Yeah. And it's, you know, and also dealing with you too, because as a
• 46:36
  dealing with me, because I wake up with these ideas and I probably had in my mind, 20 billion
• 46:42
  dollar ideas, I just was like, this is going to be great. And, you know, and it's some, and it's
• 46:49
  hard to because it's like, you need that sounding board. And sometimes my wife and, and interestingly,
• 46:55
  my wife and my best friend are the same person and his wife very, very low on, but we're all like
• 47:02
  best friends. But I hear these two kind of, you know, skeptical people, but the sounding board
• 47:08
  is so good because, you know, sometimes it's very annoying because I just want people to say, you
• 47:13
  know, but like this is a great idea. But they'll ask all the follow-up questions, okay, well,
• 47:18
  what are you going to do here? And what are you going to do here? And I'm like, okay. And then
• 47:22
  that's how you kind of come up with the idea. So, you know, it's super important. And I love it.
• 47:27
  And again, you got the support as well. So the support is huge. Talk to me about, because you've
• 47:32
  done it very, very well, that the psychology of starting over, because I think a lot of people
• 47:38
  get trapped by their own success. So you've made so many dramatic career pivots. Like you, again,
• 47:43
  I guess this is living dangerously, right? Or in air quotes, but lawyer, sports management sort of
• 47:52
  full entrepreneur building something that's really never really been done before. A lot of people
• 47:58
  get trapped in their own success. And I think they get comfortable whether or not it's Golden
• 48:01
  Handcuffs or they've built success once and they don't feel like they have the confidence to
• 48:08
  build it again. And I think that that's incorrect. I think that it's important to feel like you can
• 48:17
  lose everything and start from scratch. I think that's a very important mindset to have,
• 48:20
  because it just makes you very effective human being. But where did that come from? Where did
• 48:27
  the ability to do this come from? Like where did the ability to leave, you know, probably pretty
• 48:34
  high paying like lawyer job and go out on your own? Where did the confidence come from?
• 48:42
  What gave, was it the people around you? Was it you just taking the chance on yourself? Was it,
• 48:47
  you know, listening to too many podcasts? Like how do people, no, it's so important to be able
• 48:53
  to do this, but not many people can? I think that's a key key part of being an entrepreneur.
• 49:00
  I think it kind of came to me first really when, you know, I was very regimented. I always wanted
• 49:07
  to be played baseball and then, you know, professionally and I, you know, train well and then I heard
• 49:12
  myself and it was really depressing because I'm like, wow, you kind of do everything the right way
• 49:18
  and it didn't go your way. And then, you know, I kind of, you know, pivoted really, you know,
• 49:25
  just kind of like straggled onto there and did very well in the law. You know, I was at a,
• 49:32
  you know, beautiful, like really big kind of Wall Street firm. And I was just like, wow,
• 49:39
  I, you start to believe in yourself. And I was like, I went from here to here. And I,
• 49:45
  you know, believed that I've been successful in each of these roles. And I was like,
• 49:50
  then I started climbing up the ladder, but the other really important part is I wasn't happy
• 49:55
  in kind of my own. I always, you know, and again, I think, I think the short answer is really
• 50:01
  just believing in yourself. And I think you have to believe in yourself. I've actually gotten
• 50:06
  even better at doing that because everyone's a little insecure. That's just life. The way I prove
• 50:11
  my insecurity is I say, I'm going to, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. And I keep trying
• 50:16
  to do something. And that helps me get confident in myself because I'm like, well, I accomplish this.
• 50:24
  So when I was at the law firm, you know, and again, you're right, very successful there. You know,
• 50:28
  I, I enjoyed everything that was there, learned a lot. It's been pivotal to learn all the things
• 50:33
  were there. But I often said, and, you know, maybe it's a little bit of just, I worked with the
• 50:39
  clients. And I was like, wow, they make, I want to be them. I really want to be them. They,
• 50:45
  you know, we, like they pay us. They are doing what I want to do. And I think I'm creative enough
• 50:52
  to do that. So I really have to kind of think about that. And then, you know, so, you know, the
• 51:00
  confidence of taking and being being dangerous, you know, testing yourself happiness. But then I
• 51:08
  think the other thing is I just said, hey, what is the worst thing that happened?
• 51:14
  If you fail, it's a powerful question. Yeah, it's a very powerful question. If you fail, and it
• 51:19
  doesn't happen, I mean, I've still built up all these strong attributes. It's fine. It doesn't
• 51:25
  define me because this didn't work. So, you know, and I think that kind of go back to the first
• 51:30
  statement, you know, you do have to live a little dangerous. You know, I say if people are very
• 51:35
  again, and I'm not people, you know, people are calculating. My wife is calculated. So it works,
• 51:40
  it works for her. But, you know, and she says, I could never do what you can do. I do think you have
• 51:45
  to be, you have to be okay with saying, I'm going to try this. And I'm going to give it 100%
• 51:53
  and believe in yourself. And if it's fails, that's okay. You know, just try, try something else.
• 51:58
  That's what you want to do. And that was such an important lesson to me because I was just like,
• 52:04
  I tell people, I'm almost, you know, I'm probably more nervous now because things are going so well
• 52:12
  that I want to make sure that I still think methodically about everything. It's actually easier for
• 52:17
  me when I think, oh, this could fail because I'm going to put 100% in there. And if it fails, I know
• 52:25
  I gave 100%. And that's for me, all I need. If I know I put 100% in everything I did,
• 52:33
  and it still didn't work, then I'd get in everything. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that
• 52:38
  result. And I think you have to be okay with that result. When you start over, I don't believe that
• 52:46
  you really start from scratch. I think that you take experiences and you take sort of the lessons
• 52:52
  and you mentioned before, like the attributes from all the previous stuff you've built and you apply
• 52:56
  them to the new thing. Do you feel, do you agree with that? Do you feel like sort of you've sort of
• 53:02
  stacked skills across every single time you've restarted so that by the time you get to break
• 53:09
  house, it's actually, yes, starting over but not really starting over. And the reason why I ask
• 53:15
  that is because maybe the answer in the answer on how to be a successful entrepreneur is to start
• 53:22
  multiple things, be okay with failing as quick as possible, but then retaining the skill sets so
• 53:28
  that eventually when you start the thing that is meant to happen, you have so many compounded
• 53:32
  skill sets from all these different things of your life. Even if the actual project was a failure,
• 53:36
  the skill set isn't, is a learning and a lesson that you can use to, you know, go from zero to a
• 53:42
  million or zero to 10 million or zero to 100 million in a fraction of the time. I completely
• 53:46
  agree with that. And I think that that is something I didn't realize until probably we were a public
• 53:53
  company and I really started trusting myself even more. That's seven years into it. So from going
• 54:01
  back to playing sports, I learned about teams. Everyone has a say, you're working together. It's not,
• 54:07
  you know, I'm the CEO of the company, but getting the insight and really listening to the opinions
• 54:14
  of my team and my management and my board of directors, that's important. And I learned that
• 54:20
  very early on. You know, at first I, you know, I was kind of focused very linear, but then I kind of
• 54:25
  said, oh, these are all the attributes I picked up and those attributes have stayed me forever.
• 54:29
  When I was a lawyer, really the analytical thinking and I focused on like securities and corporate
• 54:36
  governance. And I realized I was running a business that way, which, you know, in essence kind of
• 54:41
  made it a little bit easier to go public. It's not easy, but it made it. I have no doubt it's not
• 54:47
  easy. But so I don't, I don't want to ever use that, you know, but it made it a little bit easier
• 54:52
  because I realized I was keeping minutes. I was doing, you know, I was trying to make sure that
• 54:57
  everything was proper from our accounting because I didn't want to have any issues or anything later.
• 55:02
  So then we got to that process and get audits and all that kind of stuff. Things were reasonably
• 55:08
  organized, you know, that people were like, oh, this is, this is not hard. Most startup companies
• 55:13
  don't even have notes, you know, everything is terrible. And then from my startups, you know,
• 55:18
  again, I probably focused more on the dangerous part in the happiness. But what I realized from my
• 55:25
  first one, which was being a sports, you know, sports agency, I was, I was successfully built,
• 55:32
  as a first time I successfully built a community amongst people and then connected them to a revenue
• 55:40
  model that was very genuine. And I was like, wow, that was, and it was also rewarding. It was fun.
• 55:46
  My second entrepreneurial business was a soccer team. I had a good friend from law school and
• 55:53
  he said, hey, can you, can you, uh, you know, be interested in buying the soccer team? It was,
• 55:58
  wasn't super expensive. It was a small soccer team. And they were part of a league that wanted to
• 56:03
  bring like minor league baseball to minor league soccer, excuse me, to, um, to the United States.
• 56:09
  And I remember the first thing I did is I said, in order for this team to be successful,
• 56:16
  we need to get the actual community behind it. So it was in New Jersey. We went to a local
• 56:22
  neighborhood called Ironbound, which is a predominantly Portuguese and, and um, Brazilian neighborhood.
• 56:28
  We recruited people only from there. And we had every single one in that community.
• 56:36
  Every day, remember I said, build the community. You'll get the, you'll get the audience. Everyone
• 56:42
  wanted to support people that were there. These were kids from their community. And it was super
• 56:46
  successful. We became the prize soccer team. But it, you know, I don't know a lot about soccer.
• 56:53
  But I took exactly the same way that we built everything else. And I was like, wow,
• 57:00
  this is really good. And then when I came to Bragghouse,
• 57:04
  what it was, I really just say, hey, I believe I have really good ideas. And I'm going to
• 57:11
  try my best to build those ideas in a very methodical way as I possibly can
• 57:16
  because I believe in that I've made the right decisions and doing these things. Not perfect.
• 57:21
  I made tons of mistakes along the way, but, but doing all those things kind of gives you a sense of
• 57:26
  confidence. So you, you just, you can't be scared to fail. You have to just say, if I, again,
• 57:32
  goes back to my fail, I gave everything possible. So, you know, exactly what you said is right.
• 57:38
  Every step of success or work ethic or whatever has led me into exactly what I do right now.
• 57:45
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• 57:55
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• 58:04
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• 58:08
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• 58:12
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• 58:17
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• 58:22
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• 58:26
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• 58:30
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• 58:34
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  register to get your ticket today. When you reinvent yourself repeatedly,
• 1:00:44
  I think it's a good thing. I think that people have to do it. I think that anybody who's been
• 1:00:49
  successful has gone through multiple sort of reinventions of who they are. But it affects everything,
• 1:00:54
  right? It affects your business, your finances, your relationship, all of it. So for somebody who's
• 1:00:59
  listening to this, who is thinking, okay, I'm motivated. I actually do want to reinvent myself,
• 1:01:04
  take the first step, stop or at least gradually exit what I'm doing and maybe try to do something
• 1:01:10
  else or maybe they're going to be dramatic about and just quit what they're doing. Not that I
• 1:01:14
  think that's a smart idea, but you never know how people interpret these ideas. So regardless,
• 1:01:19
  a lot of people listen to this show at some point will reinvent themselves in some degree. What is your
• 1:01:24
  words of wisdom to them? What do they have to? What are the things that happen when you stop one
• 1:01:29
  thing that's successful and start a new thing? Psychological, with relationships, with your friends,
• 1:01:35
  with your time, with your energy, with your money? What are the things that they just have to be
• 1:01:38
  aware of so that they make that transition a little bit easier? I think so for me, I'm a very
• 1:01:46
  that's again, the dangerous quote, I'm a very, I just have to do it. Jump into there and I have to do
• 1:01:51
  it. So I think you have to, so probably people listen is they have that passion and you need that
• 1:01:56
  passion. If you don't have that passion, I don't recommend it. But if you have that passion,
• 1:02:01
  go for that passion. And then I think you just, you need to do two things. You need to believe in
• 1:02:06
  yourself, which is, which is crucial. And you need to be okay with failing. How I do that? And again,
• 1:02:13
  I had help from it is I set out these things that my wife has told me to do that. I'm like, okay,
• 1:02:20
  I'm going to go until I can't go anymore. And that's I've always been. But then you can set these
• 1:02:26
  things. And there's almost like checkpoints because if you if you, if you mentally try to do it,
• 1:02:31
  at least in my experience, you won't do it. So if you're like, I have one foot in the law firm,
• 1:02:36
  one foot out here, you're 50, 50 in both spots, you can't really go as fast as you need to. And that's
• 1:02:42
  hard. So you have to, I believe step out of that and say, I'm going to go there. But I guess the,
• 1:02:48
  you know, which I never had the security blanket. So I probably shouldn't say that. You just do it.
• 1:02:53
  But I guess the security blanket that you kind of that I've at least, you know, set that was
• 1:02:58
  helpful. And I remember we first started. I said, Hey, I'm taking my own money. I'm going to do
• 1:03:02
  this. I believe in this. I'm going to go forward for the first year, like burn the burn the
• 1:03:07
  boats like fully. That's what you did. Just fully. But then I said, okay, I'm going to go ahead and
• 1:03:12
  do that. But what I'm going to do. And my wife told me that she was like, if you don't secure
• 1:03:18
  funding or an investment by X amount of time, I think we'll give us over a year. That's fine.
• 1:03:24
  Don't quit your business. But at least kind of re-analyze. Look at the things. Do the accounting
• 1:03:28
  over again. So I think that was a helpful thing to me. Because again, I'll be very honest with you.
• 1:03:34
  I will just go. And I'll be like, Oh, that didn't work. And I'll just keep on doing something else.
• 1:03:40
  But that was a helpful thing. And then a funny story of it was we, uh, my wife told me to do that.
• 1:03:47
  And I said, Okay, you know, I'm going to do that. I'm going to set it because you know,
• 1:03:50
  have a family now. And you know, I'm going to do that. So, you know, I'm going to be smart.
• 1:03:54
  So I said, I think it was like this, uh, December and December. It's like right before Christmas.
• 1:04:01
  Then again, investment. And we were doing really well when viral. Everything was doing great.
• 1:04:06
  But we didn't have any investment. And I said, Okay, well, you know, we reached the 24th. That's what it is.
• 1:04:12
  January 2nd venture capitalist was like, love this idea. Let us be your first people to invest.
• 1:04:19
  And this is going to be big. And I was like, Okay.
• 1:04:25
  But it helped me because I also don't. So, you know, the advice I would say is like, you
• 1:04:30
  know, you can't, you have to be 100% into it. And then if you, you know, need something to protect
• 1:04:36
  yourself, set yourself some type of reasonable goal that doesn't mean you stop. But that reasonable
• 1:04:41
  goal is just kind of a check-in point, you know, and say, Hey, you know, do I need to rebalance
• 1:04:45
  it? Do I need to change something about this though? So that was something I never had.
• 1:04:50
  But it was been very beneficial to me because it gives me these kind of milestones to say, Okay,
• 1:04:56
  love out your building is a huge thing. Where are you in your scale of doing it?
• 1:05:00
  I love that idea. I like that. Like, I love the idea of like seasons in your life. And,
• 1:05:06
  and and seasons, the way that I've sort of interpreted it always was just like
• 1:05:11
  this business is for a season, this career is for a season, do it for five years,
• 1:05:15
  ten years. But you set these checkpoints much earlier on. So at least you can say like,
• 1:05:20
  am I directionally moving, am I moving in the right direction, right? Am I, am I sort of
• 1:05:26
  progressing? And I think that like, especially when you live, quote unquote, dangerously,
• 1:05:30
  you live a certain way. I think it's important to do that because like I see people that
• 1:05:36
  I see people don't check in on themselves. And I think that they end up just doing something
• 1:05:42
  that doesn't work for too long when if they just took like a second and and like gave themselves
• 1:05:50
  like a little bit of like a like a check in point, like you're you're mentioning, you don't have
• 1:05:55
  to kill it, but maybe realize that like the pitch isn't good or the customer you're selling to,
• 1:06:01
  it's not really aligned and they're not really like buying what you're selling or like there's
• 1:06:05
  a million different things you can iterate on and improve and change. So it doesn't mean kill it,
• 1:06:09
  but this means like just check, just like just check for a sec. You're exactly right. I mean,
• 1:06:14
  I, I, again, we had this, you know, amazing model that I worked, but there was even like you said,
• 1:06:19
  the pitch, you know, we worked on the pitch, you know, I had to understand what the tam was. I had
• 1:06:24
  to understand all these concepts that I didn't really, really know wasn't it wasn't a bad idea,
• 1:06:31
  just had to kind of refine kind of what you were doing. Sometimes it's like the same idea,
• 1:06:36
  like said differently exactly to the customer, to the market, whatever. Exactly. And that was it.
• 1:06:41
  And it's like, you know, you had this great, you know, you had this great business and your 100%
• 1:06:46
  right messaging is so important. And one of the things that, you know, again, I feel like you
• 1:06:53
  cons, as long as you're going in this direction, that's good. Even if there's a couple of drops
• 1:06:58
  here and there. And one of the things that, you know, we had to do is I said, okay, well,
• 1:07:02
  what is the audience you're speaking to? Because then you have to change it a little bit, you know,
• 1:07:05
  it's the same business. But an investor, their first question is how we're making money. You know,
• 1:07:12
  so they're excited about the people and the users and hard to reach, but how you're making money.
• 1:07:17
  And be able to convey that and still keep an authentic authenticity. You know, that took some time.
• 1:07:23
  I took some time to kind of understand that is. So I think that's I'm glad you brought that point up
• 1:07:28
  because I think that's an awesome point too. You have to be okay to criticize yourself and change.
• 1:07:35
  That's, that's a huge thing because you're right. You can keep going down the same rabbit hole
• 1:07:40
  saying this has to work. And it won't. So I think honesty is a really big thing. And that's,
• 1:07:48
  that's a hard thing for people. But if you can master that and saying it's okay, I think you're
• 1:07:53
  fine. I think that's an excellent, excellent, excellent point because you can live in your own
• 1:07:58
  head. You know, you can be the, you know, it's, again, it's, it's, it's success. You can live in your
• 1:08:04
  own head for success, which I think we said and say, look, I did this. I did this. And I'm great.
• 1:08:08
  But you could also live in your head of not being successful, but just focused on one idea and
• 1:08:13
  thinking this was going to be. So it's like, I think the best leaders and I, and I hope I exhibit
• 1:08:18
  that is being able to take constructive criticism, listen, one advice I would give any entrepreneur.
• 1:08:26
  And this is something that I did a lot. I just sat down and talked to other CEOs. I literally
• 1:08:32
  set up calls with them. I found them. I went to different events and I just talked to them.
• 1:08:38
  You know, we were in a accelerator one time and I just sat down and just had conversations
• 1:08:43
  with people. And I did that because I was like, I just want to know what makes you think.
• 1:08:50
  I want to know what you do. And that was probably one of the most helpful things. And it's funny
• 1:08:56
  when you don't want anything from anybody, they have all the advice in the world. Because I wasn't
• 1:09:00
  asking for them to invest in me. I wasn't, I just wanted to talk to them. And they had so much to say.
• 1:09:06
  And it was the, and I, it probably was if I can kind of point to, you know, a few things that
• 1:09:13
  really helped me was sitting down and just talking to people. And when I did that, I was like,
• 1:09:18
  okay, yeah, you know, the way I'm thinking about this is right. Because I wasn't in my head.
• 1:09:23
  I was having other people that were either successful or just starting out like me. And I was
• 1:09:27
  seeing how they think. And I was like, okay. And I was, and it gave me things to leverage and
• 1:09:32
  balance. And, you know, if they wanted to give me constructive criticism, I was like, please,
• 1:09:38
  because I want to make sure that I'm doing everything possible the right way.
• 1:09:42
  I love this. I think that I've experienced the same thing when you're not asking for anything.
• 1:09:46
  People are so willing to give advice. That's why it's so, it's sometimes frustrating, but
• 1:09:52
  ultimately it helps. But I think that there is zero excuse. There is really zero excuse if you,
• 1:10:00
  if you are struggling with something or if you, if you aren't sure how to move the needle in your
• 1:10:04
  business, your life, it's really because you haven't sought, like you haven't sought out help.
• 1:10:09
  And you haven't really looked for it because there has never been a moment. Like you want to,
• 1:10:14
  forget, forget now, you know, well, you know, like you have like a people follow you online or
• 1:10:19
  people know your business. So obviously they're going to say yes to a meeting. No, I'm talking about
• 1:10:24
  like when I'm like 20 years old, like zero, zero impact on this world. Nothing, nothing,
• 1:10:31
  nothing tied to my name and people will still sit down for coffee and still give you the same
• 1:10:36
  great advice and really just pour themselves in their experience into you. You just have to ask.
• 1:10:43
  Yeah. You just have to ask. That's what you have to do. That's right. One of our first advisors
• 1:10:47
  was that he was a lawyer, but he was like more of an entrepreneur, a chair of like, you know,
• 1:10:52
  this big entrepreneur group and a law firm didn't know him at all. You know, so I'm going to
• 1:10:56
  tell me and I just reached out to him and say, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm also a lawyer and I remember,
• 1:11:02
  like it was first call. He was kind of like, you know, what do you want? Like in this and stuff.
• 1:11:06
  And after that, I was like, and I, so I immediately said I was like, I want nothing except just kind
• 1:11:11
  of your advice. He was like, oh my god, let's, let's schedule like an hour. He's, he want to meet,
• 1:11:15
  you want to do that. It's crazy. You know, he eventually came on as an advisor, but I just
• 1:11:23
  wanted to pick his brain. I was like, you've seen a million startups and you see what failed in them.
• 1:11:29
  And I'm trying not to make that same mistakes. I'm pretty sure that they're very common mistakes.
• 1:11:33
  You know, I just want to talk. You know, I would love to take out the lunch. It's exactly what you
• 1:11:39
  said. People, I was nobody. I was nobody on the map. I was no one, no one heard of broadcast,
• 1:11:45
  but people love to give advice if you just have to ask. I would, I would also say that now,
• 1:11:51
  you know, fortunate, or I'm out of position in my career, or people ask me for some advice
• 1:11:57
  every once in a while. And the one thing that I value, just maybe this will be useful for people
• 1:12:06
  who are listening, but the one thing I value is when people ask for advice and they actually
• 1:12:10
  implement it because I find implementation is so rare. Like I, I, I mean, I talk about my podcast a
• 1:12:16
  lot and how many people have asked me how to start a podcast. Like I'm sure at this point, like 50 or 60.
• 1:12:21
  And I know the ones that have actually done it because the people, I've given people like my SOPs,
• 1:12:26
  I've given people my list of equipment. I've connected people who have been past guests,
• 1:12:31
  so they can be like first guests on their shows. Like four people have started a podcast out of
• 1:12:37
  like the 60 people that I've emailed, like my podcast, like full systems to. And like the four people
• 1:12:45
  that started it, like those are four shows that actually like rank on Apple, like pretty highly. So
• 1:12:52
  it's, it's just a matter of like if you're going to take somebody's time at the end of the day,
• 1:12:56
  I guess if you don't want to execute on it, fine, it's, it's not really hurting anybody. But like
• 1:13:01
  just if you take someone's time, you don't understand how much it means to them if you take their
• 1:13:07
  advice and execute on it. And if it doesn't work, they're okay with that too because we'll work
• 1:13:11
  through that. But don't take advice and waste that information. I think that that is another
• 1:13:18
  reason why, and I never really understood that because for me, when I get advice that hits,
• 1:13:22
  I'm like, bro, I'm doing it like before we get off the call. Like if you tell me that there's
• 1:13:26
  something that works in whatever it is I'm trying to do, like I'm I'm literally doing it while we're
• 1:13:31
  on the call. But maybe that's maybe that's just a personality trait. I don't know, but that to me is
• 1:13:37
  like I love it. I get so much happiness when I tell somebody to like this is work for me,
• 1:13:42
  then I see them do it. And then they're like killing it. I'm like, yes, like that's fucking awesome.
• 1:13:47
  Exactly. Exactly. I don't know. Try and execute more too. It's not just collecting wisdom.
• 1:13:54
  It's like actually doing something with it. No, it's true. And that's another big component
• 1:13:58
  about is actually doing it. Like I, I mean, literally this was yesterday. Yesterday,
• 1:14:04
  they asked me to be on a, it was like FinTech or some like segment in the New York stock exchange.
• 1:14:08
  And I was sitting down and I was, you know, talking to the guy and kind of explaining,
• 1:14:12
  you know, the platform. And after he just started telling me all these things, he was like,
• 1:14:18
  this is brilliant. He was like, you should do this. You should do this. You should do this.
• 1:14:23
  And at no point did I say, I know everything. I literally sat there for a next
• 1:14:30
  week, half an hour, listened to him. Some of his ideas I thought were absolutely brilliant.
• 1:14:35
  Some we thought about, but some were absolutely brilliant. Even just the, the, you know, like,
• 1:14:41
  he came up with this slogan, which I'll happy. He said it's called Ready Player Bragg. And I was
• 1:14:46
  like, I like that. I was like, I like that a lot. I was like, I love that. And again,
• 1:14:53
  but being able to listen to that, that's really a mindset that you have to do. And then you have
• 1:14:59
  to, and you said it, then you have to say, okay, I'm gonna execute this. It's like, I love listening
• 1:15:03
  to people. It just, and then, you know, and if you come to me, I love giving advice for people.
• 1:15:09
  But I, I'm not scared to ask for that. And that's probably been one of the most helpful
• 1:15:13
  things there is not knowing it all. Was there any moments that were more difficult where you
• 1:15:21
  just sort of asked your, you sat with yourself, you asked yourself, like, what the hell am I doing?
• 1:15:26
  I'm sure there was, but there's always those moments. There's been many in my life, so I'm sure
• 1:15:31
  there was. But when you hit those moments, for somebody that's going through that moment themselves,
• 1:15:38
  how do you push through? We had two really big moments like that. First one was, so the first one,
• 1:15:47
  I think it was like, you know, building our business, things are going well. And then I think the
• 1:15:54
  economy crashed again. I think it was like the Ukraine war. All these things started happening.
• 1:16:00
  And it was, you know, probably a pretty low point because things kind of were stopping,
• 1:16:05
  they were slowing down. And I just remember kind of like, you know, sitting there and saying, wow,
• 1:16:12
  you know, this is hard. But I, you know, again, I always asked myself, I was like, hey,
• 1:16:19
  but if it wasn't hard, you know, you know, then everyone would do it. It'd just be like, you
• 1:16:24
  know, I was sitting. So I kept telling myself that, but it was, it was a lot to kind of force
• 1:16:29
  myself to say, hey, you know, keep on pushing. Things are slow right now. But you have a good
• 1:16:34
  business. You have all these things. And it was hard. It was really, really hard. And what I've
• 1:16:41
  done, the trick that I do is that I slow down. I put one foot in front of the other and I slowly
• 1:16:52
  accomplish everything on my list that I need to do. And that's the only way that I can get through
• 1:16:59
  because if I think, oh, well, this and this and I think too far and I get worried, then I'm like,
• 1:17:05
  you know, you, you cite yourself out. So I'm like, all right, well, what do I have to do? I have to
• 1:17:10
  do this. I have to do this. I've do this. I have to do this. And I did that. And I just kept doing
• 1:17:15
  and I said, well, you know, you still need to make a business plan. You need to do this. You need to
• 1:17:19
  do this. And I did that. And I think it was four months of doing that. And then I think we got
• 1:17:26
  approached by, well, I think at that point, we're also pitching and talking to people and stuff.
• 1:17:33
  And, you know, just going, and I was editing my pitch doing this again, but it was one methodical
• 1:17:39
  step after another. And one of our pitch, it was very successful. I think we raised like two million
• 1:17:44
  dollars. And, you know, obviously that changed everything at that point, but those four months before
• 1:17:49
  that. I had to really just say, okay, let me just go slow. Let me go slow. Let me just make sure
• 1:17:58
  we're doing it. The second time that happened was actually the IPO. And nothing goes right.
• 1:18:04
  Everything goes wrong. They're, you know, auditors, they're things there. And I just remember
• 1:18:11
  slowing down and just say, okay, these are the steps we need to go to IPO. Period.
• 1:18:19
  I'm just going to do one. Finish that. Go to the next one. Finish that. Go to the next one.
• 1:18:24
  So in my mind, I didn't even, it was, it was a very linear way of thinking. And when I got to like,
• 1:18:30
  you know, maybe almost the last three steps and I was closer to it, then I could think a little bit
• 1:18:36
  with more emotion and kind of thing. But before that, I just said, you got to one foot for
• 1:18:42
  the other. And it was the, it's, it's what has always worked for me when things get really,
• 1:18:46
  really complicated. Just take away the emotion. That's hard. Take away the emotion and just put
• 1:18:54
  one foot in front of the other. Before, before we wrap up, I just want people to understand
• 1:19:00
  a little bit more about how they can participate in the Brighauss universe and where they can go
• 1:19:06
  to sort of see what you're working on and just immerse themselves. So where would you want people
• 1:19:12
  to connect with you and just go and explore more? I think the website, we have a pretty awesome
• 1:19:18
  platform, creating account, go to www.brighauss.com, create account, jump in there, you know, play,
• 1:19:25
  join other communities. You know, we have everything from the public side to the gaming side,
• 1:19:31
  to the community side on there. But I would just say just, just jump on there. Just jump on there,
• 1:19:35
  you know, start a, start a, you know, start an account. And you know, I think you'll see how
• 1:19:42
  much fun it is. And again, we are really just, you know, with all the success, we're still really,
• 1:19:47
  really just starting, you know, in December, we're going to be doing 12 SEC schools that are going
• 1:19:52
  to be participating, you know, after that, we're going to be moving on and getting, you know, Midwest
• 1:19:57
  schools, California schools. So, you know, more things would be there. But again, it's the community
• 1:20:03
  that makes the platform. So, you know, I would say just start an account, jump on there and,
• 1:20:09
  you know, I think people will be really pleased. If you could, if you could go back and tell your
• 1:20:15
  20 year old self one bit of advice after all of these entrepreneurial journeys that you've been on,
• 1:20:22
  what would that piece of advice be and why? That's a good one because it's kind of hard because
• 1:20:27
  a lot of these things kind of shaped what you were doing. But that could be an answer too. I've
• 1:20:32
  actually heard that before. That's a very, I think that's actually very wise, but I'll let you go
• 1:20:36
  with it. But yeah, I mean, it, well, I just, it's, I, a lot of the things I learn is because of,
• 1:20:41
  because of all the mistakes and successes and stuff I have, I think if I had to tell myself one
• 1:20:48
  thing, it would probably just be believing yourself and don't quit. That's what I think I would
• 1:20:56
  just probably want to tell myself because, you know, and I never quit, you know, but I, for more
• 1:21:01
  of myself, it was kind of proving that I can do something. So it was almost saying, I'm going to do
• 1:21:07
  this and not know if it's going to be successful, but I want to prove it to myself. And, you know,
• 1:21:12
  having that confidence, I, I now, again, I listen to everyone. I want to be, I want to make sure
• 1:21:18
  always stay very humble and accept advice. But believing in yourself early on and saying, I can do
• 1:21:26
  this and having that confidence to do it will alleviate a lot of the other stuff. Now I feel
• 1:21:30
  comfortable in saying, Hey, I can make this decision here. And I feel like it 80% to 90% that's the
• 1:21:37
  right decision. If you've only passed on one lesson to your kids, and that was the most important
• 1:21:43
  lesson that you've learned outside of betting on yourself, I think that's a very important one. But
• 1:21:48
  what would be the one thing that you'd want, like your kid to learn that they can take through
• 1:21:52
  their life? I think the other thing is to have a good circle around you. I think that that's
• 1:21:59
  really important because I believe I've always had these attributes. But every step of my way,
• 1:22:07
  I had people who believed in me, people who, you know, gave good advice and people who were actually
• 1:22:14
  trustworthy. So I would say that the people you hang out with, whether you're friends, whether
• 1:22:20
  your colleagues, you know, I would say make sure that those are the people that you feel comfortable
• 1:22:25
  around that they add value to your life because, you know, I get all the credit. I mean, I get all
• 1:22:32
  the blame to everything goes wrong, but I get all the credit. But, you know, if it wasn't for my
• 1:22:38
  co-founder, you know, if it wasn't for my wife, if it wasn't for mentors, you know, I clerked for
• 1:22:45
  a federal district judge who was the hardest person on me in the entire world at the law firm.
• 1:22:51
  I had several mentors who pushed me harder than anyone else pushed me before. So it's like,
• 1:22:58
  you know, those were people, you know, that were like, you know, even best friends. And then I had
• 1:23:02
  a lot of negative people around me too. You know, I'm a very slow both ways. You've got to be careful.
• 1:23:06
  Yeah. I'm a very social person. And I had people who, you know, probably shouldn't have been there.
• 1:23:12
  So now I have a lot smaller circle. And but the people that are around me, they know they can tell me,
• 1:23:20
  I don't agree with this. And they can tell me, but this is the way I would do it. And I have absolute
• 1:23:27
  trust in them that they have the best interest for me and for the company. So I would tell my
• 1:23:35
  daughter that I would say, you know, that's a really, really important part. In addition, you
• 1:23:40
  believing in yourself, you have to have a really, really strong circle of people who also believe
• 1:23:46
  in you, and I'm going to push you up.