Latest / In Search Of Excellence / Sean Mike Kelly: Viral Marketing and the Power of Social Media | E132

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Sean Mike Kelly: Viral Marketing and the Power of Social Media | E132 · In Search Of Excellence

• 0:00
  Randall Kaplan: So you made ten million and you lost ten million Yeah, well, I
• 0:03
  Sean Mike Kelly: made but I never realized it. But on paper, I had ten million and I could have sold it for US dollars, right? Didn't do it. You
• 0:09
  Randall Kaplan: got no one to sell Exactly. My
• 0:11
  Sean Mike Kelly: greed kicked in, and that's, that's when I took a step back and realized, wow, this is a psychological game. It's a player versus player game.
• 0:22
  Randall Kaplan: Well, welcome to In Search of Excellence, where we meet entrepreneurs, CEOs, entertainers, athletes, motivational speakers and trailblazers of excellence, with incredible stories, with all walks of life. My name is Randall Kaplan. I'm a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and the host of In Search of Excellence, which I started to motivate and inspire us to achieve excellence in all areas of our lives. My guest today is Sean. Kelly. Sean is a serial entrepreneur, web three advocate, an incredible podcaster with over 11 million followers on Instagram, 1 million followers on YouTube and 400,000 followers on Tiktok.
• 0:59
  Randall Kaplan: During his freshman year in college, Sean started a company called Jersey champs, which sold custom jerseys and partnerships with rappers, athletes and influencers, and later sold it after dropping out of college, and after that, he started a company that sold $17 million worth of masks and other supplies during the coronavirus pandemic. Sean is the host of the number one marketing podcast, the digital social hour, where he interviews celebrities, entrepreneurs and industry experts from all walks of life. Sean, it's a true pleasure. Welcome to my show In Search of Excellence. So I always start with my family.
• 1:29
  Randall Kaplan: Your mom was born in China, both your parents from different countries. Your dad was a computer programmer. What were they like and what kind of influence did they have on you growing up?
• 1:40
  Sean Mike Kelly: Wow, you did your research. Man, no one's ever said that before. Yeah, growing up in a multicultural background was really interesting, looking back at it now, because I got two really different perspectives. So my mom was an immigrant from China, came here with 20 bucks in her pocket, didn't speak English, scrubbed floors, worked her way up to become a self made millionaire from a nine to five job. So I witnessed the work ethic from her. My dad, similar story. Immigrant grew up on a farm, working really, really hard, but he was a genius. So his IQ was 150 and he had a lot of like, mental problems too. So I grew up around that, and that ended up playing a big role on me too. We could dive into that later. Yeah.
• 2:15
  Randall Kaplan: So how do they go from your mom go from scrubbing florist to becoming a millionaire? That's pretty incredible,
• 2:20
  Sean Mike Kelly: pretty insane, just hard work, man, that Asian immigrant mentality is hard to beat. So she did that for a few years, and eventually learned English, worked her way into a sales position, and she's still at the same company, Erickson, a telecommunications company.
• 2:31
  Sean Mike Kelly: Yeah, it
• 2:32
  Randall Kaplan: was telecordia before, okay, got acquired, and then, so I know she's in sales and marketing there. So did she become a millionaire based on commission revenue, or
• 2:41
  Sean Mike Kelly: both her base plus commission. So she did that for 25 years. Now she's out of Amazon,
• 2:47
  Randall Kaplan: and so and your dad sells books now for on Amazon and eBay. Yep,
• 2:51
  Sean Mike Kelly: watched him do, I think, a million dollars in books, and this was when I was a kid. So a million, back 15 years ago, was a good amount in sales.
• 2:57
  Sean Mike Kelly: And is he still doing that right now he stopped. It was on the side. He had a main job, and he did that on the side for a long time. But I think these book scanners started coming out. So it removed his skill level, because he could just eye a book and know the value,
• 3:13
  Randall Kaplan: right? But you were younger at the time, so were you saying to yourself, Amazon is new, and are people selling books? These were not his own books. He was brokering books on Amazon, brokering
• 3:21
  Sean Mike Kelly: books. We would go to dumpsters, we'd go to book sales. He could eye any book and know how much it's worth. It was the craziest skill I've seen when you're that smart, it's almost like a savant like
• 3:30
  Randall Kaplan: skill. So he's getting discarded books, or he's getting them at used bookstores, where they're 99 cents, and he's basically flipping them on Amazon.
• 3:38
  Sean Mike Kelly: Yeah, Amazon, niba and I would help them ship them too, using keywords.
• 3:41
  Sean Mike Kelly: Because
• 3:42
  Randall Kaplan: how does a guy who has absolutely no experience compete with Amazon, for example, where you can buy used books on Amazon?
• 3:49
  Sean Mike Kelly: Yeah, well, I think back then it was easier.
• 3:51
  Sean Mike Kelly: You could just list books for the cheapest price and undercut people. But now it's a lot harder. You need volume.
• 3:57
  Randall Kaplan: So let's go to seventh grade. You're selling candy. You make $20 a day some days, and tell us what happened and why you got suspended from
• 4:07
  Sean Mike Kelly: school. Yeah, so pathetic that they make your your own students think this way, but I guess the school had vending machines, and I don't know what the kickback is like, where that money goes to exactly, but this teacher was just so upset, and she's like, this huge lady, probably 250 pounds. I'm walking to my bus stop. In one hand, I have a bag of money. Other hand, the rest of my candy left for the day, and I'm smiling, like, there's a huge smile on my face. 20 bucks as a kid is a lot back then, huge. Yeah, because you didn't really have many expenses. So yeah. She said, what is that?
• 4:39
  Sean Mike Kelly: I'm like, I just sold candy. She said, Come with me right now.
• 4:41
  Sean Mike Kelly: Takes me to the principal.
• 4:41
  Sean Mike Kelly: Principal's office. So I missed the bus going home. My mom had to pick me up, and they suspended me, man for selling candy for how long? I think was a day or something. But I just I had to stop selling. So that was the part that sucked. You
• 4:56
  Randall Kaplan: stuck out of the house at night. You got the candy. Yeah, 1011, o'clock at night. Crazy
• 5:00
  Sean Mike Kelly: story. So I would sneak out at Wegmans. Have you heard of Wegmans? Yeah, yeah, they're big on the East Coast, and you said it was two to three miles from your house, yeah. So I had to either bike or run, and I think they closed at midnight, so I would leave at 11 be like, the only person in the whole grocery store. One day I came home, my dad pulled a gun on me because he was on drugs, and he thought it was a robber or something, so he's literally pointing a Glock at me from the upstairs. I'm a kid, like,
• 5:26
  Randall Kaplan: how old were you at this point?
• 5:28
  Sean Mike Kelly: Probably in middle school, probably seventh grade, so 13. So he pulls a gun on me. I'm like, begging dad not to shoot, and he still didn't understand, like, the situation, because he was so messed up on drugs. So I had to hide in the bathroom that night. There's a bathroom right by the front door.
• 5:43
  Randall Kaplan: So the doors were locked. Were you upstairs?
• 5:46
  Randall Kaplan: This kind of thing where you see on TV, where you open the window, you hop out the window, or just kind of no tip toeing out the front door.
• 5:52
  Sean Mike Kelly: I left the front door open, so I walked in.
• 5:54
  Sean Mike Kelly: As soon as I walked in, he's there with a gun. It's like midnight, pointing at me.
• 5:56
  Sean Mike Kelly: There's a bathroom to my left.
• 5:59
  Sean Mike Kelly: So I walk in there and hide there for like an hour, until he went back to his room and fell asleep.
• 6:04
  Randall Kaplan: So let's talk about college and the start of your first real company. Talk to us about spending $250 on a design and then spending $1,000 and how you got started in your dorm room, and kind of what happened from
• 6:19
  Sean Mike Kelly: there. Yeah. So I was broke in college, even though I grew up in a family like middle class, they one thing I love about that is they didn't give me any money or anything. It was normal in high school for their parents to buy the kids a car. I was the only kid that didn't have a car High School. So shout out to my parents for not doing that at the time. I hated it, believe me, I hated it, but shout out to them for doing that. But yeah, in college, I was broke, and drop shipping was hot at the time, and I really took advantage of that wave, and I did pre orders because I didn't have enough money to order inventory, right?
• 6:47
  Randall Kaplan: Tell us, though, first, what you were making and why you were making them. Were the idea for that? Yeah, because it's a little different than selling T shirts, which a lot, right? We're doing, yeah. So
• 6:55
  Sean Mike Kelly: everyone was doing T shirts, and I think that market's super saturated for people watching this, trying to start t shirt companies, because I still get DM daily about that.
• 7:02
  Sean Mike Kelly: Please don't do that. Jerseys, on the other hand, at the time, weren't as saturated. So I would go to fraternity parties and tailgates every guy was wearing a jersey. So I knew there was a huge market. Sports is big in America, obviously. So I did a pre order for this Toronto jersey. Drake dropped an album at the time, the rapper and I had like, views and the number six in Toronto on the front, and that was the first Jersey, and I think we sold 100 of those.
• 7:27
  Randall Kaplan: You you sold out. Yeah, what you made in you paid $250 for someone to
• 7:33
  Sean Mike Kelly: make the design for you. Yeah? Because I didn't know what the going rate was, so I overpaid for sure, but it ended up working out. Yeah.
• 7:39
  Randall Kaplan: So tell us how you got influencers to wear them, which is very, very tough to do. That's a it's, it's so important now to do it. But before social media really exploded, it was still a great way to do it, right? Yeah, free advertising, if. Kim Kardashian, where's your stuff? Good things are going to happen to brand, right? Kendall Jenner, so how, are you doing this? I mean, what was your first wrapper? And, you know, you can't look up their email addresses. So where are you finding these people?
• 8:08
  Sean Mike Kelly: Yeah, you can't look up their emails, but you could get their agents. There's a few websites, booking agent info and the handbook. Those are two that I used to use. But DMS, I feel like works better. So I would DM 100 people a day on Instagram until I was blocked, basically, right? And I did that for probably two years straight.
• 8:24
  Sean Mike Kelly: So just from sheer volume, and I see everything as a numbers game, and I still have that mentality today. When I was doing the mass, which we'll get into, I was emailing probably hundreds a day as well, and that's how we were able to do good revenue there,
• 8:37
  Randall Kaplan: right? So who was the first rapper? And then I want you to tell us about Donald Trump and how he just changed your entire career. Crazy,
• 8:46
  Sean Mike Kelly: I still remember that day vividly. It was probably Khaled, and then logic. I don't listen to rap anymore, but at the time, those two artists were pretty
• 8:53
  Randall Kaplan: hot. And then tell us about Donald Trump and what happened there. Crazy,
• 8:58
  Sean Mike Kelly: it wasn't planned. I wish I could say it was some elaborate marketing scheme, but someone bought one of my jerseys, and he was front row at his rally, I guess, and had access to Trump and handed it to him, and then we got a whole video of him holding it front and back.
• 9:12
  Randall Kaplan: And how did people know it was yours?
• 9:15
  Sean Mike Kelly: My logo is on the bottom right, but it's small. Yeah, it's super small.
• 9:19
  Randall Kaplan: What'd you do take it. It's like on these football replays, where, where are you blowing up? I mean, yeah, he probably didn't have that blow up mechanism back then. Yeah,
• 9:27
  Sean Mike Kelly: I guess people just had to trust it. The video was a little blurry but surreal moment, because my my father was a huge fan of him, even though very controversial. But in 2016 he was always talking about him, yeah,
• 9:39
  Randall Kaplan: I have a Trump story I'm gonna tell you, and then I want to go back to the T shirts. Do it. So my best friend's getting married at Mar a Lago. This is 2015 2014 and Mar a Lago is a very nice place.
• 9:50
  Randall Kaplan: Trump owns it. We all know it now, but as a hedge fund conference, he's in the financial business. So there's all kinds of wealthy people.
• 10:00
  Randall Kaplan: People there, and Trump is there. He's the 10th candidate in the race. He's the joke candidate just announced, never going to win, and he comes down right. He's schmoozing with people, saying, Hello, everyone's getting their photo with him. And I said, oh, let's go take a picture. My wife wanted none of it. She had met him before. Newest sons used to live in New York so and she doesn't like taking pictures with celebrities or famous people. She's never going to do that. Me. Yeah, sometimes good branding. Yeah, it's good branding. My son was 10 at the time, so we have a great picture of Donald holding my son, Charlie, looking directly into the camera. And it's cool. It's my son's screensaver today, and the only post that I made there is one of these men will be president one day. Hashtag, 2040 Wow, thinking it's gonna be my son, not Donald Trump, because 2040 I kind of did the math.
• 11:03
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, you know, I'll be kind of in his late, late 40s, 40s then.
• 11:07
  Randall Kaplan: But it's kind of just amazing how someone can go from dark horse, no candidate to no chance of winning, to what he's done as a president, whether you like him or not. Yep, it's a it's, you know, coming from the rear and winning the race is
• 11:24
  Sean Mike Kelly: unheard of, especially for president, because you need a lot of money.
• 11:28
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah. I mean, he raised a lot of money, and he's still raised a lot of money, not spending his own money,
• 11:33
  Sean Mike Kelly: but he's, he just raised 50 million, yeah, one night, nuts. And he could do that once a week, probably, yeah. Well, we'll see it's gonna be, uh, interesting. Yeah. I know people that have paid 100k just to be at a dinner right next to, like, at his table.
• 11:43
  Sean Mike Kelly: Yeah,
• 11:46
  Randall Kaplan: let's go back to selling T shirts. Because I know you tell people today, don't do it. Back when I was in college, I went to University of Michigan grade school on the planet, and I saw some people selling T shirts, and I didn't have money, so I thought, all right, so, and these were people that I befriended. One of them is Brad Kewell. Has become one of my best friends. He's on my show.
• 12:04
  Randall Kaplan: They started four public companies. Groupon was before it was the fastest company at the time to a billion dollar valuation and uptake. His company that he started was the fastest company to a $2 billion valuation. He signed the giving pledge. But he got going in college, actually, he got going when he was six years old, selling greeting cards. So when you see someone doing something in college, I thought, well, it's an inspiration, right? If they can make money selling T shirts. So can I? So I took $500 of my Burmese for money, and today you can just go online, right? You can buy T shirts. You can see what kind of cotton they are. You can see photos. Back then there wasn't any of that. I said I want to make a University of Michigan inspired t shirt, and I called, and I remember, thank you. God, I'm in the yellow pages, right? So you're calling one by one, and you're on the phone, and I don't know what I'm at. I'm 18 years old, and I just want some pizza money, so get the T shirts I copied. And today you couldn't do this, but back then, it was loose, so just do it was a slogan. It was huge. They have that trademark font. And I made, just do a T shirts for Michigan.
• 13:19
  Randall Kaplan: And then Michigan was in the Final Four. So it was road to Final Four. Just do it. It was amazing. Blue as a very good looking shirt. And I made shirts previous to that, but I sold them in the dorm, door to door, yeah. So I think there's 11 or 12 dorms at Michigan. I went through every single hallway, every single dorm I got kicked out of, almost everyone I go in the back door, yeah. And it was a very invaluable. It was a great experience for me, because I learned margins were big. I sold the short sleeve for $12 cost me. Five Long sleeves were even more killer. $6 cost falling for 18. Wow, and so. And by the way, these are heavy, so you're logging around the boxes.
• 14:01
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, right, you got 50 shirts with you. It's not, it's not, not, not a great thing, but one of the great lessons of that was the art of cold calling. So let's talk about your cold calling. I know you've done it for your career. How important is cold calling to our success?
• 14:19
  Sean Mike Kelly: Oh my gosh. I know you've done more volume than me, but I'm more of a cold email, but cold email, cold call, I'll group them in the same group changed my life.
• 14:27
  Sean Mike Kelly: That's how I did $17 million in PPE sales. I didn't know a single person I sold to,
• 14:32
  Randall Kaplan: right? So we'll get to the PPE in a minute. I want to go back to political issues in high school, and really the regulation of that?
• 14:43
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, you had a principal remove one of your jerseys because it was anti patriotic or something in a football game. Yeah, how the hell does that happen? What happened? And how the hell does that? I know I woke
• 14:57
  Sean Mike Kelly: up to that pretty crazy someone wore the Trump jersey. The to football game, and the principal kicked him out of the whole game. Isn't that nuts? It's nuts just for wearing a Trump jersey. So what?
• 15:08
  Randall Kaplan: So this kid's in the stands, yeah, comes over.
• 15:11
  Randall Kaplan: Hey, Joe. Come with me. Joe's looking around with everyone there, yeah. So what I do?
• 15:15
  Randall Kaplan: Crazy.
• 15:17
  Sean Mike Kelly: And that just goes to like all the programming schools are doing these days. I mean, they should never have political influence like that.
• 15:22
  Sean Mike Kelly: It's crazy to
• 15:24
  Randall Kaplan: me. It's crazy.
• 15:24
  Randall Kaplan: So all businesses struggle before they get going. I've never heard of one, by the way, that didn't struggle. Yeah. So you started the jersey business.
• 15:33
  Randall Kaplan: You had a lot of issues. So you got two partners who stole from you. You had jerseys that didn't come. You had 100 grand locked in Paypal that you couldn't get out. Yep, so, and you're young, and that's a shit ton of money.
• 15:46
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, so how are you dealing with those? And then there's something at a festival as well.
• 15:52
  Randall Kaplan: I think you had 100 shirts come.
• 15:52
  Randall Kaplan: They didn't come, people, you know, pissed off. So how do you overcome those challenges? And you're young, so it's not like you have the maturity, where you've done this before, and
• 16:04
  Sean Mike Kelly: yeah, at the time, it really hurt, because all these numbers are relative.
• 16:06
  Sean Mike Kelly: So even though it sounds small back then, it was a lot for me, like 100k being locked in PayPal was a difference of the business being shut down versus doing a million dollars next year. So yeah, it was just tough.
• 16:19
  Sean Mike Kelly: Luckily, had a really good support system, and I was watching a ton of videos on YouTube and courses and stuff, and had some mentors to help me guide through the process. But e commerce is tough, man, the margins are thin. Payment holds are common, so it's just something I don't do anymore.
• 16:35
  Sean Mike Kelly: But yeah, I sent Hunter jerseys to that music festival. Never got paid. That sucked, and I just never fronted people again after that. I always got paid first. So
• 16:45
  Randall Kaplan: you mentioned something that I think is very important too, the importance of mentors in our lives. We'll talk about the people that you studied before later in life, in your career. But what mentors did you have, and how important are mentors and their success?
• 16:58
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, I
• 16:59
  Sean Mike Kelly: had some that I just watched, which I consider mentor. So back then it was Gary V Ty Lopez, Patrick bet David really liked his show back then.
• 17:05
  Sean Mike Kelly: And then I have some in person mentors. Now that I could just text, I'd say Dan Fleischman is one of them. Matthew Morgan, these are eight, nine figure guys, but they also have a really balanced life, which is important to me these days, because I've achieved the money part of what I wanted to do at a very young age, and now it's more about health and lifestyle for me, right?
• 17:26
  Randall Kaplan: So sometimes we're in businesses that kind of peak, and then they fall. We'll talk about the mask business in a second, but after the jersey, you pivoted into E commerce. So what was that like? What motivated that? Then talk about your rise in your arc, and then kind of the downside of what happened there.
• 17:43
  Sean Mike Kelly: Yeah, did e commerce for five years. It was great, learned a lot, never made a killing, and I also wasn't fulfilled. So I was making 50k here the first three years, this was in college, and when I dropped out, which was decent, nothing crazy. And then once I got into, I think crypto from there, that's when I became a millionaire. And then I realized I could use that money to start doing what I actually like, podcasting, mentorship, stuff like that, and
• 18:08
  Randall Kaplan: talk to us about the crypto game. I was in the crypto game a little bit. It was kind of crazy, not kind of crazy. It's fucking crazy, insane. You had people with no experience running anything. I mean, they didn't even work in a coffee shop ever alone. Manage a single dollar, manage a single person who are writing white papers, and white paper those people who don't know is a plan.
• 18:27
  Randall Kaplan: What this crypto currency, which is actually worth absolutely nothing when had a plan that it's going to be used? And we're talking about altcoins, so we're talking about things that are not Bitcoin, primarily not Bitcoin, yep, which people knew?
• 18:39
  Randall Kaplan: And then they're raising 100 million dollars, $200 million on a deal. You got all these people promoting this coin that has ultimately no value, and you got to get in to this deal. So talk to us about that, and who you knew. And, yeah, well, how you made money in that space,
• 18:59
  Sean Mike Kelly: a lot of it's timing. Man, I remember this one kid in my high school, 2015 it might have been 2014 Oh my gosh.
• 19:06
  Sean Mike Kelly: So he was mining crypto.
• 19:06
  Sean Mike Kelly: Everyone made fun of him mining it. Yeah. So tell people what that is. So mining is basically, you use a bunch of fast computers, and you mine it, and then you collect fees.
• 19:17
  Sean Mike Kelly: Basically, it's hard to, like, explain, but basically, you're
• 19:21
  Randall Kaplan: creating Bitcoin, yeah, by plugging in a computer using power, hopefully that you don't pay for electricity, right? A lot of people were doing it at work, so they have to pay for the electricity at their house. So they're creating their own Bitcoin,
• 19:34
  Sean Mike Kelly: yeah? So that's one way of making money. And everyone made fun of him. I messaged him a few months ago.
• 19:39
  Sean Mike Kelly: He has 10 million and everyone in uh, yeah, Bitcoin, yeah.
• 19:42
  Sean Mike Kelly: Everyone made fun of them in high school. I was the only one who was semi interested. But that's one way of making money.
• 19:48
  Sean Mike Kelly: So there's people mining. They buy giant warehouses. Adam waitsman is one of them. There's guys doing eight, nine figures.
• 19:53
  Sean Mike Kelly: You're just mining. It's probably the most passive form of income I've ever seen. And then if bitcoin goes up, it's just like a double win. You know what I mean, right? So that's one way of making money. The altcoins you mentioned earlier, is how I made my money. So I made ten million at 25 years old, and 80% of people would probably lose that money in their 20s. And it happened to me, and I was like, wow, that is crazy, because I felt like I was so disciplined. And it happened
• 21:12
  Randall Kaplan: you were flipping the all coins. Because if you had held the all coins, most of them are worth zero pennies on the dollar, zeros, I think 99% I was a speaker on stage at, I think was the largest crypto conference in Los Angeles at the time, in 2017 in the wave. So there are all these people. A couple of people had paid to be on the stage. Yep, right. They were promoting their own shit, which, again, was just ridiculous. Most people didn't know that they had paid to get on there. And I said, if there may be 2000 people there, I said, this thing's gonna end badly. Yeah, and 95% of these companies are gonna go bankrupt.
• 21:45
  Randall Kaplan: I think it's 99.9 have gone bankrupt. There's gonna be class action lawsuits everywhere. And this is weird, right? I'm gonna tie. I've got my name's up on the board, and I was heavily booed. Wow, looking. I mean, these are young people who had no experience, because everyone is into crypto. It's the
• 22:04
  Sean Mike Kelly: fastest way you can make money, not not now, but it was back then. Well, even now. I mean, there's still all coins popping now, but you got to get in and out, or you're screwed, yeah? So I got caught holding the bag on some stuff and lost ten million in a few months.
• 22:18
  Randall Kaplan: So you made ten million and you lost ten million yeah? Well,
• 22:21
  Sean Mike Kelly: I made but I never realized it, but on paper, I had ten million and I could have sold it right for US dollars, right? Didn't do it right.
• 22:28
  Randall Kaplan: So that's also a lesson that you gotta know when to sell
• 22:32
  Sean Mike Kelly: Yeah, exactly.
• 22:32
  Sean Mike Kelly: My greed kicked in, and that's that's when I took a step back and realized, wow, this is a psychological game. It's a player versus player game. So
• 22:41
  Randall Kaplan: many things about life are about relationships. And for me, my ability to get into some of these crypto deals was because I had the resume to do it, and I had relationships. And if I didn't have them, people would find them for me. And people like to say, oh, Randy's got this. He's done this, and that it helps credibility if I'm in the deal and I was not promoting anything, but people would use my name. And so it allowed me to get into a lot of deals. We made money like you. We lost money as well. I mean, timing is everything right. These coins can go down 80% in a day, yep.
• 23:15
  Randall Kaplan: And, and they did. And the interesting thing, by the way, there isn't a single altcoin that has a single effect of use in the world today, not one that I can think of. Yeah.
• 23:24
  Sean Mike Kelly: I mean, you can argue Ethereum and Solana, but really, what is it? If you look at the bigger picture, you're right for sure.
• 23:30
  Randall Kaplan: So relationships have been a huge point. Has been a huge, important part of your success. Let's talk about your mother and speaking Mandarin and how you were able to take advantage of relationships in a very difficult time to get a certain product with supply chain issues.
• 23:48
  Sean Mike Kelly: Yeah, so I used to speak it fluently, actually, because she when I was a baby, I was in China for a couple years, but I forgot it because I just wasn't practicing. But my mother grew up in China, so she had connections and could speak it.
• 23:59
  Sean Mike Kelly: So during the pandemic, she had a friend at a big PPE company out there, I think one of the biggest in the world, called cinepharm, and she brokered some deals for me. You were able to get the math. Yeah, we were also an author. We signed with an authorized 3m distributor, so we were an affiliate for them.
• 24:18
  Sean Mike Kelly: Okay?
• 24:18
  Randall Kaplan: It was important to have credibility, to have 3m which was leading mask maker in the world, yep, n 95 mask. And there was another mask that was even more, I don't know what the word is, better than, than that,
• 24:31
  Sean Mike Kelly: uh, the medical grade one, yeah, there's n 95 Yeah, there was kn 95 which was the cheap stuff from China, right? And then n 95 which was from three, um, right.
• 24:41
  Randall Kaplan: Okay, so you see people needing this. You're reading about it. You can't get mass. Prices of mass have gone up three and four times, right?
• 24:47
  Randall Kaplan: Price gouging for people. And you say, hey, hey, Mom, can you give me some masks, or where'd the idea come from?
• 24:54
  Sean Mike Kelly: Yeah, no, literally, that I would see it in the news these hospitals and governments struggling to get masks. I'm like, why is that?
• 24:58
  Sean Mike Kelly: That shouldn't be an issue, and especially gloves, Nitro, gloves and gowns and stuff. So I just, my biggest skill is connecting people. So I knew I could, I could take advantage of that.
• 25:09
  Sean Mike Kelly: But here's the crazy part. On the $17 million Guess how much profit I'm in? 1.7 million because you had 10% margin. Wow.
• 25:15
  Sean Mike Kelly: How do you know that? Because I did my research on you. Oh, wow.
• 25:18
  Sean Mike Kelly: But yeah, you would assume it's way higher, though, right, right, if you just see that number. So I learned a lot from doing that, from cold calling and cold emailing. So
• 25:28
  Randall Kaplan: let's talk about that, because we cold call cold email now in a lot of our businesses. So tell us about the services you use, setting up Google Alerts. How important is to read the news and then react and say, Hey, what's going on here? And then walk us through the process. Because as I was reading about what you did, I said, shit, that's the exact same thing that we're doing.
• 25:49
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah,
• 25:51
  Sean Mike Kelly: those Google Alerts are. On, man, I do it with podcasting right now too.
• 25:54
  Randall Kaplan: So tell people what that is for. Don't know, and then what's the value of that and your success? Yes,
• 26:00
  Sean Mike Kelly: you could set up Google alerts for search terms. So I think mine were mask shortage, gown shortage, just any type of alert where a hospital or something, some company would need PPE. So as soon as an article would pop up, I would know within hours. Step one, yeah, so set that up.
• 26:18
  Sean Mike Kelly: Whatever business you're in, set that up, right for what your service is. Step two. Step two, I use Zoom info, so that's also similar to Google Alerts, but they set up. I forget what it's called. There's a term on Zoom info, but it's similar to Google News.
• 26:32
  Randall Kaplan: To do what, what was in zoom,
• 26:34
  Sean Mike Kelly: they would basically know if companies were in need of a certain product or service and rank it from zero to 100 on score. So I think it's based off if the company employee emails are searching terms on Google, they track all that, okay? So they'll know if a company is in need of a product or service, and it's really targeted, and it gives you their email to contact.
• 26:51
  Randall Kaplan: Okay, so emails are in zoom. We use Lucia, and we've used rocket reach, yeah, and we've used a whole bunch, and the cost is not allowed 50 to $100
• 27:01
  Sean Mike Kelly: a month. Yeah, same thing. I use Apollo now rocket reach, yeah, it's all the same. And, man, that's how I get a lot of podcasts, yes, too.
• 27:06
  Sean Mike Kelly: It's such a big database, you could sell anything on those.
• 27:09
  Sean Mike Kelly: Yeah.
• 27:11
  Randall Kaplan: I mean, we get emails daily. I'm sure you do too. We get emails for Salesforce customers or Salesforce people. And you can actually go and contact these companies and say, I want restaurant email list of people that manage restaurants or own restaurants.
• 27:28
  Sean Mike Kelly: You could use it for anything, man. So I host networking events. This is a bit of a tangent, but in a new city every month, and I get 500 people in the room every month with very little ad spend because of Apollo, I just email, right email campaign,
• 27:42
  Randall Kaplan: okay, so walk us next. So you've got, you got the search terms. You found a niche in the market. Yeah, you're reading about it every day. We are all reading about it. We're seeing it on the news every day, shortage, shortage, shortage.
• 27:54
  Randall Kaplan: You have the connections. You're now set up search terms where you're getting identifying potential customers. Then you have to find out the identity of the people at these companies.
• 28:08
  Randall Kaplan: So for those people who don't know who you're targeting, yeah, as your customer. Because not only the company, you're not going to target, the CEO. Target the CEO of the company. So who are you targeting? And then how do you determine that for me
• 28:20
  Sean Mike Kelly: and for PPE, at the time, it was chief procurement officer, because they have the final say in purchasing. If I couldn't get them, it'd be someone else in procurement and try to work my way up. And that was basically who I was looking to email or cold call. And it was just a numbers game, man. And just when you had the targeted leads, it made the number game a lot better, a lot easier. The close rate was pretty high. What
• 28:40
  Randall Kaplan: is the close rate? I mean, the close rate in that business, that specific time was a very unique period of time, yeah, the close rate is going to be massively high.
• 28:47
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, it's not. I mean, it's 90% plus. I would have said, once they realize that you have three on masks, yeah, and they're not counterfeit masks. Well, it
• 28:55
  Sean Mike Kelly: was, there was a lot of competition, but on the 3m side, it was definitely high.
• 28:57
  Sean Mike Kelly: But for other stuff, gowns and gloves, it was lower. It's a
• 29:02
  Randall Kaplan: one thing I learned at a young age. I was unsuccessful lawyer. I wrote 300 letters looking for a job.
• 29:08
  Randall Kaplan: Everyone said, You're crazy, writing to the CEOs of some of these biggest companies, and I got all of these meetings during that year long process, what I call a letter writing campaign, emailed a senior investment banker at Bear Stearns and just going through the meetings and said, Okay, well, I want to meet some more people. Who can you introduce me to? Because it's all about meeting people, shaking their hand and ask for the order. And he said, Well, I can't do that, but Bear Stearns has a very successful, well known media conference in Laguna Beach. And he said, If you want to hunt moose, go where the moose are. It was great advice.
• 29:49
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah. So because all the CEOs of companies were there, Michael Eisner, Sumner, Redstone, the head of every media company in the world. BMG, and I just went there armed and ready to roll. I mean, I was ready to just fire away. I met so many people. Got a ton of meetings there. Some people became my friends, nice, and it was really great. So talk to us. You mentioned conferences. What's your advice to people who want to get it and want to get in meet these people? Should they go to these conferences where there's 500 people? Can they really make a difference?
• 30:24
  Sean Mike Kelly: Here's the best hack I've ever seen. I've said it once you have to host dinners around these events, and it's going to be a hefty bill because you're paying for six to eight people, but the long term networking value from that dinner is amazing. So you want to invite the VIP guests or the speakers to the dinner and have that any conference you go to.
• 30:40
  Sean Mike Kelly: If you can't afford that, then offer to be a videographer of one of the speakers. Do it for free and just follow them around all day and meet people. So I'd say if you do one or two or both of those, you'll be in a good, good position.
• 30:52
  Randall Kaplan: But. Are you gonna invite people that you don't know? I mean, here, here's Randy Kaplan. No one knows who he is. You're going around and say, Hey, you want to come to a dinner at Carbone? Yeah, and people are gonna look at you.
• 31:04
  Randall Kaplan: I'm not going to that then. I mean, I didn't invite it to dinners before. Yeah, and I don't mean to be snooty about it, but I always want to know who else is there. And, by the way, it's rude to ask who is very rude. And there are times where I've been rude and I've done it because I don't want to sit there and say, Fuck. I really don't want to be here.
• 31:25
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, kids, and I like be home for dinner every night, and and it's, it's one of these things where I don't know if I should go. And then I'm always worried about, I mean, today I have a little bit of a name and have some kind of credibility. I've thought about doing that, but I haven't done it before. David Meltzer does it really well.
• 31:43
  Randall Kaplan: Have you been any of his? No, but I want to meet him. I know he's in Los Angeles, and I definitely want to get him on my show. Yeah. So
• 31:49
  Sean Mike Kelly: he does it phenomenally. So he'll do it in a new city, and then he'll charge people 1000 bucks. So he'll make 20, 50k every dinner, right? And he'll have a big celebrity there. So the 20 people, that's why they're paying to meet and be close with a celebrity like Drew Brees or someone, yeah, but yeah, I think for someone like you, it wouldn't work on but I think they can find six to 10 people at the conference, VIP attendees, or people in their industry, and just invite those guys start there.
• 32:13
  Randall Kaplan: You were a natural born entrepreneur, right? A lot of people are not.
• 32:19
  Randall Kaplan: So you never had a boss. You never worked for somebody else.
• 32:23
  Randall Kaplan: A lot of people think they don't want a boss either. So what are you telling the 18 year old kid or college graduate today? Say, I don't really want a real job.
• 32:34
  Randall Kaplan: I don't know what I want to do, and I don't want to be a slave, and sitting at a desk all day, should they go out on their guard and go start a new business? And can you learn to be an entrepreneur if you don't have the DNA? I
• 32:46
  Sean Mike Kelly: would say not at first to the first question, I look back at what I sacrificed. I had gray hairs at 21 I had no friends, wasn't close with my family, and just sacrificed so much, and was making 50k a year those first three years. So I would say to work for someone else at first, if I had to redo it again with with the knowledge I have now, would be a safer route. I like what Cody Sanchez kind of teaches people, which is get a job first. She's She made a, I think she saved a million or so working a nine to five, and then went out on her own and did her own stuff.
• 33:21
  Randall Kaplan: My goal was to make a million dollars before I was 30 years old. I think you made your first million at 24 years old. Yeah, 24 I believe.
• 33:26
  Randall Kaplan: And I thought, all right, I'm gonna I started as a lawyer. I figured, all right, well, I got to go make some money. I got to save money, and then I want to figure my not every year was$40,000 a year, and when I ultimately left, I didn't make a million dollars by the time I was 30, but I had 10 years to bet on myself because I'd saved$400,000 and I think it's really important that you have, if you have gone to college, you may have some debt. You got to pay off the debt. It's very, very risky to just say, I'm going to go do something.
• 33:59
  Sean Mike Kelly: Yep, agreed.
• 34:01
  Randall Kaplan: So does influencer marketing work today, I have a lot of friends who own companies that say, All right, you know, even people that own the company say, you know, it's really bullshit, but people are still paying for it, because everyone is doing corporate clients and say, well, we got to do it. Someone else is doing it.
• 34:16
  Randall Kaplan: Our competitors are doing it.
• 34:19
  Randall Kaplan: Does it work?
• 34:20
  Sean Mike Kelly: Not like it used to before you could just pay any influencer, have them promote any product. And there might be a good chance you make money, but now it really has to be aligned. But you do see, see some campaigns work out, but from an influencer point of view, it actually makes more sense for them to start their own company now, because they'll make way more than just getting paid to post a brand. Look at Logan Paul. Look at Mr. Beast.
• 34:39
  Sean Mike Kelly: Look at that girl, Emma Chamberlain, with the coffee company. There's so many other creators starting their own brands now, so I'd recommend influencers to do that instead of getting paid to post stuff they don't care about.
• 34:50
  Randall Kaplan: Is it more effective to have a star power like Ryan Reynolds or someone making you know as the face of a brand in the VC business. I always felt like it was very rare to have a celebrity promoter, because it's still the VC it's a very high risk game, but when it hits big, it hits big today. What do you think about the use of having stars to promote your brands? Do you need it to be successful? It doesn't really, I guess, is a question.
• 35:19
  Randall Kaplan: I don't think you need it.
• 35:21
  Sean Mike Kelly: It might help on the branding, and if you use it for ads in the right way, it might help. But look what Ryan did with his company. I mean, he sold for what, a billion dollars, yeah, the mobile company, so knocked out dude.
• 35:31
  Sean Mike Kelly: Yeah, I think he made $300 million on that deal. Crazy.
• 35:34
  Sean Mike Kelly: More from that than acting, I bet.
• 35:35
  Randall Kaplan: Oh for sure, yeah, not, not a bad and it's long term capital gain as well.
• 35:39
  Randall Kaplan: Oh,
• 35:40
  Sean Mike Kelly: yeah. So only like 15%
• 35:43
  Randall Kaplan: 20, 20% don't know where you live, yeah? You know, probably lives in Florida, Nevada, hopefully not. Cali.
• 35:49
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, hopefully not. Yeah, we pay, we pay a. A lot of tax How important is it for people to go and study their mentors, to learn when they're not in the classroom? People don't really do that. You did it, and it was like a class for you. You're taking notes on it, like it's a real class in school. What's your advice to people who are just not doing that and who really want to learn from from people who they may not be their personal mentors, but they can be your your mentors on YouTube, because you can learn a ton of things from them. It's
• 36:20
  Sean Mike Kelly: crazy to me that more people don't do that.
• 36:22
  Sean Mike Kelly: You're the most prepared man I've ever seen, by the way, so that's awesome. Thank you. But, uh, yeah, that's that's goals right there for real. I've never seen a host do that much preparation, so I think your show's gonna kill it.
• 36:31
  Randall Kaplan: I appreciate that thing.
• 36:33
  Sean Mike Kelly: Yeah, but for me, I still do it. I watch probably three podcasts a day right now, or I listen to an audio book, and I'm probably learning at least three to four hours a day. And back then it was way higher. It's probably eight to 12 hours a day, just videos, non stop TED Talk, scary v Patrick bet David Tom bill you and I attribute so much of my mindset to watching stuff like that. Really
• 36:54
  Randall Kaplan: want to talk about how has extreme preparation led to your success?
• 36:56
  Randall Kaplan: Can you talk about some examples about preparation getting results that would not have been possible had you not done it?
• 37:04
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah,
• 37:07
  Sean Mike Kelly: I think I'm a bit different with you in that regard. I know there's levels.
• 37:08
  Sean Mike Kelly: Bradley does no prep. I don't know if you knew that. No, I didn't drop in bombs. Yeah. So no prep. He gets a one cheater before the episode starts. And there's people that can pull that off. I'm somewhere in the middle between you and him. I'll do about an hour, I'd say, per guest, and I'll use AI. So I'm cheating a little bit, but I think it's a tool that everyone should use in the space just to learn faster. So I'll go through That's why I asked what shows you've been on? Because I went on them and used AI Okay, to summarize them for me, and then I took the most interesting points I found and came up with some questions. Gotcha. So that's my process.
• 37:43
  Randall Kaplan: You give a lot of advice on your show. You get a lot of you had, I don't know, 1000s of guests at this point.
• 37:49
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah. And I always find on my own show, I come in, and I come in with preconceived notions of what's worked for me, then I learn what's worked for people.
• 37:56
  Randall Kaplan: And that's really the goal of our shows, right? Is to bring people on from all walks of life, to motivate people to hear how they became successful. So taking all the data in your own success, what do you think are the three most important ingredients of success?
• 38:16
  Sean Mike Kelly: I'd say for me, because it's probably different for everyone, work ethic, mindset, and I'd say probably networking and connections, those are the three things that propelled me to where I am. So I'd focus on those. And it's been an interesting journey, because we had those, the trauma growing up. So I was not talkative at all. Like this is the fact I'm a podcaster is mind blowing. I was a huge introvert, super shy, didn't want to talk to anyone. So I think being able to adapt if I had a fourth one to add that's been major too.
• 38:49
  Sean Mike Kelly: Yeah,
• 38:51
  Randall Kaplan: my best friend, who knew me for a long time, said it's really amazing what you've done, Randy, because you started, you couldn't get like you couldn't go into a restaurant. Here you are. You got your own show. You're about to go out and do some paid corporate public speaking on topic of extreme preparation front of 1000s of people. But you've come a long way. I've come a long way. And it's been, it's been great. One of the most important things, I think, that people overlook, is the difference between positivity and negativity, and you are an incredibly negative, pessimistic person growing up, your girlfriend told you that. Yeah.
• 39:28
  Randall Kaplan: So explain why, and then explain kind of the lightning bolt that hit you and how you change, and how the change has affected your life, yeah, so
• 39:38
  Sean Mike Kelly: bad man, and you get normalized to it, right?
• 39:40
  Sean Mike Kelly: So both my parents and I hate to put blame on people, but this is kind of just what happened. So I would come home, I'd be one of the best athletes in school, so I could run a mile in four minutes, 40. So that's amazing.
• 39:48
  Sean Mike Kelly: Yeah, I could have probably went d1 and pursued that. But I would come home from a track meet tell my mom I won this race, got 440 she wouldn't give a shit. She would just say, like, Oh, good job. Not even that. So just any type of news to her was a negative reaction. And I think she got that from her parents, or something I don't know. And same with my dad. I could tell him anything, and just so pessimistic. And he left on really bad terms with his parents, so he brought that up every day, then his dad beat him every day. His dad beat him every day, and he just had so much trauma that he never dealt with. So you just always bring it up instead of addressing it, and just rubs off on me. So once I got out of that environment, and that's kind of mean to say, because my parents, but once I was on my own and with my girlfriend, anything she would tell me, negative response, isn't that crazy.
• 40:38
  Randall Kaplan: It'd be the best news, and you didn't know it at the time either. I didn't know don't recognize it's different subconscious.
• 40:44
  Sean Mike Kelly: It was so built into my subconscious, and she could be like, I aced this test my mom's doing. Well, just anything, and it'd be crazy. So I had to rewire my brain,
• 40:54
  Randall Kaplan: but it's hard to do. So I think that's very important, because a lot of people are very negative, yeah, very negative. But you can't just if you've been that way your whole life. So did you go to therapy to do this? Were you reading books on this? Were you meditating on this? Because it's, yeah, it's hard to do. I mean, that's super DNA.
• 41:12
  Sean Mike Kelly: It is super hard. I tried all of that therapy didn't really work on me. Books, I mean, they're good to know, but applying it is a whole different story. Just reps, just straight reps, just talking to 1000s of people at conferences. And now I can see subconscious cues and like body language reactions, so when I'm telling someone good news or bad news, and I can just see their reaction and know if they support me or not. I've trained myself to do that.
• 41:39
  Randall Kaplan: I think attitude is almost everything, right when you walk into work every day, if you're grumpy or have a negative reaction, have a frown on your face. Is contagious. And if you're a leader, people are following your mood, right? So I, as part of my coaching, I tell people, Hey, you shouldn't give a shit if you just had a fight with your wife, your kids, or you just blew a deal or something, you got to walk in with an attitude, regardless, a great attitude, regardless of what's going on in your life.
• 42:11
  Randall Kaplan: And you know, one of the most the most common asked question in the world is
• 42:19
  Sean Mike Kelly: attitude, how are you Oh, how are you right?
• 42:22
  Sean Mike Kelly: Most
• 42:22
  Randall Kaplan: commonly asked question in the world, and how many people get that wrong? So many people just say, good, right, right, good. To be 3.0 you wanna be a 3.0 is the easiest thing someone can do, walking into a room. How are you I'm getting by. I've had better days, you know, doing all right?
• 42:41
  Randall Kaplan: I can't get, you know, can't wait till I get off. Yeah, it should be. I'm doing phenomenal.
• 42:45
  Randall Kaplan: I'm great. I'm outstanding. I'm having an amazing day, even if you're not. No one gives a
• 42:51
  Sean Mike Kelly: shit. Yeah, no one cares. No one cares. That took me a while to realize they really don't. Yeah, and
• 42:56
  Randall Kaplan: it's the easiest thing to start off a meeting or anything or a greeting, and it takes no work, and most people will get it wrong, absolutely.
• 43:02
  Randall Kaplan: Ton, a ton of coaching on that.
• 43:06
  Randall Kaplan: That was
• 43:06
  Sean Mike Kelly: the biggest mindset shift for me, by the way, when I realized no one cares because they really don't.
• 43:11
  Sean Mike Kelly: Yeah, and it sucks to say, like, it sounds kind of negative, but it was. I just used to be scared of being judged a lot. So when I had that shift, it was Major,
• 43:19
  Randall Kaplan: by the way. I'm not saying fake it to make it.
• 43:21
  Randall Kaplan: I'm saying if you have close friends who you trust, girlfriend, wife, family, parents, people really care of you, I think it's important for you to tell them I'm not doing well right now. Yeah, because mental health is so important Absolutely, and I think people who care but just to employees or people you meet on the street, I just don't think I just have a different mentality in terms of how you should go about that. Before we finish today, I want to ask some more open ended questions. I call this part of my podcast. Fill in the blank the excellence. Are you ready to play? The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is,
• 44:02
  Sean Mike Kelly: wow, that's deep. Biggest lesson I've learned in my life, I'd say, to cherish life, because I mentioned earlier, I've had three near death experiences, and each one of those, if I died at that moment, I wouldn't have been fulfilled in my life,
• 44:13
  Randall Kaplan: my number one personal goal is have kids. My biggest regret is
• 44:21
  Sean Mike Kelly: not being closer with my father. My biggest fear is letting my fiance down.
• 44:29
  Randall Kaplan: The craziest thing that ever happened to me in my life is
• 44:34
  Sean Mike Kelly: crazy. I would say Trump, Trump were showing one of my jerseys at his rally.
• 44:38
  Sean Mike Kelly: One of
• 44:39
  Randall Kaplan: the things that we didn't talk about is how much revenue that actually generated from you. So why don't you tell everybody? Yeah,
• 44:46
  Sean Mike Kelly: it was six figures overnight, which at the time, I was 22 years old. So that was a lot of revenue for me.
• 44:51
  Randall Kaplan: The one thing I've dreamed about doing for a long time, but haven't, is go to space. It's possible now it is.
• 44:58
  Randall Kaplan: You're gonna do it.
• 45:00
  Sean Mike Kelly: We'll see. I got some flat earthers on the show saying there's no space.
• 45:01
  Sean Mike Kelly: Yeah,
• 45:04
  Randall Kaplan: no space. So where do they think all these SpaceX rockets? I don't know. 10 years from now, I want to be doing podcasting, if you could go back in time and give your 14 year old self one piece of advice. What would it be? Oh,
• 45:21
  Sean Mike Kelly: 14, so that's high school. Don't go to college.
• 45:27
  Randall Kaplan: What's the best advice you can give to 50 year old parents today?
• 45:33
  Sean Mike Kelly: Maintain your relationship with your kids. I think when they go off to college and they go out in the real world, a lot of parents are disconnected.
• 45:41
  Randall Kaplan: The best advice for a research the best advice for a recent 21 year old college graduate is
• 45:48
  Sean Mike Kelly: internship. I'm
• 45:51
  Randall Kaplan: going to ask you. Couple questions about internship now, just because we're on that topic, because we have one more question to go after this, cool internships are very competitive. This year for our program of 36 kids, we have 4000 applications. Dang. It's become a thing. Wow, that's hard to get a job. And it's a, it's a, it's a 12 week formal program. I spend 6090, minutes a day with the interns. Speakers come in each week. If you want to be a speaker, we'd love to have you, yeah, and I have a bunch of friends who will do this just because we're friends.
• 46:19
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, I'd love to support thank you, and that'll be really dope.
• 46:23
  Randall Kaplan: So I appreciate that. And I think internships are so important, they're so competitive to get so how does someone Citadel, for example, Ken Griffin's firm got 29,000 applicants for summer jobs last year. Holy crap. I mean, you can Google this. When I heard it was hard, I Yeah, you know, hopefully Ken will come on my show. I met him, asked him, really hope he does. So Ken, we're going to send you this, this clip, but I really want you to do my show. Please do my show. I think a lot of creativity will go into what's the best piece of advice you have for someone looking at Citadel working a jump this summer, how to stand out among the crowd? Yeah,
• 47:07
  Sean Mike Kelly: I didn't know the numbers were like that. When I said internship, I mainly meant just working under someone, being mentored by someone maybe for free. When I was just starting out, I emailed GaryVee and said I'd work for you for free, so I was willing to do that. Did he respond? He didn't. He didn't respond. I should find the email, hopefully I didn't delete it. But uh, yeah, for those companies, it'd be tough. I heard a lot of connections are involved at that level. Is that true? A lot of what like if you have personal connections with people at the company, at these
• 47:35
  Randall Kaplan: companies, you know, I think it varies. I think at our company, just because I know a lot of parents, and a lot of parents have kids looking for summer internships, yeah, we hire lead interns from the previous summer to run the program. They do all the sifting, interviewing, hiring. I want to empower them, lead interns, go on to do whatever they want to do. It's the only job that 19 year olds can't have the green light to hire someone and manage your peers. Got it so we've got kids working at Goldman Sachs and investment banking, which probably knows incredibly hard job to get. Matt Hickerson is here as my right hand person. He's sitting right there was an intern. Came dressed his first day in a suit and tie, did a test run from 90 minutes away to find out how he got to work. Wow, stayed late till 11 o'clock at night. When this is unpaid internship, you have to get credit for the internship. Yes. School credit, proactively send stuff. So I think, I think you got to do stuff like that stand out among the crowd to be the best 100%
• 48:43
  Sean Mike Kelly: I have personal assistants I'm interviewing after episodes today, and I didn't even look at their resumes, because I just would rather see what they're willing to do in person, right? Feel out their energy, right?
• 48:52
  Randall Kaplan: We look at the resumes, if there's a period out of place, if there's a comma where there shouldn't be, if the formatting is wrong, we don't even look. And what's crazy is, yeah. I mean, if they don't have that level of detail, these are easy things to fix, yeah, so would they be making careless errors at our company? I can't have them missing a period, a letter they're sending out to a client. It's a reflection on me.
• 49:16
  Randall Kaplan: It just looks terrible over a period. That's insane over a period, wow, right? And it's a resume. They're looking for a job. This is a job that's gonna put food on the table, pay the rent, pay their bills. Are gonna be spending more time at work than anywhere else, and if they can't see that a period's missing in the resume, something's fucking wrong. Yeah, I do not work. I do not want them working at our company.
• 49:36
  Randall Kaplan: They're not gonna work at the company. Yeah, and there are sources online Grammarly, which, if you're not have Grammarly on your computer, you're not working at our company either. I have that. It's good. There's no reason to have a spelling mistake, and there's no reason not to have a miss period, yeah, it makes you sound really intelligent. It's just, you know, there's no need for it.
• 49:55
  Randall Kaplan: These are low hanging fruit mistakes that nobody should make that could not only kill your chance for a job, but could kill your career, right? Just imagine, you're working at Goldman Sachs. You got a major presentation. You go in there.
• 50:07
  Randall Kaplan: You're meeting with David Solomon, the CEO. Takes you five years to get there. You go in with your PowerPoint presentation. There's a misspelled word. You're done.
• 50:17
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, done, done, absolutely.
• 50:21
  Randall Kaplan: What's the one question you wish I asked you but didn't?
• 50:27
  Sean Mike Kelly: Huh? One question. Oh, I guess what? What guest Do you want to get on your podcast,
• 50:33
  Randall Kaplan: besides me, what guests you want on your podcast, right?
• 50:37
  Sean Mike Kelly: It's gotta be Rogan man. I grew up watching him with my dad. We watched every single episode growing up for five years straight. So he's the goat to me.
• 50:44
  Randall Kaplan: You have the ability now, you have the clout, I'm sure, to get to him. So what's the plan there?
• 50:50
  Sean Mike Kelly: Yeah, so just my plan with these. Big guess is to get people around them first establish credibility, have those people have great experiences on the show, and then eventually I'll go for the ask. I'd say within three years, we'll be on Yeah,
• 51:03
  Randall Kaplan: I'm also guessing Joe's gonna be on my show. Within three years, I'm gonna have Tony Robbins, Milan musk, you
• 51:08
  Sean Mike Kelly: already had Dana, so
• 51:10
  Randall Kaplan: you're right there. Yeah, Dana was great.
• 51:12
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, yeah, super pumped. So appreciate you being on my show.
• 51:17
  Randall Kaplan: I'm a you fan Sean, and I think this is great. We learned a ton about you, and I think people are really gonna love it. Yeah, it was cool to get that side out of me. Yeah, good job, man.
• 51:25
  Randall Kaplan: Yeah, I appreciate you. Thanks for
• 51:26
  Unknown: being here. Yep, you.