Latest / Founder Mode / Uh-Oh Everything's Broken with Jonathan Sturgeon

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Uh-Oh Everything's Broken with Jonathan Sturgeon · Founder Mode

• 0:00
  I feel like I built my businesses in the dark without
• 0:03
  doing social media and nothing. We just picked up the phone and
• 0:05
  sent emails, right? And when I joined Hampton, I
• 0:08
  didn't know that community existed.
• 0:09
  And then I noticed that everybody was doing this
• 0:11
  personal brand thing. And I see the value in it, but
• 0:14
  I'm like I already lost. This episode of Founder Mode is
• 0:32
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• 0:33
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• 0:50
  and scaling early stage companies, Winston Francois gets
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• 1:00
  Accelerate your growth at WF dot team slash podcast.
• 1:04
  That's WF dot TE AM/POD CAST. Hey, welcome to Founder mode.
• 1:11
  Yeah. Where we talk to interesting
• 1:12
  people going a little bit against the grain.
• 1:14
  Dude, today's episode's going to be interesting for sure.
• 1:17
  And his guest runs a design agency, IT firm and know somehow
• 1:21
  tells people to unfollow him. Yeah.
• 1:23
  He's proof that you don't need an audience to scale, you just
• 1:26
  need clarity, systems and a pretty good sense of humor.
• 1:30
  Jason, so you've got this strategy when you sell that's
• 1:33
  Jonathan has his anti sales strategy.
• 1:35
  What's yours and and how have you sort of done this?
• 1:37
  Yeah. So over the years building
• 1:40
  building my consultancy, I have sent a number of emails to
• 1:44
  founders and CEOs after using their products and have said,
• 1:48
  hey, this is broken. This doesn't work.
• 1:50
  One of my favorite ones is I was working with a Neo bank and I
• 1:54
  had $1,000,000 of cash in their online checking account for my
• 1:58
  business, right? Which let's not even talk about
• 2:00
  treasury and why that's a bad idea.
• 2:02
  But things were blowing up. Things were going well.
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  There's $1,000,000 in this account and I reached out to the
• 2:08
  founder because I couldn't like easily get a check, like a
• 2:12
  checkbook and write a check and pay someone with a check.
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  And I was like, hey, I think I've outgrown your little bank
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  and here's all the reasons why. And it wasn't just the check
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  thing. There were several other
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  features that they just didn't. Have that like regular.
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  Banks have and so I emailed them all the bullets of hey, This is
• 2:26
  why I'm I'm leaving like the subject when I was leaving in
• 2:28
  the name of the company and he wrote back and he's like, whoa,
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  hey, this is really great feedback and like I just
• 2:34
  LinkedIn stock to you and it seems like you know a few things
• 2:36
  about growth and marketing and stuff.
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  Could you maybe help us? I was like, sure.
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  And then that turned into a six figure consulting deal.
• 2:43
  No joke. Jonathan's a boundary.
• 2:44
  Who's behind two really, really cool growing companies and, you
• 2:49
  know, built without the hype and the noise, and it doesn't
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  really, you know, performative post on social media.
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  And that'll, I think, in a sense will be a pretty interesting
• 2:56
  topic. Yeah.
• 2:57
  He calls himself a little bit of an anti influencer, but his
• 3:00
  playbook appears to be working. You want to get into it.
• 3:02
  Yeah, let's do it. Welcome to Founder mode.
• 3:15
  Welcome to my dungeon, the best. We invited you on Jonathan.
• 3:19
  One, you're in this awesome founder community with us called
• 3:21
  Hampton and two, you are like maybe the weirdest guy on
• 3:25
  LinkedIn. You might be like the doing the
• 3:28
  your headline is something to the effect of decrease your
• 3:31
  reach. Unfollow me to learn how to
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  decrease your reach and ruin your personal brand.
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  And I there's something about that's just really admirable.
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  So maybe we could just start with what the heck is going on?
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  Can you help us? We're just two regular guys
• 3:42
  trying to grow our reach. We're doing it wrong on
• 3:44
  LinkedIn. Figure this out.
• 3:45
  I feel like I built my businesses in the dark without
• 3:49
  doing social media and nothing. We just picked up the phone and
• 3:51
  sent emails, right? And when I joined Hampton, I
• 3:53
  didn't know that community existed.
• 3:55
  And then I noticed that everybody was doing this
• 3:56
  personal brand thing. And I see the value in it, but
• 3:59
  I'm like, I already lost. I feel like that it's over.
• 4:02
  And when you see people trying to become famous, I'm like, wow,
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  what a loser. And then there's people in
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  Hampton. I'm not going to name names that
• 4:11
  are way more successful than me. And then I happen to have three
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  more followers than them, but they're trying.
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  And I'm like, it just feels off to me because I'm like, and then
• 4:19
  there's something also real about the fact that, yeah, who
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  cares, man? I think if you always talk about
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  the thing that you're trying to do and you're like keep posting,
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  keep trying, keep posting, eventually you stop talking
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  about what you're actually doing.
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  You're talking about the function of posting and trying
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  to get engagement and whatever. So it is a critique on us
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  founders being like, what are we doing?
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  Just if you wanna make a sale, just call someone.
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  You can go ask for the credit card now instead of hoping that
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  you have an audience, even though I do see the value of it.
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  And wouldn't it be cool if we could just post and get a
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  million customers? Yes.
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  You can, it's just got to be a really particular post.
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  Yeah, I I think that the other thing too that bugs me is some
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  people are doing a rage bait at all costs.
• 5:01
  No, So they're like, they're literally like, have you seen
• 5:03
  this guy? I made fun of him the other day.
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  I don't know if you saw my post, but he takes a screenshot of the
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  celebrity like Cody Sanchez or whatever, Samuel.
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  And then he see puts a big red arrow and says stop doing this.
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  And then he gives us like, yeah, all this.
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  I. Trolled that guy too.
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  Yeah, yeah. And then he has another pose
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  where he's like, look at all these impressions.
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  I'm like, who cares, man? What are you doing?
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  Just. Yeah, this one and where this
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  got really bad was when X first turned on monetization, people
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  were going crazy to hit the five million impressions.
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  And it was all about like, what would you say the most negative
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  thing or rage thing to like people to comment and get
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  impression? And it's like, what?
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  Get 12 bucks from Eli? Like, come on, like doesn't make
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  sense. Dude, And so doing all this
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  stuff to your point, like you're not trying to grow your
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  businesses or you are, you have two businesses.
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  Can you just help people know what are you doing?
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  What are you working? On Dude Kevin, you put scaled
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  Microsoft in your thing. That makes me feel really bad
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  about myself. Thanks a lot.
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  What truth? The truth hurts.
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  John I know, crazy, but then I feel.
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  Bad because I feel like I'm trying because you said people
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  that are trying, I'm like, I just tried to shoot without
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  there's. We're both trying.
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  We're here on a podcast interviewing him, and then he's
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  turning around. He's asking us questions.
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  We're pointing the camera back at you, man.
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  I do respect you less for being more successful.
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  There is something there. Challenge accepted.
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  This whole thing, like when did you decide, OK, so you said I
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  joined Hampton. I realized all these people
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  built their personal brands. It's over for me.
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  There's no way I'm going to do it at this point, so I'm just
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  going to do the opposite. It's kind of you said, yeah, but
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  then but in service of what it sounds like nothing but you also
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  have these couple of companies you're running.
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  So what's the point of it all? I decided to just have fun with
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  it and make myself laugh and sometimes, like my wife's not on
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  the Internet, but sometimes I'll show her a screenshot and she'd
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  be like Oh my God. Oh my God, that's so funny.
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  Or Oh my God, what are you doing?
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  Dude, you know the answer. It's like just saying why are we
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  still married? Oh my.
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  God, it can't be the only thing that comes up.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a trend.
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  So I mean, look, the truth is that I posted a picture of a
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  Beluga the other day and I said I've never made money on
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  LinkedIn. And then some guy offered to
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  Venmo me some money. So there's, there's something
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  there. You know, I did do AI did spend
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  2 weeks begging influencers for $20 to see if they'll do it.
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  And some of them were like, cuz you know, like people that have
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  screenshots, I think this is the, the most humanizing thing
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  ever. They post a screenshot of how
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  amazing they are and how much money they make.
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  I'm like, oh, that's awesome. Can I have 20 bucks?
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  And then you. And then you find out who they
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  really are. Dude, we had an employee once
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  that we joked he was the kind of guy where if you have 10 sticks
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  of gum, well, you, you give me one and you're like, yeah, sure.
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  He's like, if you have $10, will you give me one?
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  We're like, yeah, sure. And he's like, if you have 10
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  million, will you give me one? And we're like, I don't know,
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  like the 20 million returns. Depends how big the check is I
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  guess. I'm not gay, but $1,000,000 is
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  $1,000,000. So yeah, I have two businesses,
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  the one that I came in from Hampton on.
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  I've been an entrepreneur my whole life.
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  I'm unemployable, I have ADHD. I should be in prison.
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  Did you know that most people in prison are ADHD?
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  Really, it's a thing. And they're smartest.
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  Yeah, but they, so I came in with Dingus and Zazzy, which is
• 7:54
  my marketing company. What's Dingus?
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  Dingus is it's an insult from most people think I took it from
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  The Simpsons, but I actually took it from Doctor Steve Bruhl.
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  You know that guy? I learned something you got You
• 8:05
  guys are too cultured. Don't Google it.
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  It's like brain rot from perfect to 20 years ago.
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  And Zazzy is from another TV show.
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  I forget and they're dead but and that's why me and.
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  They're your cats. They were your cats though,
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  yeah? It's funny cuz you and I, we
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  bonded. Yeah, I have the dog company,
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  you have the cat company. My dogs are still alive, just
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  hanging on. Barely.
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  Yeah. We moved houses and moved to the
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  country and then they wanted to go out and then they must have
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  got eaten by an eagle or something.
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  I don't know, dude. I've always wanted to ask you,
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  Winston Francois, is there 'cause I'm French.
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  So in my mind, I'm like, is there like a a British, France,
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  French, English angle in that? Or what basically.
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  So my wife when I met her had had Frank Francois, the
• 8:48
  Frenchie. He's a French bulldog.
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  They're both French Bulldogs. And she's like, I always wanted
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  to get another one and name him. And so it was after the French
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  philosopher Francois Leotard 'cause my wife's super bougie
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  and he was like a purse dog and the whole thing.
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  And then we got Winston together after we started dating.
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  And so Winston is the Winston Churchill.
• 9:06
  He's also a French bulldog, but he has floppy ears and he kind
• 9:08
  of looks like a mini English dude.
• 9:10
  I could never. Imagine your dogs being purse
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  dogs. They're big.
• 9:13
  You look like Frank was a puppy. He would fit in a big purse.
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  You look like the kind of guy who would have an Instagram for
• 9:18
  their. Dogs.
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  Yeah, of course she did have one.
• 9:20
  I I should, I should have, but I never got it going.
• 9:24
  Yeah, totally on point. But I got A tag on that,
• 9:26
  Jonathan, because you keep turning this around, which is
• 9:28
  really cool, but you have this thing that you do on LinkedIn,
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  and I'm guessing you're going to start doing it on Twitter, too.
• 9:32
  Every time Sam Parr posts, you respond with Sam's the kind of
• 9:36
  guy that blank and like and he at the same time Sam sometimes
• 9:40
  like calls you out, shouts you out and he's like, that's so
• 9:42
  cool, that's great. And like he seems to love you
• 9:43
  and the trolling of him doesn't seem to bother him.
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  So I want to understand the strategy behind the same.
• 9:49
  Troll. It's there's no strategy.
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  I just And The funny thing is that LinkedIn learned that all I
• 9:54
  care about is Sam Parr, so now I'm always first to market every
• 9:57
  time you post. It's your #first.
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  And you're the first thing that he probably your friends.
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  You're like you're seeing each other's posts every morning.
• 10:04
  Yeah, I don't know. I just when I joined Hampton, I
• 10:07
  had no idea what my first million was.
• 10:09
  I had no idea who Sam was. The first thing I did is I came
• 10:11
  in and like, dude, you're just an AI, you're not here.
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  Who are you? And he like responded with a
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  million spelling mistakes, probably to try to prove how
• 10:18
  human he was and how fast he was moving.
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  But I just felt I'm like, OK, all these people love this guy.
• 10:22
  He's probably really cool. I actually started before I
• 10:25
  started doing that, I was like, I was writing things like, hey,
• 10:28
  Sam, this is a great post. But by the way, you left your
• 10:31
  Pokémon Snap video game at my house when you came over last
• 10:34
  weekend. Is there any chance you could
• 10:35
  pick it up? I don't want to be responsible
• 10:37
  if it gets lost in a couch cushion or something.
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  And my for again, it's just me trying to like, you know what,
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  this came out. This came from high school.
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  We used to do this in high school.
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  There would be the cool kids and we were not them.
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  And we would go to Devon and be like, hey, man, you still coming
• 10:51
  to Dungeons and Dragons this weekend?
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  And he would like look at his friends.
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  I'm not going with them. And then we would just walk
• 10:56
  away. And then so we would try to
• 10:58
  implicate people. It's kind of like when you call
• 11:00
  somebody a Nazi, you have to defend your I'm not a Nazi.
• 11:02
  So in the same way, if you call out an influencer and say, hey
• 11:06
  man, you left your sweater, your Harry Potter sweater at my
• 11:09
  house. Mix also there was.
• 11:11
  A guy that was just calling him out on all kinds of stuff.
• 11:13
  Yeah, he was actually being mean.
• 11:15
  And to Nick Hubert, I'm like, I'm gonna take this idea.
• 11:17
  And I gave him credit. I actually, I messaged him.
• 11:19
  I'm like, dude, I think you're hilarious.
• 11:20
  I'm gonna steal your shtick and bug Stampar with this.
• 11:22
  And then I do it in a way that is poking fun at the fact that
• 11:26
  he's just a human and he probably wipes his ass just like
• 11:28
  us. But he I feel like he just has
• 11:30
  all these people that wanna be his friend, and I just wanna
• 11:33
  bring him down a notch and remind him that he's just one of
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  us in the end. And then you guys hugged it out,
• 11:38
  right? You had a ground rule before we
• 11:40
  started. You don't want to talk about
• 11:42
  artificial intelligence area, right?
• 11:43
  So I did and that means I have to put a dollar in the swear
• 11:46
  jar. But I want to talk about the
• 11:48
  businesses that you've started a little bit.
• 11:49
  So people that are listening aren't like, what am I?
• 11:51
  What have I gotten myself into? The thing that I remember most
• 11:54
  about you when I first met you is that you have built this
• 11:57
  crazy kind of almost Wolf of Wall Street boiler room cold
• 12:01
  calling culture in I think now both of your companies, but
• 12:03
  definitely in Dingus and Zazi, which is when I first learned
• 12:05
  about it. And you basically have been able
• 12:07
  to build these businesses on the back of like just sending tons
• 12:11
  of cold e-mail and cold LinkedIn and cold phone calls and getting
• 12:15
  clients who have never heard of you before.
• 12:18
  You seem like the kind of guy that that's not going to work on
• 12:20
  everybody. Jonathan's the kind of guy that
• 12:22
  would offend some portion of the population.
• 12:24
  But the ones that aren't offended decide to hire you
• 12:26
  guys. Like how did we get here?
• 12:27
  Answer the wolf of Wall Street thing like we it was it's a real
• 12:30
  thing like we got evicted from our Co working space.
• 12:34
  So we there was a Co working space and we had the majority of
• 12:37
  it, but there was all these other like real companies like
• 12:39
  taxes, accounting, like there's a massage like a therapy place.
• 12:44
  So we were screaming all day, hitting the gong, yelling and
• 12:47
  just having fun. But then finally they sent us a
• 12:50
  screenshot of a another tenant that said, hey, they meant this
• 12:54
  as an insult, but they said it. This is like a 10 year old's
• 12:56
  birthday party meets Wolf of Wall Street.
• 12:58
  This needs to stop. And I was like, Oh my God, this
• 13:00
  is the most. So we it actually forced me to
• 13:03
  buy a commercial building and I've got it cash.
• 13:06
  It was a really good deal. Everything works out for a good
• 13:08
  reason. But I had to pivot because I
• 13:10
  live in the middle of nowhere, La Duke, Alberta.
• 13:12
  You've never heard of it And it's a suburb of Edmonton and
• 13:15
  there's only so much population that is even willing.
• 13:18
  It's cold, man. But it's freezing, man.
• 13:20
  It's -7 today, I think I'm the northernmost Hampton member.
• 13:24
  There's Lavon, who's in Estonia, but he doesn't live there.
• 13:26
  He lives in America. And then it's just me at the top
• 13:29
  of the world. So figuratively and literally,
• 13:31
  there it is. So I hired, actually hired VP of
• 13:34
  sales who was the VP of sales for Hampton, David Dollar, who's
• 13:38
  not Jewish, by the way, with that name.
• 13:39
  I'm like how? He's just a regular white guy
• 13:41
  with the name Dollar. And and so he's in Atlanta and
• 13:46
  he was like, he found it difficult to have half of his
• 13:49
  team remote and then half in person.
• 13:51
  So we ended up doing everybody remotes and it did take a little
• 13:54
  bit of wind out of the sails of of the culture.
• 13:58
  Like you can't be at home with your cat and be like freaking
• 14:01
  out. So that did do some damage to
• 14:04
  that fun culture. But at the same time though,
• 14:06
  like there is a part of me that's like, I would have people
• 14:08
  being like, this is a liability. You can't do this, you can't do
• 14:10
  that. You're right.
• 14:11
  This is not a good idea. We're running it.
• 14:13
  Let's cut some of the shenanigans.
• 14:15
  So hopefully that answers that part of that.
• 14:17
  What kind of crazy stuff have you guys seen in this IT kind of
• 14:19
  world so far? I'll answer it in a different
• 14:21
  way. So the way that it came out came
• 14:24
  to be was that I have a marketing company and in it
• 14:27
  sounds down now and boring, but back when we were doing like
• 14:30
  unlimited marketing for the entire month, people paid a flat
• 14:34
  rate. If Oprah came to sign up, we
• 14:36
  would charge her the same thing. That was revolutionary back
• 14:38
  then. And there was a huge pylon.
• 14:40
  And everybody told me like it wasn't possible.
• 14:43
  And I knew it was a dumb idea, but I just went with it anyways.
• 14:46
  But it did work out. It was almost like, it's like a
• 14:48
  gym membership where there's a couple of meatheads that should
• 14:51
  that are there all the time. And then I have a membership I
• 14:53
  should go more often. And they you kind of bank on the
• 14:55
  fact that no, not everybody shows up at once.
• 14:57
  The breakage model. Yeah, so that worked out.
• 15:00
  It went well. It's an 8 figure business with
• 15:02
  over 100 people. But one thing I hate about
• 15:05
  marketing is that you could be amazing at doing what your job,
• 15:09
  but the person on the other end could just not like it because
• 15:11
  they're having a different, they're just having that kind of
• 15:14
  day. Whereas IT so I was looking at
• 15:17
  everything in my business. I'm like, what would I cry?
• 15:19
  Like if would I have a funeral? If this person, this department
• 15:23
  like, you know, I was like, what is the thing that I actually
• 15:25
  need? That's binary.
• 15:27
  And then I landed on IT because I'm like, Oh my God, I'm never
• 15:29
  mad at my IT guy unless he's slow.
• 15:32
  But everything is either done or it's not done.
• 15:35
  It's. Binary.
• 15:35
  Binary, yeah. Yeah.
• 15:37
  So there's no more opinions. There's no more.
• 15:38
  Objective. It's one or zero.
• 15:40
  Exactly. So me and my Co founder Deep,
• 15:43
  who is my IT guy, we decided to pull in Erica, my COO.
• 15:46
  So there's three of us, three Co founders from DNZ.
• 15:49
  So we have the same DNA. There's still like a lot of fun
• 15:53
  that's being brought over, but it is, yeah, a lot of poop
• 15:55
  jokes. And we bought the domain.
• 15:56
  We bought it for $73,000, which I think is a great deal, I
• 16:00
  think. It's a great deal, yeah.
• 16:01
  I would have guessed more than 100 easily.
• 16:03
  Yeah, it's a Chachi PT didn't the average is like 200,000 for
• 16:07
  a four letter domain that is that means something that's not
• 16:10
  just an acronym. And so the idea that we're doing
• 16:13
  is it's a managed service provider, it's an MSP, it's AIT
• 16:17
  company where we fix printers, but we don't do it in person.
• 16:20
  So we're not going to drive to someone's house.
• 16:22
  Everything is remote and we're working with teams that have
• 16:24
  Slack or they have agencies or whatever.
• 16:26
  But the big differentiator that we're doing right now is that I
• 16:29
  took it a step further, OK, I believe that I'm the only
• 16:33
  company on planet Earth right now that does a free trial.
• 16:36
  First of all, for IT. Nobody's doing that.
• 16:38
  They it's all requested quote. Then they look at your head
• 16:40
  count and they're like, how much can I get from this guy?
• 16:42
  So not only is there a free trial, but on top of that, when
• 16:46
  they're done with this, you get to choose the price that you
• 16:49
  think it's worth. And you can never hate the
• 16:51
  price. It came from your own brain.
• 16:52
  I have to ask this. Then Kevin will do your trial.
• 16:56
  He will then sign up for $1.00. Paying Hampton members right
• 17:00
  now. $1.00 a month is that but if?
• 17:01
  Somebody, yeah, somebody goes and does the trial and then pays
• 17:04
  you a dollar. You're just like, do they do
• 17:05
  that? Do the service scale to a dollar
• 17:07
  level or how do you? You can only afford a dollar, so
• 17:09
  go tell all your rich friends about how crazy we.
• 17:11
  Are, but I'm saying like Kevin's not poor and he might only pay a
• 17:14
  dollar. How do you think rich people got
• 17:15
  rich, John? No, it's funny because so far
• 17:19
  I'm not going to tell you the range 'cause I don't want to
• 17:21
  actually muddy the water. It'll change the.
• 17:23
  But it's so far it's been super reasonable.
• 17:26
  People are picking real prices that.
• 17:28
  People are. Picking real prices, high
• 17:29
  integrity. However, like we put this in the
• 17:32
  FAQ, it's like when you're taking your kids out trick or
• 17:35
  treating for Halloween that some people leave a basket of candy.
• 17:37
  Most kids are taking one or two, but then you got that one
• 17:40
  emptied into his bag. And I'm building that into my
• 17:43
  projections where I'm like, eventually somebody's going to
• 17:45
  come gut us. But I have a story to tell now.
• 17:48
  And I reached out to a few like keynote stages and some PR like
• 17:52
  myself. I didn't go through APR company.
• 17:54
  I'm just messaging myself and I'm like, like this is radical,
• 17:57
  right? Put me on a stage, let's talk
• 17:59
  about this. And there's been very good
• 18:00
  interest. It's a warm up.
• 18:01
  I like the idea. Like what?
• 18:02
  So like how do tickets? I'm like nerdy out like this.
• 18:05
  Like I see all this in my inbox and I'm like, I need like an IT
• 18:07
  guy to go fix it. I'm going to end up doing it or
• 18:08
  I give it to one of my VAS. Like how do people file tickets?
• 18:11
  They send you emails, they go, what access do you have to have?
• 18:13
  Do you need the keys to the castle?
• 18:15
  Hey. Here's another Yeah, here's
• 18:16
  another way where I think we kick ass.
• 18:18
  OK, Yeah. As a founder, do you think that
• 18:20
  I want to go and submit a ticket?
• 18:22
  No, no. So I want to talk to a guy and
• 18:24
  be like, can you help me? And they submit, like they'll
• 18:27
  submit the ticket for me and they keep track of it for me.
• 18:30
  I don't want to go to some website and fill out a form.
• 18:32
  No, I know that's what you should do.
• 18:34
  But right now we're in their Slack and they're like, hey, I'm
• 18:36
  having trouble with this. We make the ticket for them and
• 18:39
  track it and keep them updated. We're the ones Slack to Slack.
• 18:42
  Yeah. And then how do you deal with
• 18:43
  access? Do I have to share like my login
• 18:45
  to everything or what's that like?
• 18:46
  How do you actually get the work done?
• 18:47
  That's a very good question because it's very trust based.
• 18:50
  Yeah, with a free trial. That's the other reason why I
• 18:53
  think we're gonna dominate, because we show people how
• 18:56
  responsive we are, how competent we are, and we earn trust after
• 19:00
  30 days. But during the first 30 days,
• 19:02
  we're usually picking some small projects that don't require us
• 19:06
  to have your Google Admin access to start helping.
• 19:08
  Some people have signed up with Hampton and they just know me.
• 19:11
  But outside of that, the free trial is where the trust is
• 19:14
  built. And then the people that we have
• 19:15
  working on our team are people that have my banking
• 19:18
  information. And it's a very high level of
• 19:21
  trust. And that's something that's
• 19:23
  interesting. When I was starting this
• 19:25
  business, I was like, I think we need to be serious because we're
• 19:29
  dealing with cybersecurity. We're dealing with people
• 19:30
  getting phishing emails or whatever.
• 19:32
  And just to ship it, we launched this page and we put a bunch of
• 19:36
  jokes in it because I can't help myself.
• 19:39
  So at the bottom of our page, there's me and my designer we
• 19:41
  were talking about, there's a Pierce Morgan, Jordan Peterson
• 19:44
  interview where he's all beet red and he's like yelling and
• 19:47
  pointing. So we use that as inspiration.
• 19:49
  And at the bottom of the page, it's we're like, click this
• 19:51
  button, do it. And then Sam out of nowhere, I
• 19:54
  didn't ask him to do this. He like threatened me that I owe
• 19:57
  him a favor. I never asked him, but he posted
• 19:59
  it on X and then it went viral. We had a buttload of sign ups
• 20:02
  and then Jason, freed from base camp, was retweeting it.
• 20:05
  And there's still people tweeting about it.
• 20:07
  And it's crazy because me and my designer and our team were
• 20:10
  laughing because we never tried. Like we, we could never create
• 20:14
  this moment. It's just lightning in a bottle.
• 20:15
  It's here now, gone forever. We could never have anybody care
• 20:19
  about it, ever. Again, is there of what you do
• 20:21
  or don't do? Hey, you'll change my DNS,
• 20:22
  change my thing. What is the like limit of like,
• 20:24
  hey, go reconfigure my Linux boxes?
• 20:26
  Is there like a where you guys think about where it some of
• 20:29
  these MSPs are like can do lots of things, some are just like
• 20:31
  e-mail and like website stuff. Yeah, we've said no to certain
• 20:34
  things and have passed them on to like much bigger experienced
• 20:37
  firms for like migration, like it.
• 20:39
  Like for example, somebody came to us and they wanted to merge 2
• 20:42
  businesses from different continents with all like 1000
• 20:45
  employees and we're like, dude, are you kidding?
• 20:46
  Imagine you're charging a dollar a month for that.
• 20:48
  We say no to those kind of things and anything that has to
• 20:51
  do with in person, if somebody wants like, yeah, of course
• 20:53
  physically a tech guy to come and turn it on and off again,
• 20:56
  then it's not for us. We also, we met with an oil and
• 20:58
  gas company and they were technically a good fit.
• 21:02
  But I find that if they're not an Internet company and they're
• 21:05
  like a warehouse or their guys don't have Slack and they just
• 21:08
  e-mail each other, we're gonna say no because it's like putting
• 21:11
  your digital pants on. If we have to get you dressed in
• 21:14
  the morning to talk to us, then we're not gonna show value for
• 21:18
  that. But grinding the phones and like
• 21:19
  cold calling same model to build clients like from this side.
• 21:23
  No, because we have had our plate full just from word of
• 21:27
  mouth and all that stuff. But I do plan on, I do plan on
• 21:31
  doing the same exact thing, building a call center and
• 21:35
  calling people. I just, I just love it.
• 21:37
  Honestly. It's just it's fun.
• 21:39
  Like you, I look at everybody else talk.
• 21:41
  About it a little bit. So like you're wearing the cold
• 21:43
  calling headset right now. So like for those who have never
• 21:45
  done cold calling ever, and there's a lot of founders who
• 21:49
  are like, I'm never going to do that.
• 21:50
  That's wrong. But it's gross.
• 21:51
  I don't like it. But you're like a huge advocate
• 21:53
  of it, so can you. Yeah, because it's recession
• 21:55
  proof. It's I'm not worried about an ex
• 21:57
  COVID or whatever because you can dial your way out of
• 22:00
  problems. You could interrupt your way to
• 22:02
  a billion dollars like you're just X amount of calls.
• 22:04
  Whereas anybody who's building their audience and trying to
• 22:07
  post every day, they're just crossing their fingers.
• 22:09
  Whereas you could just call somebody and be like, hey, look,
• 22:11
  man, I know I'm calling you out of the blue.
• 22:12
  I know I'm catching you off guard.
• 22:13
  Give me 30 seconds. I'll tell you why I called.
• 22:15
  Excellent. I deal with, I talked to CMOS
• 22:17
  all the time, man. They deal with XY and Z.
• 22:19
  And I know you can relate to at least one of these.
• 22:21
  Which one stood out to you the most?
• 22:22
  We're digging up the pain. And as soon as the pain comes
• 22:25
  up, then we stop talking. Dude, I know you're at Costco.
• 22:27
  You're buying $1.50 hotdog like I caught you off guard.
• 22:29
  We're not here to solve the world's problems.
• 22:31
  Let's book a time tomorrow. I have two PM, 3:00 PM.
• 22:33
  Because of the whole, you got to treat them like a toddler and
• 22:35
  not give them any other options. Which one works best for you?
• 22:37
  And then, oh, by the way, you're going to be meeting with my
• 22:39
  director. He runs Winston Francois.
• 22:41
  He has a $50.00 gift card for you.
• 22:43
  It could be like Amazon, Starbucks, Nintendo, whatever
• 22:46
  you want, and I know your time's worth more, but it's a token of
• 22:50
  my appreciation for you. Just taking the time.
• 22:52
  Get them to confirm the meeting, they show up on the call and
• 22:54
  then during that call, it's all scripted.
• 22:57
  It's science. It's literally we have a script.
• 23:00
  All our sales people are saying the exact same thing.
• 23:03
  So it's like a mathematical thing.
• 23:05
  At 4:00 PM everyday, all the sales people get together and
• 23:08
  they listen to their game tape and say, why did you steer away
• 23:10
  from here? Oh, you thought he was
• 23:12
  important? No, the script doesn't change
• 23:14
  just because you're meeting with the guy who has that kind of
• 23:16
  face. And I agree with you like for
• 23:17
  the what you guys do, the thing we can't talk about doesn't
• 23:21
  really work that well for high intent.
• 23:22
  We're almost out of time, John. This has been actually really
• 23:25
  interesting. Give us the hey where?
• 23:27
  We blame you. I honestly I would love to hang
• 23:28
  out with. Me, yeah, no, I'm just being
• 23:30
  nice. We say that to everybody like
• 23:31
  it's been like mediocre, but cool, cool.
• 23:34
  But, you know, tell us where you're going next.
• 23:36
  Like what? So after you've got Dingus and
• 23:38
  Zazi, you got what's the next big thing for the Jonathan
• 23:41
  Sturgeon Albanian Enterprise I? Don't know the answer to that
• 23:44
  question. I don't think like that.
• 23:45
  I personally think I literally made a neon sign that's in the
• 23:48
  other room that says we're all gonna die.
• 23:50
  And I made it in pink because I wanted to like mellow out the
• 23:53
  harshness of it. Like, okay, I better be like, I
• 23:56
  better just take advantage of today.
• 23:57
  Yeah. So to answer your question, I'm
• 23:59
  focusing on my businesses. I am also building a restaurant
• 24:02
  right next door in this other unit.
• 24:04
  And that's like my hobby. I'm from Montreal.
• 24:06
  So it is I'm. Poutine.
• 24:08
  It's poutine. It's yeah, it's pronounced puts
• 24:10
  in, but sure. But good knowledge by the way.
• 24:12
  And, and I'm doing like, so you guys probably know Cat's Deli in
• 24:15
  New York City. Yeah.
• 24:16
  So that's pastrami. And I'm doing the Montreal
• 24:19
  smoked meat from the Russian Jews, similar like lineage, but
• 24:23
  it's a dry cured, not pastrami. And I prefer it.
• 24:26
  And there's the Schwartz in Montreal that I'm like labeling
• 24:28
  it after. So I'm doing like Montreal, like
• 24:31
  old school Jewish deli like style stuff.
• 24:33
  And that is like a fun passion project.
• 24:36
  And all these like, camped in like, Super Bros or like, your
• 24:39
  returns are gonna suck, right? And then like, yeah, like it's
• 24:42
  a, it's an art project. Yeah, and that's the Yeah, it's
• 24:44
  art. Yeah, what's the best year to
• 24:45
  pull out? Like 100 grand salary?
• 24:47
  I'm like, dude, if it breaks even and I'm having fun and I
• 24:49
  have my own restaurant food like right there like it's a win.
• 24:53
  Too easy, yeah. Where can people find you?
• 24:55
  What's your like? You have the Internet or
• 24:57
  something you said. Yeah, I'm 199 followers today.
• 25:02
  I'm. Like, yeah, give us your, give
• 25:03
  us your handles, but you made us give you ours earlier, so it's
• 25:06
  wet. I'm into moms, which is very
• 25:09
  true. That's it.
• 25:10
  So that's X and then on LinkedIn, you're just Jonathan
• 25:12
  Sturgeon, right? Yeah, yeah, that's and what are
• 25:15
  the, what are the the URLs? We talked about one of them for
• 25:18
  the two companies. Uhoh.com and dingus.
• 25:20
  Like the insult and zazzy. ZAZZY.
• 25:23
  You guys say Z or Zed? No, us.
• 25:25
  We're Zed. Yeah.
• 25:25
  I'm like assimilating. I think I'm going to move to
• 25:27
  America, to be honest. I'm talking to some people and
• 25:30
  I'm doing this. This is the best plug for
• 25:32
  Hampton ever. Clip this, send it to them.
• 25:34
  Charge them a billion dollars to hear me say this.
• 25:36
  I am making my America move decision based on where Hampton
• 25:40
  IRL is happening. New York.
• 25:42
  Or what? No other cities.
• 25:43
  I'm thinking Miami. You wanna be warm?
• 25:45
  Finally, John. But I could go anywhere but I'm
• 25:47
  like no I need a Hampton IRL IRL hole.
• 25:50
  This has been awesome man. Yeah, thanks for having me on.
• 25:52
  Dude, thanks for coming, this has been awesome.
• 25:54
  Dude, that was a very different interview than we usually do,
• 25:58
  but I liked it. Yeah, I think he's the 1st guest
• 26:00
  that started asking us questions and you were actually right.
• 26:03
  I did get a little uncomfortable.
• 26:05
  What were your top five kept? Yeah, it was funny, like
• 26:07
  watching you scrum a little bit, 'cause you're like, oh, it's not
• 26:09
  the script, or we knew we were going to go off script, but not
• 26:11
  this far. And yeah, it was cool.
• 26:12
  So yeah, the five things that I think back were is like one
• 26:15
  that's just, oh, the idea his new company, It's like a free IT
• 26:18
  trial. You pay for what you believe
• 26:20
  it's worth, and it's all through Slack focused on digital
• 26:23
  founders. And so I think that is a novel
• 26:25
  idea, especially like my roommate from college being in
• 26:27
  IT for 20 some years now. It's just a very different model
• 26:30
  than I think how a lot of those companies work.
• 26:32
  The second is this anti influencer thing trolling Sam
• 26:35
  Parr, decreasing his reach, joking about LinkedIn and now
• 26:38
  kicking in an X. And so definitely give Jonathan
• 26:41
  a follow and let's see how he has sort of antics scales to the
• 26:44
  X platform, which my sense is it'll do even better than
• 26:47
  LinkedIn. Yes, and then cold calling,
• 26:49
  right, this idea of running through the home rosy script
• 26:51
  closer gift cards like value people's time.
• 26:54
  And then this notion of, Hey, that's a recession proof thing.
• 26:56
  You can call and always find new customers because you just got
• 26:59
  to reach out and touch them. And then I think the whole
• 27:01
  dingus and Zazy story of Wolf of Wall Street, their marketing,
• 27:04
  the eviction, and then, you know, the remote nature of the
• 27:06
  business and how that works or doesn't work for these sort of
• 27:09
  like high intensity sort of call center models.
• 27:11
  And then finally, like he's starting off this cool
• 27:13
  restaurant, the Montreal smoked meat deli, really a passion
• 27:16
  project. And as much as people are
• 27:17
  saying, hey, don't start a restaurant, he's look, it's art
• 27:19
  over profit. And I think we'll have to find a
• 27:21
  way to make a trip up there and then try it out sometime.
• 27:23
  So if this one made you rethink how to grow without chasing
• 27:27
  attention or audience, share it with a founder who needs the
• 27:30
  reminder. And subscribe to founder mode.
• 27:32
  No growth hacks, just conversations that help you
• 27:34
  build better. That's it for today.
• 27:36
  Sometimes the best way to stand out is not trying to.