#270 – Exiting for Millions in Under a Year with Shaan Puri and Ben Levy of The Milk Road
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But it's gone on.

man brought. I just went to the Louis k show at medicines growth garden this past weekend.

So nice. I have been a long time since i've been to a comedy show.

Have you ever been to any comedy shows? I don't know .

you lots of shows back in pandemic used to go. I was last all the time, wasn't seeing Lucy k is a para. He's been, I mean, he like massive ted in front of a bunch women. I think that .

was a reprehend. Yeah, exactly. So actually what you know dan chivey right is like, yeah, my best friend from several socio, he was a comedian.

And he the only reason that what had gone to the show super controversial is like, then just message me out of the balloon is like, k, men, I got three ticket to U. C. K, like, do want to go.

It's going to be a medicine or garden. He was flying from arizona. I'm like, armenia, absolutely.

And I brought my girlfriend along. SHE didn't tell any of her friends that he was coming. We get there. It's hilarious.

It's like, you know, ten men for every woman that you see like just around and medicines or garden, every single one of the women clearly is just like the wife or the girlfriend of something that they are with. There no no groups of women. There are no like gay men, right?

Is exactly the kind of crowd would expect, like a bunch like White and these guys. And then even the show itself was hilarious because the first joke ity makes is like, thank you guys all for coming. Uh, I know every single person here has someone in their life that doesn't know where they are.

They like you lie to about what you're doing on this understhand day night. I don't know. I'm not going to spoil the said, uh, but I actually was really funny because that I was there with then then spent five years like really seriously trying to become a comedian. I don't know that I tell you about the time that dad and I went to an open mike and same paris.

yeah, you told me this. You did, uh, stand up yourself too, I think. And you'd never done stand up before. You just gonna do IT and then did you do good?

You bomb exactly the exact same thing is like, I don't even agree that I did stand up IT was he wanted to to do stand up and he is like, K, I going to do open, mike and I need you to be a good friend and come with me. So if I bomb, like you can bomb before me. And I was the worst experience i've ever had.

IT was good. IT was was a fun learning experience. But I don't know if I told you like the details, aren't we have like a gentleman's agreement where we're like, okay, i'm going to have like a five minutes set.

He's going to have a five minute set. We prepared them, but we like, we like we going to walk in separately is like a note and separate. Cisco is a small bar like fifty people, and you know, a lonely mike on a stage. And we like, went in and pretended that we didn't know each other. And the idea was that, like, he was in the middle each other, and .

like.

exactly now. And I was to be the plant for him, but I go first and I my like first off my set socks. So every joke that I give, he is laughing hysterically and the entire room is dead silent. Um do you .

know we got we got shown here and band, hey, guys, can you hear us?

Yeah what's APP guys? Can you hear me?

Yeah hey.

what's up up? Do shan I love your setup? You you're a process right now.

Yeah, we got, we got like put my studio out.

Yeah, when you tell you a story. Okay, just been like a year since we last spoke, I moved to seattle. I completely got out of the tech game like half I know and saying for just go, I want to talk to anymore almost one of my friends and see, I don't know anything about tech r startups s they don't even know what I do like.

I tell them what i'd do, and they just look at me, you like, with their eyes crossed. But the other day I was sitting next to my girlfriend and he was checking her email. And I see these like two little diamond emogene and a what is that? And he says, you can news letter in her in place is a shopping five tweet tuesday.

And like, wait a minute. Sar, like, how did you how did you find, like why you subscribed to this? And he didn't even remembers you? I got just interesting. I like like the sky so in my mind, like only shed Shawn has made IT he's .

crossed over, widen into your girl with my knees there you your .

mainstream now and your huge like you like, I feel like you've made IT as a content creator.

Well, at least at least i've made IT. That's the one thing that I always wanted was the tag line of being, of having made IT. You know, it's funny. I A long time ago I was doing my first started.

I was like, maybe twenty one years old, and we had this terrible idea, but at the time we thought genius idea to somehow we were going to promote our restaurant, started tup through viral youtube videos. And as and really, if we were honest with yourself, we just thought going viral would be cool. But we just wrapped as a justification to waste on of time trying to go overall.

So one of the things we did was A A chAllenge where we would brush our teeth with with sob by because we're turning a sushi restaurant hall. And um so we did the thing. We brush our teeth of the sobbin.

We're like, you know, spit and out. It's terrible. It's like, you know, mouse burn and whatever video doesn't go final. Maybe four hundred years of something like that, which I honestly I give myself a little credit, ford, that was actually a good idea for for a channel just like you pumping yourself basic. I think that's a lot of big channels.

but built that was a very mr. beast.

Bit right there. Yeah, exactly like milk boys jack as type thing. And so we then later, I was at a casino one time, and this guy points at me and he goes, and this is like, you know, more recent, I think he aren't.

This guy recognized me going to say something about the podcast to the news letter, no, or something like that. He goes, you're the wasabi guy because I saw you brush the buzby. I else like, wow, that's that's amazing. A decade later, this is like that four hundred views is still paying off. One, only four .

hundred people on earth who know you .

from that and everybody else in my god, that's what I wanted to be known for.

Ah exactly I knew that I was I told you mind not to tell .

your numbers are huge. Like I think last year you came on the that is pocket now was like a year and alf ago and you were doing like a few hundred thousand islands a month which at that time was already bigger. Then at the hackers like, i'm like, you know, around that number and then now you like, I think my first million, you will sand you like two million downloads a month is right? Yeah, something like that's a ridiculous manohar fix. And like listeners, and I think you guys monitise from ads, do you actually are as how spot well.

we basically sold all the ad, so how spot runs all the ads. But that's okay. It's still good.

Like that just means we don't have to do add sales because as IT grows, we get paid, right? So it's not like like basic to think somebody preborn all of the inventory at a set rate. And then if we grow, we get paid more.

which are you like getting a cut of the ad revenue because I like the ad revenue was .

like I don't the more downadup .

we get the we get a suite deal yeah. And not only that, but you can do whatever side projects you want. So you and been here started a newsletter, this one my goal friend doesn't subscribed you that I know if called the milk road is a cyp stone newsletter. I want to talk about that because you just sold IT, and you guys could do anything, do whatever you want. Why did you start a news letter about crypto .

first limited banks? I think people don't know the real main character of a lot of my stuff ban, actually. So this has been leave he we made A A couple years ago, and he was sort of just like in a master mind group that I was putting together.

There was like six ceos or something like that. And his business was actually somewhat boring. IT was like, IT, I do and well, but I was like, kind of a born business. His updates, where was this? You could know he wasn't even that excited about IT, but every time somebody else in the group had something he had like the most awful strategy or advice, or just like cut to the chase, kind of like comment. And so as I I like this guy then and was like he seems kind of board with this business, I wonder if I could just pitch him like, you, let's do something else come hey, what if you just stopped and um he was also just like, yeah actually let's try something and so we tried one project that went well, then we tried another. And now we've done four, five things together, the latest of which was the mail rode so .

why I do the news letter? I mean, that goes that to make money. Ah was IT just because IT was fun of.

You see, like it's very well. What's the point? What's going to your head is like this is the thing that we can work on together.

Two reasons. One was, we thought that would work. So a lot of people over estimate, like how much they love one topic. I think I underestimate that winning, like just succeeding, is in itself pretty fun. And so I had a very high conviction that this would work. I was like, okay, I know i'll have fun simply from the fact that this is gonna work, and we can talk about why I thought it's going to work.

But the second thing is mean, and ben had been increasingly interested in crypto, so I have this like to philosophy, which is sort of like, how do I give myself an excuse to do the thing that i'm already spending my extra hours doing? Meaning like if if my interest is always already going in that way, can I produced that? Can I wrap that into a business? And I don't know, was but this one else like I really could we were like, you know a news, probably not the biggest business, but I would work IT would be a business.

The second thing was like. This will be a great excuse to force our cells to learn about cyp tu every day and meet a bunch of other people in the space. And I told them probably some investment we're going to make off for this is going to make us more money than the news will basically just create a surface area for serendipity, just like a bunch space for good luck to happen because I figured cyp t was where a lot of luck was going to happen. So that was the mentality going in. And um there was just a bunch of like good inspiration for why we thought this might work.

Do you think that that's how turned out that an investment ity that you've made from your new made you more money? Or do you think like selling your newsletter and having ads on there?

Maybe the opposite, maybe the opposite. We made a bunch of money sell these other. But one of the things we did to promote the news owner was then you can describe my, my, my, what I thought was a genius marketing move that actually turned out to not be so genius.

Yes, in the way we the hook initially, you was like we're going na put a million dollars in the crypto. And this was like, this is about a year ago when the cypher is still in the world, mark, like we're going to put a million dollars in the crypto and we're going to turn into ten. This year, I think we put two hundred fifty k in the luna .

subscribed to the news letter to see how we do IT, right? This was like, I was like, big OK. Watch me try to turn one in to ten. And that was pretty juicy, but we inside turned a million into like to.

Just losing money in public is one of the best marketing hooks.

I think let me mentioned something that I think is really brilliant and super underside and what you said, which is the process of like selecting a thing to work on, especially if you was just be honest, like you're of in this position where you can have fuck you money, you have a lot of different options. So many people think, well, what am I passionate about already? And I want to go work in that.

One of the core ways till I create passion is just to interest space and then win in IT. And then you end up getting all these other buy products. And like, you know, we have happy outcomes. You learn a lot about crypto. You make a lot of different connections with people.

Just do what you want and you're doing something that makes money. And like that intersection is where you want to be.

Yeah, exactly.

I did a kind of audit, which was like, what do I want to do? I like, what do I want to do? And at first I was thinking, I think that most people think, which I wish do with my life, my career, and I thought about, like, you know, some like distant goal, like, oh, I want to make this much money, or I want to achieve acts and change the world and whatever. And and there was something that just wasn't sitting right with me about that way of thinking.

I I felt like I was a little bit just too artificial IT was like this sounds good, but I don't really know like that sounds good when I tell people and it's almost like i'm performing for them with check out my ambition and instead I was, what do I actually want? What do I actually want? And I was like, let me zoom all the way back into today, like, what is a great day feel like today. Forget what career with my long term plans and ambitions are like tomorrow.

What would make that day really enjoyable like what's an average day need to look like that includes work because I don't i'm not satisfy that if I just like do nothing like it's actually pretty oring for me um so i'm gonna work but what type of work is actually fun to do on a day to day basis so that the day itself is the pay off not i'm gona grind IT out and suffer for some future payoff um that like a mayor may not ever come and I did that for like all of my twenty my early twenty years I was like gyan suffer, sleep in the office um future pay off billion there on the cover you form thirty of the thirty whatever the stupid goals I had was that was like a way I thought about things and now i'm like, what is a perfect tuesday? Look like I said, wake up, wake up without an alarm clock that would be nice right? Uh, cool.

Uh, opening part of my calendars clear maybe you'll just check in with time like the I like I don't want to work totally alone. I don't like that. Let me check in with my one business partner early in the day.

We kind of riff on what would make today, great room. And then I don't want to have a bunch of employees that i'm like managing and I don't want my counter to look like that. I don't want my account to be a bunch of calls.

And so I really just zoom in what's a great day. And I realized in that process as I literally mapped out like a schedule of a great average day. And I think I think everybody should do this.

You should you should map out a perfect tuesday for you. And IT includes all the little things like, you know, like I realized I do one of the best parts of every days. Like when I shower, I just I love taking a shower.

It's like feels good afterwards. It's I A bunch of great ideas, really relaxing. I'm not on my phone like you.

There's just like a bunch of benefits to I like, okay, IT sounds silly, but that's actually important part of my day, right? Walking my dog, there's all these little things I enjoyed that. I was like, I need to make sure that happens. And the one most important one was, I like just being curious and i'm letting, like, following my curiosity.

So I thought, well, how can I be professionally curious? Can I get paid to be curious, is that if that was my career, then what would happen? And so that's where I started thinking, why? Why not do something like a news letter? Because if I was going to do a news letter about crp, du, which is the thing I was most curious about in those months, then I would get to just like go read a bunch of stuff, go meet a bunch of call people, blob, block, and then cool to end of the night. I just packed ed that up into a news letter that, you know, summarizes the most interesting things I saw. All I heard about that seems like a fun project to work on, and that's how we decided.

It's funny because this is like rich guy stuff. And I think this should be everybody is stuff like I talk to people who were second time founders, our third time founders, and they are saying the same stuff, like, what would I like to do on a data day basis? Know what makes me happy? And I taught the first time founders.

And like, what is gna make money? How do I quit my job? Like I have no ideas like what will work, you know and I think that like i'm interested kind of in the disparity wishing you shine and you bin because that sounds like bin.

I don't know a ton about your back story, but like you're working on a business that wasn't working that well. And here Shawn is like already like sold the company like make on this money from this podcast, which is like mum is investing. And I think when you have this psychotic y between like two different founders or in two different places, you might want different things.

Like, my boss is a billionaire. He came to me at some point a couple years ago. Okay, court, let's work on this project together. And on one hand was like, h, this is a cool pet project of his that he really wants to work on. But on the other hand, when he already has like in ten billion dollars, and I have like some like infantas small fraction of that with very different goals, like been like what was your are you like a perfect tuesday ground of? Like you just want to have a newsletter is going to be fun for you yeah .

I definitely am a little more focused on like I want to make a certain amount of money, but it's not like my only goal. And like that, I want to do IT a specific way and I want to have fun and I want to like chase the things that are interesting to me. Where is like you, for example, of my little brother is like, he's like stuck in the sb.

Twitter world. Is like, if I can start house keeping business tomorrow, and that makes me tender in a month, i'll do IT unlike yeah I definitely don't think like that, but probably a little bit more up than sean is on the spectrum, mom. Like I want to do things that haven't outcome and I think sean is slightly under underplaying max eleven. He cares too. But I think it's mostly like there's many ways to win and like there's a certain way that we try to win the game.

How do you went like change? And I have a news letter. It's not that big, know it's one hundred and twenty five thousand people. We make zero dollars from IT like we don't know how to win with the new letter. How do you win with the news letter?

yeah. I mean, I think the main things that I think we won with or one brand like which I think you guys do a good job with, two, we tried to stand out from the car. I think they were, and I don't know, show you feel about this, but there was, we could have been called cypher daily or eat daily.

Instead, we tried to pick something that people really resonated with. And we tried to build like a cold. And I think we saw that on twitter. A lot of people resonate with the cold and the things that we did, something that one I think too, we tried to write for ourselves, like, I think early on, we were like, who who is this for is IT for someone that's deeper or like our moms and like the reality as we were just like that, just right, will be like, and if we like this, we're going to bet that thousands of other people will and then three, I think trying to get good and monodist ing, which for us is we trained a kid from the other ones to be really good at dad sales. And I shown with us, from your perspective, you think we got right to help this win.

Well, I think is kind of two separate questions. One is what makes A A newsletter work, what is a newsletter business even look like? And then the second is things that we did specific to milk road that that actually like worked particularly well.

And by the way, I I think what you did in the hackers is exactly like that is that is a winning formula. And yet it's not you didn't do IT through the news letter, but you do the same idea, which is you pick basically a dish that you understood that you could speak to the people you like to be around. We built a brand around IT with a cool name, and then you started figure out out what content they like on a regular basis, success stories or stories, you know, like tips and tricks, whatever.

And you started providing that to them on a consistent basis. And whatever the outcome was, I doubt you could have predicted that at the beginning. So even though I was kind of like a little bit on the hobby and lighten path of like what is my perfect day need to look like um part of working on something was like that this is going to succeed.

It's going to be something that people like I like and the market likes that meaning that makes money and like to get me wrong, I love money. My podcast called my first million for a reason. I really enjoy the sport of making money.

But what I realized along the way was, is looked at a pattern every time I do something opportunistic, because I like this will make money. My results are worse than the things that I do, because i'm like, this would be duped and this would be dupe. Happens to be a Better like starting point for me than this would work or this would make money.

So this would be dope is like the first filter than secondary. You know I see a path. Do I think that there's a way for this to make a unch of money or give me some other big benefit that i'm interested in? Um if so that like Green light go go forward and business is like a skill set.

So it's like, you know I can go to my sister's Price school business and help her make more money because there's just a skill of business about how to increase revenue, how to know decrease your your cost in which your margins, how do we invest that in a way that like grows the business, how to struct your business in a way that's like tax advantages, like there's all these skills that go into a bucket when you're get a business. So once I realized, oh, you could just apply that to anything, I could take a podcast, which is not typically something people make a lot of money with. And I could find a way to make a lot of money with IT.

For example, with our podcast, I think the first year we made some tiny of ad revenue, 3K1k like that。 But I realize prety quickly, oh, ad is a really poor way to monetize the podcast. The Better way to monetized podcasts is like look at what is this asset actually creating and then figure out the best business motive for that.

So what I realized was this podcast is attracting a bunch of entrepreneurs who either are already, you know someone successful or you know soon to be successful. And they're really high trust, right? It's not the biggest audience.

It's not mr. Beats, like eighty million people watching a video. But it's now, I don't know, like one hundred fifty thousand people. But back then I was much smaller. Maybe, let's say at the time, thirty thousand people listening to episode.

They're listened to me with my voice for hours a week in their ears, and they're learned to trust me and like me and like his stories, like I have this free avenue to build a whole reputation with them. And how do we want tize? That was we launched to fund and we just got like you know only the top hundred or two hundred wealthiest people in the audience to give us money.

And now we invest ten million dollars a year into startups that turned out to be a way Better business model. Investing ten million times a year into startups using capital raised from the podcast listeners was a way Better business model than ads. But um it's only because you know took something that I thought we would just be doped to do and then bet on myself that later I can figure out business model that will work.

Is there any uncurious mean that's the some of the ways that you were able to kind of partly assets from your podcast into investing? Uh, is there an extent to what you did anything similar with the milk road?

And like what's the the equivalent crypto play is a man. And these people will trust me and we'll do whatever we say, like let's launch your own coin and then give you the best in that. But you didn't do that.

Yeah now part of the important part of our trust is to not abuse IT. So like, yeah, we wanted to launch A A, A fun if we thought that we could generate like alpha above, just think, go by eat and go by bitcoin if people even gripped, right? So like, do I believe I can outperform eth?

Uh, no. So i'm not going to do that. Ah oh, cool N F T or hot, should we unch milo N F T?

I know we ve got a good brand and we got a unch people here they probably buy IT, then what like i'm not trying to sell you a door to nowhere. So um we couldn't figure out what the health purpose would be of the fts. So we just never did IT um at that time.

And so you know part of the reason you can build trust is because you know how to not abuse IT. We didn't abuse t there. So what we actually do, we were like, well, we have bunch cyp t to readers who are interesting cyp to investing things like that.

And there was a bunch of advertisers that who wanted to advertise with us so that that paid the bills on a mount amount basis. So I know you said any hackers, you guys like numbers we were doing, I don't know probably what was been like between one and two million year in revenue was kind of like the rate we were at. Um now we were in year one, we sold the business one year in IT.

So we have descent a little early there, but he was working. The business was profitable. IT was doing you seven figures of revenue. And more importantly, we realized, okay, there are multiple ways you can partly this audience, in the future, what we decided to do is say, let's use this as an excuse to learn and get smarter about cypher because getting smart and crypto can be a very financially lucrative thing for you.

Um invest in projects that we're seeing early on and we're able to get on the captain because when we go to the projects we say, hey, can we invest in this by the way, like we can mention you in milk rod and get you in front of a huge number of people. So we provide some dirigo tion, some initial launch users that, that you can otherwise get. So we did invest, we did learn and now we'll see over the next uh you five years if those startups that we invested in turn out to be big winners or or or phish.

like did you share numbers about like how many of scribes you had? Like if you have a newsletter encrypt and it's doing you know seven figures in revenue year, like how big does that .

news letter have to be? We didn't sure that. But yeah, I think if you can get a newsletter, I think in general, if you can get a newsletter to let's call IT one hundred, two hundred fifty thousand subscribers, which is, I think.

where you guys said you're a, yeah.

you have high engagement. Do you have .

a high open rate? We at thirties, thirty, forty percent, right?

So we were like forty two, forty three, someone like that percent open rate. Now the hard parties we were every day, day, day were here three .

three times I thought was a lot. You are daily, which is and in saying.

yeah, we do. We did five now, six h days a week. So but three is not bad. I thought you were going to say, who wants to a week so three is not bad either.

My guess, you guys, you guys have you said one hundred twenty days of drivers so let's say I don't know something like fifty thousand people open every email you're sending that three times a week. Then what's the math on that? What should they be generator to do this with quick live? So yeah.

I think our back of the envelope was like for every fifty case subs, you should be able to make like fifteen hundred dollars a day in ads. So I think you should be of the satellites ads for each day for like thirty five hundred.

That's a lot of money. I like the guys could .

be making something like between, let's like conservatively five K A week and aggressively .

ten K A week on your yeah .

yeah by the way.

I actually think and now I have a more updated view of this, which is that you should not sell ads on your new sutter. You should figure out what what ad should go in the news, sit, and then you should build your own, a piece of that right company.

Wow, yes, my joe rome to support my vera s.

He does both, but like and both is probably the like the actual optimal thing. So you can like feel the full invitro. But I would just take the approach of if i'm going to build this audience and i'm going to promote a product, i'm going to also own the majority or at least significant stake in that product.

Um that will hold you true to two things. Number one, you will only promote stuff you actually like and believe in. Number two, um you will only get you won't just try to grow your sub list to grow a top line number.

You will go for quality of reader and trust built with that reader because they are going to actually be your customer. You're the one putting in the ad slot. So you need them to be not just a bott. You need them to be like a real human being who's got income, who trust you guys and has needs. And you can fill those needs with like some product.

This is all excEllent advice on taking notes. So I think the other part that I the most curious about is just the growth part. Our news letter been going to stalled around you like one hundred and twenty five people and you guys grow a news letter in record time from zero to whatever was something those were selling. How do you grow a news letter so fast?

Ah yeah bunch of different ways. I think you know the best way is your content is so good that gets forward or your content so good when you're posted on twitter. Other places people click, they read, they subscribe, that's the best way. So you basic blog your way, but you do one off blogs and somebody says that was dope. I'd like some more of that, please.

And then you say this button gives you more of that on a regular basis as the best way to grow into other there are other ways you know prefer and word about you build a referral program or and basic program, things like that. You can do paid acquisition. So people do paid acquisition.

They they buy IT sort of goes like and as you would guess, that sort of gets worse and worse. The further down that spectrum you go, the further way you go from I post medically, people see you, they read the content and they say more please right? That's like the gold standard and the sort of like the worst is the all time worst is you I don't know by uh indian fake future like that's like the word right.

So how do you go to news other you can choose where you want to live. I think for you guys, the Better case would be, no, like how much traffic is like hackers get? Do you guys talk about.

yeah a couple of million visits a month.

great. So why do not grow the news that are faster from that?

Most people to sign for the community, sign up for the website, sign for the form, which I think .

there's another piece that I actually wanted get a on on I mean both both views, opinion on, which is like kind of the secret to the way that we run the newsletter as just a couple of people. We don't have a big staff. The way to run the entire website is we kind of leverage the power of cloud sourcing.

So right now, we put out three newsletters a week. We have like a really talented like new york times journalist who is our editor. But what she's doing is he is finding like the best content that kind of fits a basic theme for a newsletter.

Like we ve got three main stories kind of a rip off in a lot of ways of the hustle. It's got that kind of magazine style. Um but we don't directly control the content.

We don't like have like a staff of writer. So mt IT what been said like ah you're of building this poll, you have your own voice. I mean we don't necessary have that much control on this yeah .

creating works like a my five tweet news letter right so I do this thing five to tuesday basically like, hey, i'm on twitter all the time. I see see the interesting stuff and sees interesting stuff. This been super power, by the way he's a great Carrier.

Um and we just show you like you if you didn't want to waste time on social media this way, just be the e mail. It's five of the most interesting to this. One will make you laugh, two will make you think and one you'll disagree with.

But it'll force you to kind of like articulate your own thoughts in your head, and that's kind of the core for format. And so that's a fully curious thing, but has a little bit of commentary for me in IT. So it's like here's the tweet, here's my take, here's the tweet, here's my take.

And people love that email. That's a good email, but he doesn't build the same level of trust or value as like an original content. us.

So it's a you depends on the goal. I started that one because I was like, look, I got the email list. I just don't wanted to go stale if I don't send anything for eight months, this is worthless.

If I have to write that original content, I don't have the time right now. I'm run in two businesses, so I can't do that. So I needed something in the middle, something to just keep the this warm.

And that was my my solution. It's going like ten virus is like five bullet friday or whatever. It's i've got this huge. And my podcast people, me, I might as well have like some very easy to .

ate exactly the other thing you do shaan like.

I think that schools like you've got your podcast right what you talk about, which is huge and like feeds under this, how much work does that take you to do your podcast? Because we are trying to get Better podcast. Singing like this is like, I don't know, like six or seven episode where training is.

join me this at my college library, right? Or something. What is? Where are you changed? You did over a .

just a nerd. Like, this is a real, this is, I read this article, my girlfriend sent this to me to like, poke fun at me about like how I A lot of like millionaire and like start of people are spending whatever they spend, like hundreds of thousands of dollars for some of the kind of like bus in a podcast background library was like a but but but i'm just a nerd. Like this is just like there's the books .

i've been token around for how many how many of those books have you read? Give him .

about fifty percent. I just got three books. Like literally this morning I read a book a week. I get just like a constant, a constant thing.

all change does he just reads.

every time I talk this guys tell me about a book. I do, you guys, me, maybe I four books on my bookshelf here here .

for how many? How many of those books have you red?

This book is called tango. I don't know if there's there are words.

so why look not a youtube video?

Let's be honest. You you could go on esc and you could buy it's called cream coloured books and so you just buy these neutral White looking books that look at they look good on your shelf and so that this literally my books.

you did the books in the background thing and and you only got four and one of them is on tangle. Are you trying to learn how to tango? Is that just like.

no, I I just read that for the first time. I didn't even know what was on there. I just knew was a good book. I don't I didn't say the designer was like you need books to look sophistic ted and so SHE exchange me a link and I bought IT um so that's that's that's an error but uh OK so you you think podcasting uh what is your great podcasting?

You are we were talking last year you talk about to have the all in podcast is billionaire d of billionaire IT just how you are show my first million is like millionaire talking about millionaire shit and the most roads kind of the same like I become a millionaire cyp to and then edy hackers just kind of like thousand talking talking about thousand the end of people making like ten grand a one and like that's that's life changing and your pocket actually you also interview Peter levels, I think sam Brown up on your show you who's this guy and like, why do you want to talk to you no.

i'm a fanatic. Ter, but he did come on and he had one of the highest .

like really brings an .

audience people a lot of people .

want to know that just be one one guy and and just make IT. But I member I am talking about like why would you spend sixty hours week trying to make, you know, one hundred thousand dollars? If you could spend sixty hours week trying to make hundred million dollars, it's kind of a very different ideas. What you, what do you do? Think about that?

I had the same bit of advice, given that my dad told me that he goes, you know, this is what I was doing. That restaurant idea, which is like the very, very first idea had very first business idea ever had, was to create the pole for sushi. So the stupid idea, but I started winning business, playing computer.

So I thought I was the best idea ever. Now my dad was like, restaurants, you will, you know some, not only they always fail, even when they succeed, they don't do very well. That's like fit.

No, it's going to be huge, going to be a chain and he's like, okay, maybe but he's like, you know um you're doing this deal right now or you're trying to put this one thing together and if IT works, it'll make one hundred fifty thousand dollars. I'm doing this deal. He worked in the, he work for B. P.

So he worked in the energy industry and he said, I know there is no meeting for a deal that has hundreds of thousands of dollars, like there has to be an extra zero or two further to even be a deal like they don't deal in numbers less than that and is like a small project and a big project, if you if you're working on them, will will take about your time. And I actually think that's very true. I think there's this big misconception about like passive income.

Very rarely do you find something that's truly like passive income um and most of the time, if you want something to succeed, you're gna put in you know pretty solid for a pretty lid hours unless until you build up enough expertise that you can do something in three hours that take somebody else thirty hours to do, which does happen and now has happen for me in a couple cases. But at the beginning, you know before when you're free, rich, when you're pre figured sheet out, um you should just plan that whatever you're doing and take up you all your working time. And so you just deciding and I got to spend all that workday on something small or something big is up to you um the odds of success or not that dramatically different? I would say maybe when you get to the category of i'm trying to build a billion dollar company, the odds are are somewhat different.

But to build something that's going to make millions of dollars versus hundreds of thousands of dollars or tens of thousands dollars, they're kind of the same likelihood of success. It's just, uh, you know, project selection OK. So let's get .

you on the record here. Uh, would you say officially right now that you think that any hackers, a small boy stuff.

I think the way you guys are doing IT is officially certified grade a small world. Yes, I love me. Tell you what you got bought by stripe.

amazing. That's a big boy stuff. It's been six hoder six hole.

six years. This is the .

phone that was out when you got one. This.

this calm .

is a blackberry, and this is how I texted you. congratulations.

The top of button .

vesting out your full term. And more, I believe, is small because of if you want to be an because basic what you did, I don't know if you want to be down to, maybe don't if you don't that that is not small boy stuff. If you said I want to have, like super chill, I want to read five books a week and chill like fantastic.

Did you do an x your living life on your terms? That is not small boy stuff. That is big boy stuff.

But if you wanted to be an hacker or you wanted to be an entrepreneur, then not doing entrepreneurship for six years is probably not a good idea, right? Like know you don't just like take off six years of your prime to not do IT. So let's ask that question. Yeah, do you want to be an entrepreneur or do you want to to have a really do fun lifestyle doing something else?

What is the goal? My room model, Peter levels, is my room model. He's one of the reasons that I started. Andy, hackers and he's entrepreneur r like, more than anything, he just a creditor.

He tweet something like people who always saying everything I do turns to go have made millions of dollars like, here's a list of ninety six projects i've made, only four have made any money, right? He just building shake because he likes to build IT. I'm kind of the same way, right? Like I left same for the cisco a couple years ago.

Shawn, you and sam talk about like this chat group three part of where is everyone is like trying to blow up there. I was in IT. Yeah, I was in IT. I was like, you know, i'm not as excited about that. These guys are not like you're not going to blow your twitter accounts up to like one hundred thousand people like I just don't .

care you kicked out because that sounds a good, that sounds .

a good saying you quit, but that sounds I think I D I not for me, not for me, right? Like I think there's a bug. I've just like making more, more, more and more money that hits a lot of people and it's super motivational. But for me it's like I actually just like buildings stuff.

Okay, okay. So you like buildings stuff, you want to be a career now? Okay, let's let's go on those terms.

Last six years, how many things have you built and how many his Peter levels built? If he's the, if he's the mj of the you know the indie hacker, right he's the M J. Vvd hackers. Let's say um are you kobe or are you Jerry? I don't know you A N B A fan.

but like you know, where are you? How many I was high school was like second string on the baseball team not .

wearing all year, but all the gear got the Jordans right?

I'm practicing my jumps, what I like a back in play time. But I think for me it's like we built some cool shit, like we have this huge directory products at any hacking. We have this cool community like I just want to be a builder.

Just how about how about you? Are you? Are you similarly mind IT?

Is that your goal too? I mean, so we can have different trajectories. The courland was doing startups and had an aspiration to do startups forever.

I mean, he was log around like A A bill gates book when he was thirteen years old. He went to M, I, T. He almost quit M, I, T to do a startups.

Um and I was like the old school entrepreneur in a way that you don't make money, which is like I wanted to be a novel list. Look at the books behind me. You you can kind of put this together.

And the way that I ended up going in this direction, as you know, I wrote a novel, I got a literary agent. My agent was, like, called me up on the phone and is, like, cash won to let you know, you know the of the five best selling the authors that I represent, the like top best selling one. He like worktable times a firefighter, the second full time person.

Yeah it's like like it's just to be clear here. Like winner yeah if you achieve all of your dreams, like you're going to right like to five hours on weekends. So at the exact in time court, once like we lived, we lived in some particular together.

I was like in the study sales job that I was like this going to be A I just got to call from my agent. That's like you're going to be doing that forever important. Like, well, if you want to write and if you want to do that kind of the thing, I, if that's your version of being, like, kind of a billionaire, why don't you teach yourself how to code? And so became a developer.

I got tons of free time. And then courtland started to hit home runs with the beginning of any hackers is like, hey, can you help me? You know, can you help me edit these interviews? Can he help me? Like, reach out, can help me build the form. And I was like, take off.

And now you're a millionaire, can write as much as you want. I would say chaining someone this is perfect tuesday every day he's got a very strict regimen, is exactly he wants to do. And half our conversations about books is read, and the other half is about how much he loves his life because he doing exactly he wants to do .

everything of that brow, this phone call, tel me how much you love your life. I like this everyday.

No that actually has happened .

that you know I think .

is different um in my life that i'd tried to build. I know this counts, but it's like a circle of, like, real friends. So chatting. And I were talking about the other day, like real friends versus deal friends, right?

I like all my deal friends when I lived in samos scale, people that I would talk to you, we were around with, we would work together. We would do deals together. And then I left as that, and I realized I don't talk to anybody anymore.

Was that a real friendship? And everyone says that everyone loves on pockets, say our friends or so. And so we're friends. But it's like we talk once a year about business. Is like that really a friendship? Or do you just get like social status from saying that you're friends at that person where is in seattle, like no one I know knows anything about startups and we hanging out and talk about totally unrelated shit and like about our personal ized when so I think for me have been focusing a lot more and like making real friends, which I didn't have when I was in samer, isca.

Yeah and very underwater too because it's really hard to make friends as an adult that I feel like friend's was kind of like poon feed, timid, like when i'm in school or in college or especially now with a remote work.

It's like men even those like kind of like the deal, even your deal friends are kind of gone if if you don't go to the office every for a lot of people, right, like they're not doing deals, they just those are coworkers and they can hang out together. And these are of the people I would pick to be my friend, but I see him everyday. So you know why not? And so I think it's great that you actually have that. And isn't that like one of the most commonly linked things to like happiness yeah basically having been a really strong community um of liking .

a family and friends and that was like the answer to everything, your community and like a sense of purpose those two things, if you got those, you're on the track to be happy and if you don't um you're probably screw. But also like what you said was another common thing that I heard in the tech industry that it's it's hard to make friends as an adult.

And then when I came to see at all, I started meeting people who to live in washington in their entire life. And I will tell them the same thing. I know so hard to make friends as an adult.

And everyone just looked at me like, I had two heads like black. Why is IT hard to make friends? They like, I have a ton of friends I live in to here my whole life. I've got hundreds of friends i've ever left um and I thought about that and ultimately, like it's kind of easy, right? Like i've been doing IT now too. You just like when you meet somebody, instead of only hang out the one on one you introduced in all of your other friends and then more importantly, when people invite you to stuff, you just say yes and go out, you just go right it's actually not that art.

yes. Tony Robinson says the thing. He says he's like people live this box life. He's like you sit in your house, which is a box, and then you stare. He's like you go to work. You get in your box that has wheels you you drive to to your box building and you get in the box there you sit in your cubicle, that's another box. And then you type on your box and then you get back.

You need your lunch box and then you you go back and you get back in your box car, you go back home your box, you watch watch the box on your TV that you go to sleep right right? Know when you hungry, you go to the box fridge and you grab the the first thing you see and then that's IT and he's like, that's not right. Don't live this box life like you are.

You should have some like variety and spice and twists turns and some flexibility with with the way you live and I think is the worth kind of like like looking at like zoom ing out. You know we need to get up, take off an airplane and everything starts to look like ants. It's like, kind of this, like third person, look at yourself in, zoom out and be like, I am living kind of a box life.

And like, maybe like, I started to this, I started bike to work, and he took me twice as long to get to work. And I was having three times more fun. I was like, this is way Better then what I was do before, where I would take this efficient uber to work.

And instead I started the walking, which took forty five minutes to walk to work or I would bike to work. And he was like, even if those cold and bitter and terrible um IT was still Better than the box life. And I think that there is like, there are some wisdom .

in that I could do this a lot because I feel that the the easiest way to get trapped in the box is to really love the box like box like I I heard you comfortable yeah also is like that can be a kind of a comfort trap. And I mean, I don't know, I just think back over ten years of my life, and it's like finding comfort zones and then occasionally like getting riveted out of those comfort zones.

Those were all the a of like cool stories and in hindsight, but they were also all of these crazy learning opportunities that gave me tools that I can then use to, like, breakthrough other areas. Just to be specific, for example, I had to get a job and I was in seven cisco. I'm not exactly an introvert, but like I ended up getting the sales job and I was like, definitely not looking for that.

Like IT was sort of hard core copy or sales walking into buildings, not fun work. But that I like I had to figure that out. And then the skills that I learned from that in weird ways contributed to writing, like I was had a higher pain tolerance, right? Um IT contributed to just my person like myself concept of now I can fuck learn anything eeta a and a really interesting insight into how to break out of the box.

I heard from sam on on your show, we mentioned he has his four values that he figures out how you can like kind of level up on whatever every year and for hamm's fun, family finance and fitness and like those different buckets to says, okay, what what like in sort of fitness project I want to like push my limits and and get out of my comfort zone on, right? And just knowing that one little hurry tic, he doesn't have to know in advance like what particular projects like. That's still this mystery box, right? And it's going to naturally lead him to go into these weird adventures.

And I heard that and I immediately ran a courtland and was like, oh, it's sort similar to my thing, right? Because i've got you connections that's a connections craftmanship contribution and in character and it's like it's just like easier remember. But I mean, it's it's this thing that like in a way forces me to .

do random captions, character cocaine.

And I think that's right.

You know it's it's actually a good point. A good bit of life advice is ask yourself different question. So if you ask your self a question. Most people, most people, is the quality of questions they ask ourselves are terrible. Most people's questions they ask themselves are basically insults wrapped in in a question.

So it's like, why do I always do this? So why can I? Why can I find somebody? Why am I so blob, so because those of the insults, that's like the worst type question you can ask ourself.

The other bad trap, which a lot of successful people fall into is they keep repeating the same questions that get them the results they're already getting. So I call this the distressed achiever persona. It's basically as a person who achieves things the stressed up the whole time and their life is like very um narrow, like they are just really going on some tracks, some latter.

And that latter first was go to ap biology and ap english and get to the get to the good school and get to the good school, get to the good job and get the promotion, get to the manager. And then even when they go to entrepreneurship, and yeah if the career later than they like I raise my sea round and my series a there are a series b, it's like you're just found a new latter, but like you're you're still later, you're still on some track. And not to say the tracer all bad, but they lead you to just like narrow your sense of what's possible and what the questions do you ask yourself on a data base.

So a question that I think is worth asking is what's the what's something i'm looking forward to a lot? What's something i'm really excited about in my life right now? And when you ask this is surprising, how hard IT is to come up with this kind of disapointment hard is to come up with a good answer. The other disappointing thing is if the thing you're saying is the thing you're excited about is like six months away, it's like, wow, right? That's a lot of hours between now and the end.

You know like and can I pull the future forward? Can I pull some fun forward? And as soon as you asked us of that question, sure enough, you're like, well, I can go do that tomorrow or i'm going to fight and go to the zoo tomorrow or i'm going to like i'm going to call a friend, were going to go place some tennis, we're going to go do something and you will find yourself pulling afford.

And so whatever area of your life you are like caring about, like the the family, the fitness to find the finances, whatever IT is like, it's good to think about what's a Better question I can ask myself because most of life is just a dialogue you're having with yourself and um rarely do we upgrade that dialogue. We have the same same old conversations with ourselves. And like, if we changed that, all your actions then change. And I think that's like A A really underrated thing that must be would not do.

I think in that vain one of the things you can do that's like pretty creative and will get you thinking differently is to literally just impermanent other people when you're asking yourself these questions. Like, i'll do this to podcasts.

Ers, sometimes we like, how would less free man answer questions if you were talking to you? Be like, o so like, what's the bigger source of love in your life, right? And just ever never think of that question. But OK i'll think about right ah how would patrocles and like interviewer tyre calin or how would you like ask question? And I think this is something that happens when you impersonate somebody else that you instantly adopt an entirely new perspective on the world that you just wouldn't naturally come to on your own totally.

I'll give you an example of that. Um we have a body mean benefit uh sui who is like one of our best friends but also kind of like a businessman or like on a personal level, we're really good friends from a business point of view. He's like a black belt and I consider ourself like a bu belt or something like that.

So I like try to you spar with him so I can see where I can improve and he helped to start a lot with the milk road. And I remember we had the conversation about when to sell or should we sell. And IT was like this kind of crazy to sell this thing.

One you're in when it's working, like it's every one thing if like this was a bad business, but this is actually a good business and where like shouldn't just hold on to IT and it's like he asked a bunch of questions that like i've now hung out with him enough that I already knew what he was going to ask and therefore, like I could actually just simulate the whole conversation in my heading. Better clarity, and i'll give you an example of some of the questions that he asked. But I like I could get ten dollars, he was going to ask these questions, which is a you know he would point out that well, if you're thinking about selling, there's a party that wants to.

What why why do you want to because you're saying it's a great business but a well, like cool, you would even consider this unless there were something is are they offering an outlandish Price? Is something some risk are worried about? Is there um something else you want to go do? Like what's the reason? And so he asked that and that that got me to get more clear. The other thing he said was I was like, we're just getting sorry about a lot he goes.

well.

there is another possibility, which is all the easy stuff is done and now comes the ground and he's like, so which is more true um are you just getting going and like now it's going to get easier from here or did you take all the low hing fit and it's going to a lot harder from here?

And and again, like forget, I ask these questions because for somebody out there who got their business and are thinking about what to do with IT, these are really useful questions at a high level. These are backed boat questions, not like beginner questions. But the second thing is, to your point, I kind knew what he would say on a bunch of the things that I was going to bring up yeah and actually what is that happening as I just start auditing and editing my sense before I even comes out of my mouth? Not like I know I can't get away with saying this bullshit around this guy because he snipped out bullsh. So let me just cut the bullshit out to begin with yeah and not even say IT like .

you'll let yourself off the hook, but if you impersonate him know he wouldn't let you off the hook.

he would never let me off the hook like this will happen often with when i'm hitting a platter or complaining about something. Ah it's so hard to do this. It's like, I know that he would be like, what would what did these other five companies do IT?

So like else, do you like they?

Yeah like, are they smarter than you? Or is there something that so unusual about your circumstances that you can do that? Like so then i'm like, yeah let's not waste breath talking about how difficult something is when clearly it's possible. And I just need to spend my time thinking about possibilities instead of thinking about what is me.

So clearly you decided to sell. You will do that process and you successfully sold. So like any high level or low level tactics that you have for selling and .

nego negotiations, specially china, and I just like a pretty high level negotiation with, like, literally, I do this button sold like two hundred and fifty companies at some of the biggest companies. And I think I would got burned and that negotiation, if I hadn't already been burned, even like an earlier negotiation, I learnt some tactics. So like, I got, if can do this next time and like, luckily i've got that result. Like how do how do you guys approach negotiation to try to like make as much money as possible when you selling democrat.

But i'll lets you kind of give me give give me your take on what cause this was, I think, your first big negotiation like this because because selling your company, I think, is one of the highest stakes negotiations you're going to do, right? You put years of effort usually into the thing, uh, it's your baby. You don't wanted to fall apart.

You also wanted a don't leave a unch value on the table by agreeing to easily, uh, you don't get a lot of reps at doing this. It's hard to get good because you do that one if you're lucky, once every few years. This is my second time doing you as bends first of band, i'll let you go. Then i'll give you kind of .

my take to yeah on the previous point to like I think when we were going back and forth is sui like every three hours we would be like in a group chat. Black h we should sell. And then three hours later, black, no, we're not selling.

I remember there is a specific moment where he he was just like, what is your visceral reaction to selling yes or no? Just type yes or no immediately. And that's what you guys to do. And that he would see.

like our three dots tipping. So what do you want to do? right? Simple question.

So do you? Do you want to sell or you keep running the company either to be like our dota dot typing some sable post coins and he's like, guys, you should just have a visceral reaction to the idea of selling or not selling and like start with that. Then we'll go from there. We'll add analysis is later.

And then I think I think in terms of like negotiations, like I was kind of my first radio, I would say one at the beginning, we were just kind of fishing around to see what was possible. And then too, I think the main thing we did is we brought more people to to the party.

So like as soon as we knew someone was interested, like I think first thing we did is we kind of set a rough number or a rough range in our head where I would be kind of a doable deal. And then we went and we found three or four more interested people to put them against each other to talk practice. By the way.

I should say that wasn't the initial instinct that I think most people have, which is that sounds obvious. So that sounds like A A A Normal sounds like a very obvious point.

But you're instant when someone's interested is to go deeper and date them and instead what you do is you actually stall them for a second year like oh, they're interested great fuck can ignore them and go get three more interesting people um because like this will never work without that and you will never maximize unless you can kill get some more people to the table where I think the initial instinct is oh, they asked us for this. Let's give them that document tomorrow. And then then they want to meet again and let's meet again. Let's get hot and heavy with this party real quick because, oh, they said all the right things and that sounds like it's going to work and in actuality, it's the time to immediately sprint on other options.

What what prompted you to do the like counter instinctual thing, then in this case.

just experiences like the same thing happened last year. I was like, okay, I understand. Now how this works in fundraising is the same way. Like, you know, I realized that these are actions and a, once you decide that you might sell, you need to run the auction. But to run the auction, you need all the party's interesting at the same time, every time delay costs you money.

So that's well as like, okay, now I know how to play this and we initially didn't plan for IT like we reached out to somebody basic being like, hey, can we advertise with you guys? You have a cyp total audience on your website like they might want to read our newsletter. Can we do like a swap or like we pay your dollar for somebody that subscribes know you'd do something like that and they were like, no, but we actually really like the more we would actually buy IT.

And then I was like, oh, great. cool. Let me get back to you. Let me think about if if you would want to do that. And then we had our conversations and simultaneously booted up like, well, if we're going to talk to them, who else would be the people that we would talk to? You make the hit list and start those conversations except.

yeah, I think the everything that I thought was helpful is like one of the frames and I thought I was really easy to be like dreaming about how much money we were going to make and be like, oh, now i'm just dreaming and hoping that this happens.

And I think one of the frames that someone really hate a lot was like, look, even if we don't sell here, we're going to learn a lot about the business and have like what people are interested in, what they're not interested in, where we need to get Better. So I think try like we tried to embrace that, like even if this deal doesn't happen and we wanted to, we're going to get a bunch of data points of things that people are curious about to like to come back in a year too. We're going to a be way stronger for these reasons.

Yeah, that's a really, really important. And another thing that silly had taught me, he had done this with his business. He's like, had this beautiful rosy picture of his business.

Of course, somebody will want to buy this. And he went and he tried to sell IT himself. And immediately the markets, like, first, they like, wow, great business, would love to learn more.

And as they learn more, they are like this. And that h, you only do this. Like, have you thought about this? And like, why do they keep talking about those three things? They are missing the big idea, the big, big parts. It's like actually those are what's important to them as a buyer. And you if you do that with enough people, you get a real objective opinion about what your business is worth, where IT is strong, why why they valued at anything um and where it's weak and then you're like, okay, you know like let's take a newsletter for example.

Oh, you value this on are they valuing this on profits, revenues or do they look at the subscriber engagement and then assign a value per subscriber? Um oh interesting once I know how they think about this and what they're worried about, then I know if I was going to sell this twelve months or twenty four months or now that gives me a blue print that gives me a road map of how to make my business a lot stronger and more valuable to the objective person. So that's one component to IT is is learning that that's true.

And in the other is this great quote that after we got acquired by my previous company, got acquired by twitch emit, who is the sea of twitch and the cofounder of twitch? He has his great phrase that he learned from pol gram from my commentor. He goes, he goes, what what he goes. Birds fly, fish swim and deals fall through.

And so that's the other, like any time someone would come to the table and be like super proud, like ah we have this great meeting, they're super interested and then they start forecasting all this stuff is like, great just know birds fly this very beautiful and then he would say that and you can see they're like, kay buzz kill sure enough, ah IT gets even Better. We get the term sheet or the contract oh yeah which is working on the last few details. Sure, not deal fall through.

And same thing happened in our acquisition process, which was first of all, uh, we had to go with this mentality that most like don't start dreaming about all the ship you're going to buy, a most likely there is no deal to be had. Let's go in with that, understanding that, that is the likely scenario. And that means two things, don't check out of running the business and start imagining a world or where you don't have to work and don't have to do hard things.

And secondly, don't like count on these coming through that way, you're emotionally detached and can actually not be desperate when IT comes to to to the negotiations because a negotiation will go in the favor of whoever has more leverage. And the the thing that looks all like logical leverage is your emotions. If your emotions are desperate to buy or desperate to sell, you have lost all your leverage in that one emotional swing. So you have to be emotionally detached.

I mean, there's A A similarity between the acquisitions of the hackers and milk road IT sounds like and that you like, you know this wasn't just like a project of like, hey, let's go try to get acquired. You said you were reaching out about advertising and then like this other avenue opened up.

And I onder if that ads or fat, like sort of dancers are a little bit of your emotional attachment because like the road map that was no sort of in your head before that was like you probably had knew the next six, twelve, eighteen months. Probably we going to look like well as if you're like this is kind of a fire sale or something we really want to get out for whatever reason. IT seems that you're a little bit more desperate at some me that you're you're explicated looking for. You're going to be a way .

more Better than not to sell, right?

Yeah always Better. And there's really three to three bucket you could be in, you could be instagram and it's like, yeah, we're the next big thing and everybody wants us. You have a very different negotiation style practice and outcome.

Then there is like where we were with little road, which is we have a good business that we like. We don't have to sell IT. But if the deal was right, Price is right, partners were right, people are right um then we will do IT. And then there's the shots not working.

What can I do to like, you know, scrap some value out of this for myself, my investors, for my sAnitation, for whatever else right to to land the plane because the engines on fire? And just be honest yourself, which category are you in and once you know which category you are in, you have A A slightly different tactic. And i've done the second and third before and i've never done the first um but I don't think IT takes much skilled to do the first.

When you're the first one, you hire a banker and run the process like it's to stay forward. You know you pick the highest number. Yeah everyone is coming in bound and everyone's out at each other because you have the the in demand hot thing. But I wanted to say one more thing about deals falling through because I think this is really important, which was we got to a point where we had two offers that side by side were about equal. One was a bit Better and um one had been like a lot more sorrow and diligent and like you know lots of conversations, lots of questions, lots of sessions talking through different problems, whatever.

And the other one was still a little bit earlier in the conversation and we had a conversation with, I think I who was biology, I think I called ology knows I you what what would you do with this? And he says, something really smart. He goes, uh, I gave, I gave them the information with the officers, but I didn't tell them how they were on slightly different timetables.

One was more mature than the other. And when I said that at the end, he goes, oh, forget everything I just said he goes, most deals will fall apart twice before they happen. Um this other one you're telling me has almost you know you both walked away twice already.

And so this is a real offer and it's a serious offer and will likely close. This other one is your still in your oneself moon phase. You haven't walked away yet.

They haven't kicked the tires in the the most serious way yet. Um you need to discount that by maybe fifty to ninety percent is like so you thought these were close. They're not close and he turned out to be completely correct in that analysis.

And so I would say the two takeaway for somebody try to sell the businesses, the rule of two, you're going to a break up twice before you, before you getting married. Most likely did that. I don't enough that happen for you guys, but it's very, very common to sort of like feel like there's no deal happening twice, either because of a legal reason or a finance number or some other hold up that pops up. And then also, if you're in the case where one deal is actually gone through that process and gone through the fire a little bit, gone through the diligence and other one has in, you have to apply a pretty aggressive discount factor .

to all the terms we we had. Like the exceptional story, we are like the day between stripes. We want to buy any hackers and like having the Green numbers and have attorney like drafting and paperwork was like four days I was like wow but one b and then um and like a later negotiation that I ve gone through IT was what you're talking about.

Like two three months of like tense conversations. This might not happen. Prepare for the worst case in area uh, before things like concluded. I think that's like that's why why I know I did the first wrong.

All conversations about like we could just walk away like just like feeling meat heat that what we didn't feel in the original should .

push hard enough for like IT might not work otherwise you given up too easy.

Yeah, you haven't found the line. You haven't found there are actual line. And they have been found .

yours exactly that.

The other two things that I find very interesting is, I think at least I learned in this, like we would ask for something from the guys being that are working with. They were just say, no and I was like, oh, wow, they're pushing back pretty aggressively and were still interested. So there are ways to push back and not turn the other party often than two.

I thought I was destiny when they invited us to dinner. IT IT was the same restaurant that shown went to when he close this witch deal. I was like this .

is that this is happening well.

that no, in both cases the other party who said, come, let's meet here and that just happened to be the same restaurant in for this o both times of crazy.

Well, this guys, you taken up a lot of your time ah thanks to time for comment on the show saying the story the mok road um where can people go to find out you know what's next for you guys when you guys working on work where people go?

yes. So we're bring something up that I think is going to be pretty fun. And I think right now, the place to do that is to go subscribe to the new other.

I actually want to publish a lot more about the micro de story, said the origins, the how we grew IT, how we sold IT story. So i'm going to publish that if you just go to just go to shown poor I dot com. So it's S H A A N P U R I. So and you description just go there put million and that's where we're going to send that and mean, Better gna start putting out a bunch more kind of amazing content like i'm basically going to not start another business. I just going to put out incredible content for the next like that of a few years been .

what about you where you about?

I'm on change list too, but i've been guess posting. I broke my first one last week and you can follow me on twitter. Ben and levy, I need to get rid of that. M, need to make my sir end for now. Ben m, leave.

Yeah, who's got been leaving? Who is this guy?

I thanks, guys. awesome.

yes.