All right. I own 40 $10 million in revenue. >> We acquire and this year we'll generate around $20 million of revenue. >> We manage um and that makes $30 million per year of revenue for the company. >> Those are three ideas that didn't even exist in my my cone of vision. You know, I didn't even know that people do businesses like that. >> All right. How's it feel to be in real life? This is strange. >> This is weird. It's been uh >> there's normally a screen right here. >> Put a side by side of the last time we were in person in San Francisco doing it on the red chairs. >> So when we um when you started this thing and then I came on two or three months later, we had these bright red chairs that we bought off Amazon for $150 and it was just us sitting on chairs and I hated it cuz you could like see like a crotch shot. >> Yeah, I think I might be doing it now. >> And just like sitting like this and then we had a like a camcorder. We would have a guy in the room and we'd be like, "Hey, are we good to go? Is it all good audio video?" And he'd be like, "I think so." It was like, "I think so." Is like not what you want to hear from from the guy who's sitting ever intern. >> Yeah. >> And it was one camera. >> You ever done audio before? >> No. >> But I hear you. >> Yeah. I can hear you. Great. >> Um, what do you think of New York? You been to a bodega yet? >> Yeah, we went to a bodega. Yeah. >> So, I talk about Bedadega culture. I don't know if you've like seen any that I've Have you seen any that have impressed you? >> I have to like stay out of bodeas cuz I just start chatting it out for too long. >> Like dude, I've been here for 75 minutes talking with this guy. >> Like the like the cashier, right? It's the best. I'm friends with so many bodega owners and >> we could do a full MFM just inside a bodega. >> I probably should have done that actually. >> And like it's the pure definition of entrepreneurship because you could clearly tell like oh one day someone asked for cereal. Now they have 10 Costco sized things of cereal and they're individually packed into an iced coffee cup and they just sell cereal now. Like that's just what they do. There's no like does this go with our mission statement. Like no we sell cereal now. >> I don't know if you need a license to sell food even though it says don't repackage just for individual sale. We sell cereal now >> and that's what I love. All right. So today we're doing something a little bit special. You said you were coming and I reached out. I basically just slacked like the Hampton channel. go who in New York has like an odd business that we can like impress Sean with? And so we picked three different entrepreneurs. >> They had I tried to find three businesses that were off the beaten path a little bit because that's why people like watching MFM. You guys like watching um or seeing like kind of strange businesses. So hopefully you can open up your mind and be like, "Oh, there's a million ways to get done whatever I want to get done and build a big company, right? >> So I pick three." >> Okay. >> Okay. So they're going to come on. What are they going to do? >> So we told him I we just bumped into them. We just told him, "Hey, come in here and don't start with words." >> As MFM, you got to start with a number >> and um don't make us dig it out of you. Just give it to us. You know the stick. You know what we like? We like to know. We like you to not be humble and brag about the We want you to brag a little. So, they're going to say a number. They're going to say what they do. And then we're going to get to know their business cuz we're nerdy about businesses. And then at the end, you know, we will ask them two things. We'll ask them what adjacent business opportunities are there. like what other businesses do they see because of where they are in their tiny niche that we don't have enough exposure to that other people might go run at and then two like how can we help them like what's what's the burning question what where if they just had me and you for like you know 10 minutes what would they want to talk to us so that's what we're going to try >> all right the first guy >> Ben we could bring him in what's up >> much how you doing >> all right welcome to the podcast >> thanks >> all right so I've known Alex for years for a year >> yeah a year >> a We're very good friends, so I'm going to be biased. Okay, start us off with the big number. >> All right. Uh, I have four I own 40 publications, 40 magazines, $10 million in revenue. >> 40 magazines, 10 million in revenue. What uh what sorts of magazines are we talking? >> Uh, real estate advertising. >> Real estate advertis. Okay. Give us a example. >> All right. So, >> by the way, you got to carry one. You don't have one on you at all times. That's insane. >> Yeah. Uh, real estate agents basically pay us uh to promote their listings. So magazine is like a lookbook of all the listings that are on the market uh at that time in their neighborhood >> and it goes to a lot of different like locations like do you have different 40 meaning >> 40 40 meaning basically we've divided the country into 40 locations yeah zones so we're covering all of the US and Canada >> how big is a magazine like how many pages >> anywhere from like 100 to 200 >> who who's the reader cuz you said realtors are the ones advertising or want >> realtors are advertising >> who's the reader >> uh we we have a mixture but basically we mail the magazine out and we'll mail it out based on property value, uh, income, things like that. >> With the goal of being a real estate agent, uh, is has a bunch of listings in New York City or something, I don't know, Dayton, Ohio. >> And you want to show the resident of the homes on this block that they should either use this real estate agent or buy some of the nearby homes. >> Yeah. Either or. >> Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, agents definitely are using it to pick up listings. Like, they want to be able to say, "Look, where I'm going to advertise your home, things like that." But they also want to sell the listing they have. >> What's it called? Haven Lifestyles. >> Haven Lifestyles. Okay. How did you come up with this idea? >> All right. So, I started it with my business partner, uh, Ryan. We were college roommates. I was a couple years out of college. I was actually a bill collector for like 5 years through college and after. >> A bill collector. >> I was a bill collector. Uh, which I actually I think really helped with sales. Like, uh, just having to call people all day for money, being rejected. >> Are you like the muscle? Like, what is a bill collector actually doing here? >> Uh, dialing them up. It was, uh, it was credit card. Uh, so Victoria's Secret. It's literally Victoria's Secret credit cards. >> But yeah, anyhow, I did that. I actually I was supervisor. I got drugged into some HR uh nonsense that I couldn't believe and like having to basically defend myself. And I texted my college buddy. I'm like, "Dude, you want to do something?" And he was like, "Yeah, let's let's start the magazine." So that's where we started. >> But why the idea of the magazine? He was already doing it. >> He had a small publication in Annapolis, Maryland. and he said that basically agents had reached out to him and like why don't you do something in DC we want to advertise in DC so we just launched one >> who's the big how many companies do what you do >> most there's a lot of small publications so like each city you go into I have like a publication but we have them across the whole country >> and you do 10 million in revenue you say how much profit >> yeah like 2.5 >> okay and the biggest one in the space is how big >> I don't know it's not public I don't I mean we could be one of the biggest in the space like there's not most of of them are franchised. >> How many years you've been doing this? >> 10. >> 10. Okay. So, it's been a slow build. You've been steady at this revenue for a while. What's >> It's been a slow build that that has jumps. >> Give us your one. What was your one like? >> 300K. And that's just me going meeting individually like just grinding it out. >> Okay. >> And and my business partner handling everything. >> Did you know right away like this is it? It's I'm going to do this for a while or were you even after year one, were you still like I don't know. >> I never thought 10 million, but I thought enough to support myself. Yeah. Uh we launched an initial public like we just did a free version of the magazine like just let us put you in. I'm gonna show you what it's going to look like and then I went around and had meetings all week. Um and like here here it is. And I mean literally the very first meeting the guy's like all right I'll do it. I was like okay cool. Like I'm like 25 years old. All right. And just meeting after meeting was like that. Got to a meeting where a guy's like uh what can you do for 10,000? Which is way more than we were charging. Like how many covers can I get? So just like all of a sudden like I'm calling back to my business partner every few minutes like dude there's another another another like there's something here but I kept my other job for like eight months. >> But so so the it's more like a brochure but it's a magazine because it's it's got a lot of pages but it's a brochure. I mean you're just showing off other other people magazine. >> You're just sending a magazine unsolicited. Correct. There's not >> true. It's no subscribers. >> You're junk mail. >> Sure. Junk. Yeah. It's not it's it's not a subscriber magazine. Also, I should say, I mean, there's >> like calling Victoria Secret just underwear. >> Yeah, exactly. >> A huge portion is online at this point. Like, we do drive most of our traffic online, but everyone is paying to be in the magazine. >> And and who is doing? So, let's say I want to be in the magazine and I like say like, "Yeah, I'm in." Who does the artwork? Who actually makes like the pages? >> We handle it. Uh, most of our designers are uh Philippines. Yeah, basically. >> And how many of them are there? Cuz to have 40 magazine and how often it quarterly or monthly? >> They're all every once every six weeks. We print 30 different magazines a month. >> Why did you just >> So every week we've got seven going. >> Most of it's online. >> Most of the exposure. So when you're talking about subscribers, junk mail, whatever. So like we mail copies out. We do that based on, like I said, network things like that. And then we're also driving another, you know, 90% of our readers online, which are then looking for people that have like recently been looking for homes, things like that. >> How many people work there? >> 20. So I'm I'm confused. Uh, this is a dumb question. I don't really understand how junk mail works. So, I can just mail anything to anyone. >> So, I you just look up like, hey, addresses like which zip codes or neighborhoods have a certain >> profile. >> Yeah. >> And then you download from some site all the addresses. >> Yeah. It's all through the post office. Like you you basically can pick postal routes and they'll deliver. It's actually cheaper when you do that. >> How many magazines do you send a year? >> Uh, like half a million. >> Yeah. So, this is the post office's business model, right? Like basically the post office is pretty much funded by guys like you who are using it. >> Like we have to make sure it stays within certain dimensions. It can't go over a certain amount of weight or we're >> post office is basically Facebook ads. >> Yeah, exactly. It's Facebook. It's selling you are the product. It's selling your address in your mailbox without you benefiting or agreeing to it >> to others. >> What would it take to get you to 100 million in revenue? It's definitely possible. >> No, no. Ask in the like Asian mom way. Why aren't you at 100 million? >> Um yeah. I mean, it's a good question. >> Hey, I want to tell you about something pretty cool. We have a database of all of the unsexy business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast. So, hundreds of episodes the team at HubSpot went through. They pulled out all the unsexy ideas. So, not the super high-tech ones, but the simple, relatable, interesting, profitable uh ideas that we have brainstormed, and they're all available for download for free. Just click the link in the description below. Thank you to our friends at HubSpot for sponsoring this podcast and putting together this free resource for you guys. Back to the show. It >> It's kind of a question I would have for you too because I know you always say you get to 10 million. I know you can get to 100 million. So like how uh I think there's a few different ways. I don't think there's like one like switch uh flip of a switch. I think there's a lot of other verticals we could be hitting uh >> other than real estate like home services, that sort of thing you're talking about. >> Yeah. Yeah. which we do within our publication, but I think if it was specific to their market, >> you've told us about the business magazine company aka junk mail. Do you send it to people? What's the burning question? Like where could smart friends help you? >> Yeah, I mean honestly I do think that question of how do you take this from 10 to 100? Can I take a stab at helping you? So, uh, first I always want to know what's the default growth rate, meaning how much did you grow last year to this year? What what do I what do I expect if nothing changes? >> Probably like 10%. >> 10%. Okay. So to get to 100 or is your real goal 100? What's your real goal? >> My real goal is to double profit. >> Double profit. Okay. You might not even need to grow top line. >> We grow profit faster and we grow revenue. >> Yeah. It seemed like when Sam was asking you like who's the biggest at doing this and you were kind of like h we might be the biggest. >> One thing that I could immediately tell that's very different about you than the way both both me and Sam are reverse engineer type guys. We like to understand what's working for others, how big others people are to give ourselves like we create this almost like box. And I feel like you don't do that as much. Is that fair? >> Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. >> But you're happy. >> Yeah. Super happy. Like >> what I mean is like >> to be clear, we have a sickness and you seem fine, but we'd like to infect you with our sickness for more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But if you did want to change, here's what I might do. I think what I would do is maybe it's not like direct like oh who also sends home listings sales to realtors but just the general model of mailing out magazines orformational stuff to homes and generating a big business off the back of that. Who else does that that's not exactly your space? Like are there like >> wealth management companies that grow this way or is there some other category that grows this way? >> I think the most I mean it's it's a little different but I think the most intriguing are like neighborhood publications. So, I don't know if you've heard of Stroll, uh, but >> Revolution is that one. >> I don't think it's Revolution. There's Stroll. There there there are others. >> Is this kind of like what's going on in your area? Is that >> years ago I talked about this. I think it was called Revolution. It was a neighborhood publication. That's a franchise model that uh back then we I think we were in real life when we did this actually. Uh it was uh like north of 100 million. >> Yeah, they're they're definitely over 100 million. My gut tells me that if you did have dedicated home services that would be much >> and maybe there's a way to do it moreformationally. So instead of the one you do right now, you're just like here's the homes for sale. It's kind of like utilitarian. >> If you just said like hey here's all the home service providers. That wouldn't be that great. But if it was like let's say it's winter and it's like >> here's the five tips every homeowner should do for like listical type of content, right? And then on the inside there's providers, but like you just do something that's actually like they add >> the front cover is basically like free a give. It's it's useful information, entertaining, useful information about about home service or home care. Yeah. >> And then inside you obviously have homeare providers where if people don't want to do it themselves, they could hire pros to come do this stuff for them. I wonder if you could get good at that. But I would I would just kind of if I was you, I would start with a not an answer but a study. I would I would go get real familiar with what are all the other players doing in the space, who's big, who's not, who used to work there, go talk to them, go learn from them. Like I would kind of go on like a like a one month expedition of that and I think you'll know so much more by the end of that. >> Him and I are buddies. We talk about hiring all the time. I'm like just go recruit someone who's at the bigger company and just have them come and work for you. Um why is there a world where instead of 40 it could be 80 markets? >> It would be dicing the four Well, we could go international. We're already in Canada, so there are markets that make sense for us to go into. But as far as 40 to 80, you would then break down the 40 into 80. It's the same geographical area. It's just going to be more cuz I mean, we're literally covering the whole US. Got it. Uh but I do think if you break it down, it's going to resonate more. Like there are areas that we have full states combined together because it's just not like Ohio, Indiana is just not that sexy of a market. >> Would you ever sell this? >> I would. It's not necessarily my goal. Uh I'm pretty happy doing it forever. >> Yeah. >> God, it's crazy. you might be too happy. >> It's crazy talking to like an an emotionally stable person. >> Yeah. Um you you wanted to double profits and I I I wonder what would happen. Again, I think this is more psychological than strategic. And I think people underrate how much of entrepreneurship is psychological and not strategic. >> I wonder if you just decided that instead of 25% net margins, you're going to have 35% net margins in the next 6 months. What would happen differently? Because I think you would I think right now my read is that you would like for there to be more profits, >> but you don't really have like a I have to have more profits by this date. >> And if you literally just changed the way you talked about it and thought about it, I'm sure that the answers would become pretty obvious to you as you started. Is that true? Like do you have a a goal and a date where it's going to happen by? >> Yes, but it is it is a more recent change in the mind mindset. So what is >> my goal in the date we can hold you to? >> It it was one year from a month ago. So it's we I got 11 months to double double. Yeah. >> Double profit >> to be at a double double as in uh double the run rate at that point. >> So get to 4 million in run rate profit. >> Five. Yeah. Five. >> How's the first month been in terms of uh if we were saying like out of 12 months you're you've already used whatever 8% of your your time. Are you like doing what you needed to do to create a bunch of momentum or or not really? It's like >> Yeah, I think so. I the the main thing the easiest way to double profits right now I think is retention. We already work with 10,000 plus agents every year, but we don't get them to advertise that many times. So, I mean, literally double retention and we're fine. >> You have the inventory yourself. >> Exactly. We have we we have the clients like we have people that are agreeing to advertise with us. >> Do you ask them multiple times? >> Yeah, we ask them every every cycle. >> Why don't they just do it again if they're if it's a money break? >> A lot of times they just won't it's like, you know, I've got a big listing, great, now's the time. And then they just drop off. Do you ever pre-sell them on like instead of um just one time you say I'll give you a discount if you do it for 12 months? >> Yeah. Yeah. I we have like 1500 people that do it for the year so they're just on auto debit. So there's a decent amount doing that. But I think there's a lot of things we can do to improve their experience where they're coming back every month or or just I just need them to advertise one more time basically. >> I wish you would have brought us one >> in the last in the last uh okay let's say this year. How many of those agents have you personally talked to on the phone? >> Zero. Should I? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Okay. >> Um not not necessarily to sell them, but like >> even just take your hundred top spenders. You should call every single one of them and figure out >> what do they love? What do they hate? Why aren't they doing it more? How do you get them? Could they are they actually it's just been out of sight, out of mind? Oh yeah, I I will do it. >> And you will learn a lot just by taking a roster of your top hundred. I also learned this in our our recent business that that that's done pretty well. I asked the CEO, I was like, "Hey, like this has gone pretty well. What what'd you do?" And he goes, "You know what I did? came in and he goes, "I tiered out our key clients as tier 1, tier two, tier three." And he created a a definition for each. He goes, "Tier one is somebody who's they would do me a favor. I have them in a texting relationship. They know me. I know them. They would do me a favor with, you know, quickly." >> Tier two is I got their email. We've traded some emails. We like each other. >> We're Yeah, we're friendly acquaintances. >> Tier three is like we're transactional. Like when they need me, they call me. when I need them, I call them. We haven't really talked much because that transaction is infrequent. >> Yeah. >> And then there's t tier four, which is like worse than that. And he's like, when you do that and you just score yourself like, oh, what would a what would a really healthy relationship look like here? What would a really weak relationship look like here? >> And then you look at your top 100 and you realize, we have no tier ones, >> couple tier twos, and everybody else is tier three or four. >> Then it's like a wakeup call. Nothing bad's going to happen by talking to your top 100 customers. But a lot of good can happen from from going and talking to them. >> Yeah, I like that. And you could do that in 30 days. You could talk to all 100 in 30 days. >> What do you think? Are you impressed? Did you ever know that something like this could exist? >> No. It's so simple of a business, too, right? Like, >> yeah, it's pretty simple. But I mean, it's they didn't even subscribe. I'm used to media businesses where it's like, first I win their hearts and minds, and I get them to listen to me regularly or read me every day, then I get to make money. He's like, "No, read this." >> Yeah. Read. Yeah. >> He uh Have you heard? >> That's incredible. Why are we doing junk mail? >> You know, Lindy, >> the AI tool. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The Flo, the guy who started Lindy's in Hampton. He's like, "Alex Daniels has the most impressive AI setup I have ever seen." >> Oh. >> And that's been like a little bit of a claim of fame that he's had. >> What? What? Can I give us a little sauce real quick? What are you doing? >> Uh, we used Lindy to basic to to run the sales process. So, >> they don't have sales people. >> We do have sales people, but they're on they they've shifted, but they've really shifted to a different focus basically, which is where I'd like them to be more of that customer experience and like getting people to come back. Uh, but Lindy is able to respond to the every email that's coming in, follow up with it, upsell them, just go through the whole process. But yeah, it was it's it was a big Lindy, which is what Flo was talking about. It's crazy. >> That's awesome. Well, you what you done is awesome, dude. Good to meet you, guys. We need like a name for this. The dragon stand, the shark tank, the swimming pool, the denim dungeon. Let's >> The denim dungeon. >> What's up? >> What up, brother? >> How's it going? Have a seat. >> All right. Your name and the impressive number. >> Hit us with the big number. >> Great. Uh, I'm Josh. I run Team Outsider. We acquire family-owned campgrounds and this year will generate around $20 million of revenue. >> 20 million in revenue. Okay. So, uh explain like I'm a an idiot cuz I kind of am. Um what do you do exactly? So, >> yeah. So, we acquire campgrounds typically from families who are looking to retire. And a campground, the majority of it is like a hotel, right? So, we're renting different spaces. Some people come in their RVs, so they have effectively a traveling hotel room. We also have tent spaces and cabins that we rent to people who don't want to stay in a tent and don't have an RV. >> Do you camp? When's the last time you went camping? >> Like 10 years ago, but I appreciate it. >> I haven't gone camping in like 20 years. So, a campground is literally just a piece of dirt, right? So, the ground >> we we have amenities. So, all of our campgrounds have stores. We typically have a cafe where we'll sell ice cream and sometimes burgers and >> cabins basically or >> we have cabins as well. Uh we have swimming pools, lakes, at one of our campgrounds. We have a go-kart track. >> Okay. So, it's a very outdoorsy hotel essentially >> effectively. Yeah. >> Okay. We're looking at one here. What's like the most popular one you guys have? >> They're all really pop popular in their local communities. Um the first one we bought which is right near Grand Teton and Yellowstone is really popular cuz that's a major tourist destination. We have one right outside New York City called the Neversync River Resort. It's a couple hours away. So, that's really popular with folks who live around here. >> So, so give us a give us the story. What makes a guy want to buy a campground? How did you even realize that that's a good opportunity? >> Yeah, so I met my partner in college, Cody. We studied um together and started a business together, which was tremendously unsuccessful, but showed us that it was really good relationship. And so we stayed friends post college, got some working experience, and then realized we wanted to do something together again. We were looking for a business where two non-technical founders could hopefully have a winning situation. And we wanted a market that was large enough to participate in and interesting. Uh one where there was an immense amount of fragmentation with ownership, one that was operationally complex and one that was meaningful where the team members would feel good working there and where the customers would feel good about being part of it as well. So >> how many do you own? >> Currently we have 16 and there about 4,000 sites amongst those in 10 states. >> And did you raise money? >> Yeah. So the first one we did with our own cash and an SBA loan. So just kind of >> That was the Yellowstone one. How much was that? >> About 3 million. >> And so how much money of yours and loan did you put? >> The loan was 80 plus%. Yeah. The rest was cash. >> Sorry. So that was an already operating site. >> Everything we buy is existing cash flow. It's been there generally for decades. Most of these are staples within their local communities. >> So let's walk through that first one. So you find this property. It's doing what when you buy it. >> It was generating around half a million dollars of topline of total income. >> Top line. And then the cash flow on that is what? >> About 35%. Can you do that for me? >> Yeah, we we >> uh call it 150. Okay. >> And you buy that for three million bucks. >> Mhm. >> Okay. So, that's that's the entry. And then you do that knowing, hey, we think we can we can turn that 150 to 250. What was the >> the insight at the time? >> Yeah. So, that one didn't have a lot of digital marketing. Um it was >> was it like a mom and pop thing? >> All of them are. >> And it's all everything's on paper and they've been doing it forever and they're like, "Our kids don't want this Do you want it?" >> Exactly. So, we are often times a succession plan for these sellers. And so, these are multi-year relationships. We've got a couple under contract right now. One of them I've been talking to the seller for 5 years. And generally, what happens is we maintain the relationship and when they're ready to sell, we get the call hopefully. And >> and what were we going to do to make it better? And what what does what does better mean? >> Yeah. So, there there are a few things we can do. Uh, one of them is introduce just professionalized systems. So, digital marketing, a better website, voice systems for the phone to be able to make sure that the training is happening the right way. marketing mean like Yelp and Google reviews. >> Google reviews, but also paid ads, a better website. Often times there's no digital reservation system, so we'll introduce that. >> Got it. >> Um, so that's kind of on the technology side. >> I think I missed it. So you're like, I wanted to do something with my friend and then you had the like business school explanation like high fragmentation blah blah. No, no, no. Like where were you sitting when someone was like, should we buy campgrounds or like you met a guy who's rich that bought campgrounds? You're like, we should do that Like what actually happened? >> Great question. And so our backgrounds were in hospitality and real estate. Okay. So there's like obvious confluence there. And then Cody lives in Bosezeman, Montana, and is an avid RVER. So he said, "Hey, like the thesis sounds interesting. Why don't you fly out here and let's drive around the country, meet some owners, team members, guests, and see if this is something that actually has a little bit of a spark to it." So I flew out from New York, spent some time on the road meeting different campground owners and team members and guests, and just fell in love with the space. >> And how much money have you raised in total now? Uh, we have raised around $60 million. >> You raised 60 million bucks from what' you say 15-ish properties. >> We've sold a couple, but we have 16 currently. >> And what is it all worth? >> North of 100 million. >> Does that mean that 40 million of is you and your partners equity? >> No, we've raised outside capital. So, at this point, we have family offices we work with, we have a select group of accredited investors we work with, and we have a few institutional partners we've worked with as well. I guess what I'm saying is of the 20 million in revenue or if you value it, I'm not I don't I don't know anything about real estate. However you value it, how do you get personal cash flow or net worth from it? >> Like most real estate operators, it's promote-based and different deals are different depending on the investment partner, right? So we are backend incentivized largely for most of these uh typical private equity structure where there's a preferred return, there's a return of capital, and then there's a split depending on kind of who the investor profile is. And so when you do that first one, you go buy it for 3 million. It's doing half a million in revenue, 150k of cash flow. >> What happened? What was the like success story of that one? Obviously, it was success. You wouldn't have 16 more. >> Well, we were able to refi a couple years later. So took all of our cash out. >> You brought the in the NOI up to what? >> Uh the NOI in that one went from closer to closer to 300 at that point. >> Okay. So you doubled the the profit on the on the thing, >> recap, refinanced it out, used that capital to go buy the next one. >> Exactly. Exactly. >> That's pretty awesome. >> Why are campgrounds, if I wanted to go do real estate, why would I choose campgrounds instead of um whatever, retail shopping, multif family, office, whatever. What would I what would be my advantages if I was going into this? Strong yield. It's operationally complex, which means there's opportunity to drive value and really attractive depreciation characteristics that are similar to manufactured housing, for example. So, you can depreciate the roads and the infrastructure. There's very limited land value in a lot of these more rural markets. limited building value. So the depreciation characteristics are also really attractive to people who are tax sensitive. >> Will you do this for forever? >> I hope so. >> Like you just like like looking down 10 years or 20 years down the line, where do you hope to be business-wise? >> Yes. Look, I think the the larger opportunity as more of life moves online, I believe businesses that get people together in the real world going to be more valuable. different types of experienceoriented real estate that can speak to that thesis, but campgrounds still have a lot of runway. We still have a big pipeline of properties we'd like to be a part of. And so hopefully we're doing this for forever. >> Who are the big dogs in this space? >> Yeah. So there are two very large REITs in this space that initially were into the manufactured housing side of the business, but recognized both from a depreciation perspective and also the infrastructure is very similar, right? your renters campground reat. >> There are manufactured housing reats that have a large portion of campground exposure. >> Oh, that's interesting. >> Yeah. So, that was one of the ways when we were researching this that we got a little more comfortable with the idea. >> When you're buying, you're you're buying out the operator and then you put a property manager property management companies. >> We're the manager. >> You are the manager. >> Yeah. So, initially we didn't think we were going to go that route initially. So, Cody, my partner, went and managed our first location for the first year, scrubbed toilets, did the whole thing. And we thought, you know, learn how to hold a shovel and dig a hole and then you can hire a third party to manage it like most real estate sponsors do. And what we realized is a, you can't outsource culture. So that was going to be really important for our success. And b, if we wanted to scale, there weren't really, at least at that time, competent third parties that could scale with us. So we made the decision to build an OPCO in house and have been managing our properties ever since. >> Your branding's cool. That's awesome. I appreciate that. And when I was looking, I was like, I would like to go see this. Is there a world where you would buy buy many of them in a similar region and create a membership? You know, like KO is it KOA? Yeah, we're KOA. >> We're actually a KOA franchisee in certain markets. >> So, how do how do I explain KOA to someone? I mean, I I don't know. >> McDonald's of Campgrounds. They've got 550 flags across the country. They own about 50 of them themselves, but they are a franchise. No, no, they're >> But is it like he's saying where it's a membership or it's just a brand you can trust? You know what you're going to get? >> It's a brand you can trust that you know what you can get. >> Yeah. It's like when I when I do road trips and I want to camp, it's like something might be a lot nicer, something could be a lot worseer, but KOA I just I know what I'm rolling up on. >> Like I was talking to a a kind of like a a famous guy and he was like, "Oh, out an hour outside of cities there's something called it postcard cabins or something like that." >> He's like, "Oh, I love going to those with my kids." It's like, what's the what's the story there? Then I looked it up. It's like owned by Marriott or something. >> They sold to Marriott last year. It's a little bit of a different model. They were focused on very remote single units in destinations where you didn't have to see your neighbors. We are more community focused. So a lot of our campgrounds have seasonal guests which basically means these are people who reserve the right to a specific space for the duration of the season, pay before the season starts and come every year. Grandma's there, aunts and uncles are there, kids are there, everyone's been raised there, all the friends are around. So it's very sticky and communal. M but is there a world where you do brand it so it's similar to each uh each property has uh maybe a different stick but it's all under one brand >> potentially down the road I think real estate brands are inherently tough to scale and until we have meaningfully more scale that's probably not the right focus for us but as re regional concentration starts to happen which is already naturally happening >> perhaps that's something to explore >> so when I hear you I I know nothing about real estate when I hear you describe this I think that sounds awesome you're outdoors all the time obviously that's not the case. What's the day-to-day work? Are you just like cold calling these places trying to make a deal? Writing a lot of handwritten letters, uh, a lot of cold calling, a lot of checking up on >> Have you found like a letter with a cookie converts better than like, you know, a call? >> A a lot of it is luck. The challenge in this space is effectively our sellers are behind the front desk most of the time, which means in season they're exhausted and they don't want to take a call. So the bottleneck of the business is just getting in touch and wooing, >> finding people who want to sell, >> building relationships, and being the trusted succession plan >> because they care. They don't care. It's not just a money thing for them. >> Exactly. These are their friends that they have been personally servicing for often times decades. And so whoever is taking over that relationship is a really important. >> Is there like a like a campground owners like publication or summit or podcast? Yeah, there are Facebook groups and conventions and all >> like posting them all the time with like the same thumbnail image of across all of them. So, everyone like starts saying like, "Oh, this is the guy. He seems like a good guy." >> A bit of that. We're we're trying to figure out how to do it in an authentic way. Um, and that's a tough balance because there's a level of mistrust around being over marketed to in this space. So, a lot of it is catching them on the right day when the campground's a little bit less busy and they answer the phone and we can start a relationship and then, you know, years later when they're ready to sell, we get the call. >> This sounds pretty awesome. Is this um how many hours a week do you work? >> A lot. Yeah. >> You you grind? Oh, >> yeah. >> You're in grind mode. >> Yeah, absolutely. But I love it. >> There's a lot of real estate people, they choose real estate because all real estate is work. There's a way to do it or a a a state you can reach that is not about grinding and it's not like you have a lot of flexibility and you got >> cash flow coming in or you're you flip a property and you can take time off. You know, you can do all kinds of things. Um, sounds like you're approaching it more like company building than it is >> company building and it's a hospitality business, right? We've got tens of thousands of guests every year, 350 people on the team. So, there's no no easy break period. >> Is there is are the people you employ to run a campsite, are they pains in the asses? Like, are they hippies or are they mathematics? >> No, we have some amazing people that work with us. We >> flip this and send it to the answer. >> Actually, like the majority of our team is incredible. uh they are aligned with our mission which is to be the most hospitable team in the world which when you're trying to replace a mom and pop operator is really important because the hospitality that a family provides is awesome >> really tough to beat but we do have some fun stories of team members that haven't been the right fit. We had uh >> a situation where we found out we had employed a convicted bank robber who robbed nine banks and I had to go personally fire him in person and >> that like >> terrifying. Yeah, he actually was incredibly nice and reasonable but the drive-in I was very scared. uh had a another situation where we found out through a guest that some people in the team had been cutting down our trees and selling the wood for cash in a Facebook page. So, wasn't a great situation. And again, these are total outlier situations. They're just fun for conversation. Hey, why do you live in New York? Why do you do this in New York? >> My family's here, my wife's here, my son's here, my parents are here, my in-laws are here. So, you know, when you have kids and the grandparents around, but my partner's in Bosezeman and look, >> so let's hit it real quick. What's the burning question? If you if you had a burning question, something that that we can give you kind of a quick maybe a different insight on than than as an outsider, what would be helpful? >> Sure. Um, as you think about what we do and trying to scale culture to a team of hourly employees across 10 states with this workforce, what is something that we could do differently to keep people incentivized to deliver the level of service that we're trying to deliver? >> If you can solve this in 10 minutes, I will love you forever. >> Well, actually, I'll give you a quick story. So, my first business was a restaurant business, which has the same problem, frontline workers in hundreds of locations if you do it right. And we met with the founder of Chipotle and he said, um, if you can get a frontline worker to care about the customer, like treat this the way you're treating this first location, you'll make billions of dollars. The problem is that's the hardest thing in the world to do. And Chipotle actually did some pretty interesting things where like both in the naming of like they have general managers, the general managers get comped. If any employee you ever have becomes a general manager, even if you don't longer work at Chipola, you get 10 grand in the mail. Like they do lots of things to like build a culture where they get people to stay longer than they normally would to work their way up the ranks to actually think like an owner of that place. >> And so I would just study I'd make a list of the 15 companies that have already solved this problem. I would study what works. I'd look for common patterns and I would try to hire people who were there in the early days either as consultants or or as a full-time person. Often you can find retired people who you're not going to hire them, but they kind of want something to do and they're sitting on this wealth of knowledge because they helped scale, you know, whatever >> some cruise line and uh you know, and now they're just retired. And I think that's what I would do if I was going to solve this problem. My real life answer is I run away from businesses that have that problem. Um cuz I just I'd rather pick a different hard. But you've picked this hard, so good luck. >> Have you read obviously you've read Will Guerrero's Unreasonable Hospitality? We uh we had him on the podcast and he told two stories that was interesting cuz I was like, "Okay, this works good in a fancy restaurant. Where else does this work?" And he told two stories. The first one was he was like, "I worked with a um a dealer, a a Ford dealer, like a car dealer." And I worked with him. I go, "Look, let's just find like a forgotten moment where we could blow someone away." And they I go he will goes, "Let's go sit in the car. Let's look around." He goes, "What's in the glove box?" And the the dealer was like, "Nothing. We don't keep anything there." He goes, "I got it. Let's put a $15 Starbucks gift card in the glove box of every card and we're going to put a note that says we wanted to s when whenever you gonna open this glove box, we wanted to surprise you with something special. And that's all it said. The second example where he got his team to do it, he told the story of a UPS store owner. Not exactly a high margin or wonderful business necessarily, but he was like every week the owner had a competition to was whatever person did that was considered the mostospitable thing. They just got a $20 bill. That was it. And he was like just doing that one contest, it changed the whole culture cuz now everyone was competing on who can be the most hospitable and just like one little trick and like grown-ups are just like kids. We just like stickers and so and he told these two stories and I was like oh that's those are so small and he was like they tracked like referral business and it and and it definitely worked and so he g you should listen to that podcast. It's my first million bulga. It was really cool. >> Amazing. Look forward to it. >> Um but yeah that guy's awesome and and he gave you like some actionable tips. >> Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you. Right on. Congrats on everything, man. Thanks for coming. Appreciate it, guys. God bless, dude. >> All right. See you. >> Should go camping. >> Yeah, it's pretty awesome. >> All right, the last one is going to be funny. >> All right, how's it going? >> What's up? >> All right, welcome to the hot seat. The denim den. >> The denim denim. Let's go. >> Is it live right now? >> The dudes in denim. We're live. Let's go. >> Um, all right. You want to give us the big the big >> All right. The big number. Um, I'm Brian. I run a company called Autopilot. We manage $1.8 billion. Um, and that makes $30 million per year of revenue for the company. We started about 3 years ago for the company Autopilot. And one number that kind of blows my mind, I think it's a testament to how much people want to invest in retail traders. Um, it took Bill Aman and Ray Dalio about 10 to 15 years to start managing a billion dollars. And the fact that like autopilot, this tech company that plugs into your Robin account, your Schwab account, could manage 1.8 billion to me just blows my mind. >> I'm shocked. That's crazy. I didn't realize how big you guys were. So, what's the business do? >> Yeah. So, the business we're most popular for launching the Nancy Pelosi stock tracker on Twitter. >> I thought your big number was going to be uh like 44%. That's Nancy Pelosy's annual returns or you know, what are her annual returns? What does Nancy Pelosi do >> in the last 3 years? Um, she's up around 240%. Check the app for the actual performance. I have to say that for SEC compliance, but uh, she's outperformed the spy significantly. So, I think the spy in that same time it's around is up around 30 to 40%. And she's up 240%. >> And your app I can invest alongside her picks because she's a politician. So, >> exactly. So, there >> Well, and she she's not a politician anymore. >> So, her well, she retires in January of 2027. So we have that much time to copy her trades and follow her trades. But basically >> I can follow anyone. >> You could follow anyone. So you could follow her, you could follow different politicians. We also take 13 apps from different hedge funds. And that was the way that we kickstarted the marketplace. I think every startup has like that chicken egg problem they have to solve. Uh for a marketplace, you have the supply side and the demand side. And if you don't have anyone to follow, that's good. You're not going to get people to come follow that person. But if you don't have anyone to follow, no one's going to want to launch on your platform. They're like, why am I doing this? So we were like Chris and I we got together and we're like let's just manufacture the supply side. Let's take publicly available information >> because the whole premise of autopilot was anyone can become a is that anyone can become a hedge fun. So instead of like having a Substack new newsletter where you could follow my content, I can charge a certain amount and you could follow my trades or my portfolio that I think is good. >> Exactly. >> Got it. >> And I think there's a lot of substacks. I'm sure we've all like read some of them, but you don't know like the performance of this person. maybe the right one and they'll always they're winners. >> They write a very convincing case and then they talk about how last time they were right, but you only know their >> they might have been wrong like three or four other times for that one. And so with autopilot, you have a track record of success. You can see people's winners, their losers, their performance, their entire performance, and then you can see how many dollars are following them, their content, etc. >> How much money have you raised? >> You've raised about 16 million. >> 16? >> Uh yeah, 1616. >> And 30 million in revenue seems like a good company. >> Yeah. What's that worth? >> I don't know. We're going out to raise a series B. Um the valuations that different venture firms have, you know, floated around issues between 300 400 million, which is crazy, but that is venture money. Not sure what it's actually worth. >> How how old are you? >> Uh 31. >> You start this business. What was the first idea you had here? First idea is what? >> Uh so the first idea we actually started 6 years ago, it was an idea. It was a company called Iris. Iris for the eye. So you could see into other people's portfolios. I was trading on Robin Hood. And >> you've been thinking about this idea for like six plus years. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I think like like we all kind of any retail trader, I don't know if you guys invest in the stock market yourself on an app, anyone's like there's stocks that just fly and it's kind of obvious. Like I remember buying Nvidia or buying Tesla and you're like >> some things are just obvious to younger people, but if you just like don't do the research, you're not going to get those asymmetric gains. >> Yeah. But most people don't do the research. >> Most Yeah. Most people don't. And I and I think >> most things I think are obvious are wrong. >> Most time when I invest I lose money. >> That that is fair. And there's I do have like the inverse Kramer effect. >> No no >> but I think I think there are certain people who just have a knack for it. And I think we were talking earlier about like how most people should just invest in index funds. I would say I think that's true for the most part because a lot of people want to do it themsel especially I think there's this advent of di DIY but I think the goal is for autopilot for you to find someone who you have confidence in and can see the track record of success where you put like 10 to 20% of your net worth not all of it but in about 10 to 20% in these high-risisk high reward strategies. >> You know what's fun? Wait, so we're we're doing this Ray Dalio thing tomorrow. We're interviewing him and he started as a newsletter. It was like a $1,500 a month newsletter. That's smart. And then someone was like, "Hey, if you think you're the man, then why don't you have your own fun?" And like, you know, and he's like, "Maybe I will." And >> now we have the biggest one. Now, the biggest one. And so my question is like, "Why doesn't I I think you know MLY Fool." So Mlly Fool does nine figures a year in subscription revenue. So for you don't know, Mly Fool, you give them $100 or some amount of money and they give you stock picks. >> But they also have a fund where they invest in their own pics and I think they have over a billion aum. It's all public. You can like look it up. So, will like every financial blogger who like is a stock picker like be an autopilot person? >> Yeah, I think that's going to happen. We have >> But then there's going to be way less of them because everyone's going to be able to see who's legit and who's not. >> See, exactly. And so, we have a 6,000 person weight list to like launch a portfolio on autopilot. So, we do a lot of due diligence. We look at uh the track record of success. We'll look at we'll analyze their actual portfolio cuz for example, if you run a newsletter but your actual portfolio is bad, we don't really want you on the platform. Who's the most famous or successful person that launched their portfolio on here? Not like you're tracking the politician. >> It's a guy named Peter Wolf. And so I checked out his personal Robin Hood account and I was like, "This guy's up 200%." >> How do you check someone's personal? >> So just by like I would go on a video call and I would look at it. But right now we have tech where he could actually connect his Robin Hood account to our platform and we could analyze it >> and >> over over three years. And I was like, "All right, over time, right? Three years is like >> Yeah. You're right. And it's like what does it do in a downturn? Um, but I liked the way he was thinking about what he does to uh hedge against risk. And I was like, you know what? Like launch on the platform. >> So you guys are kind of like you're you are like the editorial team. You're you're the American Idol. You're letting them sort of audition. You're picking, right? >> Yeah. >> So you're picking the pickers. >> Then they launch their portfolio. People then pay upfront to do it or people just copy the trade and you get that person gets a commission. >> Yeah. There's like a subscription fee very similar to Substack. >> How much? >> Um the pilot could we call them pilots. They could set it. It ranges from 100 bucks a year to 500 bucks a year. >> And so they do that. Um how much are the top people making as >> the top people are making around one to $2 million per year on autopilot. >> Whoa. Which is insane. >> That's outside of their stock print. That's just autopilot. That's just their autopilot. >> And so they and and so that's like that means they have how many subscribers? Like 10,000 subscribers 100. >> It depends on how much they charge. For example, Peter Wolf has around $220 million following him on autopilot. >> Oh, so you see like how many dollars are backing you? >> Yeah. And so again, for example, uh this is a stat that we pull, Bill Aman, who traditionally raised a lot of money really quickly when he graduated Harvard. It took him about 5 years to raise $60 million. This guy on autopilot within one year raised $220 million. So, so you're basically, it's kind of like um Justin Bieber was YouTube native. Yeah. >> Right. He was a YouTuber first, then became Justin Bieber. And you're basically saying like the next Bill Aman, the next generation's Ray Dalio >> is going to come from ours or from Do I put my money into Peter's fund? >> Yeah. So, what would happen is you connect your Robin Hood account or whatever brokerage you have and it we it automatically follows his fund. So when he makes a trade, we send a notification to your brokerage to automatically buy or sell that security. >> Copy trade, but it's not giving the money to the guy and take the money in your Robin Hood. >> Yeah. And that's that's how we are able to operate from a legal standpoint. Whenever you're giving custody of assets away to someone, the SEC gets really involved is that a brokerage you have custody. That's when a lot of regulation pop. >> How is the business? >> It's a uh autopilot. We've been running autopilot for 3 years, but the entire business like structure is six years. >> So autopilot has existed in three awesome years. >> Yeah. What's going to happen in six years when you have three years? >> If we have three years, >> like stock market years is what he's saying. >> I I think what we see is the retail investor right now perseveres longer than they used to. 3 years is a long time. Um I would say if it was like 3 years downturn like consistently, I feel like the whole world will there'll be a lot of questions for the whole world. But that happens. >> Well, it happens to like Robin Hood and these other guys, right? Like what do you mean? I think three years straight it hasn't really happened, but I think you'll see like one and a half years um happen. So I think >> and Robin Hood almost died and but they they didn't because they had raised billions of dollars. >> Yeah. And they they had an emergency funding round. >> Yeah. So like it was a near-death moment. >> When was that? During the >> Yeah. during GameStop. Um they were about to go under and I think they had raised $40 billion like immediately. Um and or not sorry $4 billion immediate >> because they needed liquidity. What? There's something with like being a brokerage and like the DTCC. Not too familiar with it, but they're like, "You need to post up this money. We don't have it." >> Are people nervous to in venture venture guys that nervous to invest? >> I think what we've seen in venture is just the AI wave. Um, and it's just not fintech was sexy in 2020, 2021. Right now with our metrics, I would think it would be very exciting for >> fintech. Like we have some friends in fintech. Like a lot of fintech companies make like no revenue. Like you know, you could be like what's the thing called Wealthfront and you could have billions of dollars in AUM and like your fees are so tiny that so you're making 30 actual million in revenue I think yeah on GMV like that you still have to pay to >> so right now because we've launched our own portfolios where we take 100% of the revenue like the posting portfolio is ours so we get 100% of that revenue um our GMV revenue is 30 million but our autopilot AR is around 22 million >> okay so you have more real revenue than like remember an was doing carry and like he had like a billion in AUM, but the revenue was like literally a million. >> I I think Yeah, I know. That's That to me always blows my mind. I think the thing that's interesting about us is when you look at other traditional asset managers, they just put your money in like ETFs and like mutual funds and there's no real alpha they're trying to get you. So, they can't really charge that much money cuz you're like, why would I go to them? Why don't I just go to Wealthfront that charge like.1%. And so, with autopilot, the reason you pay so much uh is because these people are they're the hope is that they outperform the market. Um, and so I think the average that people pay on autopie is around 3 to 4%. >> Does Nancy Pelosi hate you? >> Probably. I would say you guys interacted like no cease and desist even from her like >> No. No. >> Wow. >> They're all she's getting old. >> Yeah. I mean, the goal is when she retires, we try to have her actually join the fight >> be and have a commercial. >> That'd be incredible. We we did sponsor the UFC and got a fake Nancy Pelosi. >> Did you see this? This is no. >> Um, and so the the goal was this was the UFC before the election and Trump was supposed to sit row one at the UFC and we were like, wouldn't it be funny if we sponsored the UFC and it shows invest like a politician right in front of Donald Trump and then we have a fake Nancy Pelosi right by him >> like you bought a ticket or as part of the sponsorship. >> So they had the ring sponsor like a politician >> and then they hired a lookalike Nancy Pelosi and they had her walking in. They had like the You had like kind of social content of her entering the arena. Did you have to actually buy that ticket? >> We had to buy that ticket. That ticket row one was $60,000. >> No way. How much you spent on the whole marketing buy? >> About $450,000. >> Did it help? >> Um, it didn't help directly. I think the brand affinity was there. Would I do it again? Probably not. It would have helped if Trump was actually showed up. That was a weekend when there was an assassination attempt. So, >> there was and I was like, "Dang, he's not here." But I'm glad he's safe. But I think if he did show up, I think the the the media that would have been picked up, the earned media would have been insane. >> Hey, it was ballsy. Uh and and sometimes you got to do what you got to do. That's I think it was cool. We're still talking about it now, right? Earned attention that that that happens when you do unique over the top things. So So that's amazing. >> Yeah. We're trying to think of the next stunt, but >> mostly >> How many people work there >> right now? 30 35. Uh, so you're doing uh 800,000 of revenue per uh that's >> it's about a million dollars per employee right Walk walk me through the like what does this look like if this is actually big cuz some of the weird ideas your this is a weird idea and weird ideas have a lot of potential even though on the surface they take a little time to like >> I guess to me it was kind of like a common sense idea like I I don't know growing up I was like man why can't my Robinet account just like follow this other guy's Robinet account automatically like I don't want to just give my funds away to someone else like I want to be able to do stuff myself but I also want to like go on vacation without worrying about like when to sell or when to buy and I think the solution to me was just the most obvious But I think the ultimate goal of autopilot is to become the world's largest asset manager. When you look at BlackRock, they actually do this for institution. Black Rockck connects all these financial institutions. Companies will go on a tool called Black Rockck Aladdin and buy different portfolios. So it already exists at the institution level. >> You say buy different portfolios. >> Uh Black Rockck will create their own portfolios based on different risk. Um and so like if you're Walmart and you're, you know, heavily invested in, you know, uh groceries for this quarter, you could actually like hedge your bet on Black Rockck Aladdin. If you're a Facebook employee, you could actually find a portfolio on autopilot that hedges like tech and and that tool that Black Rockck created makes around $6 billion per year and Black Rockck's one of the largest asset managers. And so I think with Autopilot, one of our goals is to get that same tech and like build it for retail investors. >> How do you get those how do how are you going to hire those people? >> Well, he's saying people come to the platform like it's two-sided marketplace, right? >> Yeah. And so then the pilots come and they're the ones with the ideas. you verify, you know, their employment, where they've worked, but really the goal is where anyone could just publish those portfolios and get paid. And then us as a marketplace, we take a cut of that revenue. >> What would be the burning question? >> I have a bunch of large macro questions on AI, but I also have questions because you guys have been running companies for 10 plus years. Um, one of the biggest things is hiring. How do you find people that are highly motivated? What questions do you ask? Because one thing that I've noticed is when you hire especially more senior level people, their ability to BS is greater than my ability to detect BS. And I think there's certain questions or certain things that you could look at that you guys probably have more experience that would actually really help autopie get to the next step. >> Well, for one, having like a personal audience is like definitely that's probably one of the biggest perks is that you're able to like >> if you cold email someone, they're like, "Oh, I've heard of you or I know of you." At the very least, at best, you have a lot of people who apply. But whenever I would hire for people who uh roles that I didn't know what the hell I was doing, I definitely would have like an outsider hiring committee. So I would have outsiders uh interview people all the time and that helped me a lot. >> Yeah, that was going to be one of I I've probably three or four tips. They're not all related. The first is I find a lot of my hiring mistakes where I didn't actually even understand what I was hiring for. I wasn't clear enough. Sometimes that comes from I do the work for a little bit and I'm like, "Oh, okay. What the person's going to need to do is XYZ." as you scale that happens less uh but still writing down not like a generic like I think a lot of people outsource the job spec to either chat a recruiter it's super generic it's going to attract a generic candidate and it's not actually clear what are you what are you trying to get somebody to come change in your company what do they need to be world class at what sort of problem are they going to have to solve and be really really clear so that's the first thing second is kind of yours on outside u help so I have a buddy who he's better at hiring than I am and so what I would do for any executive hire is I would call the favor be like, "Hey, like once I've done the screening, will you talk to these will you talk to my favorite kind of three or four candidates and give me your take?" And it really wasn't about who he picked. It was me becoming a better hirer and interviewer by understanding the delta of like, I thought this person was great. He sniffed out their really quick. Why did he do that? and I'm watching the the call and I'm realizing like, oh, he dug in in a different way, asked a different style of question, didn't accept their first answer at face value. I got to start doing that. And so, I got better by doing that. Not just because they helped me pick this person, but because I realized where I was weak in the interviewing process. I also think there's two really good pools to hire from. One is you want people who've either done it before or never done anything, but can do anything. So, done it before is who's solved this problem before. I always start there cuz if I can find somebody who's already done this before, that's going to help me a lot. And I mean specifically, so it's not just like, oh, he worked at a successful company, but they do enterprise sales and we don't even do enterprise sales, right? It's like, no, they solve they they did this exact thing before this. >> We've talked about this a lot in the pod where it's like it's so fun to hire young people. They don't have any experience. It's so fun, right? Cuz that's what you were recently, but like nine out of 10 times if you're just like, "Hey, you did that there. Do that same thing here." Right? And that tends to just be way >> so so we we will map out which companies have solved this problem before who was the person that was there at the year when they had this problem where we are who was that person and then were they the real shot caller on the team or were they just doing something but there was somebody else who was amazing I like go to that level of detail there. So that's one pool you got to get good at. And the other pool is like basically diamonds in the rough like unproven talent that you can almost be a stock picker on and be like okay I think this person's like a 10xer and I build the company with those two pools of of people. Um and you build systems so that you consistently are sourcing from both of those. >> Yeah. >> Most one thing most people are you the CEO of the business? >> How much time uh per week do you spend recruiting right now? >> Right now about 20%. >> Um >> that's pretty good. Most people that means one full day a week basically. >> Most founders who have like hiring problems if you ask them that question they're like hours I they don't really track it. >> It used to be that and now I'm like seeing how important it is. If you listen to like a lot of the most successful founders that that were in a scaling phase, they spend like 30 plus% of their time just on recruiting. >> Are you guys profitable? >> Yeah. >> Okay. So, you're at 20 million in revenue. 30 million cash flow positive. Not like gap profitable, but >> Sure. >> So, you're default alive. >> What's the growth rate going to be this year over the next year? >> Uh about 250%. >> I would think almost your entire job is collecting people. What what sorts of people do you need to be hiring right now? >> A lot of software engineers, um product people, growth people, marketing people, really anyone. >> But I think people just people. >> I think the thing is um is just maintaining that high bar and we've just hired a lot of people and perhaps I'm actually very quick to get rid of people. If they like come in and within like two to three weeks they haven't really done anything, I just immediately I'm like, "All right, you're getting out of here." >> Does that imp that impacts culture, which is why you got to get the hiring right? It it impacts culture, but I think everyone who's been here, anyone who we we we tell people if you're here for longer than 3 months, you don't have to worry. So, I think after the 3-month mark, people like, "Okay, I'm I'm chilling." But before that, everyone's like freaked out. >> Oh, you going to only hire in New York? >> Yeah. Yeah. We We Yeah. Yeah. We've >> I think especially with AI, the salaries that we're paying people, like we we just just offered a guy like a 350k salary, and I'm like, "This is crazy." Cuz I've never made that much money. I still don't. But yeah, I think the the goal is with AI each person is much much more effective. So a good person with AI could be 10 20 times more effective than an average person with AI. >> That's crazy. My CTO used to say it to he's like I you're one person. No, you're three people. He're three people. He used to say that all the time and people like it's funny like it's real simple. People just realize what you mean. It's like no, you need to be able to do the work with three people because you got to be smart about what you don't do. Don't do the automate stuff, you know, figure out like a faster path, you know, that's your job is to be three people. And when we used to do off-sites, we would say every day is two days. It's like two days of stuff needs to happen every day. And so I think when you do that, you set up set a different bar for for your team on how they how they operate. >> Yeah, >> dude. Thanks for doing this. This is awesome. >> You're awesome. We uh I I messaged him um roughly two hours ago and I was like, where are you? >> Yeah, I saw the post. I'm like, yo, Sam, I got to get on my first dream. Can you be here? >> Well, you guys have are one of the great like growth hack stories. Like there's you know what you guys did with the Pelosi tracker. You have another tracker. Do you have other trackers? >> Yeah, we have like you know the Leopold tracker. >> Who's the best? >> Um right now Leopold he's up insane amount. >> 25y old. >> He was like a 22-year-old. He worked for OpenAI. Now he's like 25. Um he left OpenAI and then started a fund. >> Is he up like$10 billion or something? >> Uh around five billion. >> So he's a billionaire now? >> I think I think he raised outside capital. Uh I I think of a lot of a lot of it was friends and family, but >> Daniel Gross and Natt Freriedman and like Smart Money was immediately behind him. >> How much did he raise? >> I think originally 500 million, not that much. And now he's at like upward of $5 billion. But what he did, which was super smart, >> 10x in two years. >> Yeah. He looked at what companies what was the bottlenecks of Open AI and he was like, "Okay, well SSDs like a lot of people thinking GPUs, he was like SSDs like Micron." And so he just started buying all of like the other bottlenecks that no one was focusing on and now they're just like skyrocketing. >> And isn't like his somebody is like the chief of staff at Anthropic? He's got some some some information flow as well. That's pretty good. >> I mean he's brilliant. Have you read his like situational awareness paper? >> No. >> Okay. So do this. Uh I did this and it was very very useful. Take the PDF for situational awareness. It was like on my list of like >> what is situational awareness name. He published >> he published a a white paper or blog post like a PDF >> before like before he launched the hedge fund or right after I think it was actually maybe before and this is how he attracted the money. He launched this thing which was basically he had a very strong point of view on like what the next 10 years of AI looks like very bold predictions it was like and then huge tension between China and America and then because of that this it was like super specific predictions of how the puck where the puck was going. So he published this thing and a lot of smart people were like, "Yo, this is like one of the smarter takes of what's going on." I think that attracted more capital, more aware. >> Situational awareness was the name of his publication and I think it's the name of his uh fund or his his whatever his company is. >> So take it, give it to you Victor in your slack. >> Yeah. >> Just say, "Victor, break this down >> into the 10 key ideas like predictions and hypotheses that he has. Explain it and just explain it to me." Victor did a wonderful job. He like just chewed up this PDF for me. It explained it step by step and then I asked follow-up questions and it was just great and I was like, "So, did that play out? Was he right about this? Did he trade on that?" And it just it just answered every single question. It was so good. >> Is a guy like him? >> Victor, by the way, is like a AI thing that Sam put me on to that I am now hooked. I ended up investing in it. >> Yeah, thanks for telling me after I told you about it. You should have told me that. >> Well, it was at a absurd valuation, but like it's that good that I was like, "Yeah, for sure." >> Well, I told you I told him about those tools. He's like, "I don't know. I don't trust these tools. These are stupid." And then two days later he goes, "Wow, these tools are amaz tool." >> I made him feel dumb. I was like, "Why do you just trust a random startup with all your stuff?" >> And then I heard about a little more and I was like, "Let's try it out." And I tried it in one of my slacks. I was like, "This is amazing. Now it's in every business I have." >> Yeah, it was good. >> But the um I'm curious about the personal personal side on this. Is he like lowkey right now? Is he trying to hide out? >> No, he posts on Twitter. >> Really? >> He's a he's like very good friends with Daresh. So he's done the Dark Cesh pod a couple of times where I mean, >> is he cool? Yeah. >> Do you think like Peter Teal's cool? Like, you know, like do you think Asberger's genius is cool? Yeah. >> Yeah. He has that. He's great. >> I love it. >> You can follow. >> I'm saying is not the word I would use. I love it. Yes. I think he's awesome. >> And so you can replicate his >> You can follow his top 15 picks on autopilot. >> How do you know his picks? >> Uh so he follows a 13F. And so it is a little lag. >> There's about a 45day lag, but even we only track with the lag. and a 13-day app. How big does your fund need to be? >> Oh, uh, $100 million. >> Oh, okay. Damn. So, he's the guy right now. >> He's the guy. >> He's the guy. Does he do podcasts? >> You guys should get them on. >> There's a couple. We were trying. I I think we were reaching out. Yeah. >> And it's stuff like this that make me like very adamant of like people should always invest in index funds, but there should always be like 10 to 15% of your like net worth on high-risisk, high reward stocks or portfolios. And so this is where autopilot doesn't right now want to take 100% of what you have but just% >> I would say 10 to 15% >> your liquid net worth where is it allocated? >> Um >> who are you following >> right right now I follow basically like 20 different pilots on autopilot right now. >> So right now of your of your 100% net worth. >> So of my 100% net worth it's like 90% on autopilot. A lot of it is in autopilot. >> I want to know the truthiness. So you said you connect with their brokerage account but like people have many different accounts. >> So you can connect to all of them. You could, >> but but you don't know if if this is tracking all of them or it's just tracking some, right? I me as the user, I don't know if you have everything that this person has done, right? Winners and losers. >> So, what it is is the people will go on our platform and create a model portfolio and so you only see the history of the model portfolio from when the pilot joins >> to to now. Um, so it's not like actually following their brokerage account. >> Oh, okay. >> Um, but what we do have is we have what's called skin the game where the pilots will also put their money on autopilot following their own portfolio. And so you could be like, "Wow, Peter Wolf has $500,000 following his own trades verified by autopilot." >> Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. Are you having fun? >> I would say right now I'm having fun. I would say the last 3 years have been It's It's hard. I I would say getting from 0 to 1 million in revenue was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Getting from 1 to 30 was actually a piece of cake. >> What do you think the next the next threshold will be? >> I think we're on track to hit 100 million in revenue by March next year. Um, I think it's gonna be difficult, but >> run rate, >> uh, reoccurring revenue, not run rate. Right now, we're at like a 70 million run rate. Um, but we want to get like >> I passed on investing in this like twice. >> Do it. I know. >> Um, but >> it seems like a really hard thing to get off the ground. I actually >> Well, I'm a degenerate and they listen to MFM, I think. So, like they knew that I >> talked to Chris a couple times. >> I talked to Chris. I really admired the marketing. So, I think I just reached out giving respect. I was like, "Hey, I I think it's brilliant what you guys are doing with the plus tracker on Twitter and the UFC." I just thought you guys were doing a really good job. >> Without the marketing, we wouldn't be here just because of how hard this stuff is to do. >> What's your What was the first round's valuation? >> The first round was uh 7 million, >> right? >> Yeah. >> But that was 2021. Like there's a lot of uh >> Yeah, man. >> Yeah. >> Well, either way, I'm a fan and uh I think what you guys are doing are great, man. I appreciate you coming on. >> This is awesome. All right. We appreciate you. >> Thank you. We'll talk to you a little bit. >> That was awesome. >> Good picks. >> Yeah. >> Uh that was cool. That was fun. I hope um >> this is a this is a Hampton plug, by the way. I definitely just went into the New York channel and I just said, "Yeah, >> who's interesting?" Cuz I didn't want to tweet it out cuz I wasn't sure where we're going to get. >> Well, I'll do the plug for you. If you're a interesting business owner and you want to be in a community of other interesting business owners, >> join Hampton. And uh maybe you too can be on MFM someday, too. >> The I didn't realize how big autopilot was. I thought >> it's been scaling a lot. Like it wasn't that big like 6 months ago, you know? Well, he told I knew it was 30 million in revenue. I thought that meant like GMBB. So, like cuz those businesses, not um his business, but that category of business is usually pretty shitty, >> right? >> Uh like numbers can be huge, but the actual business, but not his. That's insane. >> Yeah, he's doing well. >> Um that was cool, right? You know, one of the things with probably the biggest thing for me since I started my first million till today was I remember pre my first million kind of like 10 years before that the full 10 years I felt like opportunity like success was this this needle >> you had to do in the pay stack or it was this narrow thing this thing I had to search for in this room and it was so hard to find and I needed this brilliant idea >> and if I just is this the brilliant idea where is the brilliant idea that I need perfect execution I remember opportunity just felt so scarce and then one of the things of you move to San Francisco, you meet a bunch of people, we start doing this podcast, it's like you just realize, oh dude, there's thousands of different tens of thousands of different ways that I can win. Opportunity is everywhere. It's really about picking what's the right fit for me. It was a total like from lack to abundance mindset shift on success. Like where does success live? And like what I like about a thing like this that we did today is those are three ideas that didn't even exist in my my cone of vision. You know, I couldn't even I didn't even know that people do businesses like that. >> And there's also parts of their business and their lifestyles and personality that I want to like like I love and I want to steal, but I don't admire the whole thing. Like for example, Alex, I'm like, "Oh man, he's so calm." Like like I need to learn from that. I don't necessarily want to trade what I have for what he has, but like I want to steal this from him. He wasn't in a rush. For better and for worse, but mostly for better. >> And same with Brian. Huge business taking off. I don't want to do all those stunts. I don't want to raise VC, but that's pretty awesome. >> I admire the creativity. >> Yeah. And then like uh Josh's outdoor business. I'm like that's awesome. I don't want to raise money, but like it would be maybe fun to own one. Like you know, like there's really small >> but I should go camping. >> Yeah. >> No, but there's like small things, Rob. I you know I think um people sometimes in the comments tease us about like having I hate when people say you have these guests that are out of touch. Whenever I hear that I'm like no you're out of touch with his life. >> Yeah that's about you. >> You're out of touch. What I mean is I'm like I am equally impressed by like a billion dollar company versus a $5 million company. They're all they're both equally awesome. >> Somebody Jesse said this at one of our events. He it was like an intro. What do somebody what do people what should people know about you? He's like, "Hey, I'm Jesse Hitler, blah blah blah. I did this." And he goes, "My thing is I root for everybody because when you root for everybody, you can never lose." And then he sat down and I was like, "Yo, I kind of like that fortune cookie he just did. I like >> Is Jesse really a cool black man?" >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. >> No, he's the best. It's cool black guys like him. It's like whoa. That's like the next level. So, in the same way of like you when you root for everybody, you can never lose. There's something like if you think you can learn from everybody, you can never lose, right? So, it's like great, tomorrow we're talking to Ray Dalio. There's going to be some awesome things to learn from him. Again, parts, not the whole. We're not trying to do what he's doing, but I'm still going to pull something away. I'm going to get a win and I'm going to have some fun in that hour. Just in the same way I got wins and learnings and fun in this hour. >> I think the new slogan should be we can we we get, you know, high high and low low because I get like equal joy. Like we'll go to we'll like pop into a bedga. I'll love that And now we're going to go hang out with like the 80 of the richest person in the world. I'm going to love that equally. >> Right. >> Um all right. That's it. That's the pod.