In this episode of Trenches hosted by Tom Wang and Ryan Mckenzie, John Roman goes deep on the mechanics: how earn-outs are structured so you never hit them, why private equity wanted control and what that would have cost him, what a Netflix drop actually does to your CAC, and the conversation with his wife when she found out the bank could take their home.
John spent four and a half years as a professional poker player before deciding he'd never be better than a B+. He took an entry-level sales job at 26, invested in seven startups, and watched six of them go to zero. The seventh was BattlBox.
He built it into a Netflix show, sold it to a publicly traded SPAC, watched their market cap collapse, and then bought his own company back for less than half of what he sold it for. To do it, he personally guaranteed an SBA loan against his house.
Transcript from video:
Chapter 1: Why he walked away from professional poker
0:00 I found out that you play a lot of poker. I was a B+ player. Could not figure out how to be an A. And if you look at a B+ player that's our age now in the casino, it's not really what I wanted to do cuz it looks like, you know, a lot of additional variables come into play if you can't crack it. So went and got a big boy job, an entry-level college job at uh 26 and I was a sales job. Did really well with that. It was a wild concept to me. I could I could grind for
0:27 13 hours in a workday and actually not lose money, actually make money. Wild, wild concept. Changed it a little bit.
0:34 But yeah, I was putting for 14 months, I was probably putting in 50 hours a week at Battlebox and 50 hours um in my sales job. So like it was it was not sustainable.
Chapter 2: The AI assistant that books his tee times
0:46 Yeah. I've been using So there's a tool called Instinct. It's uh something that my friend uh Tony Do you know Tony by chance? Ryan, does he know Tony?
0:54 I don't know. Do you know Tony? you from Vessie? I don't. No. Okay. So, yeah, he's pretty like tapped into the latest and the greatest in terms of the AI stuff. So, there's a tool called Instinct. It's basically just like iMessage. Uh it's a LLM within iMessage and you can just I'm treating like my personal assistant. So, the it's quite different because it can actually do stuff for you now. So, I play golf and I'm like, "Hey, go find me tea time." and they found me tea time and it
1:21 actually booked it for me, which is like I haven't really found any other LLMs that was able to do that. Um, and also like it actually pulled Airbnb listings out and then sent me the listing itself.
1:33 So I So it's it's it's pretty cool. Um, and apparently it can find flights. It can find bunch of stuff. So you you ask it to uh respond to any of your wife's text messages yet? Like No, she doesn't text me. So slippery slope. Yeah, my wife doesn't text me.
1:49 Tom, why are you being so I really like this new personality on your text messages? Your uh Have you Have you guys seen the meme of the guy? It's like uh he's like uh chat.
1:59 He he he um he he goes like ah have you seen this one like on Instagram? No, but I know what you're talking about. Ah, you're right. Yeah. Yeah. Ah, you're right.
2:13 Cool, man. Well, let's uh let's get the party started. Well, thanks for uh first of all, John, thanks for uh taking the time to do this with us. It's a relatively new podcast. You're the very first guest of this podcast, but yeah, thanks for taking the time, man. Um lots of questions for you. Uh you know, lots of questions, but why don't you guys why
2:30 don't you just maybe take us back to the beginning? Like I found out that you play a lot of poker. What got you into poker? Like were you playing tournaments? Were you playing cash games? Like how how many years did you grind in poker?
Chapter 3: Telling his parents he was going pro
2:39 Okay, so we're just we're going back to the beginning. I'm sure the immense joy of my parents um I told them after I graduated um from university that I was going to totally take my degree and apply it correctly with um a career in
2:54 professional poker. The the truth of it is I had been playing in um you know the the Friday night or Thursday night game with some friends um and and those circles and just consistently won. And uh it got to the point where I was like, "Okay, I'm pretty good." And then this is online poker um all the rage. Chris Money Maker, like this is now on ESPN.
3:20 And um I grinded up like a a bankroll, which is what kind of you need. It's it's your operating capital um to do it and just just went for it.
3:36 Did it for 4 and 1/2 years. Um high level got to go to some places I had I had not gone previously. Went to Melbourne for the Aussie Millions. went to London for the WSOP Europe. Um,
3:53 did the whole thing. Uh, was not good at tournament poker at all. So, you're more of a cash game player.
Chapter 4: Why he was good at cash games and terrible at tournaments
4:00 I'm very good at cash game. Um, what's what's the difference? What What made you good at one and not the other?
4:06 So, so tournaments once you're out, you're out. Um, so there's, you know, still some luck to it. Um just it's a different strategy, different type of player. Um cash game is, you know, you can tell a story, you can narrate something a little bit better, um and make mistakes and and then leverage those mistakes later later to capitalize
4:30 on them. Um, I can, you know, play a I can sit down and within 15 minutes blow through a whole buyin very like publicly showing certain types of strategy. Come back, do it again. And that's all just a
4:47 setup. And then the next time, the third time, I'm not doing that, but I've given you no reason to not believe that I'm not going to do it again. But then I take everything I lost before. And because you you you stacked up, I now can get all of yours, too. So, it's um
5:04 it's just a different animal. But I had a I had moved in with two guys that played professionally and one uh was really good at tournaments. So, he would get these all expense paid trips and I would just tag along and and get to play
5:18 the cash cash game element. So, did that four and a half years. Um I was a B+ player. could not figure out how to be an A. And if you look at a B+ player that's, I don't know, our age now in the casino,
5:35 it's not really what I wanted to do when I grew up. Um cuz it looks like, you know, a lot of additional uh variables come into play if you can't crack it.
Chapter 5: Getting a "big boy job" at 26
5:45 Um, so went and got a big boy job, an entry levelvel job, entry- level college job at uh at 26 and I was a sales job. Um, did really well with that. It was a wild concept to me. I could I could grind for 13 hours in a workday and
6:04 actually not lose money. Um, actually make money. Um, wild wild concept. So because I think of that work ethic that poker had given me and that kind of jaded view um was very successful at
6:20 sales that allowed me to make some investments. Um made some investments very poorly. Um I
Chapter 6: Seven investments, six went to zero
6:28 went through a stint of two and a half months where I invested in seven companies. Um six of them went to zero. No shot at it. It's not like oh one in 10. No, like I just didn't know what I was doing. These are like startups then.
6:44 All startups all just from this network that I that I had um of you know a friend of a friend and BattlBox was one of the seven. Battle Box um I got lucky um on the the timing and the the the element of it. So I came in to it um as
7:01 the only money that the company took two weeks after launch. Um knew the guys, went to school with them. Um the the business in that initial two weeks is nothing like it is now. Um but I I came
7:16 from B2B software sales. So I loved this reoccurring revenue and helped me understand you're going to do it to consumers which is a much larger larger base. Um what what year what year was it that you launched BattlBox originally? What we
Chapter 7: The subscription box boom
7:32 launched in February 2015, I think, cuz I used to have a subscription box, too. An outdoor adventure subscription box. And I think we launched Christmas of 2016, I think. Uh, but we were mostly in Canada.
7:49 Yeah, it was a wild time. That was that was kind of of of that moment where like subscription boxes were like all of the rave and rage. And you had from both consumers um but also the business side cuz at the time everybody's talking about Birchbox
8:06 with a billion dollar valuation and like that can be you and um it was a wild time. So fast forward that um came on joined full-time in April 2016.
Chapter 8: Fifty hours at BattlBox, fifty at his day job
8:21 So very untraditional entrepreneurial journey. I waited till the run rate of my side hustle um was was doing was doing meaningful revenue and um so I
8:37 never had to do the you know the the ramen noodles every night. Um I was very riskadverse. I've changed it a little bit. Um, but yeah, I was putting for 14 months, I was probably putting in 50 hours a week at BattlBox and 50 hours um in my sales job. So like um it was it was not sustainable at all.
9:02 Balance to me. That sounds pretty reasonable.
9:04 Yeah, it's half 50% there, 50% there, right?
9:09 Yeah. So, I waited till um I waited till we uh we closed on our first home and I had a mortgage and I decided at that point that's now that that has you know happen and that is real adult responsibility I should totally quit my
9:25 career sales job and jump into selling outdoor gear and that's what I did and wife was super happy about it.
Chapter 9: Buying out the partner who wasn't adding value
9:32 That's awesome. Are the guys that you started it with are they still are they still involved? um one so one of them Patrick um who who also serves as our COO um he he still is so initially there were four um when I came in full-time in 2016 14 in April uh my first job was to buy out
9:55 the fourth guy because he he was getting a free launch he didn't bring any value um it just it just didn't make sense so did that and then three of us wrote it um all the way uh until the acquisition in in 2021. So was there's a lot of details in there. Um and you know
10:19 business partners are challenging sometimes. You don't always see eye to eye. Uh and it was one of those scenarios to no fault of anyone but um someone was ready to retire, didn't want to work anymore. And uh so we had we had
10:34 a rough couple of years leading up to the Netflix show and the acquisition because it didn't make sense for us to you know do a buyout when we all agreed on you know these these ebida multipliers like it just and we thought
10:49 we were already at the top. So it's a weird scenario. Finally found someone that we thought spoke the same language as as us and they did um to buy us a spack out of uh Toronto emerge commerce.
Chapter 10: Selling to a SPAC
11:01 great great guys. Um I still talk to Gassan a good bit. Um but they were the the story of any spa from 2021 and 2022.
11:11 You could do everything right. It didn't matter. You lost your market cap. And um because of them losing their market cap, uh the debt facility, you know, everything, all these variables are at play and we saw the opportunity to to
11:26 buy the business back at a uh significant discount from what we sold it for. Were Were you guys were you guys still working in the business like after you sold it? Like like how did how did that like like I mean how how did that even
11:41 come to play? Like you you sell How did like the idea or even the option to to take this business back become like on your radar?
Chapter 11: What actually changed after the acquisition
11:52 Yeah. So, so yeah, Emer's model at the time, I don't think it's their motto anymore, but their model at the time was a bunch of um founder ran portfolio of of brands where the the founder doesn't
12:06 leave. Um the operating team doesn't change hands. Um, it's basically just a a stable which with a bunch of thoroughbredads in there. Um, as as I said that last sentence, that doesn't really work. That that model doesn't work, right? You can't you can't have a
12:22 bunch of bunch of that. It it's just not sustainable. And um, so we never left the business. We were running the business the same way the entire time.
12:31 Really, what changed were um, a few things. one uh financial reporting became a task and oh boy I'm glad I wasn't in the day-to-day of it because it was rough because you had to you're
12:45 you're reporting public numbers so the amount of um the amount of reporting was just insanity. um ironically ended up being a best practice that we took like 60% of it and applied it when
13:00 we bought the business back and run we have audited financials now which is like very unusual but it was such a such a good practice um we wrote a check every month to to our parent company um which caused some cash flow challenges
13:18 and um the the last piece is there was um always an attempt to try to figure out some synergies, right? Like they have this portfolio of brands. How can we help each other all win? Okay. Well, you know, True Local, which um another
13:34 another Canadian brand, um the the Butcher Box of the North, if you will, they um you know, we we uh would would get on calls and try to figure out, okay, is there a way to to share on the OP side? You know, you had services model, right?
13:50 Yeah. Um, unfortunately there wasn't a a a lot of that that worked. I think the only big win. Um, Emerge was able to take our negotiated rate with Brainree and give it to everybody else. Um, which which was great for them, but it didn't really benefit us.
14:08 What does, sorry, what does Brainree do again?
14:10 Uh, Brainree is uh owned by PayPal credit card. Yeah. Isn't that uh Brian Johnson's company? Brian Johnson, the guy who started uh who who who the biohack he's the guy that wants to live forever, right?
14:19 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I believe it might be.
14:22 Yeah. Yeah. He started uh Brain Tree, I'm pretty sure, and he sold a PayPal. Yeah. And now he wants to live forever. It's funny that that's how how he's known is the the guy that is is going to live forever. Back to your your your
Chapter 12: Spotting the chance to buy it back
14:33 question, Ryan. It uh publicly traded. So, you know, the the news is the news. We we we know what's going on. We know there's this this debt facility. We we know that there's um um a variable interest rate. We we know
14:50 that, you know, it's coming due soon. It was a one-year deal, so we we knew something was there. I had pinged an old mentor of mine and kind of ran him through this and said, "Hey, like, is there something here? Is there is there
15:05 an opportunity here?" um where everybody can win and um they can get some much needed cash and we can get our baby back at a at a huge discount and and and and do all of this with someone else's money and not ours. we had to bank the initial
15:21 sale like can we go VC route, PE route, um some kind of route like that and use someone else's money to leverage it and kind of just free roll this and and there was um and and ultimately everybody got a good deal I think uh with what was what was that free roll like?
15:37 What did the structure look like for that free roll? So that um was an interesting scenario.
Chapter 13: Why private equity was the wrong money
15:43 So they our our entire route the entire time was we were going to go um basically private equity but you know while we timed the market perfectly for the sale you know end of 2021 that was kind of the a high peak evaluations we
16:00 were now trying to um buy it back at arguably the low time of valuations which is great if you can figure it out but when when that's the scenario the ass from from the uh the private equity firms were just a little a little bit
16:17 much. Um you know, we were we were already trying to give them a discount on what we felt the business was worth, but they wanted they wanted control
16:27 and um it there wasn't a scenario I could think of where if things didn't go perfect that um we' we'd lose lose the business to them with our with our heads rolling at the end of it. So, um, in the 11th hour with with term sheets, with
Chapter 14: The secret plan B
16:44 with this being the the financial instrument that we're going to get this deal closed in, uh, I hate saying this, but we we secretly came up with a a plan B and and that was try to go traditional um, banking. And uh, we we went traditional banking. Um, we went with an SBA loan um from from a a big big bank, a top bank. Uh, SBA loans cap out at 5 million.
17:14 So, they gave us a line of credit per pu um to bridge the gap on the rest that we needed and uh we we took on instead of maybe um zeroing out some debt the business had, we took over and transferred that debt to us. So, we were able kind of to just string it all
17:34 together and get to the the the deal number and uh yeah, we went S SBA loan for the most part. Um, but that's not much of a free roll anymore, right? Like now with the SBA loan, like you're on the you're on the hook, right?
Chapter 15: This basically says the bank can take our home
17:51 Hook. It was uh it's funny you should say that cuz it's the case. I remember telling my wife um and uh there's no chance she'll listen to this. So boring.
18:03 Um, and so so my wife's very very very intelligent. She's a doctor. She's super super smart on on certain things, but then other things, you know, she might not get. So I remember telling her when we took this pivot from PE to to to an
18:19 SBA loan. And I was like, "Hey, like just a heads up, if we get this, we're going to I'm going to have to personally guarantee this." And she was like, "Yeah, you got to do it." I'm like, "Okay.
18:31 I'm glad you're I love I love you. Thank you for just being so supportive. Um and then in the 11th hour when it was time to say, "Hey, sweetheart, I need you to sign this stuff." She's like, "What's this?" I was like, "Well, this is um this is our home." Um this this
18:48 basically says that the bank can take our home if they if if if I don't make payments. She like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Why would we agree to that?" I was I was like, "Well, that's what a personal guarantee is." Like, you have to you have to guarantee it with something. And uh that was a whole whole uh ticking
19:12 at the end of the deal to to under to get her to agree to that. Um so yeah. So if we're wrong this time, we lose we lose our homes.
19:21 Yeah. Wow. Cool. Um, yeah, I was going to say, uh, I think, man, I think like a super undervalued, um, source of energy is like having a supportive wife. Like when your when your significant other just says like, "I believe in you. Like, you can do
19:38 this." Like, dude, it gives me like such a urge of energy. I'm like, "Yeah, like I can do this." You know what I mean? I just picture R. Kelly, I believe I can fly coming on and like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. pretty much like that.
19:53 My wife said I should jump off this bridge and I'll make it. Got it. Got to do what wife says. I got faith.
Chapter 16: The numbers: what they sold for, what they paid to get it back
20:01 For for for the context, for the listeners, uh I assume this is public information cuz you sold to a public traded company. How much do you sell for and how much you get it back? Um, so we we sold it for I think 8 18.9 million um, US and then bought it back for 7 and a2. US or Canadian? US. US. Both both US.
20:25 Wow, that's a that's a that's a great deal. And what made you and how was that process for you? So I sold my brand in 2021, beginning of 2021. Uh, timing was pretty good. Like it was still it was still quite high. And then I think you but like obviously your timing was like immaculate. How long did the process
20:41 take? Did you have a broker that basically facilitated everything or did you go directly to Emerge or um Yeah. So it was a process. So we we had our Netflix show um premiere in July 2020. That was the catalyst where um due
20:57 to the dysfunction of our of our internal partners um and us not really having a a clear um direction of how we were going to handle we decided that the Netflix show popped. That was the moment
21:13 to allow my old business partner to retire. Um and he wasn't involved in the business. So we're like this is perfect. So if it pops, it's going to be go time.
21:21 We had brought on in preparation for all this uh a CFO to kind of get our books in orders and make sure you know the trolling 12 looked good. And um we had brought him in in 2019 20 I guess end of 2018 and uh so so he had started the process of that. So, we
21:43 had a good trolling 12 by about November of of um 2020. So, okay, it's time time to go.
Chapter 17: The broker deal and the carve-out that closed it
21:54 Um I had had kind of maybe premature conversations with a friend of a friend that was a broker um and uh you know had started to kind of put some loose
22:10 feelers out there. had maybe talked to about 20 people. At that point, we go in through a process and we're like, "Okay, we're going to get a brokerage to to
22:19 represent us, found one. Um, we thought they were the right ones. They obviously want an exclusive." We said, "Okay, we'll get you an exclusive just with this little carve out. This guy over here who we were already kind of talking to, he's already had 20 conversations.
22:35 Throw those 20 on a list of like excluded from your exclusive and we have a deal." uh one of those 20 were were the were the one that that was emerged and and and closed. Um so we had a LOI in place. So like we went officially to market like call it in in 2021 the beginning of the year um in January. We had the LOI with Emerge in the beginning of March and then we didn't close until October.
Chapter 18: Why the sale took nine months
23:08 Oh wow. Why Why did it take so long?
23:10 What is was it more on their side? They have to get approval from all their board and stuff like that or what's the No, it was I think a lot of it was the was the traditional game. I don't mean this in a negative way, but like the suits the suits will play um with with us not being none of us being really the suits.
23:27 Yeah. Um you own though, right? Just to be clear. Remember that all remember that whole story? Um so they uh a big part of it was us.
23:39 We didn't have financial uh we didn't have audited financials, right? Um they absolutely needed audited financials from us with them being publicly traded.
23:48 So we had to go through audit uh finding finding someone pulling the trigger getting the two years of audited financials. Um and then you know I I'll skip a couple I'll skip the middle I'll come back to it. end is they have to then have another third party um do a quality of earnings which is kind of a different version of an audited
24:09 financials basically looking at the deal and and our health. So, and in between
Chapter 19: Deal fatigue and the sunk cost play
24:16 um it's back and forth and you know through due diligence things are coming up and um you know that's going to be a renegotiation point and they're going to renegotiate that and we're like try by the way all of this is a full-time job um even dealing with and then there's
24:32 this whole thing this business that you want to buy that you want us running that we're not allowed to run at the moment because we're too busy with all of your your
24:40 financial ass. Um, so then you know we have a bad month because our eyes not on the ball and then you're going to hammer us on on this line item and take our valuation down further. Um, which happened several times like I you know the 18 that we ended up on it was it was
24:57 it was higher. It was in the 20s the first time at that at the point of LOI. So that that is the game though. You know, yeah, that's that's I don't that's not a negative matter. That's their job.
25:09 They're trying to um get as good of a deal as possible and as much sharehold get you tired. Emotion like deal fatigue, right? It's like a real thing. Like it happened to us. It happened to us. We we we got kind of strained along by private equity guys as well and then at the end we had a bad
25:26 month and they just changed the deal like all of a sudden. And my wife is like very very very stubborn. She's like, "Nope, we're not going to do this." And for me I'm like I'm like dude like it doesn't even matter, you know? Like we're near the end. [ __ ] it.
25:38 Whatever. like a couple hundred,000 here and there, whatever. My wife's like, "Nope, we're not going to do this." So, I was like, "Okay." And then, uh, but yeah, I I totally understand when you say that. They they string you along, they throw some curve balls, then the numbers go down, and they say, "Yeah, sunk cost fallacy." You know, you've already put this much time in it, just get it the [ __ ] over the line, right?
25:59 And that's that's the playbook. And it's not a negative thing at all. I mean, it is when when we're on the side we are on, but that is it's not like bad people are doing that per se. Like that is their job. Like that is what they're doing. That was it was a long time.
26:14 Coming back was a little bit quicker. We um we had an LOI to buy it back in November and we closed in March. So, a little a little bit quicker. And when when you closed the when you closed the
Chapter 20: The structure: 60% cash, 40% earnout
26:28 deal for let's call it 20 million, what was the structure like? Was it uh how much of cash? How what was the percentage cash at close? And then I'm sure you got a lot of shares right from to emerge.
26:40 So um we we didn't get any any of the shares. We negotiated all of them out. Um, which in in hindsight, we to be fair, we had FOMO and we we later post deal bought some shares just on our own personal accord cuz like we were like, did we make the right move? Uh, we made the right move. So, we got 60% upfront in cash.
27:00 Um, the rest of the 40% was tied towards earnout. 50% of it stock, 50% of it cash. Um, again, another uh part of the playbook is when when you're getting a deal done, um, you got to be comfortable with everything you got on the day of
27:18 signing because earnouts are not traditionally set up in a way for not some are,
Chapter 21: Why almost nobody hits their earnout
27:26 but but the majority are not set up in a way for you to actually earn it out. I wonder what the actual percent if we take an aggregate of like a thousand exits that has the the earnout clause and what percentage of people actually hit their earnout? I I do wonder.
27:41 I think it's probably in the single digits. I would I would agree. Yeah. I mean, you don't you don't um uh emerge on one of their shareholder quarterly earning calls
27:51 kind of like I don't want to say celebrated cuz that's not the right word, but it was it was a factual statement of saying and out of all these companies we bought, we haven't had to pay a single a single earnout yet. We heard that and we were like coming up. This isn't good. Yeah.
28:07 Um but that's the that's again the model, right? Like Yeah. And how how long were you supposed to stay on the company? like um three 3 years.
28:15 Oh wow. Okay. At least.
28:17 So yeah. So yeah, I guess we closed it was right at a year and a half.
28:26 And did they try to like did they leave you alone? It's like hey these guys know how to run their business, you guys do your thing or was there a lot of friction like you want to do certain things you have they have to report to the board and you're like oh my god I can't do this. like like what was that dynamic like of working with them post post like oh during during the year
28:43 and a half we were together honestly fun fun to work with great great group of guys um they really did I I truly believe they spoke the same language as us of like the vision um there there were absolutely challenges though where
28:58 um just first first piece would be um you know our first quarter together which was Q4
Chapter 22: The quarter where the incentives broke
29:07 of 2021. We absolutely crushed it um for the quarter and uh it was one of those things where you know our earnout was was we had to hit check two boxes. We had to check an ebida growth box and then a revenue growth box and you had to
29:24 hit both. If you didn't hit both it doesn't matter. You don't get it. And um you know we were um having uh the the revenue the top line was was not where it needed to be for us to hit
29:41 our goal. But our profitability for that first quarter together was like we were way way way way I think we were run rate of of of seven figure profitability over the number we needed to be at. Um but but our our our topline revenue was was
29:57 probably going to be run rating it out probably short a couple of million. Well, I have a million of access. I need a couple million in revenue. This sounds to me like a pretty easy math problem.
30:11 Um so all this we're going into Q and I'm like we got this. Like we are going to crush this earnout goal. And then we we would do these these monthly um financial summary going through the previous month and um
30:27 we're in the January one we didn't really wasn't a big wasn't a big issue or you know it was in February talking about January and it was like what's going on like you guys are spending a lot and it's the the profit isn't there and
30:43 I was like well explain I just told them the same thing I told you guys. Mhm. It's a simple math problem, guys. Like, I'm just fixing it. Like, you can't can't do that. That means we might have a bad quarter because and quarters matter. And
30:58 I was like, "Oh, well, what matters to me is the earnout." And I'm just trying to uh hit it. Um, so it was in that moment we realized we weren't aligned. Uh, which which was a problem.
31:13 incentives having Propline and IBIDA uh like directly correlated because usually one is a lever for the other, right? Like
31:21 Yeah. I thought I thought I in naivity I was like this is going to be so easy. Like I literally have a million dollars to burn and get get 2 million in in in revenue. Surely I can do that. That's not that hard.
31:34 And in reality that was not something I could do. So that was kind of the beginning of oh um while we love working with them and they're great people and we're definitely speaking the same language at the end of the day they are a publicly traded company and they have they do have to they do have to be have a
31:49 profitable quarter or a you know not a bleeding quarter and I was going to take them straight into like the bloodiest quarter ever because I didn't know that that mattered. I just wanted my earnout.
31:58 Yeah, that shows you how important like alignment is and incentives. Like your incentives has to be aligned because if there isn't then someone we're all just driven by our own incentives, right? So yeah, that's a that's a really really important lesson. How what was the idea behind the Netflix show?
Chapter 23: Hiring the guy who became the face of the brand
32:14 Yeah, I was I was going to jump into the Netflix show too. I I Whose idea was that?
32:20 So, okay. So, the Netflix show, so we um so in 2016 came on board. Um my first like thing I had to do was figure out how to get the fourth partner out.
32:34 The second thing I needed to do was figure out how we were going to get this gentleman named Brandon Curran, who was a a customer um of ours making these amazing videos. um how how I was going to chat with him and was there a world and a path where we could get him to join join our team in a full-time capacity.
32:56 Um and the reason was was simple like this super talented guy, perfect um you know great understanding, perfect understanding of all the products like
33:12 product knowledge, top level, enjoyable person to watch in a video like checks all these boxes, super good dude. Um, and the vision we kind of had for the business was that content was going to be this like this this staple, this pillar of of everything else we were going to build on. Content was
33:35 going to be um the most important thing like the red like the Red Bull of of uh survival outdoor gear. 100%. Um, so so that was the concept.
33:47 Um, and Brandon got it. Brandon understood exactly the same thing. I was like, "Yeah, like I see it, too." And um spoke to his family and him and his wife and his three kids, they they moved down um from from North Carolina down to
34:02 Georgia and we we went at it. And so we immediately were able he was putting one video out a month um farmtot, right? So he's the camera guy, he's the guy in front of the camera, he's the video editor, he's the guy hitting post on uh on Facebook, right? he's doing the full
34:18 thing and um but he was producing one amazing video in between his normal career job um a month for us. So we if we have him full-time, surely we can have a bunch of videos and um we did. So we quickly had multiple videos and then
34:34 we started to build out a team for him of like, okay, well we're going to get you a video editor so you're not having to do that and you can you can film more. and we're growing that and the YouTube channel is is starting to grow and all of our social channels are starting to grow and a company called Highoon
Chapter 24: How the Netflix deal actually happened
34:50 Entertainment uh reaches out to us. So they the two uh feathers in their cap are Fixer Upper which is um the couple out of Waco, Texas that uh Chip and some Julie Julia G something gains. um their very successful show. They have now their products in Target. Um they that was one of their shows and the other show was Cake Boss which was very
35:18 similar from um creating like buzz on a show that then led to a large revenue um expansion. The the Italian dude with the canoli, right? The uh Yeah. that has now has a has a cake vending machine at every casino in in
35:34 Las Vegas. Um like but but yeah like it's total scale of both. So like we know that that's their background. Um so it's checking all these boxes for us and they pitch us on on the concept. They
35:50 have money at the time from History Channel. Um and and this industry has changed so much in in this period of time. cuz right now this is 20 I guess 20 2017 and um they're like we have money from History Channel to shoot a sizzle reel.
36:12 So not anymore but it used to be you get money to shoot a sizzle reel. If you got the money for that, they'd give you money um sometimes for an actual season, but oftentimes, more times than not, just more money to shoot a pilot to then
36:27 get approved to then get more money to shoot a full season. So, they had money for a sizzle reel from History Channel. They came down, we shot it, they went back, History Channel sat on it for like six or seven months and said, "No, not
36:41 not really our thing. Um but thank you." So we're like, "Oh," we're like, "Okay, well," they're like, "Well, High noon, it's their sizzle rules." Like, "We're
36:49 going to shop it." They take it to Discovery and Discovery sits on it for another, I think, like 6 months, maybe a little bit longer, and then eventually says, "No, we're we're good." So, like, okay, pretty. Just doesn't doesn't sound very good. Um,
37:07 so 2018's coming to an end. We haven't really had any success with it. we we've already kind of wrote it off. And in 2019, in the beginning of the year, January, they're like, "We're going to meet with uh Two Potentials this month.
37:23 We're going to meet with um I think they were called Voodoo. They were Walmart streaming service, which isn't around anymore." Um and and Netflix. And uh the Walmart one, I don't think anything came of it. Well, but I don't even think they
37:38 were interested, but they meet with Netflix and Netflix doesn't say, "We're going to give you money for a sizzle reel or a season." They say, "Okay, yeah, we'll we'll do we'll do a season.
37:48 We want the right right of um first refusal for the next seven and we want to start filming um in the next 5 months and wrote a check for you know for millions of dollars and um like basically in the not all that in the meeting but the meeting was basically like yeah we're going to do this now to time this um you know that's
38:13 when Netflix was like investing heavily in in content And uh so yeah, so they came back there again. Netflix wants to do it. Netflix connect they connected us with Netflix.
Chapter 25: The 120-page contract with no redlines
38:26 Netflix gave us 120 page agreement. We were like, "Oh, okay. I guess we need to find an entertainment lawyer. Spent $5,000 on that." Red line.
38:35 No AI back then that you can just uh No. So like Yeah. Like like weeks of like these calls with the with the entertainment lawyer. We get everything redlined. We send it back to them. were so happy. They reply back 15 minutes later apologizing for the clearly misaid expectations because this is Netflix and there's no red line. This is the agreement. Um we're like, "Oh, we didn't
39:01 know." Okay. Um so we signed it and then Yeah. And then they uh they they started filming um summer of 20 2019. um got done with all of it in December, came back in January 2020 for like a week and a half of like some quick
39:20 shoots for um make sure just things that were missing from the build and then gave it to Netflix. Netflix then was not responsive for 4 months. We didn't know anything. Um at that point, Tiger King pops.
Chapter 26: Tiger King, and four months of silence
39:35 Such a random show. Yeah, but that was Yeah, it's crazy that that would be the show. Like I don't think that would pop pop now. I think it was more of like a co thing. People were losing brain cells and didn't know.
39:46 Yeah. And they're like stuck in their home and they're like, "Oh, I'll watch this crazy guy with with tigers." Yeah. And uh so they reached out to us in April. They're like, "We're thinking we're going to do we're going to drop this in July."
39:58 And um we're going to call it Southern Survival. Here's the artwork. This is what we're thinking. Um we're like great. And we we actually already knew that it was going to be called Southern Survival. Um but anyway, it's coming in
40:14 July. Um we're then trying to come up with a forecast. What is this going to do to our business? How much product do we need? Um unfortunately, there's no case study or playbook for this. So, we're going to try to make an educated guess. Um we basically go all in um
40:30 moneywise on on product. Um lead times needed to try to get this in time. So, we're having to pull the trigger on stuff. We make an educated guess. Spoiler alert, we were right. But I think we just kind of got lucky. Oh, wow. And um and then the George Floyd um stuff happens
Chapter 27: The artwork problem that almost killed the show
40:52 and um there's it, you know, it was live on the news every night, right? Like it was this was not a good time in the country. And um our all of our artwork was very patriotic.
41:07 um Brandon on a go-kart with an American flag and like explosions in the background and they like ping us out of nowhere and they're like, "Hey, like need to have a call." Um we're not sure about this one. Um like yeah, we're not sure if if if dropping Southern Survival
41:29 um and the way we've kind of curated is the right move. M um so did you guys do naked and afraid with uh BattlBox or so you were so we were very honest with like look like we've gone to production on product like if we don't do this show I don't know what we can do with these millions of dollars of southern survival
41:53 product like is there a way and they had some empathy um and they came back and I don't know if it was because of the empathy or or for whatever season, but they came back and they said, "Okay, um, you know, we we've redone some of the artwork and and they
42:09 kind of took out the patriotic element completely. Um, kept the name Southern Survival, kind of made some tweaks to the show to not make it so so patriotic cuz that was the fear that it was like overly patriotic in a in a time where that might come across a little tonedeaf
42:27 with everything going on in the country." So, they they green lit it. They said, "Okay, we're going to do it." And um we're like, "Great. We're not going to go out of business." And um that was that was it. It That's insane.
Chapter 28: What a Netflix drop does to your traffic and CAC
42:41 It popped July 4th. We were getting 125,000 unique visitors a month. That was our baseline leading up to it. We popped uh 1.1 million unique that that that month.
42:53 Um now, conversion rate was not the same. LTV was not the same from these folks. like they were not the the highly targeted buyers we were getting from from Facebook ads. Um, how did it affect your acquisition cost though? Like I know they're not the same, but like
43:09 No, I mean it was it our acquisition cost went down to from I think at the time we were we were trying to get $40 um CS. I think we were we were $3. Oh my god. during that time. Now, new baseline afterwards, um, unique visitors now was was about 225,000.
43:32 So, when we back went back to reality after kind of the dust settled those couple months of this show, we had a new baseline, which was which was great. And, you know, post-purchase survey um to this day, it's not the same amount, but it's still today maybe 6% where did
43:47 you hear about us first is the Netflix TV show. So, it's very long in the tooth. And this is like literally 6 years later last month.
Chapter 29: Netflix's completion rate rule
43:55 How many seasons uh this show aired? I have never seen the show myself. Just just one Netflix original. It's a Netflix original, so it's still there, right? They're not They spent millions of dollars on it.
44:06 They're not going to like just get rid of it. Um but no, just one season. Netflix has a has a a North Star this metric called um completion rate. So any of their original series um if you start it, they want um a 90% completion rate, which this was 30 minute shows um eight episodes. You had to start the last episode and to to hit
44:35 that 90% completion rate. Um so you really had to just watch the whole series for it to count towards completion rate. North of 25% completion rate, they're going to greenlight you as many seasons as they can, get as much
44:49 out of the the concept. Under 20%, you get cancelled. See you later. 20 to 25% you're in this um purgatory, if you will. And do they give you do they give you these stats like in real time so that you can attempt to persuade the right
45:06 audience to watch your show in some capacity or or No, not really. They they gave us enough um a few weeks into it when we when we we were in the top 10 um like most like any Netflix original show is going to pop in the top 10 at first. Um and as we were falling out they were kind of explaining it all to us. So like okay like get off the call. We're like ad dollars traffic like we can't track it. Just Facebook traffic our video send it to Netflix. Get all your family, friends, get their Netflix, open up
45:40 their open up the show. Hey, make sure you watch the entire season. Put it on mute. I called my neighbors like, "You don't have to watch it. Put on the TV downstairs. Just play and let it let it make sure you're setting allow play through." Um, so we were we were in in the I think we're like 23% which was right in the middle of the middle.
45:58 Um, which means you never get broken up with, you never get asked back to on another date. Um, until they have a need. um and they might have a need. We we actually have a good relationship with them. talked to him a couple months ago about a concept we were having and
46:14 very responsive and you know they said actually we'll we're trying to uh see if if kind of our genre has a fit on Netflix and they're like we'll have a better idea in Q4 like like we'll we'll ping you but like if we don't ping you right away like ping us really good relationship but we're in that weird purgatory where it wasn't a banger so it didn't get automatically renewed but it wasn't so bad that they broke up with us
Chapter 30: Forecasting inventory with no playbook
46:38 how did Did you uh estimate you said earlier that you were right with regards to your forecasting. Can you run us through the internal dialogue that you had with your team on how you were able to do that?
46:48 Yeah, I mean we got super lucky. So we were right clearly because the amount of stuff that we had in stock we we sold correctly. Um how we did it was uh I mean there's nothing worth sharing. It was it was literally throwing throwing darts at a board, right? We're like, "Okay, well what what can we expect?" Um, so the the closest thing to a a
47:10 comparable that we could come up with um was Duck Dynasty. Um, the difference with that TV show though is that it was it was very long in the tooth because it was a weekly show. This was this predates binge watching uh which is you
47:27 know we were we were in the the infancy of binge watching where people will they'll either watch the whole show in one night or they won't watch it at all.
47:35 And uh that part made it hard to to really guess. So we we there's a lot of information on there about Duck Dynasty and how their business grew. Um now theirs was a one-time one-time product, a duck call, which was obviously very smaller niche than even us, which we view our product as very niche. So try
48:00 to gather some learnings, but to sit here and tell you that like we read it through and like came up with a formula to like just nail it, we were we were guessing. Um we we we knew reach. We felt like um we we did know that we were
48:16 sgoing to get more traffic, right? We knew with certainty. Um we were pretty close to the the what the estimates were of that. And that's just educated guessing on like taking normal data of what you know ne of of of Netflix. Um conversion rate we were wrong. Um we
48:33 didn't we didn't realize who we're going to buy. What we did get right is we we leaned in a little bit more to the one-time products that we had invested in. Um partially because we had made the investment and we we didn't want to not sell them. Um and and two the the other
48:51 aspect of that was um whether we were right. We I don't think we knew this. It was more the reactive. We don't want to get stuck on this stuff, but someone that watches Netflix and jumps on your site afterwards, they're not going to buy a subscription. Like they're just going to buy something cool they saw on the show.
49:10 So I think we got a little bit lucky there that we did lean into the one time a little bit more. Um, and then we weren't allowed. Sorry, go ahead.
Chapter 31: The mystery box hedge
49:20 No, I was going to say and then we we came up with ways that if we were wrong, because we didn't want to not order enough, but we didn't want to order too many. So, we came up with kind of a a process to ensure we weren't we weren't if we were wrong, we weren't wrong for
49:35 very long and we weren't stuck for very long. So, we had a um uh page two of our checkouts, a mystery box upsell. Um, so like that was going to be a path for us to move these items if if we were wrong on our number. And we have a couple other things that are similar to that where we kind of had we had at least have a playbook where we could be wrong
49:59 within a pretty wide margin and not be in trouble as long as the traffic came. So are you guys mostly right now still like a subscription box or do you guys have kind of like branded items? Cuz I'm on your website right now. There's like
50:12 a lot of Solo Stove, you know, uh, Zippo, like there's a lot of these brands that even I recognize. Um, yeah. Is it still the main business is still subscription side of things or have you guys like launch your own private label stuff? I would say in 2020 before the show, we were probably 90% the membership. 90%
50:34 subscript subscription, 10% one-time products. Um, today we're about 70% membership, 30% one time. The um to your question on manufacturing, we we
Chapter 32: Why they sell other people's brands
50:47 manufacture very little. Um, so I would say maybe 15% of the stuff that comes in the box is is one of our house brands. Uh, or BattlBox branded. We have um um Rock and River, which is like a a a premium outdoor brand that is one of our house brands. But um no, most of it's other people and it's it's manufactured runs for
51:12 them. Um whether it's because they don't have what we need on a shelf or because we're doing some sort of exclusive um drop with them. And um you know with with with both of those and just anything with these brands a lot of it's the the marketing engine that we built and that's that's the
51:36 value um is and Ryan you had the subscription box so you know that's you're you're putting this product in in their ICP like the value of of doing that does exist. Um, and we can we're able to parlay that with, hey, we're
51:52 putting this in in your ideal customer's hands. Um, but also we have like this giant social media reach with really good content that we can like help drive your your um your voice even further. So, um, that's that's a big piece of it.
52:11 And I think, you know, we could probably have way better margins if we just did it ourselves. And we absolutely have the skill set, too. But I don't think that's what the customers want. They don't want to get a bunch of Battlebox branded stuff, right? They want that Solo Stove product because to your point, Tom, you you recognize that
52:27 brand, right? Like it has some some brand recognition. So, it's a balance. It's a balancing act. You really you really want the person when they open the box to get like at least one wow item like, whoa, I can't believe that I paid this and I got this, right? like whether and that you can do
52:42 that either through leveraging like the the brands or by you know just providing something that's super cool.
Chapter 33: Subscription advice for a new supplement brand
52:48 What uh kind of a vague question but so I'm starting a um a new supplement company right now targeting women and it's a collagen product. Um it's a new format of taking collagen. Um still in kind of like stealth mode at the moment
53:04 but we'll probably share what the brand is and all that type of stuff in a couple months here. But what is a a big chunk of our revenue is going to be built off of a subscription. Uh if you were to basically be my you know subscription mentor, what's the biggest lesson you've learned from subscription
53:21 side of things? How do you retain these customers? Sub subscription first um all all day all day long. Um as as you know, I'm not going to tell you something you don't
53:30 know here. It's it's just such a better solution, right? It's it's easier to forecast. It's more reliable. Mhm. Um the and and this I don't know if this is anything that you haven't heard already either, but the first the first 30 days, the first 60 days are so paramount.
53:48 Um that's going to that's going to decide everything.
Chapter 34: The biggest drug in DTC
53:51 Um I think you you you want to be careful of the uh the the biggest drug in DTOC, which is those intro offer discounts. uh you know you there's there's there's a balance and there's a
54:06 place for them but um it's a drug in DC to see because you get hooked and then you can't get customers without it and it's a slippery slope um where it's such a good deal up front that you're almost ensuring they're not going to have great
54:20 LTV and be long-term customers um because they can never get back to that that initial high of that pricing or offer. M so I think it's it's a balance with with certainty. Um I would say the thing I said about that 30 first 30 days first
54:36 60 days um I would I would probably say with you it's probably first 90 um just because it it takes a while with any sort of supplements to see any sort of results um in general. So I'm not too I don't know too much about collagen um but I would imagine that's very similar that it does take a while. So, if that's the case, then like um maybe the first 90
55:00 days are just so important because you don't want people to just give up and say, "Oh, I didn't see results. Dude, you got them yesterday and you took them this morning." Like, you got to you got to give it some time.
55:13 So, yeah, I think those were probably my my key pieces. And how do you do is this through a lot of touch points via email? Is it like retargeting ads? Like how do you Is it like even calling the customer? like
55:25 what what have you guys done from a tactical perspective to try to So the last thing you said I mean I'm I'm the biggest fan of things that don't scale because they have such the the biggest impact right like think about think about if if uh to your point right I s I
Chapter 35: Things that don't scale
55:41 I let's say I'm a woman and I bought um I bought your collagen and I got a call two weeks from two weeks later from Tom the founder the owner right I don't know if you have a if you have of um female co- business partner is your wife or Yeah. Yeah. My wife. Yeah.
56:00 Okay. So, probably call probably better from your wife than you. Yeah. But like have her have her give him a call and like dude that consumer is going to leave that call. Yeah. Like holy cow, the founder just literally called my cell phone. Like her LTV just literally just shot up, right?
56:18 Um things like that that don't scale are amazing. Now they don't scale. So, you can only do so much of it. What do you think of uh I actually had this idea. What do you guys think of Would you Let me answer that. Would you pay like $500 to $1,000 a month to an
56:32 agency and all this agency did was to call every single customer that bought on your website and basically ask them a series of questions. All the calls are recorded. You get them in transcription into Slack right away and you can use that for marketing. Like, would you guys pay for something like that or No, I think I would. It would be dependent
56:48 that person on the phone assuming that it's like not a you know like not a a like a star but like B player like obviously they're probably sound like they're they're from they're from overseas but like enough to get by.
57:04 I think that would annoy me to be perfectly honest like as a consumer. I mean, I think it's I think you're talking about two very different things, right? Like having having the founder, like having the status of having the person that you just bought this thing from, the guy that started it, reach out
57:19 and be like, "Tom, so stoked that you're trying my product. I just I would love to hear what you think about it because your opinion matters to the future of the business." You're going to be like, "Holy [ __ ] like this. I can't believe that I matter this much." But if you send somebody from the Philippines, I'm not knocking anybody from the
57:37 Philippines, but like that and they're calling and you know they're they're clearly a call agency. That just kind of like shows that you don't really give a [ __ ] You just you're just like you just want to extract information from them. It's very different, right?
57:52 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. I went to a yogurt place that opened up uh in Yeltown and um they have these like crazy yogurts that they source organically from local whatever and then like they charge them so much for these yogurts that you can add toppings and
58:06 stuff and like yeah the guy um the founder basically came up and started asking some questions and whatnot and you just have a different type of feeling towards the business after you know what I mean it makes the business real like dude this is the guy that started it right um yeah that's why I
58:22 guess founder our ads do really well as well just because no 100%. Um, so back back to besides stuff like that doesn't scale. Um, yeah.
Chapter 36: Email, SMS, and what they can't measure
58:31 So we're very heavy on on uh on email and SMS in the beginning. Um, very just educational. Um, not over the top, you know, used to be one email that explained all these different moving
58:45 pieces, but now we broke it into several over several days. Just really just hammering home the education piece um, and doing it. How do you measure the success of that?
58:55 Like how do you measure the impact that that has? Like did you do like some kind of like hold out test?
59:00 Um it's a good question. I should know the answer to this and I don't. I mean sometimes sometimes you just you just wing it and you wing it, you know?
59:08 I'm not I'm just curious if you feel that something measurable. I mean it could do harm in theory, right? Like it could it could it could spike it could spike um cancellation rates. It could spike uh unsubscribes.
59:21 Um I don't have the answer. So, Walter runs marketing for us. I wonder uh I wonder how he would answer that. Let's phone him in. Yeah. Hey, Walter, you're on the line here. Yeah. Don't make us look bad.
Chapter 37: Walter on running 70 scheduled AI tasks
59:41 Are you uh are you using a lot of AI these days? What's your AI? Yeah.
59:45 Yeah. I'm using um an un ungodly amount of AI. Yeah. Yeah. What are you using it for?
59:51 Talk to us. Right now, I'm I'm living in probably co-work 20% of my day, which is scaring me because I'm seeing that um like Chat GPT and some others now are like this whole race of like who's going to win, you know, from the from a business perspective. Claude kind of passed Chat GPT and was like leading the way.
1:00:14 Gemini, you know, and Grock even further behind. And now I'm seeing this stuff that, you know, Claude is slowing down a little bit and the others are catching up and unarguably some chat GBT LOM is is aspects are better than Claude and I've kind of jumped into Claude. I have
1:00:34 maybe 70 scheduled tasks that run. Um, to your question of honestly just anything that that was administrative. um that that was not like you know what someone should be focused on. So like um probably the biggest thing that is really good for the business that I also regret taking on because now I'm
Chapter 38: The agent that builds their product pages
1:01:03 responsible for it was we had a broken process when it came to um our PDP creations. So too many departments touching it, right? So you have you have the procurement team, you have the operations team and then the marketing
1:01:18 team and um all three were intertwined involved in it. But like when you have that many people accountable, nobody was accountable. So like little things would go broken on it. It would get backed up and and the you know the team wasn't making new PDPs and we'd have a backlog of 30 30 items that need to be made two weeks ago. So we built an agent that
1:01:45 does it. Um everything from grabs the images uh so luckily you know 80% of our images exist already on the internet. um 20% exclusive stuff like that. Our products, we have to shoot them. But, you know, there's a column where whether it's uh someone else's PDP or a Google Drive with all of our images, he's chopping
1:02:11 them up in the proper um transparent image with with uh shadow. He's he's then building the PDP. Um he's following our our SEO best practices. He's um adding the right tags, adding the right collections, attaching it correctly to our inventory management software. Um he's he's he's running the full full gambit. Um and then he's connected to
1:02:35 our inventory management software. So when something gets ordered, he um he's aware and the stuff's added to a spreadsheet. And then when our inventory management software gets something in each day, he has a he has an API call. He sees what's been delivered that day.
1:02:52 That means it's go time. Grabs it all, puts it all on the whole cell, creates the product, shoots us a message in Slack, hey, it's ready for review.
1:03:00 Doesn't take it live. It goes in draft mode. Um, and then tells us to look at it. So, like super cool use case. The problem is like I built it. So, now people are like, "Oh, can you make this tweak, this tweak? We forgot about this specific thing." So, now I'm like the
1:03:18 non-technical engineer. I'm like, "Okay, jump in my cloud and like try to fix it." Um, I mean, it stole it stole 30 minutes of my day today. I probably shouldn't have been, but I needed to fix something on it. Um, then reporting, a lot of sales reporting. We'll we'll
1:03:34 we'll do um, you know, all the different departments. There's like Slack messages letting us, you know, know where everyone's at for the month. Um, where goals are at. It's
1:03:47 uh yeah, it's a it's a lot of fun. A lot of auditing um both our website and uh and just internal docs. Yeah, it's I'm definitely definitely probably spending too much time on it, but I think I think I think everybody I think
1:04:08 everybody is though. I feel like everybody's spending a little more than they probably should, like going down a few too many rabbit holes, you know?
Chapter 39: Building apps you'll never use
1:04:16 Dude, I I wanted to build like a to-do list. The to-do list basically has like green light, yellow light, uh red light. Red light are the things I have to do today. So, like top priority. Yellow yellow light's like, yeah, like I need to do them, but like if I don't do them today, whatever. And green light is
1:04:30 like, okay, like if I don't do them, like nothing's really happened. It'll be nice to have. I mean, I could have easily just done this on like Google Docs or like notes or something. I'm like, no, let me build my own app. So, spend like two hours building that stupid app. And even my fitness app, like I build a fitness app, I never end
1:04:46 up actually I I was using it for a little bit. I was using for a little bit and then I'm just like screw it, man.
1:04:51 There's like way better apps on the Apple store. I'm just going to pay like two bucks a month for these. There's so much dopamine in the build though. I know. It's like a video game. Yeah. That's why I think like productivity in terms of output across everything like builders are going to build. before like if builders can only maybe build one business or one feature or whatever it is, that builder is now going to be able to build five or 10 more. You know what I mean? Now, like dude, like you know, I
1:05:17 have to play golf a lot and one of the the downsides of golfing is if you're in a busy se uh busy season in a busy city like Vancouver, it's really hard to find tea times. Same as poker, right? You got to put yourself on waiting list. Oh, like so so so the the sucky thing is you have to like log on to course A. Hey, is there a tea time on Friday? No, there isn't. Log log to course B. There's not really like a centralized dashboard kind
1:05:42 of like open table where you can see all the restaurants, you know. So basically, yeah, I'm building this AI app that allows you to just be like, "Hey, I want to play golf tomorrow. find me any course that has an opening for four people from 8:00 a.m. till 10:00 a.m.
1:05:57 So, that's like a huge problem every single golfer u has. And I just feel like that would have taken so long for me to build in the past. Website done in
1:06:06 5 minutes. Script for VSSL done in 10 minutes. Uh fire every like it's built. It's done, you know? So, it's like builders are going to build like and it's a great time to be a builder right now, I think. Okay, man. Well, don't
Chapter 40: The most memorable hand of poker he ever saw
1:06:21 want to hold you up too much longer. One last question before you before you sign off. Uh, what was your most memorable hand of poker that you've ever had?
1:06:30 Most memorable hand of poker. Could be bad memories or good memories. Does one one jump out at you or no? Yeah, one jumps up up at me and um it's bother. Okay, so World Series of Poker
1:06:44 Europe. I'm not playing. My roommate's playing. This is a 20,000 US dollar uh buyin. Um or no, it was 20 20,000 um pounds. So even more. Yeah. So he he won a free entry via online. Um he's he's there on the uh
1:07:07 break. Um I'm chatting with I'm trying to remember his name. I think maybe Eric Lingren, Eric something. But at the time he's like one of the top poker dogs you see on TV. Super nice guy. Like just chatting it up with him, you know? I'm like probably serely fanboying a little bit and and have this great combo with him. I'm like, man, he's just I leave the combo saying, man, he's just a
1:07:32 really nice guy. And uh he's gets re rerouted. They do a table break. He ends up at my buddy's table. So, I'm sitting behind my buddy and they get in a hand together
1:07:46 and he basically gets me without ever saying a word, they're like hammering each other, gets me like plays on that moment we had and basically without saying a word tells me that like you need to tell your friend to fold like I have the nuts.
1:08:05 Oh, no way. In a hand. And he he verbally does exact un non-verbbally does it gets me to basically like look at Madden like fold dude you're beat and he was bluffing.
1:08:19 What? That's a crazy story. Yeah. Um that's wild. Did your friend fold?
1:08:25 Yeah, because he cuz I told him to because I'm buddies with this guy now and he told me that that he had the he had the good hand.
1:08:32 That might have saved him a lot of money. Hopefully your friend uh came out on top in that tournament at least won something. Well, sweet, dude. Well, hey, thanks for coming on the show. Really appreciate it. Hope you had fun and Yeah, dude. We can do it again down the
1:08:46 road. Thanks for being on our first uh first pod, first guest on the pod. And uh thanks Ryan for setting this up. Cool. Awesome, guys. Well guys, if you stuck to the very end, please comment something down below, like this video, subscribe to the pod, and we will see you all in the next
