The Exchanges

Q What, what, what assumptions did you get wrong that led it to being far more of like a full-time job slash business than you thought it was going to be when you started it?

A I mean, it wasn't for the first year and a half. I took like half of last year off. I bought a house in Kauai. It did so well. I took the summer off, right? I was on an island five months out of the year. I think it has to do with the world opening up. It has to do with the economy. It has to do with the shift in the business. Um, online courses, there was a big boon. Everybody was at home and that's really changed. So I don't know if it's the amount of work, it's the amount of effort to re strategize the business, uh, and to make up for lost revenue this year, unfortunately. And so in terms of the side hustle, there are still ways for me to not just try to bring in new students, but also provide low ticket offers or workshops to people that are 150 dollars. And, you know, eventually They're excited to learn from me or someone else, and they become part of the business class world, and they, you know, then upgrade to business class, which is huge investment. It's 2000 dollars, and also there are opportunities. I mean, again, it could feel like a side hustle, not to build like a YPO type thing, but yes, small groups that pay more than the cost of business class to join, and I hire like a few coaches to mentor them, but that doesn't necessarily have to be something where I'm building You know, what Sam Parr is trying to build in like a two hundred million dollar business. So, um,…

AI assessment note: “online courses, there was a big boon. Everybody was at home and that's really changed.”

Q times we were ambitious all at once in one point of time versus sequencing. Like, let's do this thing. Once that thing is done, let's focus on this thing. And so I think by sequencing, it allows you to both be ambitious, but also not dilute yourself or be unfocused. And so I think that's a huge point. Uh, Sophia, how, uh, how do you set the table for twenty-twenty-three?

A Yeah, I just discovered, and I'll, we can pull up a screenshot, um, in 2012, I discovered in my notes in my phone, just a few days ago, my 20 12 goals. Uh, so 10 years ago, my goals were something like take money off the table at Nasty Gal, buy mom a kitchen, I ended up paying off her mortgage, buy a house, and there was really funny things like Eat an apple every day or eat three pieces of fruit, which like, I'm sure I never did. Um, I actually have a goals guide, uh, that we created at business class. That's like a kind of huge guide on thinking through like setting your intentions all the way to creating actionable steps. And it's much more deep than the way that I think about it every year, which is a little bit more a nimble, which is in the flight front of the flight planner. And I, Go through what I want to quit, what I want to learn, what I want to have, what I want to start, what I want to stop, and then what I want to be. Um, and then go through intentions. And so those intentions, the categories for those is personal, health, career, adventure, home, and spiritual. And at the beginning of last year, I did that. I think I, I don't know if I burned it or I kept it. I tore it out of something and I put it in my journal. My journal is a bunch of pages that aren't even Bound, because I shove in so many notes, and then often never look at them again, but I think I did keep…

AI assessment note: “I go through what I want to quit, what I want to learn”

Q other people are doing it right now. And I figured, you know, it's not considered the sexiest topic, but I think it's probably one of the most important we'll talk about is, how do you go about goal setting? How do you go about planning? I know we, we all have thoughts on this, but just to kick it off, Jesse, how do you go about planning for your businesses?

A Yeah. Yeah. This is a topic I could talk about for a long time. You know, for the first few years, we didn't really do it. I mean, what we did, like me and Nick would sit and look at a spreadsheet and kind of drag the cells out and toy around with them a little bit and go, yeah, okay, that looks good. Let's do that. Which, which by the way is fine. I mean, it, you know, depending on where you're at and, and your business, I don't think that's a terrible way to plan and to think about your business. Over time, you know, we, we, we played with OKRs for many years and just, we struggled with them and I'm happy to talk more about that. And then we sort of started pulling together a variety of different systems that we sort of made our own, uh, which I'll talk a little bit about in a second, but, but we really started thinking about how do we do this ourselves? So, so I'll talk about the system a little bit before I say that, you know, one thing I tell every entrepreneur I work with is the best planning system is the system that you will use. That's also my philosophy on software, by the way, because a lot of people, and I made this mistake with OKRs for many years is like, it became this hugely administrative burden. Nobody, nobody ever touched No one used them. They, it would feel so annoying to everybody to do them every quarter, including me. And then we didn't really use them a…

AI assessment note: “the best planning system is the system that you will use.”

Q So what's the, what's the dream? Like, uh, in the sense of you're building up this, this, uh, battalion of Cody Sanchez's, um, friends, troops, and followers. Like, what do you hope to be able to launch five years, 10 years down the road that you only have the capability of doing when you have an audience of this size?

A This is going to sound like a fucking politician nonsense actor, but like, uh, I was at dinner last night at, uh, this little steakhouse here. And like the, you know, guy came up to me at the table and was serving us, whatever. And he was kind of nervous and, you know, went away. Then he came back and he's like, I'm so sorry. This is so inappropriate, but I just wanted to ask, like, are you Cody Sanchez? And I was like, oh yeah, that was really nice. But then he started telling me about the businesses that he's doing on the side and how he got kicked out of school And he couldn't go back and afford it anymore and what he was going to do now and how he's working on this stuff. And, um, at some point, you know, you make a certain amount of money and then you realize that like, that's not the only end game. And then you wonder what your impact could be on this planet, whether it's from ego or altruism, I don't know. But at some point I was like, huh, like what's the point of it all? And wouldn't it be cool if I could actually make some meaningful difference? So that was, that's one thing. Um, it's not that I want to launch something else. It's not that I want more work. I got plenty of it. I really like what I'm doing right now. It's really just like, that's so cool. How come I can make a video? This guy can watch it and then his life can get changed. What? That's wild. And then t…

AI assessment note: “It's not that I want to launch something else. It's not that I want”

Q thought about this a lot, which is, what does it mean to CEO in a company? How does the role evolve over time? Um, and you know, what has it been like for us to be in positions, in CEO positions at various companies? So Jesse, I want to start with you. What does the CEO role mean to you, and how has that journey evolved for you over time?

A Yeah, there's a, there's a couple things, kind of, like, touchstones for me when I think about being the CEO. The first one is, you know, Ben Horowitz has the hard thing about hard things, and I think he has, these are all articles and stuff, but one of the things I tell every CEO I work with and myself is he says the curve, like, if you had, if you had a test, the curve is a 22 out of a hundred. That's the average. So if you grade yourself on a 90 out of a hundred, like, you know, normally getting an A is 90 out of a hundred, and usually people who choose to be CEOs are people who like A's. You're immediately, you know, you're going to feel like you're failing every day, which you kind of are. And that's just, but once you baseline that as the role, then it's like, oh, okay, this is a lot easier. I can, I can breathe. And you know, it's like, I always use the baseball analogy, right? Albert Pujols just finished up his big run and he's going to, I don't know, top 10 player ever. And he's two 96 batting average means he's out of a thousand things. He's at 296. Like he has not done well by the 90% standard, but he's crushed it for baseball standards. And I think So I think shifting the standard is super, super important from the get go. So that's one big one for me. I think the other one that I always talk about is like, especially for first time entrepreneurs, first time CEOs, w…

AI assessment note: “there's a couple things, kind of, like, touchstones for me when I think about being the CEO”

Q Yeah. Well, so what are you going to integrate AI with the business?

A Yes, I want to. Well, so this goes down to, I tweeted this yesterday, and then you replied to my tweet about, like, what the priorities of the agency are right now. So basically, just, just for full transparency, this is basically a business that is as close to being not a business as it is a business. We have revenue. There's, The company hasn't been incorporated. There's no logo. There's no process. Uh, the, the initial ghostwriters, like I wasn't even taking a profit for the first two clients. I just wanted to learn the process. So I connected the ghostwriter with the client and the ghostwriter individually invoiced the client. So I was just brokering this. So now I like, I have to create some structure. So I was writing down priorities. One was like, have some structure so this can actually be an agency. Uh, two was, um, find more ghost writers so that I can scale outside of this one ghost writer I'm working with, and the third was find an operator to run this business, and your reply was-

AI assessment note: “Yes, I want to. Well, so this goes down to”

Q No. Um, I mean, these businesses make a lot of money too. I think that's part of one of the, for the organizers, right? Because they bring these people together.

A Yeah, it's insane. And we'll talk about it in a second. Uh, you know, the only other thought from South by is I'm just trying to reflect on some of my most interesting experiences there. The first is I saw Terry Crews. Uh, he was, there's, there's some, uh, movie or show where I think he's like the president, his name's Camacho, and he was on the back of a pickup truck with a blonde wig You guys jacked out of his mind wearing a tank top and spandex. So I saw him driving down, uh, uh, Congress, the main street in South by that was interesting. Um, and then I, I will say it was not as a non operator right now. It was nice to meet people that I have met on Twitter over the last six years, but I've never met in person. So I met like Sam Parr, who I've never met in person. I met Nick Gray, who I've never met in person. Shout out Nick Gray, who he was doing free Tesla rides. From, uh, you'd pick people up from the airport for free and drive them to their destination. I got to meet him. He had a little sign that said the plumb.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, it's insane. And we'll talk about it in a second.”

Q of the key ways that you have always talked about trying to identify talent is by finding at least one thing that the talent spikes on. And so I want you to talk about what that means specifically, but then share a few examples of your favorite founders that you've invested in and what were the things they spiked on and how did you know that they spiked on it?

A Sure. And well, I basically get this question all the time. I'm the founder driven investor. I've been a founder driven investor all my career. I don't really try to overthink things. I don't really try to think about markets or technology. Just want to back the right people. So the next question always get asked is, well, how do you identify superbly talented founders or high potential founders? What's the traits you're looking for? So after many years, I tried to distill what are, what are the common themes? What are the common characteristics that resonated with me that predicted or predicted the probabilities at least would be high of success and And as far as I can tell, the only thing in common among successful founders that I've worked with, funded, uh, interacted with is they have one comparative advantage with the rest of the world where they're in the top one percent or top 10 basis points or sometimes even top one basis points on one trait. There's one trait where you can say this person is the smartest person I've ever met in my life versus the most tenacious person I've ever met in my life versus the best sales person I've ever met in my life. This person is more strategic, and we can talk about what that means, than anybody else I've ever met in my life. And unless you find that trait, it's a very bad idea, typically, to invest in that startup. The reason why is, …

AI assessment note: “they have one comparative advantage with the rest of the world where they're in”

Q future, but to break down the steps in such component parts. Can you, I don't know if, as you were talking through that, you were referring to Mike from Traba or another recent Founder, but I'd be super interested, like, what does that actually look like in practice? Like, what does it look like for you to hear from a founder, them having such incredible clarity on the idea maze?

A I wouldn't say Mike in trouble. Mike would be mostly category one, which is top one basis point, top 10 basis points on some traits. Examples of the intellectual maze, I think, uh, Saudi at Avon had the intellectual maze of what he's building, uh, Pretty nailed. And so, it was so good. The compelling pitch in the, the, in, in financial services was so good that the only question I had is, why the hell had I missed this for 20 years of my life? Like, it was that clear. It was like, oh my god, this is so obviously great that there's something I'm missing because, like, I should have followed this for the last 20 years. Um, that Sonny has some other traits too. Actually, it was the combination. He had an intellectual maze. Perfect. And so other traits, but fundamentally that one was, you know, so starkly obvious. It's just like, oh my God.

AI assessment note: “Examples of the intellectual maze, I think, uh, Saudi at Avon had the intellectual maze”

Q Is it expensive? I haven't signed up, because I thought it was, like, really expensive.

A It's expensive. So I like, so, look, because of, like, I do have an audience, I am able to get some of these tools for free. Or, well, so I, like, I knew that I knew how to do community with trends and I, and I knew that I messed up a ton, but I got a lot of parts of it really right. I knew I wanted to business that could get to like at least a hundred million in revenue. Although I think this could be a lot bigger. I have no idea like how, like it's like the greatest business ever where basically you pay something like 500 dollars and you tell them, Hey, I want to talk to someone who worked at Vistage, get me on the phone with them. And then you get them on the phone. And then a week later, your interview is published. So if you're a subscriber, you're able to watch these interviews and listen to these interviews. And so I'll either pay money to interview someone or I'll watch, uh, or read the transcripts of other people. Um, and so the name of the game for me is just, how do I just increase my hit rate at a really like significantly higher rate than if I'm just like saying, this is cool. Let's do this.

AI assessment note: “It's expensive. So I like, so, look, because of, like, I do have an audience”

Q for an entrepreneur. They'll say, uh, I have a fear of basically being criticized. Like I'm afraid to hit send, um, on my tweet or my video or my LinkedIn post. Or the second, I would say most common one is someone's going to steal my idea. They're going to see what I'm building in public and just go and do the same thing. What do you say to that?

A I think at the end of the day, you have to ask yourself, are you committed to being the best? And if you're committed to being the best and doing the work that it takes to be the best, then if you believe that the best ends up winning in the end, it doesn't matter. And so the requirement for becoming the best ends up being the right feedback and getting the right feedback as fast as possible. Now, not all feedback is the right feedback, right? Like the worst advice is bad advice. Right. So like you have to have a filter so that, you know, like don't accept bad advice or like maybe those people just aren't quite informed. Like we might not even need to put a label on it like good or bad, but feedback, it really is a gift. And so if you're committed to being the best, it doesn't matter if you practice in public. In fact, it's a super advantage.

AI assessment note: “if you're committed to being the best, it doesn't matter if you practice in public.”

Q me, I, I'd asked you, like, what is all the shit that's gone on with your businesses in the last week? And you had a ton of great stuff. One of the things that stood out and was the first thing you mentioned was that you redid your weekly meetings for GoToMarket across Kahani and Growth Assistant. Talk about why you're doing that. Like, why did you rework these meetings?

A Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think the, you know, I'll start by saying the, the couple of things I was even hinting at earlier. I think one is, uh, you know, inertia is the devil of business. Right. And you think about the classic big company or the Google thing you were just mentioning, and it's like, oh, they've gotten slow and they've gotten reactive. And I was watching this thing recently where he was like, you know, once you become a big company, a hundred million in revenue, you just want to protect that revenue. And that's in some ways human, it's like the human tendency to, to protect, uh, But I would argue that kind of behavior happens a lot earlier than most people acknowledge. Like you get to a million in revenue. You're like, I don't want to go down from a million. I want to, you know, and so there's a human nature tendency. And this is kind of like what the whole innovators dilemma concept is. That book is talks about how, if you don't disrupt yourself, right? Like Polaroid is an example. Somebody else is going to disrupt you. And like, there's a classic example of Steve jobs where he was a huge fan of that book. And, and the iPod was crushing it and he disrupted the iPod with the iPhone. Like he actually cannibalized his own sales. And I bring that up at a high level to relate to it. Like that isn't just a big strategic thing you do at every level of your organization. …

AI assessment note: “anytime I see inertia seeping in and, and I will, I will, Blow it up.”

Q to be honest. Like, I have a tendency to think, for example, like, I want to become a novelist. It's like, just freaking write for fun, dude. Just write, like, just write, you know. Uh, and it's like, no, I gotta, like, publish a book, and like, you know, make a movie out of it, and like, da-da-da-da. Like, and it's like, why? Why do I need to do that?

A Yeah, totally. I, yeah, I don't know. There's this part of me that definitely feels like, um, Uh, we associate value to, like, ambition and growth, and like, you know, it's parroted in society all the time, like, you know, you should never feel comfortable. It's like, what's wrong with feeling comfortable from time to time? Like, I, I think to your point, it's like, um, something feels wrong when you're just like, In kind of just like this linear progression. And then the, the interesting question asked is like, why, why, why is something wrong with that? Uh, what, one, one thing I'm wondering is like, okay, we talked a little bit about, uh, like kind of what Gumroad, um, meant to your identity and like the value you ascribe to yourself as a function of what Gumroad could become in chapter one. Let's say Chapter two, which is, like, Gumroad as lifestyle business, and it's funny, like, I was even reading through, you had shared, like, what the June, 2015, and June, 20 16 numbers looked like in the business, and I think anyone, if, like, they hadn't read any other part of your blog post, and just read those numbers, and you ask them, like, what's a better business, like, it's kind of obvious. For, for the listener, it was June, 2015, this is a few months before Gumroad layoffs, revenue was 89,000 dollars a month, Uh, net profit was 351,000, -351,000 dollars. They're burning 351,0…

AI assessment note: “we associate value to, like, ambition and growth, and like, you know, it's parroted”

Q dictated what was worth working on. So then pull forward to Archer. Was it a similar type of process or did you from day one arrive at the idea and then you just built out that idea and, and had you even arrived there? Cause like there are many very large problems to solve in the world. Why was this the one that you felt was worthy of your time?

A Yeah. I think for this context too, like on the transition from battery, like when we, when I launched the marketplace in like April, 2015, like within a week we knew we had a product market fit and we knew this was going to be a huge, like big business. Like it was from there and maybe like 24 months by the time we got a term sheet to sell for a hundred and ten million dollars. And it was just, it was crazy. We went from, you know, 15 people to 300 and it was just like pure scale and growth. So it was like, you know, during that period of time, we, we, I knew we had something really special. I knew I found product market fit. I knew what it looked like. I knew how to scale the business. Like it was just a great experience overall. So by the time we, you know, at one point it was like between a series, series B round of capital or like, here's the term sheet for the acquisition. I decided to go with the acquisition route. Um, uh, you know, we ended up selling to the Deco group, which is the world's largest recruiting company. And it was just a great win across the board. At the time that all was happening, I took a step back and I basically said, I'm going to make sure I really choose what area I go into very thoughtfully here. And I knew it was going to be in some advanced area of kind of like more what people call like now deep tech. So areas of, I think there's a few framewo…

AI assessment note: “I took a step back and I basically said, I'm going to make sure”

Q thesis changed based on what you've learned from the market? So how is pray.com different today from that initial thesis you had of basically being the platform to allow priests, pastors, ministers to create their content that they create for their church, but be able to actually upload it and put it in the single destination. What did you learn that made you have to change course a little bit?

A Our mission at pray.com is to grow faith and cultivate community so that we can leave a legacy of helping others. That's literally what we're here to do. And we're building the digital destination for faith. That's what we're doing. We have an app today. That's the number one app for daily prayer and faith-based audio content. And I learned along the way that like just this massive vision for eight billion people around the world to get hope and inspiration on a daily basis. Like that's awesome, but you have to start somewhere and it's okay to start small. And actually, if you don't start small, you can't get big. So when I came out the gate at pray.com, We raised a bunch of venture capital, so we got all these incredible, intelligent Silicon Valley investors, right? Greylock, Sequoia Scouts, Founders Fund, TPG, Science, like we have these amazing investors, and I came out and realized that I actually just needed to start with like one little thing to get traction. That first thing was a prayer wall For all the churches in the United States to post their prayers and their prayer requests. Cause it's the worst thing in the world. When I send you a prayer request, if I say, Hey, Alex, my mom just got diagnosed with stage four cancer. Will you pray for me? And you're my pastor. And I don't hear anything back. Like, dude, do you think I'm coming back to your church on Sunday when y…

AI assessment note: “realized that I actually just needed to start with like one little thing to get traction”

Q you've just talked about the business part of this, like from a practical perspective, how, how do you think about this from a running the business or not running the business perspective? You haven't mentioned at all, like the grieving process of you lost a mentor and a business partner that you have to deal with at the same time as a 29 year old of making this business decision.

A So I'm, I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful to a guy named Mark Haas that worked for me. He's a former United States Navy SEAL. He's still a Navy SEAL, but he's retired. He, he was on the SEAL teams for like 25 years. Mark Gave me this framework that I use. It's called Mission Team Self. Mission Team Self. And I've adapted it for like my business purposes, not Navy SEAL stuff. You break down your perspective into three perspectives. The mission perspective, like what is our mission? And really that's about the customer. Like, what am I supposed to do for the customer? And that's my priority. The second is team. What's the responsibility to the team? And like team is our company and like usually company. The, the team kind of component or company component comes down to revenue minus expenses equals profit. Like people will throw a bunch of other stuff in there. That's like soft and fuzzy, but like, no, it's literally revenue minus expenses equals profit. And then self is like, how am I feeling like Steve or like as the CEO or something like, and, and so for me, from a mission perspective, I knew we had to keep those flights going. At least the children's hospital flights and the medical flights, like we had to, and really we had to make sure any of the law enforcement stuff was stable. Like we could shut down film production or something like that if we needed to. From a team pers…

AI assessment note: “And then self is like, how am I feeling like Steve”

Q spent my time on the 20% of things now. So for you, What are the 20% of things that you spend your time on now? And what are, like, things that, say, an entrepreneur or a CEO thinks that they should be spending their time on that, like, you do not spend your time on and you've delegated, whether it's to EAs or to other people within your company now?

A Yeah, great question. We, you know, Thumbtack was a very traditional venture-backed experience. We raised money. We did all the, all the things that venture-backed companies do. And I, uh, I did whatever was best for Thumbtack always, even if it wasn't what I wanted. You know, this person may not be the person I'm most excited to work with, but they're right for the role. Um, 12 hours of interviews today sounds terrible, but it's what Thumbtack needs. Um, and when I started Athena, there's a few people from, um, Thumbtack's team in the Philippines who came over and helped me start it. And, uh, we just did a daydream where we said, What is a dream business for us? Unconstrained by the way we've built businesses before. And w we said a couple of things. One, uh, we control our destiny. So we don't raise external money. You know, investors are great, but if we're in the fortune position to self-fund it, then let's, uh, let's do that. And, uh, I don't like meetings, so let's not have meetings. So one standing meeting a week. Uh, with the team in the early days and we worked very independently. And now what I say, this is like the most optimal way to run a business. If you're trying to get to Mars. No, I would like get in an office and I'd meet all the time, but I wanted to build a business that I wanted to work at for decades to come. And so I built it much more around the way I li…

AI assessment note: “I don't like meetings, so let's not have meetings... then I brought in a CEO”

Q money for it. You just raised a seed round. My first question to you is, what the fuck? Two, what the fuck? One, one, what the fuck is you built a business. You exited it, uh, and you decided to go back into the arena, and I, maybe a questionable decision. I'd love to hear why. Second is you went to the dark side, and you raised VC money. Why?

A Yeah. Yeah. What a cool, what a, what a great set of what the fucks. So, you know, my story, I, I grew up in a, my immigrant household, born and raised in St. Louis very proudly. Uh, and I was away for 18 years and I actually just moved back. So I'm, I'm St. Louis for life. Uh, you know, I was starting the business, businesses when I was 1012, I had a DJing company, a t-shirt business in college, just was always the kid hustling and trying to build something and then spend some time in the more standard jobs of consulting and then on the finance world. But 2010 left and started my first company Ampush, which was totally bootstrapped. We were one of the first companies to crack the code on Facebook marketing and advertising. Our early customers were Uber, Dollar Shave Club, Peloton. We grew that business, um, had a liquidity event in 20, late 2015. And I continue to run it, actually. I met these guys from Red Ventures and learned a ton from them, basically through, for a full decade. So I ran it for 10 years. And to answer your question, Alex, like, you know, as I went down that process, I realized, I started trying to pull out what was driving me every day, because it wasn't money anymore, and it wasn't, you know, ambition solely. I loved, I loved helping people learn and grow, and I loved building businesses. And so I wanted to build something that would make me, help me do th…

AI assessment note: “I loved helping people learn and grow, and I loved building businesses.”

Q Got it. So let's talk about within OpenStore. Think about a hire that you absolutely nailed within OpenStore, who was, you would describe in this bucket of undiscovered talent. Just paint a picture of, like, what did the process look like for them, and what did you see in them that, like, you got that hire so right?

A Yeah, great question. Um, so actually, one of the things that has developed and changed since my early days at PayPal is I did develop a formula for once you're running an organization, a larger organization, um, it's a lot of spot people have potentially undiscovered talent that already somehow or another got higher. I have techniques for once people are in the building, and you're like a senior executive of how to find them. That, that I've got really proficient at. So this is more what I've done in an open store, um, to the people that immediately occur to me is like sort of undiscovered talent that are You know, outstanding. Actually, I didn't hire either of them initially, but once they were working at OpenShore, I was very, very able to identify, you know, the potential. So I don't claim any credit for hiring. Other people deserve the credit for hiring. All I did is identify that they had, you know, highly unbounded potential, um, that wasn't obvious from like their LinkedIn profile.

AI assessment note: “Actually, I didn't hire either of them initially, but once they were working”

Q Yeah, what was that like emotionally for you?

A Yeah, I mean, I had built, like, My whole social media following, my whole identity, like, basically I hadn't hung out with my, I mean, you know, every once in a while you hang out with your friends and stuff. I like, I grew up in Singapore and like, you know, like moved to San Francisco, dropped out of college, like my, you know, moved, you know, I'm basically like, it was very much like the thing that I, I was doing right in everybody's mind. And I was like, okay, it's kind of like, You got to recalibrate, uh, and that's going to hurt. Um, and also people are talking and like, you don't want to necessarily say anything, but you kind of don't know if they know. I remember someone years later telling me they like, we had a meeting in the office like the next week and it was empty and they're like, what's going on? And I was kind of sad or, you know, like all this stuff that like, who knows what I was going through in the, in the moment. Uh, But yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't fun. You know, it was just like, okay, like that wasn't, you know, uh, but I still run the business, right? Like the thing that I, you know, the, the, the sort of solace was that I still ran a great business. Like at the end of the day, it wasn't dead. It was just like, I no longer had any team members, right? Like I just had to run it myself. We were doing, I don't know, like 20 or 30,000 dollars in profit or …

AI assessment note: “You got to recalibrate, uh, and that's going to hurt.”

Q that, yeah, they're the building. So there's Tenet who's involved in this, who's getting the rewards for me spending my whatever it is each month on rent. Talk about what's in it for Toll Brothers. If they were to work with Build or any of these programs, and then who else is kind of in this equation that you had to get on board in order to make it work?

A Like I said, if it was so simple, I'd walk it through in 30 seconds. But what I can say, let's just start from the basics, right? For the customer, the problem, what do we want to solve? Like I said, always start with the problem, and what are we trying to solve? I want to make it so that our generation of renters can get rewards for paying rent, can build their credit, and create a path to home ownership. I was just like, maybe I'll actually start with just like an example story of how annoyingly complex just even one of those three was, because it's just, it'll just put some color around it all, right? So we had spent almost a year touring around the country, trying to pitch real estate owners, trying to pitch banks, because to build a loyalty program, you need your own program. Think of it as Delta Airlines, which for us would be the network of buildings. But you also want the credit card business so that you can earn on all the other spend categories. And like, you can earn Delta miles when you fly Delta, but if you fly United, you can still use a Delta credit card to earn Delta miles on that United flight if you use that card.

AI assessment note: “pitch real estate owners, trying to pitch banks, because to build a loyalty program”

Q Okay. Let's hear one from you. Do you have any predictions for the year?

A Yeah, you know, the theme, one of the themes I have, I do a lot of bottom-up stuff at GatewayX, but then we'll, we quickly see top-down, um, you know, I think one of the big things is, I'd say in the short term, there will be a shakeout in the creator economy, um, but again, in the long term, I think that category of people and workers is going to continue to kind of grow and explode. I think similar to all the rest of the economy, it's been overbuilt, um, For what the demand is going to be now. It's going to pull back. There's going to be a flight to quality, but in the medium run, let's say two to three years, it's going to keep being a critical workforce. And I think there's a huge opportunity. One of our lists of ideas and items is selling, creating services for that category because they fall into this neither here nor there. Uh, I have a really good idea that I won't share, but like, just imagine that these aren't fully employees. They're not Fully contract employees. They're not fully businesses, so they don't check any of the current boxes for all the various products. Payroll runs. Um, one of the, one of the juiciest private equity businesses out there, I don't know if I've told you about this, maybe offline I've told you, is like, is like rights management for Hollywood people.

AI assessment note: “in the short term, there will be a shakeout in the creator economy”

Q Okay, Elon, what are you gonna do? And we start now.

A Well, first I just wouldn't do it, because I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be a multi-billionaire. I think it makes you weird. It's like, what's left after you buy everything? Nothing means anything. Uh, you've yachts, you go to Capri, you go, you stay at Les Sierra News, and, uh, you have, like, weird polyamorous, it's not weird, ok, I'm sorry, But like, it just becomes like, okay, my wife isn't enough. I'm going to get a divorce. Then I'm going to pursue orgies. Like, I'm like, I know these guys, like, I know these guys, like these guys created, like, I'm not going to tell you who, uh, and it's like, yeah, anyway, so everything kind of loses meaning. So then it's like, where do you go? Okay. Well, the outer frontiers of kink and like what I consider freedom. And then I want to control the media, right?

AI assessment note: “Well, first I just wouldn't do it, because I don't want to be”

Q to be able to reconcile. And then there was the part that was just like, this is how the people that you wanted to surround yourself were behaving. So why not behave in that manner? So given it was serving you, right? Like while there were trade-offs of it, it was serving you for a while. At what point in time did you decide it was no longer serving you?

A Well, so, you know, alcohol, uh, It was interesting. It's kind of like alcohol is like both, it was like celebratory and like when things were bad, right? Like I was just watching this documentary with juice world. I don't know if you see that on HBO and like at, at the end of it, like one of his friends is like, well, on a good day, we would like drink lean, pop pills and smoke weed. And on a bad day, we drink lean, pop pills and smoke weed. And I felt like kind of the same thing. It was like on a good day, I'm drinking And celebrating on a bad day. I'm drinking and I feel like shit in the morning. I'm like, it's kind of like knocking out a substantial amount of my productivity. Although I'm like pretty functional as a human being. Like I'm, I was like, you know, I'm a high functioning person. I think I'd like learn to adapt and be able to execute pretty well considering, you know, and I wasn't getting like fucked up at work during work hours or something like that.

AI assessment note: “it's kind of like knocking out a substantial amount of my productivity.”

Q for a second to how you balance your podcasts, which I'm sure takes up a lot of time, as well as your full-time job. Tell me, how do you balance the two? And also, has it ever been difficult to work on building your own personal brand and building up a content franchise while having a full-time job in the eyes of your bosses or the people you work with?

A I think I've found a system that works for me. I'm no superhero, obviously. I just turned 24 on Saturday, so I still have a lot to learn as well, but kind of in my journey, I've figured out early that there's no such thing as a work-life balance. Let me kind of just start with that piece value. I kind of look at it as a work-life harmony, meaning a lot of times I have podcast responsibilities that I have to deal with, and I love to deal with because I love my podcast. I have to deal with during my nine to five. And that's fine. You know, sometimes you got to fill in there and then vice versa. My nine to five sometimes goes to become a nine to nine or even nine to 12 sometimes, which I love because I love what I do full time. Um, so I think that if you are honest with yourself and know that it's difficult sometimes to kind of, you know, balance things and like cut things off. I think when we look at a work life balance, I think a lot of people assume that you need to cut this off and like not touch this at a certain time of the day, et cetera. But I've, I've just kind of found that, you know, sometimes responsibilities need to be filled, especially during these early years. Um, and yeah, so I look at it like a work-life harmony. That's kind of what I like to call it.

AI assessment note: “I kind of look at it as a work-life harmony”

Q What are the stories of? Like, what are they stories about?

A So I like using frameworks and I can talk about that and recommend that for how people should do their business and marketing. But the stories have been what I learned working for Zuckerberg. I, it's funny, me and you kind of put out the same tweet at the same time around here's all the tools I use to run app sumo.com. Uh, I put out stories like brutally honest relationship advice. That one crushed. That was a million view one. We do end up posting them on other channels, but what I'm trying to say is, like, you do different strategies, find the one that works, and then how do you really double down on it? Because it's, you know, some people have tremendous success with TikTok. One, I hate the platform. I don't use it ever, so it's hard for me to want to win there, and two, the stuff we've done hasn't done exceptionally well either, so you, you have to be mindful of that, but on Twitter, it's like, wow, we're getting these great results, and it's driving to email lists, so Now that you understand the channel that's getting you the results for your business goal, how do you double down on it? And so out of the 30 tweets we're doing a month, literally it's that tweet, which is on Saturdays, and a tweet on Wednesdays, which is, tomorrow's email on Thursday, here's the, this insane thing you're gonna learn, go to my newsletter at nokagan.com if you wanna find out about it. And that…

AI assessment note: “the stories have been what I learned working for Zuckerberg”

Q How do you act, like, actually try to break down how you went about that process? You basically gave yourself a PhD in a year.

A Yeah, so I think the story, like, to do that... One has to understand kind of the story of my life and the way it's kind of, you know, culminated into Nucleus, because I really think Nucleus is a deep expression of my soul, right? To me, it's art. Um, so if you go all the way back, I think the story of Nucleus begins, very unfortunately, with a personal tragedy. My cousin actually went to bed one night and didn't wake up the next day. You know, she, she died in her sleep. Um, I was around eight at the time, you know, I asked my parents, you know, how does this happen, how does this happen, they kept saying, oh, it's bad genetics. Didn't even know what that meant. Eventually, I started studying genetics, and that actually led me to a do-it-yourself genetic laboratory in Brooklyn. I think it was one of the first in the country. So, it's on like the second floor of this warehouse, right, there's centrifuges and pipettes thrown everywhere, and basically we had a bunch of biohackers, right, genetically engineering yeast to make them illuminate, you know, editing bacteria to make them resistant antibiotics, And it was just such a beautiful thing for me to be able to, like, actually, like, kind of hack biology, and I loved the beauty and the richness of biology. The one problem I had with it was that I, I wanted it to be more iterable, right? And the thing with programming was it was …

AI assessment note: “to do that... One has to understand kind of the story of my life”

Q has this extra levy on S corps. You would elect to be an S corps because you're going to end up saving money by electing as an S corp. The actual process of doing this, like one creating an S corp and electing to file taxes as an S corp. Who do you involve in that process? Like if I want to actually go do that, what do I do?

A Yeah, so again, the reason I pick a 100,000 dollars instead of, say, 80,000 dollars, the math actually may work out even at 80,000 dollars, but your savings aren't big enough, where I typically think you want to be saving thousands of dollars to make the additional cost worth it. Typically, an S-Corp entails payroll, so you would have to use a service like Guster or something to pay yourself a W-II salary, and based on who's doing your taxes, you want to get them involved as well. So it is More annoying, which is why, you know, a 100,000 onwards, you're saving enough money. It's definitely worth it. There are some, you know, Personal finance, thought leaders, and gurus that will say, at 70 K, you want to do it, 80 K, you want to do it. I tend to think, I tend to think the juice is not worth the squeeze at that point, but at over a 100,000 dollars, it's almost always, you know, a 5000 dollar-ish saving, which is meaningful enough.

AI assessment note: “use a service like Guster... and based on who's doing your taxes, you want”

Q much shit about it. Um, he's like, I can't remember what he said exactly, but basically he was like, you know, you're setting a horrible example by wearing shorts to the office, and I was like, in my head, maybe I got a little defensive. I was like, But I don't give a shit if other people wear shorts to the office. What, what's your view on like employee garb?

A Yeah, I think, well, let me start by saying, like, the reason I actually do take the time to properly put a turban on and, and, you know, make my beard look tidy, it's like a 45 minute process, and especially on something public, like, one of the tenets of Sikhism, the religion, is actually to maintain the identity, almost like a uniform you don't take off, so that you are representing your people and, you know, God and holiness and all that stuff, and so I do actually take it pretty seriously. Uh, especially in this kind of a venue. Like, this is a show, and it's gonna be on YouTube and stuff. So, it is interesting, cuz I'm like, yeah, it's still tough to, like, be here. This is not, you know, it's not not representing, but it's not fully representing.

AI assessment note: “let me start by saying, like, the reason I actually do take the time”

Q idea of, do you keep church and state separate? Meaning, like, do you talk about your side hustle within your full-time job? Uh, or do you keep them totally separate? Have you communicated it to your boss, your employer? Like, how do you think about having an employer that supports your side hustle, and how have you thought about communicating in a way where you feel really good about it?

A That's a great question, and that's obviously what I'm really excited to talk to you about today as well. Um, I'm fortunate now where, um, you know, where I currently spend my time, you know, with my current employer, there's a lot of alignment. Um, you know, for reference, I Lead our event strategy and then also our podcasting strategy at the company I'm with now inside.com. So there is heavy alignment and that's what the reason for my podcast, they wanted me for that reason I should say. But yes, I've had past positions and that's kind of what I wanted to talk about, especially like as a young, 20 something doesn't have to be a podcast, but like starting a new side hustle, how do you not let it become a distraction? Because I feel like, you know, there are always eyeballs, especially, you know, people are looking and they're curious, like where you're spending your time. And I haven't had this issue necessarily, but if you're not performing as well as people think you can be performing in the nine to five, there could be a lot of pressure to stop that side hustle. But what I learned is, I mean, I'm glad that I did start my side hustle because, um, you know, it's continued beyond, you know, my, the past positions I've had, it's led to new opportunities. And, um, someone, I think I mentioned this earlier, told me that you want to be the CEO of your own life. And that really com…

AI assessment note: “with my current employer, there's a lot of alignment... they wanted me for that reason”