The Exchanges

Q Love it. You, you talked about it briefly, and I actually want to spend a little bit more time on it, which is, like, Ikigai, which is kind of your reason for being. What did you find as you went through that exercise was your Ikigai? Like, what were the things you plugged in for yourself?

A I do believe that business, I believe it as a very, it's a very spiritual thing to me. Um, because I think that it's like this, it's like the ultimate Maslow hierarchy of need, like the self-actualization thing. And so to me, it's like an exercise of like turning dreams into reality. I find that to be incredibly intoxicating and, uh, fulfilling like spiritually. Um, so for me, I loved sharing. I loved like creating information and I love just like sharing and I love getting, I like getting feedback and I was like obsessed with like the dopamine of like seeing my Google analytics go up. And seeing comments on the blog posts and moving really quickly. The cool thing about content is you're not creating a physical product. And so every single day you could iterate. And I just like obsessed over that. I also felt like I kind of understood human emotion and understood how to get a rise out of people. So I understood how to make people feel sad or happy or angry. Like I, I understood how to like capture people's attention. And I, and I really enjoyed that. I also love working with like weirdos, like people who are kind of like freaks. And I, I think I'm a little bit of a weirdo, and so I really liked the idea of hiring oddballs and working with them, and content people tend to be like that.

AI assessment note: “so for me, I loved sharing. I loved like creating information and I love just like sharing”

Q Yep. And so when you were thinking about launching Hampton and you thought about like, Your goals, your Ikigai, like, how did you know, like, this was a bet that you wanted to take?

A Well, so I, like, 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 a business that could get to, like, at least a hundred million in revenue, although I think this could be a lot bigger, and so I just was like, well, YPO does that. Vistage does a hundred million plus in profit, so, like, All right. I know the market's big enough. And that was basically it for sizing the market. Um, and then I was like, I think I'm good at it. I have got an audience that matches those people. I think this is a problem that needs to be solved. I think that, um, I talked to a bunch of, uh, members of all these other communities and they told me, I wish I had this or this or whatever. And I was like, all right, there I've, I've spotted the opportunity. Now I just need to execute. And that's what we did. And then I can give your audience like a more real-time example. Yeah, let's hear it. This one hasn't proven itself yet. So it's called Sam's List, samslist.co. And what I've noticed, so when we are, you probably saw this at Morning Brew. Dude, these B to B advertisers crush it. Like they would get so many clicks and they could pay a lot of money per click or whatever to acquire a customer because their, their products are Tens of thousands or more a year versus like a deodorant brand, they can on…

AI assessment note: “I knew that I knew how to do community with trends”

Q When you're looking at annual reports to kind of reverse engineer business opportunities, what are the, the few parts that you really focus in on?

A So this, again, is where I was envious of you and Austin, was like, I, like, I didn't know how to read these, and I never really truly, I don't truly understand them. Like, I can't, like, I've taken classes recently on how to read the financials, but I'm not great at it. But there's like so much that you can read just in the text. So like in terms of like, uh, the financials, I basically look at the cash flow statements. I look at operating income and that's honestly it. Like I'm very rudimentary and not good at the financial part, but, and like the outlook, they'll tell you like, what's like, what sectors, like, for example, I remember for trends, like one, 800 flowers said succulents are growing amongst our millennial customers. And in trends, we wrote, all right, well, someone's going to create an online retailer focused on succulents. And then like Bloomscape and like three other companies raised like tens of millions of dollars like a year later. So like the reports, they'll tell you like what's happening. Like we're, we're facing headwinds because, uh, young people care more about this than that. You know what I'm saying? Like, it'll tell you like what's going on. And my opinion is like a company that has billions of revenue or is a public They have so much data and intel on, like, where the world's heading that I can just piggyback off of their intel.

AI assessment note: “I basically look at the cash flow statements. I look at operating income”

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”