Guest Podcast: Raising Money, Public Markets & Podcasts (Todd Ault Show)

It's a political side of it and then there's the real story. There's a lot that I'm packed right there. Wasn't quite the interview I thought it was going to be. It is a reason for it. This will be officially my favorite podcast I've ever done. So tell me about the social club. I'm really interested in that. That's probably the thing. I'm the most interested to understand what you're doing there. So that's the graduation of me trying to figure out what to do next in my career and trying to build a business that I have a unique unfair advantage building. So we'll see how that thesis plays out, right? But it's a private member's community for later stage exit entrepreneurs. So it's very much competitive to Tiger 21. So it'd be similar to, I mean, if you know what that is, then you have an idea of what it is already. But like YPO, EO, they do networking, programming, masterminding for EO is like $2 million. Earlier stage entrepreneur YPO is $12 million. And in theory, those two programs can last forever in terms of like supporting entrepreneurs and you have your different chapters and whatnot. But I was trying to build something for post exit entrepreneur. So we focus on four pillars. So obviously business operations, of course. But then you have wealth, so legacy planning, portfolio review. You could have portfolio defense. Then we also focus on health, longevity, wellness, and then influence. So sort of four things for later stage individual. It's already had like their first version of success in life. Basically I'm building something that would be for myself. But also I mentioned unique unfair advantage. I bring in a lot of the people that I've had on the podcast as speakers and mentors for the community. So because of the show, I have access and very interesting people kind of the same way you do with yours. So those people more or less are inaccessible to the average entrepreneur that has had a 20, 30, 40, 50 million dollar exit. And then some sometimes. Right. And that's really what I'm trying to build up. So it's really a private members community. Membership fee, monthly networking, orderly mastermind. We do a lot of experiential stuff. So yes, there is like an educational component. Plus, yeah, it's also fun to go rent out to 70 foot azimits. And then take them out and have a little bit of like a networking session on a nice boat. But yeah, that's really what I'm working on right now. That's relatively new. I'm very familiar with Tiger 21 for sure. I've been on Wall Street for 34 years. I saw, yeah. I actually got invited to the chapter one of the chapters in Orange County. I ended up not joining. But it is a really interesting group. I'll tell you, life is serendipity. I'm actually launching a club similar to Tiger 21 called mock 29. I've had two exits. I mean, I was part of two exits. I was a founder of one of them and an owner of the other with a bunch of people. And I myself run a lot of public companies and involved a lot of stuff. And it's always good to have one of the things I like to talk about about focus. But I'm curious as to when you launched your podcast and kind of why you did it. Because it's successful. And a lot of people are wanting to do it now. But I don't know like in terms of like how do you believe you have longevity doing this podcast? So I think that if you're going to start anything, I mean, my thesis has been the same for any business that I've started. So just to give you a little bit of background as well. So I've also had two exits. But the first company that went through an exit event, I was leading sales and marketing. So CRO did not have equity position in that company. But it was a nice exit. Still contributed quite a bit to that event. And then the second one, I was co-founder of CRO. And then also exited. First one was in Telco. Second was a broadcast SaaS. So very technical background, but on the sale of the marketing side. And when I was building the last company, it really occurred that like I was, you know, I'm a marketer at the end of the day. So I'm studying the greats. I'm studying the Gary Vee, the Seth Godens, the who, you know, the pick your favorite marketer. And I wanted some longevity to what I was doing. And I knew that it wasn't going to be a, you know, a nine figure exit. It wasn't going to be an IPO. It wasn't going to be a huge enormous company. It was going to be a good exit. But I would have had to have started from scratch. The second I basically exited it. And now I have no name in the market. I know who knows who I am. And if I want to build anything. It's, it's just a grind. So I'm looking at Gary Vee and I'm thinking. He has a massive brand and he launches brand. He like, he launches companies against that audience. He sure does. That was it. That was it. Like that was the, that was the, that was like, I wanted to have that audience. Because I didn't know what was going to happen in the future. But I knew that I wanted to launch companies against that audience. That I would build over X period of time. So answer your question. Why did I think I could do it? Well, the thesis was if I commit 10 years of my life trying to build that thing. And I'm a smart individual. And I can reverse engineer what someone else has done to achieve some sort of success in that particular thing. I figure that if I continue with it. Or an unreasonable amount of time. And for podcasting 10 years is definitely an unreasonable amount of time. Considering the fact that most people don't even release more than two episodes. In my mind, I could build at least some samples of a community that could be useful. So far that thesis has proven true. You have a, you have a thought process around the number of podcasts and how you like. Is it, is it, is in your mind it's, it's quality over quantity? Or is it you want to get as far as big of a footprint as you can? And then sort of filter that down. Because if you're going to launch that community, how big do you need that to be? That's a great question. Because the way that I did it is not the way that I would recommend people do it. So the way that I did it was look for the biggest guests and have the most diverse conversations. Because that's what I enjoyed. And for me to want to do it for a long period of time. I really wanted to enjoy the process of content creation. Versus what would be smarter for most people. Would be you focus on tying all the content in the medium that you're creating. And on to be newsletter podcasts to the ideal customer profile that you're trying to target for your business. And then leveraging that as a sales asset. Because you're only, you're only attracting listeners or audience members that could be buyers for your product or service. So strategically I didn't tie it back to the thing that I was building at the time. Because I knew that I wanted it to live what I was building at the time. I wanted to tie it strategically back. It would have probably built something focused on broadcast and streaming and distribution. And only bring on CMOs of broadcast companies we were already selling to. That would have been the strategy. That was not the strategy that I deployed. So quality is important. Focus on what you want to accomplish is important. And I think that you could use it strategically as a medium. Not just to build a massive audience, but to actually drive revenue in a business. If you take a much more focused view than what I originally did. But I mean at the end of the day. It was sort of like a learning experience when I started like most people to start creating. Like what are you going to use this for? Well, I know that if I stick with it, I'll find a way to use it. But you know, hindsight's 2020. And maybe I could have done it a little bit more focused. But I don't really regret how I built it because it gave me access to some of the most incredible people in the world too. So have you sold anything to your network yet? No, I haven't. I have not. So you're just still building. You're still building that before you have this first cell, right? Where you're like, I'm going to launch this product into my network. Or is that something you, is that something you fear doing? Because then that's a different chapter. Are you not, when do you think you're ready for that? So that's a great question. Um, I haven't sold anything into the audience yet because I feel like you have to build a level of trust before you ask for a sale. And I've always aired. On the side of caution. And I want to have. This level of trust where I feel that people are true fans of the content that I put out before I ask them for a sale. I think I gravitated in that direction because the market is fundamentally right now going in the opposite direction where even if you don't have trust, you're asking for a sale. And you're selling something you probably shouldn't even be selling. And I think that I have such an adverse reaction to that style that I went in the complete opposite direction. And for six years, I did nothing but audience building and not productizing as quickly as possible. I still monetize. So not, I'm not oblivious to the fact that there's an ad play and there's a CPM for a business finance audience. And I can sell an ad slot that will guarantee 500,000 impressions to a LinkedIn or a net suite or a HubSpot. That's still a play, but it's not going to be as lucrative in terms of business model is. I'm selling a widget coaching consulting masterminds, whatever it is to the audience. So I think I just focused on. And I also thought the second you start selling or gating content that diminishes your reach significantly. Definitely gating, maybe not selling, but definitely gating. I think I focused on reach first. And now is the point where I think it's fair to start to monetize. How do you bring people into the social club? And I'll tell you before you answer that question, I thought the social club the way he called it. It's interesting that you must definitely be a marketer because it's almost like you've heard of it, right? You hear, like if you think about one of those things they're all over the place now, these private, there's one in Malibu, there's one in like a private member's club. Yeah, it's called something. So, yeah. So automatically makes me think of something like that, right? Like when you think of the social club, it's a really, I wouldn't have thought, oh, the social club is a network for people who had exits, right? I wouldn't have thought that. Because nobody wants to be part, nobody wants to be part of that though. Like nobody wants to be part of a network that people like don't mind being part of a network of people that have had exits. But why do people stick around EO or YPO or Tiger 21? Right. It's because of the, it's because of the peers. It's because the camaraderie they build with people that play at the same level as them. That is truly why people stick around because there are a lot of different groups. And people do want not only just do business with people that have competed at the same level, but they want to go on trips with people that have competed at the same level. They want to go on trip, they want to, they want to be friends. They want to have these people over. And it's not like we, we have a, we have a hack, right? Our podcast, our network is a hack. It's easy to find great people, build good networks. I noticed it when I came down from Toronto to Miami. A lot of smart people, all very siloed, not huge groups of friends. A little bit apprehensive about which rooms they step into because they don't want to get pitched all the time to put money into this, put money into that. So I think that, you know, it's a cliche. It's lonely at the top. It very much is. And I think that that's why these groups exist. So I'm not trying to, and I appreciate that it sounds familiar and friendly. And that's great. And I think that it really was, it was tying back to what am I trying to build? Tiger 21 is a, is an investment group at the end of the day. It's very much focused on investment. Even if that's not how they market themselves, significant portion of it is focused on investment. Right. Just because you've had an exit, finance is not the only part of your life. It's one of the pieces. Sure. But how many people come on this show and they want to write a book. And they want to increase their thought leadership. And they want to get more followers on Instagram. And they want to start a podcast. I'm worried about, I want to live longer. So they get a red lights spa or sauna and then they do coal plunges. Like there's so many other aspects to once you've sort of achieved that first level of life. That you really just, you're, you're just trying to figure it out as you go. How many people could be in the social club in your mind? Like how big of a group could it be? I mean, the way that we structured it, I do not want more than 100 people per major city. Because once you get past 100 people per chapter or city, then you start to lose meaningful interaction. So I've been thrown into rooms of 200, 250 people, 300 people for EO and YPO. And you don't know everybody and not everyone's an extrovert. And part of what I envision is I envision the chapter head knowing every single individual intimately. And we give what they need and then matchmaking between the members. So it's at the end of the day, it's like business, investment, matchmaking, but concierge. Because that doesn't also exist. Many masterminds, many networking groups, people are just thrown into the group. People pay and then they're kind of just left of their own devices like show up here. We're going to put, you know, a speak in a room and 200 people are going to show up and, you know, there's some nice hors d'oeuvres and some drinks after. But like I want this to be beneficial. And that means that you're actually placing people with other individuals who can support each other. That's like the secret sauce in networking and not everybody is comfortable facilitating themselves. So to answer your question, 100 per city. And then we copy and paste the strategy to major cities around the world, which is not complicated. But I don't need 500,000 members. I don't know if you want to talk about what's it cost to be a member. If you don't, I don't, yeah, I don't mind. I mean, it's 35,000 for the year. And that includes monthly networking, orderly masterminds. That's our price point where we thought in the market, it benchmarks against some of the existing competitors out there. It's cheaper than some of the higher end masterminds if you look at like the. I won't name names, but this masterminds it pushed you know over $100,000, but I think is very expensive. The goal is there has to be a business model that makes sense. And we want to make sure the people that are joining, we do a lot of betting and due diligence on the front end to make sure people are who they say they are. They've had the success that they have a cheat. And then. That they're comfortable at least putting this amount of money in because for the people that would be ideal fits for community. This amount of money is not significant. What's SDC holdings? So after this is my holding company. So after I exited, then I started getting into angel investing. I was not good at it. And then I moved into private equity because I found that pre revenue early stage. And they were not huge checks that were talking like 15, 20, 25,000 dollar checks. I realized very quickly that the good operator does not make a good investor and sometimes vice versa too. So then I focused on private equity acquisitions where I do deal by deal SPV deploy capital bringing some LPs by a company in a category that I actually understood. And that would be where that's very that's lost company was acquired four years ago. So that's the past four years that's sort of been my investor life. Yeah, we're somewhat similar. I'm doing a lot of private equity a lot of private deals. That's what I was kind of going back to my original question, which was that it seems like now. The default is most people want to be a private investor. They don't they're. It's just what I'm seeing in hearing is there's way more money in private markets now. Way more money in private credit. Ray more money in private access LPs that want to be private. Obviously they may want to have an exit, but it yeah sure seems after the pandemic and the the the up tick we had in. Game stop and all the kind of craziness of what was happening with all these young people getting checks is that sort of fading away. Are you seeing it that most people just only want to talk about being private or are you I think that it's I'm going to take it a step further. I think that most people there's there's like this. There's like this glamor around angel investing and and SaaS startup and venture capital that I think is misplaced. So not only are and I see it a lot from people that are operators turned investors. I see people on LinkedIn talking about their tech portfolio, for example, which is mostly private right like it's like series day at most. For some reason Silicon Valley got a lot of smart people excited about becoming VC. And they see their it's either Jason Calacanis. I literally just going to say it's like a Jay Cal moment right. I mean that's what he's doing right. He's got everyone jacking up that right. Awesome, but first of all VC has a massive failure rate. Angels get screwed all the time because they don't even have the the resources that a proper VC firm that raised a fund has. And they don't even know they don't even look at public markets like it's like they start with VC they get screwed there kind of like me. And then they migrate to private equity because what's private equity will private equity means not controlling interest in a company. And I see a historic PNL and I can kind of see where the company's going and I can kind of see their track record hopefully. So at least it de risks the deal a little bit and then public markets it's like as an operator what do you want you always want control. You try and find some semblance of control because that's what that's what you've done well so far. Sure. Public market seems like you've just given up control whereas private equity it's like I feel like I have a little bit of control I can sort of tell. I can hire a good operator I want to be an operator I can hire a good operator but I know the growth levers they can pull I can kind of see what they've done so far and what they could do. So I feel like some semblance of control and slightly be risked so I think that's where people gravitate towards. I don't have an answer as to why public markets are not as prominent in someone's mind when they make money outside the fact that no one's marketing them no there's no big podcasts talking about how I've done well in public markets it seems almost like for the average investor. They invest in what they know and most people did not build a publicly traded company so they go back to what they understand I really think that's it but I I don't know for sure. I've been asking that I'm going to start doing it actually probably with you but you might be the first I've actually decided I'm going to ask this question of everyone I talk to you but how is AI affecting your business? AI has radically expedited everything we do so I've not removed anybody but I would say they probably work a quarter of the time they did for AI. So I have deployed AI to everything in mostly my content business so I would say the podcast is a business content is a business. And even marketing for like the social club there's AI components but video editing audio mastering podcast cutting and clipping graphic design copywriting so basically most first pass at creative tasks has been executed now by AI with a smart person to review the first the first version of that. And then added up massage it a little bit before it goes out into the world but that's reduced like no live it probably 75 to 85% of the workload from my content. Yeah we have a new chief marketing officer who I started yesterday and one of the things she's been pitching the last couple months is she said you can take all the videos you want to edit and have them edited in AI. And then as long as you watch the first pass you can really refine it pretty quickly so she's editing most of her videos in AI which I was like wow I didn't know that was possible. Oh yeah so opus.pro is great takes long form turns it into you know about 20 different short form clips and again it's like it's the first pass right it can't be the final product but the first pass what would that take it would take somebody to listen to the 30 60 minute podcast there's 30 60 minutes already find the most viral clips clip them out export 20 different clips that's probably like three or four hours of work. So I just took that and did it in 15 minutes with no no human interaction whatsoever since it's astonishing it's astonishing I love one of your quotes successes in a straight line it's a messy twisty sometimes backward feeling journey. I've been working on this refinement of like how do you in my life my wife says to me all the time the things are that happen to you even once if it happened to the average person they would not continue I'm curious is to along your journey where you've been how many times if you had a moment where you thought this is it it's not going to work out. Almost like every day like no sir it's almost every day like so this would be this would be what we're doing right now my second show of the day so I did a show this morning. I had to drive somewhere for it drove back to my my house where I have the studio and then we're doing this show we're doing another show after that I'm speaking tonight and I was like I just lay down for like 30 minutes I'm like what am I. How am I doing yeah I because I'll be up from like six in the morning to probably two today yeah when it's all said and done all the driving so and nothing even went wrong and there's like 10 billion things that could also go wrong got you know like knock on what. Nothing does but like every single day so I think that this is a concept that I really think is very important for people I hope it doesn't sound too silly but it means it means a lot to me at least so if you're going to build anything kind of like what your wife said like if any of things that happen to you your suit. You get fired you have to fire an employee have to lay off people whatever it doesn't matter is a million different things you're getting death threats got for a bit I think you have to really keep track of the life because those negative moments really in print and this is why new cycles are so negative because they in print on your mind much too much greater degree than anything positive that happens so like however you want to do it whatever works for you it could be writing it down it could be putting in the word doc it could be like reviewing the cool shit that you posted on Instagram whatever it is just be very cognizant of all the wins that you have because they help you get over those huge losses when you realize that like I won 5,000 times this week so maybe this one event is not indicative of who I am as a professional in a person I think it's very important right because I think that that one negative event for a lot of people is like all consuming and it can really sideline. Before you had your exit with your last company did you raise a lot of capital around it no we didn't raise the million. I think I have a different you know I've to strange footprint it's everyone's level of success is you know it's good to see this I'm I'm sometimes you get caught up in your own universe and you don't realize that there's lots of forms of different success and what people do and you raise it raise it a million I raised 500 million dollars we're still not there right so I think to myself that doesn't that's not good it's not bad but a lot of money there's a lot of ways to do this right I'm more mesmerized by the success story podcast and it says number one entrepreneur in top 10 business podcast how do you think you got there. I'm a marketer and I stuck with it for six years I mean that's easy answer the the less obvious or the less the less simple answer is every show goes into about 50 different pieces of content so I draw the audience in and I don't assume that just because it's a podcast people like podcast that goes into a whole bunch of short form it goes no a blog on my website which is SEO optimized goes into a newsletter and I have 320,000 on the email list it goes into tweets it goes into graphics that I post on Instagram. So in terms of a content strategy it build once and distribute everywhere repeatedly second thing would be you want to collaborate with people that have also earned trust with their audience so a lot of collaboration with other great creators like yourself that's a huge way to grow a show and then lastly I'm a marketer remember that so I do the gamut of marketing activities for podcasts but I'll also promote the show two ways on other podcasts which is huge so we can do cross posting of episodes meaning that I'm going to drop one of my episodes in someone else's feed they're going to drop their episode in my feed so what I'm doing with that is I'm basically fishing where there's fish right I'm not saying I'm going to go advertise in a newsletter and say here's my podcast I'm literally going where people already have already love podcasts are and saying come check out mine so the friction in turning them into a subscriber or a listener is much lower and then I also run paid so performance marketing is fine you have to find a way to make it sustainable and you can run ads on Facebook on Google on anywhere but the only place I run ads is where other podcasters are so I'll run ads in different podcast apps because again I'm trying to reduce the cost of acquisition of that customer reduce the friction and turning them into an actual listener subscriber and you rinse and repeat that over 500 episodes in six years so YouTube's big do you monetize on YouTube do you like let ads run I let ads run but that's not where the majority of so for the podcast how I've monetized it is just through advertisers so there's a CPM I have five agencies that sell for me and right now actually to be honest we not that many ads slots left but from the get go I've basically said listen when I started the show I didn't have the resources to hire a full sales team so let other people work for me take a split they fill the ads and then those ads are cross posted to the audio feed as well as on YouTube but YouTube monetization I find is really insignificant compared to like host red ads that I get from you know anyone from a LinkedIn to a net sweet to athletic greens that kind of advertisers and when you run when you run those ads you just edit it into your your overall preparation for your podcast right so you're responsible for that it's not like a it's not like a video network feed that inserts immediately you do you do you do insertion god do insertion so right now I mean fortunate now that I have a team of supports right so I'll record like a host red ad 30 seconds 60 seconds but I won't like I'll record it audio and interesting enough like very soon I'm sure that I could train an AI tool to actually replicate my voice but we haven't gone that far yet so I'll record a 36 second ad they'll turn it into an audio video version of that ad and they'll do like like a capture of the of the particular clients website maybe they'll show some B-roll maybe they'll show some clips from one of the one of the clients YouTube videos showing what their product does whatever it is turn it into a 30 to 60 second audio video clip and then we insert that into the podcast well got it for sure what who's your favorite guest so far you've had like of all the guests all and I that's not a fair question I know it's not fair because I saw Grand Cardone guy scaramucci I've had Grant I've had scaramucci I haven't had Patrick David I haven't had some of these people but obviously I was a big fan of Grant Cardone back in the day and so I was pretty excited I think he was on one of my first podcasts might even might even mean my first podcast really yeah that's a good first guest that's a very good first guest I knew Grant and I basically said I'm going to see you and you're going to be on my podcast he agreed so it was really not that hard but I'm curious to who your favorite spin I would say there's a reason why this guy was my favorite because he's the guy that got me started in podcasting so it's actually Seth Godin Seth Godin was one of my favorite interviews and he's a big marketer so he's been around for a long time long long time he writes an awesome blog daily known for that and the only reason why it was so important for me is because I remember I chose to start podcasting when I was listening to his podcast and one of the lines that he said was about Icarus and flying too close to the sun but then he followed up with like don't worry trust me if you fly too close to the sun you won't get burned which is obviously a little bit slightly a different version of the Icarus story but that was like I remember hearing that line I'm like you know there was like a whatever effort I'm going to do this kind of moment right and that's when I started my show on whatever four years later it was a nice like full circle moment I come back to this thesis of I want to teach as many people as possible and help as many people as possible based on what I've learned in my life and if I can accomplish that I think that the money will figure itself out and I believe that I truly do believe that so whether or not people sign up like I mean I'm not telling everybody listens to my show like hey you got to spend 35 grams to be honest my show is actually probably earlier stage entrepreneurs it's probably not even all like it's definitely not all exited but I'd say probably a fraction of it is exited entrepreneurs so it doesn't really really fit for me to sell hard through the show but it wouldn't make a difference even if it was perfectly targeted I'm a big fan of I'm a big fan of like the man generation like I want to be so good and create a product so good and create a voice so good and and build so much trust that you gravitate towards me because that's what the best companies are built the best companies are not forcing you to buy their product the best companies are pulling you in because their product is so phenomenal right and I you know there's more than one way to build a business but I find the businesses that have longevity are the are the businesses that figure out how to do that the best what's your numbers now what's your how many what's your podcast like what are your your views are down right now it's between it ranges between 700,000 and a million per month wow that's a big footprint yeah well that's great congratulations wow and are you are you when you when you got to that kind of number do you feel like a lot more pressure to put out more quality content or or do you feel like it's just the same as before you pay no attention to the number I think when you get to that level you have you have either on purpose or just through repetition gotten better at the content you create because you've done it so many times so a podcast is really a casual like long-form medium and the goal is to create an environment where the person is comfortable talking I think that what we're trying to do when we podcast and what people actually respond to well is we're trying to take the conversation like say we were hanging out in my living room having a drink we're trying to take that conversation and replicate it here but the second you press record there's a level of stress people are you know worried are you judging me what's your audience going to think what's my audience going to think so the level of stress it removes that that like less a fair casual almost like shooting a shit kind of conversation that people actually come to podcast for so after doing it for 500 times I think the end goal is you actually just end up being able to act like you would without recording with the person that you're chatting with and I think that that vibe creates when you put two smart people together you'll you'll totally recognize this it creates just a great conversation because you set two smart people shooting the shit challenge each other's ideas and then you do that 500 times and the content starts to take care of itself in a way because you start to understand what question can I ask to get the best possible response out how do I create an environment where the person sort of like puts down the guard and their shield and opens up a little bit so yeah I do want to create better content I feel a little bit of pressure but I don't I felt more pressure creating city or content at the beginning so I had no idea what I was doing. How hard is it for you to get guests nowadays and I know you're getting a million views a month so that's big everyone's going to want to get there but like your process for getting them on Kelly on my podcast the other day I think was two days ago and Sean told me he DMs people directly and that's how he gets them do you have a system that you like to use to get people on your podcast? So I built relationships with agents from Harper call and Simon Schuster a couple larger like talent like representation agencies Anderson CAA not like the whole agency like people within the agency and whenever somebody notable writes a book they usually reach out to me I'm on like the list of like some of the bigger business shows a second strategy that I've used that was a little bit more proactive because obviously when you first start you can't really build those relationships as I would go on Amazon because I always listen if you're trying this is my sales brain thinking if I want to get somebody on my show I have to think what do they want to accomplish? What reason do they have for coming on to my show? Outside of just a have an audience usually in a traditional sales strategy there's something called intent right there's intent and you can actually find the intent of somebody how soon do they actually have to buy that product or service is there a meaningful event in their life so what's the intent for an author while they're releasing a book on September 15th and they got to get on a show to promote it because if they don't no one's going to buy their book so now there's intent there's a meaningful event in their life so what I would do and this is kind of what I'm getting from all these book publishers like Penguin and Harper and Simon what I used to do is I go on Amazon and I'd filter by up-and-coming business books and rank them by most popular release popular and look at the people that were releasing books in next two months and then I would call DM them and it wouldn't always work but it would increase the likelihood of them responding saying yes and they'd say hey go speak to my PR person and I'd go speak to the PR person the person is like awesome you have a great podcast we were already planning on doing a media tour so we'll just add you on it was just right time and then finding a way to figure what that right time was for somebody that could have been my target guest and then also what Sean does now because I have an audience now I can just DM but I can't DM for example Elon Musk and I can't DM Mark Cuban but I can DM a lot of people but I still have to be strategic with people you know like always the next tier right there's always another tier it's never ending so a little bit of strategy and aligning with a meaningful event in that person's life really makes a difference and you're trying to book them as a guest what do you think of Lex's podcast it's interesting because it's long right it's super long really long and it takes me days to get through it because I don't have three hours to set around although I you know they just did like a six-hour it was one he wanted to say it was six hours the guests he has are fascinating I mean I listened to the entire Jeff Bezos one I've listened to I think so many of them so he does have my ear but I was curious as to what you thought about his style I think that I think that I think that you have to find a format that your audience likes I mean I like Lex's podcast but I don't always listen to them because I can't afford the time so I also like Tim Ferris' podcast because we're like an hour and an hour and a half do I like them? yeah but like does it matter if I like them? it just matters if a lot of people like them and it matters if you like producing them because that's what's going to keep you staying with it for a long period of time so I like some of them I always have people tell me the podcast are good but they don't seem to be growing anywhere they're going parabolic in fact I promote a lot of them and it's probably because I'm not doing the job you are doing the right kind of promotion I'll have to work on that but I'm curious as to the feedback you got was it only that you got it because people watched them or did you actually get people tell you that sucks that it doesn't suck I don't think many people really criticize your work or are really even honest with your work and especially the people that feel comfortable so the people stop right because you have people on the internet you have people on the internet that unless they really really hate you unless they really really hate you or they're really big fans and you disappoint them they're generally going to leave for podcasts at least relatively positive if you look at the podcast reviews if you're trying to build a Twitter audience it's probably a little bit more ruthless than a podcast but even your friends your friends it is ruthless but your friends are not going to your friends are probably not even going to your friends are probably going to tell you you're awesome and probably not listen to your show so I mean yeah I've noticed that by the way I've noticed that a lot where people say oh I love that podcast and some of them have really watched it but the vast majority of them don't even look at it they're like oh yeah I saw that you had them on as a guest well do you remember that part oh I didn't watch it okay thanks so I don't look for I haven't I haven't felt comfortable trusting feedback as like the feedback that I'm getting as a huge mechanism or a huge like you know data point for whether or not I'm doing a good job I just I look at watch time if somebody sticks around for 45 minutes to 50 minutes and consumes 75% of a podcast that was a good podcast I'll unpack how that podcast went I'll transcribe it I'll look at the questions that I ask I'll look at basically everything versus something that had 25% completion rate I just trust the market do you help people with podcasters that not a product you sell so it wasn't a product I sell but you know how many people have pushed me to do that was I was about to do that tell you you should do that but that's another like who the hell am I to tell you what to do you got a million listeners a month but telling me to do it like very notable people are saying hey like roll out a playbook for starting a show so do you like to run your business I've sort of felt this lately as I've been at this for a long time I'm 54 I've been at it for 34 years I always tell people I've made like every single failure there is like if any stupid shit you could ever do I pretty much have done it and I try not to do the same stupid shit even sometimes then I repeat the stupid shit but you know I'm curious as you after you had your exit and now do you when I was younger I used to say person would say oh you know you only want a hundred thousand from me I have to do the same work for a hundred thousand I do for ten million it's not worth my time I used to get mad like it's not worth my time but we're doing two hundred million a year and I say to people like it's an interesting idea but you're at zero and I'm at two hundred million and I don't even know where where where I would put you and it you evolve so have you evolved in your mind about what you want your daily life to look like because you just talked about I'm going to be up at six and be done at two and I presume you mean to it night by the way yeah yeah so do you find yourself saying hey I only want to do these behaviors and I'm going to limit what I do whereas maybe you didn't limit yourself before you were willing to do anything versus now you're not willing to do everything so yes so I mean I think part of my success was that I was willing to do anything to I mean like in startup land like I would quote a website I'd figure it out right like I'd set up my first ad set on Facebook if I didn't have the budget to hire somebody to do it I'd figure out so I'd do all of it at this stage the goal is to basically find talent that's better than you as soon as possible so find a way to hire the right people like when I say I'm up till two in the morning I'm up till two in the morning because I'm doing two podcasts and a speaking gig tonight like that's not something I can outsource so I focus on tasks that require me and me building my thought leadership or me teaching over a skill set that I've learned to somebody you can actually execute on it versus doing it myself it's not because I'm better than by any means I could step in any time but I think it's just you have to leverage and you have to remove yourself from a lot of the you know the day-to-day and the minutiae and get yourself out of the weeds but yeah I think that's the natural mindset of somebody who's building something a second or a third time because they just wanted to move quicker and they understand how to leverage capital and leverage talent and leverage media and leverage anything to just re-up more of their day that's the only way to really build without losing your mind to be quite honest and having some somewhat of a work-life balance and having some sort of diversity and sometimes backward feeling journey so I have discovered for myself that if I forecast where I want to be in 10 years there's all kinds of shit along the way but the 10-year goal kind of still stays there so you just remind yourself where you're going so where do you want to be like in five or 10 years like with the success podcast with so in 60 months from now I would 10 years is a long time 10 years is a very long time I think that the goal will be to keep the podcast in all seriousness for the rest of my life I don't think there's any exit plan for that because I think it's an asset that I can leverage for any next opportunity in terms of I mean I could put a download number on it right now kind of look at diary of a CEO that hits about 20 million downloads a month and right now I'm building out a full studio like a very high-quality studio so the production level will increase and like that's the benchmark but I don't even think I mean more people are coming online more people are consuming content there's more creators there'll be more competition but I don't even think you need 10 years to get there but maybe you do like say 5 to 10 million subscribers on YouTube have a podcast it's hitting that kind of reach in the US would be a phenomenal accomplishment for a success story but then again I that would just scale over time so if it's 5 years 10 years that's great I don't want to get rid of it ever for social club for social club I need to scale that I want to get so if we do the math you're looking at about 3.5 million dollars in run rate per city top line revenue I would like to scale that to roughly at this point you know ideas change about this point 40 to 50 million dollars in revenue so we're looking you know do the math on how many cities are trying to copy and paste this model too and I would say that I would put that as my maybe not my 5 year gold my 7 year gold but that could easily be expedited or drawn out it depends but the point is that is where I would like to take this business in terms of revenue before I start entertaining maybe like a private equity buyout in my career that would be a milestone for me I have a 9 figure exit then that would sort of push me down the path of starting my first fund so I mentioned that I was doing deal by deal SPV I would like to raise a fund and I would like to deploy as a first version of private equity between 500 to a billion dollars worth of capital or assets under management and that would be I mean that's not even 10 years that could be a 20 year gold but that would be where I'd like to end up and start to reinvest into companies that I think can have a massive impact on the world whether or not it's earlier stage or later stage but I think I'd actually like you know you're talking about your career that's where I'm heading like that's really what I want to do because I feel like have a true impact on the world you have to create I think impact starts at a billion dollars worth of value I think you can have a small exit and you're going to die and no one's going to know who you are but I think when you deploy capital build something it is at least value that a billion plus that's when you start in the market and that's really right now where my north star is Wow it's got appreciate your time I uh I like that a lot I've learned a lot from you on the podcast today No nice way to you as well Too long There's a reason for it Yeah