$100,000,000 Dollar Company with Popl Co-Founder | Jeremy Greensfield (Vault)

(upbeat music) - I am here with my friend, Jeremy Greenfield. My man, I appreciate you being on the show. - Absolutely brother, thank you for having me. - Absolutely, and I wanna dive into, 'cause everyone asks me, how do you meet these incredible people? You are incredible, I can't wait to share your story, but how I met Jeremy. So I got invited by, on and Lacey Dill, and they had a podcast that said, "Jesse, we have a podcast, "So if I stadium, we want you there." I said, "Oh, amazing, I'll be there." So like three days later, I got a flight, flew to LA, and as I walk in the room, I got Dan Fleshman, David Melcissus there, like we have some big time hitters, and then you were two people before I spoke and did my podcast, and then afterwards, I'm like, "Man, I gotta connect with Jeremy, "he's got a cool story, I didn't get to hear all of it "by her just bits and pieces." And so I go up to you, I'm like, "Hey man, we gotta connect, we start talking." And I hold, I hand you my phone. I remember this very distinctly. I hand you my phone, I'm like, "Hey man, "I got this really cool app software, it's called Poppels, "it's like a digital business card." And you go, "Yeah, man, it's awesome, man, I'm a co-founder." And I'm like, "Wait, what?" So just like, I bet you hear that story a lot because it's a very popular app to use now. So we got one of the co-founders of Poppels on the podcast, Jeremy, great to have you, I appreciate you. And I wanna give people a little bit of your backstory. So if you don't know Poppels, valuation is right around nine figures now. This definitely has skyrocket over the last few years. And welcome to the Growth House podcast, the show where we help you achieve financial freedom with the strategies, mindsets, and actionable steps from investors and entrepreneurs who have already earned their freedom. I'm your host, Jesse Ray. And if you're new to the show, in February of 2022, I was able to replace my six figure corporate salary through real estate investing. Guys, I'm on a mission. I am now on a mission to help one million others reach financial freedom. And we're gonna accomplish this through this podcast where we have four episodes every single week. Monday and Wednesday, we bring on incredible guests. And Tuesday and Friday, I do two solo episodes documenting the whole journey of building Growth House from zero to $10 million. And I share everything. I share the wins, losses, and even learning lessons, the revenue, and everything in between. So welcome to the show. Jeremy, obviously you're very successful now. Helped a lot of companies out, but let's take a step back. I'm pretty sure you got into the oil business. Was that one of your first jobs? I've seen it just during and after college. But I'm not really comfortable with saying I'm really successful at this moment. You know, I feel like when you think of success, you always think of it as like this mountain top. And when you hit this goal, or when you get this, or when you do that, you're gonna have this sense of accomplishment, or self worth, or whatever, maybe you'd wrapped up in it. But as anybody that's been on this journey knows, as soon as you think you're at the mountain, there's another mountain, and there's another mountain, and there's another mountain. And in a lot of ways, that's what keeps it fun, and that's what keeps you humble. In other ways, it can be seen as frustrating because you thought you'd have this fulfillment whenever XYZ happened. And really, I think anybody that's done this journey knows that you kind of have to have the fulfillment along the way, because if you think you're successful, that's right along the time that you can end up on your way to being broke, and you don't, you don't want to, when you're right, you're right, when you're green, you're growing. And so, I just want to be on the, and I don't know, I don't like to just think, oh, I'm super successful, because I definitely have a long ways to go, and a lot to learn, and a lot to still accomplish. - Let me ask you this, man, before we dive into your story, what does success mean to you? If you do ever feel like you'll be like, okay, I feel very successful, or do you think you'll never feel that? - No, I definitely do. And once again, this could be one of those things, where it's like, hey, when I hit that mountain peak, I'm gonna feel that success. But to me, success is having complete control of your time. It's freedom. It's the ability to take care of your people in a good way, and be just completely driven by a calendar. I think there's a way to do both. Like David Meltzer is a perfect example of somebody who can do both. But, you know, he wakes up at 4 a.m., he wakes up before his family to get time in, and he doesn't do a lot of things on the weekends to make sure he's with his family. And he also has a no-phone policy. When he's not on his phone, he's not even around it for, I think, an hour to every single night at the same time. So, you know, you have to be fully on, and fully on. And typically, what I've done, or what a lot of people do, is will mix. So, when I'm at work, I'm thinking about home, when I'm at home, I'm thinking about work, and then everyone loses. So, you can do both, but I think you have to be able to really be present. - Yeah. Speaking of David, I mean, what's one main thing that you've learned from him, 'cause we can talk about the story, how you got connected with him, but I'm just curious, what's the main thing you learn from Mr. Meltzer? - Yeah, that's a great question. For me, I would say that you can have it all. I've been a previous to David, when I thought about my dreams and my goals, I've always wanted to buy the Raiders to football team. That's been my focus since I was a little seventh Raider. I wanted to buy the Raiders, 'cause my mom liked the Raiders, and I thought it was cool. And I thought, in order to have Elon Musk level of success, you also have to have the other things that come with it, multiple divorces, multiple kids, and maybe you're not around all the time, because you're so focused on adding to the world and doing your part. And Elon and what he's done for the world is terrible, and only apparently, as we've seen, he's the one that can do it. Nobody else has that ability, and that's why we're a plus for him to do it. But at the same time, he sacrificed a lot in order to give that to us. And before I worked very closely with David, we traveled together for AM Hotelroom, Wakeups, and being around his family, and they're amazing. I thought it was either or. Yeah, you can have a family, but then you're not gonna be able to be a success. So that's fine, but you gotta choose. Or yeah, you can be very successful, but then you're not gonna have a family. Or you're gonna have a family that you're not a part of. But he does both. And so being able to operate with somebody who can do both at the highest level, he has four kids, three daughters, one son, and all of them adore him. And they're all different ages. His kids in middle school, his oldest daughter, is like 28, 26, maybe 25. And they all adore him. And he spends a lot of time with them. And you can't manufacture that. That just comes from decades of putting in the daily time. And his business is growing at an exponential rate. His marriage is doing very well. You know, they spend a lot of time together. And that showed me that you don't have to choose. You can actually have both if you prioritize both people. I love that. You know what, we're gonna get, we're gonna dive in some deep stuff in this podcast is 'cause I love your mindset. I love who you've been around. You've learned from so many amazing people. Just to give people kind of a quick, maybe let's say a three to five minute on your background. So start with college, you went to college, and then after college, what'd you end up doing? - Yeah, I went to Oklahoma State. I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma called Ponca City. There was 30,000 people in the town. And then went to Oklahoma State, met my college sweetheart. We got married after college, 'cause that's what you do in Oklahoma. You get married super young. Her family was in the oil and gas business. That got me into the oil and gas business. I was really blessed to be around her dad, who was a really good role model and started, you know, (indistinct) I think graduate high school or maybe dropped out, started with a $7,000 loan to pick up one well and then turn that into a $500 million acquisition and stayed humble the whole time. Like this guy is all to the earth. He would do this thing where he always wore button downs, long sleeve button downs. He's a big guy. He wears wore long sleeve button downs with a front pocket. And everywhere he'd go, he'd pay for a hundred or pay for 20. And when he got changed, he'd just put in his front pocket. And then inevitably if somebody asked him for money, like, "Hey, sir, do you have any change?" He would say, "I've been waiting for somebody to ask me that all day." And then he would give him all of it. He would just hand him whatever was in the front pocket. And it really showed that giving and being humble and gracious and as he called it, hat and hand humble and being successful at the highest level, he owned a private jet. He just called it his personal heartbeat. But it was a calendar 600. It was a big jet and remained humble regardless of his dank balance. And that was a great role model to learn from as I was, I experienced for me a high level of wealth at a younger age through oil and gas and other things. It grew up very middle class, but was able to at one point, I had like five cars at 26. But funny thing is, when you fast track through life in a lot of ways with business and making money and buying things, you kind of get to fast track to the end as well and see what's important and what's not. As I'm even though I work in 10 hours a week, 20 hours a week, 'cause I own production and I had pumpers and I empowered them and trusted them. And what do I know about pumping oil fields? I don't know anything, I trust you. What do you think we should do? Okay, that sounds like a good idea. Well, why do you think that's a good idea? Can you explain it to me? And just empowered them and we did really well. But I'm playing golf and I'm hanging out, but we turned into roommates, we weren't really happy. And I thought, man, I've got everything except the loving wife, the marriage, the house, like I have the house, like just that family unit that I envisioned. So I took the roadless travel, followed for divorce. My brother said I was an idiot. He's like, you realize how hard the real world is like you have it made right now. You're making a hundred grand a month and you're thinking you're not happy. He's like, you don't really know unhappiness. Like you think you're on a poor wait till you get out there and try and I'm like, well look, know where this life goes. Like I can look down the train tracks. I see my future. I understand where I'm headed. Some things are great. Some things aren't in the end. You can always make more money. But if you're married to the wrong person, that's a cancer that can't be fixed. That's just there. And I know I'll be wealthy in this life. But at the same time, I can rule the dice. That I'm a, and this was a real thought. Like I might be working at subway, living in a woodbedroom apartment, told so for home in 20 years. Or I could be owning a $25 million mansion in Malibu. I want to think about if I can make that happen. And so I thought for divorce August 11th, 2011. And then that took her a long time with businesses, no kids, so businesses and, of course, it's never fun. It wasn't a great experience as anybody's been through divorce would say. But when I think about today sitting here talking to you, where I am today, what my life has been so far, the idea that had I not done that, this person wouldn't exist. I would be on that timeline. The delta there of what I've done or experienced like Y combinator, poppile, filing patents, helping people doing these things that I've won my bucket list items, had I not done this, the idea that I would have missed out on that. It's kind of not only scary, but also exciting because it means what's the next 10 years? What's the next 20 years? Like, you know, what else can we do? Once you decided to go down a different path, was it like diving into the person development? Was it like me and I want to look into like a religion or spirituality? Because I feel like once people have that kind of point in their life, they turn to something. And so I'm curious for you, would you kind of turn to and would you really have as your anchor as you figured out the next right direction for your life? Yeah. So when I was married, I was more, I wouldn't say morbidly obese, but I was fat. Like, I was definitely fat. I was 273 pounds at my highest, which is, you know, unhook. Like my turning point was I'm in my 9/11 turbo and I need to pick up some shorts to go play golf. And I'm like, oh, just run into old Navy. Pick up some shorts real quick and they didn't have my size. I needed a 42 and they didn't carry 42s and I needed to go to the big and tall store, which, you know, less my ex-wife, less like her father used to call it the short and fat store. Right? I was like, well, I'm not shopping at the big and tall store when I'm six feet tall. Like I know I'm not, you know, like I'm average height. So that's not why I'm there. I'm there because I'm short and fat in that sense. And so you're not abroad, six, eight, two, two, three. No, like I'm not 32 waist, 38 incy. Like it was the inverse. And so I was like, okay, that's enough. I need to make a change. And actually, Tim Ferriss's book, The Four Hour Body was the impetus because it gave me a game plan. It was like, okay, so if I do this, this and this, that happens. Like I can follow a game plan. Whereas before I felt like I was just out there on my own and I would yo-yo diet. And I was reading the wrong things, you know, eat six meals a day and do this and the other. And for me, it didn't work for my body. And so that was really the change. And then as I lost weight, I wanted to do different things, got into different things. And that kind of created a bigger divide. And so when I filed for divorce, I moved to Denver and just kind of unplug focused on my tech startup. And really, I got a dog, Alfie the Bulldog. And you know, just kind of like grounded myself while figuring out what to do next. What do I want to do? Things like that. And what was that direction? What'd you end up doing? So I had another before pop, I had a tech startup called originally called Divi. And then I had to rename it to hashtag because I got a cease and desist. And it was a social aggregator that brought the visual content from Facebook and Scram at Twitter to one place, one feed. So instead of checking Facebook, checking Instagram, checking Twitter, for you, for example, you can put #TheGrowthhouse, #Growthhouse, #JesseRate. All of these hashtags, instead of having to check them one by one, you can create a permanent feed that pulls from every social media into one place. And then you can like comment, repost, save, fall from one feed. So was an additional platform. It was kind of a third party software to integrate all the platforms within a hashtag. Exactly. So it was like, what was that reader? What was the reader people used for a long time for magazines? The reader? Yeah, reader like on Kindle. That was like newsroom for Apple, things like that or flip flip flip. So instead of, because I knew nobody was going to sign up for another social media, hey here sign up for Google Plus. Like, no, thank you. My friends are on here. Why would I do that? But at the same time, why am I having to check three different social media's to get the content I want? And so I spent three years on it. I spent half a million of my own money. We had a lot of excitement at articles in tech crunch. I traveled the country in a 73 Volkswagen bus. And but in the end, we just couldn't cross the chasm. If you've read the book crossing the chasm, like, I'm excited. And it's really good. You should on this podcast, you should put up a little thing showing the chasm. And what it really is. Every time you launch a product, you have early adopters. There are the types of people that will try things. They like to tell other people about it. Hey, have you seen this app or they're the ones that bought the Apple visions right when it came out? And then right after that, you have the, and I'm going to, I want to sort of look it up, but I'll just do it off memory. You have the like, it's not late adopters, but there's something like the silent mid majority or something. That's after the fact that once they take hold, the other ones will follow. And then you also have people that no matter what, they will never change, right? Like our grandparents, for example, they, the only reason they quit using their flip phone is because they quit making it. So then they had to get this other phone. Otherwise, they don't care. Whereas I like to have the new phone. So that would be both. And then you have to cross the chasm where you become a TVO, which never really took hold, even though the actual idea of DVR is in everyone's home. The people that invented it and tried to market it and publicize it could not get the idea across to where people would accept it. Simon Sannick talks about this. He's like, you can pause live TV. You can rewind it. It's too much. I don't get it. I don't trust it. I don't like it. But everyone has DVR now. That's the biggest. I was going to say, what's your biggest learning lesson that you had from that company? You spent a half a million dollars of your own money. So you had some money saved up. I'm guessing to be able to do that. But you know, that's a lot of money. So what was your biggest learning lesson from from that experience? Man, I got a lot. And you sure a couple? Yeah, the beautiful thing was everything I learned. Little did I know Steve Jobs talks about connecting the dots looking backwards. When you're going through life, everything seems random. But when you look back, every little dot made sense to get to where you are. And before I get to those lessons, all of these lessons, I ended up having to go through. To get ripple to pop. Because when I first met, it was called ripple. So I got to actually use these lessons and put them into a real live product and then turn it into something viral and that took. So even though it was a failure, it actually turned into a success years. And I want to actually stop right there before you get into those lessons because that's super important. Because I know a lot of people, that was your first tech startup. And a lot of people are early entrepreneurs. They have a maybe their second or third startup, even even second or third. Like you guys, it's okay. You're going to go through quote unquote failures, but I think for Jeremy is the same mindset as a learning lesson. And so just know that anything that you're going through that maybe sucks right now, you turn that around and then implement the learning lesson into your next business. So amazing. I love that you said that. All right, let's dive in because I'm always always love learning about the learning lessons because I think people always highlight the accolades. You know, Instagram is all about the highlight real. Let's talk about stuff that actually these entrepreneurs are going through on the daily. Definitely. Yeah, I completely agree. You learn way more from failure than success. Yes. So a few things I learned one, don't build a product on somebody else's products. So we built hashtag. Which was polling Facebook Instagram and Twitter. Well, Facebook Instagram and Twitter don't care about hashtag. So I'm building a platform on a platform. And unless I'm communicating with that platform, they change anything in their API. Now my platform doesn't work. And if they ever decided I'm too big or a threat or not great for them, they just shut down my API access. And now I don't have a company. So even though that didn't happen to me, I could see down the down the tracks, they're like, I'm building a platform on a platform. When they make a change, it breaks what I'm doing, then we got to fix it. And I'm not technical. So I, you know, I have my either co founder or paying somebody and you're just behind the table. You're always catching up, which doesn't work. Number two, focus on real metrics. I got a lot of. for me, you know, articles and a couple articles in TechCrunch. I did a pitch competition for them in Seattle and all of that and while that was fun because it always feels good to see your name publicized or for your company to get accolades at the same time those metrics don't really matter. They don't do anything for the company unless they're driving sales or bringing in eyeballs. Like if you get on a shark tank and 5 million people 10, 20, whatever it is, see your product and they go to your website that makes sense. That drove the needle. But if you get an article and your website gets 10% 20% more viewers for a day or two and then it goes back to normal people may say, "Hey, I saw your article. It looks like you're really doing great." And it does look like I'm doing great. But actually we're not making revenue. I have a hobby, right? And that's something else that I learned is if if you're not making revenue and you don't have a real business model, it's more of a hobby than a company and you don't want to have a company that is reliant on investors. If Jesse is the investor and I'm the founder and I say, "Hey Jesse, super excited to get you in on this round." You know, our burn is 100K a month but we're growing this many users. Okay, are you gonna monetize? Well, not yet. We're focused on users. Okay, sure. How many months of runway do you have? Well, I have six months of runway. All right. Well, I'll email you back in four months. Because now you have two months of runway. Right. Because you don't have money coming in unless I write you a check or another person writes you a check. You don't have plans to monetize. You have a team that you need to feed. You have heart expense. So I, the determining factor of your business, continues to operate. And that was one of the big things we did at Popple was I, you know, first lesson and one of the first lessons when I talked to Jason and Nick was we're gonna run a real business in the sense of revenue, profits, costs, brick by brick, do it slowly, correctly. Because if the market changes, which we launched Popple in 2019, money back then, it was easy. 2020, not so much. And then it got worse and worse. And now people are having a hard time raising money. But luckily, we built a sustainable business to where we are profitable, where we don't need to raise money. And we can continue to grow at a brick by brick rate. It might not be, you know, 60% year over year, 100% 500% whatever it might be that venture back companies look for. But at the same time, we're not playing the venture back game. So those aren't the rules that we need to play by. So let's stop and set. Because we're already talking about Popple and I want to dive into that story. What did you see in, you know, the co-founders of Popple and Jason and then remind me the other founders name. Nick. Nick, Nick and Jason. So I actually want to hear the origin story. How did you guys get connected? And then what did you see in them? We were like, I want to join this team and make this happen. Yeah. So I was working with David Meltzer. I was in Dana point, living in Dana point and I, I'm on Instagram. And one of my friends who's also an entrepreneur, Ishmael, shout out to Ishmael, founder of Paragon. If you have an app that needs API connections, check out Paragon. Use Paragon.com, a little shout out for him. So Ishmael posted, reshared this story of a video, looked like a little commercial. And it was Jason and Nick showing ripple. And it was super catchy. And I had that Sean Parker moment in the social network where I'm like, whoa, like this is a big idea. What is this? So I messaged Ishmael. I'm like, Hey, do you know those guys? Can you introduce me? He said, Yeah, I just met Jason. Jason, this is Jeremy. We got on a call. And at the time I'm washing my car. I remember like a flash bulb memory. I'm like outside of washing my car and Jason's on a lunch break at Boeing. He was fresh out of college. And I go, you know, congrats on ripple. What are your plans? What are your goals? What are you going to do? And he goes, well, we're going to sell the stickers for cheap and then we'll, you know, skin websites do advertising, do localization, things like that. And I go, well, you're not old enough to remember my space. But I don't think anyone's going to pay you to risk in a website. I also think that if you put a different brand behind this, you could commoditize these stickers and actually sell them for a good amount, regardless of the cost because. So let's pause just for a second. Their initial concept was a sticker. Is it NFC? Is that the NFC sticker? Like what we do. So they were the first ever do back of the phone stickers. It was like this little one like this. But it was called, the company was called ripple code. So it's ripple code.com and it was RIPPL, I believe. So when I saw the Instagram story, I go online. I'm like, and I can't find anything. And I'm searching, I'm searching, I can't find this thing. So I tell him, I look, I don't know you, you know, we just met. I've got four free ideas for you. It doesn't do me any good to hold on to ideas for a company I'm not involved in. And here's some things I've learned that I think you should be aware of because I'm excited for your journey. So number one, you need to change the name. There's a milk, there's a crypto currency. You're never going to own the SEO for ripple. I said, I looked for you guys for five minutes online. I could not find you the average customer isn't going to look 15 seconds. Right? It's like, I search, if you're not in the top, whatever I'm bouncing out, the little bread bouncing ball move my excitement elsewhere. So you got to change the name. Number two, you need to change the UI. And I'll send you the video so you can see it. And if you want to clip it on the end of the people can see it. But the UI, it should be visual. It should like the back, look like the background of my iPhone. You don't need to write the word Instagram. Just show me the icon. So Apple did all the design you need. Just take that. Number three, instead of sending me to a page with all of your links, could you decide to share one specific link with me? So you choose what I get. And Jason goes, why I could build that? Because he's an engineer. And I said, that is a huge feature. You should build that because that's true value. If I send you to a page with 15 options, you're going to do it later. It's too many choices. So you'll just say, oh, that's cool. And you'll bounce out. And to be honest, I don't want you to look at 15 things of my, I don't need you to follow me on this, this, this, this, and this. I probably want to share one or two specific things with you based on our interaction or our relationship, whatever it might be. So I said, create that. And then that way you can share something directly versus an entire page. Last idea, you need to take everything down that you've posted about this idea. It's a huge idea. You right now, you don't have a moat. And somebody like me is going to get sparked off of this. And instead of reaching out to you, they're just going to build a better, better, um, mouse trap. It's to your wave while you're pushing ripple code. I'm like, you created this. You need to do this. And don't let anybody else take that. And so, because I go, this is going to get copied a million different ways. I go, once this gets out, you're going to get copied a million different ways. And inevitably we did get copied, right? You have dots and you know, all these other people came out and they just copied us. But that's fine. It was expected. So instead of saying, you know, who the hell are you? What do you know? He was like, I'd like you to meet my partner. I think you, you know, I'd like you to work with us. And so I start out as like an advisor and then I became the third co-founder of the third partner. But I told him this right away. I'm the guy behind the guys. You two are two best friends who went to UCLA. Young guys look look like Abercrombie models. Best friends is such a marketable story. I'm a sales guy. I know I can sell that story. But if I mix in, you know, a 30 something year old season on entrepreneur from Oklahoma, blah, blah, blah. Now the water gets a little muddy. It goes from these four easy bullet points that are, you know, good morning, America could talk to you about to another storyline. And so I said, I'll be the guy behind the guy. I don't care about being famous. Not my goal. I just want to, you know, see this through. And I think we can make you household names like the Snapchat guy. Evans. So that was the impetus. And then in November, we started working together in end of December. We had come up with the name popple. So there were some guidelines that I'd created. And this is, I mean, I haven't heard anybody else talk about this. And I think there's some real power. I studied branding a lot when I had to rename Divi. And there's things that I've been saying this for over 10 years. There's exact few lines I'm about to say. And I don't think anybody's really publicized it in general. Like not like I'm the only one that's thought about it. I think it's just an unknown, known thing for letter brands and the power of four letter brands. If you think about Puma, 90 bands, Kith, all these four letter brands. And then even Victoria's Secret created pink Valentino. Valentino could have created VLT in Oh Valentino. But instead they did VLT in four letters. Why? There's something about four letters because you can block it. It's super easy. We need to have a four letter name, just in general. If I have five works too, right? Rolex, Adidas, yeah, there's all that. But four is ideal. You need to be able to verbalize it. We're running something that is an action. It has to be able to verbalize. You can't say I'm gonna ripple that person. So ripple, even if there was never a ripple in the world, ripple doesn't work, 'cause you can't verbalize it. And if you think about Uber versus Lyft, even if you take a lift somewhere, you will tell people I Ubered here, because you can verbalize Lyft. I Lyft did here, doesn't make any sense. So you, most, some people might say I took a lift, but what you'll probably hear, 80% of the time is I Ubered here, regardless if they actually took an Uber or a lift, because that's the verb of rideshare, and that's the action. And so it had to be something that you could, I snapped you, I Facebooked you, I popped you. So that was another one, was that you had to be able to verbalize it as the action. - So good. I don't really wanna talk, because you're giving so much value right now. I do have a question. So you said, all right, this is our name, Popple. When are you comfortable sharing now publicly what you guys created? Because I think a lot of people that are start up founders and stealth mode, they wanna kind of make sure that their idea, like you said, isn't it copied? So when should someone be ready to then market something publicly? - As soon as possible. One of the best things about Jason and Nick was they were never afraid to put it out there. Right, Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, says, "If you're not embarrassed of your first version, you waited too long to launch." So if you don't look back at V1 and think, "Ooh, what was that?" Like, "That's crazy." Then you probably waited too long to launch. And there's too many people, if you think about like a sprinter, during the starting blocks, and they're ready to go, and they just try to get more ready. Or if you're going sailing across the world, they are so busy making sure the boat has every second, third, fourth, fail safe, and every potential thing that by the time it is time to go, now those previous things need to be redone and fixed. So they never actually go because it's all about the preparation, making sure it's perfect. 'Cause in the end, it's not easy to let society judge you. And that's what you're doing as an entrepreneur. You are saying, "I think this is special. I'm gonna introduce it to the world, especially something like Poppa that's a new idea. And even though you don't get it, I think you're wrong and you will get it in the future." Like that is a very difficult stance to take as an individual and maybe your family doesn't get it. You know, I was lucky a lot of my family was very supportive, but maybe your friends don't get it. I mean, if you ever want to realize who supports you, start a business tonight. - So true. - Yeah, a lot of stories. Like you have your friends, you hit 'em up, "Hey, I just launched this thing. Can I get a big discount?" Or, that's cool, man, but they won't share it. But if Drake releases some Jordan Tens, they share it. - Mm-hmm. - That would be very impactful for me in my business and where I'm at now. And I can't get the help that I want. And then what you quickly learn is, strangers you work with become friends faster than friends become people you work with. And that's what you say again, that's good. - Yeah, strangers. - So true. Become friends. Strangers you work with become friends faster than friends become people you work with. - And it's-- - What's your thoughts? I'm curious on this one, little side tangent. What's your thoughts on working with friends? - I think in a perfect world is the best, you know? And at times it's the absolute best. But in a lot of ways, I think you're better off finding a stranger from the Quentin. Somebody that is in line with your goals and your energy and your future because oftentimes the friends we make are aligned with us at that moment. That's why you become friends, right? In high school, you play golf, they play golf, you become friends. Well, in college, they wanna be successful. Eight years after college, maybe you're in middle management not doing anything and you're a little down on life. And they're doing something they're really excited. Well now there's a gap there. That really the only thing that a lot of times holds together and this is kind of morose in some ways, but it's just how I see the world is surface level conversations and lack of discussing what really matters. And so that allows you to continue to have your good conversations, right? Like if you and I were on a part and at one time we were equals, but now you're Jesse Ray Multimillionaire and I'm Jeremy who is still working the same job I was working eight years ago. We can't talk about what you want to talk about. It will come off as bragging to me. I won't understand and I won't take it the way you want me to take it. You probably wanna help. You wanna take me to where you are 'cause that's what friends wanna do. But if you're the one in the position of receiving it, a lot of times it can be difficult to understand that and not think about, well what do they know? They got lucky, I'm here, whatever storyline they create. And so in a lot of ways, the past is the biggest common denominator with our long term friends unless you're growing together. And so to start a business with somebody that maybe there's a this, unless you're gonna carry them to here, there's gonna be resentment regardless, right? If you, I haven't started a business and you're a seasoned entrepreneur, but maybe I'm really good at running this business and you're like, hey, I wanna back you, you're managing that business, you could be running it. You don't even see that. I'll put up the money. I'll get the brick and mortar place. I'm gonna make you 25% owner. I'm like, oh man, that's amazing. Thank you so much. Fast forward 18 months. I fucking work all the time. Jesse's taking 75%. This is bullshit. I'm like, what the hell? How do you as my friend? I'm over here living on crumbs. I'm making a quarter. Jesse, what the hell? And it's like, man, I was just trying to help. Like I was, and that's why no good deed goes unpunished. And it's sometimes it just takes a long time for that punishment to come, but in the end, you were truly just trying to help. And so sometimes starting a business with friends can be magical, but you gotta make sure that a lot of things are aligned and the type of person they are. Do they clap when other people win? - Oh, that's good. - But they're not. That's the real indicator. Send something out to your group chat with your buddies. Hey, I just got fired. Instance. Hey, I just got bad news. Instant responses. Hey, I just got promoted. Cool, that's good, man. Right, so sometimes in the wrong circles, those happen. Right? - I'm like, hmm. - Yeah, I just won the lottery. Man, he gets everything. Can I borrow a 20 grand? Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Right, you wanna be around people who are genuinely happy for you? - Yes. - And if you're not, it'll bring you down to whatever level they take, which won't be where you're trying to go. - This is all so good because our growth has motto is you become who you surround yourself with. And we're all about association and environment 'cause it plays such a big role in our life. Harvard even recently did a study. It said 95% of your success is gonna be dictated from the people who you surround yourself with. So it's not even like this cool quote. There's studies being done by Harvard over 25 years that says this is actually facts. So a lot of people come to me and suggest me, how do I create my network? How do I, you know, be surrounded by these amazing people? What would be your, you know, tip? How do you level up your network? And also wanna make a quick note, it is okay, guys, that you're gonna, I wanna say I'll grow your friends. You're just gonna go in a different direction. And the coolest part is if you stay, hey, like who you are at the core with your good values, good integrity, and you just do your thing, and maybe you lose, you know, communication with them or don't hang out with them as much. A lot of your friends actually will end up coming around. I'm seeing this recently and it's so cool because I haven't talked to someone in five years. It's reach out, man, Jesse. I'm gonna talk to you in a long time, but I love what you're doing. Just wanna say you've been encouraged, you've inspired me. That's the best feeling. So it doesn't go and notice, like people are still watching you. It doesn't mean you have to be in contact with them because you do sometimes have to distance yourself from those people in order to grow. So just wanna quick little thing on to share there, but for you, Jeremy, how do you, and what would you, what would your suggestion be to, you know, level up your circle? I agree with what you were saying, definitely. I would say to level up your circle, it's like this. If I wanna go fishing, Marlin, right? Trophy fish. I'm not a big fisher, but let's say I wanna buy it. I wanna go get a trophy fish. I can't go fishing a lake. As it doesn't matter how good of a fisherman I am, I can have the best boat, the best rod and reel, the best lures, whatever they bite on. I can have everything perfect, but in the wrong environment, I'm not gonna get a single bite. Whereas if I go to where there's a lot of Marlin, I don't have to have the best of everything. If I'm in an environment with a lot of options. And so the parallel I would say is, I grew up in a boat. a small town in Oklahoma, 25,000 people, small. And great people, but I had to go search out my mentor, right? Like who lived a life that I was interested in? Because growing up middle-class, we were very blessed. We didn't want, like, it wasn't like we couldn't afford shoes or food, you know, our parents took care of us. But they left a room, a lot of gap for growth and desire. And they wouldn't just give us money. I mean, I remember I had a golf tournament coming up and I walked around my neighborhood asking if anyone had any golf balls. And now it seems kind of crazy. But back then it was just like, I need golf balls. My parents aren't buying me any golf balls. I know some of some golfers here. I'll go see what I can do. And I'm a little kid, people want to help little kids. And so that desire, like Gary Vee says, you either grow up flipping things, trying to make money or you don't. And it's important to have that from a young age on there. And when it comes to your group, you surround yourself with those types of people are typically in every environment. They're in your college class, they're in your high school class, they're at your work. There's somebody in every office that has a dream of starting a business. They just don't want to share it with the wrong person who's going to shit on their dreams. So they don't talk about it a lot. But you can seek out those people. And then in the end, if you truly can't get in the right rooms, fire your way into a nice dinner, go to those events, go to those growth houses, like go to the places where they are. And if you paid five grand to get there, some people would be like, well, that was silly. Why would you do that? Well, people spend five grand on a lot of things and have no ROI. And if you put me in a room with millionaires, and I don't get any ROI, then that's on me, right? I wasn't able to get the ROI. The ROI was there. I just didn't access it. And I think about that. You know, I was a member of Jet Smarter. It was an old private jet company where you could fly around and everything. And it was like 12 grand per the year. But I thought, if you put me in a jet with the other people that are in that jet, it's like a country club in the air. I've got undivided time with them. The networking has to be insane. That was the real reason I joined was because, yeah, it's fun to hop around on a private jet. I enjoyed it. But the truth is, it's the best times where whenever I sit down, what are you guys working on? What are you into? Oh, I can help with that. My friend does this. So much money was made in the air multiples of what it cost. But if everybody said, why didn't you get any value out of that? You said it correctly. You didn't get any value out of it. That doesn't mean the value wasn't accessible. So I would say, look for mentors, add value. Don't tell people you want to pick their brains. That's just something. It's a small thing. But nobody wants to have their brain pick. And it's, you need to think about it from my point of view. Right? Step in there. So if I want to connect with Jesse Ray, hey, Jesse, can I pick your brain for an hour? Sure, 500 bucks, 1000 bucks, whatever your rate is. But like, I'm not just going to go by a lot of people wouldn't even look at that. Honestly, someone said that to me. I probably would even open the message. You don't even reply, right? Like $1,000, like just that's a polite way to say no. But so many people are like, well, I'm just going to ask if I can pick their brain. That's a horrible way to go about things because anybody who's worked hard to get where they did didn't do it by picking everyone's brain to get there. You got to, it's the same thing as this. If you see somebody in a car broken down, people don't pull over. They just leave them there. But if I see you pushing a car, I get out of the car and I push with you. So you have to help yourself. I like that. Right? Like it's, it's just if you're helping, I'm helping. But if you're sitting in a car and I want to pick your brain, well, I mean, there's nowhere to go with that. You know, and they think it's like a compliment or it's this, but it's really just off putting. There's so many other ways to go about that. You could just be like, Hey, Jesse, what are you working on? To be honest, I want to add value to you because I respect what you've done and I want to get in those circles. But I don't want to come at you and just say, can I pick your brain? But what I do want to do is add value right away so that you see I am different than the others. And I'm here to move the needle. And I'm not asking for anything in return, except to be in the room. You're in for the start. What are your goals? How can I help? That's very different. And that's a relationship. And that's it. This, even though we're here, I'm saying, Hey, I know you're here and I'm here, but I'm coming at it like this. We're equal. I want to help you. You can help me. Let's just do it. And there's nothing wrong with being honest about adding value to each other. But if I come in and say, Hey, can you just, can you help me? Can I pick your brain? You're going to be thinking, if I want to do charity work and I want to give back, sure, but it's not something I'm going to want to do long term. I smiling, Jeremy, because there's so many like different directions I want to take this. I know we're at time. And we've already talked about it. We are going to do it in person. We're going to have one of the best podcasts ever when we do this in person. And I know there's so much value that you already shared on this podcast. So what I want to do here is in like, actually, you know what? I'm going to save some of these really good questions that I have for the in person. What I want to do is take off what you just said, you literally just said, Hey, don't reach out to someone and say, I want to pick your brain. And at the end of every single podcast, I say this, Jeremy, people are going to listen to this and want to reach out to you. And not a single person is going to say, Hey, can I pick your brain when they reach out? If they do, let me know. And this is instead what we do. We're very much a go giving community. If you haven't read the book, go give your guys. It's a great book. And for us, we're all about providing value up front. And so I make it easy for me when I'm trying to reach out to a mentor or a coach or someone like Jeremy, who's way ahead of me, just in different steps in different areas of success, I'm looking to see how I can provide them value. We give it to you easy. Jeremy, Jeremy right now is going to tell you what's a way that if you reach out to him and say, Hey, Jeremy, listen to the podcast, love XYZ. Also, here's something. So Jeremy, what are you looking for right now? Whether it's a resource, whether it's a connection, whether it's a, you know, maybe you're looking to look into another startup company and help them out, just in general, what can someone help and bring you value with when they reach out to you? Yeah, I like it. I would say right now I'm really focused on like I like to give back. I like advising companies. I enjoy working with multiple companies and, you know, because I can see things that are different like when you're when you're in the weeds, it's hard to zoom out and see things that maybe is obvious from 30,000 feet, but not when you're in it. So I do enjoy that. I'm also looking to increase my cash flow. So my passive cash flow. I do have some commercial real estate. I have oil and gas royalties, but I want to continue to grow those so that, you know, I can not be worried about it and get those streams income higher. And then beyond that, you know, good people doing interesting things. Always happy to help. Guys, Jeremy is so humble. This is the bad right here. I want to ask one more specific question on you say grow the passive income. I got a shirt on. You even got a shirt, man. I love it. So when you mentioned commercial real estate, is there certain projects that you're looking to get into? Yeah, I'd like to do more triple nets and get into things like that. My brother owns a good amount of real estate. I own a little bit, but more of that. I also think apartment complex are interesting because as we move more towards a richer society, I think those will continue to grow. And then I'm interested in learning about people who are doing the rent to own on three bed, two bath bricks, like on houses. I love it. So Jeremy, we're going to set up some dates to sit down and do this podcast and connect more in person. I appreciate you a lot. You're someone I look up to. I love your story and I know this has so much value for people and yeah, man, so I appreciate you. Same, Jesse. I appreciate you looking forward to the next one, man. Thank you so much. Hey, real quick, if you received any value from this podcast, I need your help. Our mission is to impact one million people in the next five years to achieve financial freedom. We know the people who listen to this podcast or go givers and we use their freedom to inspire impacted help others as well. But I can only do that with your help. There's two main ways of podcast growth. One is through ratings and reviews and the other is through sharing the podcast on your social media or directly texting two to three friends who you know will benefit a lot from listening. Be sure to tag the growth out so we can reshare your posts and stories as well. I appreciate you in advance and I'll talk to you soon.