3 Genius Business Ideas We're 'Borrowing' From Syed Balkhi

All right, we've got our buddy Saeed Balkion today. If you don't know Saeed, he is one of the few people on Earth who has bootstrapped a company to a unicorn status, a billion dollar company without ever taking outside money. The guy's a legend. He's in his 30s and he's done all this. What I liked about this episode is most people. We talked to a lot of guys who have made it, but they're kind of just like, you ask him, "What would you do today?" And they kind of just shrug, like, I don't know, that's what worked for me back then, but good luck to you and you're like, "Shit, "alright, I gotta figure this out myself." Saeed's the opposite. He didn't close the door behind him. He kind of just puts a ladder down and he's like, "Hey, here's three specific opportunities that I see." And what I liked about these opportunities is, he's very specific. He says exactly what he would do. And actually, that he's looked into doing some of these things. The second thing is that he, these are not like moonshot ideas. It's not like, "Oh, invent the next big AI thing." These are just ideas that will just work. Like, if you execute them well, they will work. - And this is one of those episodes where I actually was like writing down what he was saying. He was like, "Oh, I should do that." - I literally slack Ben. I was like, "At Ben, at Ben, call me when you're free." Call me if you're like, "I gotta talk about some of these ideas." - And by the way, at the end, we talk about money and we ask a little bit about what people's numbers are. You'll understand when we get to that part about what your number is. I want you guys to do me a favor. If you're listening on your podcast app, go to our YouTube page. Obviously, you have to subscribe because that's the gentleman's agreement. You subscribe when we create valuable content for you. All we ask is just for a subscribe. But tell us in the comments section, what your number is, you'll understand when you get to that part. And also, you can do what other people's numbers are. So this will be like a little bit of a social experiment. ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪ ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪ ♪ I put my all in it like no days ♪ ♪ I'll put my all in it like no days ♪ ♪ I'll put my all in it like no days ♪ - We have to do an intro, Sean. So, Siod was on the podcast like six months ago. You were a hit. People loved you. Basically, the gist of the pod is you have this empire that you own that you've not raised money for. It mostly started as a WordPress blog on WPBeginner. And then you saw which WordPress plugins, among other types of businesses, were most popular. You bought them or invested in them. Now your empire is doing something like over 100 million. I think you were somewhat vague, but I think you said over 100 million in revenue. The whole thing, you own gas stations, I think. You own tons of real estate. So you're just, you're kind of your hands and everything. - The title last time, the catchy title, which I thought was really cool. Siod is one of the very few people on earth who is a bootstrapped billionaire, meaning, or has built a billion dollar company, sorry, as a bootstrapped, so not taking extra money and did it kind of slow and steady in a really unique way where you really grew inside this WordPress ecosystem and WordPress turned out to be really big. Andrew Wilkinson came on and called this strategy, the Barnacle on the Whale. So there's a Whale and it's a growing Whale. And if you can be the right barnacle, you can actually just kind of grow with it. And you can ride that, you can surf that wave and actually build a large business yourself. - And by the way, for the record, we have to protect Siod here. He never said billionaire, I think. I think we said that. So that's us. He doesn't have to deny or confirm it. - I tend not to focus on the valuation. The goal is to keep building cool things that our users are loving. And with the team that I enjoy working with and have a good time. - And if you want Siod's back story, from what we were talking about, when you were a kid, what you were doing in your teens, to how you built this empire, like we did that episode. So this one, we're gonna do some different, which was just, we were like, hey, come back on, you're like, well, I kind of told my story already. But we said, actually just come in and just hang out with us. Like we do a normal MFM where we're gonna talk about five different things. It'd be great to have you here just to talk about those, whatever random things that come up along the way. So if you want the backstory go there, if you want to hang out, come here. - So Siod, you made this amazing document. You have another topic on here that I know that's just gonna make Sean just super horny 'cause he's gonna be able to promote his own thing. What do you have here about this? - Well, we can pop that up while you do this. Go ahead, I'll scratch you. - Yeah. (laughing) I see, there's a massive opportunity in productized services with the offshore market, especially in industries where the TAM is really, really high. I believe this is greatly underestimated. Everybody's trying to go build this massive big idea of business and spending years and years building software, which may or may not work. Or if you're good at sales and you have some sort of audience taking this model and going to town, or it doesn't matter if I was evaluating a business earlier today that just came to my table that's doing productized service. - What's an example? - Yeah, give an example. 'Cause I don't think most of them know productized service, offshore market, that's a lot of words. - Sure, sure. So we took an investment stake in a company called C.O.K. Media and they offer custom WordPress development, website maintenance, basically other web master related services at affordable prices. And we can also do it at white labels. So this is, if you're a small business and you can't afford a higher full-time developer, you can go here, basically get a developer for higher kind of thing at very, very low rates because the team is based out of in India. And there's a white label offer there as well. So other agencies that hosting companies, businesses, can add on revenue by reselling C.O.K. But other example could be take very large market, bookkeeping. There's this company called Bench. I use them. Yeah, they charge you between $299 or $499. And then more, Paramount to do your bookkeeping and they're really, really slow. One of our portfolio companies were using it and super annoyed. And we brought this thing in-house, but I know that many accounting firms now have offices in Pakistan, India, Latam, et cetera, where they're doing this special CFOing task, like very, very basic task, like bookkeeping and basic panel at super low cost. So someone can go in and say, hey, we will do the bookkeeping for you at this rate. I know, of course, like, shepherd, right? This is one of the companies you can go in. [LAUGHTER] I think that there's a large opportunity here where you take a market where a term is really high, especially a services market. And then you turn it into a productized service, you off-shore to the talent. And then you add a reseller or a white label model. I think the one that I was looking at was bookkeeping. And I think the tam there is so, so large. And the key is the reseller and white labeling model, which is what we learn from C-Hawk media. So let's talk about C-Hawk, right? Because you have a tactical example here. So C-Hawk is basically your outsource WordPress development agency. And how much does it cost, roughly? Let's say it costs like $1,000 a bill at a website. I'm just making this up. And you're a web hosting company. And a bunch of your clients are coming to you and saying, hey, I want you to maintain my website. And you're like, well, we just do hosting. I don't want to build a services department. So they will go to C-Hawk, partner with C-Hawk, and say, hey, can you manage these clients for me and VDO or F-split? So now there are many web hosting companies that are effectively white labeling C-Hawk media's team and offering add-on services to their customers, like custom website design, maintenance by the hour, site optimization, hack site repair, all sorts of these services have been productized and delivered without you ever building your own team. So in that same way, by the way, this is something that we're going to do on WPBeginner. I know the team is working on it and it's going to go live as we will start offering professional websites. So anybody who comes to WPBeginner can get a website done and so on. But you can do the same exact thing in every space. So let's say bookkeeping. I can go to all the smaller CPA firms that don't have the economics to build on their own bookkeeping and just say, why don't you just white label my services? And this is like, now Joe's CPA bookkeeping. You're getting all the clients. You charge whatever markup you want. You're paying the X. So on the back end, it still works the same way. So if you, for example, Shepard can, like instead of doing a traditional affiliate model, you can do this white label model where other people are just becomes like your legal work. I have a question for both of you guys, Sean, which Shepard inside. I'm sure you'll, you know, a bit about this as well. When you guys are out fun, so I think Sean, you guys have people in Latin America. I think you also have people in Asia. Yeah. When you are going out and I don't know how many people you guys have, but let's just say hundreds. When you're going out and you're like finding these people, how hard is it to find them? How hard is it to train them? And how hard is it to keep the quality high? I mean, it's the main thing, right? If you don't provide quality talent, or if you're not able to provide higher quality talent than somebody could just easily search for, then you don't really have a business. So for example, with Shepard, they have a hundred recruiters. Like I remember when I was doing the investment, I was like, hey, what's this like giant payroll thing? I thought there's like nobody here. Like what's, what are these hundred people? Who are these hundred people? Where's your office? He's like, we have an office in the Philippines, an office in Latin. And what's in that office is just recruiters who are constantly searching for talent and then basically testing them, filtering them, and trying to, 'cause you're like, the whole game is, people want to hire overseas. They want to cost savings. Like what you don't want is the average person in the Philippines. So the average developer in Latin, you want the top 1%, the top 5%. And so who's gonna do that filtering? And that's the, that is the whole service of what Shepard does is goes to find that. In order to do that, is it hard? I don't know if I would say it's like, it's not like rocket science, but it did take somebody on the ground in the Philippines who started an office, has a hundred recruiters there, and then they, They have a whole system and process how they intake talent. So they're getting thousands of resumes and then they're trying to filter down, "Okay, when somebody comes to us asking for a designer or a bookkeeper, how do we give them the best and not the average person?" You do want to have that. That's what Sayid is saying is, "You've already built that hard infrastructure. Now you could go to Joe the CPA and say, "You need a bookkeeper. I actually already have the good bookkeepers here. You already have a customer relationship. Why don't you create an ad on service. It's extra revenue for you without extra work." That's really smart. Yeah. And, you know, same to Echo Shond's point. Quality is very, very important. If you can't deliver quality, it doesn't work. But the good thing over the years that we're seeing is that talent across the world is getting better. So if you go 10 years ago and you're trying to hire overseas, whether it's the looking in India, you may not have had that same level talent. But the new generation, much better English, you know, more technological, the adapt. And so on. So when we're hiring in Seahawk, for example, this is, you know, super-vetted talent. We know they can build for a press website. Or, say, you know, if you're a business owner, you're like, "How do I know when I go to Upwork that this person actually knows what they're doing? If you can, then you're going to make a profile on Upwork. There's not a lot of vetting being done. Here, you know that this is a vetted person who can do it. And it's in Seahawk's best interest to vet that person because if that person is working on a client's website for some big hosting company, you're not just going to lose that one client. You might lose the contract, or white labeling the service for that big hosting company." And so, you say, "You're going to start this for accounting up the productized service of accounting or bookkeeping?" No, I'm not actively looking to start it. But I'm studying it right now. And I talked with one of the influencers in the accounting space to see what if they're the JV potential. I bet that guy's just that thrilled to be around. The accounting influencers. He's got his top button on button. Do you like the party? That guy's just thrilled. So you have another one here which is ecosystems. This is the kind of barnacle on the whale idea that we were talking about earlier. So you were like, "Here's what you wrote. You're going to go. I'll be the first to admit, I've benefited tremendously off WordPress and the growth of WordPress. And I'm grateful for that." Andrew was talked about how he, with WeCommerce, benefited from the growth of Shopify. He got an early start, make a Shopify themes and then as Shopify group, his themes business grew and then they bought more Shopify apps. And you said, "There's got to be more of these, basically. There's not just those two. There are more." So what are some other ecosystems that you see that you think are exciting? The one that I'm excited about is QuickBooks and the Zero Apps. So these accounting platforms are very, very sticky. I missed the deal here. It was a really, really good business. It took like $3 million in revenue, extremely profitable. And I believe there's a lot of value in someone acquiring multiple one of these QuickBooks apps or Zero Apps or maybe QuickBooks apps and then you port it over zero and so on and then you cross out. So it doesn't matter if the user switched from QuickBooks to Zero or why it's a Versa, you're still keeping that customer. You can even multiply that effect by going and tying multiple ecosystems so you can say QuickBooks and Shopify or it works in WordPress and so on. I think there's serious potential here when you're looking at these businesses. This episode, I know this episode is good because Saeed is saying ideas. And I'm literally opening up an email thread and be like, "We've got to do this. We've got to do this right now." It looks like I'm sitting. I'm almost on my toes up ready to go sprint because he's saying things that immediately I could see the opportunity. This is good. Sean, do you know how many users, this is shocking. Do you know how many users or how many customers QuickBooks has? I would guess like 2 million. I would just guess a crazy number. Saeed, do you know? Go ahead. I believe 30. I think it's 30 million people. 30 million customers, QuickBooks have, which is insane. What does 0 have? It's smaller but it's in the millions as well. Am I right? Is it about 30 or is it even more? My number could be old. I think your spot on there. What do you think is the place? It's software plugins or is it agencies that manage service? I think the software play, the one that I was looking at was software play. I've seen other software plays in this, the one that I really wanted, I missed it. So stupid. I can see the regret, your face. I've never seen you have like, "Foma, this is amazing." But there are other implementation partners around these that have Bill and Jason Apps that you can go in and then use that as distribution. This is a very essential tool. You're not going to get rid of it. You've had two great loves of his life, his wife, and then whatever this app is that got away. I don't think that's the case. He'll never stop thinking about this app. No, I'm studying the ecosystem. And I think this ecosystem, you can find wonderful businesses that they're not going to be venture growth. They're not going to have venture growth, but they're going to be extremely profitable. And you know that people are going to keep using ClickBooks for 0 because they as long as they have a business. Okay. What you're talking about is the QuickBooks, I just googled QuickBooks plugins. So you're just talking about something like that. So there's like a variety of plugins that you can buy. I imagine they cost money. How much are you the biggest WordPress plugin business on WordPress? I think collectively when you look at it, after automatic, we would be the biggest. Okay. And we promised that we're not going to dive deep on numbers. Can you say like the second or third place, like how big of a business would they have? Also tens of millions of dollars? Yeah. And so how big of a business do you think you could build just on the QuickBooks platform or the QuickBooks ecosystem? I think if you look at the App Store, because you know, just like Shopify has an App Store, QuickBooks have an App Store. And if you take a couple of apps that might be doing $3 million, $4 million, $2 million in that range and you exit by five and you buy five of those $2 million, $2 million, you just build a $10 million error business that may not be cross selling enough so you can unlock more value. They might be mismanaged gems. By the way, if someone wants to do it, reach out to me. I would like to invest in it. Yeah. I was studying this. And if you're listening and you have a quick tip, just have. John, I'll forward you to say it. Don't worry. Yeah, you're going to be like, "That mafia. Where's my cut bitch?" Yeah. There's no direct access here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What on. So like, when you do, I imagine that there's a software like Jungle Scout, I think, or there's a bunch for Amazon where you could see which services or products are selling the highest. I imagine there's the same for Shopify. When you're studying QuickBooks, I can't imagine that that software exists. What does studying mean? I think you're looking at the number of reviews that the specific app has. All the signals that they might be featuring something that's in the popular looking at was in the new. You can Google or search in the QuickBooks category, the tags they're using and see how many solutions show up in that and gauge, "Okay, if only three or four percent of users are going to leave a review, that's probably how many users that they actually have." If somebody has 100 reviews, that's only 4% of their user base, essentially. You can sort of make hypothesis there and say, "Okay, this category or this keyword, maybe is receipt management or whatever, it maybe has 20 apps and that's how big the market size is for a receipt app in QuickBooks. If that makes sense." You're basically a billionaire building these plugins, basically. I think that's awesome. That's so funny because the people listening to this, you guys should actually go to the YouTube because you're smiling as if it's too good to be true. You're like, "No one's talking about this. I can't believe why no one's talking about this." That's kind of the vibe I'm getting from your facial expressions. I enjoy the game of business and I enjoy finding these opportunities that allows us to compound and that's what's exciting. Any time I hear a billionaire talking about where he's sounding compounding, I'm like, "Talk dirty to me, baby." Yeah, like, you're. You keep saying billionaire, which is not. By the way, I'm completely making that up. I want to respect that. I was being hyperbolic there. To state of mind, baby, it's a state of mind. It's not a state of mind. Let's do open source because I was reading today, a Y-combinator put out a request for startups. I made this once a year. One of the top requests that they had was more for-profit open source companies. We funded GitLab and they named five. We funded 150 of these and we want to do more. We like this model. This is a good model. I was reading it and I was like, "I think I know what it is, but I don't know why it's particularly interesting or why it's unique and special." Tell us about the open source stuff. What is intriguing to you about open source? I believe that open source is one of the most powerful ideas of regeneration because it gives you many freedoms. Anyone from anywhere in the world can live. look at the code and learn from it. Imagine having some of the best programmers in the world writing code, and then you some new kid in India or Pakistan or US, wherever you are, be able to read that code. And then when you see something that maybe there's an idea that you have, you want to contribute back to it, you can just write a patch and commit that patch. And then the project maintainers can say, OK, this is great. They can adapt your code. And all of a sudden your code is now being used on millions of websites. Can you explain? Because this is a kind of counterintuitive idea, right? Like, normal business would be it's our product. We hire people. They build the product. We would never want others to see our secret sauce, our code, or be able to use it or fork it, which it means it's basically remakes it for themselves. And so like, I don't know, is there anything interesting about the origins of this? Like, when it came out, was this a controversial idea? Because to me, it's pretty anti the way you would normally build a business. Can you paint that picture kind of from first principles? And why would anyone want to contribute? So well, one, it's this very, very controversial in the beginning, right? It was copy left. You have copyright. And this is copy left. Like, everything we're building is for the good of society for progressing technology, for innovation. So there's a lot of people that get behind that vision. The freedoms that it offers in countries, like a lot of people can't afford some of the more expensive enterprises you offer. Maybe they're in Pakistan or maybe they're in Africa somewhere where they don't have the resources to have those kind of tools to build their business. And now you have this open source platform. Let's say WordPress, it gives you the freedom to publish anywhere. Maybe there's censorship happening on any other social media platform or publishing platform. And you can sell those on WordPress site and put your take out there. So that vision becomes really, really important. I think when you look at long-term, anybody can write code. You can hire developers anywhere. So most markets will get competitive, and your vision becomes a USB. OK. And that's what open source brings to the table. And it's going to disrupt basically every established market that exists. And there are startups that are coming out. I was looking at this guy. I talked to this guy named Joseph. He runs OSS Capital. And he's deep into the open source community. He's looking at various GitHub projects. And he's a pretty cool method. He sorts them by the number of stars. That means how many developers are really liking that code. And then he gets behind them. So one of the things that he invested in was App Flowey, which is a notion, a competitor, but open source and a portal. So now I can make my own notion and use it. Maybe I can self-host it and significantly reduce costs in my business. Let's do some examples. So there's Windows operating system. Then you had Linux, the open source counterpart. And Linux is like a $20 billion or something. It's like a big, very big enterprise. And they make their money off just the services, right? Because the product is free. That's kind of the whole point of open sources. You could just use a self-hosted for free. But if you want the like, is that all that they do with Red Hat? Is it just services that generates so much revenue? Services add-ons, premium morgions, all that. So like, NGNX, for example, there's the free version of NGNX, and then there's the pro version of NGNX, which gives you a lot more features, et cetera, to save you time and can mean the same thing. WordPress, the core of WordPress is free. It does many, many things. And then there's plugins. And many of the plugins are free, which gives you a lot of cool things. But then if you want more convenience, you pay for additional updates and support. So you have WordPress, which is the free open source publisher. I don't even know what the closed source version of WordPress is. It's maybe just social media. But then you have Android, open source, iOS, the Apple operating system, closed source. There's always this kind of dual winner. And so people have this strategy of just X but open source, like Slack but open source, Notion but open source. Is that generally a good-- I like Blueprints when it comes to business. Right. Somebody told me about a Blueprint. They were just superhuman for X. The way superhuman just took one piece of work software. It was like, pay 20 bucks a month. But I'm going to make it really slick and incredible UX and just way better design. And linear was a good example of that. Linear was basically superhuman for Gera, for the ticketing system. And it worked. It's a very successful company. Is a successful Blueprint in your mind, like popular thing, but open source? Does that work? Absolutely. I think you take something that has a large tab. And then you make open source version out of it. That is cost-effective, affordable. And now you grow with the community. Over long term, I don't think anybody could build what WordPress did as a proprietary software. But the reason why WordPress-- it was just successful was because all the other website building platforms, or all other hosting companies that you say, that didn't want to have their own website builder to start contributing to it. So go out instead of building their own website builder. I mean, they have one. But they went in WordPress and started contributing to WordPress. And many other hosting companies did too. So Shopify, which is essentially a hosting company, same thing with Wix, at the core of it, they're hosting. They have their own proprietary platforms, where WordPress is built by-- and built on top of-- by many, many, many other hosting companies. And this share number of contributors are a lot. And you see the same thing in Chrome as well and others. But can't you say that, OK, so WordPress powers how much? 35% of the internet? I mean, it's probably a little more like 40%. OK, so 40%. OK, so Shopify has a-- today, they're worth $100 billion. I don't know what WordPress is worth. I don't know what the revenue is, because they're a privately held company. But for controlling 30% or 40% of the internet, you should be making tens of billions of dollars a year in revenue. Do you think WordPress is over a billion in revenue? I would think no. So I think when you think about WordPress, WordPress is a community project. And there is a proprietary company that the founder of WordPress, Matt Moell, started called Automatic. Automatic has good size revenues. They're private companies. I don't know what those revenues are. But it would be fair to say that's not as high as Shopify. But when you look at the collective ecosystem of WordPress and all the companies that are in it, you take GoDaddy, how big is GoDaddy? You take many, many, many other hosting companies or WPNG and so on. And you put collectively together. I would say that the market cap will be bigger. Yeah, so Automatic was valued at $3 billion and it was valued at $7 billion at some point in its private. These are, I don't know if this is rumors or confirm, but it's like published in a bunch of different places. And so that's what the Automatic is kind of the company that like kind of, what do you call it? The steward of the open source program or the open source project. I'm not sure what you would call it. They're essentially the Red Hat. What Red Hat was from Linux, Automatic is that for WordPress, right? They have the same power. They're CS. And plus Sam, you get all the developer street kid, Fred Broell, like I mean Matt Mullen, like that guy's, he's a made man, he's untouchable. There's no doubt that it's awesome. I think actually, when I think of like internet heroes, I think Matt Mullenwag is up there. I actually used WordPress, so check this out. Let me explain the difference in business models. I used WordPress for the hustle. The hustle ended up being worth 10 to millions of dollars. It reaches hundreds of millions of people. And we are small compared to many of the others on WordPress. So I know I had a friend that had a WordPress site that was doing 100 million monthly uniques. And so there's no doubt that it's the best. But check this out. I bought WordPress's software called WooCommerce. WooCommerce was $300 a year. I had a business on there that was doing five million a year and recurring revenue. And I paid them $300 every single year. If this were Shopify or something else, I would have been paying them, I believe 50, I think is a 10% or 5%, so I'd have been paying them 25 to 50 grand a year. And I was like, this is a fucking steal. I'm stealing from these guys. And I was like, I don't understand this business. I'm getting all of the value and they're getting virtually not. - Well, I think the value is disproportionately favored in the consumer. And that's what you want in a business, right? You want your users to have this proportional value coming from you. I think like when you look at products, and this happens when you're studying long term, then your product can't be 10x better in a specific space. It really becomes all about the brand and the value that you're delivering when customers aren't using your product like actively. So having that value being so disproportional makes your business far more stickier than your competitor who might be charging an armament. - I have a bad idea for you, say you. So where else have we seen this? Where are the customers just getting an incredible deal? One idea that comes to mind is Costco. And Costco is basically like, hey, we'll sell you the goods at cost plus 10%. And that's just gonna cover the kind of the caring cost of putting these items on the shelf. So like if whatever that bag of rice actually costs it's that plus 10%. That's always the price. And we're gonna negotiate the shit out of these vendors by the way to get the lowest possible version of that price. And we're gonna use our scale to do that. And all you gotta do is pay us $120 a year. That's like $120. I'm saving that in one grocery trip, two grocery trips. There's a no-brainer. And they've built a like, you know, huge subscription business off this. Do you think somebody could do that in the software world? 'Cause I've seen a couple examples of this where I bought this screenshotting tool. That's really good. It's called Clean Shot X. And free shout out for those guys. They, so it's really good like screenshot tool. But one of the ways you can buy it is off some service that like, it's a lot of things. It has all the random software tools put there on the shelf, like a Costco or like an Amazon for random software tools. And it's usually at a lower price than if you go by direct then on the site. And I think if you have a membership to the overall thing, then you can just get these tools for free. I kind of wonder if somebody could do this with the open source community and just say, all right, pay us $1,000 a year, and then you're going to get WooCommerce, you're going to get all these things at the lowest possible price. Or you're just going to get, go round up all of the software and say, hey, you're going to be selling at cost plus 10%. And we're going to have this, you know, the subscription revenue for our members who want to shop there. Is that a how bad? How bad? On a scale of one to terrible. What is that idea? Two-sided marketplace is generally a tough business to build. So they're challenges in the model. But you know, you can try it. And I think they're, they are companies doing it. I think if you focus it on as maybe a subset, let's say, agencies, and you say, hey, development agencies, we can get you access to these softwares at a lower price. Probably that's where I would start. And then you try to make it broader. Worse is saying, we have every software under the sun. Because you have to do some backend integration, the best decay, a lot of indie softwares don't have the ability to have reseller models. And versus like, hey, here's my thing. Take the payment, give me money in the backend. That's generally not how software provisioning works. That there's a little bit more nuance there than what cost was. So what is this OSS capital doing? They basically, you said they go through GitHub projects. And they look at like which things have, like some combination of engaged users, large TAM, and what do they do? They invest in them or they at they build products for them. They're investing in them. And then I think you're investing in the open source community. He's like, well, they just give them hugs and shit. What's the money of this whole business? They're doing all that. They invested five high fives. No, actually, they're investing capital in those businesses and helping them come into market. Like, I mean, if you look at GitLab, for example, it's like $11 billion market cap right now. So like, app flow going after the notion market or like Cal.com, going after the scheduling market, I think we're going to see many of these established companies that might be unicorns right now in the project management spaces and such, get disrupted by an open source solution. And then what's going to happen is you and I can take app flow and say, we're making notion for doctors. And we can take the code, forget, make it better, and then contribute back to it because the way the licensing is done, so there will be flavors of these open source offers that will get created. Like, there are flavors of WordPress that are created. And that's what makes it so disruptive. Because a doctor who might be using notion will say, well, I want to go use this tool because it does the extra 5% of the notion will do. Well, which categories and products do you think this model would work for? Where you're like, you see a particular product category, you say, if we did, if we attacked that category with this open source blueprint or framework, I think that could be a winning combination. I think the open source CRM that does a well in the job will be quite disruptive. And then the market. Perfect segue to our sponsor. Play the ad, baby. [LAUGHTER] But I think you take any large TAM market in software and you add open source component to it. Like, Sam Dito's stability AI, they're basically open AI, but open source. They're the ones who make stable diffusion. How big are they? They're multi-billion dollar-- AI hype cycle, they're very big. But people actually use stable diffusion a lot. It's a big project. I think Sam, you invested with me in Cal.com, which is the Caldon-Callonly but open source competitor. Because Calonly is really expensive. And the Cal.com guys have done a good job of building the open source version of that. I really like this thesis. In fact, I think this OSS capital thing is really smart. There's a few strategic venture fund ideas that I really liked. This is one of them. Another one that I had heard was somebody who's just taking pro-Rotas. So they're like, oh, you do all the work of finding the company. 30% of them are going to die or whatever before they raise their next round. But of the ones that raise their next round, you have pro-Rata. You could top up and keep your percentage. But most investors don't want to do it or don't have the capital to do it. So these guys are just pro-Rata. And that's pretty smart. I think there's a few strategic venture funds. One I really wanted to do was just a flipper. So you basically, you would say, hey, I want to invest. But I'll be out when you raise your series A. I'm really helpful in this zero to one. But as soon as you get to your series A, I'm out. Because a normal venture fund is like seven to 10 years. And you're hoping for this 1,000X outcome. But the seed to series A valuation lift is like 3X. And it's usually in 12 to 18 months. And so if you could just pick well of what seed startups are most likely to get to a series A, or you're just in an environment where a lot of companies are able to raise their next round, you can flip. And for the founder, it's great. Because you're like, cool, I could take this capital today. But it's actually non-dilutive. Like they're going to be out by the next round. And that same those shame shares go to the next investor. So it's actually less dilutive than normal capital. But wouldn't you be accused of a pump and dump? Well, you're not pumping, you know? Like when somebody buys a home and then sells it a year later, is that a pump and dump? Like no. Well, no. Well, I would argue a home has realized value, which is-- But that's how to look at it. From a seed startup when you invest or pre-seed startup, 18 months later, they've now built a product. They have customers. They have some traction. Their story is so much better, right? They are a de-risk startup in some way if they're able to raise. Theoretically, but not always. Usually. You're right. But the risk goes a little bit lower. And you enter the risk you stayed at seed. So the problem is it's just like a faux pas. Like startup investing is supposed to be this true believers. I was in and I'm here for the long haul. And you're going to change the world. Whereas when you sell it to Series A, you're like, oh, you might change the world, but probably not. The whole lot of those. You change my bank account by three x if I sold this right. And so I think that's the problem. It's an anti-signal. Nobody wants to see that your first investor wants outright away. It's such a bad signal. So you would have to first build your brand of, this is what we do. It's not-- for any company, we do this. It doesn't mean anything about them. We do this with every company we invest in. And you'd have to frame it not as like a quick flip, because that sounds like self-serving. You'd have to phrase it as like non-diluted. It's like, we're the early stage guys. We're really helpful early. We don't know anything after that. And like, we want you to not dilute yourself so much. So take our capital, because we're going to basically give you back those shares to sell to the next guy, rather than just losing more and more equity as you go. Yes, still very, very high risk. You have to be a very good picker and say, yes, this is going to go from C to A. But I looked at my portfolio. So I looked at 100 companies. I don't remember the exact numbers on top of my head. But basically, it was out of 100 angel investments that I did that I looked at what percentage of them raised the next round and what was the average multiple of the companies that raised the next round. You just multiply this together, and you'll tell you, what's your expected value? And the math math, when I did it last time, which was basically that enough companies raised the next round at enough of a multiple where you would be getting a good return. I think it was like 30%. Math was basically that I would be making 30% on my money, which was fantastic. And better than almost every venture fund out there. But I didn't actually do that strategy, because I thought of it later. And also, it's really hard to get around that perception problem. [LAUGHTER] I thought of it when one of my university companies raised a series A, and I was like, this company's not going to work. I wish I could just sell right now. And bro, that's ex-- You're proving my point. You're just proving my point. So wait, there's a point. No, that proves my point. Well, you're not pumping. You are dumping now. Yeah, you're dumping. Yeah, exactly. That's what you should call it. You're dumping schemes. Speaking of numbers, I tweeted this out this morning. I'm curious which you guys will guess. So I asked a question. I'll tell you, I guess I'll give you the background. So I was talking to-- I heard this like coach, like an exact coach or whatever. And I was telling him, I was like, yeah, I'm trying to do-- he's like, what are your goals for the year? So I was like, yeah, I'm trying to do this, this, and this. And one of the things I said, I was like, yeah, if I sell this business, I think I'll make-- I don't know what I said. I was like, I think I can make $20 million. And I was like, and I was like, that'll be great. Because then-- pause. I was like, I don't actually-- I don't have no idea. Well, I have no idea what will change. And I was like, I was like, because no, it'll be cool. Because then I can-- then my life will be better because I'll-- what will change? And I was like, wait, what am I doing? Is there any benefit to incremental-- and so I started thinking about this. I was like, I do want this. However, I do think it's a little silly that I can't point to maybe an area of life that I want to improve using the money. Money's a tool. I believe that. But I have no idea what I'm going to use this tool for. I'm just going to Home Depot, trying to get a tool. And then what do you need this drill for? And I'm like, I have no idea. So that was a little silly. So I tweeted out a question today. I said, how much money do you think you need to live your desired lifestyle? Because I think I'm very close to just living the exact desire lifestyle I have. I don't really have any more desires of what I want to change. So what does money good for in that sense? And so I asked people, I said, 0 to 1 million, 1 to 10 million, 10 to 50, or more than 50, 50 plus. And I said, how much money do you think you need in your bank account in order to be living your desired lifestyle? One of the answers got 48%, which one do you think it is, Said? And what's your answer? Yeah. But I think if you're looking at between those four choices, most people probably set 10 to 50. - That's what I would have guessed. - Okay. - That's what I would have said myself also. I think that's like the, kind of my, nothing is pervnot utopia where somebody's feeding me grapes and shit like that. But like what I actually want, what I actually care about I think is totally achievable in that range. So do you, and so Sam's question was a good one. What would your answer be? Like you surpassed all these, great. But what do you think actually made a difference in your lifestyle where you're like, oh, I now have the money to live the lifestyle I want. - I call it the threshold number. - You know, I have a very simple life. I don't have these crazy desires of varying the fancy clothes or any of those things. For me, the 10 million dollar number was more than enough to have a good life. I do what I do because I enjoy it. What would you, I want to be a productive member of society and this is fun for me. But you know, people might say their number is more. - Do you think anything changes? Like maybe like as you go up, what gets unlocked at those levels of the game? The only ones I could think of, I'll just give you my answer. So I was like, I think if you go above 50 or go above 100, you know, private travel is like, you know, the big unlock where you don't have to think you just fly private everywhere do all that. I think that's the biggest one. And the second one is if, if you really care about you being the one to give to charitable causes, I think that's the other thing that you can do is you can make large charitable donations. I don't really know what else gets unlocked past that, but you know, you might have other ideas. Am I missing anything? What gets unlocked over 50? - Well, I think it's just the level of convenience that you get whether it is, and whether it is through private travel, whether it is through private health, home, and so on. And then the level of that that you can, oh, you know, access, just get elevated. Also, I think there's a difference between 50 and 500. Like is there like a number where you think the level of convenience is mostly quite similar? Like is it more convenient to have a significantly larger plane than a smaller private plane? (laughing) - Yeah, I mean, it makes a difference on how far you're trying to go. (laughing) - The poor rich guy in his small plane is puttering out and couldn't make it across the Atlantic. (laughing) - I mean, yeah, you know, you can spend any amount of money that you want. If you have money, you can spend it. Do you really need it? I don't know. And that's dead based on each person. But even if you look at Taylor Swift, right? She had to take, she took a private jet, but it was not hers. Like she contracted the service to fly from Japan or wherever she was to Super Bowl because her own jet can't fly that far. - Right. - That doesn't mean that she can't afford a bigger jet. No, I'm pretty sure she can, but it just doesn't make financial sense for our to maybe have a global 8,000 or something like this. - What was your number, Sean? - Mine was in the 10 to 50. I thought 10 to 50, like that is, past that is there's very few things that are as appealing or just like big diminishing returns. But this is my perspective. - That's too big. - My number, my perspective 10 years ago would have been one to 10. I would have been like, oh, 10, past 10, what does it matter? And now past 10, you're like, that kind of matters. And maybe that same thing happens again. I'm not sure. That's why I kind of like I say, I wanna ask other people's opinions. Because again, I think A, doesn't get talked about much, but clearly we're all acting on it. Everybody who's listening to this podcast, everybody on Twitter, you're all playing a money game and you're spending a huge portion of your life earning money and it is probably worth knowing what's, where does money really improve the quality of your life? And what are those thresholds? Where, what are the things you can unlock and so you could decide for yourself if it's really worth devoting this much energy and this much time to accumulating more? - I think 10, 10 gives you a base. You've got your fortress of solitude. 10 is enough that you can tell most people to fuck off because you don't need much from anyone. I actually still think you can lose 10 if you make a handful of bad investments. What, Siod, do you wanna look at me stupid? Because I-- - I can lose 100 if you make a handful of bad investments. No, no, no, no, you can't lose. - That's true. And I think I think a threshold is 10. I think another threshold is 50. That's my current thinking. - What do you think happens at 50? What's the difference? - I think at 50, you can fly private safely. Like it's no big deal. You can fly private most every time you want. - And that's the only difference? - Well, you could have a, you know, with $10 million liquid, I wouldn't buy a $5 million house. - A certain number, you're nanny speaks Spanish. At the next number, she speaks English and Spanish. Next number, she speaks English, Spanish and French, right? That's what else changes? - But like, Siod, where you live, you live in one of the most expensive, like 50 mile radius parts of the world. Like a really sick house is probably $6 million, right? - Yeah. - You're not gonna buy that way if you're worth 10, but you would buy that if you're worth 30, probably, right? - Challenge accepted. - So, (laughing) - It's not like me, I want to do something I will. - But no matter how big your house is, you will only ever be sitting in one seat at a time. So it's important to have perspective to not let the goalpost keep moving forward and then for what? I mean, there's a house here that's $170 million for sale. Like, not too far away from somebody who is at the camp with us, I won't say their name, but they have a, like, a, probably, like, $15, $20 million home. And they called me yesterday and they were talking, and they were like, oh, sorry, I've been, 'cause I called them, they were like, oh, sorry, I've been house hunting all day. A house hunting, you just bought your dream home last year and you told me, like, we went crazy on this house because it's our dream home and it's what we've been working for all these years, why we made all this money. And then they were like, he's like, God, he's like, yeah, but he's like, our HVAC broke and then he's like, he's like, you know, that's his 50 grand to fix that. He's like, my, the guy fixed our AC, he's got like engineering degrees. I pay two grand a month to our pool guy. A pool guy's making two grand a month. He's like, and another four grand for landscaping. He's like, it's just annoying. He's like, everything that's, it's all my problem. He's like, he's like, yeah, it's great when we entertain people. But most of the time, I'm, like, he said, I'm just sitting in one chair. I'm sitting in the same chair and I have whatever, 10,000 extra square feet or 20,000 extra square feet of, like, empty house. And so it was just like such a visceral reminder of the, like, the age old wisdom of like, first you own your things and then they own you. And it was like, he was just explaining all the ways that his thing now owned him. And he had this like reaction where he's like, I gotta change this because like, this is not my dream, actually. I thought this was my dream. It is not my dream, actually, because I don't want to be owned by this. Where now my monthly nut is so high, I have to stress about, you know, not all these things or when things break, it's such a colossal break. I feel so wasteful, you know, that I'm spending this much just fixing our whatever pool or whatever it is when in reality that money could, like, I remember what that money could do for me. I used to live all year off that money. Now it's just, you know, going to one little thing. - Comedy square feet was this place? - I don't know. It's probably like 15,000 square feet or something like that. - That's fucking insane. That is so insane. Is it? - 15,000 people. - It's more than 10, less than 20, I think. - Dude, that's like, you know, that's a commercial property basically. You need like a property manager. - That's insane. - I think it's important. One of the things that a lot of people don't think about is the holding cost of anything that you're acquiring, whether it's a property or business or what, you know, understanding the holding cost, the real holding cost may help you not make certain decisions. - There's other hidden cost you, right? Holding cost is one. Opportunity cost is another that people usually discount. There's a great tweet that was going viral on it if you saw it yesterday, but the guy said, "It goes, I think making between 150 and 250K "is the worst." It's like what? He's like, "Is it against the worst? "Because it's too much money to just say, "Fuck yeah, I'm just gonna go do this thing I really want." So it's like too much money to walk away from, but it's not enough to ever like, actually get escaped velocity financially, 'cause you're paying like a huge amount of taxes and then you probably live in a, your lifestyle creeps up. And I saw, like I see this so often, which is that there's some range. I don't know what the numbers depend on where you live and what industry you're in, but something like 200 grand to 500 grand is like, that's the real golden handcuffs and that's the real like danger zone. That doesn't sound like a danger zone. It's a hit, but it's a hit and danger usually, 'cause if you're making that much, you're probably very talented. However, it is so hard to walk away from that amount of money if you, once you get to that and take a risk, maybe start a business or take another job that might give you all kinds of other things, but maybe have less certainty or less annual guaranteed pay. And I could see that tweet going viral 'cause I think it resonated with so many people. The guy hadn't like no followers, but the tweet had like 20,000 likes. - You know, I mean, it also depends on your personality. My uncle's moved to US 40 years ago. He's a teacher and you know, teachers in America don't make a lot of money, but he's still retired a millionaire. So I think it's all about how you invest that and compounding. - I think that tweet is really fucking stupid. - What is it? - I think that if you make $250,000 a year, you can live a very rich life. I think that you could have a beautiful rich life. I think you can retire by a certain age. I think that that is an out of touch tweet. I think that tweet is true if your goal is to make tens of millions of dollars or be your own boss at a young age. - I think it's true for the people it's true for, right? Which is if you want to be an entrepreneur or you want to be financially rich, free and not have to trade your time for a salary, right? No, you can be financially free on 250 a year if you're 60. I don't know. I live in California. I'm using California as my frame of reference here. But yeah, where you live definitely changes things and what your burn is. But you're your California. Like a lot of places, like stuff, I don't know, like what's the amount of money you need? Even if you're living in Texas, like what do you think is real amount of money? You make 250 a year and then you have taxes. So you're taking home, I don't know what the math is, but like something like 175 or 180, something like that. And then you pay for life and you might be stashing away 100K a year. How many years do you have to stash away 100K in order to like be financially free? It takes a decade plus. Yeah, a decade. A decade, right? And even to get to 250, that takes you usually seven to ten years to get to making that much, right? Seven years to get to that salary threshold too, right? So now you're 17 to 20 years in. That's a lot. That's a long time. Side, what are you going to say? You don't like what Sean's saying right now I could tell. I think it's, there's certain, something about the guaranteed payment and it really depends on your personality. Like the folks that are going to become an entrepreneur, they don't need to walk away from 250 all the time. Like I mean, when I started, I had nothing. And those are all right. Right? So a lot of folks start out and they don't have a salary. And they just kind of go and pursue it. That's what you want to do. You go to do it. You have to have conviction. And I think that's the key to success anyways, especially as an entrepreneur. I'm not giving advice to other people for what they should do or what the ad person should do. I'm saying from my perspective of what I would want in my life, which is only thing I can really speak on is the things that I know about myself. And I know that most of the people who listen to this podcast are going to be people who are like-minded. Otherwise, how did you get to episode 500? If you weren't into entrepreneurship or you weren't like-minded in some way with our ethos. And for people in our world, I think that it's a valuable message. Right? I think there's a lot. I have a lot of friends personally who are in this situation. I know what they actually want out of life. I know where they live and the lifestyle they desire. And for them, that is a very dangerous thing. Of course, if I'm just speaking generically, that advice totally doesn't apply. It's totally out of touch. And it's a total overkill. I get that. I think that's fair. I wanted to give you an alley. I wanted to give you an alley, you. It's like I show myself on the foot and then I put a bandaid on it. I had to very little. So that's all good. Where do we want to go from here? Let's do a couple other ones that you have on this doc. So you have- let's go to the bottom here with the strong opinions or philosophies. And so you talked about acquiring a business versus paid marketing. I think this has got interesting. I think most people don't really think about this. I know when I was running my company, I never thought, hey, let me grow through acquisition. That wasn't on my radar. What's your point here? What do you think is the takeaway? I think when you think about growing a subscription business, there's only three ways to grow it. You get new customers. You expand existing customers. You reduce churn. And then new customer bucket. Most of the people are always looking at PPC. And especially at a certain scale, you might be spending a lot of money in PPC. Paper click. Paper click, exactly. Paper click advertising. And your cat might be high, especially in a very, very competitive market. In that sense, it makes sense to just go pay revenue multiplier to buy a business that has the customers that you're targeting anyways and then cross out. And I would say that that's something that more CEOs need to think about when they're thinking about growth. You know who knows about this? Yeah, boy. I sold the hustle to HubSpot because I actually didn't know about this. They knew about it. They made the right. I know about it in that. I know a guy. I know a guy. No. I know a guy who did this and they bought my business. That was the whole point of HubSpot. That was the whole point of this podcast. Now I don't have too much information. I've been part of it forever. But I think it's working. So are you talking about buying other products or like content sites? Anything in everything. I was looking at this publicly traded company and where I was looking to potentially establish a sizable stake. And the revenues were growing steadily but not exponentially because they couldn't compete with the larger competitors. But the reseller side of their business was great. One of their resellers were actually making more money than this company was. What's a reseller? Like can you give an example that isn't related to this company? Sure. Like I could, for example, resell HubSpot or any other hosting, I can be hosting reseller. I can make my own hosting company selling Amazon. I can be Amazon reseller and so on. So for this business, they basically just acquired one of their resellers and boosted the revenue. So there's the same customer that they had and bringing it in. I wanted to work with the management and just kind of fund their acquisition of the reseller because the margins, if it was in-house, we'd much, much better. How can a reseller make more than the main thing if you're just reselling and then presumably giving a cut back to the mothership? How does the reseller ever make more? No, it all depend on not pricing and how you're licensing and what you're charging on your end. Okay. So like, let's say we both could be drop shipping the same thing and I could charge like five times premium because I know how to market better and you're charging only two X. Okay. Right? Just one example that you can look into your own ecosystem and start acquiring your resellers and bring that customer in-house. But also what Hubsbaud did with the content site makes total sense. What was then that's just recently did with Clouse makes total sense and so on. So I think that when you're looking at acquisition and growth, like I'm talking about acquisition from like new customer acquisition, think about M&A as a viable option, especially when your PPC budget is high. Could your WordPress and Pyre have existed without you owning WPBeginner? So WPBeginner for the listener, by the way, it's like a blog if you Google how to set up an email service on WordPress, WPBeginner, which site owns, always shows up number one. So would your empire have existed without WPBeginner? Well, no, the answer is no, but for many reasons no. I think you can't build solutions to solve problems that you don't fully understand. And for me to be able to build the best solution in the market, I had to communicate with the audience. I had to understand what their pain points and that I believe was their biggest advantage. Of course, the marketing and having the audience is very important too. Very, very important. But I think that understanding of the pain point is crucial. Like for example, in talking to their customers and also my various company founders and GMS, I realized that we were not happy with their help that software. So we went and acquired stake in Groove, which is a help that software that will drastically reduce cost for anybody who's using Zendass for anybody using help scale. But now I know that certain customers that are using Groove may also want our other solutions and I know that many of our customers and agencies and so on, they're all using a help that software so I can cross promote Groove to them and say, hey, if you switch from Zendass for whatever, you'll say 40%. If you're an agency, you're using front for your communication switch here and you'll say 80%. So that level of synergy gets unlocked and can be quite lucrative. Can we finish with these two lifeless and type things? I think they're both good. I know we're on time, but I want to do it anyways. Compounding Goodwill is the best form of compounding. What do you mean by that? I think too many times we are very transactional in the relationships that we're in. It's doing something nice and saying, hey, do something back in return for me. I think just giving with no expectation return, a lot of us are very smart. And sometimes in that we can be kind of, you know, a holy, you know, and not so nice. I think intellect is a gift and kindness is a choice. And if we choose to be kind over long term, this comes back multi, multi, multi folds. So not letting your ego or the keyboard warrior get to you. And, you know, I'm smarter than you. You're 100% wrong. Just going along and even if you feel like you're in the right, sometimes it's better to just be kind anyways. Sometimes I get stuck on that where I'm like, this is, but this is right. That's what we said. And actually it doesn't matter what we said. I suggest in that moment, it matters more to them than it does to me to just let it, to just be kind and it's go their way rather than that mine. I've learned that lesson the hard way of a couple times. Absolutely. Not this guy's name Guy Spear. I've seen this guy around, but I don't know him. Who is this guy? He's got something special. He'll see something conference thing, right? That people really like. Who is this guy? Why is he the example of that? Yeah. So he's a really good friend now and we're in a forum together. So his conference is called Value X. Very well known, Value Investor has a book as well. And, you know, he talks about compounding goodwill in his book and then tell it to investor. And I'm always really, really amazed by his level of generosity. The amount of like, Hey, you need this. Let me just connect you with X and Y and the and long term. what he's been able to do is build this amazing network of super duper talented people that, like, you know, if he rings, they'll pick up and, you know, help out whatever and nothing, nothing in returns. I think he is an amazing example. I learned a ton from him, even, you know, for Chicago a couple of months ago and he gave me an idea to acquire, like a, the very cool deal idea of doing acquisitions and then long story short, I was able to actually use it. Deal came and I've heard you've got exact tactic to make a purchase in a very tax-efficient way. So I think his ability to just, you know, do that is really good. - But I, you know, I don't know you that well. We're friends, but we don't hang out too much. If I had to guess, I would say that you're a very shrewd negotiator and I would say that you're probably a very disciplined and firm manager. I think you're probably quite nice, but I think that like you're a very disciplined person, which sometimes people would say, well, you're just being an asshole or something like that. You know, if you have enough employees, some of them are gonna think that about you. How are you balancing being a nice person and also like trying to get the best of a deal or trying to capture a little bit more value for yourself than for the other person? - I think not all Jews have to be squeezed if you think about value on a very long-term way. So part of the discipline is to say, okay, well, we don't have to squeeze all the juice today. You know, that's the whole point about compounding goodwill. You know, if I acquire something from a founder and let go a few percentages, because that helps me have a great long-term relationship with this person, that's a worthwhile decision. Rather than saying, you know what, you're down and I'm gonna like, you know, kind of crush it. And that's not good for reputation long-term relationship. - But do you go into a negotiation saying, here's my threshold of I can no longer do, or I won't do it at this number, but I will do it anything below this. And then you go with like a number and you leave room for that negotiation or for that threshold. And then you just don't ever cross that particular number. Like, I know. - I'm super calculating about it. (laughing) - Well, because I know that he's a value investor. And a value investor, they like, at some point, they're like, you make money on the buy. You make money when you buy something at a low price. And so like, there has to be like a threshold of like, it doesn't make sense after this. And so I just can't be a nice guy anymore. - Just because you're winning, it doesn't mean the other person has to lose. And I think that's a very important aspect of compounding goodwill. That's also the example of like, just because you're very smart, you don't have to prove the other person wrong. You can agree to disagree or move on and just saying, okay, this is fine. Maybe it's worthwhile considering this. And letting that conversation be in and going, what if forcing business you have to be very, very disciplined if it's actually as a capital allocator? And that's that. - Let me tell you guys a quick story as we wrap up here that was like the best good guy story that I heard. I heard it on another podcast, but apparently Adam Sandler was in New York. He was taking acting classes. And the teacher was like, hey, I wanna take you out for a beer. Let's talk. So the teacher takes him out and he goes, look Adam, you don't have what it takes. And I just want you to quit doing it now 'cause I don't wish to waste two decades and it's just not gonna go your way. I wanna show you love and respect by telling you now. Obviously, 10 years past, Adam Sandler's still doing this. He's an epic star. He's at the top of his game. He's at a bar in New York. He's with his friends. He's with his buddies. He sees that professor, that teacher out. And I imagine in his head he's thinking, well, should I go rub it in his guy's face? And he's like, told you I win. He walks over to the guy and he brings his buddies with him. And Adam looks at his buddies. He goes, hey, I want you guys to be professor blankly blank. They were the only professor that was kind enough to take me out and buy me a beer. - And I heard that story and I was like, that is one of the best stories I've ever heard about treaty people respectfully, even though you may be a little bit angry or you didn't like them at the time. But Sean, did you, you saw that clip? - I love that clip, I love that story. It's Brad Pitt telling the story, by the way, which just makes it even better. You did good. But Brad Pitt telling the story was a little bit better. I think just, - Hey, no, I saw Andrew Santino say it. - Oh, okay, maybe there's somebody else. I think Sam did an excellent job. - Yeah, you're my Brad Pitt Sam. (laughing) - It's both, both hot guys from Missouri, I'll take it. (laughing) - Sayon, thank you very much, that's the part. Thank you. (upbeat music)