Building a $50 Million AI Startup from Nothing - Rafeh Qazi, Poppy.AI

It was normal for me to wake up at 2am, 3am, hearing my mom in pain. When I was really young, like 9 or 10 years old, we were at a red light in America, and this girl behind us, she's going 60 miles an hour, I'm with my family, she accelerates, she re-erends her car. My mom ends up getting like, her back discs get fractured, and we can't like, afford to pay for her surgery. We pretty much had no money left over. I'm some kid from Pakistan that doesn't deserve anything. They're supposed to be getting beaten up right now, and I'm like, I have people watching my stuff. What if I had an automation that could just like, log my hours? That ended up being actually our most profitable year. I think it'll be worth like $150 million. Welcome back to another episode of the Bad Marketing Podcast. Today we got two special guests today, the CMO and the co-founder of Poppy AI, in a world where there's so many different AI platforms. As a marketing company, we got to test so many of them. This has been the one that's been at the forefront of a lot of the stuff we do for the local business side of our marketing campaigns. I got Trent with me here who's our head of all local marketing. He's the one who's kind of spearheading the entire Poppy AI experience. We got the co-founder, CMO and town. Thanks so much for flying in guys. If you guys want to give a quick intro on yourself, just everyone knows who you are and we'll jump right in. Yeah, go for it. Yeah, my name is Sawyer. I'm the head of marketing for Poppy AI. Amazing. I'm Casi, co-founder of Poppy. Dude, thanks so much for flying. Would you guys fly in from by the way? Just flew in from LA. We missed our first flight. No way. It was that night and then we found the second flight and then we made it like literally right on the dot. We came straight from the airport. That's crazy. I mean, that's a long ass flight too. Yeah. You cost country. Well, thanks for coming out. Dude, appreciate you guys. Absolutely. You guys have built some obviously incredible software. We've been jamming kind of off camera here for a bit beforehand. We did record it. Just so you guys know. I thought it was a podcast actually. No, no. I knew it wasn't. I was just letting you guys riff because I think it's-- I was like, we needed an intro. I'm like, it's okay. I'm a contact reader. I'll be that later. It was just good content. Then I was just making sure you're recording and then we'll do a podcast later. But want to get into the background. Obviously, you guys are building a pretty sick platform. Want to get into the background of what you did before this because usually people see businesses like this like Holy Falk, these guys started poppy AI. They're so young. Look at all the shit they're doing. Thousands of people on the platform. But they don't see that you probably had failed businesses before this. You probably had other businesses that succeeded that took you a ton of time learned a lot of experience. So take us back before poppy AI. We're 31 now. So when you're in your early 20s, what were you doing to make money, what kind of skills are you learning? And then let's take it to how we got here. Amazing. So I started with learning coding. That's how I started my career very early on because my brother had told me-- You're brown. Brown, of course. Of course. Mainly it was because I wanted to do something that made a lot of money because I grew up-- I love my mom. I was actually telling you this. Yeah, it was good. Right on the floor. We got here. And when I was really young, like nine or 10 years old, we were at a red light in America. We just came from Pakistan. And this girl behind us, she's going 60 miles an hour. I'm with my family, parents. And instead of stopping, she accelerates because she doesn't realize. She rear ends her car. My brothers are in the car. My dad is in the car. My mom's in the car. And-- This is like when you first got to America. First got to America. And it was a really crazy crash. We get out. Luckily everybody else is fine. My mom starts complaining. She's feeling something in her back. We find out the girl was drunk, which is actually why-- Welcome to America. Yeah, which is why I don't drink. And then when-- That's the reason you don't drink. Yeah. Really? Let's get there. Yeah. You should consider drinking and not driving. That's fine. Later on, I just became a thing. I'm like, can I just go with-- Go with that. How long can I go? Yeah, because I just didn't want-- If I'm in a party or having fun, I'm like, that's actually fun. If I can be left with a party without drinking, so it kind of just became like an internal thing. Yeah. So anyways, my mom ends up getting like her L1 and L2, like her back discs get fractured and it leads to arthritis. All these diseases problems, she gets overweight because she can't like work out easily or anything like that. And my brother, my dad is like working two jobs at Security Guard. They're working and they're ass off. And they-- and we can't like afford to pay for her surgery. We can't take care of her. I have to go to Cook County Hospital in Chicago and sit next to some random fucking homeless guy for 20 hours with my mom. And my mom isn't like screaming in pain and they can't take her in. And that was like normal. Like that was normal. I was a little kid, so I didn't really think much of it. It was normal for me to wake up at 2am, 3am hearing my mom in pain. Go upstairs, like help her out. And then just like I'll be massaging her or something and then she'll fall asleep and I'll be like, so sleepy and then come downstairs. And for me, it was just like really frustrating. I'm like, we're in America. We're paying citizens. We're doing everything that we can yet. We can't take care of-- like I can't take care of my mom. Like what the fuck is the point of me being alive? Yeah. And so for me, it was just, what can I do? At that point, it was like, what makes money? So I don't actually have to live through that. It's like when 2015, '14? To-- I mean, this is like 2000. I was 10 at the time or something like this. This is like early 2005 or something, something like that. So I just knew I had to do something different. And then at 15 or 16, my brother-- I was on a call. My brother, I was like, what makes money? And he's like, dude, you should do this thing called data science or programming. And I was like, fuck it. I'll do it. So I got into-- I started teaching myself coding. And what happened is I ended up getting fascinated by coding. I thought it was like, I started just for money. And then later, I actually started doing it. And I'm like, I actually love this. Because I had gone into chess and I became competitive in chess. I'm like top 1% in the world in chess. Really? What's your ranking? Elos like 2,000 to 2,200. Oh, solid. You're a killer. Yeah. So I was like getting good at chess. And so I would teach you-- 2,200 Elos, fucking high. Yeah. So I would go to places to teach kids chess. So I would coach. And I would drive there. But like, for example, what I hated was I would always have to come back. Go to this Google sheet that I had and log how many hours I worked with this kid. And then how much I have to charge their parents to do that every time it was really annoying. So I started doing little things to make my life easier. I'm like, well, what if I go there? I know the area. What if I had an automation that could just like log my hours because it would determine, like, I'm at their home. And then so it would log when I entered their home. And when I would leave, it would log when I exited their home. And then using the time of how long I was there for, it would automatically calculate my invoices. And I would just use, like, if this and that, IFTTT, was just like popular before Zapier was. And I would use that. And I put together these automations. So I started getting into programming and just finding a lot of like, passionate in it. And then I was going to college and started teaching programming. Would you go for? I went for a computer science. OK. And I was like doing computer science. And I just felt like I was really stupid because everybody was learning so fast. And whenever I would learn, I'm like, these things just don't register in my brain. And I just was sure. I'm like, it must be because I'm dumb school-wise. Because I had missed a lot of school. I went to a religious school for four years to memorize the Quran. And for all those years, I never had any worldly education. So I'm math, geography, all of that. And then teach any of that. No, not straight religion. So basically, I went from first grade to high school. So I missed everything in between. That's fucking crazy. Yeah. So I didn't know-- But you were self learning on your own, it sounds like. Yes. So like, for example, in high school, when the teacher told me like, turn an essay, I turn an essay, there was a couple of pages long. And the whole class started laughing. And I thought they were laughing because I wrote it so good. And then I find out that they're laughing because it was size 72 font, green color comic sense. Because the teacher said it should be easy to read. So I was like, this is hell easy to read. And my teacher was like, he let me get away with it. So yeah, I was like, high school, all of those things were really hard. There were just so many things I didn't know. I had to get through. And then the religious school, they would beat the shit out of you all the time. So I'm like, 10-year-old kid, I'm like, come into the school. And the teacher is memorized, you know, recite this. And if I made a mistake, he would go to the bathroom, grab a plunger, take the red part of the plunger off, wash it under the sink, sprint back to me. We lovingly called him the Gujarati Hitler. And he would like, come back. He would lift up my jeans to my knees. So my shins were revealed. And he would take that thick wooden stick and just right on the shins. - That's crazy. - And that was like an average day at that religious school with like no knowledge. - But-- - Can you imagine that she's in today's world? (laughing) - It's a social media talk. - Yeah, yeah. - This will be gone. - The TikTok would go crazy, you know? If I drop that, it's crazy. - But it became a really solid foundation for everything. I feel like that is something that when people listen to me, they're like, oh, this is a very sad part of my life. Those four years, it felt like prison at the time. But I felt like for me, that built a lot of hardship. And they actually made it really easy for me when I started doing other things in life. So, you know, when I went to school, and I was sometimes like, 'cause I was new to school, so I would get an F. I thought that was the teacher marking me, and he was gonna come and beat me up later in high school. But I realized in America, like in high school, like nobody beats you up. So I was so confused, I was like, how do you get your ass beat in Pakistan? - Actually, I got my ass beat in America. It was in America. - That's what I thought. - There was a religious school in America. - Yeah. - But I was so-- So I was like, "How are you guys getting anything done "when you don't get beat up? "Like how the fuck why is anybody doing anything?" So it was like crazy to me. But then later when it came to doing things like YouTube, for example, I had my best friend at the time also doing YouTube with me and we started, 'cause I started learning coding. So I was like, "Let me just teach it." And when I was teaching it, I would get like two subscribers in like two weeks of making YouTube content. He would get like 10 subscribers in a day and he'd be sitting there and he's like, this is bullshit, like only 10 subscribers. And I'm like screaming in my underwear, running around the whole house. I'm like, some people from different parts of the world are watching my content. Like I'm some kid from Pakistan that doesn't deserve anything. They're supposed to be getting beaten up right now. And I'm like, I have people watching my stuff and actually finding value out of it. I'm like, this is amazing. - What was the stuff that you were posting? - I started teaching coding from what I was just learning. - Yeah. - 'Cause I was learning at a slow pace, but I'm like, maybe there are other people that learn just like me. So I started posting that. Fast forward a couple of months, I'm like 18 or 19. I'm sitting in my college class. And in this Python programming class that I was in, I started looking at the laptops of other kids. They're watching my YouTube tutorials to pass up Python class. - No, yeah, that's crazy. - And my professor starts coming up to me and asked me for career advice. And so at that point, I was like, - I'm in the wrong place. - I'm like, maybe I should take a semester off and just pursue YouTube and see what happens. Because I would just see my YouTube, you know, growing. It would be like, somebody watched two hours of watch time on your channel. And I would be sitting there and going, I helped the world move forward by two hours. Like somebody watched my coding content that I would have to physically teach people or like through remote or somebody just teach me, they just watched and I helped the world move forward by two hours. Then it became 50 hours and it became 100 hours. I'm like, I just helped the world move forward by a week. Of course, I'm gonna get paid for this one day. And so I became obsessed with that idea. And then I dropped out of, I took a semester off, never ended up going back. - And it usually how it goes, huh? - Yes. - I felt like most people had dropped out of college took a semester off. - Yeah. - I just take this one off, I'll be back and fall. - Back in, yeah. - I felt like I wasn't committing to like a really big thing. - Yeah. - So it felt easy. And then I did that and that's when I started growing my first business, which was clever programmer. And it was teaching people really how to code. And that just, that channel just took off. I mean, we got, it went from like zero to like next month, 5,000 subscribers, month after that, like 10,000 subscribers. And it just started growing fast. And I just forced myself to make all my money from the YouTube channel. And so I stopped coaching or-- - So no paid marketing, nothing. Just all organic YouTube. - Yeah. - And even though we were selling, you were selling like a recorded program or like a live coaching. - Once I learned about marketing, like I started looking up RemiTzAT and all these guys and I started learning what you can sell courses and stuff like that. I learned about PathFlan. And then I started, I launched a course. I think I launched my first course on new years of like 2017. So like right when it turned to, yeah, right when it turned to 2017, I believe. We did like $400 on my first launch $500. I couldn't believe it. - Yeah. - There were people who would pay for my course. And then a couple of months later, I hired a consultant who was teaching me marketing and then we did a launch that did like $20,000. And then we did another launch and it did like $150,000. It was like insane. - No, that's insane. - And some random kid, like for me, I mean it was unlimited amount of money. It got to my head really fast. - For sure. - Well what are the lessons you learn from getting to your head? And honestly, but there's an important lesson here because I feel like we work with a lot of course sellers, be honest. And they get a, you know, not our guy specifically, but in general, course sellers get like a shit rep. And thanks to Miami and-- - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Like in general, but like, I don't know for me, like I literally was way more educated from courses that I bought after college and I ever was from my entire marketing degree in university. And like what you're saying is like so important, like you viewed it as like I'm saving people time, like I'm moving the world forward into the future. And it's really just like mask content distribution. - Yes. - You know what I mean, with a paywall. Like and I think, I think obviously there's a large bunch of people who just like, oh, I can make money selling shit online and then they go sell shit online and then like, it's almost flipped. It's like, okay, how can I make money doing this? I'm gonna just do this as my main business versus like the natural progression of like, dude, I'm educating people for free. I'm saving them time. I'm making them money. Why can't I get paid for this? You know what I mean? And then naturally progressing into that, like my point is like, there's so much good that happens in the online education space and courses and coaching and all the stuff. I mean, we built what we built because of it. We coach hundreds of agencies because of it, right? Like these are agencies who also have employees who also have clients who like-- - You started with info stuff or you started with the service base. - No, I started with the service base stuff. And I made a lot of businesses, a lot of money. I was running ads in 2015 and then in 20-- - You started in 2015? - Yeah, 2014 was my first ad. 2015 was like actually doing it for people. 2017, I started like taking on other clients that weren't like family businesses and shit like that. - Yeah. - And then 2019, I dropped my first like marketing program and it was because, it was just because everyone was like asked me on Instagram because I was like, decently popular in college. Should I build a pretty good falling on Facebook? More than Instagram at the time, Facebook was like big. Now I don't even have a Facebook fucking band me. - Did me too. Like my account got shut down because of some bullshit. - My most valuable asset and like also, I'm posting on Instagram every day like fuck you, just giving my Facebook back anyways. Long story short, I basically did the same thing. I launched from like my parents bedroom, like did this huge launch, whatever. I made like 10 grand and that was like the first like, like I showed my mom and she's like, are you selling drugs? - What's going on? - 2017 or 2015? - No, it was 2019. I was making decent money monthly at the time 'cause I was freelancing but like, never through like a recorded course. - Interesting. - Not like, oh, I'm gonna sell this thing and then I don't have to do anything after I sell it. Yeah, yeah. And like, people were like, this is the best fun. To this day, we still sell that same course. - That was like your version of 67 steps. - Dude, it's just like such good marketing foundation because like I was so in the weeds at the time, like that it's like timeless. - You give it to your internal company members now or no? - Yeah, how we do. But like the ads manager stuff is outdated. Like it looks different and stuff, but like the concept of like how we think they're marketing, how we run ads, how we write copy. Like it's all the same stuff stuff. - There's like Dan Kennedy stuff, you know, for old school copywriting, I feel like so much of it still applies. Like a lot of those old stuff applies. - Yeah, it's just like a different medium of distribution. - Yes. - Some of these guys used to teach mail, right? But now it's just like ads on Facebook or whatever it is, right? So it's just different. But yeah, I mean good for you. So you started selling education. And then it turned into serious business and it sounds like. - Yes, it turned into serious business. - This is pre-core sellers getting shit online too. There wasn't a lot of like negativity. - There wasn't people flexing lambo. - There was pretty thing and all that bullshit. - Yeah. - And Ty was like the first lambo flexor. You don't even know me in there. - And Ty was. - Ty was. - Yeah. - I learned books, I am the snowman. - Dude, I love Ty. I learned so much from him. - Ty's done a lot of good. - I don't know him in person. You probably have met him, but I've never met him. But I've learned a lot from his content. And so even the whole new controversy or drama that's happening, I have no idea what he, if he did something wrong. - I think the controversy is he raised a bunch of money and then the businesses failed. And I was like, tell my friend, I was like, look, don't jump to conclusions of like how this went down until it goes down. But like at the end of the day, bro, anyone who's getting the responsibility of raising $100 million and doing something with other people's money, there's a risk that it's not gonna work out. So like barring any fraudulent situation where he took that money and bought his own jet or did some crazy shit like that. - Right. - Other people have done. Like you can't really fault the guy for trying to go buy all these drowning businesses and flip them around. All of you guys also bought into that vision. - Yes. - And if he actually tried to do it and tried to make it happen, it just didn't work. Like I don't see that as fraudulent personally. - Yes. - Yeah, I mean, it's like, that's an investment you guys made and he tried to make it work. And he probably wanted it to work just as much as you guys, it's probably billion dollars for him if he makes it work. - Yes, that's true. - Yeah, and I personally got value from all my virtual interactions with him, whatever stuff that I watched, I was like, oh, this is actually good stuff. A lot of great stuff on psychology and he goes very deep into those things. So, and then now he's like kind of coming back on social media and he's always doing funny shit. Like him and I like a lot of similar type of brain rot content. So I'll always see his like on the thing. I'll always see him commenting on those things too. And it's just the funniest thing. I'm like, this can't be a social media manager. Like this has to be fun. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - He's sitting there watching this dumb content and it's hilarious too, 'cause I'm like, sometimes feeling like I'm like, why are you a watch just content? You know, I'm a CEO of this company. And then I'm like, I'll see Ty there. And I'm like, I guess. (laughing) - I feel like that all the time. I told him I understand. So 150K biggest launch, or-- - That was getting bigger. That was a big launch at that time. And then it kept getting bigger. So then years past, we kept growing the company. You know, you asked me what were the hard lessons that I learned during that time when things started getting to my head. So for me, it was infinite amount of money. And 150K, 300K while I'm living with my parents, I have no other expenses. - Right, at the time I couldn't even imagine making that a year. - It was infinite money. And so for me, I just thought I was everything I touched turned to gold. I was a cocky. I became really cocky. I worked hard, but I bragged harder. And then I just started traveling the world, started dating everybody. I just-- and then what happened is a lot of my team members just started leaving because they were uncared for. I stopped paying-- I wasn't even taking care of paying my rent or whatever. And so I came back from traveling like Bali in all these other countries, going to all these different masterminds, making all these friends. And I came back. And almost my entire team had left. Only one person that was like my right-hand person, her name is Rachel Shoutout to Rachel. I always called her like the protector of my realm. She protected the entire business herself at the time. And she basically told me at the time, I was at a Grand Cardone conference. I went to Miami 10X. And I remember she called me and she was like, "Cosy, I'm going to be leaving." And I heard that a number. I was at that same event. I think in the stadium. 2018 or something? Yeah, it was a stadium. Yeah. It was really hard to hear. It was like outdoors or something. Okay, impossible. It was in the baseball stadium. Yeah, that's crazy. Dude, what is that thing? Ty spoke of that event. Yeah, okay. I don't remember if-- Like what I did is I just-- I go to these events, I get sick of them, and I just leave in a start working. I'm like, fuck this shit. I just started shooting content. I'm the same. I put the hells-up point of this thing. So yeah, so I was at that event. I came out-- Rachel called me and she was like, "I'm going to be quitting." I'm like, like, my heart just fell into my like balls, where I'm like, dude, this is frightening. Because if she leaves, I'm done. I'm cooked. Because I was like a kid with money. Yeah. Not a lot of it. I'm going to look back, but it felt like a lot. And I'm like, after-- if she leaves, I don't even know what the fuck to do. So I just-- I'm like, okay, I'll get my act together. I'm like, please just give me a chance. Don't leave. Like, I'll just get my shit together. And after that time, I kind of just swore to myself, you know, I virtually put on Warpaint, War of Black, and I was like, I'm locking in. Like, I am just working. And after that, I just-- you know, I went hard into the business. That was a hard time, but we turned it around. What was your biggest year in that business financially? That year, 1.7 million? Nice. Yeah, we launched-- It was organic, too, right? Most of it organic. Some of it ads. OK. Oh, so you did run ads? I did run ads. Yeah. There was one ad that I made that-- I'll show you guys at some point, but it went viral. It went crazy viral. We got 100 million impressions on it. Wow. And it was on it. People started recreating in like e-com agencies and stuff. So that business started doing well. We launched a coding bootcamp. So we started selling that for like 15K. And then the hardest thing that I've ever gone through ended up happening within that business were out of a big cohort of people. Like, we had hundreds of people graduate from our boot camp and they've got jobs at companies like Spotify, Netflix, Quora, Amazon, like all the big tech companies. But then we had like 10 or 15 people that were not happy with the program. Like, one of our instructors at the time had like a heart palpitation problem. So he quit. And then we couldn't really find a replacement. And that cohort ended up having problems. So those guys sued us. Like, we would never have any money left over. Even if we made 300K, we would spend 320K. My anxiety was at all time high. I basically told the team like for a month, I couldn't pay them. So a lot of the team members had to leave the left. And then that lawsuit ended up-- I was like dealing with-- I was going to pay the lawsuit. I was going to figure it out. I went and met Alex Ramose actually at that time. I did dinner with him in Laila. This was right before the blew up. So he made an Instagram story. I saw it. - I remember it was like 50K for dinner or something. Is that-- - No, he wasn't even charging at that time. This was right before he blew up. So he was actually not huge. He made a story. He's like three entrepreneurs that are making over a million a year. It was to have dinner tonight. And I was like, how can I have it tonight? He's in like-- He wasn't in Nevada, but he was-- - He wasn't in Texas. Wasn't in Austin. Austin, that's right. - I remember this post. - That's right. He said, I'm in Austin. And I was like, oh man, I can't go there. I'm in LA and it happens tonight. And so I was like, I give-- And then I saw one person booked it. He's like one person booked, you know? Then half an hour later, he's like two out of three booked. And I was like, damn. But I'm like, wait a minute. Look, fuck that. I'll figure out a way to go. And I was like, I could just take a flight. And I just message him, I'm like, dude, I have a business. It does over a million a year. Can I-- - He's like-- He put it on his story. He's like the third spot is filled. Like, you know? So he reserved it. And then I booked the flight. I ran and told Nas, I'm like, you don't fly to meet like Ramozy. And he didn't even know who he was. - Yeah. - It's like, oh cool. I flew right away. And then I met them. And Layla and Alex both gave me great advice. They said, refund the guys. They were supposed to be a 9-8-K refund. And he said they just did. They're like literally take out a loan or something from a bank, refund them. And I was like, we've already provided five months of service. And like, 12 hours a week. Like, why should we do this? And we were like, kind of standing strong. - Yeah. - Terrible idea, by the way. - Why? - Because so they started a lawsuit against us. Then when I went to our lawyers, the lawyers were like, not negotiating. And then what they did to put pressure on us is they leaked it to their like local news media. - Yeah. - The local news media covered it. - From their standpoint, obviously. - From their standpoint. And it was like really small channels. You know, those guys probably got like 100 views. - Yeah. - But what happened was I ended up seeing it. And so for me, it's like building up so much psychological pressure. I'm like the first time I'm on TV is like, they're literally calling me a scammer. They just have videos of me. And then they're showing impact statements from these guys. Like I ruined their lives. When last week, these guys were on a Zoom call with me, happily learning. - Yeah. - And these guys are like making these states. - That's crazy. - And I could not believe what is happening before my eyes. There were two people that deserved a refund. The other 10 just jumped in because they're like, oh, we can make our money. - Yeah. - And then what happened is YouTubers found it. They picked up this thing. And my own like colleagues that would make coding content alongside me, that never fucking recognized me. I did eight years of work in this industry. Like I have hundreds, I thousands of hours of YouTube content teaching you things like how to make Instagram in one video live, how to make Uber Eats in one video live, how to make Facebook, six hour long live streams. And these streams got like hundreds of thousands of views and people built so much. None of these guys ever commented like, oh, he helped me. - He helped me or like none of these guys said, oh, we're very proud of Cosy in this industry. My peers that were making coding content, that were big YouTubers, never even acknowledged that I existed. People that were my heroes, bro. Like I'm sure they're people who you're their hero in marketing. - Yeah. - Okay. And imagine you never acknowledged it to exist even if they're crushing it. But then when this saw this post, they all started covering. Oh, like I had a feeling that this guy is doing this stuff. - Crazy. - I'm like these guys were my heroes. What is happening? - And so those videos were getting like hundreds of thousands of views. Like it just went and turned into this viral thing. And so that pressure just became crazy for us. - Was it strong enough to end the business? - It wasn't strong enough to end the business. I pivoted and I actually, that was probably the hardest period of my life because I thought that I'm gonna go to jail or my life's gonna get destroyed. Then I learned that. - Like my reputation's gone forever. - My reputation's gone forever. And you know, like I woke up to a thumbnail, bro. And my friend sent me a friend. He's like, have you seen this video? It's a thumbnail of me wearing an orange jumpsuit of the prison fucking cell. - That's crazy. - And like so my anxiety just spikes so high. - Yeah, and you're young and like afraid of shit. - Yeah. And so I saw this and I was like, can't believe that this is happening. But we eventually just like, I figured it out. I tell these guys, you know, my lawyer was a dumbass too. He just kept instigating their lawyers. He kept causing a fight because it's an incentive for us to fight. So I told my lawyer like, I'm just gonna go, I went directly to the plaintiff's lawyers. Actually, I told them like, you guys are actually amazing. I'm like, I'd love to actually hire you guys after we do this. I even take a coffee because I'm like, you guys win. What does it take to end this today? I'm like, if we don't end it today, I'll fight you to the fucking death. Like, I'll take years on this shit because my reputation's already ruined. So I'm like, I don't care. So yeah, we went to the lawyers, handled the deal, paid the lawyers, ended up paying $300,000. The guy's only got $90,000. The refund those owed. Lawyers ended up making like 200 grand. That's crazy. And so they made so much money off of it. Seems like they deserved it honestly. Yeah, it means, yeah, they were working hard, tremendously hard. The smearing campaign was amazing. So at that point, we pivoted because we're like, this, I don't wanna do this bootcamp thing anymore. It's too much liability. Like, I don't wanna deal with this. So we, blockchain was going crazy in those days. It's 2021, something like that, who's going insane. So we started closing deals with like, one of our first companies was Salana. And we ended up doing a partnership with them to-- Procoding? Yeah, to educate people on their platform. So instead of charging our customers, we're like, why don't we go and do deals with these companies? So we closed-- So basically, it changes from coaching to media. Exactly. Like, hey, we give you-- Let's just have these guys sponsor us. Exactly. People were so happy. Because people are like, oh, these guys are not charging anything for this insane content, free content that we're just putting out. But then we're closing like a half a million dollar deal with like one company, a $300,000 deal with another company. That ended up being actually our most profitable year, a clever programmer. But ultimately, like me and my co-founder, NOS. NOS actually helped me build ClareProgram. Yeah. He worked closely with me. But eventually we were like, you know what? This is great. But we are software developers. Let's actually build a software company. And so we ended up shutting that company down. We ended up like, we broke up with our girlfriends. We ended up moving to San Francisco. And we're just like, let's just go all in and build a company from scratch. So was the first one you actually built? Was it Poppy? Like as a software company. Yeah. Poppy was our first software company. But it wasn't called Poppy. It was called something else. It was called Poppy started last year. Oh, okay. Yeah. Sorry. Okay. Okay. I heard 2021. So in my head, I'm like, okay, I see what you're saying. Yeah. We, I did clever programmer until like 2023, or whatever. It's almost 2024. And then by then AI started becoming like a thing, right? AI was becoming an AI. I started becoming a thing and became more mainstream. More and became exactly. We became more mainstream. And we were, for us, it was just like, dude, we want to build a software company. We just don't want to do this much anymore. Like teaching is great. But it's like a fighter, you know, like a, if you're a fighting coach, most of the fighting coaches are like out of shape and whatever, because they're not fighting. But ultimately their dream is like to fight kind of. That's why they live through the other fighters. And so for us, it was like that. We were becoming like the overshaped like out of shape coaches, teaching developers. But we're like, let's actually put our money where our mouth is and like build something ourselves. So why, why do you build Poppy? Like what was the solution that you were solving for essentially? So we built Poppy because, you know, we needed, I needed something for content creators that could help me personally. Because one person Cliff Whitesman, he runs Speechify and they have hundreds of millions of users. One thing I learned from him was amazing. And he basically told us, forget about product market fit. Work on product founder fit. So build something that you actually use for yourself. So Poppy happened because I had, you know, copywriting problems with my own, like I would have these YouTube videos. And I would try to tell copywriters to just turn them into copy and then we can email them. But they would always do some weird shit. And I'm like, what are you guys like messing up? Yeah, yeah. And so initially it was a copywriting tool. And it was very helpful for me and we gave it out to a bunch of like our close friends who were YouTubers. They loved it and we're using it. So started as a solution for copywriters. It kind of eventually pivoted into for content creators because this, this amount of people who were using it for content was way more than the people that were using it for copy. Yeah. And so we started, we now just lean hard on that angle. We don't even say ever for copywriting anymore. Yeah. We just said it's for content creators. And at this point, our goal is to help a million content creators like and business owners, like Bill generational wealth with, with AI. Because you have content creators that know how to make content, but they don't know how to make money with it. Yeah. Then you have the business owners that don't really know how to make content that well. They're very good at ads. They're good at other things, but they're not good at content. So this tool is really designed to, to solve that problem to like marry those two. And so a lot of our people are like business owner type of people that have courses and things like that. So you know, I'm sure you know, Aiden Ross. Yeah. So those type of streamers or like maybe even your brother, like ARAB who streams, Poppy is not really a good tool for, for some of them, I would say. Like maybe it's not good for Aiden, but I'm thinking about it. It would be good for your brother because he does these big research things. And put some together. Poppy would be unbelievable for helping him put all his research together. Like it'd be a great tool for Johnny Harris, for example. But for a lot of streamers and stuff, it's not who it is really good for is somebody who has a course or a product or a service and they want to use content to sell. This is like perfect because most streamers don't even have the money or most like regular content creators. Only have the money to buy a $400 a year AI product. Yeah. So that demographic of like early up doll people like Vanessa Lau, people like Matt Gray, they love it. And then you know, Trent, you're here. You're using it as a marketer. And for people who are marketers, yeah, how are you using it for clients? So for us, it was like, like we kind of talked about earlier, is the disconnect from what they see is like, this is right to like, how do we turn this into action? Right. And so for us, you have multiple pieces of the puzzle on the R&D. You've got the media bar, you've got the strategist, you got the landing page builder, you got the person that does go high level. Yeah. And what we typically found in the beginning is that either A, it's me manually going in doing these and trying to use my thought process, but time was my biggest constraint. And so what I found out is I can build it all from start to finish all at one run and everything will be cohesive. So for our ads, for example, one of the biggest and this is like true to this day, you could have a banger creative, fantastic creative. If your copy doesn't speak to that offer to that creative, still underperforms. Yeah. And on the same way as the landing page to say you have a really, really high CTR on your video, they get to the landing page and then it just dies. You're like, I don't understand. I had a fantastic video. We're getting really good results data wise on meta. Why are we getting this disconnect? And a lot of times is because the copy didn't really speak to that specific offer. So so you have a really great offer. The video is great. The copy is great. Well, then guess what? That copy still has to be connected into the landing page the same way, the same verbage the way we're putting it out there, the emotional side behind it. And what we typically did at the beginning is we had like a what we call like a template style offer. So like say you come in for one service, we already have a template and unbalanced for that landing page. And then all like I was telling you guys the dev would do is you'd go into the client's website to find out the information about the client. So you'd go in and say, you know, here's their about section. Takes a man from that. Here's their services section takes a man from that. Yeah. But what was what I was finding was that each part of the process has some variances. So the strategist has one idea. She doesn't actually write that part of it down. She just hasn't her head. Yeah. So she writes down a couple of things. Yeah. It goes on to the next person. She skips on one of the coolest things in her brain conceptualized because she didn't have time to do it. Yeah. Goes the next person. That same thing happens. They get 75% of it. Miscalculable things and like I told you so it started 100% at me. And then as it went down the chain of command to these different people. Yeah. By the end the variances were huge. So it's like, oh, it's only 5% here. But if you keep doing that over time, the last person is like, you look at this. You're like, did you even look at the video? I got confused. Where is this going to go? I wrote you the. And so for Poppy for me, it was, how can I take not just giving one thing? So I chat to you. We'd go and be like, oh, we're going to get just the copy. Yeah. I'd have to come back and be like, all right, well, I got to get on another call and teach the guy how to shoot this the way that I want him to. Yeah. Then I have to get on another call with the media bar and make sure that she understands what's important for this and what's not. Yeah. So all of those things was time, time, time, time. Has Poppy helped your clients generate any revenue yet or not yet? Oh, bro. 100% 100%. The email and like, I'm not even kidding you. The email and SMS side alone. Uh huh. Right now. And this is across. I've probably sent out about 50 different batches. Yeah. So these are just reactivation. So we're not even diving into like the day to day. We're talking just sending out to a mass group of people. Yeah. My lowest return on an email and the with the, I would say the maximum amount of clients that I've sent so far is about 15,000 people to kind of give you perspective. Got it. The average client we send about two to three thousand SMS email at the same time. Yeah. The lowest return that I've gotten is $22,000 off of a single set. Uh huh. One text message. One email to one client or to one lead. That's incredible. In the craziest part. So this is what we were talking about. Yeah. Now every client that comes on as part of like our onboarding, I pray that they have a CSV because when they do before the ads literally even go live, they're making money. Yeah. And they don't understand it. They're like, what just happened? Like why? Well, we'll have people that will come in the office CSV. They'll have leads from four plus years ago. Uh huh. We put them into that go high level. I create the campaign just like literally basic, you know, email SMS single message. Yeah. So that's how the guys ads are not even published yet. The editors are still working on the background. That's right. And he's like already closing leads. So imagine you pay a, you know, a marketing company. And for some of these guys, the price is daunting. Like you, like what we talked about earlier, some of them are maybe one or two people that work at a business. Yeah. So they come in and they say, oh, I see the retainer. Then I know I have to commit to this ad spin. Like it could be on the low end $4,000 in my month. Yeah. Imagine you come in on day one, you've made 15 grand, 20 grand. You're never leaving them. You're like, these guys just maybe 20 grand in a day. I've never had that. And like a lot of them literally have never had that happen in their business ever. Yeah. So that's how I'm using it for the copy side of it. I'm like, wrote the amount of copy that I can put out today. It's like almost crazy because like I feel like my team like almost doesn't believe how fast I can get it done. Yeah. They're like, hey, we have, you know, what just, what are they counting out of jumps and hey, I just talked to him. Here's his offer. I'm like, cool, write it down. Give me all the details. Send it over to me. I'm like, you know, now where I come back to him and I'm like, here's 60 different copy versions. Here's your shot list. Here's five different videos that you're going to be shooting. Here's the different. Oh, that's incredible. And he's got it all back to him and then we send it back to the client, you know, two hours later and he's like, oh, I didn't know you are like that. So the Emo SMS on has been killer without it out. That's where my money, the most money has been made. And you found that consistently true or 60% of it is coming from email and like about 40% is coming from SMS. 100%. And let me preface that by saying before this happened, we rarely send emails. Interesting. From my understanding. So you actually opened up a. Bigger bucket of revenue because the email is like bringing it's not you. No, no, no of my clients broke right now It's kind of mind blowing that email still works like in today. It's extremely well. It's insane Do one of our I'd say it Craig me from wrong heading one of our best departments Probably entire company other than info is in there's email. Oh, they just call sure Like the numbers that we so we do like a monthly call stand-up call with everybody like entire company LTV's like years. Yeah, I always hope that I don't go after them Right, so like each each department comes in at the once a month entire entire company comes together Yeah, and the the head of each department comes forward what we called up Right, so it's like let me celebrate this one win that our department has always hope that I don't come after email Because their email is just like they're killing their wins are like it's so part of so part of what I did from that Like I keep seeing them winning our client base you if you literally go ask my clients like hey, what do you do for email? They're like we don't yeah, like that's the answer. They don't do it at all if it's not automated They're not touching it and even if it is automated They do the one and they never manually stepping again. Yeah, like even on beyond that they wouldn't even respond to people even if they did email Uh-huh, so I'm looking at their returns and I'm like wait what they're making that kind of money off an email like Well, this actually work for us and so we again then I started doing these bus so then I did one I'm like okay 15k that's a win second one 20k That's a win and we kept doing it kept doing it kept doing it finally I've got into the point now where it's like The guys come to me they're like hey, we got whatever holiday is I've already built out probably like the next 20 different major holidays I already have templates for the team. Oh that's it and then all they do is go in and they just input the details of like it also like have like a little holder like offer here Oh That's interesting. Whatever it is here Yeah, so they can just go in and we can get these things out instead of now so your team is using like click up to do this or they're using okay So I built the template give it over to them and click up here's the Halloween template that we're running and then all they do now Is reach out the client half already got everything written for you. I just need the offer Wow, so he gives them the offer who comes back to the dev they already have everything else they need we have it set up within 20 30 minutes and go I love that's genius So I can just so rinse and repeat really fast, but still keep the branding of a business That's the key thing that was like what do you find when people work with you guys do you find that they eventually like They do it for three to six months and then they build an internal team or do they like Work with you guys and just like ever different. Yeah, they're all different. Okay Some people think like working with a marketing agency is a temporary solution or Less effective than someone full-time because of hours what they don't realize is like resources and skill is just significantly higher so like Why do I have to put 40 hours into your business if I could do in 10 what someone else doesn't 40? You don't I mean so that's true and so they have this misconception so some positions they try to hire in house, but then They realize for the price of their paying the agency. They're getting much more skill Then what they have I mean like I'll give you an example email team, right? If you're to hire a full-time email person your company, let's just call it six seven grand a month, right? Then you have to hire a designer because he can't design but he's really good at planning emails and tech So like then you get a designer then you get then you get then you get and then you also have to manage them Yeah, or you pay an agency Seven came on they do a significantly better job. They way more resources they've a full team of six seven people on your account They can do every problem fixed deliverability. Yeah, whatever the case is right so I think the smarter business owners who can afford to Outsource things like that because it's not necessary to have full-time employees You know, but I think the ones who like are a little bit more novice What did you say so would you say like it also depends on the agency, right because I of course That's like saying employee though. It's like it depends on the employee. It's the same thing right true assuming things are going well Yeah, we still have people who We're doing amazing for and they're like all I'm gonna try to do it in house for myself because they're trying to save like a thousand dollars And then the probably will just come back or something. Yeah, and I mean some of them leave access to their accounts and we see the revenue drop But we that we had a client fire us like four months ago because they brought in a new chief growth officer revenue officer whatever and like He wasn't doing his job. So it's easiest scapegoat is like the marketing company sucks So he fires us and I watched their revenue on the screen go from four and a half million a month to 1.3 million a month Four and a half million a month. Yeah to 1.3 in 60 days Well, what was their industry? I can't say I'm not gonna say just yeah, but like You know think about that for what because he was paying us a bonus that was coming out of our entire retainer for him was maybe 35k a month And we're doing a bunch of shit But like think about the loss of three million dollars a month is 1% that's a lot you don't I mean I know what he was making so yeah, you know sometimes the decisions don't go in their favor and But if someone respectfully breaks up with us like we'll always take him back like you guys should have a reactivation campaign for everybody who's revenue drops after the stop If it drops, we can track it. Hey Well, I'm thinking about you. Yeah, yeah, I mean sometimes it works out sometimes they get people on again Like I don't want anyone to fail. They have employees. They have all these things like I never want someone to fail You don't I mean but like if you're if you're disrespectful to us when you leave and you do it in a super shady way and like It's just not the right way to do it You don't want to take it right, yeah, you know what I mean But like if you do like I tell my clients I'm like well if it doesn't work out We're still in business whenever you're done. So you know, we're here. So sometimes prices go up. That's just business You don't I mean but overall yeah, so I mean popies helping you out right? I told you I really get to the end by like the 18th 20th of every month. I'm like I start getting a little like I got a rash in these I got a rash in my credit's out like what's really the highest value? What's the thing that I can move like the most because You're on the regular plan. Okay, okay, wow yeah, that you're getting a lot done The regular plan that's not told you I've had to like work it backwards the biggest thing that's changed for me though It's like I'll do the same thing wrong kid instead of giving a 30 minute video Oh one thing that like maybe I'm different than a lot of the people because I have seen that other people did just go and add like Whatever like they type in like how to run ads and then they just find like the top 10 most new videos and they drag it in Yes, I watch everything. I want to make sure that like it's actually value for this thing Right, and then what I'll do is when I go into poppy. I'll pull it and be like hey Just take minutes three to eight. That's the most important for thing for you to focus So I'm not having a 30 minute video using more credits I'm literally just taking the most valuable pieces of that video for it to learn from but for like content creation For our clients in general bro the the ability for me to not have to sit there every single time because Ultimately would always come back to me it never failed. I'm a very creative person I love to make videos like even though it's not my job. I just enjoy doing it Uh-huh, so I was super picky like the editors hated it when I was doing their reviews because like they're coming in like There's a glyph here, you know, I catch like the smallest thing. I like but no one's gonna see that like yeah I saw it fix it, you know It's just how I am so for me to be able to go into a client who has no idea how to do this like imagine You're literally talking to someone who has never held a camera before in their life Yeah, and you have to get them to not only just record something But record something that's gonna make them money and ultimately their ability to do that impacts me like the business owners Right. Yeah, that's very shitty video. It doesn't matter how good of a marketer Yes, I am it I can put as much money behind it as possible So I can give them everything literally I'll give you a prime example of this. Okay. I have obviously went on in Canada I have a client in Canada in Toronto and I go in and the first thing I did same thing we talked about the the prompwriter board built him his own board From there I did not give it any information other than just like here's where he's located, okay? I went in and started pulling pain points his specific services paint protection film So it's film that you put on the car stops it from rock chips, you know that kind of stuff Got it. Mm-hmm. Right, I'll hold I got a ton of scripts for this guy I haven't even had a chance to review them yet One of my account managers picks it up sees that I'm done with it Didn't come in a check in with me and sends him over interesting. I'm like I didn't get a chance to read them real Because they're right the guy calls me and he's like bro. How do you know what the QEW is? I'm like what? It's like the QEW I'm like looking. I don't know what that is bro And he's like you wrote the copy for it and I was like what is it? And he's like bro It's the like most busy road near us. He's like I cannot believe that you like thought to know the name of the road And I was like that's a just certain yeah It's poppy. Yeah, but it literally was picking up so all I did was essentially give it like the locations Yeah, here's your highest earning places in the city. Yeah, and then from there it picked out places in the city Do that this is we'll talk about or drive down so like for example here we have interstate 75 if you know 75 Everyone in Atlanta knows 75 75 and 285 are like the worst places you want to be in a car Especially during like business time like you know, you're seven to nine o'clock and then again like four to six right it's hell That's the same type of road where he's at so what it was calling out was like these different things so like the business district I don't know anything about Toronto's business district It was calling out the roads bro that people or that's right there cars on the shop. It's like hyper-specific copy 100% you needed video was doing it too so like Because those are the type of videos or even if they get less views they'll get much higher conversion People are like Where the biggest junk? This is a thing I love $15 lead, but that $15 lead a week ago was just a general lead This one is super educated and it's coming from a super niche type of place So it's like that guy that goes to the business center that goes to this one tech area. He's the one that's jumping into it So his average client, his average ticket, all of it starts going up. No, it's not just like he's getting a ton more leads. The lead count is about the same, but the actual quality of that person is significantly different. Yeah. It's because it's speaking to that person instead of just generally saying like, hey, do you want to buy this? It's like, let me call you out on literally. I know where you're driving. And then they see that and they're like, I'm literally on the road getting called out on this thing. Yes. It's going to answer more. Like it's going to get a way higher response rate. Yeah. This is the thing like I feel, I mean, when you're saying this, it's very exciting for me. Because the thing I find fascinating about product and a software, because I never could get this type of thing with the info product. You're, you've done also a lot of info product. And you can share your thoughts on it too. It's just like, for me, when I was teaching people courses, it's hard to get that big breakthrough moment for them. Or it takes longer and it's also for a small set of people, because it depends so much on them. Whereas a software can just do it for you. Like for example, how you just made the scripts for this client and he's so happy and he finds these scripts to be so hyper specific. That's the thing I've really found to be exciting about a product. I don't have to, people can just see the results for themselves. It's almost like giving somebody a car or something. Yeah. I mean, I first started using an march and for all our emails, via sales, funnel copy, and makes the entire process just so much easier. Because we don't have to go and manually write all these emails or go even just like webinar presentations, like having to be able to whip up all the copy for 400 slide presentations instead of having to go and spend four days going through that process. Just so much more. I've been using it recently for our case studies. I'll have a video call with the client and we'll cover all the things from the beginning. Where did we start? It's just using phantom to record. Yeah. I'm going to go back in and say I'm going to use, I think it's Gamma AI to use the presentation. Yeah. I'm using Gamma AI. We're launching, we have a beta version of it behind the scenes, but we have integration with Gamma as well. We're working on real-time. That's right. I'm using it disconnected, but give it the whole video and then essentially make sure that it knows. One of the most important main points that the next person needs to understand and it writes every bit of it for my presentation. Then all I'm literally doing is just, it writes the code. Oh, that's the thing. I'm just going to Gamma. Copy and paste the code. It makes the exact thing and then all I'm doing is just putting assets for whatever he's talking about in there. That's amazing. So I can knock out 15, 20 slides of detailed information of where he started, where he's at now, what are the problems that he came up with? Do you know Cleo Abram? So she does podcasts with really massive people. So she had Sam Altman, she had Mark Zuckerberg, whatever, Nvidia's guy. And then she has a couple of, so we ended up our marketing. He's our affiliate partnership manager. His name is Amanat. He's a genius, the one you were speaking with. So he's getting the biggest way we're growing poppy is actually through affiliate marketing. I was going to ask you next thing like how you guys actually growing the software right now. Yeah, so 80, 70 to 80 percent of the growth is from affiliate marketing and then other 20 percent is word of mouth. So for example, how one of your clients shared it with you and then Amanda found out about it from you. That's our biggest growth. We tried so many different strategies. Like at the start, poppy was just not growing at all. Like last year in May, we did like $500 in an entire month. Yeah. And then a few months later, we had a TikTok of this one girl talking about our product, TikTok. And now one TikTok in two weeks made us $150,000 in revenue. So like, Nas and I was crazy. Yeah, we were going crazy. Like we could not believe it. We're in a tiny apartment and we're like, we're like a two months away from probably going bankrupt. And Nas and I were talking about like whose parents basement are we going to go and like, we're going to go and like, where's goes to worse? Well, just we loved it so much. You know, we're like, it's okay. We'll just build from somebody's house. Luckily, this TikTok, like we were going after this affiliate approach because we had heard stories about other software companies like take off. This just goes crazy. We just see $97, $97 sales after sale. And it was like clockwork. Every 100,000 views. We would make $10,000. When she had 200,000 views, we made $20,000. She had 300,000 views, $30,000. It's the same TikTok. That TikTok grows to a million views. We've made $100,000. It ended up growing to 1.5 million views. And we make 150. So that blows up. And then we start repeating that process. Like other, we start getting a bunch of other affiliates and reaching out to them. And then they start making videos on Poppy. And on YouTube, it's even crazier. YouTube is like $1 equals one view. So meaning if a thousand, if we get a thousand, somebody makes a video for us and it gets a thousand views, we make a thousand dollars. We had Jason Cooperson. He made a video. He did 80,000 views. We made 80,000 dollars. It's recurring revenue, right? And yes, recurring. Recurring. Yes, annual. Exactly. It's all annual recurring. Okay. Correct. Plus credits. If somebody wants to buy an upgrade, they can upgrade. So we have higher plans. They give you more stuff. So like one of the plans gives you landing page access. But then it's like higher. And what's different, how we did our software is like everybody does this monthly stuff or free trials. We just stayed away from that. We just charge you annual. So it funds us a lot. And we don't need to rely on investors. Yeah. We have had a bunch of people like, you know, come to invest like Eman. God, he had a call with our team. And they were like interested. But like we just love how we're growing it. We want it to be, well, I mean, we really, I feel like even if we fuck up and do the dumbest things ever, if we just do this for the next 10 years, which we will like, I find it almost impossible to believe it won't be a billion dollar company. Yeah. There's 200 million creators. We have 7,000 creators. So we just have to get better at marketing it, which is why we got so er, he's a genius. I mean, he's 21 and he was making, he's making 100 grand a month like with his clients doing marketing and he ended up picking us and like working with us as well. And like already we're building out the sales team because what we see is like the next big step. We're now at 500,000, consistently. Nice. And that's recurring. And then how's it recurring of its annual? Can you explain that to me? So what's funny is I realized after one year, annual becomes actually like MRR, because after the first entire year, everyone renews every month. Right. It's like the January news and the February news. But when, sorry, when I'm saying 500k, I'm using it a little loosely because we're getting new customers and we're making 500,000 a month from new customers. Oh, okay, okay. Right now. That's huge. Yes. And those annual bills are about to recur. Like the big ones because now it's November and around this time our things started picking up. So we're now starting to get the previous payment. So like for example, in the next few months, our recurring will go up to like just pure recurring will go up to like 200, care 300, care months. Nice. And people already a year ago, you were almost bankrupt. Like that's what that's like. We were almost the swing. This is the craziest swing we've ever had. Like for this company to go, you know, the previous company, I took eight years to get it to one point something million a year. Yeah. This company is already like five to six million a year. Also has a valuation at this point. Like I'm 100% sure because of that a bunch of people in similar niches that were pre-money raised like 30 million or 50 million. So I just doubt that this company is already not going to have a valuation of like 50 million. Yeah. I know probably everybody says that about their company. No, it makes sense. I mean, 10X, 10X, we're having a software like makes sense. Yeah. So there's sparkle, some little AI terminal. It is AI. Poppy, you know, there you go. 20X multiple. But regardless, we're not planning to sell anytime soon. Like we just want to keep growing this thing. So our next, the next big vision is to build a sales team. High ticket because a lot of our affiliate deals. Let's say we paid early up doll or somebody. Let's just use random people. Like we paid them 10K. They made us 10K back because they promoted the product. We break even. But if you have a sales team closing high ticket, now from that one deal, we're making 20 or 30 grand on the back end. So a high ticket sales unlocks growth on affiliate marketing for us and cold ads. And so that's our sprint that we're currently doing. Yes. So you've been helping us with that a lot. Yeah, we're, we're, we have like a 30 day challenge. We're trying to collect $100,000 in the, in the 30 days. We, we built out the sales team. Finalize it. I would say about two weeks ago. We're six days into the challenge and we've done around 60 grand. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. So I'm hoping to, you know, crush that goal for sure. Sounds like you're going to crush it just fine. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm just thinking in 60 and think you're, yeah. We're, we're, we're going to, yeah, we're going to. Yeah. But yeah, and then post that kind of like really going hard on the ads because I think that's going to be one of the biggest leverage tools that's going to get this to. I was going to say I haven't actually ever had a single ad come across from you guys. That's interesting. That one. We had a lot of ads running. Now we have, is basically stop the ads. Because until we make the high ticket thing work, I don't want to put more money into marketing. But then, so as soon as this works, LTV is going to go from like RLTV right now in average is $500. Once our high ticket is working, I think it's going to be like $2,000. We're going to like four X or three X. I think that's going to two or three XD enterprise value of the company as well. Like if it's worth $50 million right now, I think after we have a solid backend engine, which in the next three to six months we're gonna have is gonna be crushing it I think it'll be worth like a hundred and fifty million dollars um, and then we're just gonna go really hard on affiliate and cold ads Shouldn't you still raise a little money just to pin evaluation? I would love to learn all that stuff because I'll be honest. I'm like a dumb kid. Yeah, cuz here's how to look at it So like let's just say you know, you think it's worth whatever 150 right? It's all subjective. Okay. Yeah Everyone everyone has a different reason to value or devalue your business, right? Yes, but as soon as someone puts up 15 million dollars for 10% of the business the business is now worth 150 million All right, you know saying it's like everyone Picks how much they want to pay for a house until someone pays for the house now that house is worth that much right You know what I'm saying? Yes until the house is actually sold. It's not ever worth that much It's just a speculation So same for you like if if you give up 10% to get 15 million or 10 million or whatever that valuation is at the time Now you've pinned the overall valuation of the company at 150 The downside is if you do with a private equity firm They want a 4x return minimum. So if you raise out 100 million They basically won't let you sell until 400. Yes, so that's the downside. So like Play it wisely, but I say if you're worth 50 you get to 100 You can sell 5 10% of this business just to pin it at we're worth a hundred million. Yeah, I mean you said you want to get to a billion right? So like I think that's like a very important first step. Otherwise It's all speculation right something happens in the future business goes down Now maybe you're worth 20 to someone because you decline right but hey our last valuation was at 110 So we're not gonna raise any money or sell for anything anywhere below that right you get them saying I would love to hear your thoughts on this. So we're very torn with talk to a couple of founders that are like Oh, you know, it doesn't they have Billinners on their board that have invested. Yeah, but then I feel like those guys are not interested in the product at all Because they just have so much money. They just invest and that's kind of it. Yeah, our belief is that The people that should invest to really like believe in the product 100% So but it's also not that necessary right? So like everyone has a different seat Yes, he's a marketing guy for example. Yeah, is he gonna go get you investors? Probably no You know what I mean? So everyone has a different seat. I don't need to necessarily use your product or love your product To be on the board because maybe my job on the board example is to Go connect us with big firms that are gonna eventually be the people that buy us. Yes, right? So like I'm my job's to prep us for an exit. I don't really care what poppy does to be honest You don't I mean I know what the numbers are who the buyers should be and that's my seat in the company You get them saying so to an extent what you're saying. Yes, true. You want someone to obviously believe in it right? Yeah, that's step one But like two they don't need to be like Users are super passionate about it like you guys are they're seat and roll might be different. You know what I mean So okay, so without how I was looking at investment is I'm like we don't technically need the money because we're growing it Profitably, I mean sometimes we're breaking even I'll be honest like on 300 400 thousand months sometimes we're breaking I get it but bro at the end of the day like You always want to get money when you don't need money It's it's a very important outlook because you're you're playing much different when you need money You're you're playing from a point of desperation. I need this money to make this happen Okay, I'll let you sell for last year willing to do all these things when you don't need the money Is the best time to take the money because everyone will give you the money Mm, and you don't need it so you could back we're pricing it up fucking 110 Take it or leave it. We don't need your money. We're fine. We're self-sustainable. We're gonna keep growing But if you want to invest So then we can do good deals as well. We're not desperate now I wanted to ask you this like your thoughts on raising for just purely capital versus and if you have to cut me off It's fine. Just let me know versus like distribution, you know, so for example Doing a deal with somebody like diary of CEO or those types of people. I've heard conflicting advice on it Some are like forget that go to a billionaire. They'll cut you a big check or they'll know like other billionaires or whatever like Versus my thought processes if we partner with creators That would be really interesting because then it's not just that they're giving us money, but they're literally unlocking huge distribution Um How do you think about those types of things? Yeah, I mean We should take this offline so you can get much deeper and get more private with your info and stuff But um from my perspective like you can work out deals with okay, so like the creators aren't gonna be the best people Who we're gonna give you money? It's gonna be the people who have money. Okay, the creators are gonna be the people who can bring you traffic revenue So you can incentivize them with some sort of equity rollout based on Revenue they've generated compared to revenue of the company or whatever it is you can incentivize them differently to be a partner Have seats or whatever the case is but you want the people who have a ton of money who just It's nothing to them the upside is what's important to them Yeah, whereas a creator will come in and you're probably might need a pull teeth to get a hundred grand from him You know what I mean? Yeah, whereas someone else might come and just give you five million dollars because he thinks his five is gonna be worth 50 and five years You know what I mean? So those are the like different people different roles You know what I mean? And like in your case, you're not raising money for marketing Yeah, where we're we would raise for Development and product. Yeah, so like you so a creator can't really solve that problem for you that makes sense So like I've been in companies where like oh, why are we raising five million dollars? Oh because we need to run ads and get users okay? Well instead of five million dollars, why don't we just go give Creators equity of the same portion based on them generating revenue and results for us And then we don't need the five million dollars and we should go get creators who can generate us way more than five million and we value it at less And now we give that same equity So I wanted to ask this right like sometimes I feel like you can raise for Just to raise and have the money, but I feel I mean, I've heard different people's opinions I don't know what the right answer is, but I feel like I want to have a very clear reason for what we're raising for And then raise because I'll tell you this right now the biggest bottleneck is my And nauseous skill of like the ability to hire more talent. Yeah, good talent quickly So then even if we have money the problem is like we have one one million something In the bank right now. Yeah, well, we even have trouble spending that because It's like we have to find the right talent to spend it on yeah, and so then I'm thinking okay Well, how does that change if we have 15 million in the bank like we won't go any faster because we're still bottlenecked by Our own ability to hire talent fast enough. Yeah Let's take it off line perfect. All right. Let's go to lunch. This is a good time to end it But hey for everyone listening, you know, if you guys are in the marketing space if you're in the content space if you're in Any of these if you own a business pop AI great software to use links down below Look these guys up. They're gonna keep developing on the product our team loves them They're probably the number one AI software we use outside of like a chat gbt Which is just you know common normal day-to-day work Thank you so much guys for flying in for the podcast and excited to keep building this relationship together Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it if you guys also want to work with us Look like a lot. Thank you guys Thanks so much for watching another episode of the bad marketing podcast I hope you got immense value from it And if you did all we ask of you is that you share this with a friend that you think could find this very valuable And depending on the platform that you're watching or listening to this on Please like subscribe or rate the podcast as best as possible. It really means a lot to us We pour so much money time and effort into getting these guests here filming all this editing it All for free just to give you free value and all we ask in return is that you just share this with people You give it a positive review So that we can continue to reach more people and impact more lives with all this effort that we're putting in with that being said Thanks so much for tuning in to the episode and I look forward to continue to provide you more valuable content moving forward on the bad marketing Podcast to make sure you subscribe