How to Build a $25M+ Business Without Raising a Dime (Jesse Pujji’s Playbook) - The Shopify Growth Show (#14)
But the number one thing I took away was hire incredible talent and train them and make sure you have a system for how they work that that works, that you can repeat it multiple times over. And I used to at Ambush in the early days, I would say, we gotta build our McDonald's franchise. And as soon as we were able to do that, that's how you know, we scaled Ampush in from 3,000,000 in revenue to 24,000,000 in revenue in less than three years.
Speaker 2:Dude, that's a hating. Mass agency, man. That's amazing. Hi. I'm Jim Hoffman, and welcome to the Shopify Growth Show, where we dive into what's actually working to scale Shopify brands.
Speaker 2:Each episode, I talk to founders who've grown from idea to 7 or 8 figures, plus experts who share what's driving real results. And we're in the game too, pulling back the curtain to show what's really working. I hope you enjoy today's episode. Today on the podcast, I have one of my favorite Twitter follows or ex follows, Jesse Puji. The dude is super impressive.
Speaker 2:He is the CEO of Gateway Ventures. It's his own kind of fun startup studio that he's done, But his background is very impressive. He started on Wall Street, worked at Goldman Sachs, but he launched a Facebook ad agency in the early days. Got over 25,000,000 in sales, sold part of it. And from that, he started bootstrapping and making his own companies.
Speaker 2:He has Growth Assistant, which is essentially a productized service HR placement company for growth marketers that's hit 8 figures. He has his own D2C startup called Unbloat that's a subscription product for people around gut health. That's doing over 3,000,000. He just launched a SaaS called Kahani for Shopify users that essentially takes the Stories feature you use on Instagram and puts that on your website to make a really unique landing page experience. So how the heck has he pulled all of this off?
Speaker 2:That's what I was trying to get the cheat code on. We talk about what makes a good bootstrap company, how to find your zone of genius, know what you should focus on versus what you should hire for, and the startups he's launched that have failed, the mistakes he's made when trying to launch multiple companies or trying to find the right bootstrapped company. And he's super open and honest about the playbook, what has worked, what has not worked. I try and get all the lessons out of him. But it's a really fun episode to see how someone's grown a lot of businesses in kind of a nontraditional way without outside funding.
Speaker 2:And he even talks about how much money he's putting into each project to test. And then he talks about what he's launching next, this idea of bootstrap giants, and the content kind of media company that's 's coming out. But really hope you enjoyed this episode with Jesse. I did to get into it. So, Jesse, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1:Thanks for having me on. It's a it's a pleasure, Jim.
Speaker 2:So, we're just gonna cut to I read a thing whenever you interview somebody, start with the question you want answered first. We're just gonna go with that. You're coming out with content around this concept of bootstrap giants. And, like, you know how people have trigger words, like good or bad? Like, bootstrap business owner is always a trigger word for me in a good way where I'm like, I'm sold.
Speaker 2:Like that name alone, I'm super jealous. I love the kind of oxymorons opposing things. So well done there. But let's just, like, come off the top rope. What does a bootstrap business even mean?
Speaker 2:Because some people are like, Oh, does that mean self funded? Or it grows organically? How do you define a bootstrap business versus what are even the other options for starting a business?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Well, let let's jump into Bootstrap Giants, you know, as a thing. I think where it came from for me is the typical narrative. Like, I see it the the most common narrative out there is there's two options if you wanna start a business.
Speaker 1:The first is, I think, the most well worn, at least for people kind of from my background, which is, hey. Go start a venture funded business. And, you know, you you can raise you can raise money. You can raise seed money, pre seed money. You know, the pre seed is 500 k out of 5,000,000, and then you get to the 15, and it's this, like, worn path, and there's people who will do your decks for you.
Speaker 1:And it's it's this, like it's almost like you take the kids who went to college. You know, I went to an Ivy League college, and then you went into consulting and then investment banking, you know, and then private like, and it's almost like the same steps in in in in VC. And and I'm not I'm not trying to be super negative on it. I think there's just it's a very well worn path. And by the way, we can talk about this.
Speaker 1:I think it's I think it's right for lots of types of businesses and lots of types of bets that people are making. So I think it can be the right option for a lot. But it it's that's one narrative that's very well worn. The other narrative is, the four hour work week narrative, which is, hey. I'm gonna like, a lifestyle business.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna make some money, and I'm gonna do what I want. And there's also a lot there's books written literally, there's a book written, right, called four hour workweek. And then I think there's this other category that, frankly, I think most businesses in history have been, and I think a lot of businesses are, which is, hey. I'm I'm building a business off my own profits. I wanna be in charge.
Speaker 1:I don't necessarily wanna sign up for a board. I wanna I wanna be the person running the company, making the decisions, driving it. I wanna be able to control my destiny and and, you know, be the owner. But I'm as ambitious as anyone else. I I want it to be a huge business.
Speaker 1:I want it to be make lots of money. I want it to to be really amazing and change an industry and all those things. And I think that is what I sort of defined as a bootstrap giant. And I think the thing I observed was there are not as many materials, conversations, content out there for the founder who's on that path. And and so that's sort of what the, know, the unserved market, if you will, in the case of Bootstrap Giants that I'm trying to build around, which is, hey.
Speaker 1:I think there's this and and look. There's a lot of the principles. Some of my favorite content on the Internet is Paul Graham's letters. So there's a lot in the Venn diagram of how to start a company and grow it. There's a lot of stuff that's the same no matter what, whether regardless of how you're financed.
Speaker 1:Right? But I think there's a lot of nuances to bootstrapping a business. So that's kind of the concept of bootstrap giants. You know, what is bootstrapping? Look.
Speaker 1:I, you know, I don't know. I'm sure there's a million definitions. There's you could go with a very extreme binary definition, which is, look. I never raised a dime of outside money from a single person. I think that's probably the most obvious extreme answer.
Speaker 1:I I just never raised any money from anyone. I started myself, and I just kept going. There's this really funny book I read the other day about the famous banana man. Have you heard the story?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. Absolutely. What's did you listen to the founder podcast? I feel like that's when I heard about it,
Speaker 1:but not No. Someone just told me to read it, and the guy starts the business. I won't go to the whole story. It's a great book. I can't remember what it's called, but it's something about the famous banana guys who like But this guy, he goes to the docks of Louisiana, and he basically, in the banana business, if you get a shipment of bananas and any of them are ripe, they have to throw them off of the shipment because every banana has the same genetic makeup.
Speaker 1:They're all clones of each other. So if one gets ripe, the rest of them get ripe really fast. Well, if a bunch of bananas get ripe while in shipping, they all go bad they all go bad essentially by the time they're on the retail. So they would land at the docks in Louisiana, and anything that was yellow, they'd go around and throw it off. They'd throw it away.
Speaker 1:They'd throw the yellow banana away. So this guy goes, what? That's free? Those bananas are free. I'm gonna go get those bananas.
Speaker 1:So he just starts taking those bananas, and he just goes within a 30 mile radius of the dock and sells them at a huge discount. And this guy just ends up, you know, becoming and then from that, the book basically chronicles how he starts at that to literally taking over the banana industry. Like like, twenty years later, he buys out the company that was doing you know, who he originally got. So that's, like, a fun way to think of boots true bootstrapping is like, man, you had nothing, and you just hustled your dollar from from dollar 1. I I think, like, I personally would probably include anything in the, like, low single digit millions raised, whether from friends and family or even sometimes from angels.
Speaker 1:You know, maybe the way to the anti definition is, like, I think the second you take institutional capital from a venture firm, you can't really be bootstrapped anymore. And and the reason for that is, you know, most often than not, you have to get on the venture treadmill, which means as soon as you raise your seed, you gotta raise your a, and then you have to hit certain metrics. And if you're not on those tracks, you're not on track to be a unicorn, which, you know, so on and so forth means that there's obviously exceptions to these rules, but that's kinda how I think about what bootstrapping is.
Speaker 2:Yeah. To keep your members only bootstrap jacket, no institutional funding is like the lion in the sand. I I like that. I like the example of the banana man because and it kinda parallels with Nathan Barry has this article of ConvertKids CEO, this idea of, like, ladders of wealth creation and laddering up, like, using your profits to grow your business but to fund the next one kinda stair stepping. And I think you've done that really well from like an agency model to a SaaS model to an ecommerce model.
Speaker 2:And as we get into those two, I'm going to talk about that because I'm impressed you could bootstrap those because a lot of those, we have to buy inventory or you have to invest in building a tech product. Those can be very capital intensive where in some cases being bootstrapped could be a disadvantage as opposed to an advantage. And maybe I'm wrong in that. But I'd love to hear this kind of recipe where someone's listening to this, like, alright. Sold bootstrap.
Speaker 2:Own a 100%. Let's go. Where where do you even start? What are your unfair advantage you should be playing in? Because I
Speaker 1:think a lot people want a bootstrap,
Speaker 2:but then they hit a wall where it doesn't work. I So think I have to do five questions at you, so feel free to
Speaker 1:put them.
Speaker 2:Well, you adventure.
Speaker 1:You mentioned before the the we started recording, like, I just put this email course out. It's the first one I've ever done, and I'm curious what it's gonna do. I have no idea. Right? But it's a question that I get asked a lot, what kind of what you ask, which is like, well, if I wanna bootstrap, where do I start?
Speaker 1:And, you know, I I sort of put together my my answer to this question, and I think the first question that I always throw at everyone is like, what do you actually want? And, you know, I I made this mistake. I think a lot of entrepreneurs make this mistake. Like, the the question you always ask yourself when you're starting a business is or the thing you're trying to avoid is how do I not fail? I can't fail.
Speaker 1:I can't fail. I can't fail. Like, that's that's your it's just like this super scary, you know, nobody wants to go back and tail between their legs and go get the job. Like, it the the concept I remember the fear. Like, oh my god.
Speaker 1:What if I have to go to business school because I like, my venture failed. I'm gonna have to admit that that failed. Like, it's a very vulnerable position. I think that's the thing we don't talk about enough in entrepreneurship is how personally vulnerable it is and how courageous it really is. And so, like, the fur when I meet a new entrepreneur, the first thing I say to them is, I acknowledge how courageous you are.
Speaker 1:What you're doing takes a lot of courage. And I I think it's worth even pausing there for a moment. It's like, man, why don't we say that to each other as often as as, like, I think we'd like to hear it? I'd still like to hear it from my friends and my wife and my kids. Like, man, you're doing something courageous.
Speaker 1:You know? Yeah. But but, anyway, so so you end up spending a lot of time on I don't wanna fail. I don't wanna fail. I don't wanna fail.
Speaker 1:The question a lot of people don't ask themselves is, well, what if I succeed? What do I actually want? And and I kinda paint the picture as, like, again, across these three different sort of genres is, well, if if you're successful in a venture model, you probably own 10 you know, seven to 20% of your company or seven to 15% of your company. You've raised multiple rounds. You have a board.
Speaker 1:You likely don't control your company. Your company is probably worth a billion dollars if you're successful or some huge number like that. But, you know, you're managing a board every day. You're dealing with these huge growth targets. You know, you you can't necessarily make decisions independently if you wanna make them.
Speaker 1:And, you know, you're one bad step away from from some gray haired person coming in to run the company. And I'm being a little, you know, provocative on purpose. But but then but you probably did something that changed the industry, changed the world. It's big. That's a cool path to be on.
Speaker 1:And by the way, I think VCs teach young entrepreneurs how to build businesses almost better than anyone. Like, they really know how to do it. Again, the other path is you're a four hour workweek. Like, you know, you're is that what you want? Do you just wanna, like, chill and run-in a bunch of Airbnb rentals and, like, go vacation a lot?
Speaker 1:Great. That's another path. Or do you wanna, like, build something that you're excited to walk in every day? You're the boss. You're in charge.
Speaker 1:You make the final calls. You grow your team at the pace you want to. You make these decisions. Most founders, I'm talking to them and they haven't started anything, they just think of the question as too indulgent. They're just like, what do you mean?
Speaker 1:I can't think of that. And I go, well, just think a little bit about it because even if you you know, if if you don't want to be if you'd rather if you're just trying to build a successful business that's, worth $20,000,000 or $50,000,000, but you get to call the shots, you you know, you're driving it. It's your choice. It's your decision. You don't have to ask anyone to do anything.
Speaker 1:Like, you probably shouldn't raise an institutional round of capital. That's probably not the right thing to do. Right? So that's my first if you wanna bootstrap, first get clear with yourself as to what you actually want and just indulge yourself for that little period of let's assume you'll be successful in three years. What do you actually want?
Speaker 2:Can we go down that path for a second? I'll use my own situation because I think it's easy to start a company, grow up and to the right. I'm a success in the eyes of others. But when you break it down, it's like, what's the reality of your day to day? Because that's where the real joy comes from.
Speaker 2:Because Yeah. As I like, with our own, like, growth marketing agency, you know how it is. You have to wear different hats. And I see hats that I like putting on, hats I don't like putting on, hats I'm good at, hats I am not good at. And like, right now, I'm very much head of sales.
Speaker 2:That's the one thing I haven't fired myself from, which I have such a love heat with it. Like, sometimes I'm like, I'm talking to founders. This is awesome. It's energizing. And other times, I'm like, if I have to go through our deck one more time, like, my eyes are gonna bleed.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean? It's like, I just can't. It's You're like a
Speaker 1:Broadway actor. You know? Every every night, you get on and sing Alexander Hamilton, and, like, you gotta sing the exact same amount of drama and I think I
Speaker 2:get dumber as I go through it. And I see, like, a buddy who's an entrepreneur that's, like, fired himself from sales, and he's, tinkering and building and creating.
Speaker 1:And I just look over
Speaker 2:the fence with Emzi like, oh, because I've kind of figured out, like, what I want is these things that bring me energy. And I love working in growth and like new idea and that zero to So I don't know if like if to answer that question, is there like an exercise people can do? Do I have to go,
Speaker 1:like Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:A retreat and drink some kombucha? Like, well, what are we doing here?
Speaker 1:I'm sure they're sure there are retreats for it. I think well, it's funny that it's funny you say that because I I I share that same experience. I like it more, I think, than you did. Like, I like selling. I like telling stories.
Speaker 1:I like kind of people, like, sitting back and listening to me and and enjoying it. So I maybe don't have the love hate. I had just the love love. But but the joke at Ampush was we would do this. We'd have, like, roasts every year, and we'd have inter you know, people you know, it was an open floor plan.
Speaker 1:So the whole company at one point could literally say say word for word my
Speaker 2:pitch. Like,
Speaker 1:hey. I'm Jesse. I grew up, and I was an entrepreneur. I went I worked on Wall Street, and then I did you know, someone told me to look at digital marketing. So there's this hilarious joke internally that Ambush said that everyone could tell could tell the story because I'd I'd literally told it so often.
Speaker 1:Because the other thing you didn't mention is, you you know, as a founder, you're doing sales, you're also doing recruiting, and and it's kinda the same thing. You're selling something, you every minute. But, anyway, so, you know, there's one of my favorite books is called the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I'm not involved with the company, but I I very much am an evangelist for it. And, you know, I think they borrowed this from another book called the big leap, which I'm a big fan of. But there's this thing called zone of genius. And, you know, the the the setup for it is you have your zone of incompetence. Right?
Speaker 1:So for me, that's like, don't know, cooking or laundry. Like, I just I'm not very good at it. I could probably do it, but I'm not very good at it. There's zone of competence. Like, I think I'm a decent driver.
Speaker 1:I'm I'm okay at walking and running. Like, I'm competent at those things. Right? Yeah. And then zone of excellence.
Speaker 1:Like, I'm pretty good with spreadsheets. You know, I I I'm pretty good with PowerPoint. Like, I'm I'm excellent at those things. I could I could whip them out. You know?
Speaker 1:And then there's zone of genius. And and what differentiates genius from excellence is not only is it something that you're really, really good at, but it's something that gives you energy. It energizes you to do it. And most of us get stuck in our zone of excellence. So you may be stuck in in things that you're really good at.
Speaker 1:You're really good at sales, but it doesn't actually bring you energy. And that's kind of the, you know, one of the things that really a lot of founders who burn out. And I spend a ton of time. A big part of my mission is making entrepreneurship sustainable and really being able to coach the CEOs that I'm cofounders, but to enjoy this journey, to actually make it a fun journey, not kind of the journey that most people describe. And look, I think your first company when you're young, it's really hard to do any of this stuff.
Speaker 1:But I think as you age and as you get older, a lot of people kind of figure some of this stuff out with or without the frameworks. They figure out kind of what works for them. And I think so zone of genius is this thing of like, no. It's the things that you could just do endlessly. They genuinely don't feel like work.
Speaker 1:And, like, you know, the best example I always give of this, like, Warren Buffett. Like, the guy loves investing. It it's just so obvious. He likes looking at the companies. He's, like, reading about them.
Speaker 1:He likes thinking about it. He likes talking about it. Like, it clearly energizes him. Like, if you know, when when Joe Paterno got fired from from Penn State, you know, that poor guy died within a year. Well, he had no purpose.
Speaker 1:He his genius was gone. Right? It, like, makes sense. And I bet you if for some reason Buffett couldn't invest, within a year, he would be dead. Because that's how much this thing he it energizes him to that degree that he's still alive because of it, I would argue.
Speaker 1:Right? So so Zone of Genius, there's exercises you can do on their website. There's one called, like, the energy audit where you kinda see what gives you energy, what takes away your energy. A lot of times, here's another weird thing about genius. It's like a fish telling a fish they're a good swimmer.
Speaker 1:How the hell do they know? Like, it's
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like It's like,
Speaker 1:what is water? Right? Exactly. And and so, like, for me, you know, part of the reason I started building a public persona, people said, Jesse, you're a good talker. You're a good synthesizer.
Speaker 1:And I'm like, oh, am I better than that than most people? Like, I didn't I didn't appreciate that about myself. And so there's another exercise they have where you ask some of the people closest to you who've worked for a long time, like, what are the things I do that seem effortless to you that are like I you know, but for you, they'd be really hard. So because you're trying to actually identify what your zones of genius are and what kind of naturally oozes from your being. Right?
Speaker 1:And so, yeah, I think it's cool that we we got here because one of the reasons I started Gateway X, like, was running Ampush for ten years, is that I started I dialed in my zone of genius quite a bit. And I realized, like, the things I do for fun is, like, I spot opportunities in the world, and I I, like, wanna, you know, put together the right team or the right approach. Like, I love I I get tons of energy from the, not sure if this is possible. Let's go try some things to figure out whether it can be a thing. Right?
Speaker 1:So that's one. The other one that I just do very naturally is I'm very naturally, like, a coach and teacher of people. Like, anyone who ever worked with me knows, like, if, you know, you'll get you'll get some feedback. You'll get my perspective, but you'll get a lot of like, hey. Here's a way we could be better next time, and here's a thing to think about, and here's a book to read.
Speaker 1:And I'm constantly teaching and coaching those around me just I don't even know I'm doing it. It's something very, very my mom's a teacher. It's very natural to me. And then, you know, I love building relationships with people. Like, I love you know, in in your seat, my old seat at Ampush, gosh, I got to know so many people, and it was so rewarding.
Speaker 1:And and I just it felt effortless to me to get to know someone, and it energized me in a very meaningful way. And so I I started with those three things when I thought about Gateway X. And I said, what's a job that's gonna let me do those three things all the time? And, you know, venture cap being a venture capitalist would've had some of those boxes checked, but not all of them. And starting a single company, you know, wouldn't I felt like I would've ended up back in the same place.
Speaker 1:And so as I started building what what Gateway X would be, the venture studio kinda meets holding company, I it was based on my desire to spend 75, 80%. That's the framework that said. Try to spend 75, 80% of your time in your zone of genes. You're not ever gonna spend all of your time in it, obviously. Right?
Speaker 1:But if you could spend 75 to 80%, you'll you'll be sustained. You'll be able to constantly sort of have more energy to work. So I'm obviously, like, pretty devout around around the concept of that. And and, you know, as the companies get beyond a certain stage inside of our, you know, inside of Gateway X, I especially after they find product market fit and they're scaling, I really encourage the CEOs to start to find their zones of genius and hire around the things that that are not you know, they're in their zones of excellence and competence. Because otherwise, what happens is, you know, we had growth assistant, you know, it was, let's say, 3 or 4,000,000.
Speaker 1:Now it's over 10,000,000. And Adrian, you know, she's burning out. Like, she it she she has certain days where she's like, gosh. I don't wanna be here today. And as a founder, you know that feeling.
Speaker 1:I know that feeling. It's not a great feeling. And so to actually make these things sustainable, it's really important that she or anyone in that seat finds their zone of genius and then really has the discipline to stay inside of it and to not veer too far from it. And it's super hard as a founder because you're the narrative is you gotta take care of everything. You're the person.
Speaker 1:You know? The buck's house with you. And and so it's a real hard transition to go through. It's been a transition even for me in this framework because I'm not running any of the businesses. That's kind of a scary place to be sometimes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I have a lot of questions on that. One just note, I'm not sure if it's the book. I haven't read it, the one you mentioned around 50 Commutes to Conscious Leadership. I did the Working Genius Frame.
Speaker 2:I'm in this like entrepreneurship, we did that. And that really helped me. But I think you're really smart. You mentioned 75%. If someone's listening, it's like, I understand what your genius is and how do you structure your work, your day to where you're doing over 50% of your time and that ideally 75%.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. So that's the question. How the heck have you pulled this off to have multiple companies with people running it to focus on that zone of genius? Because you're doing something really hard, which is you're going from zero to one with a lot of these ideas as opposed to buying something that's already working and cash flowing, where when you're going from zero to one, you have to be so tenacious. There's so much roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty type of work.
Speaker 2:How do you not get sucked into the spiral of the day to day with those?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. I mean, look, I wish I could say that I haven't. I think the first year or two, I was.
Speaker 1:And I think what I also realized was it wasn't successful. We've learned a ton through this journey. Right? And I think the number one thing we've learned through the journey is the company doesn't start until there's the CEO and cofounder in place. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And we only learned that the hard way. There was two companies we started without a CEO for either of them, and I kind of half CDO'd, half sort of, you know, didn't do anything. And both of them ended up kind of going through their own really, really challenging well, both of them effectively have shut down and pivoted into new ideas since then with someone who actually acted as the, you know, as the real CEO for the company. And so, know, you I I think there's, like, so many layers to this. I think the hardest thing on a spiritual level, honestly, and and I think it's worth starting there because most of the time, I believe when you're not doing something you you say you wanna do, it's because it's because you're actually afraid.
Speaker 1:You're there's some part of you that's not willing to do it, and that's why. Mhmm. Right? Because we say all these things all the time, and there's some part of us that's afraid that isn't. And I think it's really, really scary to commit to your zone of genius because it means inherently not doing all these other things.
Speaker 1:And so on a spiritual level, it's you know you know, my coach has helped me kicking and screaming. Be like, dude, trust trust your zone of genius. Like, trust that if you spend your time in it, you're so much more energized, you're so much more powerful that it's gonna end up actually creating the thing you're saying you want, and it's gonna do that. And I think in the beginning, I I didn't do it. Like, I I've gone through this journey, I guess, two years in, almost two and a half years in.
Speaker 1:And, you know, in the beginning, I didn't do it. I was all over the place. I was I was jumping in one minute. The next one, was jumping out. Didn't have CEOs running the companies.
Speaker 1:I was like, oh, we'll we'll figure this out. I even I just signed up to run one of the companies as the CEO for a while. Realized that's not what I want. So I went through a lot of trials and tribulations now to get to a point where I'm like, I am not gonna run any of the one companies. The CEO ultimately has to make a lot of the final decisions.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna be there, you know, to help get the idea off the ground like a cofounder would. I'm gonna be there kind of as, like, the, you know, board member owner strategy helping drive certain things. I'm gonna give a bunch of resources to these companies, but, like, they may not work out, and and that may be okay. And I have to, like, make my peace with that. But I'd say a lot of it started at this kind of really willing to commit.
Speaker 1:And I think I think what I also I mean, I kinda inched my way there. Like, as I saw my commitment to it, like, I saw things be successful, and I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like, I could almost break the areas. I get started a few companies, and the ones where I had, like, honored my zone of genius, they were doing better than the ones where I hadn't honored it, actually.
Speaker 2:So but how how do you pull that off? Because, like, got it. Let me hire the CEO to run it beforehand. But I have a couple questions. It's like, do you need to validate the concepts and then the idea first?
Speaker 2:Are you already feel that it's validated? Or two, like, having the the capital to fund an A plus CEO when maybe the company isn't generating revenue to fund it? Because as we're going this food truck path, I guess with Gateway, you then have the funds from other cash flowing businesses or reserves to pull in there.
Speaker 1:Kind of. Yeah. So the way it works, the way we where we've gotten to, and I wouldn't say we started this way. Right? But where we've gotten to is, you know, the best analogy I can give is, like, when you when you do IVF, you know, and and they they make a baby, like, not the normal like, not the old school way, you you know, they inseminate an egg, and then they freeze it at six days old.
Speaker 1:Right? And some of the eggs don't make it to the six days. Even after some makes it six days, they have genetic defects. They go away. And so, like, they come back to you after this process, and they go, look.
Speaker 1:There's, like, four viable things, and they're called blastocysts. And they literally are these, like, fertilized eggs that are six days old that then in order to turn into babies, potentially, they have to go into a uterus and grow into being child a child. And, obviously, they couldn't, they wouldn't. So I would say we get the business ideas to, like, the blastocyst level, which is, like, we we don't we don't necessarily fully validate them. We sort of we do a little bit.
Speaker 1:We we have the we see the opportunity. We spot it. We have a list of a bunch of them. And when we're engaging with someone who wants to be a CEO and cofounder, we kind of, like, show them all the things. We go, well, here's an idea.
Speaker 1:Here's an idea. Why don't you pick one or two, and together, let's go validate it? And, normally, like, I have a big enough network and a big enough platform that I can kind of validate anything within this within our space, in our world. Right? So I'm like, well, I can get the phone calls.
Speaker 1:I can talk to all these people. Right? Like, that's not a problem, but I need someone to go do the phone calls, take the notes. Like, let's go talk about it. And that process is kind of the initial dating phase of wanting to become cofounders with someone.
Speaker 1:But that person has to really take the idea and go like, well, I heard this, and I think we need to do this because of it. And I think this is the right path. And I might say, well, what about let's go talk to other people. But I'm not going, no. No.
Speaker 1:No. You're wrong. Here's what you should do instead. Mhmm. You don't get it.
Speaker 1:I'm I'm listening. I'm reacting. I'm like, if you've launched enough companies, you know organically that, like, ideas evolve. Like, they they they turn into things over time. And so but it can't be mine.
Speaker 1:If it's if it's my idea, if it's my thing, it's it's gonna be trouble. Like, because ultimately, the person living it day in and day out, they have to believe it has you know, it's their idea. And then I think the other thing is, like, how do you how do you source, you know, the right types of people to be CEOs and cofounders? That's the hardest part of the business by far, like, by far. Right?
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And I think what I offer is I come in at least for the first year, really the entire time, but really for the first year plus, And I behave like a cofounder and a partner to these people. And most of them have never started their own companies as a founder CEO. You know, we've got some who or or they haven't had success doing that, I should say. Like, we've got a couple who started their own companies.
Speaker 1:They didn't work out. Obviously, those people are eager to learn. They're super humble, and they're willing to work with me and kind of and most of the time, it's amazing for them because they go, oh my god. I got a teacher. I got someone who every week I can talk to, and they can help me.
Speaker 1:And and I I meet the people where they are. I don't I'm not stringing them out. Right? So I meet them where they are. Another one of the CEOs, was a very successful CEO, but she'd never started her own company.
Speaker 1:So she felt more comfortable in a framework where she had this. Another person was just a brand new co founder and CEO. She'd never done any of this before. So there are people who want to learn and want to be doing it hand in hand with someone like me. And I think that then that has to be the case.
Speaker 1:Because if someone who thinks they could do it on their own or don't don't need me, I'm the first person to go, well, if you don't think you need me, good luck. I'm, like, loving another entrepreneur in the world, but, like, then we shouldn't work together. Like, we it isn't Yeah. You have to believe a few things before before it's gonna make sense. And then from there, we start to kind of vet an idea together.
Speaker 1:And then assuming we find that they're there, we launch the idea. But oftentimes during that process, you know, I'll give you an example. Like, we we launched this really cool business. I don't talk about it much publicly, but it's a tech enabled kind of advisory and consulting business where private equity firms are the clients, and we're helping them assess digital marketing capabilities of their company. So imagine you're going
Speaker 2:to That's buy a such a first off, that's such a good idea because we've done a little bit of that, but that's a really good idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah. If you've done it, you know it's hard and it's weird. And, like, even at Ambush, I got asked. I kind of we also kind of hobbied a little bit. And I said, you know, you know, look, One of my friends calls me.
Speaker 1:They're they're about to buy a half a billion dollar company just like you're about to buy a house. They go, can you go do a home inspection on this, Jesse? And and nobody apparently, no one does it. So we run, like, you know, account audits on steroids. We give them all these information and data.
Speaker 1:I'm like, look. This is how good they are at this. And the CEO, Casey, she has a deep digital marketing background. She's awesome. She was a CEO for many years.
Speaker 1:She'd never started something. But her and I actually started the first idea that she picked off the list was what I call Lambda School for Growth Marketing. Right? So it's this idea of, like, let's go train people how to be growth marketers, and let's charge the companies or charge the people part of their salary do do the school for free and make it outcome based. And, like, her and I started we got so excited about this.
Speaker 1:We started validating it. And then through that process, I think, a, we like, she started hearing a lot from companies who are private equity backed who seem to want more of this help, but she also reflected on her own kind of zones of genius and the things she got excited about. And she's like, you know, I'm not that excited about teaching all these random people growth marketing. I'm much more excited about helping a private equity firm and and investigating the companies and doing diligence for them. So And that was another idea on the list, and she's like, let's do that one instead.
Speaker 1:And so, you know, it sort of evolved, then and now we've launched it, it's live, and it's off to the races. But it's definitely it's an art much more than a science, and I think we'll never get so big. Like, I don't see myself doing more than two of these a year, you know, and I don't think I could and still the value probably be the same for that person. Because if I'm not around, if I'm not actually helping them learn how to launch the business, you know, well, why should they do it? You know?
Speaker 1:There's probably other things to
Speaker 2:do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think the
Speaker 2:big value add is having you and another person in the trenches, someone there that's been there, done that. I love the point on you having a list, but letting someone kind of go through it with you to find something that's their own. Because if it's yours, they're not going to have that ownership. It's just a different level of intensity and speed probably that they're going to be operating at. I think that that's really interesting.
Speaker 2:So I want to as far as like these bootstrap giants, like you've done the service based business, you've done the SaaS business, You've done the direct to consumer, like, sell a product, have inventory. My assumption is service is the easiest to start because you don't have to actually buy inventory or have a piece of technology. You know, I can, like, go on LinkedIn right now and be like, we have a service business for X, Y and Z. But with Growth Assistance, you've grown that to 8 figures. Could you kind of walk through what's this playbook for pulling this off?
Speaker 2:Because I'm happy to talk through my growing pains and the different walls I've run into as I hit these milestones, but I'm interested to see how you've broken through and done that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No, that's a great question. I by the end of this podcast, you're probably gonna be a customer of growth decision, I bet. Oh, here we go. And that's part
Speaker 2:of it. A sales pitch? Oh, crap. It's a sales pitch. Well,
Speaker 1:funny thing is the second email that's coming in the series that I put together talks a lot about unfair advantage. Right? And the way that I visualize unfair advantage is a bunch of basically unique Venn diagram circles, and at some plate, they all overlap. And then the middle of that is something that, like, really, you are one of the best people in the world to go start it. Right?
Speaker 1:And, you know, Growth Assistant, like, I I had this massive network of of people working at brands who who I knew. Like, you know, half my former employees were running growth at at some D2C brand. Right? So I had this big network. I I had a lot of knowledge for how to offshore things because we had done that at Ampush.
Speaker 1:I knew the roles. I knew the things people would do. And I kinda had that brand, like a burgeoning brand in growth marketing. So I had, like, there's all these and then you bring Adrian in who's a CEO, and she had a big background in HR and recruiting and had built big recruiting systems. So you just start looking at all the cent the concentric circles, and you go, oh, wow.
Speaker 1:The the like, how many of these kinds of things exist, like, where all these things are kind of the stars have aligned in this way? And I would argue we use unfair advantage as more fodder to start the business than even, like, markets and ideas. Like, that's there's plenty of big markets with unserved needs. There's a million ideas out there. There's not that many unfair advantages we have, so we use that as a starting point.
Speaker 1:So that business, I mean, you know, the first 30 customers were literally former employees of mine. Awesome. Yeah. And so and so, you know, they all got on the phone with me. You know?
Speaker 1:Not all of them bought from me, but, like, a lot of them bought from us. Right? And and then, you know, we happen to also be like, we're like, are you having trouble finding people? Are you annoyed at doing the rote tasks? Like, in your case, are you having people turn over at the agency because they're sick of sitting in the innards of Facebook?
Speaker 1:Like, oh, well, we have amazing people offshore. They're trained in how to do this, and we can set them up for you, and they're, you know, $2,500 a month. Right? Everyone says yes to that pitch. Right?
Speaker 1:Now that we have to go deliver to a great person, that's the hard part of the business, and the supply side is there's a whole thing we can discuss around that. But the demand side, we it was we felt like, unlike Ambush, by the way, which we can talk about, Ambush, I felt like I was lost the whole time, or at least for the first five, six years. I was just lost. I had no idea what I was doing. I was learning new things every day.
Speaker 1:And with growth assistant, I felt like, oh my gosh. I'm playing craps, and the dice are weighted. Like, I know when I roll, I'm gonna get certain numbers more often. And it just felt really different because I had these unfair
Speaker 2:advantages. And can we talk about the difference between those? Because I think a lot of people listening also are doing service based business. And tell me if this categorization is right. I put growth assistance in the category of a productized service where it's like repeatable, scalable.
Speaker 2:You pay something, you get this. You're getting amazing offshore talent for like 30% or half of what you would pay here in The US. Whereas Ampush, it's like premium agency. Maybe it's more custom, more strategic, higher retainer, but maybe harder to scale because it could be custom work. Or was it just a paid ad agency?
Speaker 2:I don't know if I
Speaker 1:No, I think you you nailed it for the most part. I I would call growth assistant even simpler. It's a staffing business. I mean, it's a staffing or talent marketplace. Like Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because we don't we don't actually get in between the customer and the purse like, the growth assistant. They become they they're sort of an embedded person onto the team. So for you, we'd say we'll get you two two media buying support people, two creative support people, and two admin support or outreach or something.
Speaker 2:Where where is my salesperson? Can I offshore sales? See that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. No. You can't. I mean, we
Speaker 2:Sales assistant. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. We we I did I did this thing at Ambush where I would leverage my LinkedIn with someone offshore, and they'd figure out who I was connected to and who we could get introductions for. And it became just a way that we got meetings all the time. And so, yeah, look. I I the that's a little bit more of like an old school staffing BPO type model.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. But it's recurring revenue. It's pretty good margins, and it's growing super and it's really needed. I think that's the big thing is, like, there's just a big need. As you know, digital marketing talent is extremely hard to come by.
Speaker 1:And to keep. Yes. And to keep. Right? So so I think that the need for it is the pain point is really, really pronounced.
Speaker 1:And then age and then Ambush, as you said, was, you know, was called by many people the McKinsey of growth marketing. Right? It was the super high end. The average deal size was probably 1 to $2,000,000 a year in fees. Nice.
Speaker 1:Right? So you're talking about, you know, huge deals. They took us months, you know, if not years to close. They were you know, you pull out all the stops as a part of the pitch. Now, what's interesting, though, is I will tell you scaling that business, and a services business in particular, I think you have to really enjoy the talent side of the business because the only way you ever scale and I was lucky enough to work in consulting and then work in financial services early in my career.
Speaker 1:So I saw these huge people don't realize that McKinsey is a services business. Goldman Sachs is a services business. Yeah. Right? So these two venerated companies, they're big services business.
Speaker 1:So I got to sit inside the halls of these places, and I took away a lot of things. But the number one thing I took away was hire incredible talent and train them and make sure you have a system for how they work that that works, that you can repeat it multiple times over. And I used to at Ambush in the early days, I would say, we gotta build our McDonald's franchise. You know? We gotta have sort of these little pods.
Speaker 1:They have certain types of people. All the people know how to flip the burgers, how to put it in the bag, how to and as soon as we were able to do that, that's how you know, we scale Ampush in from 3,000,000 in revenue to 24,000,000 in revenue in less than three years.
Speaker 2:Dude, that's a hating. Massive agency, man. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And
Speaker 1:that came from really getting good at recruiting great people and putting them into a system that trained and got them kind of you know, got those franchises.
Speaker 2:Yeah. What what's driving the top of funnel there? Because I totally hear you on, like, some of my best hires, it's like, overpaid for someone because I'm a player, and it, like, more than worked. Talk about getting the people that are paying those huge retainers. Was it building a reputation?
Speaker 2:Was it referrals? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Mean, specific growth took place during we rode the wave. You know, we were in the right place at the right time. Yeah. And that that that specific numbers I just gave happened from 2012 to 2015. Right?
Speaker 2:Oh, wow. Super early.
Speaker 1:I'm just Yeah. Our clients were names like Uber, Dollar Shave Club, Peloton, Birchbox. So we were early, early, early.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And then we'd bring these clients on, and they were exploding as companies themselves. Right? So we had a bunch of like, we had the wind way, way behind our backs, but we still needed to be able to recruit, train, and scale. Was a people business. It was a services business.
Speaker 1:So it wasn't we could have easily not had it work out had we not you know, the demand was there. That was the easy part because we were just so early to to being in Facebook. But yeah. But but but so it was but we were very good at the talent side. We were very I I am and and was very passionate about talent, about coaching and training.
Speaker 1:And, like, if my people aren't learning, that's a big problem. And I I take that super seriously. And I think you kinda have to to be in any kind of services business, frankly, business, but but service.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. It's yeah. People are everything. And talk about the growth with growth assistant because, obviously, like, with the bigger agency, you were able to right away and have a phenomenal team and deliver with growth assistant. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You talk about, I think, in your email, and I'm also obsessed with this idea of have, like, an amazing offer. It makes the marketing so much easier. Yeah. With growth assistant, you have that amazing offer. But, like, what has worked is you hit different levels or phases of growth because you launch on the back of your network and referrals, but does that get you to 8 figures?
Speaker 2:Like, what else have you done? Doing that from a bootstrapped approach, because it's always like, you wanna stay profitable. How much do you dip into the margins of the profit to fuel and fund growth?
Speaker 1:Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look. Every business I've started, we end up kind of getting lucky on something and, you know, and then figuring out how we got lucky and replicating the luck over and over again.
Speaker 1:Right? And so in the case of of Ambush, Ambush actually started as a lead gen business on paid search. And then about a year or so in, we said, let's try that Facebook thing. And back then, Facebook was like desktop, right rail. And we go, oh my god.
Speaker 1:And, like, what was a 10% margin in arbitraging for leads on Google was an 80% margin on Facebook. So we and then we just said, well, we gotta go figure that Facebook thing, and then we became the best in the world at it. Right? Mhmm. And in the case of Growth Assistant, I think there was at least two things.
Speaker 1:Like, we started with my network, then we started doing Twitter threads about the story of Growth Assistant or how to do certain things with off and that just we just got so many organic leads that way. And then we, you know, we've been saying, okay. How do we get the best be the best in the world at organic content vis a vis offshore marketing? You know? Like, we own that category.
Speaker 1:And that's the one and the other one was around recruiting. So, you know, we did we used the digital marketing muscles there, and, you know, we have a TikTok. You can go look it up. It's $5,060,000 TikTok followers in The Philippines. And, you know, it turns out that, by the way, that that we got kinda lucky with this, but the The Philippines, they're having the same same sort of talent issues that The US is having.
Speaker 1:Like, their two options, if your talent there, have been go and work in the the sweatshops for United Airlines or American Express. They have to commute ninety minutes each way. They're not treated like a human being. That's kinda like one option. The other option is go to Upwork and do random project based work for random American clients.
Speaker 1:They're kinda jerks. They sift you in the bill every
Speaker 2:now and
Speaker 1:You know? And we basically said, well, you can work from home. We're gonna get you Internet. We're gonna get you a computer, and we're gonna make it a great experience for you. And you're gonna get to work with these really cool tech companies on a full time capacity.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you're part of the team.
Speaker 1:You're part of their team. You're not, you know and and they all of a sudden, we had a big influx of talent. And between that and the digital marketing, we were able to bring in a bunch of unique resumes, which then kind of builds the flywheel. Right? Because most of our growth has actually not come from new customers.
Speaker 1:Most of our growth has come Again, you're going to go get two or three growth systems after this. In a year,
Speaker 2:you're going have 10. Where's my discount code? Where's the promo code?
Speaker 1:I'll get it for you. But you're going have 10 in a year, right? Because you're going to go,
Speaker 2:Dude, this
Speaker 1:is awesome. All my employees are happy to have all this work off. Those folks love it. You know, they like being part of an American team. They like being treated like humans.
Speaker 1:They like getting days off and not just being clocking in and clocking out. And so you'll start with two or three, and then in a year, you'll have 10. And so all the growth has actually come from us finding great talent and then clients going, give me more of that, please. Right? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Our biggest client started with two and has 50 people now with us.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, hiring is such a pain. If you have something that solves that problem for you, that's that's everything.
Speaker 2:No, man, I love it. And it's funny, I was talking to a guy in my entrepreneurship group, he buys companies and he's like, all I care about is recurring revenue. He's like, that is my number one thing. And then that's what I do like about growth assistance is the retention component of it, because then the lifetime value is just magical. So we talk about bootstrapping service based businesses.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about SaaS or even like a D to C one because I see where you have the unfair advantage with the D to C company because you've already run ads for all these d to c companies. So with Couprie, it's like, let's, you know, have our own that we grow. And then make sure I pronounce it well, unbloat. Right? Those are the two d to c.
Speaker 2:Am I correct?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Puforia is kinda dead. We should all turn into unbloat. Awesome.
Speaker 1:But it was know, yeah, we can go through them. Like, for unbloat well, for Puforia, I it was, like, a funny story where I was like, you know, I just wanna see how good I am at at running ads. Like, I did this for ten years. I'm gonna literally take a commodity product. I'm gonna throw it up with a funny, silly brand name, and I'm gonna see if I can market it.
Speaker 2:And Yeah. That's the ultimate marketing test.
Speaker 1:Right? It turns out I'm not that good of a digital marketer because that one just never quite got the economics working. But what it did do is it got us in front of customers, and we started hearing and listening to them. And they kept saying, like, bloating, bloating, bloating. We kept hearing that.
Speaker 1:Then we started doing some research on it, and we realized that the term bloating is searched more often than erectile dysfunction.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. Said like, wow.
Speaker 1:This is a big category. Like and so we launched unbloat, and and I think this has been a test and and a subsequent validation of my skills and my learnings. And, honestly, for most of the last year and a half since we started it, I wasn't sure. Like like, the I could have easily come to you on this podcast and said, you know what? I thought I was really good at this, but turns out, like, yeah, I didn't really know what I was doing.
Speaker 1:Like, maybe all these young people I hired knew what they were doing, but I didn't. But, you know, we were extremely disciplined with our spend and our ROAS. We were, you know, we were amping up testing and and performance. And, you know, on the course of a year, we've gone from, you know, call it a four or five month payback, which is not very exciting, to first order profitable. And and so, you know, and and it came from what I would describe as the playbook that me and multiple other people at Ambush put together, which was really like there's a lot you know, I can't share it all now necessarily, but, like, creative testing, different ways to kind of pull lots of creative together, discipline around the financial side of it and not overspending.
Speaker 1:You know? And and so we basically were able to build up. It's now you know, this month, it'll do over 3,000,000, close to 4,000,000 in sales. It's profitable.
Speaker 2:In the month?
Speaker 1:No. No. No. No. In on a run rate basis.
Speaker 2:Oh, gotcha. So, like,
Speaker 1:you know, 350 or whatever. Mhmm. And it's a 70% gross margin business. And one of the secrets for how we bootstrapped it, by the way, was we got to kind of a really compelling negative cash working cycle. So we were able to get terms.
Speaker 1:You know? We put a little bit of like, I I put $250,000 in each of these businesses just to get them going. Mhmm. And so, you know, we we convinced someone to give us a very low order quantity to start. You know?
Speaker 1:That would stick some work, but we sold ourselves. We pitched the dream. And then, you know, we're able to get terms from Facebook and then able to use a company like, we use Settle, one of these kind of financing businesses. And so the net of all of that is, you know, we basically we we have a negative cash working cycle. So we make a $100,000 in revenue.
Speaker 1:We're paying the bill from, like, three months ago because we've had all this time to kinda get going on it. So we're actually generating cash in the business and have been since the sixth month in business. So we haven't been profitable as a company, like, for example, for from June to May, let's say, we weren't profitable, but we were still cash flow positive. Yeah. Now we're profitable and cash flow positive.
Speaker 1:But so that's what allowed us with a very, very limited amount of cash to get that thing going and get it off the ground.
Speaker 2:That's cool. For people listening to this idea of the cash conversion cycle, there's something genius here if you go into the pricing page. Because one, it's a subscription product or it's a recurring revenue product, which is huge. And you save money by paying more money up front for the next three months. So you're getting that cash on hand, and then you've got to pay for the inventory.
Speaker 2:And then as and you've delayed that. So that's that's quite genius, which if you're going down this bootstrap path, like, that is a must. And so Yeah. And and and it's
Speaker 1:way more common than you think. The the best example most people don't know is Amazon only raised one round of venture capital. And you go, how is that possible? It's Amazon. You go, they raised one round, and then and then they got big.
Speaker 1:And how did they get big? Well, they had negative working capital. You would buy something on Amazon. They take a few
Speaker 2:days to ship it to
Speaker 1:you, and then they pay their suppliers sixty days later. And so they they had you know, they already had the cash. And so as long as they grew, they generated cash every single month because they were always ahead of last month's sales or three months ago sales, and they were able to basically grow their business using the customer's money to kind of fund the the growth and operation. So this isn't like a small time you know, Amazon, the big daddy, grew their entire business this way, and there's a bunch of articles about it and charts online. But it's it's a it's a thing I think a lot more ecommerce entrepreneurs should pay attention to.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. That that's really cool, man. That's super inspiring people inspiring for people to think differently on how they run their business so you don't have to tap into outside signing or whatever. And then the last one I wanna hit on is Kahani.
Speaker 2:Is that launched, or is that in beta with certain people? Because I want it for our clients. I haven't gotten on the app if it's available in the Shopify store because I so for people listening, you take the stories function that we all see on Instagram or wherever else, it's and allowing you to have that experience on the website. And this could be a magical landing page from a story ad to an experience on the site. Is that an accurate pitch or what it is?
Speaker 1:Yeah. You pitched it. You pitched better than I do. Yeah. I mean, look.
Speaker 1:The the the insight we had there was the the experience on TikTok and Instagram have gotten so immersive, and yet you send someone to this old website that's like a old scrolling kind of, like, text heavy thing. Like, why aren't you sending them to an experience that is immersive the way that those platforms are? And so we started with the stories functionality. You know? Now we've launched kind of like an influencer landing page micro store experience.
Speaker 1:And so you can now to your point, you could go from a whitelisted ad on Facebook, land right onto that same whitelisters micro store, and you can purchase through that experience. And it's sort of all in vertical media format. And, you know, that one has been tougher. Like, I'll just be totally framing it. You know, I'm sharing a lot.
Speaker 1:Like, the idea of Kahani, everybody loves, but but a busy ecommerce entrepreneur who's got a million things going on, they kinda go, yeah. Next month, Jesse. Next month. Next month. Yeah.
Speaker 1:What we realized as we grew it was and the reason we kinda made the the second part of the product was and it's more or less a pivot. You know, we think that's a bit as is like, Connie was really cool, but it wasn't solving anybody's problems. Mhmm. Nobody know, no one was waking up in the morning going It's like
Speaker 2:a nice to have, not a must have. Exactly.
Speaker 1:And so that's the thing about product is is you really have to not only dial into a very specific use case, but you also have to be solving a very, very important problem. And I'd say, like, that's one that's just been tougher on us. It's been more expensive. You know? We've been able to get enough revenue to kinda keep it keep it moving, keep it sort of bootstrapped, and we're scrappy with how we're building it, but it hasn't sort of seen any kind of meaningful lift around it.
Speaker 1:And so now we're hoping with this landing page tool, it's a real thing people need. You know? You know this. 30% of brands are spending on white listers. The landing experience for today for Instagram and TikTok is broken.
Speaker 1:You know, it's not a very good or very diverse. Growth marketers want something easy to use to be able to launch this, and so that's what what the tool is gonna do. It's gonna make it really easy to launch a bunch of different landing experiences with influencer, you know, persona influencer persona in around it. What's their favorite product? Them talking to you, of being a part of that.
Speaker 1:And so Yeah. That's actually launching in the next month here, the new the new product or the new pivot. And it's been that one's been a different experience. You know? It's been a tougher experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And well, first off, you should be selling through us. We do quite a bit of conversion and optimization work because it'd be a fun landing we do a lot of, obviously, landing page experiments for our ad creative that lands on it on on the website. So we could be using this in our experiment pipeline. Then I'm how does gonna connect
Speaker 1:you with the CEO right after this.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Pass through cost there because I do like that. But so I really appreciate your transparency. And by the way, man, we talk about congratulating each other for being entrepreneurs. I love that you're putting shots on goal.
Speaker 2:Right? It's like getting reps in your honest with ones that didn't hit, but then you have ones that have hit extremely well, like growth assistant unblowed. So with both of those, did you put 250 k in? And with Kahani, was that the same rule? Like, I put two fifty and ks that's it?
Speaker 2:Then we like see how it goes. Very cool, man. Well, nice. I want to I know we're kind of running up on time. I like to end these podcasts with the same question.
Speaker 2:I didn't prepare you ahead of time, so apologies for your. What is the nicest thing anyone's done for you in your professional career? Like when I ask that question, what comes to mind? Could be truly something nice. I've had people answer in kind of a funny, fun way where it's like a tough love situation where it, like, lit a fire under them, but I'd be interested to see your take on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I've told this story before, but, you know, in 2015, we we sold a minority stake kind of to a business called Red Ventures in Ambush. And, you know, we had been up into the right for five years, and we'd, you know, pushed the team pretty hard, and and we'd finally gotten kind of this this first sort of it's kind of a mini liquidity event. We sold 20% of the business to them.
Speaker 1:They came in, and they're they're operators. I mean, they're they're business builders, but they had wanted, you know, what we were doing in social and wanted to kind of be a part of it. And so they fly our executive team out you know, with companies, 200 people or something, they fly executive team out to Charlotte where they're based. We get dinner with their founder and CEO who's a friend and mentor. And, you know, he's he's run business for two, three decades.
Speaker 1:Guy, he's very experienced. Right? So and he only asks questions. Like, he never says anything. He just asks questions.
Speaker 1:So he just sits at dinner, he kinda goes like, how's everyone feeling about the deal? And and and then he doesn't just say you know, it's not a small talk question. Then someone goes, well, you know, people have been waiting for it for a while a while to get done. He goes, oh, what do you mean? He goes, well, well, the founders, you know, they've been trying to trying to shop this company around for the last nine months.
Speaker 1:People are pretty tired. He goes, oh, well, what are they tired of? And, you know, five questions into it, my whole executive team is venting to this new guy.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. That's a different business. And
Speaker 1:I'm like, fuck. And I've never taken any outside weight. I've never had that situation. And so we go you know, dinner gets over, and I'm, like, embarrassed. And I'm I'm like, Jesus.
Speaker 1:What just happened? Like you know? And and he he just kinda pulls me aside, and he goes, hey. You know? Like, I'm your partner.
Speaker 1:I'm here to help you. Like, I'm I'm I'm gonna help you with this. Like, I I've run business. Like, he kinda you know, he had a moment where he could have been like, oh my god. What did I invest in?
Speaker 1:Yeah. You know? But he he really showed up as someone who who built a lot of trust with me in that moment of, hey. Like, I've been there. I understand what we're going through.
Speaker 1:I can support you, and I will support you in solving these problems and kind of working through this. And I think, like, I'm not sure I've ever had anyone in that position in my career show up that way. And it was like it really it inspired me to show up more that way. Like, it was just a really, really powerful moment for me. And even later, like, I remember nine months later, he called me.
Speaker 1:He's like, how come you never call me about my business, like or your business and tell me what's going on? How can I help? I'm like, it's like 2% of your company, dude. Like, it's
Speaker 2:it's you know?
Speaker 1:And he goes, yes. He goes, yeah. The revenue is meaningless to me, Jesse, but you're not meaningless to me. You're important to me. Right?
Speaker 1:And I was like, oh, oh, okay. Shit. Like, that's a very different worldview. Like you know? And so, Rick, you know, just in general, I think that kindness in a professional setting with his money on the line that, you know, that, like, it just it left a pretty big impact on me, and it showed showed me what I could potentially be as a leader to people.
Speaker 1:And I think it's pretty inspiring for me.
Speaker 2:That's a great story. And that's contagious when you hear things like that. You're like, oh, that's how you operate at that level. That's really impressive. Well, Jesse, this has been a blast, man.
Speaker 2:Where should we direct people if they wanna follow you? And then as you're launching Bootstrap Giants, where can they go?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Mean, for now, Twitter's great, jspooji, and we're gonna launch a whole Bootstrap Giants content community. It's gonna become a whole big thing that we hope, you know, you, Jim, and and a bunch of other people are a part of. And then, you know, we also think every company is gonna get a growth assistant, so go get go get one.
Speaker 2:Looks like I gotta I gotta sign up once I get that promo code. And, Art, are you gonna launch a podcast? I feel like I saw you I don't know if it's in your email or somewhere you mentioned a podcast where you're gonna, like, interview bootstrappers or something? Am I making this up?
Speaker 1:No. No. I wanna launch a podcast also called Bootstrap Giants where we interview some of the folks who have built these bootstrap companies. Nice. And are you
Speaker 2:gonna do, like, live coaching, or how how transparent do people have to be?
Speaker 1:TBD. TBD. I don't we're playing with a couple different formats.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, very cool. Well, Jesse, this was a blast, man.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for the time. I'm glad we got to connect.
Speaker 1:Likewise. Good to see you, Jim. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to the Shopify Growth Show. If you found this helpful, be sure to subscribe and leave a review. It helps other Shopify founders like you find the show. Want more Shopify advice? Sign up to the Shopify Growth Insider newsletter by Growth Hip, where we break down the top five growth tactics every week.
Speaker 2:Remember, you're not in this alone. Building a Shopify brand is a grind, but you got this. Keep testing, keep scaling, and don't run out of larges on Black Friday like I did. Have a good one.