0:09
People standing, put your HANDS TOGETHER FOR WEBBY AWARD-WINNING SEAN PURY, SAM PARR, AND SPECIAL GUEST ANDREW WILKINSON. Come on out, YOU GUYS. EXTRA MICS. All right.
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0:34
So, we are we are backstage and we saw like all the bands that have played here.
0:38
It's like Franz Ferdinand and like The Killers and all these cool things and I heard the sound guys.
0:43
First off, sound guys, I want to apologize.
0:45
I heard them talking before this and they're like, "What the [ __ ] is this?"
0:54
They're like, "Is this like a rich guy's birthday party? What is this?"
0:57
I think they thought it was a graduation happening.
1:00
So, sound guys, sorry, but it is what it is.
1:03
you always wanted to be a star.
1:03
You wanted to walk out to a sold-out venue and uh I guess this was it's one way to do it. one way to do it.
1:10
So, sound guys, it's going to be the lamest thing you're going to see this week, but maybe you'll learn something. I don't know. Uh but this is awesome. What do you think? Working? [ __ ] you, sound guys. Is it working? Come on, guys.
1:25
You can tell who the real podcasters are up here.
1:28
So, so we did this huge event in Vancouver.
1:30
We had like 1,200 people in this massive theater and Sam sneaks out on the stage and I'm like, "What are you doing?"
1:35
And he's he's peering around the corner taking photos and he goes, "I'm posting this on Facebook."
1:38
And I was like, "Who the [ __ ] uses Facebook? That's so weird."
1:42
And he goes, "All the people I went to high school with."
1:49
Uh and so, we wanted to start off by saying we were laughing backstage.
1:53
I and we were like, right before we came on, we were like, we got to talk about Nick Gray.
1:59
Does anyone here Has anyone here met Nick Gray?
2:01
That was the guy that was just talking.
2:03
Nick I just met him for the first time last night.
2:06
He is I don't know if he's the most interesting man in the world, but he's like the most interesting man in Texas, for sure. I'll give him that.
2:13
I feel like on this show we always talk about billionaires, and there's a lot of money billionaires, but Nick is a friend billionaire.
2:21
Yeah, last night So, we hosted a dinner last night with like I don't know, 15 people, and Sam had set it all up.
2:26
It was going to be perfect.
2:29
He had this like high-end restaurant, table for 14, the time was locked in, we got reminders, we show up, it's supposed to be beautiful, uh you know, just a first-class dinner, everything was taken care of.
2:41
And we get there, and immediately the plan was blown up. It was raining outside.
2:47
like crazy, and our seat was like half outside.
2:49
Yeah, so we weren't going to be able to do it.
2:50
Immediately, Nick Gray improvises. He's like, "Hold on. You stick to the bar."
2:57
And then he sprinted cuz I pulled up, I saw him running, and I was like, "Nick Gray, where are you going?"
3:03
And he was like, "I'm scoping out a venue."
3:05
And he I don't know where he went.
3:09
He runs into this place, and he's like, "Hey, is this a event space?"
3:11
And the women soaking wet.
3:15
Yeah, and the women look at each other, and they're like, "What?"
3:17
And he goes, "What's the name of this place?"
3:19
And they go, "It's called Miss Kitty's."
3:20
And he's like, "Are you guys an event space? What do you do?" He goes, "We wax women." And he goes, "Oh." "I got 15 dudes outside.
3:28
Do you have an event space or not?"
3:32
But he did, he found us this like like abandoned shack almost, this amazing place, and he got us It was really like a shed.
3:41
an abandoned shed, but it was like I don't know, it was perfect.
3:43
It was exactly what we needed.
3:44
It was outside the rain, we were all in there, it was quiet, we could talk, and um and he He this thing cuz so, what Nick does is he has this book called, I think the two-hour cocktail party, and he's basically perfected the art of a two-hour party.
3:59
And I got to see it firsthand.
4:01
He takes out his harmonica to like get everyone's attention, and then he he has this way of getting everybody to open up, to talk, to sit in the right places, to do the right things. And it was incredible.
4:11
The best part though was he saved your he saved you.
4:16
So, so Nick is looking around, and he walks up to me, he goes, "Hey, are you all good? Everything good?"
4:20
And I say, "Okay, I want to go to the shed. I'm excited.
4:23
I'm a little bit cold though.
4:25
Is it going to be Is it going to be heated?"
4:26
And he goes, "Hold on, I'll be right back."
4:28
And he runs outside, and like Sam said, it's like pouring rain.
4:30
I don't know if you guys witnessed this yesterday, but it was insane.
4:33
He comes back, he's soaking wet.
4:35
He looks like that scene in Glengarry Glen Ross when the guy is like at the doorstep, and he brings me this sweatshirt, which he'd paid like $70 for. That's who Nick Gray is.
4:46
And the reason we're bringing this up is not because we like him.
4:47
It's be- To be clear, we like him.
4:52
To To be clear, we like him, but that's not why we're bringing this up.
4:53
But, on our pod, My First Million, and by the way, is everyone here Is anyone who doesn't listen MFM here?
5:01
Who's here for the graduation? Yeah, okay.
5:03
And who here actually listens to us regularly?
5:07
All right, that's good enough.
5:08
And so, we bring up all these like weird businesses that a lot of people haven't heard about, and this one is probably the weirdest one.
5:16
He He told me he was going to write this book about a cocktail party.
5:19
I thought it was a horrible idea.
5:20
And so far, he's sold 11,000 copies of this book, which is insane.
5:25
And he um And so, we have this dinner, and we meet all these interesting people at this like 14-person dinner.
5:31
I think we had a guy there who sold a company that sold dog supplements, which is like the greatest business ever, because who knows if it works, right? Like you have no idea.
5:40
He sold his company for $650 million. It was insane.
5:47
He he telling us a story about this.
5:48
We had another guy who sells also dog related dog ramps.
5:51
So like so your old or small dog can like go up on the couch and he does 18 million a year in sales.
5:58
There was another guy there that has a website that is like a marketplace so you can rent a tractor and it's killing it.
6:04
We had a a person who has a a bunch of owns a bunch of car washes that does tens of millions in profit. What else we have?
6:10
Anything else that was weird? It was it was crazy.
6:13
It was different than San Francisco.
6:14
If you go to San Francisco or New York, you get one type of entrepreneur.
6:18
You get the AI, crypto, you get that in SF.
6:21
In New York, you get something else.
6:23
And in Austin, you get mustache, hat tilt, and like I sell tractors online or I'll sell your dog some vitamins, you know.
6:33
You get a different type of entrepreneur.
6:35
I bet in the I bet in the crowd right now we got to have some interesting businesses.
6:40
Some get Yeah, who who here has a business?
6:40
Let's get it get a sense of who here has So keep your hand up if you own a business and if you do over $100,000 Raise them high. Raise them high.
6:49
If you do over $100,000, keep it up.
6:49
If you do $500,000, keep it up.
6:53
Uh 1 million 5 million Okay, we got a few. Hold on. 20 million, anybody? No? Okay, back to five. Oh, no, no, no.
7:03
We got We got a couple over here. We got a couple. Okay, 20 million. 20 million and up.
7:06
Couple of We got one over here, two here, one in the back.
7:10
Any of those Any of them profitable? Okay. All right.
7:15
Okay, Nick, we want to talk to these guys.
7:17
I want to know what their businesses are. Put your hands up. Hand is up. I'm coming over here.
7:22
All right, stand up, please. Let's hear from you.
7:24
What's your name and what's your business?
7:26
Kelsey Larick, 365 Holdings.
7:26
We're an e-commerce roll-up.
7:29
Sorry, can you say that one more time? 365, please. 365 Holdings.
7:32
We roll up e-commerce businesses.
7:34
I want to be Andrew Wilkinson when I grow up. You don't, trust me. He's blushing up here. very sad.
7:43
It's not like a good deal. I don't know.
7:45
Who's the guy next to you?
7:47
Uh Justin Turner, Traction Capital.
7:47
We have a business that sells equipment to fire departments. What what do you mean?
7:54
I love the way you said all that, but I'm going to Can I just try being you for a second?
8:00
Sean Perry, Perry, dad of dad of the house. Change diapers.
8:06
Like you just said an awesome thing, but with such like Yeah, you're probably right about me. That's the vibe I got.
8:13
We We sell like $37 million worth of equipment that fire departments use and firemen use every day.
8:20
Like like Yeah, hoses, nozzles Uniforms? Uniforms.
8:25
And why is Okay, so and what about competition?
8:27
Is it just like you're the only one in town?
8:29
There's only one place to buy them?
8:30
Or do you have a moat of some kind?
8:33
We have exclusive distribution uh relationships in nine of the western states in the US.
8:40
How much profit on $37 million in revenue?
8:42
Uh it's about 10% margin.
8:44
Does it feel uncomfortable when I ask you these questions?
8:45
Should I ask like what do you look like naked?
8:47
Like what was it like when you lost your virginity?
8:50
There's only one way to find out.
8:54
This data is wrong every freaking time.
8:57
Have you heard of HubSpot?
8:59
HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.
9:02
Well, I can see the client's whole history, call support tickets, emails, and here's a task from 3 days ago I totally missed. HubSpot, grow better.
9:14
Um all right, what else and who else uh Who's got a weirder story than that?
9:18
Anybody got a weirder story than that?
9:19
Who's got Yeah, put your hand up if you got a really weird business.
9:20
Okay, that's She immediately was like, "Weird? Yes." Yeah.
9:24
Yeah, I need Hold on, one second, please.
9:27
Okay, so this is a paper koozie, but I own a 40,000 square foot print wear shop warehouse, and we print real koozies.
9:33
So like it's really niche and it's really random.
9:38
Not these small boy koozies that we handed out.
9:40
How long you been running your business for?
9:42
Um, I've been in business for eight years, but we do a lot of different types of printing.
9:46
Um Did you become a millionaire selling beer koozies?
9:49
That was my first largest e-com store that I created, yeah.
9:53
Selling koozies cuz I'm from the Midwest and we drink a lot of beer and that's You look like you're from the Midwest.
10:01
You and I look I'm close to St. Louis, actually. sister? What's going on? Yeah. We could be cousins.
10:07
Anyone else have a really, really weird business?
10:10
Like dog ramp level weird business?
10:12
Tell them to let the freak flag fly. Oh, here we go.
10:15
Guy with the Austin stash. There it is. it is.
10:18
The the the capital V-neck shirt.
10:21
You just grow those when you fly in as soon as you cross the the border, the the mustache just pops up.
10:26
We make custom dog treats for hospitality businesses.
10:28
So, like, when the Ritz-Carlton has guests come with dogs, we provide the dog treats that they give to their guests.
10:35
And why wouldn't they just use normal dog treats?
10:37
Because ours have their branding on them. Oh, very smart. How big is that?
10:41
Um, we started 10 months ago and we've grown it to half a million in 10 months at run rate. Wow. That's cool. This is cool.
10:46
We're going to we're going to hear more businesses cuz a little bit later we're going to do like a Shark Tanky type of thing with a bunch of bunch of pitches.
10:52
Yeah, you we can put we can put the lights down.
10:54
Two times, okay, there we go.
10:58
So, the cool part about like doing this stuff is we get to meet all these interesting people who are succeeding and some are failing, which is actually just or more interesting.
11:08
Um, but speaking of a big success, Andrew over here took his company public. pointing at me.
11:16
Uh, Andrew over here just took his company public. It's called Tiny. It's not that tiny.
11:22
Yeah, that should be the tagline. It's not that tiny.
11:27
And you're telling he was telling us a story that we had not heard about almost selling the company like 6 years story. Can we tell it?
11:35
I think Yeah, we can we can tell it.
11:36
So there's really two stories.
11:38
So one By the way, if you don't know, I I got to do the intro.
11:42
Andrew started this thing called Metalab.
11:43
It was an agency that made a bunch of tech stuff for big companies.
11:47
Using the profits from that company, he then started buying and investing in other companies.
11:54
Which that whole company that whole company or whole co was called Tiny.
11:59
He recently took it public last week.
12:01
It's now trading at 850 million Canadian dollars, which is only like 600 million bucks in real money.
12:09
Uh no, but it was it's a huge success.
12:12
But it all started because he had this agency called Metalab where he was you know, like I said, doing stuff for tech people, but you were saying earlier that how that was like the foundation for the success of everything else.
12:22
But you it you almost did something crazy early on.
12:27
Yeah, so I almost wasn't sitting wouldn't be sitting here.
12:29
So we're sitting at dinner the other night and talking about this and there's two stories.
12:34
So one I got very excited it would you know, you when when you have a business you always know how much it sucks, how hard it is to run and you always admire other people's businesses.
12:44
And so I always wanted like a SaaS business, sexy business. And so I started one.
12:48
I started this productivity business called Flow.
12:51
It was like Asana except we didn't raise any money and we we had a great product, but it just didn't go anywhere.
13:00
like task management software task management which is like one of the hardest things to do the hardest businesses in the world.
13:04
And I got so excited about it at one point that I I was up at like 11:00 at night. I was feeling all manic.
13:10
I probably had a couple beers and I sent this email to the entire staff and I said, "Guys, we're shutting Metalab down.
13:15
We're going all in on Flow."
13:17
And Chris, my business partner who's here somewhere, where's Chris? Chris is over there.
13:24
Chris was the CFO at the time.
13:24
He looked at the numbers, and he was like, "We will be out of business in 3 months."
13:30
Flow at the Flow was doing like 300k of revenue, and Metalab was like 2 million or something like that.
13:35
And so, How big was Metalab when you when when you were 2 million maybe at that point.
13:40
in revenue versus 300,000? 300k or something.
13:42
I was just like moment of insanity.
13:43
And Chris went around to all the employees quietly and was like, "Please don't leave. Please don't leave.
13:49
We'll be bankrupt in like a week." And saved the day.
13:50
And then the second story was Chris and I we you know, running an agency is really stressful, and we got this offer for the business to sell it for 15 million.
14:02
This is about 8 or 9 years ago, almost 10 years ago. And 15 15? 15 15.
14:09
And we actually went through the whole process, you know, spent 4 months going back and forth with this private equity firm.
14:15
We signed the documents, you know, my lawyer calls me in, quivering hand, I sign sign the documents, and the wire is supposed to come in the next day.
14:23
And so, I wake up, I go to my local bank branch, I go to the ATM, and I look at the balance. My balance is the same.
14:31
And I think, "Okay, it's probably going to come in later."
14:33
So, I check later, nothing. Next day, nothing. Next day, nothing.
14:37
I call the guy at the private equity firm, and he goes, "Hey, man, I'm really sorry, but we weren't able to finish closing our fund.
14:44
So, the deal is not done."
14:46
So, I legally sold the business, and if the wire had come in, I would my business would be worth maybe nothing at this point cuz this was the entire foundation of the business, and we would be we would be tiny.
14:56
So, we almost lost it all.
14:59
What do you think it's worth now, Metalab? I don't know.
15:01
Hundreds of millions for sure.
15:02
But, I don't I don't know.
15:04
And didn't you So, it all could have just one decision.
15:06
Actually, you made the decision.
15:08
And it's And it was all driven by anxiety, right? It's panic.
15:10
Every I'm sure every one of you that runs a business everyone knows how miserable it is inside, right?
15:14
I've You talk to people, you look at them on the outside, you go, "They're an amazing operator.
15:19
They have a great business."
15:19
But, on the inside there's a great quote by Brent Beshore.
15:23
He goes, "Every business is a slow-motion knife fight." Right?
15:25
Like you just wake up in the morning, you're sweating, and you're fighting trying to survive, right?
15:30
And we felt that way, and we pushed through, and it was okay, but we almost gave in.
15:36
Did you, before you sold The Hustle to HubSpot, did you ever almost Did you come close to selling before that?
15:44
So, when I was running the company, I was miserable most every time.
15:45
So, if you go on like Facebook or Instagram, look at my pictures from like 2017 and '18, I was lumpy. I was like pretty fat.
15:56
Uh and I was like cuz I was eating all the time to like make myself feel better.
15:59
So, I was miserable most of the time.
16:01
And then this one company emailed me to uh they showed interest in buying.
16:07
And so, I flow fly all the way out to New York, and I start talking to them, and I get in their office, and like it's empty.
16:14
And I'm like, "Where is everyone?"
16:16
And they're like, "Oh, they're doing stuff."
16:17
And I'm And they take me to a an office to have the meeting, and I look in the windows of each office, and they're in a Every employee is in a sexual harassment seminar because the CMO had just like, you know, gone off the rails and did a bunch of bad [ __ ] Um and so, they get me in a room, they like send me a term sheet, and they're like, "We'll buy your company for $10 million, but it's going to be all in stock."
16:39
And I was like, "Well, show me the financials, and like let me see what's going on with your business."
16:44
And And I got a peek in it, and the company was Vice Vice Media.
16:50
Which means that deal, I was so close to taking it, it would be worth zero.
16:52
I'd probably be in debt cuz Vice like the valuation has just plummeted.
16:56
And so, I almost took that because I was so like desperate to get out.
17:02
Sexual harassment seminar almost saved you. It did. Yeah. Yes. You're a survivor. Mhm.