How to Work Together (Husband & Wife CEOs)

the first four letters of culture is cult my belief is that every company should build a positive cult a cult for good he came to us when he was 34 years old and he said listen I've worked for my dad's liquor store never made more than 100 Grand a year I don't have money for an office can we use your only conference room to launch Viner media yeah know you can't say no to Gary like he's very convincing so I said yes right away and I said Cass can you talk to Gary he wants to use our conference room and I already told him could so 0o to one you're starting a company you know what you want you've pitched your idea to friends family investors whomever and you create that Financial projection right what it's going to take what it's going to look like in terms of expenses and revenue so your job in that first year is to constantly I'm Mike Lazaro this is my wife of 25 years and business partner and mother of three kids and three dogs Cass Lazaro we started our first company when we were dating as all people who were madly in love and newly in love do um and that company was golf.com we're both entrepreneurs we built our businesses um you know really starting at cassen high school me and college and connected over entrepreneurship and went on to start companies like golf.com and Buddy media which sold to Salesforce for $745 million which at the time time was a lot of money that seems to be a series a for this uh the world we live in today and I'm more of the creative and sales and product and cast does everything for our life and our businesses Mike is definitely the Visionary he can he literally in in all of our companies and and when we invest in companies can help like monetize anything think of the different models and I usually help out with all operations marketing hiring my favorite thing to do firing and uh everything in between is that said with sarcasm or are you being serious no I really do like firing I think it's just such a um a task of efficiency so you know the best operators out there will will hire fast but fire faster but she does it with kindness which is you know I think I've learned a lot from Cass and often times getting fired could be an awful experience that ruins you or it could be the best advice you've ever gotten and put you on a path of self-awareness and figuring out your migas or where your best fit is and Cass is really good at like firing people and making them feel great and giving them feedback that really I think I've seen it over and over again changes their lives you have you have to My Philosophy is that you spend so much time and Care trying to recruit somebody for a company that you have to spend the same amount of time when you actually let them go right it's only fair and you know to do the right thing you know this is an opportunity where someone can learn and change the trajectory of their career if they choose to listen but you have to give them the information wow that's a very interesting philosophy I mean there's so many things I want to get into in terms of like how you stay married and happy working together cuz that's a challenge you both have accomplished things that our audience have can only dream of and you're looking at that perspective you have such an interesting unique approach to firing that I have to get into as one who struggles with it myself and I know many of our listeners do this and for my own history I've been reluctant to hire people CU I just didn't want to fire people right and that was an artificial constraint placed on myself and once I learned how to deal with it it made my life a lot easier of course I can grow but let let's just let's just do this I've learned from some of the best podcasters who I aspire to be if somebody doesn't know anything about this episode give us a couple like a few highle things as to why they should pay attention I'm going to say that the first four letters of culture is cult and my belief is that every company should build a positive cult a cult for good and harder to do with this remote world and this remote Workforce but absolutely necessary as you start to create companies where people are you know quietly quitting checked out literally phoning it in that how you Embrace culture is like a big deal I think from the highest level we spent our 30 years working years at least Cass a little more she's older than I am just a chronological fact I'm not but the way he says that in it's just so bad yeah it's and we've been building businesses and we've come to the conclusion that there's no worse way to spend your day it's miserable it's suffering and there's no other way we'd rather spend our day and as we started talking entrepreneurs about our book shoveling [ __ ] a love story there was this dichotomy between it is awful and I'm suffering like I've never suffered before and it's awesome there's nothing else I'd rather do and so that kind of really encapsulates our life where we didn't see our kids for many years we felt we were fighting like crazy when we weren't connected we didn't see friends we ran out of money we had to recap so it's like you get to work as an entrepreneur you know this Chris like [ __ ] hits the fan and you just start shoveling it and there's nothing you'd rather do I think in the last couple of years entrepreneurship has been made sexy and somebody described it as trendy I think Gary ve was talking about like entrepreneurship is trending now and I turned to my young uh employee my my young staff and asked him is it trending I mean I've been a an entrepreneur all my life like I didn't even understand that concept and he goes yeah everybody wants to be in business for themselves and if we look from the outside especially Amplified through the lens of social media it does look sexy and fun people are posing in front of their expensive cars and the boats and the lifestyle and the apartments and the boyfriends the girlfriends the party life and then they forget to talk about all the stuff that no one sees I think you I don't swear you refer to as the S the stuff we got to do right yeah and you're you're say like let's get real with this and and there are sacrifices that need to be made and and a lot of our our our audience are really they're really Freelancers who pretend to be entrepreneurs and I said stop pretending let's be real entrepreneurs you need to scale you need to team you need to learn how to delegate and it takes a lot of work and there's a lot of sacrifice so why don't we start off with this what are maybe the top couple of myths that you can think about that people who are in that space do not understand anything about entrepreneurship whoever wants to take that I'll start I'll say that you know I I run across this a lot with entrepreneurs who come and ask us questions that there's this this glorification that you're going to have all the time in the world that you're literally you know never going to miss an event you're never going to miss an event with your kids like you're going to go on vacations you can take as much vacation time the truth is that being an entrepreneur is a bunch of sacrifices right and I have a philosophy that you only can do one thing well at a time and because of that if you really do want to start a company and run it and do it well you are going to sacrifice friendships you're going to sacrifice being with family you're going to maybe not miss things with kids like big events like a play at the school that you can like have on a calendar but you're going to miss all the little between moments and you know those those friendships that are that are family friends those are all like you're just not going to get that so I'd like to demystify that with saying that you got to be prepared and swallow this imbalanced life and be ready to have some sacrifices I think you mentioned kind of one of the most toxic things entrepreneurs which is social media because it's all about external validation it's ironic because this will probably go on social media and we helped invent the social marketing space at buddy media but you have to realize that that person who you mentions in front of Lamborghinis probably living in their parents' basement and they've never built anything and you know Gary ve is a really interesting case because he came to us when he was 34 years old and he said listen I worked for my dad's liquor store never made more than a hundred grand a year I don't have money for an office can we use your only conference room to launch Vayner media and you know you can't say no to Gary like he's very convincing so I said yes right away and I said Cass can you talk to Gary he wants to use our conference room and I and I already told him he could but what I saw is the Hustle real hustle focused strategic hustle of like getting customers on board hiring people to fulfill the work many of your you know audience members are in the creative industry and have you know could get more work but they'd also have to get more people right they have to scale it's what you're talking about entrepreneurship and I think if you tap into real entrepreneurs you know like Gary like Mark hubin like others who put out content it will help educate you but most importantly you have to stop worrying about what people think if you go into this worried about perception you are just going to be riddled with fear that's going to cause uncertainty uncertainty is going to cause doubt and you're not going to be able to get out of this hurricane of fud and so tap into why you're different what are the benefits you bring to the world what do you do better than anyone else and exploit those for the benefit of others and that's really what business that's what you've done I mean Chris look at what you've done you've tapped into your true kind of gifts of creativity and communication and you've just exploited them to help people I I'm going to ask this question on behalf of all the partners who have to suffer for with Partners who do things and then the other person has to deal with it I'm mostly channeling my wife here I what I heard Mike say was hey there's this guy named Gary let's just let him use this thing and then I saw reaction from you Cass I I need you to explain the reaction because I don't think I'm a mind reader but I saw something please expand on that so we were in an office right on uh what you you know Columbus Circle so 60th in Broadway and we had I don't know maybe 20 desks and very like three offices and then a conference room which was just basically a glorified bigger room that didn't have a partition in it and for Mike to tell me that he'd already said yes to Gary that and then literally as we're talking he's like you know I need you to get behind this and Gary's brother AJ is like has boxes of stuff that he's walking past me like hey Cass and like moving in I was like what the f did you just do right so again Gary came up to me and he was so appreciative and genuine and thankful it did put us in a bind I mean it they they got to like a number of people in that office smooshed in there and it actually became a fire code Hazard I think uh that was an interesting moment for Mike and me I was not happy about that but in retrospect uh it was fun to be in an environment where you had really focused people and our employees could also see another group of people who had their heads down and were leading by example is there anything else you want to expand on that in terms of the feeling and how you process that because this is what I do to my wife all the time and to my entire team I got this idea let's go do this thing yeah and then they literally then have to go and clean up the crap afterwards I'm sure it's frustrating yeah it is frustrating I mean Mike and I you know we're we're very different but we're aligned on many different things one thing we're not aligned on is when he can start talking and pitching ideas to me and that's in the morning so he wakes up fired up to go and has like an idea like coming out of the shower and then like opens up and goes I have another idea I have another idea so yeah it's frustrating you know I'm the one he throws things over the fence and I've got to like just like your wife I've got to execute it I've got to operationalize it I got to figure it out um but it's also how we get our best ideas because if he throws me something that I cannot figure out how we can scale it's a great filter for him right and and the things that get by the filter or let's just say he goes around the filter I.E he goes around me those have not worked out so great my God I probably can spent all our conversation on this one thing but I'm not going to be super selfish here Mike I want to ask you this question you meet this guy he seems like he's got a lot of energy what is it I think you're you're more of an instinctual person I'm I'm maybe I'm projecting here what is it that you see about this young Gary vaynerchuck who's like we have limited office space but why don't we share what limited resources we have with a with a random person I think right yeah no I didn't know him very well and what was interesting about Gary at the time is he had a small following from his Wine Library show MH how he was creating content was unlike anyone out there it was raw it was him he was eating dirt he was animated and he' built this business which I knew about I don't drink but I knew about the store Wine Library from from about $4 million of sales to 70 million off the back of content we launch buddy media to help marketers Market in a whole new way to connect with customers in a whole new way so this is the Advent of Facebook we you know were part of some of the first campaigns that launched on Facebook and we just thought that like content was the currency of culture my whole life is listening to my gut and I I wouldn't recommended to everyone but I do stuff that I think should exist in the world or you know liquid death is a great example like First Time Peter fam at science talked to me about it I just went down a rabbit hole I met the founder Mike Cesario and on the spot I said I'm in this is pre-launch an idea on a napkin and I just thought that a wellness product marketed really well using content that that made people laugh was like would find a place in the world now that I think it would be as big as it's gotten like of course not like you never do I think that's what that story is about is like you have moments in your life if you make the right decision it spirals in a new direction if not whatever like life goes on and I'm not afraid to do stuff that other people think is crazy including my wife there's another point to that though which is another myth for entrepreneurs is that they think that the first idea they have is going to be the one that actually makes them big right so they think that they'll never have to Pivot they'll never have to change anything and that whatever they came up with the first time to the investors to their company to their employees to their parents and their significant other is the thing that's going to work and we argue 95 98% the time that's not true you're going to have to Pivot and you're going to have to let go of your ego around that original idea and really that original story that you pitched and got so good at pitching and eat your pride and say wait this isn't working here's how I know it's not working and we're going to change it by going over here and those entrepreneurs that can can basically say Okay I accept that whatever this idea is is not going to be my last iteration those are the ones who succeed I I I think you two are kind of like the embodiment of like how creativity should exist and when I speak to mostly creative people the problem is in the creation process they're judging at the same time and you have in two human bodies where Mike throws ideas out over the fence as you say and he justes have to worry it's going to work he just has the freedom to play to run naked with scissors and crowns and whatever he wants to do and then you get to say like oh of the ideas that you came up with these are things I can see us doing and then you can judge and so what we want to do is just put some space between those two if it's just you the second thing you said just right now was and I just want to draw that to everyone's attention is you have to have faith that you have more than one good idea right people are stuck as it's like I think it was mostly because they're scared like I got this one idea I don't know if something else will come and maybe for some that is literally what happens but what I'm hearing from you is you have to have faith to say like you know what this they say it this ain't it I know you spent the last 5 years trying to build this thing it's not it you have to Pivot you have to find a new thing and to know that back there inside your brain another idea will come if you allow it to step out if you if you let go of that ego that pride and that autopilot like this is the idea and this is what I pitched everybody on and this is what I'm known for maybe it becomes part of your identity if you can let go of that then you can actually get out of your own way and start really looking at you know the factors that you can judge against which actually you know this is how you created your whole pitch like you can go back to your projections and say oh well the of course this isn't working because we have no clients or because we didn't hit this Milestone and you can be objective and actually make some changes for the good before you run out of money right but what do you say to people are like but it hurts if my idea fails my business fails I'm a failure I mean it does hurt there's no there's no way around that there's nothing that I can say to make people say like when this idea didn't work and I didn't listen to my gut and I didn't cut you know half my staff to stay alive and now I'm out of business I feel like a failure well this too will pass okay so failure out of failure comes some of the greatest ideas some of the greatest strength that you can have right if you choose to listen to it and look at it objectively there's a a habit that my teams sometimes get caught up in which is they fall in love with the input and they're not really looking at the output so we spent five years building this and we're we're doing everything we can I've sacrificed so much but the results are we're losing customers right not getting traction we're not hitting our numbers how how do we get past that attachment to well we're doing what we're supposed to be doing and not looking at the result I think that a lot of it is um you know because we've spent a lot of time studying that and a lot of it's leadership and we write about this in the book the death and the pivot where you know we compare pivoting a company to kind of leading a skydiving exercise where you don't quite know if the parachute on your back is going to open you don't know how far you are away from the ground you have very little information and you basically have to get people to jump not without fear because it's scary right and if you say oh don't be scared like well that's an emotion that I'm feeling I cannot feel that way you have to get your organization to move despite the fear inside that fear and Buddy media we pivoted three times to get to our business model you know Cass approved these ideas but we had something called Ace bucks which was literally the worst idea I've probably ever had which was I did not I did not to prove that I want to make sure we're C you didn't veto it let's just say that I just had I just had our third hisory like third child you came up with this idea while I had just given birth literally after the csection well sometimes you got to like just you know you got to suck it up do stuff when people are down and out like when iron's hot he's like she's down and out let's do it we weak right now you know we looked at the results which was like oh no one wanted this like Ace Buck stuff and eventually we talked to enough customers that they said you know something we don't really love what you're doing but we need help on Facebook and Twitter and the other early social networks and that's where our first our Facebook page management system product came and then our whole social media management system came from and your job as a leader is to pull off the Band-Aid set the course make sure that everyone has what they need and often times lay people off and re reorganize the business and you can't expect your people who basically are getting a salary not all of them are Risk Takers like you you can't expect them to get there on the own you have to lead and leaders lead and leaders win and they continue to play even if they're down in the second half and need to come back it reminds me of another myth because you you talked about this myth theme that the best leaders are totally transparent and I know you've heard that before it's like you know buzzword of a century but it's about always telling your employees and your team The Good the Bad and the Ugly it's making your employees no different than your board or your investors right and telling them we hit these numbers or you know we're having a tough time over here we were so transparent that during our three pivots we didn't lose anyone and if you can do that if you can lead with a huge amount of transparency even talking like we we shared financials right like how were we doing did we hit numbers then you know people don't leave because they're so loyal because you're telling them the truth right and Mike always says this you know people are okay with bad news they're just not okay with surprises so you've got to get rid of this myth that you can't tell employees the bad stuff right you can and you have to uh that reminds me of something that my business coach told me many years ago absent an explanation people create their own narrative right so in good times and bad times so everybody assumes you're making money and then when you have to cut people back they're like wait why did you get rid of XYZ we're doing great or they see like oh we just signed an X client and they don't understand only a certain percentage that is profitable if it's profitable at all so we as Leaders as managers as Visionaries need to bring team in and to let go of this idea that we have to hold all the information cuz the team is going to be irresponsible with that information right exactly transparent leadership I'm a big fan of okay I I got to ask you this question here because um there's this idea that you said about trusting your gut when did you not listen to your gut and how did it turn out I mean I'll tell you one story that I really haven't talked about it's painful I mean to me it's you know one my failures which is you know I was a little lost after we sold buddy media and I spent four years at Salesforce which I wasn't lost I was great Salesforce an incredible company incredible customers I was doing some of the best work of my life but then I was just tired um I have a artificial heart valve and some health issues so I just told Mark Ben off that I just have to like focus on my health I was 40 pounds like more Cass and I were fighting I didn't know my kids I was like I was just looking for and I was like man this is not how I want to go right God forbid anything happened like it's just not a life worth living right um because for entrepreneurs it's not about money like we started off just you don't start off the internet in you know 1994 because of the money there's 13 million people on the internet right we just are creative we like doing stuff and so those you know I got a painting Studio I paint um it's a hobby I'm not very good at it I realized and then I was hanging out with an artist friend who was giving me advice on painting and a big artist I mean sells stuff for you know sold pieces for a million dollars more and he had a good idea for technology and I started a business with him and it's called shape Matrix and still around um very sweet guy Jonathan Kramer is the artist and you know I help raise money we raised $12 million it's a it's a new visual language based on the eight basic shapes that populate the world your 3D shapes um and there's applications for cryptography and security and um tag and track but in my gut I was like man like he's an artist sweet guy never done a business you know I don't have cast who's going to operate this but I was just not in a great place personally I'm just like this is my passion I'm going to do it it's creative like it's art business you talk to me about yeah and Cass is like I don't know but you know I support you co-founders relationships are very hard and we couldn't work together you know which is why I'll never do anything with anyone other than Cass and if I do please punch me in the face someone and stop me it's okay so that was like it was so obvious in my gut that I shouldn't do it but I was so filled with kind of huis I think it was more of like you know oh even I can make this happen right I've sold this because when you make all this money like people treat you like you're smart and it's like I'm the same old schmuck that I went to journalism school and like I've always been and it's just been a really painful experience we have a hundred Investments we've done and when we put in money when we commit to being part of the team we never give up no matter how good how bad like we're in it and uh you know it's been like that one gut decision that was so obvious my gut saying don't do it don't do it don't do it I basically I mean the thing is and what I've realized is like your gut is usually right and then you spend two weeks talking yourself out of your gut it's like this internal like well like my gut's not thinking about this or that or like you know I don't think that's going to be an issue and like at this point I'm like that first reaction that I have write it down and that's the truth so you're saying you're you weren't in a good place mentally maybe burnt out and then you have this hubis of like I can make anything great and there's this super great artist that you're collaborating with maybe you admire this person for their work and like who's a great friend like right this is going to work of course it's going to work and you raise all this money and you do it and Cass is like I don't know about this one and your gut's like uh I don't know either Mike but you're like no no shh you know and and when I think we I just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing here so often times we refer to it as the gut I think if I if I remember correctly Simon cic's whole thing it's like the lyic brain the decision Center the emotional part that makes all of our decisions I think that's what we refer to as the gut correct and it's the neocortex the logic part that then talks our lyic brain out of it to say you know what screw you you know what you're talking about we're going to do this other thing instead now sometimes I think we mix those two up where we think it's our gut telling us we can do this and forget about the worries and the logic part but it's the opposite have you been able to figure out when you know which is the gut or the limic versus the neocortex or whatever we love this topic and it's both magic and Art and Science and I've been able to tune into a feeling and I've talked to a lot of people about this and I know that feeling because it's a subcon just processing of data it's not just a gut so like if you're running a business you have to make a big decision you have like years worth of data and results and conversations and third-party data and it's just like in there right and you have to let that process play out and result in a feeling and that is the feeling that I've tapped into which I call my gut I'm not as smart as you and definitely not as smart as Simon cynic who I met very early on and I was always like man this guy's going places but what you say resonates because it is not it it's a very kind of like you know our brains and the computer systems that we have in our you know in our bodies are they're just amazing and they're doing the hard work to result in one output that I now through a lot of trial and error can recognize I'm going to get to cast but there's this line I think of I can't remember exactly and it's like um Benedict cumbot just run on Sherlock and he was saying something to Watson I just have to listen to my instinct and Watson turns I'm like wait Instinct he goes no it's just your brain working faster than your logical brain can comprehend and that's what you're speaking about Mike we have all this experience in this data and it process so fast that we just call it gut or a feeling but it's actually super logical too right and there's something that's beautiful about your brain that you're a dreamer and dreamers Visionaries are also Romantics everything works in your brain your brain and your mind whereas Cass I think you're a lot more like my wife you're like the realist my foot's on the ground you know some of your crazy hairbrain ideas just don't work how does your gut serve you you know I was thinking about this when Mike was answering his question um so I look at I've always look at Pathways how do we move pieces up a chessboard knowing we're going to make sacrifices down down the line right so we're going to lose a couple pawns we might use lose our Rook like we've got to do some things that push the board forward even if they're not perfect decisions and I've always loved you know what do they teach you in like economics 101 like you've got to make imperfect decisions with imperfect data right and and the people that can lead in that kind of um uncertainty are great but for me when I think about it if something I can't see a path what looks like to me in my brain is I can't see a path that can move enough of our pieces forward then it keeps me up at night and I keep trying to say like it it it won't settle like I always have a like I always tell Mike like okay I think I'm settled on that that that feels right because I'm not trying to go find a different way to solve it so for me when my brain quiets down I know that my gut whatever you you want to call it is okay it's a different way of seeing things than Mike and I I think mine is very like hardcore compared like in very um tactical and sharp if you will because I'm kind of saying like Okay he's got this idea this is what he wants me to do with it and then I'll go like it's like a board on the on in my head like on my super screen of my brain looking at all the different things that that could be impacted and if this is worth it I I want to go down that path a little bit more with you because my wife who's also my partner in business and life and the mother for our children we see things a little bit differently and I'd love to get your perspective on this cast so I'm okay with risk I'm very risk tolerant and she's very risk avoidant so when there's an opportunity an opportunity we'll put that in air quotes cuz they're not opportunities half of time I'm totally wrong I don't know what the next move is but my gut says this is going to work out so I'll do business or I'll go to meetings and I'll do things with people that I'm like it may not work out whereas my wife needs to see what the next five steps are on that chess board because she can't see the play she goes why are we wasting our time now more often than not I would say like 80% of the times I'm right about this kind of stuff I'll put myself in a risky quote unquote way but then they pan out to be this other opportunity I could not have seen right so from your perspective how how do you process that where I I don't know what the next moves are and do I allow ourselves our company Mike or myself to go forward not knowing or do I shut it down maybe this might be where your wife and I are different so I don't care I'm I'm I'm a risk taker I I think that in order to succeed with anything you have to be a risk taker and be okay with whatever the consequences are because I know if you bet on yourself you can pivot right into something else good or bad whatever that may be so with with things that Mike comes up with like Ace bucks or tickets he had this one idea with tickets which was just wanted to make me vomit don't don't even say that one yet I'll tell them that one in a second but maybe me want to vomit in our company like I'm willing to not know how to execute as long as I can still see a path forward with the team members around me it's when there's like how does this work with the team like this doesn't like I can't see the workflow I can see is getting to be a big bottleneck this can't scale and nothing makes me more itchy or upset or grumpy than not being able to scale something in an efficient way I can stand in a line at a movie theater and I want to go up to them and be like you know if you just put the rails over here this is going to go a lot faster right so that's how I process it but it's not about risk for me I I never look at it with a lens of risk I look at it as how can we move forward and not disrupt the board if that makes sense yes and it's a very rare thing that you possess and probably why Mike's like I can't do this with anybody else except for with C because a lot of people ask the how question but it's not the same how question like he has a big idea and and most people are like how that how's that going to happen so we're kind of caught in the tyranny of the how we get caught up in the weeds and your was like no we we like this idea how do we make that successful not how do we deal with all the the details right right so it's very different your mind is activating something yeah it's activating this like go forward right like just move forward and I think I'm able to say okay these are the three you know markers if you will if they happen we got to shut this down and pivot right so to me it's about I guess if you really kind of boil it down it's about data right so I'm willing to take any idea and I'll figure out how to move it forward but if we're going to measure ourself against scale efficiency making money you know you name it that's great give me those data points because that just helps me with my equation now I will tell you a story that you will you will laugh at so we had just had our second child Cole and I had him we had him on April 4th 2004 so 4404 which was kind of a lucky day and um we were you know limp along with golf.com because the ad space was coming around and we had been living through the do you know crash and one day you know I have two small kids we work in the basement in this tiny room the doorbell rings and this guy with this huge truck says hi ma'am we've got your felt and I say pardon me and you know I have the baby on me and he's like we have your felt and I said I'm so sorry you must be in the wrong place they're like no no no Michael Lazaro and I'm like yeah and he's like we have your felt and I'm like why do you keep saying felt like what what does felt stand for and he's like felt felt poker felt felt for tables and I said well how much felt do you have and I walk to the truck and there's like four pallets of felt so I go hold on a second slam the door go back down I go Mike what the f did you just do he's like oh well I might have started a company called freef felt.com a couple months ago and I was like what he's like yeah I ordered all the felt poker's really big and we're we're just going to start sending the felt out and I said there was a business behind it it wasn't just sending it out it was a lead gen system for online poker wa like I I need to hear the rest of the story and then you can tell your side of it honestly there was no con ction on what made sense and why in my home there was going to be four pallets of felt and then ready the big question who was going to be sending the felt who all right Mike you can now say it I mean listen it was a it was a mistake I was young so I'm not going to you say that now you can say that now the idea the idea was simple which is like this is the beginning of online poker y sites are getting paid you're are paying out $1,000 per funded account so hey you're playing in a online poker game or a Home poker game here's like free felt just pay shipping and handling I'd break even off that but I'd be able to get people to raise their hand and say I play poker and then get them on the poker stars and all these sites now let's just say at the time when I was only 30 years old not even 30 no I was about 30 I wasn't great at what's called communication and asking cast questions that I didn't really know the answer to or you didn't want to hear the answer no I kind of knew you you'd hate the idea I resemble that statement I'm going to say so I'm like if I ask her about this business she's going to say no I'm not going to be able to do it and like a giant man baby I just went and did it okay I want to get to the book I know we I know we don't have a ton of time I'm excited for you guys your your the book launches I think in June it's called I can't even say because I don't swear sh a love story much cleaner kind of language than we do about the entrepreneurs messy path to success so we hope that you know entrepreneurs want to pick it up because we have like 50 plus cheat codes in there 30 years of our lives and lessons that we've learned and really just trying to give back to everybody so that they can get a head start when they decide to become an entrepreneur okay now there are parallels here right there's the the the it's a love story and your own love story and how you're able to make this work and it's obvious here there's give and take push and pull but there's also the love story about like loving your business doing the hard work there's there's a lot in there that you if you are not made for it and you can't learn to love it you're going going to ultimately not be as successful as you want in worst case in or you fail so I get that part and you mentioned cheat code so let's just do this with the time remaining why don't we just go left and right left and right until we are like tired give us one of the cheat codes let's go to Mike and then we'll bounce over to cast and we just go back and forth okay what what is one cheat code Mike I mean the number one is to me is don't run out of money three things that a Founder has to do is not run out of cash not run out of cash not run out of cash and we talk about the greatest ways to fund the business not Venture businesses this isn't built for Tech entrepreneurs it's built for the 5 million people who start businesses every year most of them look like restaurants and laundromats and service compan iies and the number one way to really bootstrap your business is customers and we focus a lot on that so that's like number one cheat code for all entrepreneurs is kind of get real how we got very good at funding businesses both through customers and then obviously at buddy media we had to build stuff before we sold it so we'd end up raising $100 million wonderful okay over to you Cass focus focus focus so 0o to one you're starting a company you know what you want you've pitched your idea to friends family investors whomever and you create that Financial projection right what it's going to take what it's going to look like in terms of expenses and revenue so your job in that first year is to constantly and this is what we see entrepreneurs not doing but constantly look back at that Financial projection so that that becomes your focus right that's how you measure yourself against what you told everyone that was going to happen that was good that was a good outcome in the first year what you tell investors what you tell friend and family what you tell seed money whatever it is focus on that use that as your like Bible to look at every day M overs you Mike i' take it even further back which is how do you know when to Greenlight a company mhm or a product at a company and we outline we give our framework it's called The Go gauge and there's six questions you need to answer before you launch it and it starts with what is the product why is it different who is going to buy it and how many of them which is the market size it's not just like you know the golf industry is a hundred billion Market but if you don't own a golf course you're not getting $80 billion Worth right so we focus on like who are the customers and how many of them are CU then you have to really drill into the addressable market right and then how are you going to Market it great products exists that never saw the light of day right Chris that's like your superpower how do you get stuff out into the world and a lot of entrepreneurs underestimate that I'm going to build it and they will come is not a strategy that's a movie how are you going to distribute it so a lot of companies um you know this is the fifth think about all this stuff but they don't think about the logistics how are they going to get it to the customer whether it's online or they have to ship it is it a channel strategy um and then the last and that in that is like the sales strategy and go to market and the last which I would say is the least important to start if it's a big market so if it's a really big Market at this last one it's basically the idiots Guide to the financials so do the financials make sense on a napkin does it pass the smell test and when I say financials it's I'm going to sell the product for 10 bucks it's going to cost me two bucks to make it's going to cost me another two to ship it I think I can get customers for two bucks so that means there's $2 left over for everything to pay for like the general administr can I fund all that and I see so many entrepreneurs creating complicated Financial projections for businesses that they're so [ __ ] clueless how it's going to work like literally they're like haven't talked to a customer have no idea if the pricing makes sense but they have like you know the Harvard MBA like thing and so that alone as an entrepreneur is worth the money because save your myself the pain I've had at shape Matrix I did not do it for shape Matrix and it's been 7even years of Misery all right let me just quickly recap the six questions you want to ask yourself about the if whether or not you should green light a product or project initiative in your company is what's the product why is it different who buys it how do you Market it what's your marketing strategy how do how do you distribute it and in terms of financials keep it simple stupid don't over complicated understand your numbers right right that's exactly it wonderful cast the last hack here give us the biggest juiciest One Drop It On Us please all right I'm going to talk about marketing so we haven't really touched on that and when you're a startup you probably don't have any dollars to Market so what we did and obviously this last company was a big one we were we were starting a new category social media marketing right and social media management but it's not like yeah we started the company we got a little funding right away but it's not like I could say like hey give me $500,000 and like that's going to be my budget so what do you do so you got to think about depending on your product or service where are your customers and wherever they are in our case at that time they were at conferences right so conferences are pretty cheap way for the most part some are $1,500 a ticket and stuff but that's how we spent our money our marketing dollars in the very beginning right so we went there and then I would negotiate two for three for tickets and stuff like that I'd pitch Mike with this incredible PR guy that was helping us pitch him for a thought leadership panel conference which was great because as you've seen here Mike has a lot of insight about a lot of things so now I've got Mike two other salespeople going to a conference I've got Mike on stage now think about what's the cheapest thing I can do to Brand our company in that way with all the extra customers that are walking around us at this conference it's always around food and beverages I will tell that to anybody until I die so one time in a huge conference for golf.com we didn't know like this was at the PGA show of America I think that was what it was called the Golf Show of America we we had there was like 10,000 booths I got old-fashioned popcorn machines that smell like popcorn for like 6 miles and I just we had a crappy booth that wasn't very pretty or anything but we had our sales team lined up and everyone gets hungry right so they would just come over because they smelled the food number two what we did once have Mike talking at a conference doing thought leadership in a panel and we own every single coffee cup at the conference and they're like well that could be 10,000 coffee cups okay best money I've ever spent every single time you put your brand on it it's cheap you're they're literally looking at you holding a cup with your brand on it so so what I like equate that whole thing to is when you're a startup punch up with marketing punch up make yourself look bigger there are a lot of opportunities out there that don't cost a lot of money I want to stay on the conference thing because it's not a usual thing for people in our space to think about go to the conference we go as the attendees but we don't know how to make a splash we're not putting ourselves in a position of leadership and where people now Chase US versus us chasing them right I love this let me ask you a couple of questions here so yeah get your brand everywhere so you would sponsor the coffee cup so the event organizer is happy for you to pay for that awesome best money you ever spent so you're your golf.com is all over the cups right people walking around then they smell this delicious buttery popcorn they come over to the booth maybe the bags are branded to whatever corre somebody Scoops them some popcorn how do we bring them into the conversation cuz we've been there go and grab the popcorn we just go to the next Booth right that that's like sales 101 here now now we get to the real you know Secret Sauce of what it means to be a good salesperson because there's a Marketing Group that helps you get the lead generation and now it's up to the sales team so when you're there and I'm gonna let Mike answer this because he's obviously like the ultimate salesperson along with our other co-founder Jeff Ragan um your job is to hook you don't give that popcorn out until you have a conversation right you better not give that popcorn out it's not it's not laying around team listen pay attention to this part well wait but Mike doesn't always agree I I so I was the one who you know I did most of the traveling speaking yeah you know I got most of the recognition Cass did most of the work and you know made things work um I'm just happy that I got all the recognition but um the you have to get people play the long game no one's heard about your brand if they're carrying around a coffee cup they've now heard your about your brand that's step one okay so brand recognition and just oh I've heard of them what do they do and so we didn't make them have a conversation with them with us a lot of people wanted to know because they felt guilty people are guilty taking things taking things without asking and seeming like a total pig but like right I'm I'm right there yeah and so um you know we would do is basically like get the coffeee cups out there and then they would see my column and AD age I'd write about like how to Market in the social world right I had a column and then I had a column in fast well not fast Inc magazine Inc magazine which i' write about startups and then I'd show up at we'd like you know pitch speaking engagements and this is all laying the groundwork right so you have to like there's no easy way to cold call today it was easier back then lay the groundwork and then figure out how you're going to bring value to anyone you talk to so popcorn is the best exchange of value you know my brand now and you got some delicious hot popcorn right and so do stuff that's like that's cheap that is impactful that's not goofy right like right I was just at the CES show and the stuff that people are passing out at their Booth it's like why like I don't like giving away candy I'm like I'm just giving you poison right I don't like giving away chachkies that's it's like you know they're going to throw away right outside it's just kind of be smart like what would you want and you know you have a very creative audience everyone has superpowers and ideas creatives are much better at marketing their clients often times than themselves so think to yourself okay I'm Chris if I'm a product or a brand how would I Market myself you figured out a while ago it's why you have like millions of people following you right but most people don't know where to start and where you start is you just do it like you just start and so if you want to do your own popcorn at an event yeah we hacked CES at you know 2019 where Peter fam and I passed out about a thousand liquid deaths no one had ever heard of the brand we hadn't launched yet we had it in our backpack I kept going back to my room to get it right by the end people were filling up their cans with regular water cuz they love the brand so much so you know don't Market stuff that is like you you don't believe in but if you really believe in it just force it force people in some way to get exposed to it I still want to get to the sales 101 part where C says this is the critical part you got the popcorn and I'm I'm I'm guilty of this I walk up if I want something I'm unaware of their Booth I feel guilty I feel like I owe it to you to listen to 3 minutes of your pitch right it's this whole reciprocity thing and and I feel like now I've taken and I need to get back so in the booth itself I I I would love to be really practical and pragmatic about this you got that bag of popcorn what are you saying to that person give us a sample like the structure of it maybe we have a takeaway so we always had like materials Cass was great at like either two pager or pamphlets mhm we had giveaways cast didn't mention this but we always had like you know win a trip to whatever and people could enter by scanning or by putting in their business card we constantly did that and we had salese there so people who are interested be like hey this is what we do if you have like you know if you Market in multiple languages multiple countries we have a system to let you hyper Target content on Facebook Facebook at the time but then it opened up to others and people who were dealing with that would say oh we I got to do a demo and yeah we we usually in the back had a computer set up but you could follow up afterward but sales is not a you know oneand done it's like we look at as building relationships like how did people feel when they left their Booth like was it worth their time or was it not popcorn helps but it's if they're going to spend 10 the other other thing Mike I think that I saw you and Jeff and all the other sales team doing is the conversation is about hey let me tell you about you know buddy Media or golf.com it's more like what are the problems you're facing right now in your company right so you talked about reciprocity Chris we usually have taught our salespeople to to then turn it around and give back again give back more right so it's not take take take take it's not quidd pro quo it's how can we help you right it's give give give and and draw them into the conversation right popcorn got them there now we have some stuff to give them you know at golf.com we would like you know get Titleist to give us a driver and everybody was crazy about you know new golf club so they'd sit there and fill out their information which helped with our lead genen and then you can say because we're giving you know what brings you here what what are you facing in your industry right now what what's what's happening with your company how could we help the socratic opener right okay so you're there to solve more problems and give more stuff and eventually if there's a fit you might do a demo happens yeah they're going to remember you but you can do all of this by punching up being creative I mean one year at South by Southwest it was pouring rain and somehow dropped to like 48 50° and we rented we scrambled and rented golf carts and we were a mobile golf cart coffee like mobile coffee machine and everyone was freezing and we just provided the coffee and the cof in our coffee over yeah freezing and hung over but we were the coffee here comes coffee Jesus like we're your savior I love that okay did you call an audible in the moment it's raining it got cold hey somebody get the truck let's slap on a label let's do this five or six days before our team did I was watching the weather yeah we figured the weather and it wasn't getting any better was like it dropped all of a sudden we would have been all in the same place right but we saw it and then we thought oh my gosh everything that we were going to do was going to be a waste of money how can we get our branding out there you know what I love about that is that you're not waiting till after the fact to make a decision you're you're kind of anticipating it and paying attention to this and I love the second part that you said because earlier in our conversation you said you know what don't fall in love with your first idea be ready to Pivot and know that that's a loser so you had a plan going in and now that plan's not going to work most regular folk would just no we paid for it we're pot committed we're going to go all in on this 2 27 off suit we're going to go in right that's for Mike so then like let's switch let's switch gears here right right and we can change it up and and you do that so you know what having heard this part my team and I we have some work to do I mean we have a lot of work to do but I'm like my God we go to conferences we're at the booth and we do nothing we pull them in we we teach and we teach and they go home happy and fed and like hey we got zero business out of this like awesome guys yeah freaking awesome okay we we got some work to do I I I need to end this but there's one question that's been burning in the back of my brain and if I don't ask this I think people are going to yell at me and it's a light question okay when Gary vaynerchuck says to you I'm going to use your conference room I have to ask this question what was in it for you how did he pitch it what did he say like why would you say yes to this nothing was there's nothing in it for you well I mean something well Mike had a had an idea so I had what I was thinking and it actually played out this way is this is one of the world's greatest content creators he wasn't at the time he wasn't recognized but I just thought that what he was doing was brilliant he says I want to do what I did for myself for companies basically help great content and Market same thing he's doing today yep in my head I was like we have the software you're going to be the agency and if you succeed you will deploy our software alongside your services right and and we talked about that Gary and I said listen like and we I can't I still remember this pitch we went into the NHL's headquarters together which was walking distance from the office on 6 venue mhm and you know when you meet with people at the time with Gary Gary does all the Talking um and he just he just starts and you just sit back and we ended up winning business together from the NHL which you know did I do we gave him the conference room zero strings attached yeah I knew this was going to be one of my great friends in life long term I it just it what I just felt it we ended up doing a lot of business together we've since we own pickle ball team together we help we're part of the his wine company empathy we are investors in vriends and own a lot of vriends tokens if any of your audience likes the V Friends Community so like sometimes you have to give way before you get anything and this is an example that like we gave and what we've gotten in return is so far lopsided on our side we've gotten so much more he wrote the forward to the book and he said I'm all in like he's he's marketing our book for us he's got 40 million followers so sometimes do what you think is right or that you want to do even if you don't know what's going to happen but Serendipity is a good thing I didn't know Cass was going to say yes at a wedding when a kid who was 3 years younger at 21 asks her to dance I was nervous I'm like sweating I wasn't good with what they call the girls right and so I just went up to Cass and I'm like hey you want to dance with my sweaty hands in me but like if I hadn't I'd be in jail or homeless right like who knows what would have happened those are options and so just do stuff that you want to do or you think's right and it's just like that's that's this crazy thing about this awesome thing called life which is just like you get to do [ __ ] that's you may not know why you're doing it but you do it and let the cards fall for the record as our audience is listening to spitting out whatever beverage they had in their mouth thinking what I'm thinking Mike they're just called girls you're like they call them girls it's like they're still girls went to an all guys High School I wasn't like I wasn't popular and the fact that castle was goodlook smart and had a heartbeat she meant that she was my type right yes yes I love this and for the Gen zers if you're listening what I think what Mike meant to say he didn't have the RZ so but he did any he took a shot I know is I still don't have the RZ that's for sure but you know what you don't need to anymore yeah C say the RZ you're you're good you're good you you got a good one and you're making it work um it's been lovely talking to you for a lot of different reasons uh I want to mention this I've been talking to can cast their book shoveling stuff a love story is coming out in June be sure to check it out I've enjoyed the transparency just the real realness uh your depth of experience I'm I'm sure it's a Fountain of Knowledge and so I'm going to recommend everybody if you've enjoyed this episode please do look out for the book when it drops it's a couple months away Cass and Mike has been a real pleasure talking to you I I enjoyed watching you just interact with each other just you know just a human I'm just watching it and you know I know you're not in the same room but it feels like you're in the same room and it it's just been really cool so I appreciate you coming on the podcast been really special we appreciate it and uh yeah you're special content creator who really you know we feel great coming out of this I do at least so thank you I do too thanks for sharing so openly that's all I could ask for if people want to look up whatever it is you're doing check out the book or whatever it is where should we send them to do you want to tell them Mike www.c and mike. or just the book www. shoving shit.com spelled out the way it's spelled out or the exclamation spell out the way I listen spelled out the legitimate way as it was intended entrepreneurship we weren't going to like sugarcoat it let's just say that okay wonderful now you guys know where to go I'll make sure to put the links in the show notes thank you [Music]