Matthew Kobach - A masterclass on how to do marketing, branding and social media in 2023!

I think we've got to sprinkle in other pieces of content, but I want big ideas. I want stuff that can go viral and I want to optimize for it. I think if we play it safe, if we do kind of boring, maybe uninteresting content, then I don't really think we're going to get much out of it. But if we take big swings, if we do fun giveaways, if we make the brand something that people want to wear on their shirts, now we've got something that's really, really special and that pays for itself 100 times over.

Welcome to the Undefeated Underdogs Podcast, where I unpack and narrate stories of ambitious people who turn obstacles into opportunities. My goal for this podcast is to create a platform to narrate underdog stories and maybe play a small, teeny tiny role in inspiring you. I intend to highlight the underdog mentality and make authentic conversations with people who play the long game, take action with a chip on their shoulder, and convert obstacles into opportunities. Buckle up as I'll be bringing some authentic founders, VCs, community builders, and content creators who got underestimated their whole lives, and yet they beat all the odds to become insanely successful. Now today, I want to tell you a little bit about our awesome sponsor, acquire.com. Selling a business is as tough as building a business. As someone who went through this process once, selling my own startup, I know the pain it takes to get to the end zone. This is where our sponsor shines. Imagine this. You're a founder who's built a solid SaaS product, acquired customers, and generating consistent monthly revenue. The problem is you're not growing for, for whatever reason, lack of focus, lack of skill, or just plain lack of interest. And you feel stuck. What should you do? The story I'd like to hear is you buckle down, somehow reignited the fire, get past yourself and the clichés. And start working on your business rather than just in the business. You start building an audience, move out of your comfort zone to do sales and marketing, and in 6 months you triple your revenue. The reality isn't as simple. Situations may be different from every founder facing these crossroads, but too many times the story ends up being one of inaction and stagnation until the become business— the business becomes less valuable or worse. Worthless. If you find yourself here or your story is likely headed down a similar road, I offer you a third option. Consider selling your business on acquire.com. Capitalizing on the value of your time is a smart move. Acquire.com is free to list and they've helped hundreds of founders already. Go to try.acquire.com/sharath and see for yourself if this is the right option for you. Now let's get into today's episode. Hello, hello, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to yet another episode of the Undefeated Underdogs podcast. I should slow down a little bit. I've been doing this for a while. I don't know why I got nervous because I have an amazing guest with me who I actually look up to for multiple things. I feel for— if you can start Looking at him as an expert in social media content marketing. But I feel to me, this guest is really— I resonate with him on a meta level, the way he thinks and the way he actually really be authentic on social media, which is something I really admire about. But without further ado, Matthew Koback, welcome to the show. How are you feeling today?

Thank you for having me on the show. And I feel like a million bucks. I feel great. It's sunny outside. I'm selling pizza these days. I know. I've got a kid. I got another one on the way. So everything's feeling really good these days.

Awesome. Yeah. So glad to hear that. Yes, definitely. We definitely want— I want to cover about the pizza part. But for folks who don't know about Matthew Koback, which is very rare, let me guys give you an intro. Matthew is currently working as a VP of Marketing at Slice. He previously led content at New York Stock Exchange. He led marketing efforts at Fast and he did like a bunch of— he owns a social media firm for himself, like a marketing firm. And he's a master of marketing and digital advertising. His tweets are spot on always, and he's very successful in terms of building a strategy and executing it with the team. He's a results-driven marketer, and I love most of your— all of your tweets about marketing, how people should think modernly and in this day and age. But yeah, let's dive into the world of Matthew Koback, how he thinks, how he kind of strategizes the whole thing. in terms of social media, but right off the bat, how are you enjoying Slice? What's with the— how are you feeling about selling pizzas and whatnot?

Like I said, I love it. It's always exciting to be able to sell something that you really, really like. And I joke that I sell pizza. I don't really sell pizza. You know, I sell the technology that powers pizzerias to really get the most value out of their customers. But it's very, you know, it's pizza adjacent. It's a fun category. You can have a really good time with doing content, with creating ads. So I love it. I'm a big fan of the founding team. I, you know, I met with them a bunch. I met with the executive team. I really appreciate the way that they're thinking about building this business. I really agree with what their strategy is for the next, you know, call it 3 years. Of course. And I think this is a company that's really poised for success. And I wanted to join a company where I believed that the strategy they have was the right strategy and that if I was added, you know, as a key person that I could help make that vision a reality.

Of course, you're, I think you're going to be like their strongest weapon in my opinion, because for 2 reasons. One is generally speaking, for some reason, social media among food chains, food industry is ridiculously well done. Like they have the jazz, they have the sass, They're always on top of all trends. They're quick. Like, take Domino's, like Pizza Hut. Their accounts are followed by millions of people. And usually B2B businesses, B2C startups, they take lessons from how to run social media from them. I personally learned a ton how to get into people's mind in a very creative way. And 2, you're extremely creative. So it's like it's match made in heaven. And I can't wait to see what you do in the future for slice right off the bat. Another thing, let's go back. Let's go back to your early days. Let's go back to 2007 where you actually started educating people about social media when it's still kind of like taking the space.

Yeah.

What are some things you did in the early days that you find very interesting that you're still using in 2023?

Way back, if we're going to 2007, that's, uh, yeah, that's when I started. I'll get for a little context for, um, you know, people who don't know my history. Uh, I thought I was going to be an academic. I thought I was going to be a professor. And in 2007, maybe it was 2000. I don't, I don't even remember the years. I'll actually trust you that you got the years right. And I don't.

Yeah. Yeah.

I have it. Yeah. Yeah. You have it. The, uh, I was starting a PhD program and the way PhD programs work is that you pick an area to be an expert in and then like, that's your career. career. That's what you do. And I was doing this mix of marketing and psychology and really the way that media impacts and affects people. And social media had just started booming, and it was very clear that this was going to be a thing that wasn't going anywhere. So I decided I wanted to be like— that was my thing. I was going to be the social media expert and the content expert. So I started studying that. And, uh, through that I learned, um, that a PhD program is very, very slow, and a new emerging technology like social media is very, very fast.

Right.

So, uh, while I was studying it, I kind of started looking at like how these videos and how people were representing themselves and how brands were representing themselves at the time online, uh, was impacting people. And so from the early days, um, man, I'm even trying to remember the, the ways that I got started. I remember I was just looking at all this like branded social media and I remember thinking like, this is horrible. Like, this is, this is like, it originally was just you know, like print media that people were putting on Facebook. They didn't, just didn't know any better. So it was kind of like a flyer that you would get handed or that you would see on a telephone pole and was posted on social media. And I, my very, like the way that I was writing my dissertation at the time was that businesses on social media needed to act a lot more like people. That there was, there's this like sense of people like interacting with people. And that is, you know, I'm finally getting to the answer to your question. That's what's kind of like been the common theme of content and social media that I've created ever since then, because I've got this opinion that you want to put a face on camera. Like, I think that really helps. Or in the case of some of the fast food companies you referenced, they're really personifying their brands or having the brands act like a person. And there's a sense that people want to interact with someone where it feels like it's a person. They don't want to interact with something that feels like a brand. And so that's why wherever I went, whenever I was creating content, doing social media, it was important to have, you know, maybe that was the CEO, maybe that was the founder, maybe it was me, maybe it was a host, but I always liked having a person that could kind of represent the brand. So I think it's just more interesting to look at, more interesting to watch, and I think people kind of tune out brands otherwise.

Right. And I think back then it is, Like you said, you saw the obvious gap. Brands are acting as corporations, not people. And we can talk about ours, like why they did that, which is unnecessary and irrelevant. But in this day and age, 2023, I always refer to this example. Like, if you observe Apple's design, right? Like in 2007 or 2001, the early days of when they actually revolutionized the manufacturing itself. Nobody else was doing it. And now everybody's packaging is like Apple style. Everybody's product design is Apple style. Everybody's website is Apple style. Like, you know, that's the standard people are aiming for. So in this age of social media, going back to the question, what do you think about— how do you differentiate people who are already representing themselves as people, like brands representing themselves as people. Like, what is the differentiation factor? One thing I observe is being very funny, sassy, like on top of like trends and make it really relevant. And I would love to know your observations given in this age.

Yeah, I don't think there's a one-size-fits-all answer of like what needs to be different. Because the thing is, is what's different for one brand might be completely redundant for another brand. Like you said, you were talking about the personification of a lot of like quick service restaurants and fast food restaurants. If a B2B SaaS company was to do something like that, it would stand out because it's so different because you get compared against your competitors, not against like the best in class.

Right.

So what's interesting to me is when I think about content, I think about what gets the most views and that's how I'm approaching it. I'm viewing organic social media, at least right now for Slice, as awareness. I literally only care that more people saw our videos this month than they did the month before or saw our posts more this month than the month before, and I want the content to be pizza food adjacent, or, you know, that be the star of it. But I don't need something explaining what Slice does. I don't need some— someone saying download the app. I don't need someone saying order it. I don't need someone saying to businesses, hey, make sure that you partner with Slice. That to me gets really uninteresting. That to me is boring. Um, but then what do you actually do then? Okay, so you've removed some of these barriers of like making boring content. Uh, we recently put out a job opening for what we called a pizza influencer. Now that was very deliberate. So, 'cause we thought we'd get some PR and press coverage, which we did. And so happy about that. Uh, but really what this is, is a content creator. And so I am looking at this almost like a media company or like a MrBeast kind of like ask approach. Right. I want someone who's got really, really big ideas. that can make videos that people are gonna DM their friends. Like that to me is the, is the sign of a good video. And that's what I went through this job interview process. That's what I told 'em the job was. That's what I want them to optimize for. And so to me, the content I'm making, the way that I wanna differentiate is like, what are the crazy big ideas that people have never seen that are gonna make people wanna watch it and then share it with their friends? Mm-hmm. And to me it is a little bit of this like MrBeast style. Of content that I think you can kind of you know start with an interesting idea, and then you're always trying to figure out how to top yourself. And as long as you're getting more views, you kind of have the budget to top yourself and do more interesting things. One of the videos I really liked—we had we had sorry to rewind—the pizza influencer—they had to submit a video to apply. One of the videos I really really liked, and we're going to work with this guy. He ordered like it was like a. It's like an 11-foot pizza or something. It's like super, super long. And he like had this crazy idea that he wanted to like deliver it across New York City. It was like he had to go from, I forget, the, you know, Financial District to the Upper West Side or something.

Right.

And he had to like talk, talk people into helping him carry it. And he got into a taxi and it made this like really compelling, really felt very New Yorky because he had all these people on the street that were like talking to him and interested in helping and stuff. And it was this video that he then shared on his own. We didn't actually share it, that ended up getting millions of views because it was such this like clever concept that was well executed and sounded crazy. I think the premise was like, the hook was I'll pay you $500 to deliver this crazy size pizza, you know, to the Upper West Side or something. Really? And that's the kind of stuff that I think is gonna be interesting. I think we've gotta sprinkle in other pieces of content, but I want big ideas. I want stuff that can go viral and I wanna optimize for it. I think if we play it safe, if we do kind of boring, maybe uninteresting content, then I don't really think we're going to get much out of it. But if we take big swings, if we do fun giveaways, if we make the brand something that people want to wear on their shirts, now we've got something that's really, really special and that pays for itself 100 times over.

Right. I really like that. A couple more follow-ups from that answer. One is, you explicitly said asking for people to sign up or direct asks are always boring, which I completely agree. How do you— it's kind of also, I wouldn't say risk, but not mentioning about the CTA, which everybody's kind of like craves about, especially in marketing.

Yeah.

How much of a risk is that? Like when you create content and not have like a specific CTA, which is kind of the whole point, get more attention towards your business and actually like convert them and whatnot. I'm talking about more results. So what do you, what do you think about that?

I think that is a separate job function. I've, I have 2 job openings and one is this pizza influencer where I've said your job is awareness. Because right now, if you go outside in New York and ask 10 people if they've heard of Slice, I assume 8 or 9 are gonna say, yeah, of course I've heard of Slice. If I go to LA and do the same thing, I'm not gonna get the same response. We just don't have the same penetration. Mm-hmm. So before I can even put an ad in front of someone and say, hey, download this app you've never heard of, or order from this platform you've never heard of, I need to at least get them familiar with us. So that's what I want this social media content to do. I want this stuff to have a wide audience. I want it to reach millions of people. Because then when I have this other role whose job is orders, is app downloads, is getting someone who orders 5 times a year to order 10 times a year, that they're already like familiar with us. They're already seeing us in other ways. I think it's a really difficult ask to get someone who's not familiar with you to engage with you. So I look at the social media as like this person is warming you up or this role is warming you up, content is warming you up. Right. And then we're going to have other content or other touchpoints To then close the deal. It's like a full funnel approach, which by the way, even when, like, it doesn't end there. Even if I get you to download the app, there's still marketing that needs to be done. It's a lifecycle approach that, you know, you have to hit certain benchmarks within certain days for the LTV of that customer to be paid back depending on what it, what your cost of acquisition is.

Right. Talk to me about the next phase, which is, so one thing I particularly observe and even I make mistakes is that I basically club both. I want to create a viral content piece and not knowingly, unconsciously, I put a CTA which actually kind of destroys the awareness piece and the fun element or the viral element. And it feels like, hey, I'm asking for something. So I think we'll talk about the viral, how to create viral content and all that, the elements that you think is necessary as an ingredient. No pun intended, especially pizza. But this on the other side, talk to me about the traditional, like, loop closing, deal closing, the touchpoints you mentioned. How do we make sure that this function works really efficiently?

So it's not easy. I can tell you the way that we're thinking about it is we're— and this is for the CTA, this is for like increasing orders. This is very tangible.

Mm-hmm.

When we think about this role, or like the— or I shouldn't say this role, but like these campaigns, we're thinking very data-driven. So we want to understand what is the type of user that we want to attract. So the good example is someone who is, you know, a grandpa in LA who doesn't have a history of, you know, using online ordering. is not built the same as someone who is 19 at Ohio State University in Columbus for the first time ordering food on their own, who, you know, probably has new habits that they haven't yet developed in terms of like ordering food. So step one is figuring out like who is actually the market that we want to advertise to. And digital, it's a little easier to get in front of that market. That's obviously why Google and you know, Facebook have the monopolies on advertising that they do. But there's other interesting ways that you can get in front of those audiences. But then when you have that, then even within those demographics, those people aren't created the same. So you've got someone who, if you give a $5 off deal, they're just going to take it. They're— they are deal chasers, they're discount chasers, and they'll use it once and then they'll drop off and you'll never hear from them again. And then there's people who need a deal to like kind of coax them a little bit to like, all right, I could be like, this is something I could use, but I'm going to need, you know, the right kind of hook to start using it. And so you've got to figure out like, how do you target just those people as opposed to someone who's just going to use it once and then never again? And then with us, since we're a marketplace, it complicates it even more because if you go— I'll use Etsy as an example. If I, if me and you were convinced to go on Etsy and we go there and there's nothing on there that we want to buy, that's worthless. Like Etsy's wasted money getting us. So they better make sure that there's something we want to buy on there and they better make sure that we see it really quickly and really easily.

Correct.

It's not all that different from Slice. If you are opening up the app and you're looking to order something, I better have your favorite shop on there. So a lot of then what I'm doing is going and looking in different geographical locations and saying, do we have enough penetration? on the shop side to do meaningful consumer marketing? And if we do have enough penetration in a shop, what does penetration look like? Is penetration 30%, 50%, 80%? Is it based on the best shops in that area? Because maybe 20% penetration is great if I've got the top 10 shops and that's all mostly that area eats from. And maybe there's another place where I've got 60% penetration and normally that's really good, but I don't have any of the top shops. So these are all like the different things that we've got to consider and we've got to look at the data, which we do have before we go do anything meaningful in terms of direct response ads where I've got a CTA where it's download, it's order more or whatever it might be.

I love that. I think it's very analytical. It's always numbers that actually decide and helps you make decisions. I love that. Now talk about like your—

Just to, I thought of a metaphor that I like the data. Tells me where to fish. The data goes, you know what, you're in the lake, and this part of the lake has a lot of the fish that you're looking. But what data doesn't tell me is what bait I need to put on the hook. And so like, that's why you have to have both of these. Like, the bait on the hook is the creativity, is the like, all right, I know there's all these fish here, but if I've got really, really shitty bait, they're not going to bite anyways. I'm not going to attract them. It doesn't matter. And then conversely, if I have a really, really good bait, but I'm going to the part of the lake that doesn't have any of the fish I want, I'm not going to get any fish either. So like both of these are key components to the like marketing stack. And so yes, you have to be analytical, but yes, you also have to be creative.

Right. I love that. And now talk about, I love the analogy, by the way, the metaphor is so spot on. We'll definitely use this clip for marketing this episode, but talk to me about the virality piece. content going viral? Mostly out-of-the-box thinking, doing something that really shocks people, right? That's the trend we are seeing on TikTok or Reels or the vertical content type, short attention span, doing something ridiculously out of the box works. So what is your take? What is something that you are applying at Slice? And this pizza influencer What are your guidance to him or what is the direction you're giving to them?

Yeah, so I'll be honest, I hired this person to figure that stuff out. I don't have all the answers. The way that I'm approaching it is I think we need different content pillars or like content series for lack of a better term. We need to come up with 3 ideas and then we need to go. And what I want is I want ideas that are replicatable. So I think there's, we've got space for like one-off big ideas and then we've got space for essentially Essentially content series where we could do it once, uh, film it, like film it once, then film it again, kind of change a few things. Like a good example would be you're, you know, you have a game show on the street and you just ask trivia questions or something. You go film a dozen of those. Um, and so what I want is I want someone who's going to come up with a dozen ideas. Mm-hmm. And I'm going to work with this person and say, all right, let's narrow it down to these 3. Let's go film 3 or 4 of these 3. And let's just put it out there. I, I don't have any preconceived notions about what's going to work, what's going to get people to send this to their friends. I'm not necessarily trying to shock people. I'm trying to grab their attention and keep it for 30 seconds, 60 seconds, 2 minutes, whatever the length of the video is. And to me, that's all based on ideas. Like, how many good ideas do you have? And then can you execute on those ideas? And then the audience tells us. So if I've got 3 ideas and one of them is really, really good, one of them doesn't take off and one of them is kind of in the middle, cool. We cut the one that isn't working at all. We retool the one in the middle and we double down on the one that really, really worked. I think one thing that a lot of companies do incorrectly is they'll have an idea and it works really well. And then they go, what's the next idea? Instead of going, hey, I've got this idea, it worked really well. Let me do this until it is so boring and no one wants to watch anymore. It's like you're digging for gold, you strike gold, and then you stop digging because you're like, I got enough gold. And it's like, no, no, there is so much more gold there to mine. Like, why would you go somewhere else and dig for gold? What you're looking for is right here. So do not stop until you have mined all of the gold out of that idea. And then you just rinse, repeat. You do this over and over and over and over and over again. And maybe you do it with freelancers. Maybe you do it with like, you know, you need different faces. You can also assume too, a pizza influencer— I'm, I live in Atlanta. We're both in Atlanta. A pizza influencer in Atlanta is probably going to look and sound a little different than a pizza influencer in LA, than a pizza influencer in Denver, than a pizza influencer in New York. Because you got to figure out like, how do you speak to like kind of those areas? I'm gonna make content that might resonate A little more strongly with a different spot.

Yeah, I think I kind of want to add on that what you said. Geography is such an important piece, especially when you create content that is relevant, right? So for example, I think if you hire someone in Atlanta, probably they should have like a Georgia Bulldogs hat all the time, right? That actually resonates. And probably they should do some sort of Like you said, delivery to Georgia Tech.

Yeah. And they should honestly, they should have an intimate knowledge of like Georgia culture and Georgia, like Georgia food culture. Like they should know the shops. They should probably have like, ideally they would know a shop owner. They would, could do like really interesting things. They could find like the maybe less known spots. They could go to the really, really popular spots. But if, if, you know, and I could do that myself in Atlanta right now to some degree. But if you sent me to Denver, I wouldn't know where to start. And like, that's what would happen is if you just have one person who's doing all this content for the whole United States, like you can, you really can only, you max out at a city-specific knowledge.

Right. And when do you, when you inspire these folks who are creating or figuring out the content in your words, do you suggest them to steal ideas from—

Oh, for sure. 100%. I am a ruthless idea stealer. I am one of the people who is of the belief that like everything under the sun has already been done. And whenever you like— it's funny, I want people to steal ideas, but we need to make them our own. I think a really good example is Dave Portnoy. So he does the like one-bite pizza review. I saw a lot of videos that were just a ripoff of the one-bite pizza review. And it's like— If you're going to steal an idea, you got to make it your own and you can't make it so obvious that you stole it. You know, like what I want is someone, if you're going to steal an idea, I would like this person to go, all right, Portnoy has the one-bite pizza thing. We're never going to be as big. It's always going to be a cheap knockoff. Sure. But maybe what we could do is like one, I don't even think you could do one bite. You could do like, what's the best thing on your menu that isn't pizza? And you go to all these pizzeria shops and you do something like that. And you give it a rating or whatever it is that you do. But that to me is more interesting. It's so it's like, take an idea, remix it to make it your own. And then it somehow becomes this unique thing that just belongs to you as opposed to like a really bad impression of someone else. So yes, steal, but like steal as inspiration, steal as to like give yourself a starting point to make something that does feel unique.

And I love that. Of course, I think, you know, again, quoting Steve Jobs, you know, great artists steal, right? Good artists copy. So I think we don't want to be knockoffs, especially in this age. Everybody, everything is pretty transparent, right? Everything you do, there is a relevance point. I love that. I knew the answer, but I just want to ask. Yeah. What fuels Matthew's creativity?

I, you know, honestly, I feel like it's not knowing any better. Like, I feel like I never got the lessons that marketing needs to be this way, or it needs to look this way, or it needs to sound this way. Like, all I've, all I've ever done with marketing is try to put myself in the shoes of the consumer and say, what would I want to watch? What would get my attention? And I think kind of the early examples I can think of is back when I started at the New York Stock Exchange, I inherited the social media and the content when I joined. I think whoever had it, they left or something, or honestly, they were probably fired. But I got it and I remember my boss was like, all right, whatever you want to post. And I looked at like the old stuff that they posted. I was like, this is really boring. And like, and so I didn't really like know what to do at first. And then I went within like maybe the first month, I ended up going because I— sorry, the New York Stock Exchange is owned by a company based in Atlanta. So I was based in Atlanta. And when I went onto the floor for the first time, like maybe a month later, I saw the energy, I saw these CEOs, I saw all the traders, I saw the like media outlets and the journalists and stuff. They all shoot from the floor. And I was like, this is really exciting. This is really cool.

Why are we not What's that? This is a big moment for a lot of seniors.

Yeah, big moment. And like, this is what's interesting. Like, this is what people want to see. And so I remember I kind of just said to my boss, like, why don't we film any videos here? Why don't we do like a lot more stuff? Why don't I just take my phone? And like, to my boss's credit, she was always like, yeah, just whatever you want to do. Like, this is yours, figure it

out.

And so to me, I was like, all right, what would I want to see here? And it's like, to me, Shaq just came in. And so, and like, I want to see Shaq. And I'm using Shaq as an example. I don't know what he's coming, but I don't know if that was that early. But I remember thinking, it's like, I'd want to see Shaq. And so it like started as me taking a video of like Shaq walking by and doing whatever he had to do. And then I was like, okay, that got kind of boring. I was like, you can kind of see pictures of Shaq wherever. I was like, let me actually see if I can like give him my phone and have him shoot like a quick video and be like, hey, I'm Shaq. I'm at the floor. I'm really excited. And so we started doing that with all the celebrities and CEOs and stuff. And like, that was kind of cool. It was a unique perspective. You never really got to see that. And then to me, that got kind of boring. Then it was like, well, now they're just like saying they're excited to be here. How many videos can I post of someone saying they're excited to be here? And then it turned into, well, why don't I interview them? Why don't I ask them questions that they're not going to get asked on CNBC or Fox Business? Let me kind of like have a little more fun with this, especially with the CEOs. Like, the CEOs are really buttoned up. The CEOs are like, they've got their talking points that they stick to. They're not expected to get You know, crazy questions like, what's the last TV show you binged or something like that? Right. And so that's what I started doing. I like, I went and grabbed my phone. I'd have to like, normally I'd have to usually negotiate with a PR person that like, hey, I'm not, you know, here are the questions I'm gonna ask. I just want to grab them. It looks, it looked really authentic because it was like, you know, me and a phone kind of like this. And so it didn't look like they were, you know, they didn't have the perfect shot and the microphone wasn't perfect. But like, that really ended up Making it feel like this is not someone who's just reading polished, prepared answers; it's someone who's actually giving honest responses to what I'm asking. And it really worked; it worked well. And we and we did similar stuff. We did like market updates in the middle of the day from the floor, just walking around. And that was the stuff that really resonated. And it was just the stuff that I would have wanted to see if I was following the New York Stock Exchange. So like that's. Like, that's where I get my creativity. It's like, I feel like it sounds really simple and stupid. Like, I'm not trying to overthink it. If from a Slice perspective, if I was a shop owner, what kind of video would I want to see? I'd probably want to see something about how you're going to make me more money. I'd probably want to see a video about explaining it. I'd probably want to see a video that simply explains how your technology works and how little work it is for me. And if I was a consumer, I'd probably want to see entertaining, funny, Creative videos. Like there's literally nothing like that or like pictures of pizza. Like I don't think there's a lot other things. So like let me go big. Let me have these crazy ideas. Maybe I want to see some shop owner stories. I think there are a lot of really interesting stories. I think there's like a humans of New York kind of element to what we do. I think you've got a lot of and I think I know for a fact a lot of shop owners like have that American dream story where they were immigrants came over. started a business and like they love what they do and they've worked, you know, however many days in a row or, you know, however many years. Like those are really interesting and inspiring stories. And I think there's like a lot of these that you could do.

I absolutely love that. I do have like a couple of follow-ups, but let me actually acknowledge you. I think there is something beautiful about pizza that has that American dream stamp on it. And there is this underdog mentality, I would say. I'm not talking about the big guns like Domino's. And I'm talking about really local shops because I don't know, not many people know this. When I came to the US, I worked at my university cafeteria and where I used to deliver pizzas across the campus.

Full circle.

Yeah. So that's one. Number 2, I literally worked at a local Pete's area in Houston, and I know how hungry the owner was. Even till today, I believe he was still passionate. He was like, he wants to make sure that the customers are having the pizza delivered on time, and he makes sure that we feel comfortable. We give all the resources, like whatnot. And that to me is like the driving force. I would highly, highly recommend you should do Just like how you said pizza, you know, humans of pizza, whatever, or pizza underdogs. That can be a thing. That can be a show. 15 minutes. How, where did you start? Where are you right now? And there's other thing, I think there is also like a family angle to these pizzerias.

It's your brother works there, your cousin works there, your kid works there.

Exactly. You, you give, you inherit from your father, you inherit from your grandfather. There is that like long like, you know, long game concept as well. So there is a lot of, you know, meta in these areas.

Yeah, definitely.

A couple of questions. So one is you seem to be like someone who executes scrappily, like you don't need like a perfect solution or a well-baked, you know, content product, right? Where did that philosophy come from? Like execute quickly. Fast learn and whatnot?

It likely came. So you mentioned this at the beginning of our conversation. I started a social media marketing firm. I don't even remember when, 2010 or something like that. And it was me and 2 other people. And I think it came from them. It was like, again, not knowing any better, just going, I need clients. I know how to make content. I know how to buy ads. Let me just like do whatever I think is best at any given time. And I didn't have, you know, I literally just had to go from like business to business and, you know, word of mouth and do that. And so it was, again, it was this idea of like not knowing any better. Like I didn't have a budget. I didn't raise any money to do it. The only money I had to reinvest in the company was the money I was making.

Hmm.

And so I think it just all comes from that. Like I think that there are a lot of interesting ways that you can move the needle with marketing that don't cost any money. And in fact, I think those are the things that you actually need to do first. A good example, I use this example often, or use this person often, or reference them often. is Roy Sutherland. He has a really good book.

Oh yeah, legend, legend. He's a legend.

And the book's called, I think it's just called Alchemy.

Yeah, Alchemy, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely read that book. You could read it in a weekend. You probably read it in like an evening. But it's so good because it's this concept of like marketing has this ability to turn lead into gold. And it's literally like by the way that you describe something, by the way that you photograph something, by the way that someone interprets your message, you can take something that they were completely uninterested in and turn it into something that they need to have. And that's currently what I'm trying to do at Slice and what we're working on is like, how do I get shops to understand what we do really succinctly, really simply, and then all of a sudden make them realize I would be stupid if I didn't have this.

Hmm.

Now there's a lot of things that have to happen before, like I, we have, like you have to believe in the product and I do believe in the product that does make it a no-brainer for shops to use. But I look at it as my job is to describe it. In such a way that it's easy to use and describe it. And the criteria I use is, all right, so we pitched a shop owner and let's say we even gave them the full pitch. If they're, you know, like we said, it's a family affair. So he or she goes, well, I got to talk to my brother. And then before I make a decision, they call their brother. What are they going to say to that family member after our pitch? How will they describe us after we've described ourselves? And if we are not giving them something really easy to grab onto, to hold onto, that they can remember, that they can then share to someone else, then I think we're missing that alchemy magic. Like, I, you know, it's this idea that, that some of the best companies of the past decade, I think, were really easy to comprehend. So it's like Uber, cool, I got like a taxi in my pocket. Airbnb, I can find an extra room or a house in a city that I want to go to. I don't have to go to a hotel. That's what I think it has to be for most brands that want to scale really quickly. And so we're figuring out what that is. And so like, that doesn't cost anything. It costs what? It costs thinking about it. It costs trial and error. It costs coming up with 10 different ways to describe the company and figuring out which one feels right. It costs talking to the founder and the CEO who's got like a really strong vision and understands the company more intimately than anyone else and figuring out like, how do you think about this? How do I take what's in your head and get it on paper so that shops can easily understand, digest, and share that same information? And so it's only once I've done that, that then I even want a budget to then get it in front of a lot of people. Again, it goes back to that like bait, you know, like, do I have the right bait? Like, if I don't have the right way to describe it, why am I going fishing anyways? I'm like, there's going to be such a leaky bucket. Yeah. It'd be like, I could go fish with like some really crappy bait and I'm going to get some kind of crappy fish. Or if I get the really, really good bait, And I've spent time and I figured out our value props. I figured out the right way to describe our company. I'm now going to get shops that are going to be bought into what we're doing, are going to be more invested in working closely together and are going to have success with the platform. Like they need to be bought in a little bit too. And how you describe it matters.

I love the being simple philosophy, simplify, simplify, simplify in a way that it, you're basically imprinting your brand's identity, the what you do. In people's mind very quickly. I love that. Another question I feel, which is going back to your previous answer, you said you wanted to do something, especially content creation, where you feel like it is something I want to consume, right? It's for me. I'm doing this for myself to excite myself, test my curiosity and whatnot. I do the same. 90%, it succeeds because you have that conviction and the gut being right. What about the other person? What about the 10% you fail miserably that, oh my God, this didn't work well, this content piece,

whatever.

So how do you handle the other 10%? What do you learn? How do you pivot? How do you move quickly?

Here's what I tell my team when we have a marketing campaign or I don't care if this is successful or not. Like, I obviously, I want it to be successful. What I care about is if it was unsuccessful and we didn't learn anything. So like, I can have the failures. I don't care. Like, it just comes with the territory. It's like, obviously I want to hit a bunch of home runs. I like, that would be the dream. But I'm also realistic in knowing that like, not every piece of content, not every marketing campaign is going to be successful. And so if we do something that isn't successful and we leave with going, well, I don't really know why that worked, but we're on to the next thing, that is unacceptable to me.

Right.

But if we go, hey, we did this thing and you know what, I think it didn't work and it was a combination of these 3 reasons. So we've got to now decide, do we try this again and we change those 3 things? Or do we just say, even if we change those 3 things, like we got enough signal that it's not going to work anyways, let's scrap it. That's where I want to be with failure. So you can't get bummed out by something not working. Like, I especially— like, social media is a great example. There's so many tweets I write where I'm like, this is going to be a banger, people are going to love it, it's going to get 100,000 people see it easy, and then it completely flops. And then there'll be something I'll just like kind of a random thought I'll have throughout the day off the cuff that I post and it does crazy numbers. Um, like, that's the stuff you can't predict. That's why too With this pizza influencer role, it's an idea game. I need you to come up with a lot of ideas. Like social media is this insatiable beast that even if we do it once, that is not enough. I need like hit after hit after hit after hit. And that means there's going to be a lot of strikeouts. And I'm okay with the strikeouts. We just like, what I don't want to do is like strike out 4 times in a row because we didn't like change our stance. We didn't change our grip or we didn't like pay attention to what the pitcher was doing. So that's how I think. I just— rejection, failure, it just is a part of life. Life's a lot easier when you realize that, like, that's just what happens. And then if you can just turn it into— I don't want to say a positive, but you can turn it into something that you can improve upon the next time. Like, that's how you succeed.

I love the authentic, you know, take on things we do. I feel the other thing is expectation setting for your team. As well as yourself, like, okay, this is just an experiment. It's not like a sure shot.

Yeah, yeah.

Nothing's a sure shot. Yeah.

Not all of this is a big risk. So let's try to take like as many— like, to me, it's you want as many swings at the plate as possible. Like, that's how you succeed. So if I only give someone one swing at the plate, I don't think that I'm setting them up for success. I want to give them 10 swings, 100 swings. And like, I only need them to hit a few home runs. So like, that to me is My job as a manager and my job as a department leader is like, how do I get as many opportunities as possible for us to be successful? Especially in something like organic social media where one post or like one thing can have outsized returns. Like there's literally like, we could do a post tomorrow that goes completely viral and all of a sudden everyone in the United States knows who we are. Like that is the ceiling of it. And like, that is a really high ceiling. Where I can't buy ad campaigns that could do that short of a Super Bowl ad. And even then, half the people aren't going to pay attention to the Super Bowl ad. So I think there's a really interesting way to think about that kind of risk to reward when it comes to organic content creation.

I love that. One of the things I also want to touch upon is you do things in a very public way, like in a very public setting. There is no secrecy. It's all transparent. One of the things I learned from you, this is like 2021, if not 2020, is when you did the fast social strategy, like really revealing it. Hey, this is what we're going to do. And you did it. So what do you think about marketers being public these days? Some of them are some of the startups are very stealth and they're still building. They're like, you know, in a very early stage, but they want that user exposure. What do you, what is your message to them who can be public, but you have to like, you know, get that creative energy going?

I can tell you what I learned about doing it from the Fast side. So Fast was a marketplace as well, B2B to C company. We were a payment processor. We needed people who were buying stuff to click our payment button as opposed to any of the other options. But before then, we needed a business to put our button on their website.

Hmm.

My job when I started was the consumer side. My job was to get people really excited, want to buy stuff, use the fast button. And what I learned was we went a little too fast on the consumer side. So what happened was we got people really excited about the brand. We got people really excited to use the product. But we weren't on enough websites yet. So to like extrapolate that to a lesson that's maybe a little more applicable is you've kind of got to make sure that you've got the MVP and like an MVP can be different depending on you know what industry you're in and what product you're creating. But to me, it's like a very similar idea again is do I want to do a really big consumer ad campaign for Slice in a city that I don't have a lot of penetration for? It's like no, I'm. Getting people excited for something that they can't really use.

If there are no pizzerias within Slice, what would you do with hungry, you know, people, right? Like,

yeah, I would say that I have— my time is better used else places and that there are plenty of markets where we do have enough penetration and I need to focus on there. And in the markets where we don't have enough penetration, my job is a B2B marketer. Like, it's just, I am trying to get shops to understand what we do and to onboard onto our platform. And then once I get get a certain threshold of really, you know, um, well-known shops or enough, uh, you know, kind of shops that people love on the platform, then I can go after the consumer. But I, I— the mistake I made was doing it in reverse in the past, right? Um, and I just, you know, you, you're kind of like, look at all the, all the love that we got, all the people that want to buy our stuff. And then it turned out they're like, cool, I want to go buy something, where can I use it? And it's like, well, we've got this like candle maker you've never heard of, or I've got this like other thing. It's like, I don't really want to spend like $50 to test out this. I want to, you know, I want to use it on nike.com or something. I want to use it on a brand I already know. And so that was a lesson for me. And that's what's really funny is like we got really popular for selling cheap hoodies. And a part of that was because we didn't have anywhere else to send them that was like as interesting or was that like compelling. We didn't even have like another hoodie maker. So we couldn't even just send it to like blank. So it was, we were getting users to like kind of dogfood our product and we could see what was breaking and what wasn't breaking. And we could get like that, you know, We essentially had brand affinity really high, but we couldn't transition that brand affinity and that brand enthusiasm to other customers. And the sad part, the real tragic part is there's an alternate universe where Fast maybe works out. I'm actually less bullish on one-click payment processing in general. I think Apple and Amazon and Shop Pay and stuff have probably done a good enough job. But as we ran out of money, we were just onboarding those really, really big brands. And so like that was really exciting. We had deals, we were like, had just gone live on a brand. And so like we could, like we were just so close to transitioning that enthusiasm to websites and brands that they wanted to buy. But we were probably, what, 2 years too fast, or maybe 18 months too fast to like kind of ring that consumer bell. Because that is something too, is like, if you ring that, you can only ring it so many times. You know, I can't keep getting people excited about our brand. when they don't have anywhere to use it or anywhere to like interact with it.

I think the hype should meet the substance. If there is no substance, you know, the hype would like, you know, fade away. It will weigh price immediately, right?

Yeah, it was, we kept getting accused of like our marketing being too good. And I think that was like too complimentary to me and too much of a disservice to our product team. The marketing didn't match where the product was. And like, that was the biggest lesson to me is like your marketing has to be as Like keep pace with where the product is or where distribution is. And we didn't do that.

Yeah, I like that. Yeah, love that lesson. Let's switch gears a little bit and I want to talk about Matthew as a dad. How are you enjoying being a dad? What do you do? Like, you know, what's your favorite pastime with your kid? What is something that, you know, you're teaching him? On a personal level.

So, I love it. I'm totally bought in. I know that there's some people that kind of mourn their non-child life. I don't. He's still pretty young. So, he talks, but he's not saying sentences or anything. So, he's not even 2 yet. But he says to me, outside. And so, I come, I try to pick him up from daycare Every day, and I pick him up and he's in the car and he's wanting to listen to Old MacDonald and he's dying to go outside. He just says outside, outside, outside, outside, outside. And so we go outside, and I think he likes going outside because he likes seeing airplanes. And he doesn't call airplanes airplanes; he calls them deltas. So if anyone from Delta is listening, you've got an Atlanta toddler influencer. He's dying to do some work. He's going to go on an airplane this Christmas, so I'm excited to get him on there. But we've literally gone. There's an I don't know if you know this. There's an air. There's a private air. Airport in Atlanta. It has a restaurant up to it. Oh, eat dinner, have drinks and stuff. And you can see all the private jets come in and take off and stuff. We took him there and he just had a blast. And so every other word, Delta, Delta. So my favorite thing at this age is being outside with him and watching him like just get excited as Deltas go over his head.

Talk to me about your work-life balance. How do you, you know, what are the things that keep you away from anxiety, stress? And what are the things that keep you really like— I think Naval tweeted about this. If you want to get into flow, either you have to create, play, meditate, and exercise or something like that, right? What do you do to keep you sane? The things that habits and whatnot.

So I'll talk a little bit about my work-life balance. I don't know that this is unique. And like, I am, I feel like I'm predisposed for this type of work or this type of schedule that is, give me, you know, I pick up my kid at 4:30. Let me pick up my kid at 4:30. Takes a half hour. Go there, bring him back home. And maybe I hang out with him for another half hour. And then let me like log back in. If I've got more work to do, let me come back in at 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, whatever. So the flexibility of like, I don't have to be in front of my computer From 9 until 5. I have a certain amount of work that I want to get done each day or each week or each month or each quarter. And like, that's what it is. A good example is I worked like a couple hours on Sunday and I didn't mind it. Like, that was— I knew it was a trade-off I was making earlier in the week.

Right.

And that stuff actually like gets me like that. That actually keeps my work-life balance good. Like, I'm not the person who needs to unplug for 2 days and not come back in. I'm the type of person who likes to check our Twitter handle and likes to see what we're doing on Instagram and likes to make sure that if anyone Slacked me that I don't have a bunch of Slack or emails waiting for me on Monday morning. That unplugging when I know I'm not disconnecting for a long time from the business, that's the stuff that actually stresses me out more. I don't like that. I'd rather do a podcast interview at 1 in the afternoon or 2 in the afternoon. I'll come back to a bunch of Slacks, I'm sure.

Right.

And deal with that as opposed to like, we would have to do this on a Saturday otherwise. Like that,

right?

Um, that doesn't do it for me. But in terms of like what I do to stay sane, it really is, it's, it's being outside with a kid. We go on a lot of walks. It sounds dumb. Like, if you are feeling in a rut— Oh, not at all. Working and you're like, I can't do this. Like, you just go outside, man. Go for a walk. Um, I try to jog every morning.

Nice.

Um, you know, I, I used to do like sports and, and more, you know, like more physical fitness, kind of, you know, like take like boutique classes and, you know, Solid Core and Orangetheory and all that stuff. But now it's like, I got time for a 45-minute run, and I can come in. And lucky enough, we're all in, you know, Zoom world. So no one knows that I stink if I just throw on a hat after a jog. Yeah, but that's stuff. It's like you keeping your body in motion, getting outside, taking a walk. Hopefully, if you can take a walk without your phone, even better.

It's

just It's kind of like letting your mind wander a little bit. I end up finding that my, like, the stuff at work, I have the biggest breakthroughs at work when I'm like not actually working. You know, it is when I'm out for that walk at 8 AM or something, or it is like when I'm kind of like unwinding for the day. It's like, that's an interesting way to describe our company, or this is an interesting idea. And I try to jot it down really quick.

Good.

I don't want, uh, like, so it's funny to me when people say work-life balance, I don't exactly know what they mean. 'Cause it's like, it's all my life. It's all like, I don't have like a kid life balance. If, if I got a call today, like just right now that I had to go pick 'em up, I'd drop everything. I'd be like, this is like, it's just this part of my life. My career's part of my life. My relationship's part of my life. And so it's all kind of just happening at the same time. And I carve out time to do deep work.

Right.

But I'm not carving out 9 hours to do deep work. I've got like different things that I focus on for, you know, 30, 60, 90, 120 minutes at a time, and that's about the max.

Yeah, basically I think what you're saying is there is— you basically have to blend all things. If you started— even I'm realizing that like lately, when, you know, I have a 2-year-old toddler too, you basically have to mix up. If you kind of separate, that's where you kind of also like have different expectations. It's good for certain times, but I think, you know, there is like, there is no right or wrong answer here. Everybody has their own thing. And like, to your point, being yourself in nature is the simplest, the most free thing that you can do to have like a sane life, right? Like, you know, just going for a walk itself.

One of the biggest criteria— so I bought a house a little over a year ago, or I should say moved. One of the criteria is like, I need, it needs to be a walkable neighborhood. Like I need to be able to like either walk to the downtown area, walk to a coffee shop or just walk around. And so just because I understand like how important that is to like my mental wellbeing, it's not something, you know, I don't think I go crazy without it, but it was like my life is dramatically better when I'm able to incorporate that into my life.

Yeah, I love that. So in 2020, This is one of my favorite tweets of yours. You tweeted about Twitter is a lighthouse for like-minded people, and you preached about it. And I think it hit me so hard that I started living it. And once I started living it, I saw the results, right? Like, you be the soundboard, you be the, in your words, like, lighthouse. Do you think X is still the same way or what changed and where should people like, you know, focus on in this age, like 2023?

Yeah. You know, it's a good question. It definitely feels different. The, you know, Twitter right now does not feel like Twitter 3 years ago. But with that said, I still think, I think it's just like, I mean, this is a compliment. It is like a cockroach company that will just refuse to die. It can survive a nuclear explosion.

Right.

And it's still gonna be around because like the people that have like really interesting things to say, like they want an outlet for them and for saying those things. And there's like, this is the spot for it. So I still, you know, like maybe you lose some people, maybe you lose 10% or even 20%, but there's no other collection of that. So I still think this is the space that you go to, to share your thoughts, to share who you are, to share what you're interested in. And you end up attracting that kind of back to you if you do so in a thoughtful way. So it's slightly different, but I think the essence of that is still there. So I don't know of a better place to do it than Twitter. I don't even have a good second place that jumps to mind. I will be that person who is going to this cockroach company 30 years from now, 40 years from now to get my news and to interact with people because it's just where people share it. It's got enough momentum that I don't think anyone else stands a chance, really.

I think it's really about— I think you tweeted this about a long time too. It's about picking who you follow, clearing your feed and interacting with people like you look up to. I think if you do that in a consistent way, you have a better Twitter, which I think it's debatable. Many people don't have that time and patience to curate their whole thing and they just complain, right? So one more question.

It ends up being like what you want to get out of Twitter. Do you want to have interesting conversations with interesting people? Then it's going to— you're gonna have to take the time to like figure out who those people are and go talk to them. If that's not what you want on Twitter, that's fine. You can watch it for sports highlights or breaking news or whatever it is. And that's going to take a different amount of effort. So, you know, it's anything worth having kind of takes time to manifest kind of thing.

Yeah, I know we're on time, but I do have one more question. I have like some other questions I didn't ask. I wish we should bring back to you.

I talk a lot. So that's my mistake.

No, no, no, no, this is gold content. I love the The fish analogy, the bait, that's all pure gold. Probably we should do a part 2 sometime in the next end of this year. One question, which I think— a couple of questions, sorry. One thing, talk to me about— you're a big believer in the serendipity on the internet. You've created opportunities for yourself, you've created opportunities for others. You've collaborated with people like Jack Butcher, David Perel, a lot many others by being in that mindset. Talk to me about it in a way that the current generation, the Twitter folks who are using Twitter, they're like, they're not using that mindset a lot these days. It's all about transactional. I need, hey, this is the ask, or I can do something for you and all that. So talk to me about like, you know, the serendipity, how much of that impacted in your personal life. Your life is, your career is not linear at all. And I think it's due to the serendipity, right? Talk to me about it.

Yeah, I think I've got this job because of serendipity. I think I'm currently living the life I am right now because of serendipity. This is someone else's metaphor. I forget whose it is. So if you know it or if a listener knows it, please tweet me and tell me who it is. But really, your goal in life is to make your luck or serendipity umbrella as big as possible. And you do that by having genuine interactions with people. You do that by, you know, giving without any transactional kind of approach to it when you do it. What happens is you get this umbrella that gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And what you're hoping for is that one of those luck or serendipity raindrops hits your umbrella. And if you have a really, really small umbrella,

Hmm.

probably not going to get hit by one of those like infrequent raindrops. But if you have a really, really big umbrella, The chances of those raindrops hitting your umbrella increase. And now I think there's some people in life who are born with really, really big umbrellas and they make them bigger. And there's some people who are born with really, really small umbrellas next to a nothing umbrella and they can work to make it bigger. Right. I think the size of how big you can make your umbrella, you know, I shouldn't say, I think the size of it that you can eventually get to is uncapped. I think we all start from a different size at the beginning.

Right.

Um, but that's how I look at it. Like, I, I'll go back to like the reason I'm working at Slice now, or part of it, was because of a conversation I had with the founder probably 4 years ago. One conversation, that was it.

That's awesome.

And neither of us were trying to like get anything out of it. I think we were seeing if we could work together at like, or like our companies, like I think there was, you know, I think it was at Fast at the time and seeing if there's anything that made sense. And we talked, nothing really made sense, but we kept in touch. I think we started following each other on Twitter and fast forward You know, three or four years later, and here we are. And like, I never went in that with an objective. I never went in that with like what's in it for me. It was like, oh, this is a cool guy building a cool company. Let's talk and meet and see if it makes sense for us to do anything together. And if it doesn't, I had a cool conversation with a cool guy.

I love that.

You know, you know, like there's so many things that you could be doing, especially if you're young. Oh my god! If you're like twenty and having conversations now, you could be doing stuff that maybe pays off in fifteen years. Well, you don't know that. Like The timeline, to use this umbrella metaphor, you don't know when it's going to rain again. And all of a sudden, maybe it might start raining again, and you're capturing all the serendipity that you created 15 years ago. Right. And honestly, I probably have hundreds, honestly, maybe even thousands of people where I've had, where it could come back. Who knows what's going to happen in 5 years or 10 years from now where it could come back again because I was purposely trying to do it. But one of the things I used to do was if I met you on Twitter or saw your handle and I thought you were interesting, I would just invite you to the New York Stock Exchange. I'd say, hey, come watch a closing bell. There's a bar right across the street if you want to get a drink after, happy to buy you a beer. But yeah, I just want to meet and hang out. And I think like 100 out of 100, I think that was a really good offer that no one ever refused.

Yeah, of course.

What's funny though is my coworkers would make fun of me. They would like joke that I was going on this like weird anonymous date and like, who am I meeting today and stuff. And it was like, sure, I don't care, you can make fun of me. So you can join me if you want. Like, I just trying to meet some interesting people and I'm living in a really cool city to meet interesting people, so I'm going to take advantage of it.

I love that. Uh, yeah, I can— we can both talk about ours because even you and me, we met through Twitter, purely through serendipity. I found you, your tweets were interesting, I interacted And I think I DM'd you like 2020 and you were like, dude, this is so cool, you know, let's connect. And I think that's the like-minded people network we have to choose on Twitter. Last question, I ask this every guest. What is an ambitious goal Matthew is chasing?

Oh, I want Slice to go public.

I love that.

I want to go back to the New York Stock Exchange. Part of what I used to do was I would pitch companies to list on our exchange over our competitors. I want to be on the other side of that table. Now, I understand they've been a company for a long time. I have not been any part of getting it to where they are, and I would be only a small part to getting it public. But I'm hoping that they think I know enough about negotiating the deal to list on one exchange over the other because I have intimate knowledge that they would at least include me on one phone call or when they go tour. But I very much want to be, you know, getting pitched by the New York Stock Exchange to take Slice public.

I love that. Yeah, rooting for Slice. And I seem like you guys are doing something authentic. Whenever people are authentic, I kind of crave for supporting them and encouraging them and doing everything in my capacity. But Matthew, this has been a blast. My God, so many analogies, so many metaphors, so many gems that you've dropped. I appreciate you for your time. Any closing thoughts before we wrap up?

No, I appreciate the time. And my only ask is Slice helps independent local pizza shops. These are your mom-and-pop shops. These are immigrants who came over here to like, because they wanted a better life and they created something. We do not take predatory fees when you order through us. It really helps them thrive. So if you have a local pizza shop in your area, download the app, order from the app, And if they're not on the app, go there and tell them to get on the app. And I'll honestly even pay you like $500 if you get them on the app.

So

find me on Twitter. This is not a joke. I will pay you money if you get your favorite shops to use Slice.

I love that.

It's just a really powerful tool to like make sure that these local shops thrive and are taken advantage of.

Yeah, I love that. I love that mission. And you know, folks, you know what to do next. Go do it and support your local businesses. It's always like good to have more people thriving in this economy. Matthew, thank you so much. Appreciate all the listeners for tuning in. This has been a blast. And stay tuned, we have some awesome guests like Matthew coming on the show and doing everything, sharing with us and the knowledge and the wisdom. So stay tuned and cheers.

Bye.