$1,000,000/mo in India. We have 30 days.

The thing is, like, you know, you're not given challenges you're not really ready for, right? God gives you the challenges which are ready for that stage of your life, you know. I don't get stressed anymore, to be honest. Then the right click, man. Pick up our— no, no, no, no, not at all. I've stared like down the barrel of the gun having like one month worth of runway in the business. And even when you're given things you feel like you cannot handle, just thinking about it in this frame means that you'll be able to handle it. Get ready! I'm a king but I bought from a saint. They call me a bad man, that's a fucking good thing. Mama said swing back when another man swings, so I make my mama proud and they make their heads rain. Father forgive me, I can't forgive them. So a bit of an issue. We were planning to head out to India next Wednesday, but we just closed a big 6-figure a month deal with the agency. So now we actually have to fly to New York to execute it, and then from New York we'll go to India. So I think I'm about to book the most expensive economy class flight of my life. To scale to the million, $2 million a month, there needs to be a big change on how we do certain things. So with an agency, you're basically rewarded for putting together really good talent and then managing them well. But as you grow in revenue, what you have to start then doing is you have to start adding management layers. Those layers of management, they actually erode away your margins. Your margin goes from like 30-40% to maybe 20%, if that. And it just becomes a bit of a nightmare to run. So the key is like, how can you increase revenue without really increasing the number of staff you have? And that's what we've actually just launched. And our ticket sizes have now gone from, you know, $10,000-$20,000 a month to $100,000-$300,000 a month. So what we're flying in to to New York is actually to get the initial version of that project launched and to get some really good case studies. And what is that product? So we've actually built out tech platform for it. It also uses some of our personal brands to actually source a big community, and then it uses our expertise in working with tech and VC. And we put together a very unique packaging for a proposition that already exists out there. So once we've set up the client here, we've met with some of our existing clients as well, we're gonna fly to India, we're gonna make sure that everyone's aligned on like the vision. And mark my words, we're going to be in the high six figures a month by the end of next year, if not in the millions. If this product works, but it will work. So the client comes in and literally the first thing out of his mouth, "I don't like what you guys are doing. I don't want to do this." I'm like, "Fuck." Like, he was already here, so he was down to record. I think he's more bought in now to what we're doing, and I think it's going to be like the start of a really, really awesome relation, and we're going to do some magic with them. Nothing goes according to plan. We've been here for 3 hours. Fuck. Big fuck! It's okay man at the end of day we have each other... No gay!!! So let's see if I make it to Mumbai today? The flight got cancelled— no way!! Yeah, but gonna figure something out will try book some tickets We paid an arm leg extra But old adage true time money! Have made on plane that am not going sing victory until takes off be honest Ding ding dong dang daing dahng ahnghaahhning gung gaanggaaan Ning ning nining na ngaaaaling! Thank you so much sir for your help What's the most surprising thing for you that like either in the positive or the negative that you didn't expect? This is the place where really you can die crossing the road, they don't give a fuck. Bro, as we're speaking, we just got a payment for 41 grand. Have you seen anyone take a shit in the street yet? I was expecting it, but I didn't see it yet. I think we're in too urbanized of an area. Yeah, no, this is the rich area. This is the sleeping on the sidewalk next to a Maybach area. Uh, we're basically, um, offboarding one of our clients because they're taking up too much resource and we cannot use their name publicly, and they're not paying us enough either. So we're just losing on all fronts. Client pays us $17,000 a month. Once a client starts thinking that they know more than you about your domain, they will start giving you way too much feedback and you will lose frame. And you really don't want to be there because they'll stop trusting you. They'll ask you for iterations and it's the surefire way to actually like fail as an agency, basically. 12,000 on hotels for just a week. For a full week? I don't know, sounds about right. Like? One of my favorite restaurants in London was like— two of my favorite were Indian spots. I had mad diarrhea. My shit was the same color as the chicken I ate. 6:44, we're about to head to Jaipur. We need to disconnect from the day-to-day so we can strategize for the next year of growth. I felt the butter chicken moving around my stomach, like here, there, up, down, left, right. And then once it was on my left and I moved to the right— but bro, you're Indian, what the fuck? And then I was burning with the alcohol inside, ah, you know, so it was like, okay, okay. You guys need to work on your stomachs. I don't think I slept for more than 30 minutes. My recovery— Could have been, could have been, could have been, could have been 30. What would you have done if not entrepreneurship? I actually applied for jobs. I literally got no job offers. I didn't even get invited to interview for a seat those days. Unemployable. I'm literally unemployable. Subha is unemployable now as well. Few people know, but this is actually a photo of when we founded Atomic Growth. Here's me as a white guy and then the whole Indian team around us. Yeah. What makes you hungry in particular? For most things, I have filled my hunger. If I was just being pulled towards something, right, or I wanted— I had holes to fill. Like, those symbols— you have a lot of holes to fill, bro. Yeah, I'm sure they're waiting for you. Desire had been kind of filled, right? But I think it's more like fear. I don't want to be average. I mean, average sucks, man. The issue is like, I'm not where I wanted to be when I was 30. I'm like way behind. It's really, really hard to predict where you're going to be in X amount of time because everyone overestimates what they'll get done in 1 year, underestimates what they can do in 10 years because the human mind thinks linearly and life and everything is really like more exponential. There's more of a power law and you just cannot think in that way. As long as you're playing games which are like uncapped on their upside, you're running your own business, you're running the right kind of businesses, where you can be in 6 or 7 years is almost like undefined. Like, you could be nowhere, or you could be somewhere making millions and millions of dollars a month. Like, everyone you kind of see starts to succeed in business at the 10-year mark, right? And I was like, maybe if they're smarter, they can do it sooner. And you're like, nah, I think intelligence defines the games they can play. Basically, your intelligence says, like, which league you're in. Calling them leagues means that somebody very intelligent can play in inferior leagues, and I think That might not be the case. They might get bored. They might get so bored and feeling so bad doing the work that is needed in those games that they will actually be worse than the lowest IQ people. So I think it's not about leagues, it's a different sport. Intelligence is first knowing what you want, then getting it. So I'm not intelligent, bro? All I want is some fucking 10s out of 10s, bro. Bro, you get them, no? No, where are they? I'm here with you, bro. We just finished our lovely stay at the Rambagh Palace, most expensive palace in all of India, yet somehow the next hotel is more expensive. So it's a wrap, we're going to Udaipur. Been on the road for 4 and a half hours, I've slept 4 and a half hours. What's your perception about money? Money isn't real, man. That was the moment where even the business started turning over good money and I wasn't getting anything. The fact that I was moving every month hundreds of like tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars every month, like that kind of fucked my mentality on money because I was seeing such big money amounts being moved. And then that kind of dissociated me from money and I started looking at money as like energy. You always want to like pack your time as densely as possible because you look back at things like, shit, I didn't do this, this, this, this, this, and I regret not spending my time better. So once you have that first round of realization that, okay, you might be wasting your life away, then you want to pack it more densely. What do you regret the most? There's a specific girl, and I didn't ask her out when I had the opportunity, and another guy came and stole her away. And bro, that was like, fuck, shit. But on the other hand, I think actually not dating her was kind of better for me. It got me down my villain arc and kept me hungry in life, you know. Hey guys, today I'm going to be making a course showing you how to make money by scratching your balls so you can afford nice places like this. Follow me. If Arthur sells his company for how much? More than 1 million, I have to quit my job and he's gonna hire me for 3 months to make my business. Yeah, yeah, that's why I saw. Yeah, yeah, so we're getting there. Deal. Oh, but that's going to be easy to do that, bro. That business is growing, this one's growing. You're fucked, bro. Revenue for the last 4 months across the businesses have been— you know what's funny, bro? Even at a million a month, the money is not that life-changing as well, bro. Because let's say a million a month, you bring in what, like $300 grand just like into your pocket net a month? Like, it's good money, but $30 grand a month to $300 grand a month, it's not as big a jump as going from like $5 grand to $30 grand, you know? Because At $30 grand, you can Uber everywhere, you can eat out every day, you can live basically in every apartment you want, you can like fly wherever you want whenever you want. Maybe not business all the time, but you can at least. People say it's the journey, not the destination. I say it's the company. Bombo rasclat! Let's grab our Indians and get them drunk. Uh, let's get a drink. Come. Can you not wear sweatpants, please? Bro, come on. Can you put that back? I cannot un-out it. Stop looking at my dick, dude. It's literally— Ben Chod! It's good to see Subhan not wearing black. He looks good. I like black. Angel and the devil. They both happen to be brown. Thought of the day. There's a lot of thoughts here. Not the thoughts that he wants, but anyway. There's little sense in attempting to change external conditions. You must first change internal beliefs. Now the conditions will change accordingly. I realize, man, like, how much effort needed to be expended to make enough money to, like, enjoy this shit, man. It's kind of wild. But is it worth it? Maybe we could start again. But if you really cared for her, then you wouldn't have never hit the airport to follow your dreams. Sometimes I still talk to her, but when I talk to her, it always seems like she talking about me. She said you left your kids and they just like you. They want to rap. The next flight doesn't be delayed. It's most likely that we're gonna miss it, bro. Hoping to make the flight on time. Let's go, let's go! Okay guys, we're fucked. Um, can we confirm? That our best bet is tomorrow. Then I go see what they have to offer. Guys, this has unlocked a new level of being fucking frustrated. Private jets only from now on. Yeah, look at what Kareem is doing, bro. How much? Well, this guy, your cardio is worse than mine. Insane, bro. Are they? I was keeping like a steady pace so the heart rate doesn't go above a certain level. Bro, what the fuck am I chatting, bro? My cardio is shit, dude. I was dying. The air is solid, bro. Not satisfied with the fucking garage. I'm in some 3-star hotel. Shit, I was staying like some absolute luxury the past few days and now I'm in some 3-star hotel because my first flight got delayed so much that I missed my second flight to Srinagar. So now I'm in Delhi. It's not looking good. No Anima Sleep, no meetup. I'm tired. Why did you redeem it? Chennai is a defense airport. Photography and videography at this airport is strictly prohibited and is a punishable offense. Thank you. So none of our luggage made it to this beautiful city, so we are buying shit right now so we don't get cold and we don't smell like shit. Hedonistic adaptation means that you get used to like getting more and more pleasure in life, but then you have to seek even more of it, get a new pleasure from it. Like no matter what you put a female, you'll get used to it because we always want it more. You know, you buy a house, you want a bigger one. You do drugs, you want more drugs. But it also applies to like closing deals, you know. You close a deal for $1,000, cool, then you get used to it, you want to close $10K deals, then $100K deals, then million dollar deal. We could have just been content with just like, you know, touring and just climbing up the mountain with, you know, skis and then going down. But no, then we were like, okay, you know what, we need to build gondolas to make it easier for us so we can go down more. It's also probably the reason why we can have so many this inequality inside it because when you're like at the shittiest level you get used to it or near the highest level you get used to it as well on both cases just want 20% more though we just got the green light from the Colonel we've been commissioned by the Colonel to film this track and open up the mountain for the ski season in Kashmir. That's pretty— that's a pretty good mission, man. It's not even a ride, it's a GTA mission. I'm looking forward to, you know, flying in my private jet into events to talk about global warming, you know. That is the level of wealth I want. Business is a lot about the seeds you plant and how long they take to harvest, right? I mean, when we started Atomic, right, the first seed we planted was just starting the business, and it took a few months to get our first customer. Man, getting that first client is so hard. Once you get that first client, you then make a case study, you then like flex that first client a bit, and then you just 10x your output, get the next 10 clients. Problem is the first client might not be a lighthouse client, but the idea is a lighthouse client is a client that everyone in the industry looks up to. So if you can get a lighthouse client, you're set because you make a case study, and then from that everyone else comes to. Like, the one thing I repeat constantly is don't fuck with reputation. Don't fuck with reputation. Don't fuck with reputation. The next seed we planted after that was looking around and seeing what was really working in the business and how could we double down on that. It was finding the best customer type and understanding how can we grow and increase the quality of service we provide for them. We actually decided to niche down in the VC and tech space because we had a really good client in that space. We didn't want to have just a million clients doing short-form content. We wanted to have a few clients bring us a lot more money. Once we won our first few big podcasting clients, the next seed we planted is really doubling down in the talent we had and getting the really, really the best talent. This is, uh, 3 bags of coffee in a liter of water. Efficient. Only hire PhDs. PhDs who are hungry, desperate. Yes. And there's 4 options: death, debt, or divorce. You need one of the 3 to come up. The perfect candidate. We like our dogs, bro. Over like a 6-month period, we quadrupled more or less the prices we charge for our services because of that investment into Kallen. And the next seed we planted was 3 months ago, and it was the clipping stuff we've done. And now we're like in the middle of that seed expanding. It might even take longer than with the other products because here we have to build products, let's leverage technology, we have to really work with enterprise sales and push that forward, and that's not easy. And we have to build a community of clippers. So all those things take time to do. It's all about how consistent we are, how much content we put out, how much effort we put in. I mean, you're in school, fucking hell, you don't have anything to do. That's true. Yeah, just go fucking nuts clipping, boys. And then the final point is you've got to have enough runway, enough cash to watch the seed grow. The knowledge of not knowing what's going to happen makes things 10 times harder. That's the hard one, yeah. Yeah, when is the game over? When are you going to finally make money? When are you going— when is the war going to be over? Exactly. When are you going to finally hit your lucky break? Are you going to win? And the interesting thing is, for example, if you plant bamboo for 3 years, the roots are going to be growing before it even grows out. Like, the bigger the project you work on, the longer it takes for it to grow and for you to be able to harvest it. Growing Parcel Tracker was a fucking bamboo, I can tell you that much. I know, it's bad. It's beyond bad. Disappointing, maybe. Simply does not work. Because at this rate, this is going to go to shit, and it deserves to go to shit if this is how we'll do it. The problem is, I don't know in this situation where the campaign is headed. Like, understand the logic of it. The number of views that get counted get counted only for approved clips. This campaign can't be extended without us losing out on money beyond 30 days, bro. I do not want to work for my own company. It's what, 5:30 AM? What have you guys been doing for the last 30 minutes? QCing clips. How many did you QC each? Uh, 221 in 30 minutes. Did you do that just to assert dominance on your moderators? August. August? What? Yes, give us 30 days notice. Bro, don't tell me this. But guys, you know, making a million dollars is not meant to be easy. For engineers are so fucking hard to find though. Like, jokes aside, I'm actually getting fucking pissed off right now. Fucking journal on New Year's Eve? Benchwood, be grateful the fucking next day. It's New Year's Eve, I'm leaving. Let's go to a restaurant. Okay, there's loud music, there are people, but it's a restaurant. Guys, 2026 goals. You guys need to make one fucking motto, and every decision you make, you bring it back there. Because guys, none of the shit you plan, you will hit, because we're so bad at fucking predicting the future. Humans think in a linear manner. Which means that we overestimate what we can do in 1 year and we underestimate what we can do in 5. Where I was in 2023, I was exactly the same place at the start of this year, but the winning happened in this year. It is like a bamboo. You put your roots down and then you sprout up in 2, 3 hours later. Okay, so let's make— yes, sir. Make your goals, make them fucking big, and remember you're going to under perform this year, but in 2 years you will fucking hit them. Godspeed. Godspeed. Godspeed. Make sure like you play games you enjoy. Make sure you play the right game and just be like the 2 Vs: vigorous in your work and put in a lot of volume, and you don't know where you'll be in 5 years.