#056: The $50M Exit: Aaron Spivak’s No-BS Lessons on Business, Life, and Crushing Success

I watched, you know, my mom go through a really traumatic time where she lost her business. I watched my dad go through a stroke and he used to drive a truck. He couldn't drive anymore when you get a stroke. And I was like, holy shit, I need to put myself in a position where I can take care of me and my family. I think entrepreneurship is one of the loneliest things you can possibly do. We see less than 0.01% of these people in the news, the Bezos, the Musks, even though the entire economy is run by small businesses, people hustling, grinding every day. Most don't make any money. You get paid last. It's actually the worst possible job unless you absolutely hit it. You have to learn the way you love. It's really, really important because also the way you receive love is really, really important.

Aaron Spivak, co-founder of Hush, has achieved remarkable success by combining innovation, persistence, and a relentless drive. Hush, a company known for its weighted blankets, faced a major downturn early on, but Aaron's decision to directly engage with customers revealed a key product flaw: excessive heat. This insight led to the creation of a cooling weighted blanket, a move that propelled the company from near failure to a $50 million business today. In this episode, Aaron discusses his entrepreneurial journey, the importance of surrounding oneself with the right people, and his commitment to personal growth through therapy. He emphasizes the power of setting clear goals, maintaining energy, and simplifying complex problems to achieve success in both business and life. Welcome back to Season 2, Episode 19 of the Turning Pro Podcast. Today we have Aaron Spivak, who is the co-founder of multiple businesses, most notably Hush, which he sold last year. Thanks for joining us today, Aaron.

Thank you guys for having me.

So Aaron and I, I joke about this. I would say there's very few people who are Jewish, who played hockey, who are from the Northeast, who are in entrepreneurship. And what was more impressive about it is we hadn't known each other until, what, like a year and a half ago at this point?

Yeah, we met at a coffee shop and he's like, you want to run 131 miles from Montauk to Times Square? And I've never like ran more than 5 miles in my life. And I was like, of course, when? He's like, 2 weeks.

So, so we did that. And, uh, during that, Aaron and I ran 8 miles together at like 4 o'clock in the morning. And I think Aaron broke his PR for that distance. And I was like, all right, I think we're gonna be homies after this because we need miles at 8:30. When you do miles at 8:30, when you do that— granted, he wasn't training for like long distance running.

It was 4 AM too, the whole day on an RV for like 16 hours. And he's Right, ready for 8 miles?

I saw the videos of this. I didn't know that was you next to him.

That was me.

I saw him with his little headlight like ripping in the darkness.

And I feel like when you do hard things with people, that's like when you become friends, and kind of the rest is history from there. But, um, Aaron, maybe just give like a quick 2 seconds on what you're up to or where you started.

Yeah, I guess a little bit about myself. I'm, you know, born and raised in Toronto, played hockey for 20 years. Uh, when I was 18, I started a juice company out of my basement with my mom, my brother, just based on the idea that as a hockey player, the healthiest thing after a hockey game was a Subway sub or like something like McDonald's where you take out the bun or something like that. There was no like alternative at the time. This is 2012, 2013. So we launched a juice shop and, you know, juice shop now, there's tons of them in New York City. You see them, the Joe and the Juices and stuff. But in Toronto, there was nothing. And even till today, there's really not that many. So we've got 10 locations, still exists called Revitalize in Toronto, and then in 20— when I was around 22, 23, I realized the idea of like every time I wanted to expand a juice shop, I had to take all my profits from the previous year and then dump it into another location and pray to God that it does, it does well. And then eventually you do the same thing over and over again. And then I discovered the internet. I was like, wait a second, with the internet I can sell from one store everywhere. And my co-founder at the time, Lior, introduced me to the idea of weighted blankets, which is the whole concept of deep, deep touch pressure stimulation.

Got one right there.

Ben's got one.

That's a plush.

Yeah, that's one of our newest ones. The whole idea of just like feeling like hugged, those little small pressure points all throughout your body releases like that cortisol that you don't want, increases that melatonin, deep restful sleep. And then we launched that and never looked back. We went from a $0 to $700K business in our first year to a $10 million to eventually a $50 million business in 48 months. So it was a straight rocket ship until we sold it.

Then that's it. He's like, I'm retired, guys.

Thank you very much.

Thanks.

Follow me on Instagram.

And you've never seen him again.

So the thing— I think one of the reasons that Aaron and I got along so well is he has that same gene of just obsession where it's like he can't stop thinking about building things, right? So a lot of people will look at him and be like, all right, you sold the business for $50 million, you were 20— how old are you when you officially sold it?

Uh, 25, turning 26.

Turning 26 years old, sold the business. Like, all right, like, you can retire now. You don't really have to do anything. You can just take that, like, passive income off of the interest on your money. But he's started, like, a bunch of businesses since, and you realize that it's not about the money. It's really just, like, the, the passion and the purpose of just, like, solving, solving problems and having fun doing it.

What's your why? Oh, my why has changed throughout— my why's changed throughout the years. I mean, I think, like, when I was young, I watched, like, you know, I grew up in a lower middle class family. I watched my parents open up their RSP to take me to these expensive hockey tournaments and stuff. So for me it was just like, I wanna be able to take care of myself. I wanna be able to take care of my parents. I watched my mom go through a really traumatic time where she lost her business. I watched my dad go through his stroke and he used to drive a truck so he couldn't drive anymore when you get a stroke. And I was like, holy shit, I need to put myself in a position where I can take care of me and my family. So like, that was unbreakable. Like, how can you bet against that? I was gonna— I was willing to do anything, and I was— I was waking up at 6 AM, going to bed at 1 or 2 AM. I'm not saying that's a healthy thing. I just— that's what I was doing because I wore every hat and I was relentless for years. Post-transaction, post-feeling secure, being able to take care of myself, be— being able to take care of my families, I think that that why is changing. And now my why is really to just bring as much value to other entrepreneurs all over the world. I think entrepreneurship is one of the loneliest things you can possibly do. We see less than 0.01% of these people in the news, the Bezos, the Musks, even though the entire economy is run by small businesses, people hustling, grinding every day. Most don't make any money. You get paid last. It's actually the worst possible job unless you absolutely hit it. So without a community, without people understanding, when I dropped outta school, it was like, you know, the worst thing to do. You're either gonna be a drug dealer or like, we have, like, we have the Leaf game. You're gonna sell hot dogs outside the Leaf game. Those are the two options, you know? And nowadays it's a little bit cooler. Right now when you drop outta school, you're like, what do you, what are you doing? What do you like, what are you up to? What's the, can I invest in your idea? But still it's lonely. Nobody's honest and there's no safe space for entrepreneurs to come together and be like, yo, it's really tough right now. Can you help? And what can I do to change my circumstances?

I want to talk about honesty and that loneliness for a second because I remember early days. I started my company like 2.5, 3 years ago, kind of similar time to you. And sometimes you look back, you know, with rose-colored glasses. Looking back, I was like, when I think about it now, I'm like, I was wandering around LA. I was in an Airbnb. I had no money, no savings. And I'm like, that was just the golden years, man. That was so fun. And in the, in the moment when I actually think about it for a little while, I'm like, that sucked. That was a grind. Waking up early. I didn't know anyone in the space. I didn't know how to build a company. So I'm curious for, for your perspective, specifically building Hush, like early days, do you look back and you're like, no, that was fun? Or do you look back and you're like, wow, that was, that was a grind.

Um, I wouldn't do it again if I could, you know, I think it's, it was the most difficult thing. I've ever done in my entire life. You know, I was also operating juice shop. So I would wake up at 5:45 every single day, 7 days a week. I'd get to the juice shop by like 6:15. We'd open at 6:30. So I'd prep the shop. We'd open at 6:30. I'd work in the shop from 6 till 2 PM. Then I think the night guys would come in. We made most of our money between that time. We drive home at 3, either work out or change or do whatever, just kind of relax. And then at 4 o'clock, I'd meet up with my co-founder. We'd go from 4 typically till midnight or 1 AM every single day for a year until we got the business to a point where like I could hire some people. But we still did that for 3 years straight. And looking back, I had no other choice. But also I didn't know any better. I didn't trust anyone. I didn't know how to hire. I was 23 years old, right? So a part of it was I'm like, I'm grateful I was able to go through that because I learned so much. But I would not do that again. That was, that was max. Max pain. Like, my acquisition was the most painful 8 months of my life. I lost all my hair to get a hair transplant, you know.

Shit, really?

Yeah.

Look at him now. Yeah, look at me now. He's back.

So it was, um, yeah, I mean, there's certain things, there's certain things that is crazy, by the way.

I'm like, look, yeah, I'm actually looking sharp as fuck, dude. That's so wild. He called me a couple months ago, fucking bald. He's like, dude, what happened? He's like, just give it a couple months.

Yeah, dude. It's been, uh, it's been a crazy journey, but at the same time, like, you know, you appreciate those things. You appreciate the hard times, but it doesn't mean I would do it again. It's almost like you have to go through it, but like, get the lesson while you can so you don't have to do it again.

I feel like a lot of our founder friends that had their businesses acquired now are spending a lot of time on health and wellness and all that good stuff because they kind of went through that grind, but in that time, sometimes you just don't have time for it. It's like, okay, I can either work 2 hours or I can walk 20 minutes to the gym, get a workout, walk 20 minutes back and like take care of my body. But almost every time that decision is, I'm just gonna keep working.

Yeah. I think it's also like not knowing any better.

Yeah.

I didn't know how to operate in an environment where I could take care of my mental, my physical health, my relationships in my life and my business. I I didn't know that. I was watching Gary Vee saying some stupid shit about working all day, all night if you're broke. And that's what I did. I was listening to these people on the internet. Now, and that's actually one of the things I'm most passionate about now is I know 100% now, regardless of what I have, that the way I did it is not the way. There's people now building incredible businesses starting from scratch. I see it because I have a community of founders. I see it with 3 kids. A wife that's working at home. They only have like 5 or 6 hours to work every day because they got to do all these other things in their life and they're still building incredible businesses. And to me, it's because they have the systems, they know how to create discipline and routine, and they can get more done in those 5 hours than probably I was getting done in those 15, 16.

I want to push on this a little bit, though, because I think this is a common thread we see where every successful founder all of a sudden is a big health and wellness junkie. Think about it. You look at like the biggest people in the world, all of a sudden Mark Zuckerberg's a fighter and he's in the sickest shape of his life. Well, yeah, it's easy to say that after you're a multi-trillionaire, whatever the hell he is at this point. You sold your business and then you woke up and you're like, all right, now I'm going to be like this health and wellness guy, which, look, I think better late than never. But I'm curious to like understand your perspective. And it's kind of a hard analogy to draw on because you can't actually like put yourself in the shoes of someone who was— who is broke, who is starting a company for the first time with their back against the wall. While also trying to prioritize the health and wellness. Do you actually think that's real and possible?

Yeah, I mean, like, my health and wellness routine isn't 4 hours a day with, you know, I think what I have is I have a performance coach that lives with me full-time. That is for sure, because I sold my business, I can afford to have that. Yeah, granted, 100%. But 90% of my routine is 20 minutes in the morning. That's 90% of my routine. And then I sometimes do a 30-minute workout and sometimes 45 minutes. Yesterday I had no time. I had to jump on a flight. I had meetings in the morning. I literally went outside my house. We ran to the end of the street and back and did like some dips. And then it was done. It was like 18 minutes. So any founder can do that, right? It's not like I'm doing cryotherapy and then I'm plunging and then I'm getting my blood drawn and doing vampire facials. Like, I mean, some people do that. But it doesn't take that long to just take care of yourself a little bit. And then we're all eating. Let's like, okay, again, when I was doing my grind, I was probably under eating. I was eating maybe once, maybe twice a day. Even once or twice a day, it takes 10 minutes to cook my beef for the whole week. It's just, I didn't have the discipline, the know-how, and no one was like, I had no one around me to be like, yo, this is the way.

What does your diet look like right now?

Oh buddy, we're about to start a 40-minute conversation.

So, so he's about to book He's about to push the primal ball.

Here it comes.

You love it, don't you?

It's good.

So, so basically, um, I hired a performance coach, but a performance coach to me is someone that cares about all buckets of life. So, and that's, that's what I define as, as a successful person, let alone a successful entrepreneur. So like, we have this Founders Club, there's 300+ founders in it, and you know, to me, if you make $100 million, but you're fat, you're out of shape, you have a terrible relationship, nobody likes you in your life, you have no friends, I couldn't give a shit. Like, I don't, I wouldn't wanna hang out with you. So for me, like a successful person is someone who is trying at least or is overflowing in multiple buckets in their life. Of course, business, success, health, wellness, all those things, your friends, do people like hanging out? Those things matter. They give you energy. That's really what we're all doing here. We're just trying to get momentum and create energy and have fun. So the one thing that I was always missing post hockey, which I retired from over 10 years ago, was this performance angle. Because when you're playing hockey, you go into this facility, the workouts on the board, you have 20 people doing the same workout. So the momentum's insane. There's food waiting for us. I don't have to do anything. So it was so easy to stay in good shape. Now, I don't know, I'll skip the meal. I won't work out today because I'm not feeling it, or I got 25 emails to do. I have all these excuses. So I was like, you know what, I'm going to hire a performance coach, going to live in my house. This guy's a maniac. He's going to teach me and create discipline in everything I do to the point— he's not going to live with me forever, but to the point where I can create these habits. I've gained 25 pounds. I really eat the simplest things. I thought it was so complicated. I literally eat beef bowls, which is essentially 8 to 10 ounces of grass-fed beef, grind it up into a bowl. Obviously you cook it. I throw sometimes some salsa on it. I throw some pickles on it and that's it. Like, put a nice avocado. It's so simple. It takes me 7 seconds. Literally, I take it out of the microwave. I throw it on the pan for like 10 seconds. Done. And then for dinner, I pretty much just have steak and rice or steak and veggies every single day. And then I have a protein shake for lunch. It's the easiest thing of all time. 3 meals.

Is it the best you've ever felt?

I'm up 25 pounds. But he still knows I'd come out of the corner with the puck every single time. I'd absolutely rock Ben. Okay. And, uh, and yeah, like I'm, I'm lifting strong and I'm, oh, another thing is I'm only working out 3 times a week.

Really?

That's it.

I didn't know that detail. I knew all the, I knew all the other fun things you do, but I did not know 3 times a week.

They're 45 to an hour workout. So we get, we get from my house, a 10-minute drive to the gym, to the gym and back in 90 minutes.

You're just doing heavy lifts or what?

It's, yeah, so it's like, I think like 4 exercises, 4 or 5 exercises. They're designed to like obviously build muscle. They're a part of the, it's just a program that I follow, and it's 3 days a week, not allowed to work out more.

Why is that?

Because the idea is like, what am I training for? What's my goal, right? Am I trying to be a bodybuilder? No. Am I trying to be like, win some sort of entrepreneurship weightlifting competition? Probably not. What I'm trying to do is be the best version of myself. I want to have my best day ever, every single day. For me, working out 7 days a week is not, there's not a, that's like, I don't enjoy that. What I enjoy is the energy. We get after it 3 days a week. Those 3 days we go hard. So I have the energy. I'm not tired and sore from the previous workouts. I'm eating good and I have time to do all the other things. I still spend 95% of my days on relationships and business, which is the two things that I want to do most.

I want to talk about, um, so you— what's interesting about you as an entrepreneur is that you have way more battle scars than the average kid your age because you didn't go to school. You started your company when you were way younger. So even for me, like, talking to him, I'm asking about things like, oh yeah, I dealt with that like 6 years ago. One of the things that I think you do better than any entrepreneur that I've been around is your ability to just sell the dream to anyone and everyone. Dude, we can sit here and be like, I We're going to start selling pineapple juice and he can go on the street and go find someone to run the business for him who actually believes internally that he's— this person is going to become a billionaire because Aaron told them how great this pineapple juice is and what they're going to do.

Have you seen where we got the pineapples from?

Is it— wait, is this an actual business?

You wouldn't believe it, dude.

Oh my— can you walk me through?

Listen, we got these pineapples. A good buddy of mine, his dad owns a farm in Panama and he's never allowed to— like, they were— they never allowed him to bring the pineapples to America until today. We figured it out. So all we have to do is juice them and sell them. It's basically golden pineapple juice. It's the most incredible thing you've ever tasted.

I'm in.

Yeah, I'm locked in.

Dude, but like, I'm not—

no, I'm not—

I'm not golden juice. No, no, seriously though, like, take the joke out of it. Like, where does that come from? Like, what's the learnings, I guess, you've had over the years? What was like that— that I honestly, I think for you, in my eyes, there was a turning pro moment where you're like, you know what, like, this is actually the thing I'm really good at. I need to lean into this.

I mean, the truth is it came from my mom. My mom is a straight immigrant. She grew up in the slums of Israel. It's a place called Ofakim. It's like, I don't know what the slums of New York are, but it's the worst possible place. When the Jews were exiled out of Morocco and they arrived in Israel, this is before Israel was even Israel, the Jews in Israel didn't want them. That's how the Moroccans were viewed. So they pushed them to the furthest point of this, the bottom of Israel that like no one wanted to be. And it ended up being a ghetto for a long time. So she grew up with 13 brothers and sisters in a house with 2 beds and they would rotate sleeping on the floor and stuff. And she, you know, left the house at 12 years old. So she's a natural, like never went to school, any type of school. So from her, I know she came to Canada, she built this incredible business without being able to read or write English, which was, Like looking back, insanity, and with 5 kids. So we were able to watch just how she would constantly sell and inspire people to take action every single day. You know, at one point she had 30, 40 employees. Again, she can't send an email, she can't send a text. So she would have to, through her voice, and I would listen to it as a kid, I would hear it in real time through the phone, just inspire and give these people the vision of where this business is going. And I learned at a really early age that especially during the tough times as a leader, the vision, the excitement, and the momentum is everything. Because the second you lose momentum, everything dies. And what I didn't realize, I would say until Hush, was that your customers feel the amount you're working. It's the most insane thing ever. And maybe you guys feel this in your business. When you take a week or two off, your sales go backwards. Why? The business is still moving. There's people in place. It's the momentum. It's the energy. It's the excitement. So as a founder, as a leader, as a person in charge, an executive within your business, for me, the most important thing is can we keep people excited? Because if we're excited, our customers are excited. If our customers are excited, we're getting results. And that momentum for me is always built to the next stage. And without it, I feel like we just die.

So I feel like the closest analogy here is when people talk about motivation versus discipline. Like in the morning, you're listening to, I don't know, a Tim Ferriss podcast or Jocko Willink right before to try to get yourself hyped up. That never works, right? It's the consistency and the discipline. So I'm curious, the overlap there in business, what is a similar thing? Because if you wake up, you can't just say, you know, Aaron's been telling me that I have to, I have to keep up the momentum and I got to wake up and I got to go inspire everyone. What is the opposite of that where it's consistency and discipline?

Depends on the story. So my biggest thing is that you have to believe in the end of the story. So what is the story that you're telling yourself? And what is the story that you're telling your staff, your people, the people around you? And then what is the story that those people are telling your customers depending on how far removed they are? And for me, it's the story. And I think the beauty of an entrepreneur, someone that is a truebred entrepreneur to their soul, is they have the ability to change the story. And if you don't have the ability to change the story, you make this commitment to yourself early on. I'm going to do this and you get excited about it. And then 3 months down the road when you're not as excited about it or things change, but you hold on to what you said previously, you end up just kind of sinking and eventually dying. I'm constantly changing the story all the time and it's based on how excited I get about it.

But I want, I want you to hammer home on this for his context because when he tells you like this concept of knowing the end of the story, he truly lives by that. And I sat down with him for the first time, I think it was in January— no, I don't know, but beginning of the year, December, before the new year. And I was like, Aaron, I'm struggling because I know directionally like the things that I'm working on, but I— when you ask me like, how much money do you want to make? Or like, where do you want the tangible bit? Like, where do you want the tangible, tangible outcome to be? Where the bit with the business? And like directionally, you know, but you can't actually like put pen to paper. Aaron basically just like sat me in a chair and was like, no, like write it out. And it was the most uncomfortable experience I've ever had, but probably one of the most impactful experiences I've ever had, whereby like when you have a tangible goal, you subconsciously and consciously can figure out how you start to reverse engineer getting to that exact moment. Can you tell them a little bit about—

with— yeah, we're going into it hard.

It's crazy. It's so— have you done like— I guess before you go into it, I want to pose the question to you. What kind of goal setting do you do, or have you done with Verbatim or on a personal level?

So for context, I run an agency.

Okay.

And agencies can go in two directions. Either A, they exist in perpetuity and you build out an executive and a leadership team and then it becomes a platform to launch other businesses, to incubate other things like Red Antler. I think they had a minority acquisition, but now they're launching other agencies and launching other cool things. So that is either kind of steady state and end in mind, or you reduce key man risk, build a more productized service and sell it. Usually goes one of two directions. And honestly, I don't know which direction I want to go. That's kind of the current state of things.

Well, before I, uh, open up the kimono here and give everybody, uh, if they listen this far, the actual value of this episode, um, are you having the best year you've ever had? I would say so, by a mile. Yeah, I wish we recorded that session. It would have been worth so much.

So honestly, I, I think about that.

Yeah, I wish we could, man. I wish. But we'll record it this year because it'll be another big year. So Basically, I learned this, I think I was 22, 23, and I give all the credit to my co-founder at Hush. He's a few years ahead of me. One of the most brilliant guys I've ever met. And I give him, every time I bring this up, I say the same thing and he sees it and he's, you know, keeps making jokes about it, but it's true. And essentially the idea is it boils down to the plan tomorrow today, which everybody knows. Everyone knows before you go to sleep, you should have the next day planned out. Okay, cool. That's the simplest aspect. But what the story is, is we need to create a detailed story of every single bucket in our life that we care about in advance. And I like to do it a year in advance. So if there's goals, so SMART goals, which we all know about, right? So they're specific, they're measurable, they're attainable, relevant, time-bound. Those things are all important. And then we create them for the buckets. So for example, if you're a sales guy and you go, I want, last year I sold, I'm making this up, 100. Great. What do you want to sell this year? Oh, I want to sell 1,000. Cool. Why? And that's when most people break. Why do you want to sell 1,000? Well, I don't know. Jimmy over there on the other desk sold 1,000 last year. I figured, I don't know, maybe, but he's a little bit better than me. Maybe 800. It just dies there. Where's the end of the story? And the end of the story is my business is going to be a $100 million business by next year. And then we work backwards. And what I mean by that is that means I need to sell X amount of product and you have X amount of staff and you have X amount of money. I need to spend X amount on advertising. I want to weigh, you know, I started this year at 165 pounds. I'm 185 pounds now. My goal was to do 100, to be 185 pounds and do 25 chin-ups. If you don't remember, I do like 16, 17 now. It'll be done by the end of the year. But it's a very specific goal. 25 chin-ups by the end of the year. I think I did like 6 when I made that goal. 20 pounds heavier by the end of the year. I'm already at 20 pounds. So it's very specific goals. And then the trick to it is, okay, we make these goals. First, we have to challenge our limiting beliefs. So why did I not say 30 pounds? Why didn't I put 40 chin-ups? Right? Why? Is it because I can't, I don't think I can do it? Well, I can go to the gym right now and find someone that'll do 40 chin-ups. Certainly possible. So it's challenging the limiting beliefs, which is why I always recommend you do it with somebody else, right? Like your business is, I'm making this up, a $5 million business. Your goal is to make it a $10 million business. Well, why not a $60, $70 million business? Well, it's hard. You know, most agencies don't do that. Well, that's just a sack of shit. You just made that up, right? I guarantee if I go out on LinkedIn right now, I can find an agency doing $60 million. So do you want me to bring him in and tell you how he's doing it? Because where's the limiting belief here? So that is the hardest thing for people, is to challenge their own limiting beliefs. And Ben and I did that. We like— I challenged him like 40 times to the point where we had to like keep moving the needle. And I think it's one of the reasons you're— I mean, you have to execute, obviously, but it's one of the reasons where you at least have it in front of you of where you're going. I need to know exactly where I'm going. The next thing we do is now that we have this goal, and I'm obviously skipping a lot of steps, it's a very long process, Let's just say you want to double, you want to make your business go from $5 to $50 million. Great. We challenge limiting beliefs. We know it's possible. We believe in it. We feel it in our soul. We then write it as if it's true. So you're literally writing on a piece of paper, I now have a $50 million agency. Great. We have 2,500 clients. I'm making this up. We have 10,000 5-star reviews. We're getting more referrals, we're getting 25 more referrals a week than we ever got before. You start writing these things that are important to you, the buckets within your business. And then the most important thing, and this is the part that takes the longest amount of time, is you then sit there and write present tense. Now that we're a $50 million business, I feel X. Now that we are getting 25 referrals a week, when people love us, I feel X. So for me, I would write every single day, now that I sold my business, I can take care of my family and it makes me feel accomplished. Every single day I would write that. Every single morning now I tell myself we're gonna build the best founder community in the world and people are gonna talk about it for decades. Every single day I write it. I don't change that. I'm gonna be in the best shape of my life, do 25 chin-ups, be 185 pounds, and be disciplined. And because I do that, I know that I can create an environment that is sustainable. And those things people don't do. So when, you know, my good friend Jesse Itzler told me that the most successful people in his life that he's met, he's met a lot of successful people, right? He said, no one's ever winged it. No one's ever winged it. Why do young entrepreneurs wing it? Why do we wake up in the morning, grab a pen, open a book, and start going, okay, so today I'm gonna get back to my emails. I gotta call Jimmy. I gotta, oh, I forgot about, okay, I'll call my mom 'cause I forgot that thing. And you start, why? Why isn't, is it a clear path that's designed on the way that you feel in the future? And for me, it's the most magical thing. 'Cause when I was 21, I wrote down one time, I want a Lambo. I wanted an Aventador. I got really specific. And when I finally got to the last point, which is when I sit there and I literally almost meditate, I close my eyes and I hold the Lambo and I sit into it and I touch the leather on the wheels and I'm describing it. And I flick that little red thing, I press it. I'd never been in one before, you know? And I was like, grrr, and I get that feeling and I was like, okay. And in my like vision, I was like, you know, my back doesn't kind of feel, I don't know if I really want a Lambo. This doesn't seem so comfortable, you know? And I was 19 when I did that. 6 months ago, my buddy got one, drove it up to my house. He goes, hey, you gotta take it for a spin. I'm like, dude, I'd love to take it for a spin. He gives me the key, they open the door, I jump in, I flick the switch, I make a right turn on my street and I'm like, fuck, this is uncomfortable. And in that moment I was like, holy shit, I knew when I was 19, that I wouldn't like this because I really got deep into the way I would feel. And I'm able to play that out in every area of my life. I've manifested my cars, I've manifested relationships, businesses, the sale of our business. We knew who we were going to sell to 4 years before we even sold to them. And we knew for how much. I knew what house I would be living in. I knew where I would end up. This year, if I showed you my goals right now, you wouldn't believe the house that landed in my lap that wasn't even for sale in Miami. Wasn't even for sale. I walked in by accident. Is almost exactly the house that I described in January that I would buy. So you have to be careful with your thoughts because they always plan out. And why not construct it? If you can control the future, why not write it out?

How is your ambition scaled over time? Every year, every 6 months?

It— for me, I go, everything's based on feelings. So you can tell me, hey, do you want to be a billionaire this year? Um, it's not even a limiting belief. Honestly, I don't. I just, I don't want that in my journey right now. This year, I'm very clear on what I want and what's important to me. And for me, everything's about energy. If I feel good, if I'm excited about it, if I'm fired up, I find like, to wake up with a ton of energy is such a blessing. Because like, I remember during my acquisition, I would take 45-minute naps. I wouldn't even sleep. I'd be checking the sales, I'd be freaking out, you know. And what a luxury it is to wake up at 7:30 in the morning like today, jolted with energy, to like come here and shoot a pod. Like, what kind of fucking— what kind of life is this? This is unbelievable, you know. And to start to live that kind of life full of energy is, is a dream come true for sure. And I feel like everyone can do that forever, no matter at what stage, because I always had energy what I was doing.

I think the other piece that I've learned from you that allowed you to be able to do this, and a lot that I learned is one thing, and that's simplicity. So I've learned— I think I learned it first from him. And when I realized this, I started to approach more conversations through that lens of like, who else in my life is very successful or very ambitious and successful? And why is that? They have the ability to simplify very complicated problems to the point where they almost make you feel stupid, like they're talking to a 6-year-old in a kinder— like in a kindergarten class. Right. So when I first sat down with Aaron, we were talking about money, right? So goals around like, okay, how much revenue do you want to do this year with Platter? He's like, all right, so just— I'm just throwing out random numbers, but it's like, okay, if you want to do $1 million this year and your average contract values— your average contract value is $10,000, right? That means that you need to sell 100 of those this year. How many people do you need to talk to to close one? What's your average close rate? Okay, you need to talk to 10 people to close one, which means you need to talk to 1,000 customers if you want to get to $1 million. Okay, if you want to make— let's say you want to make $200,000 for your own pocket, and I can only take home $100K of the million. You want to make another $100,000? Okay, where else can you make money? Podcast? Okay, how much can you sell a podcast sponsorship for? Let's say $100,000 for 20 episodes. Okay, how many days do you need to spend of your life to film 20 episodes. Okay, it's 4 days, 5 hours each day, so 20 hours of work. How much time does it take to edit these and post these? And you can literally reverse engineer how much time you need to spend doing the exact things that need to happen in your life to get to where you want to go. And it was the most miserable activity with him because I'm like, it's so frustrating. Just like, write down a number because it's really hard. But like, getting over that hump and doing it, and then you look at it, you're like, oh my God, like, why am I making things so fucking complicated? It's really not that complicated. But again, I think people, when they're scared to face the reality of how they can accomplish something, they try to just complicate it and they make it sound big and they do all these things. And you bring him in and look, he's like, what the fuck is this? Like, this is so much more than it needs to be. And I feel like that moment just like reframed how I think about business building and even like how I spend my time.

You show me your calendar and I'll tell you where you're going.

So you interrupt— you took it from me because I wanted to say this is a therapy session for you. Oh yeah, because we, we joke all the time that a big part of this podcast is like founder therapy and frankly, like projecting our issues on other people who we know do better. 100% better than us. No, to help us like grow. I always say that the reason I started the podcast is because I learned by talking to people smarter than me. The only difference is we turned a camera on to do it right. One of the things Aaron did for me, he looked at my calendar one day and he's like, what the fuck is this? And he goes, how many of these meetings are actually helping you make more money? I was like, I don't know, maybe like half of them. He's like, great, take the other half off your calendar. Your calendar, if he looked at it, it— his is times 4 what mine was. He'll go, he'll go from 9 AM to 6 PM with 10 minutes in between calls the whole, whole day.

Yeah, so like, you know, I would probably, you know, if I joined the ranks of your business without knowing the ins and outs and have all the experience that you have I would bet life savings that probably within 24 months I'd be able to smash you because you can't organize yourself properly to align yourself with where you're going because everyone can take time away from you. The most important thing is that everything you do needs to be accretive to publicly traded companies. Work executives all day. They're thinking, what can I do? What are we doing? Where are we spending our time to add value to our shareholders, to the business, etc.? And they call it a creative movement, at least where I was at. It's everything needs to be creative. Every thought you have needs to be creative to the business. Every meeting you have, every single thing needs to be creative to your goals, to where you want to go, to where your business wants to go. And if you're lucky, depending on if you're co-founders and how your business is set up, you, your business, and your co-founders all have the same goals. If you're lucky. Sometimes shit happens. But if you're lucky and if you have that perfect balance, you can flying V that shit all the way into the finish line. As long as shit doesn't fall apart along the way, which it does. But as long as— that's why I'm saying like the reason why I think I would smash is because I would put together a flying V that doesn't break and then everyone would just be dialed and we can do it for 24, 36, 48 months, whatever we need to do to build momentum. But yeah, I mean, your calendar is Like, I don't like my— I did it all the time. I remember I was, you know, last year I did 50 stages. This year I'm going to do one because I—

50 stages?

Yeah, I would— I did 50 keynotes last year.

Wow.

This year, one. I got tired of it a little bit, and I didn't have anything to sell. Most of these guys go on, they sell a book or they sell a course. I had nothing to sell, just going on there, just speaking and leaving. But every time you get off the stage, there's like a couple people that come up and want to say something. Every single time, grab their phone, go to the calendar app and be like, you're you're a sack of shit. Every single time you tell me you want to build a business, what is this? Like, nothing in here tells me you want to build a business. And they'd be like, oh, well, that's my thinking. No, it's not your thinking time because you pull out your phone, you go on your emails. There's so much dead weight that happens all the time. You have calls. And I learned that the hard way. I learned it the hard way to the point where my co-founder, which I give credit to, went into my calendar, would click 8:00 AM, drag that shit down to like 3:00 PM and write, don't talk to Aaron. No one can get on my calendar. Not possible. And he's like, you see these hours? Now you just do business and you build and you focus and you take care of yourself and you only do things that are accretive. And that changed my life. Cause I was like, okay, wow. In this timeframe now I can do things that align with my goals.

What have you learned about delegation through that process?

Hmm.

The reason I ask is that a lot of calls on my calendar, I've kind of gotten rid of all the internal ops, a lot of the internal team meetings, but sales and BD is A, what I love to do, and B, what I'm best in the business at. And working on delegation, so I'm curious if you have any lessons or takeaways.

Delegation is interesting, you know. So I was on the— we were on the plane yesterday, actually, Ned and I, and he asked me the exact same question. It was just hilarious. And I said delegation is a very delicate thing. So for example, if you had a task, I don't know, to set up some sort of sales funnel in your business, which I don't know how to do, and you don't want to do anymore, you gave it to me to do, it's going to take me like—

you actually knew what his capabilities are with getting in the weeds?

Zero.

Zero.

Zero.

Surprisingly.

Yeah, dude, I don't know how to do anything.

So he's not bullshitting you.

I'm telling you, I know, I know what needs to get done, but I don't know how to do it. So literally, I don't know how to do nothing. I don't build lighting, paint, nothing.

And you were to give it to me, I think he thinks we're fucked, dude.

We're not fucking with you.

I swear to God, I don't know how to do anything. He knows how to find people to do the things and get them excited about why it should get done, and then it happens.

Yeah, I believe you.

So my point is that if you asked me to do it, I would eventually figure it out. I'd find someone else to do it. I'd go on Google, I'd venture. But, but you would have to hold my hand though, because you like, you would check in on with me like 2 days later, be like, yo, how's that thing? I'd be like, oh, I'm kind of struggling about figuring out. You would need a hand with it, maybe take a look at it. You edited a couple times, you didn't really delegate shit. All you did was make yourself feel better because someone else is supposed to do it, but you literally had to hold their hand because you chose the wrong person. The best form of delegation is putting the right person in the right seat so that you never have to think about it again. And if you have to continually check in— now I'm not talking about business check-ins, we should always be checking in and seeing how things are going. I'm not talking about temperature checks. I'm talking about checking in on processes and what's going on. Is it broken? Getting in the weeds, putting your helmet on, getting in the trenches. Then you have the wrong person in the wrong seat, and then it's your responsibility. And you know what the worst part of being a founder is? It sucks to replace that person, which is why I take such— like, my art is in putting the right person in the right seat under the right deal, under the right deal to make sure that I can either test it out, that we can see how it goes, that it's smooth sailing either way. And that is the art of building the business. And otherwise you're just— you're delegating stuff, but you're still overseeing it. You're still the contractor on site. And I want to be the point where I'm saying, hey, let's build that building. And then I go home. As opposed to most people are the contractor, they bring in all the workers and then they're still there every day grinding it out, building the building. But they're— they might not be putting up the drywall, but they're building the building.

How quickly do you know when someone's in the wrong seat?

Oh my God. I have a thing. I could tell you within 24 hours. Yeah. Actually not even. One conversation after their first day. First day. People, it's all energy, dude. We are all energetic human beings. When someone's in the right seat, they glow. They glow. It's like, do you have a girlfriend?

Yeah.

Okay, cool. That first time you took her on a date when she was glowing, you're like, all right. Sometimes you take a difficult girl on a date, it's like, damn, I can't wait to go home. Same thing with your staff. It's like, it's a relationship. It's like, yo, you're building my dream here. Where does your dream fit within this dream? And do you even have a dream that aligns? And sometimes no, some people want the title. Sometimes they need some money. Sometimes they're in a bad situation. Whatever the story is, you got to figure that out. But it's all energy. And the right person in the right seat can exponentially scale your business to the moon. I've seen it 100 times. I've seen it 100 times.

You know what I think the, the underlying piece of this is? Um, and I— the thing that actually helped me figure this out, which I want to talk about with you in a second, is therapy. It comes down to trusting yourself, because if you don't trust yourself, you're not going to trust the decisions you make in terms of the people you put into certain places. You'll hire someone to do something but stay on top of them and like manage them and do really do their job for them, really, because you don't trust them. And the reason you don't trust them is because you don't trust yourself that you put them in the right position. I got so uncomfortable watching him, or like, we put someone in a place to do something and he's, he's gone. He's like, no, they're good, let them be. And I'm like, no, no, but like, we have to help him. And he's like, no, like, just let it go, you know. And there's something which, you know, about— we're not going to talk about on the podcast— that's like happening in that exact scenario. Where I would call Aaron, I'm like, dude, I don't know. And he's like, no, trust me, like, you just gotta let it be. And I was like, all right, I'll let it be. And it's— it works. So I think in your situation, if there's a world where you feel like you've maybe hired someone to do something, you don't think they're actually like doing the thing well, like, take a step back and be honest with yourself. Like, are you actually trusting them and giving them the space to really do it? And if you are, if they're not the right person, then you got to rip the Band-Aid off and find someone where you trust at your core that they are the right person for the job.

Do you set up any checkpoints of, hey, send me a weekly report, hey, let's do a weekly one-on-one?

I got a lot of thoughts on that. I think, I think entrepreneur, like, I think if, I think that's a, a level of insecurity. If you need, you know, there, there's certain KPIs that move the business forward that everybody needs to be focused on. So what I typically do is I have it all funneled into one dashboard. So I can see it. I can see it whenever I want. I can see it on my phone. I can see it walking home. I can see it in the morning. I can check it whenever I feel a little weird feeling. How's my business doing? I can check it. I can see everything that's important. Everything. How many leads are coming in, the transactions, the sales, like everything that's important. Your dashboard, you need. And this is another thing that entrepreneurs suck at. And this is the one thing I don't suck at is I'm dialed in on my finances. I know every fucking dollar of air. I know where it's all going. I know who's getting paid, why. I know the, I know it very quickly. I can do my P&L in my head, literally like to a T by the time I get down the elevator of this place. Because that's all that matters. That is the blood flow. That is the energy of your business. So I set up the dashboard of what's important to the business to continue to move forward. If you woke up today at 10 o'clock and you're screwing off and stuff like that, and your employees are not doing what you think they should be doing, and you have to micromanage them and jump on a one, how's your week going? What could I help you with? That's to me micromanaging. You have the wrong person. I spent so much of my early years as an entrepreneur hiring B and C players that I am so tired of it. I'm so tired of it. And no offense to any that are watching this, but I just—

how do you be players that I hired in the past?

I hired so many, but I couldn't afford, I couldn't afford, I couldn't afford it. I didn't know better. I was too scared. I was too much of a pussy to invest. When someone's like, I want $150, I'd be like, fuck you, I only make $60. Trying to make more than me? I would tell them to leave and I'd hire someone for $60 and then fucking work with them and train them up and babysit them and blah blah blah. So many mistakes. Now it's like, what do you want, $150? No problem, welcome to the team. Let's see how—

hold on, no, but that— but it goes deeper than that. I watched him do this and it was like the funniest but most uncomfortable thing. Have you ever tried to hire someone and you ask them how much money, like, what do you want for your salary, and they give you a range? Every single time they say like, oh, I want somewhere between like $120,000 and $150,000. What do you respond to that? What's your initial reaction?

Usually initial reaction in my head is like, all right, well, we're going to hit $120,000 exactly.

So Aaron always looks at the person and goes, all right, so how much do you need to live and how much do you actually want to make?

Yeah, because they're just lying, right? They went on Glassdoor, they're looking at their previous job. They had a drink with their buddy who they got jealous of, which is probably the reason they're even looking for another job. It's all, it's all feelings. It's all feeling. So it's like, okay, let's, let's be straight. What do you want to make? What do you need to live? I want to know what kind of life— I want to know what kind of person you are. Some people don't like that. They think it's an invasive HR question. I don't really give a shit. My point is, is what is it? He goes, you know what, I need $60K to live and I want to make $150K. Okay, cool. So you want to be rich? Yes. Awesome. Let's get you to $150K. No problem. We'll get you there. Let's see what kind of work you can do, though, because someone who's walking around with an extra $70K in their jeans at the end of the year must be doing good work. Right, so that's just my mentality. We figured it out within a week. You know what sucks? You know what I hate about entrepreneurs? When they have a bad apple and they let them sit.

Oh, pussies.

Alex Hormozy said that best. It was like, if he said a billionaire mentor of his said to him, if you hire someone and in the first week they're not an A player, they're not going to grow into being an A player.

You'll notice them not scale. People don't scale. They're just not there in the journey. You haven't— product market fit, person company fit just didn't go. Move on. This is your business. You're the founder. You have the equity.

Yeah.

This is your livelihood. In 10 years from now, the shit you do today is literally going to be your life. How old are you?

28.

Perfect. When you're 38, probably going to be married, probably going to have some kids. You're going to have way less time. You're not going to be able to do this many pods. Not going to be in New York City. These days in your life are literally like ticking away. I'd bet life savings you have sub-500 days left in this. That's just reality. Shit changes. Shit moves fast. Why would you have anyone on your team that's not going to double down on the story that ends you at 38 with— I'm making this up. I don't know your goals. A house with kids in an office in a company and less stress, which is most people where they want to end up. Why would any— why? 'Cause it's 5 more days. Now you have 495 days. Time is undefeated. You can't beat it. But people let shit linger on in their business 'cause they don't wanna deal with it. They're worried about a lawsuit. They're worried about all these things. And you know what that leaves room for? It leaves room for guys like me who don't give a shit, who's been sued God knows how many times. It was $30K, $40K, move on. And I will come in and eat I would eat it. That's just because I don't care. It's just every founder has this issue. Every entrepreneur has this issue, which is why we need to be surrounded by other founders. And we need community to like, you know, I have like a, you know, I'm in this community. We have all these members. You know how many times people message like, hey, like, I don't know how to fire this person. They've been with me for 2 years. They were here a long time. And like sometimes as simple as like, do it now. Trust me, you won't regret it. And sometimes that's all you need. You know what, fuck it, I'll do it. It's a tough game, but you're like, you have a lot of competition.

Not really, surprisingly.

That's probably the bad thing. I had 77,000 active competitors just on Amazon alone, not including other weighted blankets, just, just on Amazon alone, active inventory in the US.

Some of the shit Aaron would say, he was like, I'll go to his fucking house, like about competitors. Like, no, nothing can get in the way.

I wouldn't reverse engineer them. I would find out where they live. I would figure out what the rent was in that building. I'd figure out I'd go to the gym with him, see what time he liked to work out.

I'd figure it out.

I'd be like, okay, this guy needs 4 or 5 Gs a month just to live, which means based on where his revenue's at, I'd call their fulfillment center of where they're at. I'd say, hey, I want to be a client and bring you 10,000 orders a month. I'd make that up. Oh, sorry, we have a competitor. Well, what are they selling? They would tell me how much they're selling. Perfect. I would reverse engineer and say, okay, he can't drop his CPAs, his cost to acquire a customer or whatever, can't go above $120. Perfect. I can, because I'll DJ on the weekends. I don't live in a $4,000 a month place and I can go to $180. I'll live on less so I can earn the number one spot, take more market share. And in 2 years from now, he'll have to drop his price, which eventually happened. Then I'll take over the market.

I did it.

I was willing to do whatever it takes, you know? And I don't know if that's the right way, but at 22 years old where I had to DJ the weekends, open the juice shop in the morning, it was the only way. And we became the number one selling weighted blanket in the country.

How?

Everyone else was selling weighted blankets at Target, on Amazon for $48.99, not even $49.99, $48. Because that's where— that's how bad it got. We were selling them for $3.49. How do you do that?

Ben, I can see why his conversation with you was incredibly helpful and also uncomfortable.

Yeah. I mean, look, we're, we're about, what, like 50 episodes into this and we've seen entrepreneurs across the spectrum. I mean, it's, it's when you, when it's different, it's different.

Griff, pause your— Griff, what time is it? I gotta jump real quick. I'll be back for ending and pictures.

Yeah, I mean, we can— I want to talk about one more thing.

That was fucking—

No, you can— we can keep it rolling.

It's good.

Um, it was kind of directed at you too. No, the, the only, the only other—

With love though, with love.

The only other thing that I wanted to talk about uh, before we wrap is therapy. Because it's something, it's something that I've talked about a lot on the podcast and it's very important to me. And again, there's, there's levels to this based on what you are able to do, but I think you spend— from what we've discussed, you've probably spent more money on therapy than some people make, like, in their annual income.

For sure.

Fuck yeah, for sure. Spent a lot of money on therapy. Um, it's a no-brainer. It's like going to the gym. It's, it's, uh, it's hard. You gotta find the right therapist. That's very important. I've went through 6, 7 different therapists till you find the right one. And you also got to know when to leave. It doesn't mean leave therapy. There's certain time where, you know, you can look look your therapist in the eyes and be like, you know, I think our job is done here. It's kind of like business consultants, you know. I consult some people and I've hired people to consult me, and you do like, you know, sometimes you work together for a year, sometimes 3 months. There's a certain point you're like, you know what, this was great, I really appreciate it, like, on to the next consultant, you know. And but I, I don't— I think that if you are, uh, a founder that's not in therapy or some form of therapy, not, not coming on retreats to challenge the way you think, to look yourself in the mirror, to have somebody reflect and really get to know you in a safe space, um, to pour, to really take a second. You know, the benefit of therapy for me is I get to stop and check in, and I think the check-in is, is so important. And it's— therapy is definitely a luxury, you know. I think if you have the ability to be in therapy You should be. Not everyone could. It's expensive.

I feel like you've done like multiple different types. Like, you've also done couples therapy, couples, business.

I've done business, uh, I've done just personal. I've done inner child modalities. I've done holistic modalities. I've done— fuck, I don't know what they call— I've done the shroom trips. Um, I've done a lot of it for sure. And then you come out with, you know, different perspectives every single time. But I think the most important thing that I've come out with from all of it is you learn the way you love. It's a very important thing in all aspects. You learn the way you love your friends. You learn the way you love, if you have a partner, you learn the way you love your partner, your spouse, your wife, your girlfriend. You learn the way you love your customers. You learn the way you love your employees. You have to learn the way you love. It's really, really important because also the way you receive love is really, really important. And sometimes, you know, for me, my biggest thing was, if I'm being totally transparent, because I grew up in a house with 5 boys, there's a lot going on at all times. If my needs weren't met, what I would do, like my natural tendencies, is to just detach. I'll just, I'll cut the cord. See ya. Which is one of the reasons growing up back home, I really only have like 2 friends. Great friends, best friends, but I really only have 2.

I think I met one of them.

I think you met one of them. We've been friends since we were 5. Because typically what happens is I'll just leave. I'll just be like, you know what? It's not for me. But I didn't know why it wasn't for me. And typically it's like one small stupid thing, you know? Like I would call someone, they wouldn't answer and be like, done, see ya, onto the next. And like that guy might've been in a meeting or busy or whatever. I just wouldn't check in with myself and be like, why is that such a big deal to me? You know? Now I know both sides. I know the way I like to receive love, so I set people up. I set people up to give me love all the time because I know the way I want it. Also, I know how I want to give love. I really think that that is the energy. The way we feel about people is literally just our love languages, our relationships that come out. For me, it took a long time to learn that. It took a long, long, long time. Like, I give, you know, how do you give your staff love? Such an important thing. Like, how do they know that you have their back? And, you know, to the point now where I'm, you know, a few months out from just being, you know, fully really out of Hashem, I'm on the board and I help, but not in the office every day, not in the day-to-day. And, you know, I got a text a few times now, but the other day I got a text of someone's like, hey, can you get on a quick call? And I'm like, wow, I haven't spoken to this person since I left. And we talked and it wasn't so much even about business, just like in general. And I'm like, wow, this person's coming to me just to talk about like her life. And I'm like, I must have done something right. I must have done, I must have created, shown her enough love where she can come to me and say, even if I don't see you every day, you're still the person I'm gonna come to for this. and that was meaningful for me and I enjoy that. So that's like my, one of my love languages is having people like depend on me and I enjoy that. So I think it's a no-brainer. I think ever, and especially if you have co-founders, like couples therapy for co-founders, what a gift. What a gift.

We just started it with, uh, like an executive coach.

What an amazing gift. And after 2 sessions, you'll know if this is your executive coach for the rest of the year or not. 2 sessions.

We have our first— she did one-on-ones with each of us to like understand us each on a personal level.

Yeah.

And on Thursday we have our first working session like together.

Unbelievable. It's such a luxury to have someone work with you guys to work through some of the bullshit. Uh, and a lot of it is just bullshit. A lot of it is just such bullshit that has no connection to the end of your story, has zero connection. It's just fluff.

100%.

But that fluff it's weighing on you guys and it needs to just get put on the table. And listen, I do it all the time, you know, with, with even within the Founders Club, the amount of times that like you have to have hard conversations, but every time you leave that hard conversation, you get 1 inch closer. It's like, okay, we can build on this 1 inch closer, 1 inch closer. And it's just such a hack. I wish I did it with our Juice business because it's also like a family business with my brothers and my mom. You know, and, and, uh, if we would have had that set up— and we didn't know any better and we couldn't afford it certainly at the beginning— but the business would probably be at like 500, 600 locations now instead of 10. It would. So many things were just swept under the rug because your family and whatever, uh, not terrible things, but they add up when you keep sweeping under the rug. Just such a hack. And there's cheap versions. You go on like BetterHelp, all these things for $50, $40, like What an excuse. People spend hundreds of dollars a month on drinks at the bar and you won't spend $200 on getting someone to just work with you a little bit. It's the stupidest thing to me.

Yeah.

I'm going to leave you with one last thing because this is awesome and I know we're over time at this point. But I want you to double-click into the biggest turning pro moment in your life where you feel like everything changed.

Biggest turning pro moment in my life where, uh, everything changed. Um, in— so basically in 2018 for Hush, the first like 6 months of the business was flying. $30K, $60K, $90K, $100K. Every month is bigger than the next. Come like July, August, we went from, I think it was like $90K or $100K at the peak to maybe $1K or $2K months, literally selling zero or like one blanket a day. And my co-founder called me and he's like, listen, Aaron, like we have 400 or 500 blankets in inventory. It's clearly we have a seasonal business. Let's wrap it up. You know, like Let's go on Amazon, fire sale these things for half the price. I'll take my portion, you take your portion. You go focus on the juice. He had a software company, very successful one that he sold as well. I'll focus on that and we'll move on. And I remember saying, okay, but we have 2,000 customers. Like, what the hell? I'm like, man, what? Like Christmas is gonna be busy. He's like, nah, seasonal business. I don't wanna do it. So you know what? I'm gonna call them all. Let's call the 2,000 people. Whoever answers, let's ask them what's going on? Why did you buy? Why are you not buying now? What's the situation? I think we did about like 400 or 500 calls each and that answered. We called 2,000 people, but 400 or 500 people answered. And every single person said the same thing. We're like, yo, what's going on? What's with the product? Why won't you buy? They said, listen, we love it. It was amazing, but we're sweating in less nasty places. We never sweat like this before. This thing's too hot. It's in the closet. We'll bring it back out in the winter. It was like a light bulb moment for us. We were like, if we can make one that keeps you cold, would you sleep with it tomorrow? They're like, absolutely. We love the blanket. We hate the heat. And then we went on every single one of our competitors, clicked on their 1-star reviews, and noticed that all the 1-star reviews are like, it's too hot, it's too hot, it's too hot. Everyone's making the same thing. So we set forward to create a cooling weighted blanket, and it took months and months and months. And when we finally found someone who can develop the fabric for us, they wanted like a $250,000 like MOQ. Couldn't afford that. So we took the Kickstarter, we took all the money in our bank accounts. And if you're familiar with Kickstarter, you essentially launch, people pledge the money, they pledge it, which means you don't get it. So you have to fund these ads and not get money. So you're negative cash flow cycle. So I was DJing like 4 days a week, taking the cash, putting it in my bank, frontloading credit cards just so we can pay for the ads for this Kickstarter and the Kickstarter. You know, every agency we interviewed, every, you know, person that had a successful one was like, you'd be lucky if you do $100K because weighted blankets have been done before and blah, blah, blah. And we did $1.5 million in 30 days. It was the most successful textile campaign in Canadian history, top 10 Canadian campaign of all time. We ended up selling $250,000 just in sheets after the campaign to the same cohort, 17 countries, 1,400 backers. And then from that moment it was like, you know, that took us from a $700,000 business to a $10 million business. We were on Dragon's Den. We had best pitch of all time. We launched the sheets, we launched the pillow. It put us on the map. And eventually, you know, we never really looked back. But it was in that moment where we were just about to close the business did it create a turning point for us, a miracle, uh, for us to pivot. And that pivot is, you know, why 90% of weighted blankets went kaput the next year and we didn't. L'chaim.

You want to look at the camera on the left, let everyone know where they can find you, what you're working on? This one over here.

This one. Uh, if you're looking to follow along, I post a lot on LinkedIn, so just Aaron Spivak on LinkedIn with a little blue circle. I've started posting a lot more on Instagram, so just Aaron.Spievak, S-P-I-E-V-A-K. And I have a newsletter which is in my bio, which I send out once a week, and it's just called In Bed with Aaron Spievak, obviously because I started and sold a sleep company. But I talk about all things entrepreneurship, what I'm up to, things I'm seeing, you know, whether it's through consulting, whether it's through business, and tell some amazing stories.

That's it. Thanks for coming on.