Inside My Week Running the World’s #1 Ecom Agency (NYC)

I got something cool to show you, but I want to show it to you outside.

Want to go pop outside for a little, little fresh air? You've been cooped up here all day.

Let's do it. Good job, dude. It's crazy to think sometimes how you can create the life that you want in terms of what you wake up and do every day. My literal job today is to wake up and box, and then I have to go film a video with a customer in Jersey, and then go see another customer, and then come home and go to another boxing class to film more content. There's so many people who watch content, who enjoy it, sitting in a cubicle just thinking about what that life could be. And not everyone— I know there's so many people who are scared to make the jump to do something on their own, but it's when you're willing to do vulnerable things, it just makes life so much easier because most people aren't willing to do it. The cardio is the worst fucking part of this training. It's like the least fun, the least sexy, but the most important. It's like getting on a bike till you feel like you're gonna puke at the end to imitate like the interval training of a boxing round. You're not going hard the whole time, you're like throwing a combo, catching your breath, back and forth for the entire time. So going on a bike is the best way to replicate it and it fucking sucks. Good, it only took 20 minutes today. This is Adam. Have you met Adam? Of course.

All right, so we're gonna go pop into Ben's room real quick. He hates when I bother him during meetings, so naturally we're gonna go bother him during a meeting. And let's take him out, got a little surprise for him. Henny boy, what's up my guy?

What's up dog?

How we doing? How we doing?

I got something cool to show you, but I want to show it to you outside. I want to go pop outside for a little fresh air.

We've been cooped up here all day.

Let's do it.

All right, so for context, I've been working on a new startup in the hearing protection space that's developing a bunch of patents from the world's best audiologist. Ben, as a homie, ended up writing a check into the business, uh, and proud investor.

Tom's been a homie for about a decade, launched a new brand. I invested in the brand. It took me 4 years to close him to work with us at Platter.

Hey, it's the long game.

Tom now lives in Amsterdam, has been traveling the world, just got back from Burning Man, as you can tell, and he has the latest products that they've developed with Unplugged that I have yet to see. So we are going to use this time to catch up on life, and I want to see the new product.

Yeah, after 2 years of development and a quarter million dollars of money in, we finally have something that is production grade, and Ben's gonna see it for the first time. So one of the things that's epic about New York is the serendipity. This is a city of magnetic connections. Builders come here because there's so many random connections where one night, the right dinner at the right place can completely change the trajectory of your business. And at the level of randomness that is both confusing and exciting at the same time, the ability to you literally catalyze change instantly like that. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. I mean, it's the reason that Ben's still here. You know more than most because your life is casually ridiculous. My life is casually ridiculous and I'm just like, how the hell did I get here?

Casually ridiculous. And every time I turn on the camera, my first thought is like, why didn't I do that 5 years ago?

Ben, if you had to give yourself advice 5 years ago on the biggest challenge of becoming a founder, what would you say to yourself?

I actually posted about this somewhere on the internet. At least something I wish someone would have told me is not to take everything you hear. My biggest mistake is when I talk to someone who has a bigger title than you, has done more things on paper than you, you just assume whatever they tell you is the truth and you can't push it or disagree with it. But when you realize that all cool new innovative startups are just pushing the boundaries and reimagining the way things are done, that's when the world opens up in an entirely different way. Unplugs.

So with this, you have the ability to actually hear me because the button popped out. The little microfine holes that have been drilled onto the side that allow sound come through. So what I'm going to quickly do right now, I put a little bit of background noise in. It's going to be kind of loud. And so, so far we're having a conversation at normal volume. Now I want you to reach up and firmly press the button on both sides.

Change.

And so immediately the whole world, like a veil over your head, your feed just bashes down 20 decibels. Pop it open and my voice will change quite literally in volume as you're allowing my voice in or you're basically trying to block sound. Now what's really cool about this is that human beings have eyelids. We're able to blink our eyes if it's too bright, but our ears are always open. What I want you to do is I want you to close this side and open this side. And what happens is, like I'm playing a vocal track that you're isolating, he can actually hear my voice because he's only letting in this side and he's not letting in the conversation over there, the speaker over there. The crazy part about Unplugged is you give people the ability to control their environment spatially. Let's sound.

Dude, it's 11:21 PM. What are you still doing on your computer? Entrepreneurship is cool and fun because you get to meet cool people and post cool content, and there's a lot of vanity metrics and the feedback loops. But this is the reality of 99% of what it is, just like sitting behind a computer screen almost 12 o'clock trying to solve a problem. And I want to go to sleep, but I know I'm not going to sleep if I don't finish it, so I'm going to sit here and figure it out. But it's just a good reminder that what you see on the internet is what people allow you to see. It's not necessarily the reality of every day. We are fucking cruising right now with Platter. We've closed 4 deals in the last 48 hours, 6 figures worth of contracts. There's a chance that we more than double the business between now and the end of Q1. I think we have some good momentum right now. I think it's just compound interest after doing good work for an extended period of time, because now we're getting big intros from existing customers. When you get an intro to a big brand from an existing customer, it's just a layup to like not screw it up if they're high intent for whatever the services that you offer. And we also just got a verbal from one of the holding cos that we work with that they want to give us a third brand in their portfolio. So that's like the land and expand model, which again is just doing good work for an extended period of time. And I think the other thing about our business is that because we have long sales cycles, because a lot of trust is required to close these deals, there's sometimes that a lot of deals just drop at the same time and it's a coincidence. One of my co-founders, Mike, is like pretty humble, doesn't really like show much emotion in the realm of sales because he just does it all day. But he sent me a message 3 hours ago and goes, that was a fucking Fucking work day, fire me up. It's like when you get that message from the guy closing deals and you know that you guys are ripping right now. Where's Adam? Say hi to Adam. That's dedication right there. Videographer slept on the couch last night because we got a busy day today. He's up till 2 o'clock in the morning editing. Let's go! Today is an absolute chaos of a day. I'm excited to bring you guys along. We are on the way right now to go box for an hour and then we are going to play an hour of paddle with some founders who are in town from London for a few days. And then I have a meeting with my homie Matt, who's a pro chess boxer, a couple other meetings. It's going to be an awesome day. Let's get it. City biking through New York City and filming yourself doing it so you can actually get a look at what the reality is. It's actually quiet right now on the street. Surprising. I'm thinking about it right now, my ride over the gym. Every video that you make should have like a message. I'm thinking to myself like, what is the main through line for the vlog that we're filming today? And honestly, I think one of the things that I'm most excited about from this video is, I think about it, is shedding light into what it could look like for you to basically just combine your passion with your work, to just see that it's possible. Because I hate when people watch others and wish, like, tell them like, oh, I wish I could do that, or, oh, that looks so cool. Like, just You can do it. Just takes a little bit of courage. The fact that my day is like, okay, go to the boxing gym, go play paddle with some partners, sauna, cold plunge, meet with customers, and then I have dinner with my sister. That is my actual workday. Living your best life. It's important. I just finished an amazing hour session with Brian, one of my trainers. Kind of beat me up a little bit, but I realized sparring with pros is just so different because it forces you to be so much more honest about the shots you're taking because you will get hit. If you try to get greedy. And now we're getting an Uber right now to head to play paddle with some guys. Let's fucking go. Time to bully some people in paddle.

10:05.

Fucking A.

Winners!

Winners! Can't blow a 3-0 lead.

That's tough.

Alright, good game. Good game. It's probably enough physical activity for one day. Hour of boxing, 30 minutes of paddle, maybe a sauna plunge later.

I can't remember any time we've had in London, like, interest from people like that. People are just more mission-focused here and like double down on what they need to do.

I think they need to be sharp here because the competition's so big. I think there's serendipity because the proximity here is very valuable. Yeah, there's such a high density of high-quality people in such a small neighborhood that, like you said, it's literally a DM, it's one text, it's one— you could be with someone in 5 minutes. Yeah, like, if it's worth it.

Yeah, you've got one of your guys, Rising Ballers, he's out here for 3 months, isn't he? The amount of people and connections he's going to meet in 3 months if he does it right is— it takes you years back to build it. We had two 16-year-olds we hired, spoke to their parents. They lived in like Birmingham, like an hour, hour and a half away from Manchester. Parents let them move into Manchester on their own, two of them. Imagine two 16-year-olds together living in another city and a party city. They were just unbelievable. So talented, got Instagram better than anyone and helped us grow our Lab Bible Instagram account. 3 years later, they turned around to us and said, like, we want to build this Instagram account. And we were like, we'll back you, we'll help mentor you, utilizing our office and stuff. Now they've got on the 24th It's the founders of puberty. They've got over 150 million followers now. We got a team of 30 people.

Puberty? Yeah.

Pleasure to meet you. Great to get to know you better as well.

Keep me in the account. I'll give you a free play.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, very good meeting. Yeah, pleasure to meet you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you.

Thank you, appreciate it.

That paddle game would have never happened if I didn't start posting content on the internet because one of the guys that we just played with reached out out to me on Instagram because he resonated with my story. This is a reminder for you to, number one, start posting content and stop caring about the vanity metrics of how many people are watching it or liking it. And number two, if you come to New York City, send me a message so we can do some cool shit together. So many friends today. I actually think you're going to be interested to hear about it. He's basically spearheading chess boxing for this country. It's like bringing awareness to the sport on like what it even is. They're competing in the world championships in Serbia. I had no idea what his actual involvement is, but he was like the first American to compete in the world championship. Championships for chess boxing and is now in charge of building the sport in the US. And it's still very small, but I think this is a really cool moment for him to share like what he's building because it's gonna blow up one day. And so to look back on this conversation, we fought when Matt's like, see, I told you so, half the United States actually finds this sport interesting.

The alternate rounds between the board game chess, combat sport boxing, until checkmate or knockout, whatever comes first. You do 3 minutes dedicated of speed chess, so you might use 2 minutes, I might use 1 minute. As soon as that last second Tix, you go to your corner, you strap on your gloves, you psych yourself up, and then you have 3 minutes of boxing. So you and me are punching each other, we're getting fatigued, there's adrenaline in our system, our heart rate goes up. I might catch you in the head, you might catch me in the head, maybe we're a little dizzy. But after 3 minutes, if none of us are knocked out, we go back to our corners, you take off the gloves, and you sit back down on the board. You pick up the game where you left off. Maybe you got checkmated that round, maybe you don't. If you don't, you go back to boxing, back to chess, checkmate or knockout, whatever comes first.

I think the main thing from this video is seeing me actually living out what I'm preaching to you guys. Jacob, who's a brand founder that we're going to get coffee with right now, I met because he got invited to the poker event that we hosted a few weeks ago. You're just seeing that not only am I living it, but it's coming from what I'm preaching, which is posting content, curating groups, and like adding value to people and getting new introductions to continue to just expand the circle of opportunities. Yo, what's up, bro? How you doing? How are you? Good, I'm good. I thought you were not one, saw his face. You know Adam, right? Yeah, yeah, what's up?

Good to see you again, bro. How you doing?

Good. Let's go. Where's your co-founder? Is he here? He's coming in a minute, yeah. Do you want to grab a coffee? We can also go upstairs, whatever you want. No, it doesn't move far enough. That was not a good try, dude. It literally is constrained by the sides. You can't possibly move far enough. Scam. This is dangerous. Yeah, I'm probably gonna walk in and open one immediately. Yeah, that looks great. Good texture. Looks like Dave Portnoy at the beach earlier looking for snacks. I literally just had a 30-minute call pitching a company about potentially working with Platter, and the guy from their side that we initially scheduled the call with, like, was running behind, pitched 2 people on his team, and then he sent us an email 1 minute after the 30-minute pitch. He was like, hey guys, I'm free now if you want to jump back on. So I'm now jumping back on the phone to pitch another guy the same spiel that I just spent 30 minutes telling the rest of his team. He will tell in the next couple of minutes, but Ben also generated a quarter million dollar Angel investor check. Um, but yeah, again, Ben, imagine being cornered in my kitchen to film a case study for my roommate because his business actually helped me. Hi, let's fucking do it. Come on. Can you give a quick overview of your personal brand and why do you think it's helped you as a founder? Why do I think my personal brand helps me as a founder? I think my personal brand has basically opened most doors that I've needed to successfully build my business. When you think about like what are the aspects of business building that are important. It's hiring the best people. If you are a business that needs to fundraise, it's successfully raising money, making sure people know who you are. So that's client acquisition. When I think about it, it's like we need to get customers that are willing to pay us money. We need to get people to service the business that these customers are paying us for, and we potentially need investors to get us out of the mud, per se, at the beginning phases of building the business. And I feel like I've used my personal brand to do all three of those. It's our largest pipeline for sales. I've hired my best talent because of it. I have even raised money because of it. So to be honest with you, I think maybe I have a unique personality and skill set, but I really don't actually know how I would effectively build a business right now without a personal brand. Would you agree that LinkedIn changed the trajectory of your business? Yeah. I mean, when I refer to my personal brand, a lot of it really is referring to the content that I put on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is our number one lead source for the business. When I talk about hiring people via content and personal brand, it's actually through LinkedIn. So the answer is 100% yes. It's dinner time. Like, comment, subscribe, repost, share with all of your friends. Wait, okay, I understand. My boyfriend's gonna show you his vlog and you better be nice.