Make More Marbles PODCAST Mastermind with guest Calvin Correli - MUSIC & CODING Helped My Business!

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To make more marvels. My name is Brad Hart and today I have a very special guest. This is a gentleman who is a serial entrepreneur. That's right. He is an entrepreneur of serial. Count Chocula. Move over. No, I'm just kidding. Calvin Corelli. He is the founder of Simplero. He's a friend we met at flight club Mastermind. I'm really grateful to have him on because he has been through it, ladies and gentlemen. He's also a guitar player and he made the United States explode on a map behind him. So that's pretty fun. We'll talk about that too. What's up, Calvin?

Too? What's up, Brad? It's good to see you man.

Absolutely. And great to see that you have the right microphone for the job. It's always disheartening when people show up with earbuds in.

Yeah, I know. I was, I just realized I was using my MacBook, speakers, microphones. I was like, wait, gotta switch that around here.

Switch that up. So give us the story so far, man. How'd you get into entrepreneurship? What has been your journey so far?

I got into entrepreneurship from a very young age. My both of my parents were entrepreneurs. In fact they got into programming in the late 60s. Yeah. And my mom started a software company in 1980. My dad did shop fitting for gas stations. So next to a gas station there used to be a store and in the store they would need shelves and things like that. He made that for gas stations all over the world. I actually built an enterprise resource planning software for my dad for his company so he could plan out this whole production and all that stuff. So I got into that software world very, very early on.

So what were these original languages. Sorry, what were these original languages that they were coding in back in the 60s and 80s? That's really interesting to me.

Yeah. So my parents would do. I think it was a cobol. And then they were using punch cards way back in the day actually, you know. Yeah. Feed the machine this like cardboard card with holes in it and that's how you program it. And then they would have like computer time in the middle of the night and sleeping. Sleeping bag sometime for like a 30 minute computer slot at 3:30 or something.

This is back when a computer took up an entire warehouse.

Exactly, yeah. And there are literally five of them in the entire country. I'm from Denmark and there's just five in the whole country right now. My, I have a restaurant watch that's, you know, it's so much more powerful than any of those Computers ever.

Not just that, but like, way more powerful than the computers they put people on the moon with, if you believe in that story.

Right.

Everything for interpretation at this point.

Yeah.

So you grew up in Denmark, parents are obviously wicked smart, got you in at an early age. Your background has always been coding and programming or did you ever stray from that?

That and music. Right. So my, My first career chose was actually I wanted to be a jazz pianist.

Oh.

And was pretty serious about that for a while. Yeah.

Right on. And then what did you find was the biggest lesson that maybe informed your entrepreneurial journey from being a musician on the side?

Well, it was funny because, like, when I, when I, when I decided to drop the music and just focus on. On software, on entrepreneurship, people were like, whoa, like, it's so sad to see. And like, why have you dropped the creativity? I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? Like, writing software is super creative, right. In many ways more so than. Than music. And, and being an entrepreneur, as you know, is like super creative. Right. Like, you're always inventing. You're creating reality in front of you every single day.

Well, and now with AI, coding and music are both up for interpretation. You know, like, you can tell, you can tell an AI to code a computer program, it'll spit out a Python script, you explode it into whatever format you're trying to do. Same thing with music now. You can basically get your own beat going and put down words over it and build an entire track just based on AI manipulation. It's pretty wild stuff.

Yeah, well, and then. Yeah, well, and then it comes back to taste and judgment and meaning and what you want it to be about. Right. And it's the same with software, where having good taste in code, in both in UI and UX and usability and how does it work with. And in your architecture and in how you write it and so on. Like, that's, that's a large part of the work.

So let's do the highlight and low light reel, I think is really helpful for people. So given the highlights, what are some of the accomplishments and milestones of your career and what are some of the most challenging struggles that you've been through and what'd you learn from those?

Oh, boy. So highlights would be, I think, a key highlight, honestly. I had a conversation. I have a friend that you may know of. His name is Gay Hendricks, author of the Big Leap and a bunch of other books. I had a conversation with him some years ago and he was like, the greatest accomplishment that you can make is to break out of the dysfunction of the family that you grew up in. So I would say that would be one of my biggest accomplishments. It's something that I've invested a lot in, is something that is really meaningful to me. Grew up with a lot of dysfunction. I also grew up with a lot of function. I'm super grateful for my parents. I love them. But there were a lot of. There were just a lot of dysfunctional things that I've had to deal with. And I, in particular, I think I also came into this world with a bunch of shit. So I had a lot to deal with, and I've taken that on.

Yeah. So if we had to kind of break that down a little bit. So what are some of the things that your family instilled in you that, for better or for worse, you had to work through as an adult that you have overcome?

A huge part of it was not being in touch with our feelings and our bodies, but especially feelings. It was like people obviously had feelings because we're humans. We do, but nobody would ever talk about their feelings. Nobody knew what to do with other people's feelings. It was like, try to hide your feelings and try to come up with something that you can say that gets your needs met, but doesn't reveal anything of what you're actually feeling. Were very odd. And so me being this nerd and then being bullied in school and like, all of that stuff, and I. I just completely shut down for anything from my neck down and didn't feel anything. And it wasn't till I was in my mid-30s that I started to. To open up. And I got therapy, I got coaching. I found some body therapy, which is incredible. And I. I started to open up into my emotional life. And there was a lot of. There's a lot to untangle there.

Drugs? No. Drugs, Psychedelics, Anything like that?

No. Never done that. No. I'm not a big drug person.

That's why I ask is because there's a lot of paths. Right. And for better, for worse, there's a lot of great research being done. I mean, basically, psychedelics were really popular until the 50s and 60s and then just kibosh completely. Schedule one, all of them without, you know, any nuance. And now they're kind of coming back with various organizations. I've delved into certain ones that have been very effective for me. And it's kind of a blunt instrument, for sure, but so are a lot of pharmaceutical drugs.

Right.

And the side effects of those and the track record of those is Dubious at best.

So a hundred percent. I'm not. I'm. I'm. I'm not like the whole pharmaceutical industry. I have lots of problems with. Not. Not a fan. I've been very interested in psychedelics, but I've never done any. And. And the more kind of clear. The more work that I did on myself, the less interesting it seems. I found this Danish body therapist system. It's called Body sds, which is my kind of. Yeah, SDS as in self development system. That's been my. My go to psychedelic, if you will. Like, that's done for me. What I hear from others that psychedelics do for them, I love it.

Yeah. And like breath work is really great. You know, you can get high in your own supply. DMT is a naturally occurring molecule.

A hundred percent.

Yeah, I like it.

So true.

Um, okay, so having been bullied myself and I can really relate to what you talked about, like having to shut down your feelings. Even now when I get into a conflict that might not even be a big deal, but like, if somebody cuts me off in traffic or if I get an argument with somebody, I go somewhere else. Like, the feelings shut down and I just react and then later I feel all the feelings. Is that kind of a similar thing that you did? Yeah. So what were the.

For me, that later was like, never.

Yeah. Like I would need like a couple days sometimes to process what actually had happened and decide how I felt about it and what to do about it next.

Yeah, no, for me it was repress. Repress and then like just vomit out if anything, but with no awareness around it.

Interesting. And now with the SDS model, is it designed to get you in tune with your emotions in real time and be able to process?

What it does is it works through all of the tension that you have in your body, especially around your joints, and especially also in the belly area. And then as you get into that, you can either kind of resist and tense up and try to fight it and just like, because it's painful, or you can release, relax, and let go and sink into it and really feel what those feelings are that comes up. And so that's really the journey. The first time I tried it was in 2007. And. And he worked on my front side. And then he kind of let me. Let me lie there on the table for 20 minutes while he left the room. And in that 20 minutes, I was just crying and crying and crying. And then there'd be laughter and then I'd laugh and then I'd cry again and Laugh again. And. And it was just no story, no context. No. It was just like old feelings leaving the body. The way I think of it is that feelings buried alive never die. They still live inside of us, and they're stuck in our tissue and become muscle tension and eventually will become a disease. And when we get triggered, it's hitting those little reservoirs, those little pockets of emotion, and so we can work through it in those situations. But the body therapy system is so effective because it. You don't need to be aware of it. It doesn't involve our left brain. Right. We don't have to, like, we argue. We can't argue with what's happening in our body. And so it kind of forces us to get really. It can get really, really to some of that really deep precognitive stuff. I've done work on my. Released a bunch of feelings around my birth trauma. I was born strangled in my umbilical cord. Um, and then in. Put an incubator for 48 hours, which, you know, caused a bunch of things. Um, and those. Those exact types of things that you can work through that way.

Hmm. Okay, so what's the. What's the process? If we had to go through a session right now or, like, how many sessions? Like, how. What to get a result to try to get out, like, what would you be committing to, I guess is a better way to put it.

I would say. So a session is typically an hour. Start you on a massage table. They start by opening your. Your neck and your lymphatic system, which is. It's kind of funny that all massage therapists don't do that. Like, it's. You know, you're releasing all these toxins. If your lymphatic system is not open, then, you know, they're not really able to leave your body. So it's kind of a smart thing to do. And then they just work through your organs, your limbs, a lot of them in the. In the stomach, et cetera. So there's kind of a. And then they flip you over to. At the end and work on your back a little bit. Um, so it's kind of opposite to most massage therapy in that way.

So there's no talking. It's all body work.

All body work, yeah.

That's great. Yeah. Where can I sign up? They have them in the States as well.

They. Not yet. I w. It's part of my, you know, mission is to bring that to.

The US I just want to cry for 20 minutes on a table. I'm about that. I'll cry randomly, like a movie or a commercial or just a song or whatever. And my girlfriend's always like, oh, my God, are you crying? And then it's like off immediately. It's the same thing as if, like, she's like, don't sneeze. Of course you're not going to sneeze. Right. And I kind of get frustrated because, like, I need to release sometimes and it's not always linear. Right. Sometimes things trigger me in different ways. But if I had a place where I could go where it was just me and the table and the bodywork, I think that would be great.

So it's so good.

Just in Denmark so far.

All right, fair enough. Just in Denmark.

I'll keep it on my list.

Thank you. I'm going to bring them over from, from, from time to time and we're going to bring some of those guys over. I'll let you know. And we can, we can arrange like a, like, come to come over and, and get some sessions for all my friends.

Yeah. What's the biggest airport in Denmark? Like, what's the easiest one to get into?

Copenhagen.

Yeah, I thought so. Okay, cool.

Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, so far I can't bring them over to the States right now because they know enough about their health and their bodies to not have taken certain medications and so they can't enter the country. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, that'll, that'll calm down eventually too, as more data comes out. That stuff is nuts, but. Okay, so back to the entrepreneurial journey. So the name of your company is Simplero.

Yes.

It is a software as a service. It is designed to replace, or as.

We, as we like to think of it, a love as a service.

I like it. Love as a service. It helps replace a lot of the CRM, LMS type systems, funnel builders, et cetera. And you're one of the guys who's like, really built all the bells and whistles and functionality to compete with, like, go high level infusionsoft, clickfunnels, et cetera. Would that be fair?

Yeah.

So give us a high level of simpl, the benefits, how it's structured, all that.

Yeah, Benefits really is, is how much simpler we make it in part just by having everything in one platform, in part by how great our support is and how good we take care of our customers. And of course, just how simple the product is and how easy it is to use. And it's really remarkable when you have everything in one platform. It just becomes so much easier to see what's happening across it. You can basically coordinate between your front end campaign and where people come from and then their actual experience inside your membership site or inside the mobile app, which is. Our app is amazing. And yeah, it does all of those things. CRM payments. So for anyone doing High Ticket, I know you do a lot with Masterminds. Our payments engine is really incredible for anything High Ticket. Our membership site is really great for Masterminds because you got your courses and your content. You have a full CMS in there for all the content pages that you want and you have your community and you have your schedule of events. Right. All Masterminds have some, some events. They have calls, they have meetings, all that stuff and they. Then you have your content library all in one place.

I love it. I love it.

Yeah.

And then do you have your own payment gateway or is it like a plugin with Zoom, Stripe or something like that?

You plug in with over 200 different payment payment gateways and we don't charge a transaction fee and it's all your money.

I love it. That's very cool because a lot of them will take a piece, like I think Kajabi takes a piece and a few others. So that's, that's actually really great that you pass that along. What are your price points like? Out of curiosity?

We start at 70amonth on the monthly on our starter and then we scale up to. Our top plan is way too cheap. It's 249amonth.

Unlimited.

What's that?

That's unlimited.

It's. It scales with your number of contacts. But yeah, in that like normal range that other contact kind of providers will. We have some, some people who are saying you guys should be charging at least 10x more than, or actually 25x more than you're charging.

So that's killer.

Yeah.

And then what's the model then? Is it bootstrapped? You have to have VC funding.

Bootstrapped? Yeah. Self fund it. Fund it. I fund it through coursework. So I started doing this because I was. After I'd started doing this work, this inner work, I came out the other side and was like, what? Asking what is it that I'm here to do? What is my purpose in life? I want to know. I felt like I was always going in all these different directions and I sat down and asked myself and the answer popped out at me, which is I'm here to integrate spirituality and entrepreneurship. And it's been my guiding star for 15 years now. And that was really what led me to then eventually create Simplero because I was like, dude, these things that I've learned about feelings, about thoughts and beliefs, about purpose, about love, about being present, all that stuff, all the other entrepreneurs that I know, they need this stuff. And so I was like, I need to teach this. I discovered online courses and then I was like, great, now I'm doing that. But the software is kind of crap and it's complicated. Right. So let me build something that's simpler.

And that's what I did. And Simplera. Was it called something else before that revelation?

It was actually, yeah. Originally it was called Zen Billing because I. The first piece I built was the billing piece and then I added the, the email component and then I added the membership site. And then I actually got threatened with a lawsuit from, from Zendesk. And then so they didn't like it being named Zen something, so I changed it to Simplero.

That's good. You can't own Zen. That's not a very Zen thing to do is.

I know, right?

Trying to own Zen.

The funny thing too is that I know the founders of Zendesk from. Back from Copenhagen. But yeah, we haven't, we haven't docked.

Since, so that's too bad. I'm sorry to hear that. Well, it sounds like you got a better name and everything and.

Yeah, no, it ended up being great.

Yeah. And that's a dotcom. Simpler.com.

It is, yes. So I wrote a piece of software that did different beginnings and endings and checked whether the dot com was there and mashing things together, checking even numerology, and that's. Then I came up with his name.

That's beautiful. And you've been the main developer the whole time. Do you have a team working on you at this point?

Yeah, we have 35 people on the team, but yeah, originally it was me, and then gradually, over time, it's grown.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

And what's your goal at the company? Is it to keep it forever?

To eventually sell, to keep it forever, build something? Obviously kind of exit in the sense that I'm less involved day to day. Right now I'm hyper involved. I won't be that forever. But it's very rare that I see a company exit and it not being worse for customers and for team members.

Right.

And it just doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't motivate me to. To exit for a bunch of money if it harms, you know, team members that put their blood, sweat and tears into creating this product. Right. If it harms customers. Because I don't know, innovation Stops and price prices get hiked and all these things. So it's like. Yeah, not looking for that.

Yeah, well, the other thing to consider is like you can continue to work in the business or be a part of the business, even if you're not the day to day operator. Right.

Oh, 100.

Yeah, do like an ESOP or something like that. You can end up with a really cool liquidity event, but you're still in the game. You can still continue to do it, but you take some of the pressure off of doing it. So maybe even get more creative going forward and less stressed out. So yeah, that's cool.

I love it. I definitely want to like be involved. Yeah. Enjoy being involved. And I love doing product. I love doing sort of the outward facing stuff, et cetera. So planning, being involved for a long time.

So where does the software industry go in your mind? Like where do you see things happening in the next five, 10 years? Or maybe that's even too far out, the next three years, where, you know, what do you think we'll shift to? What changes you think will be coming? How can we position ourselves to really both as a, you know, as your specific niche, but also as entrepreneurs to take advantage of and, and evolve with the times?

Yeah, I mean, huge thing right now obviously, as you, as you mentioned before, you know, AI ChatGPT, that whole, that whole wave. Right. That's gonna, I don't see it necessarily fundamentally shifting the market, but it's just gonna be table stakes that every platform needs to include that and build that in. You just, you know, plug into an API and then, you know, build that in everywhere that that makes sense. I think that's a big thing. Obviously still like this is not new at all, but the, you know, mobile consumption is still more and more like it was funny like I've always been a, you know, a laptop or PC, like desktop computer originally kind of person. Right. And a friend of mine is, was producing one of the top podcasts in the country for two years, all from his phone. And I was like, wow. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't realize that people did that. But you know, people definitely do. So. Yeah, that way. And then I think like this consolidation to more of the integrated all in one is 1000% something people want. They're tired of jumping between 20 different tools and then they don't talk together and you have to zap things from one place to the other and sometimes they fail and then you don't know who to contact when things break. Whose Customer support. Do you reach out to where is the fault? I think people are really tired of that.

So how has your acquisition strategy changed in the world that, you know, there's a million of these platforms? Obviously there's a huge market saturation. Most companies, it's not a function of, oh, they're getting one for the first time. It's more a function of, oh, now it's the cost of switching. Like, what are some of the strategies you've had to implement that have been effective or mindsets you've had to shift?

Yeah, the reality is that I've never built one. I've never built a customer acquisition strategy for Simplero. It's funny because I got into this because I was doing courses, I was doing that online marketing and I was doing that quite well. But then when it came to Simplero, it was just people came to us. So we've grown through word of mouth.

Now.

We're definitely feeling the increased competition and the increased sort of noise in the market and all that stuff. So we're working on putting together our first actual customer acquisition right now. I can't tell you, like, we haven't cracked it yet, but I can't tell you. I can't tell you what's going to work. I'll let you know once we figure it out. But I think a big part of it is we met at Flight Club. One of the. One of the people who was there, she was. She mentioned. She went on this rant at dinner on the second night of how everybody's in a toxic, codependent relationship with her CRM. And I was like, hey, I need to record this. Can I record it? I was like, it's so good. And I think there's something to that angle because of who we are, because of how much we care, because of how we are able to make things simpler and how responsive we also are to people that just. I think we have a shot at providing people a CRM that doesn't feel.

Like a toxic relationship, an abusive husband or wife or whatever. Yeah, right.

And I think, like speaking to that pain that people are feeling, I think can be. Can be an effective angle. We'll see.

No, I like that. And then, you know, the, the things you get with it are getting less and the costs are going higher.

Right.

And you just. I don't want to blast anybody outta the water here, but I've used everything. I've used infusion, soft, mailchimp, go high level, you know, all the different mail guns, you know, all that crap. Like I've used them all and they all suck for different reasons. Pick the one that sucks the least in the ways you care about the most.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that's, that's interesting. If you had to kind of put a percentage on it as a function of percentage. How much innovation comes from your guys team and insights and creativity and watching the data versus customers, suggesting things or going on rants or customer support type.

Of, oh customers, you know, to a very, very high degree. The challenge is always then taking what the customers want and figuring out how to do it in the product. And it's something that I've always done well, I'm good at that. I've been doing software my entire life. I started coding when I was 5 and always been very interested in user interface, user experience. But then so taking what the customer is asking for and turning it into something that's actually elegantly simple in the product because that's so important that it's simple so that it's easy for people to figure out how to use. But it's also super important in terms of maintainability. Right. Maintaining the software and being able to innovate on the software. So this is what happens with a lot of platforms is that they get really stuck and they can't like they have to do a complete rewrite. And there's some big names out there that have done complete rewrites from scratch and those are very, very expensive and very risky because the, the people who wrote the first version are usually not the same people who wrote the second who writes the second version. And now all these people need to migrate. And so like, you know, things that used to work don't work anymore is like all that stuff is very, very, very scary or very risky to do. Yeah. So we're very, it's very important to, for us to find that right balance and another source.

Sorry, I was going to ask, is it even possible to build a infrastructure that you can continue to build on forever, like a foundation that you can continue to build on forever, or is that really not realistic?

No, it's totally possible. But you have to be very rigorous about making those right architectural decisions. And if you realize that it's wrong, you have to, in a lot of, if you can, you have to find a way to fix it. And that can be costly. But you got to do it. It's painful, it's costly, you got to do it. Payoff, as we call technical debt. Right. All those things that it's work, it's time, but it's what you have to do to keep your ability to innovate. So yeah, you have to do that. Another huge source of inspiration and creativity there is the fact that we use our own software to run our entire business pretty much. Right, right. And I use the product every single day. And so, and, and because I'm that software guy, right. I will be like, oh, like do this, do that, tweak that. Like we, we put in all these little tiny tweaks that nobody thinks about. Like on our mobile app. It will, and this is so basic, but hardly anybody does it. It will remember your preferred playback speed. So when you go from video to video to video through during a course while you're working out in the gym, because who sits in front of a screen going through a course? Nobody does that. Right. Then going from video to video, you don't have to click that little button to change the playback speed every single time, for example.

That's great.

It's little things like that. And then because I also do a business that, that sells workouts on my platform in partnership, by the way, with the body therapy guys, he developed a workout program as well. So when you're, when you're watching a workout on the app, of course you don't want that one to start at 2x speed or 1.5x speed. Right. So there's a setting setting that says this lesson should start at 1.5, 1.0. So things like that, that we, you know, customers usually won't think to come up with those things. But you know, we do. I do because I use it.

You're a user. Yeah. You eat your own dog food. So you're obviously a technical founder. Right. And you have those skills and you've been speaking code as long as you've been speaking English or you know, I.

Mean, it's funny because I actually, yeah, I ended up, I taught myself English through programming. So programming first and then it was like if and else and when and repeat and until and you know, keywords like that. And so that was kind of how I learned English before we had it in school.

I love it. I love it. So I guess the follow up question to that is like what percentage of successful like Fortune 500 style, you know, Google, Facebook, YouTube, et cetera. Like we know some of the stories, but I bet you know more of them. How many of those people are technical co founders and how many of those people are non technical co founders and do they really ever get to that unicorn status? If the founders aren't technical.

That'S a good question. I haven't done research on that, but obviously Larry and Sergey Mark Zuckerberg, who.

Else would be good examples?

Jobs was not the technical, but Steve Wozniak was the user experience person. Right. Elon Musk, obviously very technical. Yeah. I think it's super helpful. It's for a technical company for software.

Trying to think of a single SaaS. Like did Marc Benioff, did he code? I don't think he was a coder with Salesforce.

I don't know. Larry Ellison, I think was probably technical, I would assume.

Right. They were mostly selling enterprise hardware, not so much software in the beginning. So maybe they got away with it for a little while. Yeah, they were in the right place at the right time in some ways. You know, they were just crushing. But yeah, that would be an interesting kind of deep dive to do is like can you be like statistically very successful as a non technical co founder? Because that's what I'm going through right now is like not being able to code myself but having some really great coders I trust that kind of check each other's work and fine. It worked out for me. God bless. It just, it takes longer than you want it to take. Cause it's not on your timeline, it's on their timeline. And you can't make those little annoying tweaks that you just want to make. You got to always relay them through somebody else. Like you see something that's wrong, you can go in and fix it.

Yeah, yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

So that's, that's minor, but annoying on my end.

I think there's pro pros and cons. Right. Because like I, I am, you know, I would much rather spend time working on the product and making that better than, than figuring out the marketing piece. And so that's a problem too, right?

Yeah. You can't be great at every single part of the company. It would be great.

Ex.

Yeah.

And yeah. And, and then the other, the other curse of being a programmer is being, being kind of too stuck in how are we going to implement this. Like it can kind of hinder you sometimes from coming up with those breakthrough ideas because you're too close to the code.

You kind of get founder syndrome too where it's like nobody can do it better than you and you know it. It's your baby. So do you get pulled into it more often than you'd like as a result of that? Do you have trouble delegating or maybe you did it one time?

I don't think I do. Every Time I've had someone that was really good. I'm like, dude, you got this run with it. That's not been challenging for me at all. But not everybody that I find is that level. And if they're not, then I'm going to insert myself there and make sure it gets done right, because that's super important. There was a period where I had trouble finding engineers. And the way that I always deal with things when there's a challenge, it's like I do the inner and the outer, right? So what is it inside of me that's creating the situation and what are the specific actions I need to take on the outside? And one of the things that I found on that inner work piece was that I got so much praise and recognition from, especially my dad growing up, from being a good engineer. And I was afraid that if I found a really good engineer, you know, my dad was going to like him or love him more than he loved me. Right. On an unconscious level. Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Actually, that's interesting, though. It's like a twisted, interesting thing that you wouldn't recognize until you say it out loud. It's like, am I really doing that? That's really what I'm doing, huh?

Exactly Right. And so it was good to get awareness of that and be like, okay, yeah, that shouldn't stop me from hiring good engineers.

No. In fact, like, the more A players, the better I. Oh, yeah.

100.

I've built companies both ways. You know, trying to save money, bootstrapping, hiring whoever could fit my budget versus, you know, and then having to redo the work three times versus hiring the best you possibly can, just raising enough money to make it work. Like, it's. It's hard. The only reason, like, if I try to start a software company without money, forget it. I couldn't do it. Right. Because I just don't have the. I don't have the technical chops. The thing is, you have the technical chops to bootstrap. It worked out for you, but I don't know that it could have the other way in my shoes. So what have been some of your biggest lessons along the way as a bootstrap entrepreneur, as an entrepreneur in general, what would you do differently if you knew better now, given those constraints, and maybe give some lessons for the folks at home.

What you're talking about having the courage to hire more than I feel like I can afford at this point, more expensive people than I think I can afford and trust that it's going to work out. The flip side of that is I've sometimes hired people that were uncomfortably expensive on the understanding that they were worth that and they weren't. So that's a big miscalculation. Yeah.

When it worked out, it's great. You know, one guy can do eight times the work as everybody else. That's awesome. For twice the price. But when he doesn't, when he does half, you're in bad shape.

Exactly. Just because someone asks for a lot of money doesn't mean that they're particularly good.

How do you weed that out? Right. If you're not a technical person.

Yeah, well, I mean, it's not. For me. It hasn't particularly been on in technical roles because that's easier for me to measure, to figure out.

Right.

That's actually super easy. I'm hiring right now, and I just bring people in. I'm like, all right, get on Zoom. I drop them into some random piece of code that. Some work. Piece of work that I want to have done, and then I don't know how to do it yet, but I'm like, let's sit down here and figure it out together. And I just hear the thought process, and if they're able to figure it out, sort of, you know, you know, on pace with me. Ish or better then, like, then I know they're good. And that's. That's it. Right. So it's easy for me to evaluate.

The way I've hacked it is. I have two really great coders and I have one check the other.

Yeah.

Simple, you know.

Yeah.

One doing the work and the other one fact checks it and just, like, goes to the code and they tell me, hey, there's an error. There's a thing. And sometimes they tell me, hey, there's not even a fucking punctuation mark. That's off.

It's perfect.

I'm like, yes, that's what I want to hear then.

Well, you got to be careful about my. My. My father, like I said, was in. Was in production of, you know, metal and woods and those kinds of things. And they had. They would set the standard time for completing some piece of work. And so whenever it came time to measure how long it should take, like that. That standard unit, everybody was like, make sure you. So you gotta. You gotta make sure that those people. Two guys don't, like, just, like, you know, support each other in being lazy.

No. Yeah. This is like, either one could do the job.

Right.

And that's important. But the one that I hired to do the job is the one that I Hired to do the job, and they're getting paid to do the job. The other one gets paid to review the code.

What's your strategy for evaluating marketers when you hire them?

Track record. I always ask people I worked with, especially if I already know them, I'll just reach out and be like, hey, what was your experience working with this person? And I've actually saved a lot of brain damage. I've been doing that more lately because I've made a lot of mistakes hiring in the past where I'll reach out to a few of their clients kind of without them knowing. Because it used to be like, and I hated this too, when people would be like, well, I want to talk to one of your clients, or I want to talk to three of your clients. And I'm like, that's like, that's a hassle for them. It's a hassle for me. Like, you want to put down some money? And then I'll. I'll set that up. That's fine. But, like, I'm not doing that just as part of the sales cycle, because that's just everybody's. That's a waste of time for everybody. But what I'll do is instead is I'll just reach out. I'll just find, you know, some of their testimonials. And at this point, I've been in the industry long enough. I know somebody that knows somebody that knows somebody. And that just happened to me recently where I was going to hire X and the person with all the track record and the accolades, and I've done a little bit of work with them before, and they were like, why price? Right? And then I found out that they were actually too busy through talking to some people they'd worked with, and they've been taking on contracts, but they can't give the individual intention that they used to be able to. And their work quality of the product has suffered. And one person to throw it out completely and start from scratch and wasted a bunch of money. So I went to one of their proteges that had learned under them who was still hungry and not as busy and wanted to really get after it. I'm like, okay, great. And they're only charging a little less than half of what the other guy was charging. So I'm like, okay, this is. This is worth it, right? So those types of things can. Can really make the difference. Just taking the extra time to do the diligence. Because even if somebody's great, it doesn't mean that they have the capacity to deliver that's the other thing. It's like you get to a point where, you know, you have a record, a track record, but you may not any longer be able to deliver at that level. What got you here will not get you there.

Totally do. You do it sounds like more of a contractor, freelancer type position. Consultant.

Yeah. For that kind of thing. Or a consultant. Yeah. Like a coach or anything like that. Like, I'm doing a lot of speaking right now, and that's something I was just hiring for. And now we're looking for a really strong copywriter and a sales team manager. And like, you know, sometimes you get somebody that's been in a big organization that's doing 50, 100 million for 7, 8, 10 years, whatever it is, they're tired of that organization. They want to go out, but they're not really ready for a startup. They don't have like startup values, you know, or a smaller company values. Like they're. They're trying to figure out what they can get, not what they can give. And they don't, you know, their, their first question is, how can I be on a beach in three years sipping margaritas? Not, you know, how can I add value to this project to make sure it succeeds?

Totally.

Oh, and by the way, I want to be paid twice as much as everybody else along the way. So that's. That's just me. I always hire for values. That's my. That's my simple hack. I try to find your hack about.

Finding the number two person under that, but, you know, that's a. That's always a smart one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We find the person that trained under the person. Yeah, that can usually. Cause they're usually hungrier and won't charge as much, but they. They know what the. The other person knows somewhat. Richard Branson did that when he was building out his 400 company empire. He would hire the second in command of the first largest competitor in the industry. He wanted to join. That was his hack.

Smart. Yeah.

So, Calvin, what are some of the things that you're struggling with right now that you might need support with? This is the Make More Marvels podcast. After all, we want to make sure we're adding value to your life as well. So for anybody watching, what are some of the things that you might need help with? Or how can we add the most value to your life?

So for. It really is building that customer acquisition funnel that consistently brings us new Simplero customers, specifically through paid. Just because if we crack paid, then it's easier to replicate that with, with JVs and other things that kind of opens the door. So that's, that's what I'm working on right now. Okay, great.

How do you envision the solution looking?

It's funny because I was, I was.

Just.

Saw something about how Russell had launched ClickFunnel to ClickFunnels 2.0 with a MIFG most incredible free gift ever offer like bribing people to sign up for the trial, all that stuff. And so I was kind of looking at that path and I was looking at it, I was like is that simple? Can we make it simpler? Right? Like you know, so just looking at making sure that the whole like the, the, the, the messaging, like what is the unique mechanism, what's the new opportunity? What's like what are those, what is the core of the marketing argument? Making sure that that's strong and then the whole trial signup experience is really strong. And then in order to make the math work, we have some coaching offers and other things on the back end. So once we have the person in the trial we can offer other things. We can also obviously do more like bundle more bonuses in with the trial. So it kind of becomes The MIFG.

Watching ClickFunnel story from the beginning and being an early adopter of that and using it since basically day one. What they did really well was consistently webinars, right? They just. Russell did a webinar every week for years until he nailed it. And that just, that was their biggest driver. Uh, so that was one thing and then the other thing was self liquidating offers on funnels mostly with the book and the upsells on the book. So they do like a free plus shipping offer plus you know we had a lot of success with that with 8 Minute Mastermind too. It's just like, you know, you're kind of doing it on the back end but like if you can get that traffic liquidated on the front end, it's endless scale right to the point where like he had VCs throwing money at him and he's like why would I take your money and go into debt versus just continue to do this funnel, you know that kind of self liquidates. So that would be my thought. I'm sure there's another way, another way to row that boat that's undiscovered but tried and true also works.

Yeah, yeah. I mean I like the idea of the Mifji and I also like the idea of the book funnel. So we have a high ticket coaching offer which is Simplero Academy. It's kind of both a beginner and a more successful audience. It's coaching and masterminding, but it's like, get used to consistently make at least 10k a month and then get you the tools that you need to. To grow from that. That one we're doing the traditional webinar funnel. We started that three weeks ago, I think, and we just got it to where it's converting. That's another one. But that's gonna be lower volume, obviously, but it's gonna be, you know, pay for itself. And then, like, now we're working on the. Just straight to a trial and see what numbers we can get there and what we need to tweak to make that work.

Yeah. The other thing is, there are a lot of ways that you can be successful with funnels and with, you know, different sales processes. And not every company can figure out how to do it, and not every company has a product or a value set that's appropriate for that offer. And then they teach the one that worked for them, which may not work for their students. Right. So it's like a really challenging pickle to figure out to be able to strip it down to its most essential elements and make it as likely to succeed for everybody as possible.

Yeah, yeah. And that's. I mean, it's actually one of the things that we do in some of the academy. And one of the things that I do naturally is I look at what are all the things that people are doing that are working and why are they working and try to break that down. And then I distill that down to, like, the simple model that outlines, like, this is the universe. You pick this and that, or and you pick these elements over here. This is what is most likely to work for you, but gives people. Instead of giving people just, like, one path that, as you said, happened to work for this person, give them the lay of the land so they can pick. Oh, you know what? Like, yeah, maybe I should do, like, phone sales versus or maybe I should do an automated kind of selling system. Maybe I should do bsl so webinars or like, whatever, like all those different things. Elements, Right.

Yeah. And I think the best advice. I would just love to, you know, kind of make a soliloquy here, because this is stuff I'm learning, too, is as I go further into business, I've been up to this for almost 10 years now, which is Internet marketing. I realized that, like, so many people are just getting into marketing or asking me questions are like, what do you think about this? Why do you care what I think? I'm not your marketing. Right. It's like, do whatever you can to get something out there and get some data. If you fail launch, you'll never have any data. You can't establish any kind of control, and then you'll never be able to improve on that control or think of a test or what worked, what didn't. Right. So just do your best. Put something out there, get some data, establish a control, and then break it into steps. Right. A funnel is not one piece. It either works or doesn't. It's like there might be 10 or 20 pieces of a funnel straight down to like, what's the copy, what's the landing page, what's the title, what's the headline, what's the, you know, this versus that. And like, look at all of as much as you have data for all of those conversion events. Right. Because the job of any step of any funnel is to get to go to the next step, right. And figure out can you optimize that? And I would focus on optimizing the ones at the front versus the ones at the end. Meaning, you know, if you can get a 10% bump on the, on the very first thing they see in a funnel, that translates to maybe a 2x bump on the back end.

Yeah, no, yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. The only thing I'd say is, like, you know what, you start out trying first, you know, matters to some level. Right. Like if you can hit closer to what's likely to work. Yeah.

You want to take your best educated guests, work with your coaches, work with your whoever. Right. Take your best shot, but get something out there to get a baseline established. Cause otherwise you're just like in paralysis analysis mode. You'll never get anything done. You're going to get there a lot faster by trying a bunch of things than you are by just trying to find the right answer before you start.

Sure, absolutely. Yeah. And also, let's look at what other people in, in similar spaces are doing. What's working for them?

Yeah, Model success, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

If you can make a 70% effective copy of something that's already working and proven they've spent tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to make it work, then you're probably land somewhere near it, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's what I've been doing too, is like asking and in all the masterminds and all the people I know is like, how are you acquiring customers for companies that are similar Right. Like, how are you acquiring customers? What are you doing that's working? That was super helpful.

So what have you tried that you rolled out? What have you tried? What have you not tried that you're excited to try? I guess would be those questions.

Yeah. So what we have rolled out is that webinar funnel to our high ticket offer. Um, and we literally got the first sale yesterday from Nice.

Congratulations. That's always, that's always a good feeling.

Yeah, exactly. At a. I think it's like a 1.6 roas. So, you know, not terrible, but not great.

That's great to start. I mean, you haven't really made any tweaks yet. You haven't really optimized.

Exactly. Um, and then I'm, I'm really excited about seeing where, where a, you know, a campaign straight to a trial. What that's going to land at Numbers. Why math wise, I've been terrified of that because I just feel like in this space there are so many people, companies out there that have, you know, millions of dollars in venture funding and whatnot and they can spend whatever to acquire a customer. And I've heard rumors that some other companies are spent spending like 5,000, $6,000 to acquire a, a customer.

I'm like, that won't sustain. You'll beat them.

They can't.

How can you sustain that?

Yeah, you can, right?

Like eventually that'll crap out. That works in a frothy market where VC dollars are flowing. But like, you can't grow an Uber during a bear market. Like, there's no way, when you're spending five times or 10 times to acquire the customer, hoping you'll make it back on some other time at the, you know, before you have competition. It's like, it's an obscene model. It doesn't make any sense.

No, no. Yeah. So, yeah, I was just scared that that was. Those are the kinds of numbers we were going to see. But I think it's so. It's funny how that works. Right? Because like, again, I'm not a marketer and so, so it's like. Or it's not my. I mean, I've been in marketing for a long time, but. But it's not my, My brain is not wired.

You're a product.

And especially for my own stuff, it's easier for to, to work with others. But anyway, so it's like I've had this like, fear of that and so I've gone about it in like trying to create these other things and ended up creating complication for myself. The reason I'm so passionate about making it simpler is because it's been my medicine throughout, is like, fuck. Like, no, we need to make this simpler. I have this. I'm good at complicating things, and then I've gotten. Gotten good at simplifying things again.

Yeah, it's. It's not. It doesn't take talent to make things more complex. It takes talent to make things simpler. That's what it does. That's what I've learned.

Encourage. Encourage to make them simpler. Yeah.

And usually you have to go into one extreme to find the other. Yeah, the things rarely start out simple. They end up simple if you're. If you're good.

If you're good. But I mean, and that's a thing, too, with. Working with a team is like, it's hard to teach people to make it simple and to think simple again because, like, it takes that level of courage and that level of seeing all the pieces on the chessboard to make those right calls. Right. So it's tricky, but it's so, so important, so valuable when you do it right.

Yeah, 100%. So, Calvin, where can people find simplero.com obviously, but where can people learn more about you, more about your work? You guys values your mission. Where can they get signed up for a trial to check it out, all that great stuff?

Simplero.com S, I, M, P, L, E, R O dot com. Simpler O. Make it simpler O dot com. Exactly.

We got to come up with a jingle.

We need to. Yeah. Who is. Who makes jingles?

That's Paul. Paul Hoffman.

Yeah, Paul. Yeah, exactly.

He's a really interesting guy. We had him on the podcast recently, actually, so. Yeah, well, awesome, man. Well, thank you so much for being here. We're grateful to have you.

And then my personal site, Calvin Corelli.com, two Rs, one L and Calvin Corelli and all the. All the socials.

Right on. Well, thank you so much for being here. We're grateful for the time and, you know, we'll. We'll see you around the fight club and other masterminds, too, man.

You bet. It's great to see.