$25,000,000 Tech Company by 25 Years Old | Devin Johnson Interview

All right, people, welcome back to the show. Today with us, we got Mr. Devin Johnson. Devin, welcome to the show, bro.

Boom, man.

Good to have you. So Devin runs Connected.io, and actually a bunch of other companies as well, but that's your main company. 17,000 businesses use you guys to connect with, well, I'll let you tell the story, but connect with businesses and other things through, and it was messaging and all sorts of platform of potentially marketing to help your company scale. We're actually now getting onboarded as a new client with you guys.

Oh, man.

Which is pretty cool. After our last, there you go.

Hey, come on.

So we're gonna use it a lot. So welcome on, good to have you.

Yeah, likewise, man. Thanks for having me on.

So you're on your world travels. Where are you going? What's going on?

Yeah, so I was in Key West. That was a tough place to be.

Yeah, that's—

You know, I got sunburnt and all the fun jazz. And then I was in Sarasota.

Saratoga?

Sarasota.

Sarasota.

Yeah, Florida.

That's Saratoga's little stepbrother.

And then my favorite meeting I've been to so far was over in Vero Beach. I'm in Dan Martell's boardroom.

Okay.

That's a fun group. Like that, yep. Vero Beach to here, So I'm in the beautiful city of Utah.

Yeah, we're here in Utah.

Doing some enterprise partnerships. I have a lot of relationships and then we're going to do AlphaCon together. I'm going to watch you kill the stage, right?

Fun. Yeah.

And then fly to Vegas and Vegas to—

So what spurred on this world tour?

Like what's—

is your company pretty automated? Do they need you or no?

Yeah. So I got 5 people that bug me every day and then rest of it runs itself. No, I'm just kidding. I hope they watch this.

Yeah.

Oh yeah. Now David calls me every day now. So I got 5 direct reports to run the entire business. And then I've got a book coming out. So it's called—

Tell us about your book.

Yeah. So it's How to Make Your Net Work. So Net-Work. And it's—

Tell us the alternative title though, that I was gonna make you do.

I forget it. What'd you say?

It was 4 Ways to Detect—

Oh yeah. 5 Signs to Detect Bullshit as Soon as You Meet Someone.

See, that's a way better title. That's a way better title. Come on.

Yeah, I know. It's good.

So it's coming out.

Is it already written? Yeah, so 16 chapters was voice recorded through Otter AI and it's in editing right now. We're looking like late March to be able to have a readable, workable copy. I'm gonna say probably mid-April.

Let's talk about your tech company for a second. So, and how old are you?

I'm 25. I just turned 25.

Just turned 25, which is incredible, man.

Congrats.

Appreciate it.

So I'm just—

I think you're killing it. I've never had somebody younger than me on this show.

So, hey, here we are.

So you're 25 years old, running a pretty sizable tech company. You can give some numbers if you like. Bootstrapped the entire thing.

We did.

Walk us through this process. And I mean, I've wanted to get in the tech space. It's just, it's a lot of time, a lot of dev, usually a lot of capital. You guys bootstrapped. Walk us through the process of you launching this tech company.

We would hit about $25 million in sales this year. $25, $26 million in sales this year.

Which, for people listening, that's like, oh, that's cool for like a sales company or whatever. It's a software company.

65% of that's recurring.

Where half of Silicon Valley software companies still haven't made a dollar yet. You guys are doing $25 million a year bootstrapped. And a lot of it, most of it's recurring revenue with pretty low churn, as you were telling me before, which is just incredible.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. There's several knobs in the tech world that you really, really, really have to keep aware of. And in turn, I can I know I could check 5 little areas of the business and know exactly what to do to impact millions of dollars. So, you know, being self-aware and having that education, you know, came from getting myself into the right rooms, which is what my book's about, is how to build a group of relationships that you prosper forever. And it starts with being servant, right? How can I help you? How can I give? To you? How can I connect you? You know, it's just my personality. I mean, before we even started, I was like, hey man, I'm gonna make this introduction. Should be a blast.

I know, I've noticed that about you. Every time I've talked to you, you've said, hey, can I make an intro for you? Can I do this for you? And I feel like, well, what's he trying to get out of it? Like, is he trying to—

I have no agenda, bro.

That's what it seems like. It seems like you don't have an agenda. You just want to connect good people and bring them together, which is really cool.

You know, my company's called Connected, right?

Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Actually, talk to that point for a second. I think a lot of people go to rooms, myself, we go to a networking group where we paid to be in this cool mastermind, and it's hard to, number one, leverage that room. Like, you're there, now what do I do? How do I make these connections? How do I make valuable-based connections and translate that maybe into dollars one day? Walk me through that. Essentially, your book probably is gonna go through that as well, but walk us through that.

So if you don't know who's gonna be in the room, which is most often the the case, right? You're gonna walk in and you're gonna notice ballers or players pretty quickly, right? And if you don't, try to get someone that's working the event or working the mastermind, just straight up ask them, right? A closed mouth don't get fed, right? I live by that. I like that. A closed mouth does not get fed. Walk up and say, hey dude, who's the ballers? Find your top 3 to 5 ballers and have an agenda A desired outcome before you show up to that meeting or that mastermind. Yeah, you only need three to five people to really make something happen. Most people think, oh, I gotta meet everyone. I gotta get everyone's cell phone number. No, man. You're there for a reason, right? You're there to help people start funds.

So find three to five, three to five biggest players, and that's your goal.

That's my goal. And a lot of those masterminds tie you down to a chair to listen to people speak and make it a pitch fest or. Or whatever it is, right? I take those 3 to 5 people, I go buy them a steak dinner, I go take them out, buy them coffee, and I just get to know them and see how I can help them. And service obligates. So soon as I made an intro, you're like, oh shit, what can I do for him? It's human instinct because—

Reciprocity.

Yeah, law of reciprocity. I can't even pronounce it, but it's in my book.

Oh yeah.

So You know, and it is, it's simple. Just build 3 to 5 out of those masterminds and you'll build a wall of influence within that group so fast, shit just comes to you. The rule of, you know, make a sale, make a commission, make a friend, make a fortune, right?

Yeah, that's cool.

And so, you just make a friend with those 3 to 5 people that are very intentional, Premeditated, but you're also coming at it from how can I actually help this person before I ever make an ask for myself?

So take us back a little bit too. I think people, some people listening to this want to start a tech company. One piece of advice you said, fly out, meet your devs face to face. What are some other tips for starting a startup tech company?

Tip number 1, get the bare minimum anything, pitch deck, anything, sell the product. Ready, Fire, Aim. That is a book, by the way. I love that book.

Yeah.

Read it multiple times. Yeah, just take massive action. Most people that wanna start tech companies are like, I gotta meet so-and-so and get $3 million. What do you need $3 million for? Most people that start tech companies are not financially in a good spot. They just have a really good idea before they think they need to raise a bunch of money. If you can't manage your $60 grand you make a year, and you're living paycheck to paycheck, what makes you think you can go manage $3 million someone gives you? That's why you see the PEs and VCs, they say, well, 1 out of 12 will work, right? This is— that's your lane.

Crazy.

Oh yeah. Yeah. So it's like 1 out of 12, 3 will break even, right? So that's because guys with really good ideas, Burn a lot of money getting their, what I call MBA from the school of hard knocks.

Yeah.

So just take massive action.

Sell first, get an MVP, just get out.

I love it. Yeah. Sell first, stack the cash, put some money in the bank, go to an investor and say, hey, we have $100,000 in sales with $90,000 in the bank. Yeah. That's a lot more appealing than—

And you guys have never raised dollars?

So we did go and do it. You did do a raise? Yeah. So we did a convertible note so I could build a board and everything. Yeah, cool. I'm going through that acquisition I mentioned earlier. So I had to stack some stuff into my favor and bring some people in. So there is technically money in the business as of last year, but first 3 years we did not raise capital. Yeah, did all that.

Yeah.

Yeah, we all, we were all bootstrapped. By the time we raised capital, we had done, had a trailing couple years of almost $13 million in sales. So very— Wow, that's crazy.

Yeah, it's an interesting thing. I've talked to a few venture capitalists about this. It's an interesting thing in Silicon Valley or venture capitalists is there's almost more value, in their opinion, in pre-revenue businesses, the big idea, than small revenue businesses. 'Cause with a small revenue business, like let's say you did a quarter million dollars last year, they can actually run a pro forma on that. With a no revenue business or pre-revenue business, they can't run those models and the evaluations can get bid up like crazy. So you saw, I mean, this is a huge example, but Altos Labs just raised a $3 billion seed round.

Yeah, it's nuts.

It's just absolutely insane. And obviously a lot of slush money going. They have a, I mean, pretty cool technology. They're gonna reverse age things and whatever. They can extend your life like 3 times. But it just goes to show, it was really interesting. I had just that conversation is like, for the founder, it's almost your valuation at least will be higher pre-revenue than if you made a quarter million dollars last year, which I thought was very interesting.

There is some truth to that. And there are some industries that like, if you're gonna go make someone live 3 times as long, There's a lot of R&D and a lot of upfront costs, but for the average person with the little slightly above average tech idea, you can get an MVP and start making a very good lifestyle business very quick for yourself.

What's like average cost for an MVP on a, you know, simple tech company?

We got ours up in $10,000.

Serious?

Yeah.

Wow.

You also gotta know where to look.

Yeah, you gotta be smart about it, you gotta know what to do.

India has the talent and And they will lay pavement for you for $1,000 a month. They are used to— the average wage in India for any skilled worker is $200 US a month.

Wow.

Yeah. Funny story. So I land in India and so I'm paranoid about like getting captured or like losing my phone when I go overseas. So I take $5,000 US to the register to cash in for rupees. Well, the trade-in is 1 to 74. This guy is like banding up.

So you got huge wads of cash coming out.

And there's a line out the airport.

Oh no.

And then my business partner walks up, puts 5,000 in, and we have a backpack full of rupees. We have like the whole life savings of like the whole line.

Oh gosh.

And they're just looking at us like, Who are these guys?

And you got duffel bags of cash walking out.

Yeah, just 2 me bags of rupees.

Do you like, do you travel with security and stuff like that now?

Or are you gonna do that? I'm not quite that ballin' yet, but getting close.

I've got a couple friends that have like security guards with them the whole time. And I, and I didn't know who they were at first. I was like, why is this guy always following you? And I was like, oh, the security guard.

I have, I have an assistant that normally travels with me and you could look at him as security, but you could probably beat his ass with your pinky. It is my brother too.

Oh, okay.

So yeah, he's a pussy. I love him. Love you, Jay.

If he hears this on the—

He'll hear it. He'll be putting it on my social. Love you, Jay. Him, my wife, and my business partner, I don't know what I would do without them. And my key executives at my company, love all of them.

Yeah, that's cool. Okay, let's switch gears for a sec. So let's talk, I know you're a tech company founder, you guys are doing very well. I'm sure you have a huge valuation now and you said you're going through a transition acquisition right now, which is awesome. So whenever that comes out, let me know.

We'll have a big party. Oh yeah.

I'll post about it.

We'll have fun.

Whenever you're in town, we'll go hang out. Yeah, let's go. Tell me about your landscape of the Web3 movement right now. For someone that's getting in this space, is that— every big tech company is turning their lens to Web3. What's your thoughts?

I'm considered an NFT land whale.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

So yeah, what do you got?

A little bit of everything, but I got so much I don't know what I got. I actually have a— check this out— me and my business partner share a crypto fund manager. All he does is manage our crypto. He takes a 10 to 15% cut of profits every month and buys— gets us into the nodes and gets us into the land. And so I think on my OpenSea of what is public, I have like 156 NFTs and plots of land.

Yeah.

I think if you're not paying attention to it, you need to wake up. If you are just staring away, I mean, they said the internet was just a fad. And now we know, we don't know what to do without it.

Yeah.

It's gonna happen here. I'm a 100% believer. If you're looking to get into building tech companies and building in the Web 3.0, I think you're a few years off from making serious money, but if you stay consistent, you will have your big pop.

Yeah, that's cool. That's awesome. Well, I want to dive into a few pieces of this. So I'm launching a crypto fund coming out in just a matter of weeks right now.

We'll be buying, we won't do NFT stuff, but we'll have a big pool and do all that kind of stuff.

It's really fun. As far as NFT goes, Actually, no, let's not talk about that. Let's talk about metaverse land.

Okay.

It's one of my biggest questions I have, and I wanted to talk to somebody like you, 'cause I personally, I get the idea. I'm sold. I'm running a crypto fund. Like, I believe in it. I do not believe in metaverse land. Let me tell you why.

Why?

Because, at least current metaverse land.

Okay.

I believe in the concept of it, but any yahoo tomorrow can create another metaverse.

That's right.

And so what's— right now there are hundreds of metaverses and hundreds more being created. Who's to say which one's gonna be the winner? Because I've been in Decentraland and Sandbox. I've gone and tried all of them. They're not that great right now. I mean, the graphics, everything's like—

It's Sims.

It looks like you're playing Wii 2004. You're playing Wii Golf. That's how I feel when I'm in there.

It's Sims. You remember the game Sims?

It's just like Sims.

Yeah.

So my question is, who's not— who's to say, like, what if Apple tomorrow says, you know what, we just came out with the dopest metaverse ever? Activision, right? And it looks amazing.

Right.

The graphs are incredible. It's like, oh, well, my million-dollar plot of land on Decentraland kind of is worthless now because everyone's now moving to Activision's new metaverse.

Yeah.

Give me your thought, because that's stopped me from buying land in the metaverse because I don't know which one's going to win.

Diversify, diversify, diversify. If you're going to go in and buy that stuff, I have them in all. I have land in all.

You buy everything and one of them is going to be the winner.

Yeah, yeah. One's going to be declared the winner. And if you can buy and in the downtowns or where you start. So in Decentraland, for instance, I have, I think it's 30 plots of land in the, right in the downtown district as soon as you pop in. And if Facebook decides Decentraland is it, that's where they're going all in.

Yeah.

I'm in a really good spot on those 30 plots of land.

Yeah.

Right? It is a wacky concept. It's hard to grasp, But just diversify.

You can get it. So you just buy all of them, buy the spread. One of them is going to be the winner, which I believe. I think we'll have one or two that will be the winner. I'm just not sold yet that it is Decentraland or Sandbox or whatever, because I think more coming out right now. Everyone's building these new ones, and I think they're gonna— in 18 months, we're gonna see some incredible—

I— in all the land that I have, I might have $10 grand in it, and I have a lot of land. I've done worse things with $10,000.

Yeah.

Okay, like, I've spent that at the bar. So I don't, I don't drink anymore. Okay. But I have had those nights, you know. So like, it's worth the gamble. Gotcha.

So just keep your— this is your gambling money, throw it in there and diversify well is what you're saying. Because I am bullish on the other facets besides just the land part. I just have a hard time with the land. So and now you're a big NFT player.

Yeah.

Which I think is awesome. I think there's a lot of value, especially for— I'm a big believer in NFTs that have utility behind them. Yeah. So some of these games that are coming out—

Talk about like one of my favorites is the Crypto Cannabis Club.

Yeah.

Not, not huge in the whole pot smoking thing, you know, not a smoker myself, but their utility behind their project is insane.

How does it work? Walk us through it.

So you— so there's, there's 13,000 characters, 13,000 and some change.

Okay.

You have to have a character to be into the game, period. If you don't have one of the 13,000, then you can't get in. And it tied into the real world and they did a deal with all of the big chains, dispensaries. You get a discount for having what they call a toker, which is their NFTs.

Cool.

So it tied it into real-world versatility and a cult-like community. Like, if you make someone love smoking weed, they love smoking weed. They're very upfront about it. Yeah, like, yeah, dude.

Yeah, I love it.

Yeah. Like, actually, it's in my back pocket.

Yeah.

So, you know, it's, it's such a strong community, I think is actually going to make that one pop. Cool.

Yeah, I love the utility ones. Because there's like, for an example, if you had a metaverse game, and they came out with 100 fire swords, and you owned a fire sword, And you can rent that because people want to beat the boss. They can rent it from you for some coins. So every day you can rent the— 24 hours, you guys get the fire sword or whatever the asset is. I think the utility behind it, I think, is really cool.

Yeah, it's crazy. Some of these games and concepts and seeing them all come to reality is awesome.

Yeah, it's a fun just transition in the world. And I think we're going through this crossroads of technology is all converging right now.

Yeah.

We have 5G hitting really high-speed internet, we have really incredible microchips, we have AI hitting, I mean, we have blockchain all hitting all at the same time, and they all help each other.

Yeah.

And so that's why I was listening to this great person, but they were going through, that's why we're seeing this explosion in pretty much every asset class in the world is having an explosion of technology right now because of that, which is—

And entrepreneurs.

And entrepreneurs are saying, you know what? I'm going to take advantage of this. And the Fed is saying, we're going to flood you guys with liquidity and slush money dollars to do this, which is pretty cool.

I will tell you, 5G sucks. It's so slow right now.

Well, it's not 5G. This is like back to what I said before. It's not 5G. They, like on your— my phone is T-Mobile. It says 5G.

I'm in that struggle bus right now.

It says like UC or something.

Yeah, I don't even know what it says.

5G, oh, it's not even popping up right now. 5G UC or something like that. It's not really 5G. It's them saying, we're trying to develop 5G, but we're not actually there yet. 5G in its true sense is like, it's like 5 gigs a second or something like that, right? It's just crazy speeds. But all these companies, I think we're feeling, this is my opinion, I've researched this a ton, 'cause Huawei was doing this in China. They bid for the US contract. US said, we don't want China 'cause you're owned by the Chinese state. We don't want you controlling our stuff. And they're like, dude, we are the leaders in 5G. Like we have it. And the US government said, okay, our carriers, let's get it. Like Verizon, T-Mobile, you know, AT&T. And they said, oh, okay. And to appease the American public, they started running ads. We're working on 5G. We're coming out with 5G. And it is 5, 6, 7 years out to actually get the infrastructure in for 5G.

Yeah. It's—

We're pretty behind on it.

When the 5UC pops up, like my shit barely works.

Oh, it's bad.

Calls drop, Instagram won't even load. I'm like, what is going on?

It's not real 5G. It's just so frustrating. And they market it as like, we're at 5G now. No, we're not. We're not even near real 5G. Like it should—

anyways, it's crap, dude.

It's all marketing so that they—

anyways. And then all the conspiracy theories with 5G.

Oh yeah.

Yeah.

Fry your brain or whatever.

Fry your brain.

And what's the other ones? Okay. Actually, I want to ask you a couple last questions.

Yep.

Just before we head out, so what are you— what's one thing that you are very bullish on for the next 18 to 24 months?

As far as investments?

Yeah.

Definitely NFTs and nodes. And, you know, I'm starting to get into real estate. I'm starting to build a little bit of wealth where it can play for me. So getting into that, but I'd say number one thing is NFTs, crypto, Web 3.0. I think if you're not in it, you're just so far behind.

This is the future.

Everyone's moving there. It's the future for sure. Absolutely.

I love it. And then I want to ask you a last question. I ask this to everybody. If you could leave this audience with one thing, and actually before we get to it though, I'm going to have you drop your book and plug some other stuff, but that's the question I'm going to tee up. I'll give you a second to think about it. If you're going to leave one thing with this audience, that you feel like is most valuable to you. Could be politics, could be religion, it could be business advice, it could be something you learned when you were a kid, but if you could leave one thing, you got 90 seconds, I won't interrupt you at all, I wanna hear exactly what you got. Now, before we do that, where can people connect with you or where can you find your book or other things to find all your stuff?

Yeah, so my Instagram's just my name, Devin Allen Johnson, D-E-V-I-N-A-L-L-E-N Johnson. Quite a few fake profiles popping up lately, but There's only one great—

There's only one true Devin Johnson.

Devin Allen Johnson.

Devin Allen Johnson.

LinkedIn, obviously that's where our business is based out of. LinkedIn, I'm very active on. Instagram, I'm very active on. And as far as the book, we will post it on both of those social outlets as far as presales, preorders. And I'm going to get that link out probably next week actually. Okay, really cool.

So check it out, and if it gets—

if it comes before we post this, give it to me, we'll drop it below. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate that. And then you can always check out Knnected at knnected.io. It's with a K.

Knnected with a K.

Yeah, K-E-N-N-E-C-T-E-D dot I-O. Cool, awesome.

Well, thank you for coming on today. Final question, so I'll say it one more time. If you had one thing to leave with this audience, could be any topic.

Yeah, so number one thing that's changed My whole business career is leave the ego at the door, make a sell, make a commission, make a friend, make a fortune. Be a servant leader and serve others and believe in that law of receiving from others. I love it.

Short, concise. Devin Johnson, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming on. Go follow him on Instagram and LinkedIn. Connected.io is his company. His book's coming out soon. Go check him out. Thank you, Devin, for coming on.

Thank you.