Brandon White - Lessons from Raising Capital and Owning Your Market

Welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Today I am joined by Brandon White, a serial entrepreneur and founder of File Finder. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Brandon.

Yeah, right on, Casey. Thanks for having me. This is a relationship that started on, of all things, Twitter, man.

Yeah, absolutely. It's been so great to, you know, chat with you about different things from podcasting to what you're doing in the, in the business world. And it's been a pleasure getting to know you and excited to have you on the show today, man.

Yeah. And I mean, for listeners, Kasey did not pay me or anything, but the listener app that you guys are, you and Brandon, who's got a good name, are building is just totally, honestly changed the game for us and our podcast network. And it just keeps getting better. And the fact that you guys are actually listening to people, I think is definitely shows. And it did, it changed. You've been in podcasting a long time and so have I, and the amount of work that goes into the show notes and all that stuff is just crazy and, you know, AI in general. But you guys writing that on top of that engine has. It really is a game changer. So you guys are doing a great job and we're grateful for it.

Thank you so much for those words. Brandon, for those that may not be familiar with your story, you've been an entrepreneur for a very long time. You've built and sold multiple companies. I would love for you to give a high level overview of where you spend your time today before really diving into the background.

Yeah, I'm going to age myself when I tell the story and I've had a sort of winding career. I sort of say that I'm not an a celebrity, so you're not going to see me on the, on. I don't know what people watch anymore, the reality TV channel or anything, but I've had a really lucky career and I live in Half Moon Bay and I really spend my time these days and I've been lucky to have some exits that I build, businesses that I want to build. And I spend my time on File Finder, which is this app that my wife had a problem finding files once when we were changing accountants and it was taking her weeks to do it. I thought that was just ridiculous. So I built an MVP that would find files you know, you have but can't find faster. And then turns out that a lot of people have that problem and ask for it. So I. We did about 90 interviews with people and it turns out people wanted it And I hired a team, so. And I'm lucky right now that I get to spend my own money in these things, so I don't have to convince investors, which I was a venture capitalist, I'm an angel investor. I'm not. They're not good or bad. But being able to just put the money up yourself. And I've been really lucky to do that. So we do. I did File Finder. I wrote a book that's coming out in July. I don't know when our show will come out, but I. I taught a class on people, how to Build a business plan in 11 slides. And this. It wasn't an online class. This is actually was a class that I did make videos for and put online, but I taught it in person. And I taught about 1500 students on that course. And I thought that maybe I should write a book. And I wanted to write a book. So I came up with this series. And there's. There's about three books coming out. First one is Back of the Napkin to business plan and 11 slides. So easy, you can do it on a flight from San Francisco to New York. And the challenge on this book was Kasey. And I know this subject. I mean, I was a vc, I'm an angel investor. I've raised money for a lot of my companies. I've sat on both sides, and I know the subject really well, but it was really hard. I really found a new found appreciation for people who write books because I told my operations director, Gia, who was like, incredible woman who's. She tells me I gave her gray hair. She's younger. But yeah, I was like, we're gonna whip this thing out no time. And, you know, eight months later, we're just. It's just gonna publish. So writing a book is really hard. But what I did, Casey, was instead of taking the traditional approach of, hey, you need to write a book, and it needs to be 60,000 words, which is about what business books is the target. I basically set out with the goal, making it as short as humanly possible. And we came in at under 25,000 words. And the feedback so far is with some really senior CEOs of companies that are doing real revenue. I'm talking tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. Is they just couldn't put it down because it's so easy and straightforward that they got stuck and they could read it in one sitting. So I think the. I came up with it in the shower. I think our tagline for this Back of the Napkin 2 series is we actually write books that people read.

I love that. I'm excited for the book and this definitely, you know, I think it's so important, especially for young entrepreneurs and not only learning from people that have been there before, but I wanted to take it back to the young Brandon who was starting his first company. Like, where did you grow up and what led to your drive for business and entrepreneurship?

Yeah, I don't think that I told people, Casey, that I think it found me and the story will make sense. So I was. I went to college. I got a. I have a BA in psychology and a minor in sociology at the time. And I thought I was going to become a lawyer. Quite frankly, I'm not really sure looking back if I. My grandfather was a lawyer. He had a law firm. And I thought it would be a good idea, but I think it's somewhere in my college journey. I basically. Casey, would just tell people that. Because if you tell people you're going to be a lawyer, they shut up and stop asking you questions. I mean, it's just one of those things, right? Like, I'm going to be a doctor, I'm going to be a lawyer. You don't keep asking questions. You just. You're like, okay, this guy's got his shit together and move on. But hopefully I can say that, but. So I got out of college and actually didn't I have dyslexia. I mean, I was a National Honor Society student and all this stuff. But testing is not really easy for me at all. And I didn't get into law school. And I went back to a tree nursery where I had worked for the summers to pay for college. And then it sort of like turned into this. I don't know how I'm going to get out of this. And I grew up with a single mom, and my mom at the time, I think, became very concerned that her son, who she had invested a lot of time, effort and money in to, was going to turn into, you know, wind, possibly go off in the wrong direction or a direction that didn't live up to my potential. I don't want to say wrong direction. And she's like, hey, go back to school. So I went back to school to get master's in psychology with the idea. I love psychology. Worst case scenario for me, I said, I can charge people to be a psychologist. They're going to pay me by the hour. I know I can make a good living and, and, and do something. Well, I'm a big fisherman. And in the course of doing that and during College. I went to a school in Maryland, small liberal arts school. Very. Has number one writing award in the country. Very good school, small school, but we lived on the water, and I fished every single day. I literally had a dock at my house, and I would fish Chesapeake Bay. And I went back to school. My brother at the time was living in the same house. And I went back there and I decided, Casey, that I wanted to build a magazine, fishing magazine for light tackle, fly fishing anglers.

Wow. Very neat.

Yeah, definitely. Fishing on the east coast and Chesapeake Bay is huge. Yeah, it's. It's a big market.

Absolutely.

But there was only a rag. So I decided I'm gonna do this fishing magazine. This is middle 90s. I go to the local printer. I'm gonna fast forward some of this because the story goes on a bit, but the printer basically starts asking me all these questions, like, well, what's your first run gonna be? Who's your designer? Going on and on and on. And I'm thinking, these are all really good questions I have no answer to. And then at the end of the day, comes to, well, do you have the $25,000 that it's gonna cost to run your first printing? And at the time, I had about $827 in the bank, and the answer was clearly no. So I went back to the drawing board a little bit dejected at first. And then what I realized is when I was in college, which was the early 90s, there was this thing called the Internet. And it was actually called Roadrunner is what we used to go on the Internet. I was like, why can't I put a magazine on this thing called the Internet? This is 1996.

Yeah. So when I got to pause. So when was the first time you went on the Internet and when, like. Because I can't imagine, right, like, nowadays when, you know, we see these developments with AI, I had my first, like, aha. Moment. Like, wow, AI, you know, this is going to be the future of what's happening for you. When did that occur with the Internet?

I will date myself, but I dialed into, which I don't even know that we called it the Internet. Probably in the late 80s, on A or middle 80s, whenever the Vic, Commodore Vic 20 came out, you could actually dial in. And I had a modem. And then in college, the Internet was like old BBS boards, very niche community. So it was really in the 90s. I can actually remember the first time I logged into, quote, unquote, the Internet. The coolest thing for me, Kasey, was I logged onto a bulletin board where you could get the words to all the songs. And I was like, this is the coolest thing I have ever seen. So, you know, I logged into this thing called the Internet. It was very basic in the late 80s. And then in the 90s, in college, early 90s, I logged in. And then in 1996, you know, the Internet was. It was very basic. It was BBs, boards, chats. AOL was really, quote, unquote, the Internet. So that's. Yeah, that was my first experience on the quote, unquote Internet.

Wow.

Yeah.

So you're, you know, you want to start this magazine. You know, the. The guy says, $25,000, you're looking towards the Internet. What happens next in terms of that process of launching that business and, you know, taking this idea and actually, you know, creating it in this new medium of what was the early days of the Internet?

Yeah. So I said, I'm going to put a magazine on the Internet. I have hung out in the computing lab. I found the smartest kid by watching. Convinced him to work. He didn't want to. He's like, your idea's not going to work. I said, well, I'll pay you more. I had no idea how I was going to pay him. I went and got a job on a spinach farm doing financial accounting and things like that for them. I used that money to pay him. Within three months, we were written up in a big magazine called Chesapeake Magazine in Maryland. And then I had this idea that. And this is all, like, for listeners, you're like, duh, this is what we do now, Brandon. But back then, this is not what we did. I said, well, I'm just going to get the users to leave the data. Like, I don't need professional writers. So I started posting it. We wrote a forum software, because this is all flat file HTML back then. Yep, we wrote a forum software. And the long story short is I was 10 people on the message board asking myself questions and answering it with books, with answers when I didn't know, so that I could get this prime this pump. And it worked. And I will say this. I also used to hang out in AOL chat rooms. I would write down all the AOL usernames, which was everyone's email. My wife and I at night would take a legal pad with three columns and we would write all of these names down. And then the next day, I would email every single one of them and say, hey, I saw you in the phishing chat room. I've got this phishing site. You should check it out. And that would be called spam today. But back then people didn't think of it that way. And they write back, oh my God, thank you so much. And that's literally how I got that site going. So I do that. I then read an article in the front of Time magazine. It wasn't an article. There was a section in the beginning of Time magazine that used to be basically new and noteworthy tech stuff. There were two guys, Jerry Yang and David Filo. There was a very small article I can remember to this day, in the upper left hand corner, a picture of David and Jerry. And it said there's this thing called Yahoo, which I knew about because they were categorizing sites on the Internet by hand. Literally. Yeah, I was like. And it said What? They raised $1.7 million from Sequoia Capital. So I go back to this guy I'd hired and really was sort of my partner at the time and said, you know, we, we can raise money, you know, like this thing's going to happen. Fishing's a big market. If these two guys can raise money for phone book on the Internet effectively, why can't we? Yeah, I drove, got a business plan book at Barnes and Noble in my wife's car in Annapolis, Maryland. Came back, read it. Took me a while to write the business plan at the time because we wrote old school ones. Wrote the business plan and sent it to Mike Morris because it meant it mentioned Mike from Sequoia. Yeah, So I was like, I have no idea. Like you're talking to a guy has a psychology background, halfway smart. I was like, I'll just fed Exit to him. Well, I fed exit to him. Don't hear anything. I don't stop. I see a guy in the alumni magazine, says he's going to be an investor. I reach out to him, he's interested in. He comes back one day, Casey, and sends me an email and he said, hey, Brandon, I just met this guy. He moved to the east coast because he got divorced and he was taking care of, wanted to be close to his kids. He's from a well known venture firm. I mentioned that I fish. I mentioned. He said, conversation kept going. I mentioned your site's name and he says he uses it because he's a fisherman and he wants to see you tomorrow. And I was like. He said, but I didn't give him your name because I, you know, I want to be respectful to your privacy, blah, blah, blah. I was like, yeah, give him my name. Love to talk to Him. Hour later, I get an email, says, hey, this is Tom. You might know me. I'm a partner at Sequoia Capital. We did firms like Yahoo, Cisco, Apple, and some other companies. I'd like to see you tomorrow. Now, Kasey, you can imagine a guy on the east coast sitting in a little town in eastern Maryland in a. I mean, my wife and I bought our house at the time for $108,000, and that was a lot of money. Wow. And so I write back, not really believing all this, but I like, hey, I sent your partner our business plan, and he never got back to me, as if that was supposed to happen. Here's my address. Here's the business plan. I'd love to see you here. And I literally put whatever my street address was, which. We still own that house. Eastern Maryland. See you tomorrow. Next day, knock at the door. I answer the door, and it's him.

Oh, my God.

So he's like, hey. I was like, oh, hi. He's like, well, we talk, and it right there in the door. And he's like, well, let's go to your office. So I just shut the door, turned around, and started walking up the steps. And. And he's like, you could see that look. You know that look, Casey, when someone's sort of confused, let down, and.

Yeah.

You know. And you know that feeling you get in your stomach when your face starts getting red and you start getting hot?

Absolutely.

Yeah. That's what's happening. But to me. But I just turned around, walked up these creaky stairs. He follows me. He walks into the spare bedroom, looks around, and he says, is this it? At this point, I'm really feeling bad. And I say, listen, I'm really sorry if you expected more. You thought there was more. I said, I'm sorry for wasting your time. We can go see my partner's quote, unquote office, which is a spare bedroom about 15 minutes away. And he stared at me for a minute in one of those long, awkward pauses, and he said, calm down, kid. This is how we found Cisco. And still makes my hair raised to this day to think about that. And he goes in, and he's like, hey, they were just making routers on their floor. I think it was in Virginia at the time. And long story short, we go to lunch, we do the business plan on the back of a placemat. He puts it in his pocket. And I was like, you want to go fishing? He's like, yeah, let's go fishing. So I go back, I hook up my 21 foot Parker. We drive to the boat ramp. I mean, this is all like literally happening. I put the boat in the water, we go fishing for three hours, we kill the fish. Like, I mean, I'm pretty good fisherman and obviously that's what I was doing. We're driving home and he says, so tell me, how much money do you have in your bank account? I said, well, I actually don't know. And he said, well, could you explain that to me why you don't know? And I said, well, we trade stocks to fund the company. And he said, what? I was like, yeah, trade stocks. Which we did, Kasey.

Wow.

And my partner and I traded stocks every day with the company money. Now, we did make websites for people and we were getting some advertising, like just mouse nuts, like a few hundred dollars at the time. He's like, okay. And I go back to driving. I'm driving on major highway, pulling a 21 foot boat, center console. So I'm paying attention. He. He's doing something. I don't know what he's doing. And I see this check come across my field of vision. And he's like, let's do this. And he wrote me a check for $50,000, which doesn't sound like a lot of money, but it's a lot of money still to this day. And it was a lot of money back in 1998 or 99, no paperwork. And he's like, you can't trade it, though. And I was like, yeah. And that's how my career got started.

And he was, as you mentioned previously, but for people that are listening now, just to reiterate. So this was someone at Sequoia.

So he had retired. He was one of the original six partners, I call him. So there was Don Valentine and Pierre, who started in like 1968. And then at that time they, they. I think they had some other quote, unquote people. But there were four associates that moved up. Sequoia is a much bigger firm. Obviously, Doug has retired, as many people who may be listening to this know. But it was Doug, Tom, Tom Stevenson and Mike Moritz were associates and all moved up together to become partners. And there's basically, at the time, it was those six people and six associates, and that was Sequoia Capital at the time. Now they had done Apple, they had done Cisco. I mean, they were the only original. They were the only outside money in Cisco ever. So you start. I mean, this is a wildly successful firm, obviously. And Tom had retired. He was still in. I don't know how much I should Say or not. I think he said this on. I did a show with him. Him and I have become like best friends. He's more like, you know, I call him my dad since over. This is 22, 23 years later. But yeah, he was an original guy like funded Yahoo. Funded Yahoo. I mean the stories that he tells of how this stuff really happened are sort of wild. But yes, that's it. That is a true story. And I mean the stories go on. The long story with that company was, was that we raised money, had a chance to sell it for like 25 million. Board said no at the time mainly because it wasn't a lot of money to them because I had, I mean I had original AOL people. I had, I mean I had some really high.

How much money did you guys raise from outside of the fifty thousand dollar check? Because I think for you know, a lot of entrepreneurs including myself, you know I. We raised a 1.5 million dollar pre seed round in 2021 for my company media kits. And I remember the first check that we got was just truly eye opening to us and like started the ball, the momentum, right. Like it gave us what we needed to keep the ball moving. And that's when Chuck's really started flowing in and we not only got more confident but we. It's not that we didn't believe in ourselves but to have that other entity, investor like believe in you as much as you believe in yourself. It instilled in us like the next level of the company. So for you, you know, you're driving in the car, he hands you a $50,000 check. What does the business look like from that point? And you guys go raise more additional capital or what was the early stages of that business?

Yeah, we raised a million bucks which back then was still a lot, a lot of money.

Oh yeah.

I drove over the Bay Bridge with nothing and rode back with 950,000. Plus the 50,000 we had. And we had a million dollar round. I think we did three. That total of that company was like three and a half. But I would say Casey, that looking back now, what I tell entrepreneurs is, and I'm saying this lovingly as an investor, we as entrepreneurs need to understand that we are investors product. So it's very important to not lose sight of that. And I say that because what has happened is that especially over many of these years, investors have convinced us that actually raising the money is the is success. I might offer a different perspective to tell you that generally they're right one in 10 times and if you're that 10%, is that good or bad? I don't know, but think about that. And second of all, it's always great to be validated, but don't lose sight that the real work just began because the real badge of honor is, do you have customers? Are they paying you to solve the problem that you say you're solving? And are you doing a good job doing it?

Yeah, I mean, absolutely.

And so it does feel good, but it's almost. It's almost Kasey. I don't know how you felt, but it's a very deceiving drug to get because the harsh reality after your, whatever celebratory thing, which I wouldn't even celebrate anymore after I raised money at all. I don't, I didn't in my last companies that I did, because that's not, that's not success.

It's. I agree. And I think it's, you know, as someone that's like younger in the business world, you know, we raised, I was 20 years old and we raised 1.5 million. And, you know, having. We had 37 angel investors. And a lot of these people were previous guests on the podcast and like, people I truly respected and, and that I have relationships with. And, you know, there's this thin line where one of my mentors that unfortunately passed away, his name is Trevor Moad, and he was the brain trainer for Russell Wilson, the quarterback in the Seahawks. And he has a quote, he says pressure is a privilege. And like leaning into a fundraise, obviously you're leaning into pressure, whether that's you're raising debt or whatever it may be. And I think as a founder, it's not only do you have that validation, but you have that, you know, good or bad pressure to not only succeed, but, you know, you have to. That's again, like, that's where the work begins. And celebrating that, I think is something that a lot of time happens you'll see on social media when it's the furthest thing from reality. And I'm sure you can relate to that for sure.

And I don't want to minimize it. Like, raising money is incredibly, as you know, especially from 37 separate herding cats, but even from a venture firm. And it is extraordinarily hard in general. It gets easier once you have some successes and failures, because. And I just want to say this for your listeners, because I don't want to come across as, I mean, I've had exits and I've been really grateful for them, but I failed like 20 times like I have a lot of scars that you don't get to see on this camera because I'm not turned around. I mean, is really, really hard. This entrepreneur thing is. I can't imagine doing anything else ever. But it's extraordinarily hard.

Absolutely. So bring us up to speed. Like the first business you raise a million dollars. And then you said that what, like what led to that first acquisition conversation and what led you to getting the company acquired? And from that, you know, what did your life look like and where were you spending time into the next venture and what was that timeline associated?

Yeah. So it's not as pretty as what you just made it. 2001, the market crashed. We got in some legal battle with an employee, which I don't want to go into. But long and short of it is between the market crashing, not being able to raise more money. We closed the company down. I bought the company back because in 2001 people were saying the Internet was going to go away. I didn't believe it. I mean, I just. I was either dumb, Casey smart or stubborn because, you know, I saw people coming online and I saw the power of it. I bought the company back from the investors within four months. We were cash flow positive. I then ran it as a side hustle. In that time, I was an original early guide, America Online. I worked for two venture capital firms managing about $500 million. I went to business school, finished my master's in psychology, which I had abandoned. I then spent some time looking at businesses and some places with some people from business school. Came back, started a software company and decided that I was going to go full time on a five year plan to sell the fishing site. And I wanted to move to California, Northern California, where I live now, here in Half Moon Bay. I didn't know Half Moon Bay. I just knew I wanted to be in the Bay Area. And I knew that without selling a company, you just can't afford a house. And my wife's family's from LA in Santa Monica area. So it was obvious to me of what I needed to do. So I came up with a plan. And my plan was to sell it, wasn't to sell it, Kasey. My plan is this. I'm going to absolutely own my market. I'm going to run such an extraordinary business and do it so well that someone's going to want to buy it to fit into their thing. Because if you build anything cool or you are cool, or you have a cool product or anything right, Everybody wants to be a Part of you have a cool car, people come talk to you about the cool car. Yeah, you don't have to like, hey, everybody, come talk to me about my cool car. No, they come talk to you about.

The cool car attraction. You don't. It's, you're attracting people to you.

Right. By being excellent or cool or whatever you want to call it. And my model worked. And in four years, public media company came, offered me a lot of money and I sold it. And on Wednesday I sold it. And on Friday I bought this house where my, I have a recording studio in my backyard is here, you know, overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Half Moon Bay. And thank, you know, I thank the good Lord for that opportunity. But that was the plan and that's how I got the exit.

Wow.

And I, I did the exit myself. Now I was a vc. The VC was at an investment banking arm, so I was exposed to investment banking. They were the third, we were the third biggest investment banking for SM mid tier technology companies in the country. So I knew how to do the transaction for the most part. I had a very good attorney. My attorney was Benedict. My attorney the whole time has actually been Mike Lincoln from Cooley. I mean, I had an excellent law firm and all these things, but did the transaction and yeah, we moved. My wife didn't even see this house. She says I'm more picky than she is. So, you know, we, we bought this house and packed up our stuff from the east coast and drove out here.

That's incredible, Brandon, just hearing that. So you, when you sold the company, you bought it back. When it comes to that first company, what were some of the lessons learned? Because it, you know, from going from like, hey, meeting the first investor, bringing them upstairs into your spare bedroom, to getting a check, to then raising a million dollars and then buying the company back, the market's crashing, the Internet's going away. Like you've, you dealt with such a unique, like business lifecycle. And I think for founders, you know, when, you know, for me, when I, my first time raising capital was 2021, the market was on fire. Right. And not to say that that led to it being more efficient, but, you know, I think about things much differently in just a quick two year period for you, like what were the, what was the key takeaway from that first venture that you were able to then build and grow from into your future endeavors?

One, do not grow too fast. So I'm trying to make the story short so we fit in your time frame, but we grew that company really fast. Meaning we covered. We went from covering the Chesapeake Bay Mid Atlantic region, really starting in Maryland, to cover the entire United States. It was a media company and it was an E commerce company. We covered the entire United States and four international destinations. That means I had content editors in every single region where we were producing content on a daily basis, providing all this stuff and what happened and what the money actually did. You know, your pressure comment is an interesting one that we probably do multiple podcasts on. But we were almost forced to grow when we should have just gone deep into the current market where there was plenty of money to be made and where ultimately. Kasey, that's what I did. When I bought it back, I decided that I was only going to focus on the Mid Atlantic. I was going to own it. I was going to be so entrenched that anybody who was thinking of a buy or build decision, it was a buy decision without question because in order to take market share away from me was hard. And I had entrenched myself so deeply that, you know, we had 500, 5,500, $500,000 basically in SEO organic traffic a month that I had designed for that site.

Wow.

According, if you believe, like Uber suggests type metrics. But we were ranked. I owned so many keywords and had so much organic traffic that we would only spend less than $50 a month in advertising.

Wow.

So I just decided, and that's going back to your question is own your market. You will be your ego, your investors, if you have them. And your just nature will say, I need to do more, I need to do more things. And all these things, you don't need to do more. You need to go deeper and own something. Patagonia owned shorts before they made other things. Like, we can go back to great companies on one great thing and be great at it before you move on. And that's really the lesson that I would offer anyone, which is growing is cool, but if you grow ahead of schedule, you risk your foundation not being solid and recovering gets harder as you get bigger.

Yeah, absolutely. That's. That's very foundational business wisdom. So moving into like more current day endeavors. Brandon, when it comes to your journey as a, as an angel investor, like, what has been that journey like for you, like, you know, to turn the table around of, from being someone that took in that first 50k check to then writing checks yourself. How, how have you thought about angel investing over the years? And you know, what do you look for in the companies that you invest in?

I think angel investing for me is Incredibly hard. I think for any operator, it can be mainly because people won't listen and not. I mean, look. I mean, I look for people who are willing to listen, and I look for people who are, you know, I think scrappy and grit and all this stuff is overused today, but did someone really think outside the box and make it happen? An example. I'll give you an example. Ally Kaminsky. She started a company called Modern Picnic. She had no idea it's a purse that's a cooler, that looks awesome, and she's got an incredible press, and she did this all not knowing how to do any of it and cutting something out of cardboard to make her first prototype. I'm looking for that. Right. And doesn't mean that that company. I mean, it's a CPG company. It's going to struggle. It's going to have a lot of different things, and is that person willing to listen. And I think the hardest part for me is sometimes watching people make mistakes and letting them do it. It's easy when I own the company and run it. Yeah. It's harder when there's money at stake. Thinking about the IRR on your investment and ROI and that you're going to have to rewrite a check to let the person make the mistake. And we're going to have to raise another round of money, which is not good for anybody unless we're using it to grow, not to recover. So I think that's the challenge for me, is I almost have started to do less angel investing and more. I'll just stand the company up myself.

Yeah, absolutely. I want to talk about podcasting. You know, we hit it off and we touched on it early in this conversation. I've had my podcast for almost six years. You have a whole network of shows that you've been building. When did you start podcasting, creating content? And I'd love to just hear for people that may not know, like, the network of shows that you have. What led you to be, you know, going all in on this realm of podcasting and content?

Yeah. And I. You've done an incredible job, Casey. Like, I was. That's why I was like, hey, this. This thing you're building on, the podcast thing is cool, but I love to be on your show. I mean, you've done an amazing job. And I think the one thing that you've done really good is you're. You're cur. You're very curious, and you've stayed with it.

I've tried to, you know, it'll be Six years in December. And for me, like, podcasting as a medium has always just been about three things. Meeting great people like yourself, learning from those people, and then like creating those business opportunities in that, that business framework where, you know, I talk about angel investors. I think it was about 90% of the investors that invested in media kits, my last company were from the podcast. Just by having the opportunity of trust to run an idea by someone that has been on your show, they know you, they like you, they trust you. It's given me that edge. And I mean, to your point, I just love it. So I would love to hear, you know, what led you to that realm of things. And of course, I appreciate the kind words.

Yeah, I actually started podcasting in 1998 and it wasn't called podcasting. It was called Brandon was writing 3,000 word phishing reports, which was easier to record an audio because I could speak freely, like in a conversation, record it, put an audio file on a flat file, HTML page on a page and let people listen to it. And it worked. In fact, I recently uncovered, I think it's 480 resolution. I was doing video. I was actually doing the podcast or videocast or whatever they call it. So I started a long time ago. And I like you, I'm a very curious person. So just like talking to people and I met like incredible. I mean, you and I met each other from really podcasting. So I got back into it after I had sold my second company and I just, I think I. I also grew up on radio. Like I do like tv, I watch movies and I love them as much as anybody. But like audio just has something for me that I really enjoy the audio. So I got back into it four years ago. I started with my show. It's had four names so far. Just. I think I probably should have just talked to you, Casey. I just renamed it the Brandon White show. And it's like, right. Way better, easier to search and a hundred things. And what I did was I really did like sharing the mistakes and information. So I just spun off niche sites. So I have a marketing podcast called marketing. Have a 401k podcast called 401k. I have a business plan called Business Plan. And basically it's very niche, very specific content that it's not going to be someone who's interested in a conversation that's interested in. Give me the information, you know, walk away from that and get it. Not listen to Brendan and Casey, you know, have a conversation. But then I wanted the Brandon White show because, like You. I just like, like meeting interesting people and I'm always curious what the real story is. So, you know, that show has had 465 episodes and I've stuck with not as long as you, but have stuck with it. And I just really like audio. I, you know, I sort of went crazy and I built this studio here. I, I really enjoy in person conversations, so.

Absolutely.

It's been great. You know, and I think, I think the opportunity for podcasting is actually like blown up because most of the people from the pandemic quit.

Yeah.

And now those of us and you like, who started even before then, just keep going, which just means there's more market for us.

Yeah. I saw a graph where it shows the number of podcasts created in 20. 20, 2021, hockey stick growth. And then 2022 dropped, I think 80% in terms of like new shows created, which I thought was just so ironic because I mean, the statistic is, you know, average podcast puts out 10 episodes and then never puts out another one. And it just felt like that zoned in on that. And it's, it's the, it's the truth. Right. So the people that stick with it in this industry, I think it's. You get rewarded by the consistency. So I love that.

Yeah. I think it's actually true in any business life. I think most people are so close to success that they quit.

Yeah. What are some like when it comes to selling? Excuse me, you've sold two businesses. I would love to dive into that. The second company, real quick. But then also just talk about building a business and getting it ready for an acquisition. Not only have you gone through this once, you've gone through it twice. And I'd love to just hear your framework. I know we talked about, like having the, the fancy car. You can get people attracted to the business, the, the great products, you name it. But what has been that business framework for you that has allowed you to not only have acquisitions, but position the business accordingly?

I think that in my. The way that I see it is you've. You need to build a business that is viable. So here's what I mean by that. Most people won't keep a binder with all of their corporate documents that they ever have had with their charters, their amendments, their annual board meetings. They'll use CARTA to manage in general. In general. I'm talking here, their cap table, their annual audit, and they'll sort of have these things, but they won't be up to date and they won't be in One place I'm not throwing stones because the first one did not have all this. Everyone subsequently has. But there is a binder in my wife's office, in the house, in the closet that has a binder from every one of our companies with all of those things, and they're all categorized. And for anybody that would show up on the doorstep today to buy anything, I have the diligence. And I mainly learned that because I was on the other side of the table and I also went through the diligence. The other thing that I'll say is to sort of unpack this, you need it to be buyable, which means you actually need your accounting done correctly. In my first one, I had three lines of revenue. I had advertising, I had membership. Actually, 33% of our revenue was recurring revenue from membership. And then we had E Commerce. If you don't have, if you have any sort of membership, any recurring SaaS business, and you do not set up your SaaS business correctly, accounting wise, you are going to get crushed on a sale. Because if you do annual sales, which I try to, you probably do too, at Listener and your other companies, and you don't have that set up in accounting correctly, a lot of people will do cash and they'll say, well, I got, let's just make it round number $120 for the year, $10 a month. And you don't account for that as a liability on the months. Every year that you're taking that off, like every month, you have liability with that. And if you don't set your accounting up correctly and I come in to buy your business, I'm basically going to absolutely crush you. That's not a buyable. It's buyable, but it's not sellable really at the moment. So now you're, you're delaying. You're causing all sorts of problems for yourself. So what I say is, and I don't think you should build a business to sell it. I think you should build a business that's great, that's viable. Yeah, going back to the car thing. But you've got to have your ducks in order. And look, it's really hard. I just started a. I invested in a mortgage, of all things, a mortgage business. And we're killing it. We're doubling every month. We're hiring. We can't hire fast enough. And three months in, I got to go back now and like, actually, it's a folder right here. I'm not. Just so you know, I'm not making it up. This is our corporate documents and everything. And it's the start of a folder that's going to have all that. And I got to recover, but I'm not going to let it go any longer. So I think you just have to have. And that's really hard for some first time founders. Kasey, like, you know, like, you're like, well, how would I even know how to do that, Brandon? Well, get a board member or get a mentor who's done it to teach you.

Yeah, absolutely. That advice is incredible. Very well said. When it comes to just your business journey as a whole. If you were to go and tell yourself a piece of advice, just all things business, fundraising, maybe hiring, you name it, what would be your foundational business advice that you want to tell your younger self?

It's really a lot of mistakes are not controllable per se, because the market, there's things in markets that we can't control that we just don't have control. So you need to control what you can control and you need to focus on what you can control. And at the heart of that is yourself. And I know that this isn't going to sound a little psychology based, but most of the mistakes that if you go back and you look at or most of the places that people go off the tracks is because of their own insecurities and their own ego. And if you are not comfortable in yourself enough to hire people who are smarter than you are, you will likely fail. And what happens is that people, because of their own insecurities, which I'm not throwing stones at, like gotta do some work hard. We all have insecurities that. But if you don't manage that, then your ego is gonna get in the way. And you are not going to allow your business to be as great as it can be because you're scared that someone's gonna know more, be more, or do more than you, and you actually need those people to be smarter than you in those categories. And this isn't a them thing, this is a you thing. You know, the them things is that they mess up and you've got to let them mess up and make mistakes and empower them. Don't treat people like employees. Treat everyone like a leader and let them be a leader. But in order to make them be a leader, you got to be as secure in yourself. So I know, I'm harping a little bit on that, but this is really about the work on you. You'd be surprised of the exponential return your business can get because of the work you did on you, especially if you have a founder like, you know this. You've had founders, right?

Absolutely. That's incredible. And so, Brandon, just. And for the sake of timing, today you have a book coming out soon. I want to give you a chance to talk about this book again and how, where's the best place that people can stay connected with you, learn more about the book and just stay up to date with everything you have going on.

Yeah. Thank you for that opportunity, Casey. You're very kind. The book is back of the napkin, two business plan, 11 slides. You can get it on Amazon. We'll put it in the show notes. The best place to stay up with me is I'm more into Twitter now. I mean, you and I found each other, but I have a personal website, just brandoncwhite.com it's where everything is and everything's linked from there. If anybody has a question, you can reach out. Like, I'm not on. I answer my own emails. I do answer them. And if you reach out, I'm always happy to help.

Love that. Well, I will make sure to link everything that you just mentioned down below. And once again, Brandon, thank you so much for coming on the show today. This has been an absolute pleasure.

Yeah, Casey, thank you so much for having me, man, this has been a blast.