Swish Goswami - Founder of Trufan, 3-Time TEDx Speaker & UN Youth Ambassador

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What'S going on, everyone?

Casey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. Today we have Swish Goswami on the show. He is a serial tech entrepreneur, CEO and founder of True Fan, which recently acquired social rank, LinkedIn, youth editor, three time TEDx speaker, and much, much more. Swish has been recognized for curating the world's first youth social capital fund and an application to fight malnutrition on college campuses. He has been awarded the United Nations Outstanding Youth Leadership Award, Startup Canada's Young Entrepreneur Award, and plan Canada's top 20 under 20. Swish has also been recognized as a top LinkedIn creator with over 100 million content views and as the face and future of Canadian entrepreneurship. That being said, Swish has also worked with previous companies such as Google, Western Union, American Express, and has helped on many, many consulting projects. Overall, I have so much respect for what Swish has built. He's 22 years old. I've been following him for quite some time now just on Instagram and we finally had the time to sit down and have a conversation. So that being said, make sure you subscribe, follow Swish on Instagram and enjoy the show.

What's going on, everyone? Kasey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. Today we have Swish Goswami here with us. He is the CEO and co founder of Trufan. Thanks so much for coming on, man.

Thank you for having me. Really, really excited.

Absolutely. So, I mean, I've been following you for quite some time now. We've been connected on social and first off, to really kick it off, I'd love for you to give the audience some insight into what TrueFan is and when you started it.

So, December 2017, after I was working with Elliot Robinson on Dunk in New York City. I came up with an idea for True Fan. The initial iteration was just a platform that could help any celebrity or any brand find who their top fans of social media are. Fast forward about two and a half years now to where we are now. We've acquired a platform in New York called Social Rank. We put that all together and pretty much built a leading audience analytics platform. So any brand, any celebrity, any influencer in the world can come on board. Our platform can slice and dice their audience, regardless of how big it is to find a market that they want to target. And on top of that, they can engage with their superfans and micro influencers that follow them.

Very cool. I'm curious, where did this idea come from? Because I absolutely love not only the company, but the concept of it and how it's filling such a void in the social space. But where did that idea come from?

Yeah, so one of the advisors that we had with Dunk, so the business I was working at before Trufan was a guy named Mark Zablo, and he was Chris Paul and Dwayne Wade's social media manager. He actually asked Elliot and I if we had a tool that Chris Paul could use to find his most engaged fans in Houston. That was about November 2017. I pondered on it for a solid month after telling him I didn't have a tool like that. And I looked around and saw that no one was building anything around grassroots communities, around people that truly move the needle for your brand. So I thought it would be awesome to build a tool like that out of an algorithm that we constructed off Twitter and Instagram.

Very cool. Very cool. So I want to take it back because I know you're bringing up how you worked with Elliot and Dunk, and I've been following Elliot for quite some time as well. So I'd love for you to just give us some insight on where you come from, how your entrepreneurial passion originated, and how you got into everything social in the first place. Sure.

So, I mean, entrepreneur was a word I really only heard when I was 18 years old. I definitely tinkered a lot when I was younger, though. I was born and raised in Singapore. Around the age of seven, I built a hovercraft with my father out of pretty much my garage and a Havocelli that we dismantled. It's a remote controlled and rechargeable helicopter. I sold that for $200. I bought a Nintendo DS, a Super Mario Bros. Expansion pack, and I was set like I literally didn't care about the Word entrepreneur, I had never heard of it. I just wanted to make money from a very young age and be independent to a degree. So I think it was around the age of 18 I went, you know, started a non profit, went to university and still I wanted to be a lawyer. I didn't think that being an entrepreneur could be a full time career. It was only, I think around second year where my grades started slipping. I didn't want to be a lawyer anymore because I realized that 80% of being a lawyer is not what is represented in the TV show Suits or the Good Wife. It is far the opposite where you have to do a lot of reading, you don't go to trial all the time. It's not that glamorous. So I dropped out and started working with a guy named Trevor Booker who runs JB Fitzgerald Venture Capital. And in the process of doing that in New York, I met Elliot. And Elliot and I actually had a brief encounter when I chatted with Gary and met him maybe in my first year of college. And he remembered me. We went out a bit and then he was like, look, I'm looking for a roommate. I think it would be awesome for us to be roommates. And so we became roommates. We lived on Wall street and I started taking an interest in what he was doing, looked at what he was doing and thought I could really help out on the business end. So I came on as a co founder for Dunk, helping out with fundraising, helping out with any of the brand deals that we were doing, and also helping out with managing a bunch of account managers that were aged 16 all the way to 25. You know, it was crazy. Just a variety of people that were managing accounts underneath the Dunk network. So I did that and that's kind of where I came up with the idea for Truthan and decided to do it full time with my co founder in Vancouver and now in Toronto.

Very cool. I'm curious just for you know, there's a lot of young people that listen to this show and how you went from working at Dunk to then creating this platform. What were your first steps when you're, when you were thinking like, okay, I really want to go all in on Trufan and I'm going to do it. Like, what were your first steps during that transition?

That's a great question. I think A was putting everything down on paper and trying to get feedback right off the bat from people that I knew were really into the social space and knew a lot about it. So I did go back to Elliot, I did go back to Mark Zablo who gave me the idea. I went back to people that I knew in my network, knew a lot about social media and had worked with a lot of tools just to see is this a new idea, is it something they'd even want to buy? And do you think it's filling a void from there? Then the next step was building out an MVP and I was very thankful to have a technical co founder. My co founder Onik, went to Stanford, studied comps and engineering. He dropped out after second year, but he's a genius in my opinion. So we were able to build out an mvp, we were able to raise money and that's kind of when we started putting a team around the idea and really trying to make it a proper business than just an idea.

Yep. Speaking of that, because I know like, even for myself, I'm, I'm starting to build out this podcast platform and I have some buddies that are looking to build some software. And you said the word MVP and I'd love for you to dive deeper in that just so the people that may not know what that means if they're looking to start a company or you know, a software, like what does that mean in your world and how would you describe that to someone that may not know that?

Sure, an MVP is a minimum viable product just from a definition. What you really need to think about it as is a prototype. So is there any way that instead of just telling an investor, a potential client, a potential partner, a potential hire, instead of just telling them what the idea is, can you show them that's what an MVP is? It doesn't have to be even functional though. Like our mvp. Our earliest MVP was built on a platform called Envision I n V I S I O N It was a mock up that was non functional, but any investor, any potential advisor could come on board, click a few buttons and see the entire user flow of what the customer would see if they logged on to Trufan. That's what you gotta do, right. If you're trying to build something other than software, the way to build out an MVP and get validation for your idea, in my opinion, is to really do a pilot. Right. If you're doing a laundry service, go door knocking, find four or five people to test the idea out with, get their feedback, and that's your mvp.

Got it? Very cool. I'm interested because like I said before, I've been following you on social first question quite some time now and that's how I've been updated on everything you're doing, and it's been fascinating to see your growth since I started following you. When did you start? Or not only when, but when did you start putting effort into documenting your journey as an individual and utilizing social media for a personal gain as well?

Totally. So I was an early adopter on LinkedIn, and what I mean by that is I think LinkedIn was maybe started 10, 15 years ago, but no one really posted for like the first few years. So I started posting as one of the first college students to regularly share content on college problems. I did that about three and a half years ago. And then I built up a pretty big community after doing offline meetups as well. So I've hosted meetups under a banner called LinkedIn Local, which me and three other partners started, and we've now done, I think, meetups in over 800 cities in the world. I personally have done over 40, and it was an amazing way for me to connect with people that were following me, that wanted to learn more from me, and I could also learn from them about their field. So I think I took an interest because I'm also just a writer in general. I'm a very social person. I love going to events. But as an entrepreneur, it's very hard for me to step outside the house every single day and attend an event for four or five hours. Right. So I wanted to find another way to connect with my community and get that instant feedback loop.

Very cool. Just regarding your acquisition of Social Rank, that's something I wanted to dive into as well, because I know you brought it up at the beginning and I wanted to circle back to it. Why did you guys decide to acquire Social Rank and what was the process that led up to that?

Totally. So it's just a crazy story, right? I mean, my co founder is 21, I'm 22, and.

I didn't even know you're 22. I thought you were like 24. No, no, no. Hell yeah.

I'm turning 23, though, in like seven days from when we recorded. But yeah, at the same time, like, you know, we joke all the time because going into the process of buying Social Rank, we had no clue what the hell we were doing. We had never bought a company before and we didn't even know what the steps were to negotiate a deal and then close it. But initially we wanted to buy Social Rank because our platform before focused on the top 20% of your audience. And that's great, but it wasn't a full picture. It wasn't a Full suite audience analytics platform. We had a number of customers that came in that said, hey, I don't only want to look at the top 20% of my audience. I would like to take a look at my entire audience and then filter it from there. That's what Social Rank does, is you can pretty much take in your entire following. It could be 25 million or 250. And you can filter it based on location, the keywords and bio, what they're posting about, are they verified or not, how many followers do they have, and find the people that fit that criteria. So we knew that if we bought them, we'd become a full suite product, we'd become way more competitive, and we thought it would be an amazing product to be able to add into our tech stack. The way that we did it, though, we accomplished the entire deal in one month, which is really short for an M and a process. We grinded our asses off, like literally working night and day to provide any documentation needed. Getting on calls with Alex, he's the founder of Social Rank, to negotiate a price that we both thought was fair. Then working with lawyers. We had a law firm in Toronto called Osler that managed the entire deal and trying to make sure that they were staying on track with the schedule that we put out initially. So it was a crazy effort. I mean, we still have a lot of customers that came on after in December and January that had to be converted. But it was an amazing process just to be able to learn that.

That's so cool. I think it's fascinating because it's like, right, I'm 19, you're 22, and a lot of people that may be listening or that, you know, are in that age bracket, it's like, okay, they're looking to start a company and you're out here looking to acquire companies. I just think it's so cool to see, you know, how you position yourself and how you became so successful and what you do it at your age. And I'm curious just regarding, like, Instagram and how the API works. Like, for example, when you have a software that's scraping that data, like, if someone's looking to build an analytics platform to, you know, with Instagram analytics, how does one do that in the right way? Because I know there's been, you know, conversations where Instagram doesn't allow this or that, just what is the correct way to do it? Based on your experience, for someone that, you know, may be looking to solve a problem that they see that isn't out there yet, what's your advice?

Yeah. So what we're really proud about is with truefan, everything we built is very much within terms of service. We don't operate anything illegally, which is great. The two things that we've kept in mind to be able to stay in the safe zone is, number one, only using public data. Never. Never. Like, even on our platform, if there's an account that's private, you're not going to be able to get any information about them. We only operate on data that's public, so if you have a public profile, we can scrape that data and we're able to input that into our platform. The second thing is we do actually use the Graph API that Instagram offers. We've built out a distributed computing system, though, which has a bunch of scrapers attached to it so that they can all work concurrently and can fit the terms of service in terms of how many API polls we're able to make per hour. So it's amazing to be able to build out a system like that. I don't think it's actually been done on a bigger scale yet, but it's something that gives us a big competitive advantage.

Regarding. I know you have that on your Instagram. I'd love to give some insight into how you're associated with plan.

Sorry, I couldn't catch that.

Hey, can you hear me?

Yeah, you kind of broke up, but sorry about that. No worries.

Yep. So I was saying I wanted to sort of switch gears here and say you talk a lot about Faze Clan and I know that's a brand that a lot of people know and you represent it. I'd love for you to touch on how you're associated with that because A, I'm curious, but B, I know people listening for sure know what Faze Clan is.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So my co founder, Anik and I, our biggest investor to date has been a VC called Round 13 Capital, their $185 million fund in Toronto, started by a guy called Bruce Croxton, who's very well known in the Canadian tech scene. And after we raised money from him, we actually started working out of their office initially. And one of the deals that they were looking at was Faze Clan. They had no clue what esports was about, though. And my co founder is very, very knowledgeable about the space. He actually really got me into Call of Duty. Both of us played Black Ops 4 to a very high level. He was top 2% in the world, I was top 15% in the world. Like, we played a lot of Call of Duty and he was very knowledgeable about the space, the leagues, how everything is set up. So he gave a lecture to round 13 capital about it. They decided to pass on investing, but that was where Anik and I both asked, you know, the head of round 13, can we potentially put money in personally? So they sent our profiles to Greg, who's the president of Faze. He liked our profiles and he said, let's do it. So we were able to put some money into Faze Clan, become an investor. And it's been amazing. Right. Like, obviously we're not in la, so we don't get to go to every event that they're hosting, but their brand is just incredible and it's going global. I think they have absolutely out in Toronto as well. And it's been amazing to see how esports is getting way bigger and how they're kind of at the precipice of it.

Very cool. I didn't know how deep you were into the esports world. So you used to play competitive esports? Is that what you said?

Yeah. So Anik and I used to play, like, ranked matches. Onyx is way better than me, though. Like, he actually gave money on Black Ops 3, four or five years ago, him and one of our employees, actually, Jay, they used to be really, really good at the game. But, you know, obviously right now, with work and everything, it's hard for us to take time out to play every single day. But anytime we get a chance to play Modern Warfare or Fortnite, we do it.

That's so tight. I did not know that. I sort of. I want to touch on something that's super important, especially right now. And I know that you guys are doing a lot in this space, but just, you know, Coronavirus COVID 19. How has it affected not only your business, but. But what are you guys doing to be a catalyst of change that I know you guys are doing so well?

Yeah. So, first of all, in terms of the business side, thankfully we haven't been affected that much. I think people are all at home, they're all using social media. If anything, brands actually are starting to try to figure out how to do digital activations more than physical activations now. So usage of our platform has actually gone up. Enterprise sales have kind of slowed down because I know a lot of budgets are being reshuffled and people are being laid off, but we're hoping that budgets are going to be more set past May. But in terms of how we're responding to all of this, both Anik and I We have a big passion for small business. We're also a startup. We understand what small business owners might be going through during this time. So we decided to put together a response where we integrated our platform with hootsuite, one of the biggest social media management platforms in the world, so that over 1 million small businesses that use Hootsuite can gain access to our platform for free. We also have a 45 day free access to any small business in the world that has underneath 25,000 followers. We rolled that out a few days ago. I think we're at a 250smb signed up now, which is amazing. We're also putting together a virtual event on April 14, my birthday, where we have a couple of good speakers that are going to be talking about how small business owners and entrepreneurs can navigate this whole situation. So we're trying to come off, you know, as helpful as we can be during this time. We know it's a really rough period for a lot of people and I think we're just trying to do a small part.

Totally. Very cool. How is it affecting just personal life as well? Are you, Is it bad up there in Canada or how does that look?

Yeah, I mean, look, Canada and the US are actually very similar. I think the issue with our systems right now is testing has not been implemented on a wide level yet. So we're both kind of following a similar trajectory in the sense of cases are only going up, especially in the province that I live in, in Toronto. We live in a province called Ontario. I mean, cases have been going up drastically. So it sucks from that perspective. In terms of my personal life though, I'm very content staying at home and working from home. I have a good schedule in terms of taking meetings, being very focused at work, but then also disconnecting, reading, writing, talking to my friends via Zoom or playing video games. So it hasn't hurt me too bad. But again, like, I do feel for some of my employees, for example, who are married or who recently moved to Canada. I bet it's really tough for them right now with, you know, staying at home and dealing with not just work, but now dealing with all of these other problems.

Totally, man. Crazy what's happening in the world, man. But I do want to just dive into the subject of raising. I know a lot of entrepreneurs who, you know, they're looking to raise their first seed round or to get a investment from a VC fund. Like what is your experience with raising money and what do you suggest people do? Especially, you know, you're 22, you're killing it. If someone's in that age bracket, they may say, hey, how am I going to compete with all these other people that are looking to raise money for their product? What's your advice there?

Totally. I mean, look like, I think first of all, don't view your age as a limitation. I know that one of the people yet you recently interviewed was Akash Negam. And Akash is a good friend and he's someone I've looked up to for some time as well. And like, they've raised so much money off just having a great idea and being persistent. Right. They've been working at that idea for years now and they've iterated on that idea. So don't see your age as a limitation. I think the biggest thing is twofold. One, make sure that you don't think that you have to raise from only one or two people. If you're raising a million dollars, you could raise that off 20 people. For our initial 500,000 that we raised, we raised it from 22 people. We brought 22 investors into our company. All of them really liked us, all of them very much trusted us, and none of them took a board seat in the company. But the best part of doing that is I was able to go to my network and not ask them for $500,000 or a million dollars. I was asking for $10,000, $25,000 to people that I knew were high net worth that were able to take a look at that company, take a look at me and be like, this is an investment that I think is really small, but it could pay out really well. So that's number one, is be strategic about how you raise. The second thing is be prepared. You should only raise when you absolutely need to. Which means if you go and build an MVP before you raise, do it. Build a prototype and get some early customer feedback. If you can even get some sales, that would be amazing. Because the best thing you want to do is come through that door, tell an investor that not only here's my idea, but not only that, here's what I've done with that idea up till now. I've built out a team. I've built out the mvp. I've gotten five orders and I'm ready to go. So just be prepared, try to do as much as you can and only raise when you really, really have to. Like really try to bootstrap initially.

Totally. I love that. So you guys went to 22 different people and were able to raise half a million dollars in such A creative way. Right. And I think that's very important. Just that lesson in and of itself is, you know, there are many options to choose from. So that's super dope. I did not know that totally.

And then the way that I met many of those people. And I think you really resonated with this, Casey, because I think you do it at a very, very high level is I interview people. You know, like when I was a college student, I wrote a LinkedIn series called Unconventional where I went to high net worth people, whether they were in sports or business or fashion, whatever it was, whoever I thought had an interesting story, I reached out to them, I interviewed them, and I built a relationship off the foundation. I'm not taking time away from them, but giving them something of value upfront. Right. And that changes everything. Like, you will stand out if you interview people, bring them onto a podcast, whatever it is, than just asking them for coffee, which is what they normally hear all the time.

You say that exactly how I think about it, man. I did not know that. So you used to do a bunch of interviews for LinkedIn and you started doing that in college?

In college.

I resonated with that heavily just in terms of, like, my strategy of connecting with people and, you know, building out this. This network. So when I do need to raise half a million dollars. Million dollars, that there's access people right at the, you know, right at your fingertips.

Exactly.

Very cool. Are you still. Are you still doing that in terms of interviewing at all or. When did that stop? When did that start exactly?

Yeah. So I interviewed people as part of the LinkedIn Campus Editor program in my first and second year of college, and then in the first year of building True Fan. I didn't. I didn't interview people anymore, but now I actually have a podcast called the Tech House and it's run by a company called Origins Media House. They do pretty much everything. All I really do is show up and interview the person. But they're an incredible team of three girls that have set everything up and done a great job there. But we also have a company podcast called Fans first that one of our chief growth officers manages. And, you know, I just find it so valuable. You know, it's the number one way to work is being able to do something like that.

Super cool. I'm curious about you said company podcast and I talk to a lot of business owners and I even, you know, I'll pitch them the idea of, hey, like, why doesn't your brand have a podcast? Where do you think the importance of that is right now in the 2020 landscape of podcasting.

Yeah, I think twofold. I mean, one is thought leadership, quite honestly. Like, I want truefan not just to be a company that has a great platform, but I want it to be regarded as it's ahead of the curve when it comes to thinking about social media and where it's going. And to do this, to do the second part, we're putting out articles, we're putting out as much content, trying to interview people that are. Are moving the needle in marketing and trying to get their thoughts and share that and be pretty much the facilitator of that sort of content. So I think, number one, thought leadership and the number two, relationships. Right. Like, in the world that we live in, like, regardless of people listen to podcasts or not, the fact of the matter is that 99% of people in the world, in my opinion, love talking about themselves. I am exhibit A. So I just think that if you're able to play to that and if you're able to go to people, by the way, that aren't in the spotlight, but they are doing incredible things and they have an awesome story, I think it's the best way to meet them is by asking them, can I interview you? You're far more likely to get a response. Even if it's a no, you're likely to get a response rather than asking them for coffee and not getting a response whatsoever.

Love that. How do you believe networking played a role in your life at an early age to get to where you are?

It still plays a big role. But I mean, everything I've done, right from the book that I'm going to be releasing next year, to speaking and being signed to a bureau, to truefan, and everything that I've done there with raising money and building a team and hiring people, everything comes back to the people. I know it is a cliche, the whole your net worth is your network, but it absolutely is true. At least in my case. I don't think I could have done anything if I didn't have the right people around me.

Love it. And what advice would you give to someone that you know, whether that's they're in college or they're graduating high school and they don't have that network, they don't have that social media presence now, where you. Where would you point them in terms of direction? Totally.

I mean, twofold. One is please, please, please make sure to start a podcast of some kind. Like, literally, you know, my early days of creating a podcast, which I Abandoned after three episodes because I realized I was a much better writer. And that's actually how I started getting into writing articles for LinkedIn. I did it off GarageBand. Like, I literally recorded off GarageBand and then exported onto SoundCloud. So you don't have to be glamorous in terms of getting it onto Apple or like getting it onto Spotify, right initially off the bat, take the ground steps just to be able to go get some cool guests on board and then build up the podcast from there, get some good mics, maybe go and do in person recordings and virtual recordings. Right? You want to be able to work your way up in a gradual way. And then secondly, I think as much as possible, try to not rush yourself. You know, Like, I think the big thing that I did that I kind of regret is I went through college thinking, this is a waste of time, this is a waste of time, this is a waste of time. And I still do think that for many people, college is a waste of time. But that being said, I wish that the perspective that I had was, these are the years that you're never going to get back. I'm never going to be 19 again. I'm never going to be 20 again. I'm not going to be 21 again. And thankfully, I think I realized that when I was 22. I'd be very scared if I realized that, holy crap, my youth is gone when I was 30. But, like, I'm 22 right now and I'm trying as much as possible to work hard, but also realize that there's certain things that I can enjoy right now that I won't be able to enjoy later on. Like when I'm 30, 35 and have a family, a mortgage, a home, a car, like, responsibilities go off the roof, there's things that I'm not going to be able to do that I can do now that I would place an emphasis on if I was coming out of high school.

Love that, man. What was your college experience like? Just like, walk me through, you know, from high school to going to college. Because, like, you know, that was such a pinnacle part of your journey to lead you to where you are now. Like, walk us through, you know, when you were in high school, what were your goals, ambitions, moving into your career?

Yeah, I mean, in high school I debated a lot. So I debated for Team Canada in grade 11 and 12, went to two world competitions. And normally if you debate at a high level, you either want to be a politician or a lawyer. I knew that politics was something I want to do later on in life. I still actually want to be a politician later on in life. I don't know when, but it's something I'm very interested in. But that being said, I came out of high school thinking, all right, law school. You know, my brother's a lawyer, by the way. He's a genius, in my opinion. He's right now clerking for the Supreme Court. He is someone that even if I tried to be 1% of the lawyer he was, it'd be impossible, in my opinion. So I already went in pretty demoralized. But that being said, like, I went into first and second year of university and I loved college for everything it taught me in terms of being independent, learning how to cook, learning how to do my laundry, living on my own, the relationships that I had, the people that I met. That was amazing, right? The social aspect of college was phenomenal. What I didn't like as much were the courses I was taking. And maybe that's my fault for picking the wrong courses, but I just felt like I was being confined to a textbook. I didn't feel like we were learning a lot about the applications of theory and I wasn't taking any of the ideas I was taking. I was learning and actually acting on them, which I'm used to doing. Growing up, right, I was a tinkerer. I loved taking ideas and just tinkering with it. So in second year, I remember only going to about five classes and in the entire year, and I think like three of those were during the first week of orientation or something. So, like, I didn't go to that many classes in second year.

That's so epic, man. I have, like two more questions, man. One being, you brought up speaking and speaking bureau, and I know that just with the landscape of 2020 and how events are getting canceled and, you know, MBA is canceled, all this crazy stuff. Where do you see the speaking landscape going regarding, you know, our conferences are going to be digital. Are they going to try to move forward and do them, you know, later in the year? And just regarding that, being a part of a speaker, Burrell, what insight do you have there in terms of how they are looking at the industry?

Yeah, I think, you know, you nailed it. I think events are going to go more digital. I don't see a problem with that. You know, I was actually a part of an event two weeks ago called Tech Toronto and they invited 1750 people out to a digital event that happened on a software called Hopin H O P I N And it was phenomenal like there were networking rooms that were dedicated where if you wanted to network with someone, you click a button, they'd match you with someone, and then if you wanted to unmatch with them, you could then go to another person. Like, it was fucking awesome. So, like, you know, I think software like that is obviously going to come up. Zoom is great. So I think digital events are going to be where speakers need to focus on. And that's also where you have to start to be more engaging than just having a good slideshow. You have to have personality, you have to be patient. You have to try as much as possible to listen to your audience and ask them, do you have questions every 10 or 15 minutes? Because it's all virtual, it's not in person. In terms of a speaker's bureau, I've been part of two now. I think the issue that I have with a lot of speakers these days is I feel like there's a perception that if I'm an entrepreneur, I can automatically be a speaker, and that's just not true. The reason I became a speaker is because I have a background in debate. You know, I actually have a lisp. So like, vocally I'm not the most. Like I'm not Ariana fucking Grande, right? Like I'm not. But like, I do have great ideas which I speak about because I actually have done those things, right. I don't speak on things that I haven't done. So I think the first thing is try as much as possible to figure out what have I done that I can speak really well to. And don't try to speak on things that you're just dabbling in, right? Like if I just started putting money into Bitcoin, I'm not going to like a week later speak on Bitcoin because I'm going to get absolutely flamed on stage, in my opinion. The second thing is, you know, a bureau is only really important. I think if you're making more than $5,000 per speech, like, you know, you don't need a bureau early on. Like, they already take 20% commission if you're charging 500, 1000, 2000, whatever it is, it's not worth having a bureau. But pass the 5,000 to the 10,000 mark. You want a bureau because you hopefully want to focus on your full time job, which might not be speaking. So for me, I like having a bureau because they'll book my flights, they'll book my hotel, they'll negotiate the price with the client, and all I really have to do is Just show up and speak. Right. And that's the benefit of having a bureau. But if I was a full time speaker, I probably wouldn't want to have a speaker's bureau because there is that 20, 25% commission you have to give.

Yep, got it. Very cool. Just last question to wrap it up man. Just, you know, throughout your journey, what advice would you give to your 18 year old self over the last couple of years with the, you know, the amount of growth that you've had?

I mean, number one, don't sweat the small stuff. Similar to what I said before. I used to be a very tense kid. I used to think about my future pretty much every day. I used to try to find clarity on my future and try to go to extremes to do that. I think life is fun when it's a mystery to a degree. Like I don't want to know what I'm going to be doing when I'm 25. I actually hate the question like what do you want to do in the next five years? It's like shut up. I don't want to know what I'm going to do when I'm 25 or 30 or 35. I have general ideas of what I'd like to be doing, but I feel like life is just so much more fun when opportunities come your way and you just ride the wave and there's a mystery associated to it. I think the second thing is try as much as possible to find things that you like and that you don't like. And what I mean by that is I think the biggest myth in the world is that you will have only one passion in your life. When people say finding your passion, it's wrong. It should be finding your passions with an S at the end. So your passions are going to be in multiple ways, they're going to change over time. So don't rush yourself to find the one thing that you think you have to do for the rest of your life. I think I am in exhibit A on building a multi hyphenate career where I can be an entrepreneur but I can also be a speaker and an author and an investor and I can build a company around the ideas that I'm really interested in being social media, entertainment, marketing. So that's what you really should do is figure out those patterns and see if there's a way to build an opportunity around them.

Love it, love it man. Well, I appreciate the time and insight today, man. Where is the best place that everyone can learn more about what you have going on and, you know, just stay updated with everything.

Totally. With Instagram and Twitter. For me, that would be G O S W I S H Goswish. And then with Trufan, you can go on to our website, Trufan IO Trufan IO and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out. I'm fairly approachable.

Perfect. Well, my man, I really appreciate you coming on today. It's long overdue. You know, we've been on social connected for quite some time now. So I definitely appreciate you hopping on the podcast during this, you know, this crazy time and giving us your.

No worries and just keep crushing it. I love the podcast you put out and just the content you share on Instagram is super inspiring.

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