Ep. 95 | The Yay Life: Tech Powered Referrals and Living Our Best Lives Through Authentic Connections with Trey Roth

Today's show is sponsored by Money Insights and their investment optimizer strategy. In my book, I share how I use the same strategy starting over a decade ago to invest my money in two places at one time. This strategy has been used by the wealthiest for generations for estate planning, minimizing taxes, preserving wealth and increasing stability for their investments. Now you can do the same thing. In addition, you can build a plan to build an emergency fund, pay for college fund, a business plan for retirement plan, and ultimately optimize your total financial picture. To find out more information, check us out at the banking link@nextlevelincome.com on today's show, we have Trey Roth. Trey is a lifelong serial entrepreneur, a platinum selling songwriter, music producer, avid learner and a hard worker. He's an experienced CEO with a demonstrated history of working in marketing technology, a skilled leader with a heart for growing people and businesses. Trey is the founder of yeastack, which you're going to hear about today. It's a social network for authentication, authentic referrals and recommendations from your friends. Trey's married to his elementary school sweetheart, Ashley. He's also the father of four and he is going to bring the yay to this amazing episode.

Welcome to the Next Level Income show where it's our goal to raise your income, investments and life to the next level with your host, Chris Larson. Get your free copy of his book@nextlevelincome.com book also, if you're an accredited investor, check out the Invest link to learn how to gain access to institutional quality real estate opportunities.

Trey, welcome to the show.

Hello. Hello, Chris. How are you?

Dude, I am awesome. And I have. I have a surprise for you. I'm going to. I'm going to put on my favorite hat.

Yes. This is awesome. Oh, my goodness. I love it.

Some people have seen, some people see me wearing this every now and then. I will tell you. This is. We have to tell the story about how we met Trey. So Trey, Trey and I were in a meeting here in Asheville, North Carolina, and we showed up somehow. We showed up like what, an hour early to the meeting?

Something like that.

Yeah. We're sitting there in the hotel lobby and I look across and I see this. This handsome gentleman here in this hat that says yay on it. And I was like, that is a great hat. So Trey and I sat down, had a cup of coffee and started talking. And on the side of the hat, you can see the name of his company, yeastack. But what I will tell you is every time I wear this Hat. I get smiles, I get thumbs up. It improves the mood of the room. And I can't wait for you to share your story about what this hat's all about, what your company's all about, Trey. But before we do that, give us a little bit more insight, a little bit of background into who Trey Roth is.

Oh, man. How far back are we going to. I don't know, maybe.

Maybe to when you met your elementary school sweetheart like we talk about.

Okay. Yes.

In your intro.

Yes, I can totally do that. I was going to go all the way back to the womb with my. My twin brother. I have a twin brother. And so there's a lot of. Yeah, yes. So. But scooting forward a bit to elementary school, my dad was an air traffic controller, Chris. And we moved to Newtown, this little kid new town, and go to a playground. I see a girl. And truly the clouds part. The sun shines through. I'm like, who is this person? I fall madly in love. She does not. Because I am short, I am overweight, I have got a mud. I have got terrible teeth just all over the place. Kids made fun of me because my teeth were so super crooked. And so I just would try to be in a bad mood and be tempted to smile because I was so self conscious. I had layers of insecurity. But I had this crush on this girl, Truly. Like just heels. 4th grade, 5th grade, 6th grade, 7th grade, same crush, same girl. So I decide, finally, at 13 years old, it's 8th grade. I decided to do something about it. So I go running every night from midnight to 2:00am down our subdivision.

Midnight to 2:00am oh, yeah. And did your parents know you were leaving the house?

They did. That's. I get that question. Yeah, like they did. They were like, yeah, go for it, whatever. And I just didn't want people to see me. But I just started running, Truly. Every night I would have like a decent breakfast. I'd have, you know, kind of a full lunch. And then I'd have like maybe soup or a salad or something for dinner. And I would try to go to bed with like the, you know, as the stomach as possible. But then I would run a long time every night, like midnight, 2am every night of eighth grade. I lost a ton of weight, had a spurt, grew like a foot taller, kind of stretched out. Read how to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Totally changed my life in middle school. Oh, yeah. This was. This was eighth grade. And. Yeah. Well, I was also like super entrepreneurial. So, like I was mowing. People grass and listening to how to win friends and influence people. And I just like. And I just remember it just totally rocking my world, you know, it was the first, like, personal development information I'd ever been exposed to. And. And then. And it has a whole chapter on smiling. So I get braces. You know, my straighten up, I start smiling, start building some confidence. And finally it is, you know, the beginning of ninth grade, the beginning of high school. I'm 14, she's 15. Same same girl. I finally build up the confidence, Chris to ask her out. And she says yes. And then we date for 10 and a half years to the day of our wedding. And now we're celebrating 15 years of marriage, and we have four beautiful children. So love it. Seemingly impossible dreams do become reality all the time. Everybody that can hear the sound of my voice right now, you have a dream. And sometimes it really seems impossible. But let me be a reminder that seemingly impossible dreams do become reality. Now, sometimes you go through seasons of working your butt off or running your butt off, you know, from midnight to 2am you might be in a season where I don't see all the hard work. They don't understand your dream. You know, they weren't given that dream. You know, you were, and you're working hard for it. So I just want to be a little reminder that seemingly impossible dreams do become reality all the time. And why not yours? You know, why not yours? And even and I were talking before we started rolling, we were talking about, you know, a dream that he wrote down when he was younger because we're talking about Tony Robbins. And he showed I was. Yeah, younger. I wrote this down, and now it's my reality. And it's like, it's just amazing how that happened. So I just want to encourage everybody. Goodness, that seemingly impossible dream. And you might have to turn on, you know, journey. Don't stop believing and take it literally.

Tell me you were listening to each other.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I may have been listening to that one. But, you know, just, I wanted to start there because that. That also, Chris, really set up everything else in my entrepreneurial career. Like, I learned. I was like, oh, wait, you can dream and then work hard and not only make it your reality, but, Chris, in many ways, truly, it is the truth. My. My reality today in my 30s, is beyond what I dreamed. It is truly, like, if I show elementary school, Trey, middle school, Trey, high school Trey, this is your reality. I mean, he would just. He'd say, that's beyond my dreams. So I'm super humbled and grateful we.

Could, we could stop the episode here and be the. It'd be the shortest podcast we've done and there's so much in that story, inspirationally and otherwise. So maybe we'll just stop there and we'll bring you back for another episode.

Well, I have to share too. What's, what's rising to the surface. Chris heard it said from a guy who's, you know, he's got a net worth of like, I don't know, 40 or 50 million. And he's just a solid entrepreneur. Yeah, he's doing. But he stood up and he was sharing with us in our GoBundance Champions tribe, like maybe this is two years ago. And he, he said a younger version of ourselves is experiencing every moment as an adult with us. So, like, for example, Chris, whenever you wrote down your dream in that journal, that goal, that version of Chris, however, when you wrote it, is experiencing this reality, this present moment here. So I say that to say even the elementary school and middle school and high school version of Trey is experiencing this present moment right now. And what it does just fuels me with gratitude where it's like, man, if only the younger version of myself can see this, then this 30 something year old Trey, I'll be 37 next week. Happy birthday. Thank you. This 37 year old trait it. If only the hopefully 57 year old or 67 year old Trey can see this one. You just hang on, it's just getting better. That fuels me with joy as well.

Oh, no. So you're kind of going a different direction here. But I see your Tony Robbins hat and that's what spurred this conversation. So back in, this was September 2003, I was 25 years old and I went through his personal power and get the Edge program. And what Trey and I were talking about was I actually wrote down, I kind of just unbridled wrote stuff down in this journal. And it was amazing. When my wife and I moved into our new house here about a year and a half ago, I found the journal and there were things that had happened. I hadn't opened the journal in like 10 years and things had happened almost to the day, like, almost like to the year, you know, earnings, you know, things that popped into my life, experiences that I had. Just amazing things that you put in your brain. I know a lot of people, Trey, you know, they hear, they hear like the book, the Secret, right? And people are like, oh, you know, you can't just like think of this stuff. And I know we were talking about think and grow rich before here. And this is why I like Tony Robbins. I know some people are critical of him, but I think he's done some amazing things. Especially, like, I just read Lifeforce, which is a fantastic book. Really kind of expands your mind into what's capable or what is possible now in the realm of health. But setting that aside, Tony says something. He says, take massive action. So I think what you said, Trey, like, you have this picture in your mind. You have this dream of what's possible, but then the key. Exactly what you did, you took massive action. 2am, 12am to 2am every day. Can you speak a little bit about your experience and Tony's program and some of the things that you've employed to really bring you to where you are today, from that dream to this reality?

Absolutely. I so appreciate you asking, Chris. And it does go hand in hand with the theme of next level. Everybody listening to this. We all want to go to the next level. You know that. And how do we. How do we get there, you know, faster and more effectively and smarter and not harder. And maybe like a friend of mine who sold his company recently for, well, as one company for a hundred million, and then he just finished selling another company for 250 million. So he did pretty well with that. But incredible.

Pretty well.

He says. He doesn't. He doesn't say smarter, not harder. He says smarter and harder and harder.

Yeah, that's where it works. Yeah, that's right. I just posted something today. It was, you know, outwork. You know, outwork everybody. But you got to outsmart and outwork everybody. That's what you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So every, you know, here, we're going to the next level. Something that has absolutely helped me is this Tony Robbins platinum partnership, of which I was thinking nothing, nothing, Chris. When a friend of mine invited me to upw, unleash the Power within, which is Tony's big, you know, annual event in November. So this past November, I was there at the beginning of the conference. There's 9,000 people. I see the platinum partnership, you know, desk, and I think, wow, well, that looks like a lot of fun for another season of life. Far less than this one. That was the last I thought of it. Well, fast forward a few days. It's the end of the event, and Tony's about to let all 9,000 people up. And of course, like, 9,000 people in a room. Trey Roth is probably off somewhere else in the hallway. So I was back in the back hallway, and there was almost Nobody in there except for this one young lady that was passing me. I didn't know who she was, but I was complimentary and I just said, oh, I like your black jacket, your black T shirt, your black distressed jeans and your white tennis shoes. Now at this point, Chris, we were past each other, we weren't sticking around. I didn't know who this was, but I was just complimenting her. And then. But when I got to the white tennis shoes, that's when I turned around and I said, we're wearing the same outfit down to the shoes. Who are you? And she said, my name is Danny D A N I. I said, are you the Danny that all my friends are telling me to talk to? And she said, are you the Trey all my friends are telling me I need to talk to? And I said, well, let's talk. So we talked a bit about what we were doing at Yeastack. And she said, you have to meet my boss. At which point, like eerily serendipitously, her boss walking up to us, who's Tony's chief marketing officer. So I'm talking to her and telling her about Yeastack. You know, it's a positive platform. All yays, no nays, referrals and recommendations only. It's the best finds for your best friends. You know, I'm telling her about all about this and then she takes my shoulder and she walks me up to platinum partner table and she said, you belong here and you need to sign up right now. So I bought an $85,000 hat. I signed up for the year.

I was going to say I thought it was 75. Obviously inflation just even hit Tony Robbins as well. So it's a good looking hat.

85 is where it starts. I mean, you know, I've never bought an 85,000.

It's not as. I got my hat for free, actually, it might have cost me something. But anyway.

That'S hilarious.

Mine's a pretty good looking too. I had to, I had to sell.

I love it.

Give it to me a little bit. But.

So that's hilarious. That's great. I love, I love the hat. And it's funny because again, like I just got off a call with the Platts and so I should have. Yeah, so I, I should have swapped hats here before this call. But anyway, I got you.

I got you, buddy. I got you.

And I so appreciate you representing. So. Yes. So that's, that's how I signed up. Right then. Date with destiny happened. Then Financial Chris a couple of weeks ago was Wealth Mastery Financial Mastery with Tony Robbins in West Palm Beach. And we're listening to, you know, amazing people like Ray Dalio and Gary and just all these people talking about wealth mastery. And then we're also literally, like driving race cars 150 miles an hour on a track. And then. All right, I'm sign up swimming cage free in the middle of the ocean with sharks. Like swimming with the sharks, cage free. They've just been well fed like it was.

I hope so.

I know. I was like, what if, what if Trey Roth's blood is a little sweeter? Like, what. You know, what, you know, what kind of risk is. Is really, you know. Anyway, it turned out it was totally fine, but that I'll never forget. I will never forget swimming with the sharks and, you know, and learning all of it was truly, Chris, one of the best weeks of my life. And I did not expect for that to be the case, but it certainly helped me level up in regards to wealth mastery. But also just having the emotion series, memory, the emotions that you experience, the range of the emotions mixed with the motley array of teaching, the caliber and the quality of teaching. Like, I leveled up. It's so much in first, you know, quarter of the year with Tony Robbins and platinum partners unforeseen. So my, my. In my experience, here's the. Sometimes you just need to say yes to an $85,000 hat. Like, opportunity doesn't check your calendar or your bank account before it knocks, knocks. And I've learned, Chris, to say yes like, it wasn't like a. Let me think about it. Let me. I just knew. 1. I just knew it was just divinely led, overtly meant to be moment. And I've learned I actually knew. Also my intuition was it is far more costly to say no in this moment than to say yes. Far more costly. I've learned so much. So that didn't think about it like I was. I was.

I don't know if I could think about that too long myself, I'd have to. But I'll tell you, you know, people are stunned when I tell them how much I spent on coaching and masterminds in an annual basis. But it's come like the one I, the one I joined this fall. I mean, it's. It's already produced a multiple in terms of return and same thing. I said yes immediately. It's just amazing.

Yeah. And Chris, this. This is one of many, like, it's 85 just to get in for the year, but then it's another like 30k for travel and whatnot but then that's not the only group I'm in. Like, I was already maxed out with groups I'm a part of. Jesse Itzler, his. His inner circle, the elite 365. I mean, that was 25k transparently here. And, you know, go Bundance 15k. And then the founders group and some others. And I'm just like. I mean, I'm already grouped out. Like, I literally could have been freezing in an igloo with Jesse during Financial Mastery.

But you're in West Palm beach instead, I think.

Yes. Yeah. So I don't know.

I don't know what you would go for.

I would.

I think that'd be pretty cool. But now Jesse, I don't know. I don't know if everybody knows it. That's listening. David Goggins. Like, this guy lived with David Goggins for like a month, right? Like, if you don't know who David Goggins is, go look him up. So, and then. And watch some of his videos. And then picture. Picture yourself living with Goggins for a month. And that's. That's Jesse Itzler. That guy's. That guy's amazing. Him and Sarah, his wife, who founded Spanx, which again, if you're listening, you don't know, in an event down in Florida a couple years ago. And they're just. They're just amazing. Well, man, we haven't even gotten to like talking about what you're up to now, Trey, and you have a long entrepreneurial career. You're a music producer. But let's fast forward a little bit here. So let's talk about what Yeastack is. I was just in Costa Rica with my wife two weeks ago, and I was telling some. I had the hat was telling somebody about the platform, what it is. So first off, share with people what the app is, what the platform is, and then your story about how you created it 100%.

So thank you for asking, Chris. Yeastack is a positive platform for referral recommendations only. It's the best finds from your best friends. So basically, you can search for anything. And what you don't get are a bunch of ads from strangers on Yelp, strangers on Amazon reviews, strangers on Google reviews. What you do get, rather, are the best finds from your best friends. You basically can search for what it. Like the app is very simple, actually. It's broken in three parts at the top.

So it's just yay stack. Just Y A yay stack, T A.

C, K. Yeah, it's haystack or The Y. So think, you know, like, finding yeastack is like finding a needle in a haystack, but it's yeastack. It's all yays, no nays. It was great because we went through branding, Chris, and they came up with Matchstick, by the way, matchstick.com without the K at the end, so ends in a c. Matchstick.com. if you're looking for branding, they're the ones. Now, they are pricey, but they are absolutely worth it. But please, you know, talk to. Talk to Blake. Matchstick, they're awesome. They put. They threw 300 names against the wall. The A stack rose to the top of the stack. And. And, you know, because it basically said what we did and it was trademarkable and all this. So, yeah, we love the name and we love that. Yay is like, man, our brand. It's our ethos. It's our mantra. It's our everything. It's like our. My kids, when we send them off to school, Chris, we say, look, find a way to be a yay in someone's day today. Find a way to be yay in someone's day today. My son even, like, made this little, like, logo where it says yay, and it looks like hieroglyphics, but it says, you know, and a way to be in someone's day to day.

Oh, that's so good.

Like, don't be a me monster. And truly, instead of looking inward, hey, Chris, can you do something for me? Can you do something for me? It's like, no, Chris, I shall pass this way. But once, like, what can I do to help? What can I do to be of service value? Albert Einstein was asked, what's the meaning of life? His answer was, serve. I think that's a great answer. That's right.

Yeah. That's what we tell our kids. If you want to make money, help people, like, just help. Focus on helping people and bringing value. And I know you're a big believer.

In that too, 100%. Like, the, like, Yeastack was born out of a strong desire to create more value for more people. I loved what I was doing, Chris, which this goes into the story behind it. I was producing music. I was making music with my friends. My friends got more talented, the budgets got bigger. I made more money every year, and it was all through referrals, just my friends sharing with their friends. And I thought it was forever. But I've always been drawn to technology because for better, for worse, this is where culture is. We're on our screens, and I've Just thought, if we can create value for people all over the world in an instant, the screens, you know, wouldn't that be wonderful? So I've always been drawn to tech for that reason. But what happened was an unforeseen Oprah Winfrey aha moment. Just that divine. Download this idea. So my business grew all through word of mouth and I noticed a problem when people shared recommendations in person. One, it took way too long for them to get that coffee together. Two, to bring me up and my business up and then salud to actually like when the recommender gave the recommendation, she gave it to person. Whereas she has dozens of friends that could benefit from that recommendation as well, and certainly me as the business owner. Right. So in person, it's just fundamentally flawed, limited. Now, online, what does it look like for referrals and recommendations? Well, people are sharing on Facebook and Instagram, TikTok and Twitter and Snap and things that they recommend. However, none of those platforms are optimized for the word of mouth referral. So basically what's happening is most of the content is entertainment content. Now I like to be entertained too. But when it comes to the best finds from our best friends, like on Facebook is disappearing at the bottom of an endless feed. Hey, I'm looking for a good blank. Well, you get some answers and then boom, it's gone. Like, hopefully you caught it. We call those one. One you shouldn't have to ask. It should be sitting there waiting for you. And it shouldn't be one or two or three recommendations.

Well, let's say so like, okay, I'm in Costa Rica two weeks ago, right? And some of my friends see that I was there in on Facebook and they're like, oh, you should, you should have gone to this place for dinner. And it was like two days after we missed out. So let's say I'm in Costa Rica again, Trey. And like, how can I use the app to find like a great ceviche restaurant, for instance?

Absolutely. That's a great, that's a great use case because you can see on the map if any friends have already yated. If not, you can invite them to it and say, hey, I'd like to know. And then when they share, it will not disappear at the bottom of the nimbles feed, it's Yea's stacking. So it's actually, you'll see their avatar on the map and what their go to order is at their go to restaurant there. And so not only does it curate it that way where you can see it on A map, but also in a card view, you can basically like just filter. Basically you can search for anything at the top of the screen. And then, and then you see the who row. You see a bunch of avatars of people that you know like and trust. Yeah, we're actually recommending. So the rest of the screen is just, you know, video, photo, text. If you tap on it, it'll play like an Instagram story or a Facebook story. That's all it is, Chris.

It's.

It's what? Who? Yay. What who? Yay. That's the whole, the whole app and it's geo tracked. So it's geo targeted.

Yeah, yeah. So geo targeted. Sorry. So if I'm, if I'm in. Yeah, if I'm in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica, and my wife and I are walking to dinner, I can pull it up. It's going to give me, you know, and I have multiple friends that have been there, strangely enough. And you know, it's, it's. I'm like, oh man, I should have pulled up Yeastack when I was there and figured this out. So, all right, so, okay, if somebody's listening to data, like, all right, I want to get it, I want to use it. Walk us through that process real quick.

Absolutely. So we are launching through multiple private groups and then those private groups are growing in number and in size. But it's much like Chris, the Facebook Ivy League school launch, they started at Harvard and then Stanford and then Ivy League school after Ivy League school. We're doing the same thing now. You, you can download Yeastack and you can, you can sign up for an account and then we can help place you. But basically the reason that you need to be in a group is because it's the best finds from your best friends. So there's a chicken and egg thing. You show up and it's like, I don't know anybody here. You know, then it's like, it's not a valuable experience. And so what we do is we're group by group and then we have fire starters where we just tell people, hey, you are in fact the first people in this group to share the A's. Then everybody joining the group, they first see yours and you go from there. So it's kind of like these automatic features. So anyway, so absolutely, you can download yea, stack, Y, S, T, A, C, K in the app store is iOS only currently. But then we'll expand to Android, you know, beyond that tbd. You know, we'll, we'll get that to you as quickly as possible. But we're just super excited. And at this point, I'll share. Our mission is to make the world a more positive place. Yay by yay. Day by day, make. Make the world a more positive place. You know, how can you argue with that?

Come on.

I mean, for me it's like, look, I've escaped multiple near death experiences. I'm so grateful to still be alive. You know, like two plane, plane crashes. One was a crash, one was just like a. We hydroplaned, it was, we landed on a sheet of ice. I'm just glad to be alive from that multiple car wrecks that I've been in. And for me to still be dad to these four, you know, angels, I'm just really grateful to be here. So for me it's like, you know what? Let's live our most beautiful, positive, joyful, grateful lives. Which is the why Chris behind referrals and recommendations anyway? Why does Chris Larsen ever ask for a recommendation? He's going to a friend that he can trust to help him live his best life in one specific way. Why does Chris Larson ever give a recommendation? He wants to serve, he wants to be of service, he wants to be of value. And he's uniquely qualified to share a positive experience. Friend that trusts them and to help that friend live their best life. Their most joyful, grateful and positively impactful life. It is what we call the Yay life. So for Yeastack Chris, we see Ye stack as a positive movement. The community, the culture being all about let's live our most positively impactful life. Our best lives possible by way of recommendations, the best, our best friends. And then let's give, let's share referrals and recommendations that help people, you know, live a positive, you know, best life, you know, as positively impactful also as possible. Because that is truly how to live your happiest life is to not be a me monster, but to find a way to be in someone's day to day.

I love it. I love it. Trey Roth, Such an amazing story, such an amazing message there at the end if people want to learn more. I know we've talked about how to get the app on the App Store if they want to learn more about the company. And I believe you guys are going into a funding round as well. What's the best way to find out more about the potential investment or just to get in touch with you?

Absolutely. Currently our investment opportunity is made available to accredited investors. We can't always promise for all arounds to be accessible to all accredited investors, but currently as of the recording of this podcast. Yes. If you would like investment information, please reach out in my email. Trey T R E Y at yeastack co. And yeastack is Y a Y S T a C k dot co. So Trey stack co. Please email me and you can just say, hey Trey, I'd love to. The investment information and we are happy to send you that information.

Beautiful. Trey Roth, it's been awesome seeing you again. We'll have all these notes, I'm sorry, all this information in the show notes. And I'm sure we'll have you back on the show and I look forward to seeing you again in person, my friend.

Absolutely. Same here, Chris. Thanks for having me.

My pleasure. Hey, Chris, here again. I hope you found this episode valuable. Now I have one more thing to gift you. We have a page for my coaching clients where you can get a free copy of my book as well as much more from previous guests on the show. Just check out nextlevelincome.com coaching to get a free copy of my book, audiobook and much more. I'll send you a copy of my book and cover all the shipping costs as a thank you for listening to the podcast. Also, please like share and take just 90 seconds to give us a rating on Apple Podcasts.