Followers, SaaS & Creator Marketing | Alex Heiden

It's amazing what happens when you let go of how things need to be. Yeah, I think that's where a relationship with God or religion kind of gives you that edge where you're like, hey, it's not all up to me. I can have faith that things are supposed to happen in the way they are.

Best entrepreneurs are just the best at stress management.

It's so true.

Yeah. The founder of ZapX and CEO of Closeify, his passion lies in transforming the B2B marketing landscape through innovative sales and new business development strategies. At ZapX, they created a power dialer that significantly increases cold calling efficiency, promising a 50% uptick in daily dials. Alex Hyde.

I think a big problem with Gen Z is like people really seek externally for validation.

I think that's why posting content's important now too, because it allows you to like be human as well. And AI and all this tech world now, people are always gonna wanna buy from people they like and they trust. So that's like why I think it's so important to like put out content that's authentic to you. And I think that's like a personal moat for yourself. Like, I see like my social media is like literally like my insurance policy.

What's up, Zen Hard listeners? This episode is sponsored by Zendrop. Zendrop has a very special place in my heart, not only because I started the company, but because dropshipping is really a life-changing business for me. You see, I tried tons of things when I first got started. And what I love about dropshipping is that there's always an opportunity to sell a new product to a new person. There's billions of people and millions of products you can sell, and you never need to touch inventory. All you need to do is pick a product, run ads to it, and if people buy it, you make a profit. So if you're interested in getting started in your e-commerce journey, check out zendrop.com and get started today. What is up guys? Welcome to the Zen Hard Podcast. This episode is a really informative and interesting one. I interview Alex Hyden, who, you know, as you guys know, I interview people of all different ages and walks of life. Alex is turning 24, and the cool thing is his social media blew up almost overnight. And through that, he learned all these new innovative tools and tactics that you can use to create softwares, to distribute softwares, to work with creators. And this stuff is cutting edge. So if you're thinking about starting a business and you don't know where to go, or you're really just interested, this episode you're going to learn a lot about what you can do. And the future is really interesting because the barriers to entry and getting started with something new have came all the way down and they're going to continue to come down. Learning these things not only will be fun, but could really be a life-changing thing for you to learn. So stay tuned, get your notebook ready because there's a lot of good pieces of information in this and I hope you enjoy. It's cool. I get to interview people of like all different ages and different walks of life. Um, you know, I think my last guest— maybe not the last one, but the one before— was like in his 70s.

Okay.

And I get occasionally people in their early 20s, and I love learning from people. I'm 34. I love learning from people that are, are younger than me because there's so many new things out there. Like technology has changed so much, right? It's funny, a lot of the older people— like, I live in a neighborhood, I'm one of the younger people in there— they're all interested in like what's going on in the in the world of tech and crypto and all that good stuff. So it's fun to be able to connect with someone a bit younger.

Yeah, no, I appreciate it. I'm super excited to chat and I love the office here.

Yeah, really cool. Yeah, yeah, it, it's our headquarters. We have maybe about 10% of our employees here, but— okay, got it. Got the studio going. Yeah, it's a nice little experience. You've been in the internet marketing software, no-code, you know, builders. Tell me a little bit more about what you do, because I'm looking at your social channels and I don't, you know, I'm— I'd love to just get from your perspective a little bit about what you're currently working on.

Yeah, so kind of like the long story short was I had this idea for a sales rep hiring platform, but the problem was I didn't have the money to hire the team to build it until a buddy introduced me to no-code. And then, you know, I built the first MVP myself and then eventually we moved on to Bubble. And then eventually I got out of that company and I didn't really know what to do next. So I started talking about what I just did online. And that was when I grew really fast online.

What do you mean talking about what you did online? Like you just would get on camera and talk about your journey?

Yes. I mean, I blew up totally by accident. I've told this story like a few times of like this guy just asked me if I want to do a podcast. We did the podcast and afterwards he was like, I'm a short-form content agency. You want 3 free clips while you're here. First one I posted got 2 million views and added 20,000 followers.

Wow. How many followers did you have at the time?

Like, literally like 100 or less.

Really?

Yeah. And then I went 0 to 100K in 95 days. Wow. Yeah. Um, so like that opened up like an entire can of worms of like, I got brand deals, I started, you know, making videos for, you know, some billion-dollar companies. Um, and then I started a software development agency and I was kind of just doing that for the last— from, so from like March of 2023 up until Q4 of last year, I was just really running this dev agency and doing some brand deals here and there. And then it kind of seemed like everything that I had done was pointing to what I'm working on now, which is our app called Paid, and it basically connects business owners to creators, but on a performance-only basis. So for example, let's say you're a business owner, you load your monthly budget and you set the CPM you're willing to pay.

And to be clear, a CPM is a cost per 1,000 views, right?

Yeah. And so then creators connect their social media accounts to our app, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, and they post inside your guidelines. You, you still have to approve it, but then again, it's all tracked in real time. You can see how many views you're getting. The payouts are automated.

And when I got this idea, I was kind of just like, is this because you were doing this kind of stuff and you're like, I wish there was an easier way?

Well, so I was able to solve the problem on both sides of the coin for myself because I'm a creator, but I also am a business owner. Like, I'm an advisor for businesses that are hiring creators. And so it kind of stemmed from— I saw what TikTok Shop did to e-commerce where it was like all of a sudden, if you have hundreds, if not thousands of creators posting about a product on a performance-only basis, like we saw e-commerce brands launching a 6-figure month their first month.

Yeah.

Which was like unheard of unless you like had a ton of money up front to go hire like big influencers or whatever. And so that was like unheard of. And so me being in this software space, I was like, they haven't adapted this yet. Like they're still doing everything that I was doing in 2022. They're still doing cold email, they're still doing LinkedIn, even paid ads in the sense of I was like, there's, there's a big arbitrage opportunity here. Because let's say the average CPM you pay on Facebook is $9. The average CPM people are paying to creators is between $1 and $3. So now you're getting traffic at such a fraction of the cost. And so I tested this by— I basically found one of the companies I'm an advisor for, I managed and trained a bunch of creators to make content for them in a similar way that I do because I was making content for this company that was doing well. And all of a sudden we blew this company up really, really quickly with performance-only creators. But again, I was managing this process manually. Yeah, I was like, this is with one client. I can't imagine how, you know, hard this would be to scale across 5, 10, 20, 50 clients. And so I was like, okay, we need to turn this into an app. And that was like what we did. And that was what we worked on like the last 4 months to the point where we launched like about a week ago.

Oh, congratulations on that.

Yeah.

So your life changed really quickly.

Yeah, very.

Like, what was, what was it like being, you know, at 100 followers and, you know, kind of doing your thing to like getting millions of views? Like, what was that like?

It was honestly very strange because I always had the mindset that I wanted to be like the Rich and Anonymous guy. Yeah, I actually had zero desire to ever show my face on social media.

Yeah.

Um, and so all of a sudden, from going then having 100,000 followers and again, I was getting millions of views per month and being invited on podcasts and doing all this stuff. It didn't feel that weird to me in the sense of like it did. It doesn't bother me because one, it's like I don't, you know, I have 250,000 followers maybe across platform and all I do is talk about Softr and what I do. I don't go on and like show my lifestyle. Like, I don't like that type of content. I don't ever want to do that. But I very much so enjoy like sitting down and just like talking about what I actually want to talk about. That's one of my other rules for myself is, uh, when I was running Closeify, which was a sales rep hiring platform, I realized like it was a good business, but I hated talking about sales systems and sales reps and like, yeah, stuff. So it's like my rule with myself now is it's like I'm never going to make content solely for the purpose of just put out content. Like, yeah, only going to talk about what I want to talk about and keep it authentic. And I think that's been very helpful to me.

Do you think that's a theme, like a theme with creators that have great paths? Are they— is it because they're authentic? Because there's a lot of people out there that just make content for the sake of making content.

I think so. I think you have to actually enjoy it because otherwise it turns into just another hamster wheel.

Yeah.

And I've experienced that and I've, you know, there's points of it where, you know, it's harder for me to be consistent on YouTube, I'd say, because it takes so much effort and time and planning to actually produce one good YouTube video. Like, I think that's something that maybe people don't understand is like how much time, effort, and money goes into like a really good YouTube video.

Yeah.

And so that's one of those things where it's like if I'm just making a YouTube video of like, okay, I just have to make this because this is like what the algorithm wants and I want to drive conversions for this biz. Like, it just gets very, very mundane. It turns into like, again, another hamster wheel that you feel like you're doing the same exact thing that you were originally trying to escape. Yeah, um, but I really enjoy it, so it's like not, not a problem to me. Um, and also I realize how much easier it is to grow a business off of content than some of these older strategies.

Yeah, 100%. I do respect a lot that you said that, you know, you don't want to be the person like showing off your lifestyle. Um, I mean, there's nothing wrong with sharing lifestyle things, but I do think there's a big issue in your gener— what, what's your generation? Is it Gen Z?

Z, I think.

Gen Z, I think. I think a big problem with Gen Z is like people really seek externally for validation.

Yeah.

And a lot of people show things off there. And I was— when I was in my 20s, I was, I was in the internet marketing space and it was like if you post a picture of the Lamborghini, you know, you get more views, you make more money. But I hated doing it inside.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of your generation, they feel like they need to show off, you know, they want their friends from high school to see them or think they're cool and they And then it becomes like if you don't get external validation, you don't feel worthy within yourself. Like, what made you be the person that doesn't want to do that? Like, is it just how you were raised or like, what's your thoughts on that?

So there's definitely a few pieces. 100%, my, my mom would not be happy. She would not be happy with that if I was like showing off online. So definitely partially of how I was raised, even myself. Like, I know the type of person that's going to attract if I post those types of videos.

Yeah.

And like I said, I was running a software development agency. And so it was kind of interesting because people were like, oh, Instagram is only good for slinging like $497 and $997 courses. Like, you know, that's what they thought because again, all these personal brand experts ended up hitting me up of like, how do you grow? How do you convert so many followers from your views? Because they have all their clients just do these lifestyle montages that are like feel good. They'll get a like and then they keep scrolling. And that's all they can sell. But when I just like sit in front of a camera and just genuinely like talk about my experiences and things that I've done, kind of in a similar way that Hormozy's done, and that's why, you know, he's so respected. I was selling $10K to $50K packages of software development through my Instagram.

Oh, wow.

My actually, you know, I've looked at my buddies' demographics. Their biggest is like, you know, that like 16 to 20 range is the average age of their followers. My biggest demographic is 24 to 34.

Oh, really?

Yeah. So I've been able to attract a much older audience, and so it's actually served me very, very well. So it's that twofold of like, one, how I was raised, but two, I also know who that content attracts, and that's not who I want to attract.

So you, you live in Miami, right?

Yeah.

There's a lot of that in Miami.

Oh yeah.

Do you find yourself like, you know, hanging around a lot of people like that? Do you try to avoid that type of environment? How do you navigate Miami?

Yeah, I try to avoid it. So I was in, um, I lived in downtown, I lived in Brickell, and now I'm in Coral Gables right now.

Okay.

Um, I really liked Brickell and I still like Brickell, but even from when I first moved to Miami in 2021 to now, like, Brickell has turned into like this hub of info lifestyle marketing where it's like—

it's like a giant ego fest.

It's a giant ego fest, which is by far my least favorite part about Miami. But it's also like everyone is almost trying to be the same person. It's like this new meta.

It's a rat race.

It's a rat race. And it's like this new meta online of like, because these kids are seeing all the gurus in Miami, so like, okay, as soon as I have enough money, I'm gonna move to Miami. I'm gonna get like the Corvette C8. I'm gonna wear Gallery Department. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's, um, it's— it really is another rat race. And so that's like my least favorite part about it.

Um, but most people need to go through that before they learn that that's not what they want to be.

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I think, um, and I'm not to say that I haven't fallen into that to any extent either.

Yeah.

Um, but I agree with that. I think you do have to actually do it to kind of like realize, oh, this is dumb.

It's incredible the self-awareness you have at such a young age.

I appreciate that.

It's really cool. Um, I know a lot of people will hate what I'm saying about Miami, you know, that are there right now, and, and I have no, um, disrespect for that. I think when you're young, when you're, you're hungry, when you see other people doing things, you know, it looks super glamorous, you want to do it too, you get out there, but eventually you learn that it doesn't, it doesn't fulfill you and it doesn't fill that what you were looking for. And the problem is most people, they want this lifestyle and they chase it, and most people never actually get it. There's a select few that do get it, and then the people who get it eventually, like myself, like realize, oh wait, that wasn't what it was all about. Yeah, but you kind of either knew that inherently or learned that early on.

I think I picked it up. There's also like, I think it's twofold too, of like what they think. One is they definitely don't think on a long enough time horizon. Like, especially if like imagine you're 18 through even like my age, it's like how many more like decades in business do I have? You know what I mean? Like a lot. So it's like you know, you really need to like zoom out and think on a longer time horizon. And to even like coming here, like just like me thinking, it's like I don't want my goal, my end-all be-all, the lifestyle that I want to be like a Lambo and a high-rise is like I would love to have a big office that has a ping pong table. It's got a dog wandering around with a studio in it. You know what I mean? That seems a lot more cool to me, having a bunch of people in the same building with me building a company that we all have fun doing. Then again, going to get a— a high-rise and a Lambo and, you know, whatever else you want. I think this seems like a lot more cool and a lot more fulfilling.

Yeah. And as you get older, you know, family becomes the important thing. These things all change over time.

Yeah.

You know, and I think a lot of people— I don't know what to— I don't want to label or judge people that live that lifestyle. But, you know, again, you kind of have to go through it to learn about it. But it's just cool that, like, you're in the Miami scene. And to be honest, I never got a chance to meet you. Didn't really know much about you. Kind of assume that you're probably in that phase of life, but it's cool to see that you're, you know, on your own path. I'm curious, what was the, the video that blew up? Like, what, what was that first one you put out there?

Yeah, so it was actually, um, it ended up being like a pretty infamous video. Um, I basically said Iman Gadzhi shut down his agency to go all in on SaaS, and then I said Jordan Welch is telling you to do e-com but he's doing SaaS, and then I said Sam Ovens, he just shut down his 8-figure-a-year consulting business to go all on a SaaS.

9-figure.

9 figures.

9-figure a year. Yeah.

It was doing 9 figures in info.

Yeah.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Um, and then I was like, okay, all these guys are telling me to do either—

I did that too, by the way. I had an 8-figure info business and now went to SaaS. Wow.

Yeah. But so I was like, they're all telling me to do XYZ, but what they're all actually doing is SaaS. And so basically I just name-dropped 3 of like, kind of like the most prominent figures that people knew. And then kind of pointed out they're saying this, but they're doing that. And so I think it just clicked for people. They were like, and I think this is why I got a lot of followers too, because I kind of like reverse engineer this. When people ask me like, how do you convert so many followers? Like other people have like a 2 million view video and get like 1,000 followers and like you got 20,000.

Yeah.

And I was like, I think it's because I changed their belief. Like these people literally were all genuinely like, okay, agency is the best path. No, consulting is the best path. No, dropshipping is the best path. And I was like, no, it's SaaS. Like, look at why do you think these, you know, giant rich people are doing it? So I think that's why they followed me, because then they were like, all right, let me see what else this guy's got to say. Clicked on my profile and they saw these other videos where, you know, I was very, not intentionally at the start, but very scientific of making sure I have top of funnel videos, middle of funnel, and bottom of funnels. So it's like my top of funnel is like why you should start a SaaS. And then it's like how. Yeah. Then it's like, you know, the actual actionable stuff. And, you know, I think that's why, like, you know, my audience was like a lot stronger than—

it's a very real thing because if you think about it, when you're in that kind of that rat race, the lifestyle rat race, and you're doing, you know, you're thinking short term, you're, you're, you're not really building a foundate— a business that can continue to grow. You're just, you know, it's like there's a difference between creating a real business that adds value to society and hustling. Yeah, and there's nothing wrong with hustling, but the problem that a lot of people run into is that they hustle, they make a certain amount of money, they upgrade their lifestyle, and then the hustle is not sustainable because they have to keep hustling. And things change, algorithms change, markets change. Now you have this expensive lifestyle to, you know, to continue, and you don't really have any enterprise value.

Yeah, you know, I'm almost certain you— but you know Luca Netz?

Yeah.

So that's almost like word for word because he was a partner on Close is Fine. He's a partner on the new app.

Oh nice.

And, uh, that's almost like word for word what he told me probably back in like 2021.

He was— oh really?

He was like, info and like a lot of these other models, even dropshipping, he's like, that's like internet hustling.

Yeah.

But he's like, he's like, you won't be like rich rich until you build enterprise value and get like one big fat check someday.

Yeah.

And so he told me that in like 2021 and that's like really stuck with me. It's—

yeah, so that is— it's 100% true. Now when you're in it it's really hard because you, you know, you're building enterprise value, but right, your belief system is still programmed to not really believe it's possible to have an exit one day, even though you know it's possible. Yeah, like your inner chatter is like, you know, you're losing money, you're burning money. It's hard to get through that. It really is. Yeah, like I went through that. I went through probably about 3 years of funding my business and losing money before we turned profit, and then eventually we we did get the big check, which was amazing. Yeah, but it's really challenging to get through those times, right? So that's why the hustle is more appealing to people, right?

I mean, I can imagine it's like even when I was running Closeify, it's like my— I know for a fact like my monthly cash flow that I paid myself was significantly lower than all my friends that were in any sort of like online hustle model. Yeah, like, and so to your point, it was hard seeing everyone else is like balling out and like doing whatever, and I'm like I don't have the cash flow for that.

Yeah. Have you ever heard of the, um, the Valley of Disappointment, uh, model? You may have seen it before, but it's basically like if you look at a chart and the Y-axis is progress and the X-axis, I don't know if X or Y, whatever the one that goes up and down is progress. And the one that goes horizontal is time. And as humans, we expect for every unit of time we put in to make a unit of progress or somewhat. You know, linear. But in reality, you get started and you'll actually make some neg— like, you know, you're all high in hopes and then you kind of go down, and then you're kind of in this valley before you cross where you think you're supposed to be. And then eventually what you do surpasses— your progress surpasses where you think you should be, and that's, you know, where you win. But in that time under where you think you should be, like, mentally it's really challenging to keep going because You're just disappointed all the time, right? Have you ever—

you never seen that model? I think I might have seen it, maybe labeled something else, but it's kind of like they call it the Valley of Despair or something. Okay, something else like despair.

I call disappointment despair. Also great word.

Yeah. No, it's like you start off, you're super optimistic. I'm gonna start this new business. You go from— and then it's like uninformed optimism, and then it's like Valley of Despair, and then it's like you slowly come out of it.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Have you been through that curve yet?

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I have been, um, probably more than once too. Just like starting— anytime I've started a new company, it's always like harder than you think. Even at that— this stage, like right now, like when I have like a following, it's easy to think like, oh, like I've got a following that I can, you know, build this business off now. It's just gonna skyrocket.

You're like, wait a minute, why didn't I get all these new things that I thought I was gonna—

exactly. So even like right now, there's been some like small bugs in the launch, and so it's like I haven't been able to even push it as much as I could. So, you know what I mean? It's like here I thought I was like, okay, like I can just go full-blown push it. We're going to hit this many, you know, downloads the first week and it's going to up and up and up. And it's like, yeah, it never does.

It never does. It never pans out how you expect it to.

Yeah.

But if you know that model and you could remember, okay, I'm in this area right now, it really helps you continue to push through.

Yeah.

So that's a cool one to think about.

Yeah.

So your, you know, your video takes off, you start getting followers. Did you start Closeify or— Yeah, that was your business.

Yeah.

Did— was that— did you exit that?

Did you shut it down?

Do you still have it?

I sold majority to strategic partners, so I'm still involved with it. Yeah.

Gotcha. And you guys were hiring sales teams for basically for info businesses.

Yeah. Info agencies, some B2B softwares used us, some remote solar companies.

So you got to see a lot of those types of businesses from the sales else side of it.

Yeah.

So as a 24-year-old, or soon you said you're going to be going to be 24.

Yeah.

So 23-year-old, um, what are some things that you do or some things that you believe that help you kind of stay on, on this path and not slip into that other path of just going into hustle mode? Like, how do you stay on that track?

Um, so one is like, I need— I realized like I need to have— I used to live my days like completely unstructured because I thought that was like the dream of being able to do like whatever you want, whenever you want on any given day.

Yeah.

And what I realized is when you have like absolutely zero structure, then like just nothing gets done. Like I'll spend 30 minutes thinking about what to do.

Yeah, right.

So I'm not like a big like guru morning routine, 8-step, like takes forever type of thing. But like the one thing that like I have to do is I have to write down like the night before what I'm going to do the next day.

Right.

In particular, like the 3 most important things that I have to do. So like, that's the one thing that's like really, really important to me in terms of like a productivity standpoint. And then obviously just like religion helps me a lot in my relationship with God of like not wandering off and doing things that I shouldn't be doing. I would say those two things are the biggest things for me. And also just like remembering, like, again, long, long time horizon. Like, yeah, I got a long time left to go. So it's like there's, there's not really a lot of time to screw off. And this is the, the youngest, the most energy I'll ever have. So just really not trying to like waste these years.

What religion do you practice or follow? I'm Christian. You're Christian. Have you always been Christian growing up? Have you like always, you know, practiced, learned?

I was, uh, raised Christian, more so in the way though of like your parents force you to go to church, but like you just want to like, you know, hang out with your friends. Um, didn't go to church on my own until actually like right after that, right after the exit. I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do.

Oh yeah.

And so that was kind of like, uh, It was a very like clear sign to me that that was the direction I should be going in because it was like I had no idea what to do. I go to church for the first time, felt a lot better. Like a week later I blow up on social media and like things were better than I could ever imagine.

Yeah, it's amazing what happens when you let go of, of how things need to be. Yeah, I think that's where a relationship with God or religion kind of gives you that edge where you're like, hey, all right, it's not all up to me. Like, I can, I can, you know, I can have faith that things are supposed to happen in the way they are. Absolutely. So has your view on religion changed a lot recently? But, you know, from when you were a kid to now, like, has your relationship with God changed? Or—

yeah, I mean, 100%, it's probably the strongest it's ever been. Um, again, because when I was a kid, it's not— I wouldn't say that I never didn't believe, but it was just like one of those things where it's like, yeah, I was raised, you go to church on Sunday, but not like, you know, I wasn't reading the Bible or, you know, really praying or anything like that. Whereas now, like, those are things that are like I, you know, I need to make sure that I read my Bible every day and I make sure that I remember to pray.

Yeah.

And things of that nature that again helps me stay like incredibly level-headed. And I think you hit the nail on the head too. It's like if things are going bad, it's probably the best thing to remember. It's like, hey, this is, this is, it's not all up to me. It's out of my hands. Like, you know, you can have faith and feel a lot better.

Yeah. Um, it's a, it's a very common thing with people that achieve a lot in life to have something to have faith in. I know there's been a lot of times in my life where I could not see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm like, yeah, I don't know how this is going to happen. This is a dark time.

Yeah.

And it's always in the moments when I surrender.

Yeah.

That things work themselves out.

Yeah.

It's really powerful. It's a powerful tool to have.

Yeah.

What is your— what's your thoughts on that? I mean, have you been in dark times where you don't really know what's going to happen?

Like, I mean, honestly, like the last 6 months was rough to an extent. Yeah, I had no warning payment processor shut down.

Classic.

Had like $40,000 held for like 6 months. I still have money being held. And it was like right after I paid my quarterly taxes. And then I had like a developer like basically like blackmail me to pay him more money to finish a project. And then, yeah, even some like other like smaller stuff that all kind of just like it was like when it rains, it pours.

Yeah.

It was all within like this like 6-month span where I was like, wow, like, yeah, taking a beating right now. But against your point, it's like, hey, I'm not in this alone.

Like, yeah, things are going to happen the way they're supposed to. It's cool. Like I said, I get to interview people that are much further down the path, occasionally people that are early on their path. And, you know, I interviewed, um, a lady named Lori Van Dusen, um, not too long ago. She, for context, is— was like the Forbes number one financial advisor in the world, like Barron's Hall of Fame, built like almost a $6 billion book of business, left the biggest bank in the world, started her own firm, got sued by the biggest bank in the world, had all these crazy challenges. And she's went through so many ups and downs. But like now she knows that those challenges like turned her into who she is and would never have traded them for the world, right? But when you're in them, yeah, it feels like it's the worst thing in the world. Yeah, so it's, it's cool to see like you're early on your path, you're learning this stuff, and like the challenges only get harder and only get worse, especially as you make more, you know, the more money more problems thing. Yeah, it's really like more money bigger problems, or like, um, you know, more money more to lose. Yeah, so the problems feel more real, or they feel Um, you know, once you've built a certain, uh, level of wealth, you're like, oh, if I lose, I'm a bigger failure than if I lost it when I was down here.

Yeah.

So going through those things is like the best thing you can do.

Yeah, that's— yeah, that's kind of how I think about it too, where it's like you have to equip yourself with the ability to overcome these challenges that, you know, there's gonna be worse ones later on, probably inevitably.

Yeah.

Um, and that's also another thing, like Luca always told me, is like the best entrepreneurs are just the best at stress management.

It's so true. Yeah, because most of entrepreneurship sucks. Yeah, like most of it, not all of it, not like 90% of it, but like a lot of it is like, yeah, you're just like, you know, you feel like you're getting kicked in the nuts like over and over again and you don't know what's gonna happen. Yeah, people think it's like all sunshine and rainbows or it's like all glorious because they see people posting online about their lives, but the truth is it's not easy. Yeah, that's why you get back proportional rewards to the proportional pain that you put in. And it's another really powerful thing to think about. I'm curious about— you were talking about a no-code platform. Is that something that you started or you got involved with? What was that all about?

No, so it wasn't mine. Basically, I built the MVP on the tech stack was Airtable, Stacker, Memberstack, and Zapier. And then after that, we built it on Webflow with like custom CMS, and then eventually we moved on to Bubble, uh, which is like what we stayed on. Bubble is like really incredible for, you know, as a no-code builder, you can build almost anything on it.

Yeah, I know about Bubble. Yeah, we've had debates about using Bubble on certain parts of our platform. Why do— but all my developers like hate it. They're always like, no, we're not using Bubble. But then like my marketing guys are like, we need to use Bubble.

It's a very like, um, you know, a lot, a lot of the tech people do hate it because I don't know, they had, oh, they've, people, I feel like they always have like a vendetta against no-code. In the sense of it is vendor locked. So it's like, you know, you have to stay on Bubble or eventually you would have to like completely rebuild it with code, right? I'm still a big proponent of Bubble. A lot of people still build on it. It's very fast. But what I will say is like what's like coming after it that I'm really curious how Bubble will handle is these text-to-app builders. So I'm actually an advisor for one. It's called Create.xyz. And it's literally you type in plain English what you want to build and it builds it.

Just builds it completely.

And they just like have Stripe integrations. So like literally I was on, I did a YouTube video with the founder and I watched him build like a full software application ready to take payments in like 30 minutes.

That's insane. Is that like a thing that exists right now? Yeah.

Yeah. So there's like 3 of them that are like really, really nuts. There's create.xyz, there's bolt.new, and there's lovable.dev. And it's like, they're crazy. You could paste a screenshot of an interface that you like and it'll just remake it. Or you could say like, let's say it builds the first version and you're not happy with that. Let's say you just tell the AI like, you're an expert UX designer now, redesign this with this feel. And it does. Like, it's incredible. Even just to go play around with it is insane what they can do.

So in a world where anyone will be able to create software and create any kind of platform they can imagine without— because like the real— I mean, the truth is like when I started Zendrop, for example, you know, I hired a CTO and a team of developers and it was like, yeah, we'll have it done in 3 months. Yeah, it took like 2 and a half years.

Yeah.

And then by the time 2 and a half years goes by, it's like, well, everything's changed now. It's like not what it was originally supposed to be. And it's still like, hey, we want to build something. OK, it's going to take us 2 months to build it. And it's like, well, shit, 2 months is a long time. Things change in 2 months. So in the past, if you built a great platform, you kind of had a little bit of a moat around your business because you built the platform. So I'm curious, what does the world look like when anyone can build something? What's going to make someone's software stand out and survive when anyone else can just come in and build something similar?

Yeah, so we've really already seen this. That the new distribute or the new moat is distribution and own distribution. And so it really is like there's, there's no tech moat anymore really, unless you're doing something crazy where you're trying to build the next, you know, Amazon or something insane. It's really all about distribution. And that's, I kind of saw that's another reason why I started this app that we're building because we know all these software companies that are out there, all these apps, even a lot of these, you know, e-com brands, it's like they are all like, they're all at arms race of, yo, who can get the most distribution to like own this space, right? Because, you know, let's say you're even a B2B software company and all of a sudden you have 100 creators post YouTube videos talking about your product, you're gonna like own that catalog and you're gonna own that YouTube SEO, right, in that industry, right? And so it's kind of like an arms race to do things like that.

That's what I mean. That's what we also do. We have all the YouTube creators and it kind of creates like Um, almost like we create these like, uh, paths that lead to our platform that always live on the internet, whether it's YouTube or courses or whatever it is. And it's kind of like you're buying real estate. Yeah. It always sends people down to your platform, but those creators can just be bought by competitors, right? Like, so anyone can get those paths and get that distribution. So like, I guess my question is what type of software will be successful in the future when, when any, when millions of people are creating things? Like, what are the things that might stand out?

Um, honestly, like, what's crushing right now is just honestly a lot of like, this is sound like dumb maybe, but a lot of these ChatGPT rappers are honestly just cleaning up. Rappers? Yeah.

What does that mean?

So basically it's literally just like you're taking ChatGPT, slapping your own interface on it and just selling it as a standalone software product. So it's like, you know, there's— you could build these like super, super fast, right? And so like there's example, you know, there's one called like CaliEye and it's a crazy story. He's 17. It did $1.8 million last month. Wow. And it's an app on your phone where you can scan your food and it tells you how many calories it is.

Wow. That's cool. And simple.

Simple. Yeah.

And he did $1.8 million last month.

Last month. And it's all distribution. They have— I have no idea how many creators on Retainer that they're paying, but a lot.

Yeah.

And they figured out how to, how to do the content to where it works, to where the videos are like naturally integrated into the person's life. And these are the types of videos that are doing really well.

It seems organic. It's like, oh, this person I follow uses this. Oh, it's a trick.

It'll be like a fitness influencer, just like, here's a day in my life, and it's like 5-second B-roll, them scanning their food. Someone comments, what app is that? They make another video. Or they drive conversions that way.

What's the revenue model for a business like that?

They have a paywall. I don't know their exact pricing, but it's some small amount per month to use it.

Yeah.

But so in terms of— I really do think like, I don't think this is going away anytime soon. Building products like that that have like— they solve one core problem, like a very niche problem. Because, you know, I've even in the past I've tried MyFitnessPal and it's annoying having to log your food manually.

Yeah.

Every single time.

Yeah. I would never use something like that because of how annoying it is.

So it's like it solves one core issue. It's got a little viral factor, can be easily integrated into these day-in-the-life videos. And so I think there's a huge— like me and my friends say that like these mobile apps and even some of these B2C softwares and even some B2B software still, it's kind of like dropshipping in like 2016, right? Because you can build it, all these products so easily now.

Yeah.

And then you can arbitrage, you know, the marketing with these performance-based creators that a lot of people haven't picked up on yet.

So what would someone like, let's say me, right? I don't have any technical skills.

Yeah.

And I wanted to, I wanted to learn enough to be able to do this.

Yeah.

Like, what do I need to learn to be able to build something like this? What are the basic skills someone needs?

Yes. I'm not technical at all either. Yeah. So if I were to build a web app, not a mobile app, but a web app, I would use one of those text app builders and that's how I would be doing it. There's also like Replit, like Replit's also pretty cool to where you could get to a point where you could build some sort of functional. It might not be the prettiest thing in the world, but you could build something that's functional utilizing one of those tools. If you wanted to build an actual mobile app without learning how to code, you could use— there's a no-code builder called FlutterFlow, which allows you to build mobile apps. And it's actually like, you can actually export the code on FlutterFlow because Flutter is, I believe, Google's like native language. Mm-hmm. And so it's like Flutter, and then you use like Firebase. And so you can actually build like— again, it's, it's not like easy to learn inherently, but it's like someone that's not technical could learn how to build on it in a few weeks, and then you could build your mobile app.

And then just by going on YouTube and watching videos of how to do it.

Yeah, exactly.

It's kind of like when I started dropshipping, like it wasn't— I didn't need technical skills, but I was able to go look up videos and figure out how to— and then if there was something that needed to be custom, you can hire a developer to customize something. Yeah. But basically anyone can, if they have an idea for software, can pretty much figure out how to build it now.

Yeah, it's— there's absolutely no reason that someone should say like, I have this, I have this software app idea, but I'm not going to act on it now because I don't have enough money or I'm not technical. Like, that excuse is like out the window now.

That's incredible. That is really interesting. So the world's going to change a lot because there's going to be more and more tools out there.

Yeah.

And you're saying the thing that will separate those who win from those who lose is going to be the distribution.

Yeah, 100%.

So if you're utilizing, you know, let's call it, you know, this guy's app that, that you can measure calories, he's utilizing like a ChatGPT, I'm assuming, to, to scan the food and the AI to see what it is and.

Yeah.

And pull the data.

Yeah.

So is he just licensing that from ChatGPT?

What's— I mean, you know, OpenAI is like public to, to build off them.

Yeah.

Um, now I don't know for a fact that like they haven't added anything to it, right? I have no idea. But I do know most of these apps that are out there, it's literally the equivalent of ChatGPT. Like it's this exact technology.

That's serious money making. Oh yeah, almost $2 million a month. And I'm assuming that's subscription revenue. Yeah, mostly. Yeah, that's like, that's no joke.

No, not at all.

That's a very valuable business that you can— I mean, at that point you're getting that kind of cash flow, like You know, I'd be investing in building more moats, building more functionality, things that like other people wouldn't be able to replicate. Right.

And there are— so again, it's like there's a ton of copycats that are all— I mean, they're not making nearly as much money as them, but like $10K, $20K, $50K a month still just by like— because again, you can build it so quickly. You can see the videos they're making. You can follow similar strategies. That's why I kind of compare it to like dropshipping in 2016, right? Because it's probably like you see a product that's really ripping. You go do something similar, similar store, same product. You might not do as well, but you're going to make some money.

So if someone wanted to go and scale their distribution with creators, what is the path to do that? I know there's agencies. I know there's a platform like yours. I know there's— I'm an investor in a company called Maven. I don't know if you're familiar with them. I've heard it's like an influencer marketplace where you can post, you know, I want 4 videos, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and here's my budget. And then a bunch of people will apply to it and you can pick the ones that you want. But it's not based on performance, simply based on this guy, you know, looks pretty good. He'll do it for $2,000. I approve him. You can approve people to do it for you. How would you scale creator traffic these days?

In my opinion, this is why it has to start performance-based, because again, I'm going to keep relating it back to TikTok Shop because I think it makes the most sense. TikTok Shop, you might have, let's say, 100 creators posting about your product and 90 of them suck, generate no sales and no views.

Right?

But 10 of them are studs and made you a ton of money. Yeah. And then what these e-com companies are doing is they're giving them retainers on top of the commissions that they're earning and giving them more training. And sometimes they're getting promoted into like manager positions to where then they're sourcing more creators and managing them. I see this as a very similar thing to where it's too risky for you to allocate your creator budget to a small handful of creators because, again, right, If they all flop, then yeah, you just took that L. Yeah. So in my opinion, you have to like cast your net super wide performance basis and say, hey, we're going to pay a CPM only. We're going to get a ton of creators to post about us. And it's also I compare it to like if you're running ads on any platform, it's like initially you're testing. So you're going to have your creators testing all different types of content. And there's so many that are working right now. You have your green screen videos, you have your slideshows, You have talking heads, you have these AI UGC avatars. That's a whole other— like, there are AI avatar accounts that are making tons of money.

That's crazy.

And so you're going to be testing all these different things, seeing what styles work, seeing which creators are good and doing the same thing. Then you can give them a retainer on top of their CPM or on top of their commissions.

So if you— let's just say you have like 100 creators working on performance, right? Yeah. And you're testing a bunch of different types of creatives, how would you— like, what's a method for being able to see what's actually performing? And also, like, because there's limitations on your tracking, right? If you're on paid ads, you can track attribution. It's kind of hard to see attribution. And then on top of it, if you have 100 creators and people are, you know, running bot traffic views, like, how do you navigate that world to figure out who's who's doing well for you.

So obviously it's, it's tricky. To your point, um, you have to do your best to like even go into like your Google Search Console and look for the spikes. And even like you can filter like your, um, like brand search name and like just look for the spikes and try to like piece it back to the time or day that a creator posted. And you have to try to do it your best that way right now.

So it's like a manual, you kind of have to do some— yeah, you have some— you got to be like a private investigator basically investigating the campaign.

You have to be paying attention. But I do think it's possible. Like, I do think eventually, like, your spikes are very obvious to where you can go back and be like, okay, who posted this day? And like, figure it out. Gotcha.

And how, like, what are you seeing people charging for, you know, per 1,000 views these days for creators?

So on our platform right now, we're seeing people paying like between $1 to $3. Oh, wow. CPM. So again, it's like a fraction of the cost that you'll pay on Meta. And again, it's so these creators, like they're understanding like, hey, if I do well for this company on a CPM basis, like I will have an opportunity to get an opportunity.

Yeah.

And on top of that, you know, a $2, even a $1 CPM, if you can rake in 1 million, 2 million views a month, you're making $1,000, $2,000 a month depending on the creator. They might be happy with that or they might not be. But again, you're proving yourself that you can, you know, get these bigger retainers because these bigger retainers are out there.

100%, we pay them. Yeah, like a lot.

Yeah, a lot. Especially— and that's kind of like what I talk about is to these creators is like why they should be doing it even for tech companies. I'm like, these tech companies, they'll pay a lot higher CPM.

Yeah.

Than, you know, an e-com brand would, for example.

But like, as a devil's advocate, if you're running paid traffic, for example, you know, if I'm running paid traffic to like a beauty product where there's tremendous amounts of competition, CPMs might be $60, $70, $80, $100 on Facebook, and I can go run engagement campaigns and get, you know, $0.25 CPMs globally. And the, the $90 CPMs that are, you know, 400 times the price can be performing 15 times as well, right? So it's like, how do you navigate that? Like, how— just because the CPM is low doesn't mean it's going to be effective for you. So you're saying you need to basically go and look at the spikes and kind of back into what's working, right?

100%. And you definitely are gonna— I think, I think it's almost gonna be like a, like a new job position at like companies. I mean, it already is, but like someone that's really, really in the weeds of what type of content is like working well. Because the biggest thing is like we can supply creators and like let's say we can get someone even 1,000 creators, but again, at scale, if we have 1,000 clients, eventually we can't manage it all to them, right? I said like we're not an agency. And so someone on their team has to be able to put together a good brief of how to make the content to drive conversions, right? Um, so to your point, maybe the goal isn't, hey, we want to just drive 5 million views. Like maybe you want to drive 1 million views, but you want it to like be actually more geared towards showing the product rather than just like it being integrated. It's probably going to depend company to company. So someone on your team is going to have to really know what type of content works for your product or service specifically.

Yeah, I mean, you always hear like brand deals typically aren't profitable on the front end for companies. It's for brand exposures, for market share, right? How often do you see these things being ROI positive? And like, on the— like, what's like one of the best campaigns you've ever seen as far as like an ROI?

Yeah, well, I think that's where maybe some people get it backwards, because I think some of these companies just have so much money that they don't care, and that's why they can just say, oh, it's brand exposure. Yeah, like I've had companies coming to me that, you know, they almost tell you exactly what you have to say. They don't give you any flexibility. And I'm like, I'll do this, but I know for a fact this video is going to flop, you know what I mean?

Right.

Um, and whereas on the other side of the coin, I've had companies come to me where they're like, hey, you have creative freedom. Like, you literally just need to like show 5 seconds of people.

Yeah.

And so I, on, on my personal page, I have videos do incredibly well for Create.xyz. Yeah. Multiple, multiple, that text app builder. I have multiple videos for them, over 100,000 views. And then like, it's like we can see the spikes very clearly.

Yeah.

When I post them. So again, I don't, I don't know the exact like ROI for you, but again, it's that like to give you an example of that video, it's like you want to start a software company, but you don't have an idea. I got you. And I'll say step 1, go to acquire.com to find an idea. Step 2, go to create.xyz. To build it. All you do is type in plain English and you can build your idea. And then I go into step 3, just like the rest of the video. Step 3, maybe like get clients with cold email, like something like that where it's like there's, you know, they're seeing that B-roll of like me using Create.xyz and that video is performing incredibly, incredibly well for them.

So do you think the future of marketing for consumer software and consumer goods is going to be creators?

I don't think that.

What do you think happens to paid traffic? Do you think that that becomes obsolete?

I don't think it becomes obsolete, but I do think— I think more so discovery, like, I think discovery is like creators and socials now, like organic. That's where discovery happens. I see remarketing on paid being much more efficient because you have all these creators driving tons and tons and tons of traffic and you're pixeling all that. Yeah, I see like remarketing being highly effective there.

So, but with creators, like, I mean, you know, at scale, like when I was running, uh, dropshipping businesses, you know, we'd be spending— I mean, even my info business, I was on, on high spend days, we're spending $100,000 a day on Facebook ads. Like, it seems very hard to scale creators to like that kind of level of traffic, isn't it?

It totally is. And that's literally what we're trying to solve.

Yeah.

Um, so our biggest thing to succeed is getting the most creators possible because eventually our goal is like you put out a campaign and 1,000 people start posting about your product and you can see that spike evidently very, very quickly. That's our goal. Yeah, because right now, to your point, there's really no one that's like cracked how to— I mean, TikTok Shop people have cracked it because you can literally just like one-click invite thousands of people, right? But these other companies, it's like there's no agency even right now that's that tapped into, my knowledge, with so many people.

Yeah, that makes sense. So you're— that's really the problem you're trying to solve.

Yeah.

Which makes a lot of sense.

Yeah.

So the future is really interesting. You can create softwares really easily. You could tap into creators really easily. Um, it's like there's so much opportunity out there.

Yeah.

Are you seeing a lot of people start to adapt to these new tactics? Of building software using these kind of tools. And are you seeing a lot of that in your kind of network of people?

Even a lot of my— a good example is a lot of my friends in Miami, people that have been info people, agency people, they've all been asking me about getting into software in the last like year and a half, 2 years.

Yeah.

That, you know, they're kind of starting to realize like this is eventually where they want to be because they either realize that info is somewhat of like a house of cards. There's like a timeline on them. Or that, you know, their agency, they either don't like running their agency or they're like, honestly, like this might be replaced pretty soon because a lot of people are getting really fed up with the cost of services.

Right.

And also even softwares. So that's why not even all softwares are safe because if now let's say a company can, you know, build a software internally that they're paying a ton of money for. Right. Right. They're going to do it. And so we're starting to see that even. So it's really, really interesting.

So on a platform like Create.xyz, you know, you go in there, type in some text, it'll build you something. Do you also need to have your own servers or hosting, or is it all kind of in one package?

All in one. So you can just publish it on Create.

Really? And you can— you like— like, where's your backend? Like, how do you, you know, look at user data and can you connect backend?

So you like build your databases like in Create as well. Wow. Like, for example, like, again, I'm I'm going to try to explain this how I— I'm not a tech guy. Yeah, but basically, like, when you're typing in the little box, you can just like hit slash and it'll pull up the integrations. Then you can see it'll see like that and you hit like add new data box.

Wow.

And so then you can create different ones for either. There's also a button when you enable signups. Yeah, it makes your database for your users and then it also adds like the signup page, the login page, the like forgot your password page.

Yeah, that was really cool. When I like first started as an entrepreneur, I would just make it a point, no matter what I was doing, I would go to the coffee shop every day for at least 2 hours and I would do something. Even if I didn't know what to do, if I didn't know what I was gonna, you know, what product I was gonna sell, if I didn't know how I was gonna run ads before I had a store built, I would just go do something for 2 hours and it would lead to a discovery that would lead me to the next step and to the next step. I think a lot of people out there are waiting until they have this perfect idea and this perfect plan to get started.

Yeah.

But with a tool like this, like, you know, you can just play around every day until you figure something out. It's like, just take a step.

Well, the other thing is you can, you can fail so fast.

Yeah.

And not lose too much. Right. So again, it's like I go back to dropshipping. It's like what you could spin up a store in a day. It cost you however much to get everything set up. You try it. Okay. It fails. Do it again. Yeah. To me, it's the same. Now you build something very simple. You try it. If it fails, like you didn't lose that much. You try again. Fails. Like you could literally, you know, fail 10 times in a row and you still didn't waste that much time or that much money. Yeah.

And in failing and in trying things, you're going to learn something that might— you might run into a snag on like, oh crap, I don't know how to set up this database. You go on YouTube, you search something. And then another video pops up that gives you an idea and then you go like, yeah, the only way to kind of get started when you don't know exactly what you want to do, which by the way, I mean, even when you do know exactly what you want to do, it ends up being different than what you expect anyway.

Yeah.

It's like you might as well play around on this stuff and learn, especially if you're young, especially if you have aspirations to be an entrepreneur or you're interested. It's like you don't have much to lose and it could be fun. It could be fun in the process.

Yeah.

This conversation makes me want to go on my computer and play around with create XYZ and like kind of get ahead of this curve.

Yeah, I just really—

I think about the future and I think about tools like this, AI getting smarter, stronger, faster, eventually quantum computing coming into the play, which will make things exponentially smarter, stronger, faster. I just am really curious who is going to be— who's going to come out in the lead, and then is it going to be like You know, where there's, there's thousands of like people making enough money to live, or like, like 10 people that are making all the money and everyone else dies. Like, what is— what do you think the future looks like?

Yeah, I don't know exactly because I'm not even too well versed in that, but I do think a lot of what's going on right now in business is an arms race because I'm seeing how fast these AI tools are advancing. Like, Create today versus what it was 3 months ago, it's gotten so much better. Yeah, in 3 months, and it's like timeline of how much faster it's getting better. It's accelerating. Yeah, you know what I mean? Um, again, it's like your ability to grow fast on socials, like, that's been accelerating. It's like gotten, you know, it's been getting easier and easier and easier. For now, it's like everyone's turning into a creator and everyone can have a software. So like everything that's happening right now, it's like turning like an arms race in my opinion.

Yeah. Can you go on Create and say, create me Create, and it'll just create the same thing for you to go sell as your own software?

That I doubt. That I doubt. I would say, you know, these platforms are an exception of like ones that they still have a moat to an extent. Yeah, they're— I would imagine at least they're very tough to build.

What are some things that would be a moat now in these days moving forward? Like obviously Create has its moat for whatever tech it built. Like, yeah, if you're thinking forward and you're thinking about building things like what are things that you can't really build on these kind of tools?

Probably like if you're building some sort of your own AI model because I mean, that's like, you know what Create is. I would say stuff like that. Anything that's like simple, you know, can be built so easily right now. If like, if you tell it, build me a job board, yeah, it's gonna do in like 30 seconds. Yeah, I mean, um, yeah, a lot of these like, I don't know, there's, there's a lot of people that are building AI stuff that again, it's the same way. Like they're, they're raising funding for that because they're trying to compete in some little, you know, pocket of AI. And it's again, it's another arms race. I mean, even we're seeing the arms race with like OpenAI and now Deepseek and like All these things are just like one massive race, in my opinion, right now.

I feel like the future is going to be like the age of creativity because, you know, when— and when, when you talk to older people, everyone always has like, oh, I had an idea for an invention or I had an idea for this business. And but it's so hard to do it. So they never actually do it. But now it becomes so easy to do things.

Yeah.

I mean, can you use tools like this to create physical products, inventions, you know, CAD drawings to send to manufacturers like You can use tools like this for, I mean, to make anything.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's why, I think that's why posting content is important now too, because it allows you to like be human as well. And AI and all this tech world now. And at the end of the day, I think people are always going to want to buy from people they like and they trust. So that's like why I think it's so important that like you can, you know, put out content that's authentic to you and You know, I think that's like one way to like— I think that's like a personal moat for yourself. Like, I see like my social medias is like literally like my like insurance policy.

So you don't want to be rich and anonymous anymore?

Not inherently, um, because I'm fine with the type of content that I put out.

It's like part of your life is a lot still anonymous.

Yeah, it's, you know, the only time I've been recognized a few times in Miami, like maybe once or twice in my hometown of Ohio. Yeah, um, but it's like It's, you know, you're not a celebrity. You're not a— it's not affect— negatively affecting my life in any way. Yeah, I can't go like, you know what I mean? Because I'm just talking about software.

Yeah, it's not like someone's like, oh, how's your sister doing? Or whatever. Like, you're not, you know, your life isn't out there. It's your expertise that's out there.

So like, I definitely want to continue to like grow my brand. Now, if I tucked away enough money at like whatever age, like, I think I probably would stop posting.

Yeah.

But again, who knows? Like, I never know what's gonna happen down the road. But I think right now, like, if I had enough money, I would probably just like not worry about posting on social media, just go play more tennis and pickleball and paddle. Yeah, but, uh, you said you were a college tennis player? Yeah.

Where'd you— what was that like? Where'd you play?

I played, uh, for St. Louis University. I did. I mean, I guess technically I was, I was there for 2 years. I didn't even play 1 full season, uh, because my freshman year was when, uh, the scary C-word hit. And so we all got sent home. And then my sophomore year, I dropped out before the season finished.

Okay. Where'd you grow up?

Columbus, Ohio.

Okay. And so you were in St. Louis for college?

Yeah.

Okay. I lived out there for a month.

Oh, really?

Randomly. Yeah.

Okay.

I used to throw foam parties. That was my first career. I used to do the world's largest foam party and we did it all over the country. We did one in St. Louis.

Okay.

At a place called the Old Rock House. Took over their parking lot and put a stage and lights and sound, everything. So I've been out there before. So were you, um, like great at tennis in high school and that's why you went on to do college, or—

I was pretty— I was pretty good in high school, um, like my junior, senior year I was, I was pretty good. Like that's how I ultimately like ended up getting a scholarship, um, but I, I got—

you got a scholarship for tennis?

Yeah.

Oh wow, it's been really good.

But, um, I didn't get to play as much as I wanted to growing up. I played a, I played a lot in the sense of like, you know, my parents took me to tournaments and stuff, which I'm grateful for. Yeah, but, um, every other kid that was like really good and went to play college was playing like 5 days a week, and like, yeah, I played like twice a week.

Did you have aspirations to be a professional at any point?

I mean, like, like when I was like really young, yes. Um, by the time I was like in high school, like I kind of knew that like even like, even if I played D1, like pro tennis is so hard to make it. Not even make it. It's like I could play pro and be 900 in the world and like lose a bunch of money.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? I could be 200 in the world and still lose money.

Really?

Yeah.

So tennis is like you have to be like elite to be able to make a career out of it.

Top 100 singles to make a living, like top 50 doubles to make a living.

Really?

Yeah. Which is insane because like how many NFL players are there that make millions and MLB and NBA? Uh, yeah, tennis players, again, there's people that are—

it's pretty similar to golf though. Like golf, it's kind of like the top 100 are the ones that—

which is crazy because it's like there's people that are so, so talented that are like 250 in the world that put their like blood, sweat, and tears into it, that like they're still like working jobs on the side to like stay afloat.

Same with golf.

Yeah.

And you're like millimeters away from being as good as the other people. It's not like there's an outsized lead that they are ahead of you.

Exactly.

It's just like You have— so how much different is it like in D1 tennis versus like top-tier professional tennis? Like how much different is the skill level?

Uh, it depends. Even D1, like there's a range. Like the D— the school that I went to wasn't one of the best D1 schools.

Yeah.

Um, whereas, you know, I'm from Ohio, Ohio State, it's like they're all basically pro already. Like, yeah, in college. Yeah, one of my buddies, um, he won the NCAAs in doubles, got to play in the US Open.

Oh wow.

And he's playing pro doubles right now. He's killing it.

That's amazing. Living the dream. Yeah, the childhood dream.

Yeah. And, um, you know, he went to Ohio State. Like, Ohio State, their team is basically— they're all pro.

Yeah.

Um, you know, Texas and, uh, Virginia, these top— the top D1 teams, like, they're all basically pro players playing in college.

Did you learn anything through, like, playing sports and that has been translated into things that you do in business now? Anything discipline-wise?

Very much so. Discipline. I mean, that was, um, it was good and bad in the sense of it was good for building my discipline, it was bad for me not liking tennis as much. We had 6 AM practices. Um, my schedule my freshman year was crazy because I had— we had to like drive to practice, had to wake up at 5 AM, walk from my dorm to pick up the van, go to practice. Practice was like 6 to 8:30. I had every day Every day I had class 9 to 1, so I didn't have time to shower before class. Wow. It was really gross. And I like eat food, go to weights, and then it's like after weights, I'm so exhausted, like take a quick nap. And then it's like homework, dinner, business, homework, go to bed, do it again.

No partying.

Nah, I really didn't do anything in college besides work and play tennis.

Did you after college, like, dive into partying because you never got a chance to do that in college?

100% did. Yeah. I mean, I turned 21 in Miami. Yeah. So I moved to Miami at 20 and then I turned 21 in Miami. So I definitely did. And I mean, I think it was worth it. Like, I got to do it a lot better.

Yeah. Yeah.

Than if I was in college. Yeah. But ultimately, like, even now, like, I still— I'd rather play tennis or pickleball or paddle than go out. What would happen?

I mean, you were in freshman year when COVID hit.

Yeah.

And you like— people like literally just went home from school.

So we were actually on our spring break trip. When like we were in Myrtle Beach and we were like all on the beach. And that was like when we got the email from the school that was like, hey, you're all getting sent home for 2 weeks. And it was the whole 2 weeks of flatten the curve. And we never ended up going back.

Really?

Yeah. Right. That whole year? No. So they sent us home and then I did have to drive back from Ohio to St. Louis because they were like, you have to move all your stuff out of the dorm now by this date. So then we had to move out. I was home all summer. And I was actually very much so debating dropping out then and not even going back. Yeah, it's like, it's un— this is ultimately why I, I say, like, I don't necessarily— some people are like proud to call themselves like a dropout or whatever.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm not like proud to call myself a dropout. Like, I would have loved to finish college and yeah, and play 4 years of tennis. Yeah, but, um, when I went back in, so that was fall of 2021, it was so unbelievably miserable. It was genuine prison. You weren't allowed to go into any building that you didn't live in. So it's like, say you wanted to go to your buddy's place, you couldn't.

Wow.

You had to wear your mask outside on campus. You know, and it was the culture at this school too, where it's like it's very liberal school. Yeah. Yeah. And it was like even like, say your mask was under your nose, like someone's going to try to snipe a picture of you and like send it to the—

Are you kidding me?

Ridiculous. I was in the gym running on the treadmill and the treadmills were already socially distanced. So there are 6 feet apart.

Yeah.

And I have my mask under my nose because I'm running a 5-minute mile. Yeah, barely breathe. And a worker comes over and it's like, mask over your nose. And I'm like, absolutely not. Uh, so like, I almost got like kicked out for that.

Oh my God, on the treadmill?

Running treadmill?

Oh my God.

And so, and then you're gonna get a lot—

you could, yeah, you can pass out and get much more injured.

Um, the, uh, the professors, they didn't even bother making their own lectures to send you. They would just send me YouTube videos to watch. Per class and it was all asynchronous. It was like, oh, just do this class whenever you can do this class. I also just started falling behind. I couldn't learn like that. I'm a very visual person. Like I would have to be in a classroom.

Yeah.

There.

So you pay for.

Yeah.

And did they drop the price?

No, no. And my grades got awful with you, to be honest, because I was, I was making money and I was like, I'm not like, like kind of screw this.

How are you making money then?

I was running a sales agency, uh, which turned into Closeify.

Gotcha.

Um, so I was making decent money and I was saving it all because I had no expenses, right? And, um, yeah, eventually I wasn't even allowed to play tennis because he's like, you can't play until your grades get up. I was like, there's no more grades until season's over.

Yeah.

So I just left.

You pretty much got screwed out of college.

Yeah.

Like, yeah, not to be victim mentality, but in reality, like, yeah, it was just a shitty situation that was not worth being in.

Yeah, 100%.

Do you think— are you glad it happened that way? Like, do you think it led you down a path that you're happier now?

Yeah. I mean, I think COVID was probably the best thing that could have possibly happened for me.

Yeah.

Because it was like then— plus one, during the time during 2020, all I did was work. That was all there was to do.

Right.

And so, you know, I was like, screw this. This is awful. I'm not going to do another semester of this ever again.

Yeah.

Left over the summer. I'm in Ohio, like, not exactly sure what I'm gonna do. I knew I wasn't coming back, not sure. Luca calls me, he's like, how soon can I get you to Miami? I visit like the next week, I sign a lease. Like 6 months later, I'm in Miami. COVID never existed in Miami. I'm like on a boat my second day ever in Miami.

Yeah, that's what I wanted.

I was like, oh my gosh, like, life is infinitely better now than it was 6 months ago. So yeah, I think it was the best thing that could have happened to me.

They weren't making people wear masks on the tennis court, were Yeah, we had to practice in them, and not even the cloth ones too.

They were like the, like the triangular, like N95s, bird beak ones. Yeah, and we would all be getting acne because they're soaked and gross.

And yeah, you sweat so much when you play tennis.

Yeah, it was disgusting.

What's that game, um, it's called like 105 or something, or when there's like the coach basically throws the ball and there's teams of 3 on each side, and then if you, if you hit a shot that gets past me, you get 1 point. If you hit one on the fly, hit a smash, it's like 3 points. And if you like hit a smash, they don't touch it, it's like 5 points or 7 points. You know that game?

I don't know if I've ever played that. Growing up, we used to play 3-2-1 scoring, which was like a volley winner was 3 points, normal winner was 2 points, everything else was 1.

Yeah, I don't remember the name of the game, but I used to live in Texas and we had— it was like, uh, there's tennis courts in my neighborhood, um, it was like a country club. A bunch of people would show up every Tuesday night and we'd play this game. And I'd play for about an hour. I don't know, have you ever worn a Whoop before?

Yeah.

So my Whoop score from this game was like, literally get up to like 17 strain, which is like tremendously high. If I go run 10 miles, it's like a 17 strain.

Yeah.

I can't even imagine having to wear a mask doing that. Yeah, I was like beet red and dying. I couldn't add any other. So that's crazy. Out on the tennis court, they would make you wear the mask.

Yeah. And our coach was super— there was— it was super strict. There was even like, uh, if you got caught going off campus, you were suspended. What?

Yeah, going off campus, like, to like, uh, to like a party, an event. Are you serious?

Yeah, some—

yeah, were people doing it anyway?

Yeah. Did a lot—

you did— a lot of people drop out because of this?

I don't know how many people dropped. I know a lot of people at least took a semester or a year off. Yeah, um, a lot of people, because I mean It was, it was ridiculous. Yeah, it was really, really ridiculous.

So every day you're kind of just like, this is so stupid.

I mean, a lot of kids got very, very like depressed because they took away any social activities you could possibly do. Yeah, like even like little things like the dining hall, you know, you can't even have food with your friends anymore. You can't—

they took away the dining hall.

You could go, but you couldn't sit in there. You had to take your food and leave.

Go to your dorm. Yeah, or outside.

Yeah. Um, that's so crazy. There was like nowhere you could— the closest thing you could do to like publicly like hang out with your friends was to go to the library and sit socially distanced and study.

Wow.

That was the closest like social activity you could do.

I'm sure that made a lot of people's grades worse too, had like a negative detriment on people's lives holistically. Like there was nothing possible.

Either people's grades got awful or they all just cheated and did fine.

Yeah, that's crazy. So then you basically got invited out to Miami. You're like, you got an opportunity because you had the sales agency. Yeah, I'm assuming you were doing some kind of deal with them.

So it was, um, it was Close— I started Closeify in like February. Yeah, of 2021. So I was actually still in school.

Yeah.

Um, and then April was like a good month for us, which was like when I dropped out. Yeah, um, it was really funny because I was like driving when I dropped out. I was like very like kind of like spontaneous. I was kind of like done. I like packed up my stuff and started driving back to Ohio. And I was like driving back and like an old lead like calls me, he's like, hey, I'm ready to get started. Just like paid like while I was driving home. I was like, all right, this is the, this is the right sign.

Yeah.

Um, spent the summer like rebuilding the platform on Bubble, kind of like I mentioned. And then we relaunched in July. Things, things were going well. And then, um, moved to Miami very end of September, like September 28th. And then October we doubled the business and did like $50K.

Nice.

Which like we needed to because I had never had expenses really before. So I was like, all right, we need to We need to grow. Yeah.

So you guys, you know, when I had my e-commerce coaching business, we had, I think there was 25 salespeople on the team and we had a funnel where you would, you know, you'd watch a VSL, a case study video, and then you would apply to be part of the program. And if your application was right, it would get sent to, you know, people's calendars.

Yeah.

We'd have, you know, every salesperson would have like 7 to 10 calls booked every day on their calendar and they would close deals and they'd get paid commission. Yeah, they'd make 10% commission. Were, were you doing a similar model where you were like basically companies that needed salespeople would come to you and you'd get a rip on the sales?

Or so we just weren't doing it as an agency model, so we were a hiring platform. So at the time people were paying $5,000 a year to hire like as many sales reps as they wanted.

Gotcha.

Um, and then their, their in-house sales reps, they would, they would work for you. Um, so that was how we were doing it.

Okay, so it's like a, like a recruiting platform.

Yeah, exactly.

People would say like sales reps would go on, they would sign up, they'd put information about themselves and the companies would go in and connect with them. Exactly. So it's pretty much what you're doing now, but with creators.

Exactly.

So you learned a lot of lessons through that and are building it better now.

Exactly.

You have a mobile app now, right?

Yeah.

What was the idea between— behind making it a mobile app?

So it's mobile app for the creators. I feel like it had to be mobile for the creators because it's connected to their social accounts. So it's like they open the app, submit their content to these deals. They're done. Super easy. I feel like if they had to like go in on a web app and like, like connect, like, you know, open up a social media, I feel like I felt it would be very weird on mobile.

Yeah.

Or sorry, on desktop. Desktop. Yeah. Yeah. So mobile app for the creators. The businesses are on web app. And I think it just makes a lot more sense that way.

Nice. And when did you launch this business again?

So we went live on the App Store like maybe like 10 or so days ago.

Brand new.

Yeah.

Brand spanking new.

Brand new.

I was looking at your Instagram before this. I see you talking about it a lot on there. Actually, one of your videos, I didn't know this was your platform and I was like, oh, I'm going to go download this. I'm going to see, you know, maybe for the podcast or clips or something like that as a creator. Yeah, seems really cool. And your marketing and your messaging is really good on how you explain it all.

Appreciate it. Yeah, we have quite a few people that are using us for, for clipping purposes, actually.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Very cool. I'm excited to see how that turns out.

Yeah.

Man, this conversation has made me just get very excited about the future of building things.

Yeah.

It's like there's no, there's nothing that can, there's no barrier to entry or there's a barrier, but the barrier to entry is so low for things now. And I think if people get ahead of this and they're early and they learn and they can keep failing forward, like there's probably a lot of money that could be made in today's day and age.

Yeah.

So if someone wants to learn the things we're talking about and the tools that we talked about, um, before you dive into like where they like, maybe like a bit of guidance, what are the, the best tools out there? I know you named them earlier. I just want to get, make sure we put them in the show notes. You're saying there's Create XYZ.

Yeah, there's, uh, Bolt.new.

Bolt.new.

Yeah. And there's, um, lovable.dev. Dev are like the three most prominent. Very, very cool tools. Even like there's for like clipping, like Opus is crazy.

Yeah, like we use Opus.

I played around with that for the first time a few weeks ago because originally I had an editing team and I was like, hey, like you guys use Opus, should we? And they're like, oh no, it's like it's not there yet. Like whatever. And so I kind of like dismissed it. But then like a few weeks I was like, let me just play around with this myself. And I was— I put in just like a YouTube link.

Yeah.

Of mine. I was like, these clips are good. Yeah. Like, these are impressive.

Yeah.

So even like finding tools like that, it's like everything to your point. It's so much easier if you just go build whatever it is you want to build. If you want to build a podcast, a software, if you want to be a creator, everything's the easiest it's ever been.

The barrier to entry, like we, we hired an agency to do clipping for us maybe last year, and I think it was like $25,000 a month for the service for them to post like 4 posts a day on whatever, however many accounts. And now we're running the same thing through Opus, but way more posts. We're getting probably 10 times as many views. And to be honest, I don't know what it costs, but it's not enough where I would know what it costs.

Yeah.

So it's like the barriers to entry are not going down. They're going down exponentially. Right. I think it's like important for people to hear that. Like, yeah, anything you want to do is very, very possible these days.

Yeah.

And getting ahead and just playing with it and just learning will give you so many things that you might figure out that you wouldn't otherwise figure out. So if someone wants to learn these things, is there like someone they can follow or is there a resource that you'd recommend? Where do people learn about these tools?

I'm still a big proponent of just the YouTube rabbit hole.

Yeah.

Like, and even all these respective companies, they have their own like trainings around their own product, right? Like Create, you know, they have all their own documentation of like, oh, if you get you know, stuck on something, they have documentation of how to do it. You can also literally ask it. That's the other crazy thing about some of these tools is like you could literally say, hey, I want to integrate with TikTok's API. How do I do that? And it walks you through how to do it.

Right.

You know what I mean? And then, you know, they all have like their own Discords and community as well if you need more help. So it's like YouTube, they have their own communities, they have their own documentation. Like whatever you need to find, like it is available to you somewhere for for free online.

Are there any specific types of businesses that you would think it would be a good idea to try to start right now?

A lot of these, again, kind of like viral mobile apps and B2C web apps. I think it's just a really, you know, I don't know the longevity of them right now. I think it's like if someone's just like, they just want to start like today and like build and like take advantage of like the low barrier to entry we've been talking about, building some of these things that can just be naturally integrated creator videos. Yeah, are there— there's so many, so many, so many examples of it.

So next time you're scrolling through social media and you're watching things, it's like you start thinking about what can these guys be talking about that would, that would be interesting for me to go use. Yeah, and then go try to build it because it'll only take— how long does it take to build something workable, like a relatively simple web app that works on a platform like this?

Again, I don't think we could do it in 30 minutes because again, the guy that founded it obviously knows how to use it the best. Yeah, very smart. Yeah, I'd say conservatively, so like you could do in a few days.

Yeah.

And like build something that's like functional, that looks solid, like it's not some piece of crap, and you could literally go out and start selling it.

What about for like a, um, like a landing page?

If you want to create a page, landing page, you genuinely could probably do it in like 30 minutes.

Yeah. What would you use to build like a really nice, high-converting, beautiful landing page?

I would use Create.

Create does that too? Yeah, they build web pages.

Oh yeah. Ah, yeah, if you want to—

does it all?

Yeah, I mean, again, you can literally find one that you like, paste a screenshot, it'll remake it, and then you can just tell it what tweaks to make and you're done.

Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, I know I'm gonna have a new standard for our marketing team now. When they take too long to do something, I'm just gonna go make it on Create and say, right, why is this taking you 2 days? I just did it in 20 minutes. Yeah, it's really interesting.

Yeah.

Well, I appreciate you sharing all this information because again, like, I'm interviewing people of all different ages and different areas of life, and it's always exciting to hear people that are in it, in, in the new cutting-edge stuff and learning about what the world's going to become. Um, as I get older, you know, I see people that are in their 50s, 60s, 70s that are— that have stayed ahead of the curve and they're still sharp. I think it's really important to stay up to date on things.

Yeah.

So I appreciate you sharing all this stuff with me today.

Yeah, of course. It's been fun.

A lot of fun. Is there anything else about the world of technology or business or anything else we didn't talk about that would be interesting to share? We cover most of the things.

I really think we covered most of it. I think just these new AI advancements and creators, I think those two things are like what I'm personally like focused on.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's building viral marketable tools. Easily and distributing them through content creators. And if you can master those two things, there's endless opportunities. Yeah. And you can, you can iterate, you can test things, you can fail, you can build again, and it could just be fun. So yeah, you know, you can replace the video game hobby with, with this type of hobby or spend an hour a day working on this type of stuff and see where it leads you. So I think that's the big lesson from this conversation. It's like, you know, a lot of listeners are aspiring entrepreneurs. They want to make money. They want to figure things out. Well, here's your chance.

Yeah.

Go spend some time playing with these tools.

Yeah.

You know, once you have a tool, go use a platform like yours to distribute it. Really interesting. Really valuable stuff.

Yeah.

Very much appreciated.

Yeah. Likewise. This is really fun. Yeah.

All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you.