$1M By 19, $100M+ By 35 -- Here's How He Did It

It was strange. I was pulling up to my university or to the college and I would pull up in a— I would pull up in like a drop-top Lexus, like a $70,000 car. And I was like 19, right?

Dude, so Val, Sean, He's not making it today, but that's okay. We— so your thing went viral today. How many likes did you get? Like 3,000? 3,300?

Something like that. I had to turn off my notifications. I can't do when you work with— I don't know how you guys do it. I don't know how people do it while running full businesses, but I had to turn that off because I just can't concentrate. That thing just— my phone was just blowing up all day.

Now you know how I feel. It is crazy, right? It's crazy. So you had 3,000 followers and now you have like 9, maybe 9,000, something like that.

Yeah. I mean, it took me how many years to get up to like 2,700? Yeah. Now it's— I don't know. I didn't look, to be honest with you, but I'm probably at like 8,000, 9,000 at this point. So, all right.

The background here is I met you through my— like, we share like a best friend, Joe. And Joe told me about you. He goes, this guy's crazy. And so, Val, let me tell you what I know about you and you tell me if it's right or wrong. And then I want to hear your story, but basically, basically, he goes— and I'll— I won't reveal too many numbers. I'll let you talk about any number that you want to talk about because I don't know if what I know is confidential or not. So I'm not going to— I'm not going to mention them. But you, as a 19-year-old, you came from Russia. You came from Russia.

I came from Uzbekistan.

Uzbekistan.

At the age of 11.

And then you come here, you get a computer at like 16 or 17, you start this affiliate marketing business. You're the only employee. By age like 22, 23, you've made something like $30 million in profit from this like one little business. From there, you parlayed that into a lyric website that was like one of the biggest lyric websites in the world, which doesn't sound that impressive, but most people don't realize that lyric websites are some of the most biggest websites in the world. And so, that made like another 8 figures in profit. From there, you parlayed that into an ad network that now is like huge. From there, you've now launched a jewelry business that apparently Joe has said it's bigger than all your other companies, but I don't know if that's true or not. And then throughout all this, you've acquired and sold and developed like $100+ million of real estate. Is all this accurate?

Some of it. Okay. So, well, actually my first—

And by the way, the reason I'm having you on here is because We've had a lot of really successful people on here do interesting stuff and they're like, a lot of them are well-known, but you don't. I basically the other day begged you to like tweet something and I helped you write this tweet and it took like a few days and we got it out there. But like besides that, you pretty much have never done any press. You've never talked about this publicly. And when I met you, I was like, this is a goldmine. This guy has so many interesting stories. We got to tell this story. So anyway, what was wrong and what was right?

So, okay. So, well, actually the funny part is that the first business I had was a PlayStation, like a video game website. So it wasn't like huge, but you know, I was in high school and making like $5,000 a month. That actually taught me a lot of lessons. So the search market—

And you actually told me, I actually tweeted another thing about you where you said, hey, my 12-year-old son has a website that's making like 2 Gs a day or something like that, and he needs an email service provider. Which one should he use? And I tweeted that screenshot and it went viral.

Yeah, well, that was anonymous. I guess it's not anonymous anymore. But so he's— yeah, that was interesting. I saw you post that and he still has a website. It's not doing as well, but not quite a 2,000 a day anymore. But he's working on like coding this thing away, and he's like figuring out all these things. So it's actually amazing to see it, you know, at his age, at, you know, he's 12 years old.

Where'd you get— it's crazy that you and your family, you just find all these opportunities. Where did it start? So your thing, first thing was a PlayStation website, which— what is that?

So it was a site called PSX Extreme. Um, we— this is like, I launched like in '98, '99 or something like that. Actually '99, it was right before the the, the bubble, the dot-com bubble burst. I was like about 8 months into the, the, the bubble, and it was doing really well. It was very easy to generate revenue. And, you know, once I got the traffic, it was— the site was all about anything related to PlayStation. So like, get cheat codes, your reviews, um, screenshots, whatever, right? Anything for like PlayStation fans. So it was like a PlayStation fan website. Then the dot-com bubble hits. My revenues disappeared 90%. My traffic was still up there, but I had no revenues because all the ad revenue disappeared. Like it went from being $3 CPM down to $0.30 CPM, if you could be lucky enough to get that.

How many people were going to this website?

It wasn't huge, but I had like 10,000 uniques a day, maybe 20,000.

In '99 and '98, that's got to be a massive site.

Yeah, it was good. It was a good amount of traffic. And it was all free. Um, so it was interesting, like, experience because I had to quickly learn how to generate revenue, and I, I had to go out there and sell advertising myself. And, you know, like, I— and then once I figured out that I could sell advertising, I didn't have enough traffic. So I went— I started going to other video game sites and saying— who had much more traffic than me— and say, hey, I got all these advertisers who would spend more if I had more traffic. Like, I'll let me put ads on your sites. So I went to all these other video game sites and like just was a broker for advertising. So that was kind of like my first, you know, making decent amount of money. I was making $5,000 and like just from the site and I was making probably another $10,000 a month from being a broker.

And then the thing that you tweeted today, or maybe last night, it basically, you told the story about how when you were 19, after this PlayStation site, you built an affiliate ad site and it made like, I forget the, I forget the numbers, but in 2 or 3 years it was like over $30 million in profit. So what were you, you were selling stuff on behalf of half.com or eBay? Who were you? Or no, New York Times. You had like 800 basic, you basically, you had like 800 ad accounts that that sold different stuff. So like a New York Times subscription for— which sold for $100, but you were able to sell it for only $30. So you're able to keep the difference, something like that?

Yeah. So, you know, it's affiliate marketing, but I use paid search, which was very new back then. And at the time, when after the dot-com bubble burst, all the advertisers —got all of a sudden advertising, digital advertising stopped being interesting. You know, for a second, for a moment there, people thought, businesses thought it might, you know, internet might be overhyped, right? So all of a sudden you see kind of all these budgets get, ooh, you know, just get pulled back, right? Especially all the brand advertising. And, but nobody really, you know, so everybody had to still figure out how to get customers. So they said, okay, you know what? We won't do brand advertising, but if you drive— if somebody drives us customers, we'll pay per customer. Like, we can't lose on that, right? So performance marketing. So that was around, and it was very accessible. And at the same time, the media wasn't expensive, right? Because the supply was there, but the demand wasn't there. So that's what I took advantage of. I started buying up a lot of the supply, mostly with search search, page search. And that's what made everything so profitable because I was just playing into those supply-demand dynamics that were working in my favor. But yes, what I would do is I would find an advertiser that had a product. I would test it on, at the time, you know, kind of like the modern-day Yahoo page search, or back then was called GoTo.com. And then later Google came around. And so I would test that ad. If it works, I expand on it. If it doesn't work, right, I would figure out how to make it work, right? If there is a way to make it work. And yeah, just like it just, you know, I was able to spend a dollar and generate 3. And what things were you selling? Oh man, everything. Everything. Yeah.

And all of this, and all of this was making like, like many millions of dollars of sales for your little one-person operation every year. Yes. That's crazy.

About, yeah. Tell us a little bit about like what was going on in your life at the time. Like, did you try and go to college? Were you doing this while you were at college? Did you drop out?

Like what are you doing with your life? So, I already had the business.

And I went— I got into, like, I love finance, so I was like, all right, so I'm gonna do business finance. And I didn't really feel like I should be, but I only did it because— and I had no time for it.

You seem like you'd be awful at that. I am.

I was awful. I was actually interested in the topics, especially the topics I was interested in, like law or finance or business accounting. All those things were interesting. Like, I couldn't— I couldn't sit through biology. But even though they were interesting, I had no time to study, so I would suck at tests. My GPA was horrible. I can't remember what it was, but it was just horrible because I just didn't care to get prepared for the test. I slept in half the class. I was just catching up on sleep because I would go to sleep at 4 o'clock in the morning. And then I—

Don't you still do that? Don't you go to sleep at 4 and get up at noon?

Yeah, average 4, 5. Yeah, so if I go to sleep at— I think yesterday I went to sleep at 4:30, I woke up at 11. So I try to get 7 hours of sleep. Doesn't happen all the time. You know, a lot of times I have to, you know, live on 5, 6 hours. But do you recognize that you're a weirdo? I'm used to it. You know what, I'm a weirdo. I know I do everything in reverse. My wife keeps telling me like, Like you do everything backwards.

So you're studying finance, but you're not doing well because you're running these businesses.

I'm in school just because I have a Jewish mother and she wanted me to go to school. You got to be in school. You have to be in college, right? Or you have to go.

But did they know that you're like, hey, Mom, like, I bet you I'm making more money than you?

I think she kind of knew. I don't know if she knew, but what I was making, I don't remember. But it was, it was strange. I was pulling up to my university or to the college. I went to Baruch, New York City, Baruch Business of Finance, Zicklin Business of Finance. And I would pull up in a, at some, I would pull up in like a drop-top Lexus, like a $70,000 car, and I was like 19, right? So, or 18, whatever I was. I think it was 18 at that point. I think, I don't think I even started the paid surgery is at this point.

So this business is just like crushing it. So like a few years in, you've— in your tweet you said it made over $30 million in profits, like 3, 4, 5 years in. So it's gone really well. You're paying like a crazy amount of taxes, you said. So you decide to move to the burbs a little bit outside of New York City and you like buy a cheap house in cash. So things are going well, right? Like it's— but you— said, you know, I'm a little bored with this or I don't really want to go much further into this racket. I want to try something new. And then the next business was MobileFuse, which is around today, right?

So I actually launched around the same time we launched two businesses. So, Han, so I launched the, let's call it the music content distribution company.

Oh, that's right. Sorry. Right.

So that So we didn't own— I didn't own actually lyric sites. What I did is I built a service. I built a system that connects— called Ringtone Matcher. And what I realized was there was demand for ringtones, and there was all this traffic for all this music-related traffic, especially in lyrics. And so what I did is I built a service. And the other thing I realized was that the traffic was very much international. Like 70% of a music site or lyric site was non-US. And I noticed that some of the advertisers, like ringtone advertisers, were advertised, they'll do okay, but they would have only US, they could only accept US customers and they could only accept like Verizon customer or only T-Mobile customer. So I built this thing called Ringtone Matcher and Ringtone Matcher basically integrated like 60 countries into one system. So if you have a music site, you could drive that— those users to Ringtone Matcher, and Ringtone Matcher will figure out based on geo, like what country you're in, right, based on what carrier you use, because it's carrier billing. So it's important that you know, I figured out like if you have T-Mobile and to match you up to a ringtone service that actually, um, is compatible with T-Mobile. And then the third thing we look for, that content is available. So if you're clicking on, hey, get this, get Toxic by Britney Spears ringtone on your phone, I need to make sure that that song is also available in their catalog because some Some ringtone providers had, um, uh, like Warner Music, and some of them maybe just had the EMI. There were like 4 major music companies at the time, and, uh, you know, these ringtone providers didn't have all those catalogs, so they might have 1 or 2 at a time. So I would take all that data and put it into one simple link. And how big did that get?

How big did that business get?

I was in front of— Ringtone Matcher was in front of half a billion people a month. Yeah, half a billion. So, um, and it was everywhere. I mean, it wasn't just lyric sites. I was on CBS Radio, AOL Radio, Yahoo Radio, Last.fm, like every— pretty much every music site. I remember even talking to Musical.ly, which is TikTok now, right? I remember even talking to those guys. I was talking to we were talking to WhatsApp in the early days, like when they were just two guys or something, like we wanted to integrate because anytime somebody mentions music or a song or something like I wanted to be on my, I want to Ringtone Matcher there to show up.

So, and but what, but when you're using the word we again, it's not we.

No, no, this company was. So actually that company I started Ringtone Matcher myself. Again, I was a one-man show. At some point, I, um, we, you know, there was one little group of guys who were pretty good at dealing with advertisers and, uh, or actually ringtone providers, and I felt like I need help on that front. And so I merged those guys in. So there were 5 guys that merged into my company. Um, to form—

when you say merge, who bought who?

I was a majority owner of the company, and then the, the 5 guys had the— like, they, they had a third of the company. I had two-thirds.

How big was it when it was just you?

Um, it was just— it was going nuts, uh, but, uh, I think, I believe the, the year I think the year we merged, it was $10 million.

Just again, just you. Yeah. $10 million profit with just you. Do you, why do you think, so this is the, we'll get to the rest in a minute, but why do you think that you find this weird stuff and why don't you hire people? Two different questions, but how on earth do you find this type of stuff?

You know, it's, it's, it's, It's funny, like, I know how I see how organized you are, right? Like, you make your goals, you lay everything out on paper, right? You're very organized and you could think about it. You ask people for feedback. I'm totally opposite of that. I just kind of go with where, like, I'd like to test things. And I guess I'm very curious. And I could be very, very focused. But if I get distracted, I get very easily distracted, right? So it could be like sometimes it's a curse, but sometimes it's a blessing. A lot of times it's a blessing, um, and I come across these interesting things and my curiosity just takes it further. Um, so when I— when I— so the way I actually came across this thing was because I felt that there was a point of my life where I was seeing Google was just too dominant part of my business. And I didn't like that because I didn't want to rely on any one thing. So I started looking outside of paid search for supply. And I came across these music sites and I actually started testing Rhapsody on them because I had such a good deal with Rhapsody. I was like, let me start marketing outside of search. It did okay. And I had these, you know, I started building these relationships with the music sites. And then, then, then I kind of tested a ringtone service and it just crushed. Like, it was not even close. Like, it did 3 times better. And I'm like, wow, this thing did 3 times better than Rhapsody. And that ringtone provider was just covering US, just like 1 or 2 music labels and like 2 carriers out of 4. I think I had 4— there were 4 major carriers at the time. I was like, hold on a second, if it's already doing 3 times as well, what happens if I start integrating everything globally, right? So that's how Ringtone Matcher came about.

Was there— when you launch stuff, What's your first version like? Junk. Like, do you get the idea and it's online in 12 hours?

It was a kiddie script I wrote. This, you know, guy was kind of freelancing for me a little bit. I just, I didn't want to tell him about the idea. He's actually a CTO of one of my companies now. He was like 15, 16 years old. and I didn't tell them the idea. So I said, hey, how do you script this? How do you script that? So I scripted it myself. And, um, and, uh, so yeah, so it was pure junk. It was literally just a bunch of if and then statements on— and, and ASP. There's a— we were running Windows, um, Windows Server on ASP infrastructure. So I, uh, I had a bunch of redirects that were just doing a bunch of if and then statements and redirecting people based on certain parameters.

When, and when you're doing it, are you like, see, every time I've hung out with you, the reason I like hanging out with you and Joe, I consider Joe one of my best friends. And so I have like his attitude. You and Joe have the same attitude, which is like, he's a little more laid back than me and you. I think he is, he is. I've never seen him lose his temper. He is very calm. And I'm like, hey, this didn't work out for this reason. He goes, oh, that's okay. Like he's super calm, but you have that too. I think, I think that like, I think that what it is, you have this, like, I don't know if it, the right word is like chutzpah, if the right word is like, I don't know what the word is, but it's almost like things I've heard, we're gonna get to the rest of the stories because, cuz there's like this jewelry business that you started, which is like, seems like even bigger than all the other things that you've done potentially. And You like do these things where I'm like, but like, Val, you don't know anything about that. And like, you don't even have any employees. Like you don't know anything. And, but you just are like, yeah, but I, you know, whatever. I'll just, we'll just go a little bit further and then we'll see what happens. And then if it, if it sucks, I'll bail. You know what I mean? Like you have this like, aw shucks attitude. Like, oh, you know, yeah, we'll see what happens. It's very interesting. Whereas like if I was doing. What you were doing and I started seeing those results, I'm like, is this illegal? Am I breaking the law? Am I going to go to jail? What is going on? Like, it's almost like I would have— most people would have self-destructive tendencies when they see this like going so well.

Yeah, look, I see that all the time. I feel like people tend to overthink things and spend a lot of time like analysis paralysis. And the reason I think a lot of people are successful, like especially somebody like me, is while somebody's thinking about making, perfecting one thing, which by the way will still have a, you know, 60% failure, right, on that one thing that you just overthought, I'd rather test 10 things by, uh, within that same time period, and I will likely have, I have a better, um accuracy, or I'll have a better chance of hitting it out of the ballpark with one of those 10 things, or maybe more than one of those things.

Yeah. How did you get into the jewelry business to start with?

Um, so after I sold those 2 music-related companies, um, which I took like 3 years off, off, you know, I thought I retired, but it was anything but. I just got— start getting like, my curiosity was just taking me into all different, like, I was on all these boards and I was like, you know, investing into a bunch of things. And I realized after 3 years I need to build something again. So I started looking at, I knew that I wanted to do something where it's, fixing or disrupting a fragmented space. I didn't really want to go after like corporate America. I wanted to go after like mom and pops that— when I say mom and pops, it could be like, you know, I'm thinking like car dealerships, right? They do tens of millions of dollars. It doesn't mean they're tiny, right? So I wanted to go after something like along those lines. And I had some investments in the jewelry space. I had some family in the jewelry space. It's a pretty tight-knit community. I just happened to be— I had some family that knows that business. I actually worked as a teenager. I worked every weekend. I worked in a jewelry store. I knew how to fix, like, I knew how to fix jewelry. I mean, I would sit on the bench with a blowtorch at like 15 years old. Because my cousin taught me. It was my— it was a, it was a family business, my, my aunt and uncle's business. They had a couple jewelry stores and they taught me how to fix jewelry and to, you know, so I knew the business a bit from the retailer's perspective. It always seemed like a very weird way to do business. I always questioned everything like they're doing. And so, so, so the idea was, hey, like these retailers, if we could integrate, build a platform and services and we could integrate into them. And this is a $300 billion industry, by the way, globally, which fragmented, but controls is actually bigger. Independents are bigger part of the business, fine jewelry, than the majors, the chains. So I knew that again, if I could build distribution, but I had to bring some, then there's a lot of power there. But I have to bring value, and that's where my expertise in data and marketing, digital, all that came into fruition, you know. So we basically put this thing together, we integrate into stores and help them grow, help them bring customers, cut costs, increase their revenue. How much did you invest to start it? To start it? I don't— I mean, to start it, I think we started off with a couple of million.

So you put $2 million of your own money?

In the beginning, yeah.

How big is this? But you've done more. I think you put more in since. How big is this going to be? I put in way more.

I mean, at this point, I put in 8 figures into this business. I think it's a multibillion-dollar company. In the future.

For real? You think it's a multi-billion dollar company, like to sell?

Yeah, market cap. I believe that, A, I don't know if there's anybody big enough to buy my company or this company. We actually have a lot of people this time around. It's no longer just Val. We have a lot of employees. I believe this company will be, if it's successful and we could do what we need to do and we could really help all these retailers, step up their game. I don't think there's really a company in that space that would be big enough to acquire us. So like—

But are you, are you the CEO of that company? Is that smart? I mean, that doesn't seem like you're just— you get up at 11 a.m. and like you go to bed at 4. How are you the CEO of a company that could be a billion-dollar company?

Yeah, no, good question. Look, we have a great team that is able to execute. How many people? It's hard to say. We became pretty global, but, you know, our offices outside of the US are not all— most of them are employees, right? So they're all in. If I had to talk about factories, our tech teams, our marketing teams, our We're probably talking about 70 people at this point.

Wow. And who's like— you're not running the day-to-day of the business. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah.

95% of my time goes into this business.

So then are you like talking with the employees and things like that? I mean, you're like running all-hands meetings and things like that.

Yeah. I'm not big on meetings. I'll be honest, you know, to be honest with you. But, but I'm very accessible to all my team. I mean, Everybody on my teams have access to me. I go into the office in the city. We actually had the— we were in the office June 2020. I mean, we had, you know, COVID, like it was ghost town in the city and we had to figure out how to be in the office because it's not an e-com— it's not just a digital ad business that I could just operate from work from home, right? We had to have people in the offices and We did all kinds of things. We got cars to pull people into the office. But anyway, we— yeah, I'm there. I'm in the weeds.

But it's not like you're kind of downplaying it. I invested in one of your properties. We bought a 6-plex in Greenpoint, I think.

I forget. Well, we essentially bought land, right? We bought a house because it's going to be knocked down. We're going to build a brand new Uh, we're gonna ground up construction. It's gonna be, uh, like a nice, a nice condo building. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's, that's what I mean. But I didn't even look at the details. I was just like, anything that Val does, I'm part of. But it's, it's way bigger than your— you're just saying like it's a project. I mean, I think you've bought like $100 million worth of real estate, right?

No, I haven't, I haven't bought $100 million. Uh, we have 6 projects, a couple of them already completed, third one is just about to be completed. Uh, actually 2, the first 2 were completed and completely sold out. The third one is about to be completed and go on the market. And then we have 3 other projects and they're all getting bigger and bigger. The value of the combined sale value of those projects would be approaching $100 million.

Do you— what do you— what are you tinkering on now? What excites you now? What— and someone asked a good question, which is What is the equivalent of ringtones today?

What's the equivalence of—

like, it's just crazy that it's just like you're kind of like this, like, digital cowboy. You're just like this, like, one guy in the Wild West doing this shit with, like, no rules. It's just— I just think it's hilarious that you are just a pirate who's taking it to the extreme. Where are the digital pirates at right now? Uh, it has to be like TikTok. Um, what do you mean?

It's, you know, I— you look for like those spaces that haven't been touched, right? Um, because people ask me, and I think, I think what— that's what you're saying, like, what's— what, what can you— what can be marketed these days and how to get that kind of scale? And I don't— it's hard because what I've seen over my career is that the windows of opportunity, those white spaces, right? The wind— those windows are becoming shorter and shorter and shorter every iteration, right? There was the paid search, probably lasted a good 6 years. After that, um, or around that same time, there was display. That probably lasted a little less. And then there was social media. That window probably, you know, the arbitrage window, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That probably lasted 2, 3 years at best. Now you're talking, you know, now you got like Instagram and TikTok and you got the Instagram Reels. I mean, those are probably also 1-year windows of opportunity if you could kind of catch that lightning and build on it. Then you got something, but your window—

And it's all rooted in distribution, which is how do you get distribution quickly? And you're saying that you think that's TikTok. Do you think that window is still open?

I think if you have a knack for understanding how to get virality or get content, then you have your own distribution. If you don't have that knack, you got to figure out how to work with people that have that, um, that access. So if there's one company that could work with all the Sam Parrs, right, all the podcasters, uh, how much is that worth? Like, we're using a platform here right now, right, that is just smart. They're, they're doing the right thing. Like, they're focusing on guys like you who have all this access, but they're not selling anything, right? They're just selling you a platform. If somebody could sell, figure out how to sell a product across a number of podcasts, that's worth a lot. And you could sell, you can move a lot of product. And by the way, it doesn't have to be podcasts. What about all the TikTokers who are doing all those dances, right? I know, um, I know, like, for one company, they scaled to like $80 million in sales a few years ago. I'm not going to mention the name of it, but they scaled to like $80 million in sales just on the back of YouTube influencers.

What was the product? It was cosmetics, like, product.

And they just— Cosmetics.

Cosmetics. It was just like makeup or something or lotion.

Yeah, the numbers were just insane. And, um, yeah, it was just a long tail. Like, it wasn't just the big influencers, even the, like, thousands of mediocre, uh, influencers or smaller, um, ones that just drove it. So stuff like that, like, latch on to something that is big, um, especially if you could, uh, latch onto the, like the long tail of it because not, not, not a lot of people look at the long tail part of, uh, sure. Businesses.

Well, so one thing I wonder, you know, like this thing that Val talks about of testing out 10 different things before the other guy can put his pants on, right? Like you're, you're building your, uh, perfect thing that's gonna take you 6 months before you even get to market. Great. I'm gonna test 10 things in that time. That sounds really nice, but also like, I guess I'll actually ask Sam first, then I'll ask you, Val. Like, what do you think it is about Val? What do you think it is about either his skillset or his personality that allows him to do that much testing where other people just like can't figure that out?

Apparently the, I think that this is a common thread that I've seen. Uh, I, my buddy Joe is just like this. There's this thing particularly, I find it amongst immigrants. Or children of immigrants, and maybe because they've like experienced some type of hardship where they're like, like, dude, I've experienced some crazy shit, or my family has experienced crazy shit. I have zero fear in looking like a fool. If that's the worst— if the worst that's going to happen is I'm going to look stupid or lose a tiny amount of money, I'm okay with that. And I don't— so I don't have any fear about that. That's what— that's what I think I've noticed. That's the trend I've noticed amongst people like Val.

Look, I think there's a— I think that's— I think there's a huge— that's a huge factor. And one of the things I look at, like, I'm raising kids now, right? How do I make sure that they kind of— because they're not going to grow up the same way I grew up, right? They're not going to come out The resources they have, the access they have, it's very different from what I grew up with. So what I think I realized is the power is in resourcefulness. Okay, I was able to make a lot, or do a lot, I should say, whether it's money or whatever it is, right? It doesn't have to be just money. It could be whatever excites you, right? but I was able to do a lot with very little. But it's because I had no choice and I had very little. Like, we weren't poor, like, you don't get it, I didn't come from poverty or anything like that. But again, my parents couldn't afford a computer for me for the first 6 years of my life here, right? So I got to think like, how do I recreate that? And you can't really recreate that for your kids, but I figured, okay, I'm not, you know, I'm not gonna give my kids everything on a silver platter. So, so you, I mean, you just talked about my son, like, he is, uh, he, he, he's, his DNA is very like, like mine. Like, he's way ahead of me because he has all these tools. Like, you know, he has a computer way before me. I didn't buy him a computer. I made him Save up the money. I don't care how he does it— birthdays, work, whatever. During that time, he researched all parts and everything. I think at the age of like 7 or 8, he built a computer, bought the parts by himself. He built a computer from scratch by himself. I didn't even help him. That's crazy. So he now built 2 computers, like and he taught himself how to code. And, um, so I, I suppress resources for my kids systematically. Not like I don't feed them, like they're, they're, they're, they're, they're very— they're doing just fine. Like, that's good to hear. And everything, they live in a nice neighborhood, but I systematically, uh, make sure that they're not, uh, given all the resources because That's how you naturally learn to become resourceful.

What do you think it is?

Yeah, fundamentally it's about doing more with less, essentially, you're saying.

Yeah. Yeah. But it has to start from day one.

Are you driven by money? Yes and no.

I, yes, because it's kind of like a score. Right? I don't see no money. It's like a number in a bank account, right? Like, you don't— it's not like back in the days where you look, you know, you— you know, it's not like we're Scrooge McDuck, like, and you get to jump through the vault of cash, right? Like, I would watch as a kid and I was like, wow, I want to be that guy one day. And but no, I think what I'm driven really is by just winning. And, um, there is— I think there is a bit of sense in me of, um, that I'm one step from losing it all.

You still feel that way?

I feel like it's still possible. I think it's a— I think it's like an immigrant thing, um, probably.

By the way, I feel exactly the same way. I was like in bed last night telling my wife, I was like, I need to go to like a therapist or something. I'm like, I'm freaking out. We're gonna lose everything. This is all going away. I feel the exact— I feel like I, for a long time, I like had a plan on where I would go if I was homeless. Like, I still believe that it's all going away.

In some ways, in a weird way, it kind of excites you. Not about homeless, but that you got a chance to figure it out from scratch again?

It, yeah, cuz I like, uh, it does kind of make me, it, because when you have nothing, it's kind of fun to play games because it's just easier to bet. Sometimes you can't bet as much, but it's kind of exciting to be like, just like a hood rat with nothing, like which I, which I was. Um, it is kind of exciting, but I get fear of like the anxiety I, I feel of losing everything. Like I, like I have so many spreadsheets that map out like, all right, when the money gets to this number, then I gotta go and panic and get a job and start like Ubering. Like I have like a plan for that. We, the reason why I had you on and Ben, the reason why I wanted to show you this guy is now it's, he's hard to explain, but I wanted people to understand like a truly unique and original thinker. And I don't, you know, I, we, you're gonna have to come on again, but like, do you, does that, do you understand what I'm saying, Ben? It's very original thinking. Yeah.

And you, you can see that just in the way that like you, Val, have attack, have tackled like a, a different set of problems than anyone else I've ever talked to. Uh, just like I've never talked to someone who's like, yeah, I tackled ringtones. And then ad networks and then peer-to-peer lending and then the jewelry business. Like, I just think that kind of belies how your mind functions differently than other people. Do you, do you feel that way? Like, do you feel that you just have unique perspective? Have you met anyone that looks at the world the way you do?

And if you acknowledge that it's weird because— and you're saying that you didn't, you didn't actually realize it was weird until I talked about you on the podcast like half a year ago, which is weird because how old are you, like 39? 38, and you're now just realizing that you're an oddball?

Yeah, so I didn't see myself that way until you did the whole exposé with that show on that one episode that you didn't tell me about, but after our lunch.

But I know, by the way, I told Joe, I was like, dude, I'd never do that. I almost always ask for permission before I talk about it, but I just was too excited and I forgot.

I have a story, but I'm gonna tell you that after on that. But so to me, like when you said like, oh, this guy goes from this industry to that industry, he's like jumping all over the place and he's, you know, kind of successful or successful at doing it. This is like crazy. I was like, huh. I never thought of myself that way, but it makes sense. Like, I don't know why I keep jumping different categories. I guess again, that curiosity just kicks in and I just, but I go after it instead of just what if, you know, I just kind of go after it. But no, until now I really haven't realized how odd that is. But thank you for letting me know that I'm really strange.

I just think that like there's just a bunch of unique there's just a bunch of unique things about you and I think it's so cool. When I say weird and odd, that's a really good compliment, by the way.

Yeah, listen, I know you well enough now to know that's a compliment. And so the funny story about, again, before you, I was pretty under the radar, right? Like, yeah, you could find stuff on me, but you have to really look. Like, nobody really put it out there, right? And So then Joe tells me like, you're gonna do the podcast and I didn't tell my wife. And then the podcast comes out. I'm like, hey Sarah, this guy did a podcast on me. She's like, who cares about a podcast? She's like, you know, but he's gonna talk about me. She's like, who cares? Like what, a couple hundred people gonna listen? I'm like, apparently this guy has like a million people listening. She's like, oh great. She's like, did he ask your permission? I was like, not really. So I don't really know what he's gonna talk about. So she's like, okay. So the thing comes out, I was like, so we're listening to it. And, and he keeps saying Val, he keeps saying Val, Val, Val, like never say, you're right, never say my last name. And then you and Sean go into like this tangent talking about red pill and blue pill or whatever. So she's like, and so we thought like it said, Val part is over, right? She's like, okay, it wasn't so bad. He never mentioned your last name. Who the heck, who the heck's gonna figure out who's Val? And then after you went off to a tangent with the, about the pills and you go like, oh, by the way, I forgot to mention his full name. Let me spell, let me spell it out for you. And you literally spelled my last name. So she's like, I'm gonna kill this guy. Oh, she was bad.

No, no, she wasn't bad.

She's very nice.

Everything, I thought that everything we said you could find publicly and we didn't reveal anything like crazy. And I tried to only, like, I just read your LinkedIn. That's basically all I did.

Yeah, you could find stuff about, but it's, you know, it's one thing to information to be out there and for somebody to look for it. Um, but it's another one. When you're on full blast, right? Like, and it's being discovered. Um, so, right? By audiences. So, so that's all new to me.

I know. I, I felt like an asshole when that happened. I, I'm normally always good about that. So like, if someone, if we're out with friends and people are talking about stuff, I'm like, hey, is this private or not? Like, they have to make sure they say it's private around me.

Yeah. Um, it's, you're, you're, you're, you're a nice guy, so I'll, I'll let it slide.

Okay. Yeah, I blew up your spot and, and yeah, I, that's something I remembered the day that happened. I was like, oh my God, Joe, I didn't even realize it. 'Cause sometimes when Sean and I were recording, I forget that it's the podcast. I just like, it's just like friends talking to one another. And I forget, I'm like, oh my God, I forgot that was, I just said that on air. I can't believe that. So that, that was one of those examples. But, um, dude, this was awesome. What do you think, Ben? This is, this is pretty badass. This is great. It's got me fired up to go.

I know you're doing your Airbnbs this year, Sam.

That's kind of your thing. Val told me not to do it though, right before this podcast. He said, don't do it. Oh really? Yeah. I think I'm gonna do it anyway. But he, I told him these two ideas that I might work on and he basically said, uh, dude, I was like, should I work on going hard on content? Should I work on this job board idea or this Airbnb thing? And he goes, do content. And I was like, ugh, that's what I don't wanna do.

I said, don't do it now.

Well, I didn't actually, he literally sent me his response like 3 minutes before the podcast, so I didn't entirely read the, I haven't read the whole, his whole reply, but he's, he's like the, he's like the, the, the, the layup thing, that's just gonna bog you down. That's what he said.

Yeah, I think, I think so. I think something you could do in the future, but not now.

I do feel inspired after hearing for about and from Val of like, I need to be trying more things, like just taking more swings and like putting more experiments out there to see kind of what. What lands.

I like that. Yeah.

Listen, throw stuff against the wall, like see what sticks. What's the worst that could happen?

But when you throw, when most people throw stuff against the wall, it's a half-ass attempt. When you throw stuff against the wall, like you spend money or you, like you said that when you were like, when you didn't have much, you spent like $6,000 or $7,000 on ads to see if this X thing could work. Whereas most people will like, like, oh, that's, I'll lose a couple hundred bucks. I don't want to do that. It's like you, you actually try.

But that was an accident. Like, like in that thread, that was an accident. There were no budget caps back then. So I turn it on, I go to sleep, and I woke up to a $6,000 spend.

Yeah, but you still did it. I mean, I get just like most people just don't do— you, your, your attempts are like good.

So when I was going to all these music sites, you know how I get their attention? I would go to a site and I would just kind of through Alexa or whatever, I kind of know how much traffic they have. And I knew these guys were outside the country and to get their attention, I would literally email 'em and say, hey, I'll give you $100,000 or I'll give you $50,000, I'll give you $20,000 prepaid, I'll wire it tomorrow just so you could test my ringtone matcher link for 7 days. If you don't like it, if it doesn't make you enough money, take the link off, we never talk again. If you want, if you like how much it generates, We'll sign, you'll sign a contract. Um, and everybody signed a contract because those two text links were generating like 5 times, like somebody who was making like a, like there were sites that were making like top sites were making like $100,000 a month. I would pay him $400,000 a month on top of that.

And, and how many people actually took you up and said, all right, fine, I'll wire you the money and then I'll put yours. They all wanted the money first.

Oh, the money. My success rate on that email was just, I mean, who the hell is not going to take money like upfront? I would be like, you know what?

I don't need you to do it upfront. I'll give it a try just because you're serious. And you actually told a story on Pom's podcast because you like, you were like bold, but you have high integrity because like, I think there was a guy who you owed a lot of money to because they were a customer of your, or They were a vendor and you just had a bill that you had to pay them and they like changed their address or something and you're like, dude, I can't find you. I owe you $60,000 and you like held onto the $60,000 for like a long time and you just were seeking them out everywhere. Like, hey, where'd you go? I need to pay you your money. Yeah. Yeah.

It pays off. Like, um, what, um, it's, it's, it's, we, because we had so many international people, um, in the music business when the Great Recession hit and they were in all these countries and where their banks, a lot of them were in banks were located in weird areas, weird countries like Cyprus. And they would literally tell us, hey, stop wiring us money. We don't trust the bank we're working with. I gotta get a new bank account. Like we held their money for, they told us to hold their money for, I mean, we had millions in our bank account that didn't belong to us. And all these sites basically told me, told me like I was kind of like their bank for a while because they didn't want to get paid and they didn't trust the bank. It was phenomenal to me. Like I couldn't understand that they trust us, trust me with their money for, I mean, it was, I think some, in some cases up to a year we were holding their money because he had nowhere to send it.

That's crazy, dude. This is a good conversation. I'm happy you came on.

This is awesome. Listen, you're doing— I told you before, I love your podcast. It's very, it's very like, it's very like layman terms, right? It's actually takes a lot of intellect in my opinion to dumb things down. Well, thank you. I appreciate that.

It helps. Yeah, oftentimes I wonder like, I've a lot of my friends are English as a second language, maybe It's like, I'm always amazed. Can you imagine coming to another country where you don't speak the language at like 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and then like just crushing it? I just, so I think that's just like amazing. I've got a bunch of friends who are ESLs and they'll, they'll like, I'll help, I'll help them write stuff because, um, they're just a little rough and I'm like, dude, how are you so badass? I just, I'm amazed that you, you're, I'm just amazed at some of these people. Yeah. Like, and you're one of those people. Yeah.

Whether, whether, like, whether you're ESL, like, my English is pretty good now. But I still can't put my thoughts together in a way that makes it so interesting for people to understand. And you know how to break that down. So like, you know, you helped me with some of my, you know, one of my pieces on that. So that's power.

Well, thank you. I appreciate you coming on.

This is badass. Listen, I appreciate you guys having me on.