We Made a BIG Decision...

The fastest way to become the person that you want is to surround yourself with people who give you no choice but to become them. And so I think Layla and I are very proud to announce that we're bringing in for the first time ever in our career, a partner into our business at acquisition.com, which is the man, the myth, the legend, the Michael Jordan of the, the real estate industry, Sharon Servata.

I'm so excited to be here. This is so fun.

I'm so excited. I can't believe it's finally here.

Over a year.

Yeah.

Over a year that we've been talking about it now. You remember we were doing the whiteboard session in Alex's in his office and we were like talking about the whole plan. We planned the whole thing out and it's like the countdown began. Alex had a little timer on his phone.

Yeah, I did. And every, like for days and weeks, I would just be like, 78 days left, 54 days left until we could finally announce this. I think that it would be helpful for everyone to know kind of like the thought process behind the decision and kind of our relationship and how it's evolved to even deciding to do this because, you know, getting into a partnership, you know, you've heard our content before. It's, I mean, it's like getting married. It's a huge, it's a huge decision.

I think we were all equally terrified.

Yeah. No.

And, and just like not wanting to fuck anything up.

Yeah. And we've been, so what a lot of people might not know is that we've been friends for 6 or 7 years now and like very good friends. So to give you some context and, and we'll walk through the, some of the timelines, 'cause I think it'll be relevant. But like when we were selling the company, I was talking to Sharan every morning like, hey, what do you think about this? And what do we think about this deal term? And even before that, uh, you know, I had, I got introduced to him from a mutual friend of ours and we had a Zoom call at like, I don't know, like 4 or 5 o'clock at night. And I don't really take calls in the afternoon. And I was like, this is so weird. And I was like, I don't know, but this guy seems awesome from what this guy had said. Cause he'd already sold a company for $3.4 billion. And I was like, I want to talk to somebody who's—

I was like, it's for sure a scam. Yeah. Like I was like, who are you talking to that did that?

Yeah. And so anyways, we hopped on and then we ended up talking for like 3 and a half hours, which never happens. And so I think that's pretty much how it kicked off. Off, and we very quickly became very good friends.

Well, I remember what happened was like Alex went on the Zoom call, right? And then I made dinner, all the stuff. He comes back at like 8:30, and then I was like, how was the call? And then he was like, you need to meet this guy, like you'd really like him. And I was like, yeah, most of the time when he introduced me to someone, I'd be like, listen, something smells wrong about this guy, right? And then I remember like I was so hesitant, but I was like, okay, he would not like be like, you need to meet him, if he didn't think so. He's like, no, I think like you would get along really well with him. And I was like, okay. He's only said that about 2 or 3 people ever.

And I've been right every time.

Correct.

Do you remember the first call though? All we did was, um, Alex was on the call.

Yeah.

And we just drew processes out on a white— on a, on an iPad.

Yeah, I do remember. 'Cause I remember I'm being like blown away. I was like, oh my God, how do you know all this stuff? And then I was like, can I pay you money? I don't know what to do. And you were like, we're just friends. And I was like, I understand, but this is more— I just need, I need you to help me with shit. And you were like, no. And I was like, yes. I was like, please help.

And so I would say Sharon was the original kind of first trusted confidant for our money. So like we had, you know, good amount of money prior to the sale. And then obviously after the sale there was even more. And so the game of making money versus the game of making your money make money are two completely different games. There is crossover where one makes you better at the other and the other makes you better at the first, but there's still a ton, or for me there was a huge amount of ignorance debt. Of, I mean, even around tax law of like, oh wait, hold on, these, I, I'm getting this distribution, but I'm getting taxed on this too. I was like, but I paid tax on the money the first time.

Yeah.

And then like, wait, you can have other things that can appreciate. And then there's blends for cash flow and, and all of this stuff. And then there's like, oh, there's, there's buckets that you can put your investments into so that you can optimize towards different outcomes. And all of this stuff was stuff that we didn't know. And we ended up creating our money rules list, I think 3, 4 years ago. You guys might've seen a video of mine where it was like, These are the money rules, these are money algorithms. A lot of those stem from, from Shanli Liu.

It's so cool because like you're, you're really great at marketing and brand. You're really great at investing and you're really great at operating. And it's like every time I've seen one area, it's just like the depth of knowledge in each area too. It's like, it's not like you're shallow and all, it's like you are deep knowledge in each of those areas. I think that's when we really started talking a lot more because it was like, okay, we're talking about all the shit because we're doing the same shit. And that was really fun for me.

I remember when, when the time between after the sale, after I sold, we had sold TELUS and I was just doing investing private equity stuff. I would just talk to both of you saying, man, I don't know what my next thing is. And the crazy part is I think a lot of people don't know this, but you were the first people that I talked to about the Real Opportunity. And I said, hey, I have this, this is super interesting. Small public company, $200 million in revenue. And you're like, you get to go work.

Yeah.

Go do that.

Yeah. It's so funny to like sit back and think about it all because I think, um, I was like thinking through before we sat down here, I was like, how did this conversation even start around us all working together? Because I, we, I had obviously talked about Alex for years before we'd ever talked about it with you. Cause I was, and it was more of like, um, I was like, oh my God, is there some way we could bring Sharon on the board or like bring him in as like, like how do we involve him somewhat in act? And it was just like something I didn't know how to do. And it's like normal. I remember telling him I would ask Sharon about this, but I can't ask him about it because it's him. And then I'm trying to think about, do you guys remember how we started having the conversation about—

I know exactly what happened.

Really?

So we were at dinner and then I said, man, I think I've hit all the big goals. We went from $200 million valuation to a billion-dollar valuation. And I said, I'm done. I think I'm just gonna retire. And Alex just laughed. He's like, you would be so bored being retired again.

You've already done this.

Yeah. You should just come work with us.

Yeah.

And we could do it for a long time.

Yeah.

And I was like, ah, you don't want that.

I was like, No, I do want that. You should totally do that. And so I'll give you a little bit of, a little bit, a little bit of backstory. We'll Quentin Tarantino this. We'll, we'll put the pieces together. But Shanli Liu came here as an immigrant, as the only child. His parents sold their belongings to get him a one-way ticket so that he could be here. And then immediately you met a mentor who took interest in you with, with your very thick Indian accent, which you can't hear anymore cuz you worked on getting rid of it. And then what pro— did you get exception to a program? What was the, how did, like, what was the gap there that, that got you into like the, that software company?

So how it all happened was for my senior paper in college, I wrote this, I wrote the senior paper in computer science and I pitched it at a programming contest at Berkeley. And one of the judges said to me after I pitched it saying, hey kid, you're not gonna win. I was like, thanks a lot, but that was a good idea. I just funded a couple of the guys. I think what you are sharing would be perfect for them. And that was, my first foray into, you know, having a startup. And so I actually lived at my, in my aunt's basement. I had no money and we were building a startup down Sand Hill Road, raising cash. And this was during the boom. So we, we raised $20+ million and then sold that business overall. So it was all by chance when I was, of my senior paper pitching at a programming contest.

So you got the exit money from that deal and learned a bunch of stuff about deal making in that process, which we'll get to another time. And then you took off for like 5 years to play professional tennis. And so plays professional, he's like, oh great, I'm done. I don't need money anymore. I'm gonna play tennis for the next 5 years.

Can you imagine Alex explaining this story to me after he had, you had told, I was like, why is going on?

What's this? I was like, yeah, this guy's a tennis player and he's Indian and now he's a billionaire. It's, it's awesome.

Like what?

And so, so, uh, after that though, you're like, you know what, I need to, I need to get back to work. So then you went to get your MBA?

Yep.

Yeah. So went to Vanderbilt. So he's a fellow, fellow Commodore. For those of you who don't know, I also went to Vanderbilt.

Community college.

Yep. Community college. Western. That's what they, that's what the kids call it. Anyways, so goes to Vanderbilt for the MBA and then goes from Vanderbilt into Goldman Sachs on the credit side, right?

Yeah.

And then calling all these business owners to, you know, talk about financial products and investing, things like that. Did you, is that how you found TELUS?

Yeah. So one of my clients was also an investor, just had invested in this, in this real estate company. And he said, hey, I invest in this real estate company. Can you come take a look at it? And that's how the TELUS process started.

TELUS was how many years?

5.

So in 5 years, Sharon went in, bought a huge chunk of the company. It went from $300 million in gross volume to, to $3.4 billion in 5 years. And then they sold that company and then that got integrated into Douglas Elliman.

Douglas Elliman.

Yeah. And so after that sale, he then was like, okay, I'm gonna do another 5 or 6 year stint of, of, of the, the Sharon, what do I do with my life? Uh, investment.

Okay.

I have, I have so much money. What do I do?

Dude, I remember the first time when we hung out with you during that stint too. Like you were like, you guys wanna go to breakfast at like 9 or whatever. We were so stressed. We're like, breakfast on a Tuesday at 9?

Middle of my day.

So, and an ongoing joke that you don't know is that we are like, Sharon's the only person we do breakfast with. Only.

Literally. I would, I, I say no to everything.

By the way, I had no idea.

Oh.

There you go.

I still had no idea until I know.

I thought it surprised you.

It's like you eat from like 9 to like 11:15 and it's like, well, there's my entire morning.

Sorry.

We also drank like 14 cups of decaf.

So yeah. Yeah. Until it actually starts hitting you like calf when you drink that much of it. But we, but anyway, so you, you, you did that and that's, I mean, I, I say that jokingly, but Srillow Capital got started and then that was really the family office component of it where you did private equity and venture side investments and then a bunch of real estate stuff as well.

Obviously.

Obviously, because that's the background that you come from. You had a huge mix of doing that. And then that's, that kind of got us to the, to the Real situation where Real was doing, you know, $200 million or has a, had a $200 million market cap and it was at 36 months.

Yeah. Not even.

Yeah. So less than 3 years went to $1.2 billion. So 6x in less than 3 years when Sharon came in. And so that is, that is the, the Michael Jordan of the real estate industry. Not, not only doing a billion dollar company once, but twice. So he's 100% on his real estate company's getting to a billion. And so we're just honestly, we're, I would just say like, I'm beyond thrilled to have Sharan in here because it's, it was such an, it was so natural because all of the major business decisions and strategic direction stuff that I would end up calling Sharan about anyways, like I feel like you, I was shadow, I was getting you as a shadow de facto partner. And so the integration has been almost like we just get to hang out more than we did before.

Yeah. It's really interesting 'cause I also think during that time where you started and you were doing all the investments yourself, we kind of took your structure and mirrored it for us. And that's when we learned about private equity. When we learned about investing, we then, we found 7 real estate partners and the only one that ever ended up working out was from you.

Well, I'll say the ones that worked out well. Yeah. Yeah.

Worked out well. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sorry if anybody out there, but the only impressive returns deals were from you. And like, now it's like, I can't imagine the fact that we didn't work together before. Not the same time, but like around, you know?

Yeah.

Very similar timeframe. And then that's when I think we started talking more and more about, we shifted from investing to business. And then as acquisition.com started taking off and then you had like, I don't know what the next step is, then it was like, it just felt like it made so much sense. And I think we were all so worried, like, is it like, how's it going to be? What? And it's funny 'cause I remember the first, your first day, Like when we sat down in a meeting together, it was like, I was so nervous. I don't know why. It wasn't even my meeting. I was just shadowing. And, and then it was like after 45 minutes and then we're like, by the end of the day, it felt like, it felt like this has always been how it has been. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

And like now it's like, I can't imagine the fact that we didn't work together before for all those years. It's crazy.

Well, we kind of did.

Yeah.

I was just not on the official Slack channel.

Yeah. But that's fair.

Not on the official.

You're like, you've told me about this. I'm like, I know, but it's—

but I, well, I think the, my favorite kind of part of the story is I got to see Jim launch and sail. I got to see the early idea of acquisition.com. I got to see acquisition.com version 1, the building and the growth of headquarters, acquisition.com version 2, and then all the stuff we're planning for the future. And so it feels like I've had a chance to see and be a part of it in from the outside looking in, but the inside looking in is even cooler, which is, which is the best part.

Yeah. It's, it's just, it's super fun. I think for anybody watching too, you know, as, as we're talking about this, I think a good lesson to take away is like, I think one thing that was really apparent to me early on at least is like, why did Alex say like, oh, you'd like this guy, right? He said that because most of the people that he would, you know, we've, we talked to, and I'm sure you have the same thing, it's like, they just want money. It's like they're in business. I think it's like there's people who are in business to make money and then people who love business and love making cool shit and then make money by consequence. And when I met you, it was clear that you were the type of person that you like building, you like being excellent and building great business, and money comes as a consequence of that, right? Money comes as a consequence of the fact that you actually really love people and that you're a really great person and that you have values, that you value your fam and like, There's just so few people who have that where I think for me especially, like, it's so important to me that anybody that we work with doesn't just have this one area, like they know how to make money, but they also can build a great business. They're great to their team, they're great to their clients, they have a great reputation, they have a great family life, they take care of themselves personally. And it's like when I met you, it was so clear that you had all those. You weren't just like one area and sacrificing all the rest because, you know, I think there's a difference between like building a great business and making money. We all know that. And so I think that's why also just like very early on and throughout the process of being us being friends, I think the reason it was so easy to be friends is we have shared values.

Well, I'll tell you this one thing, and I learned this from both of you, which is you can't just be good at one thing and to win in life. I'm sorry, you have to win at everything. And sometimes you have seasons of life where one takes precedence. Like Alex will say, I have the season of no, or you say, I'm working on my health. That's great, but you have to win at everything. There is no other choice. And I bet people are thinking, well, how did this You know, how did they negotiate, how to do the financials of the deal? And I wanna tell people, yeah, no, no.

Yeah, it's, it's worth telling. Yeah.

The depth of the relationship allowed for the deal terms to be really easy. And for, for everyone watching, Alex and Leila said, hey, just write us an email with what you're thinking. So I wrote an email and then they hit reply all, added counsel and say, please draft this. That's all it was. That was the whole negotiation, which would've been months and years for most people arguing over terms, et cetera. We had none of that. It was a, I've been through a lot of these in, in my life and I will tell you it was the most gracious, the kindest, and it, nothing reaffirmed wanting to do this personally for me when all that y'all did was hit reply all and say, just paper this.

It was literally the same. It was, and it reminded me of like, even just like in any great partnership, right? It's like you're just, everything's been done ahead of time, so then it makes the hard stuff easy. 'Cause you've already worked on the hard stuff.

Yeah. And, and that's I think a good lesson for everybody, which is if you're getting to the point where stuff's breaking down on a final deal term means something else was majorly wrong before. Yeah. And so if you can get all of that in alignment, the, the deal points are very simple.

Mm-hmm.

I wanna, I, I, I wanna hit on something 'cause I think it's important. So I said it very casually at the beginning, but Leila and I have never had a partner that we've basically brought into our kind of like the holding company. I spend, I've spent the last, you know, 5 years from a content perspective in the last 13 plus from a reputation perspective, building reputation. And so bringing someone in at that level was a serious decision. And if you're thinking like, okay, well then why would they do something like that? Like, couldn't you just try and find somebody you could just hire or something like that? There come certain levels of skill. And experience that are unhireable. You know what I mean? Like there's the deal that, uh, you know, OpenAI did with John Ivy, right? Where like he's, he's now just basically a co-founder status of OpenAI because he brings such a depth of experience and a network and a skillset and, and, and, and that to replicate that, it would be both impractical and likely, I don't want to say impossible, but the, the effort to replicate it would detract from the whole overall. It's like you would have to have like 2 companies to replicate what, what Sharon can do. And so the vision for where we're trying to go, if anything, is that this has just expanded what, or brought the future closer of what we have always wanted to do with acquisition.com and tried to pay down ignorance debt as fast as possible with somebody who has, I mean, I mean, more experience than anyone. On the deal side, on the real estate side, the private equity side, like he has so much there. But then obviously from a scale perspective in the trenches, building $2 billion companies all within 5-year periods. I mean, I'm very upfront about the things that I will always reinvest in our ability to do more. This was a serious call. And I mean, you think about it for me, it's like you're gonna associate someone really heavily with your brand. It's a huge bet, you know, there's risk, but Sharon felt very much worth the risk because I think what we're gonna do together is gonna be really big.

You know, it's funny as you're saying that, you know, one thing I realized through the whole process is not one time did I have a doubt.

Yeah.

Like not one doubt. Like I like never, I never felt bad about it. I never had any like hesitation. I just worried that I was gonna fuck it up somehow. And I still to this day, I think we both have that. Like I'm hinged on that. Like what am I gonna do to fuck it up?

I haven't had that worry.

Every other situation we've been in, it's just us.

It's just us.

I sleep fine.

Good Lord. I know. I just take it It's a call for both of us. Every deal we've done, every event, like I always am the one doubting and hesitating and I like literally never, like, it always felt good. Like it felt really good for me the whole time. I think part of it too, for like people that are listening is like, that's the logic side of it. I think there's another side, which is like, none of us have to do this. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And, and because of that, I look at it as like, what's the biggest risk to any of us not achieving our dreams? Dux, acquisition.com, like all of it. Is that we stop. And why would we stop? Not because we can't do it, but because we don't wanna do it anymore.

Because we don't like it.

Because we don't like it. Yeah. So like, I think about it and I've, I told Alex, I was like, I'm getting to the point where it's like, I just wanna do stuff I love with people I love. Mm-hmm. And so it's like, you bring in people and you become partners with people that you feel like, I will have a higher quality of life within my business and enjoy myself more if I get to work with these people. I think that's really important. And so I, I think for anybody watching too, like that's a, That's a huge piece of it. 'Cause people come to me all the time, they're like, I'm gonna hire this person, or I'm gonna bring in this partner. And I'm like, do you like having dinner with them? And it's like, no, I don't like having dinner with them. And I'm like, well, what the fuck? Why are you bringing them in and giving them half your business? You know what I mean? And so I think like that's a, that's a huge point that people need to, to think about and consider when it comes to that stuff. I would say the, the second piece too is that at some point in a business, like a lot of people might be watching this and thinking like, maybe I need to find a partner now, but I think you have to consider the size that you're at and is at some point you're not looking to hire people anymore. Multiple people at similar levels are looking to partner because at some point it's like 1 1 11. That's the way I think about it, except it'd be like 1 1 1 I don't know, 33.

Well, can you talk about that though? Um, you, you made a great video about it, but, um, the early discussions for us revolved around this metaphor of the barrel, and I think you, you broke it down really well.

I'd love for you to maybe share shared the idea of the ammo, the resources around it. Yeah. It's at some point, I think we get into this pattern when, when we're bringing people into the business, bringing resources in, it's almost like they're bullets. Like you need to give them, give the resources to somebody who's capable of building something from nothing. And at some point you have to bring in a barrel. And when you think of a barrel, you think of somebody like you who can create something of nothing, who can be as effective as you at the things that you're doing. And at that point, it's like, if I'm gonna bring in somebody that has the same skillset as me, then that's a different type of thing. That's not, you're not gonna hire that into your business, right? And if you did, maybe you hire somebody in 10 years, they're at that level, but not, you know, and, and sometimes never. And so at that point you have to say like, I need a barrel, which is somebody I can give ammunition to and they can just go shoot it and they can hit the target. And so I think like, you know, Alex and I are each a barrel and Sharon's a barrel.

So now we have, you have 2 new barrels and we have 1 new barrel, right? Well, Alex talked about it when he first shared it with me. He goes, hey, most founders are single barreled.

Yeah. Yeah.

And they've got to get to a point, and maybe you can articulate this better, which is like, all right, now I get to a point and now I've gotta go raise money or create something to artificially create a second opportunity for myself to get the barrel bigger. And what a lot of people don't realize is the first time I met both of you, the first time I talked to Alex, I go, man, he can just make something out of nothing. Like he can make things up. It is amazing. Alex's ability to make things up and just make things up that can drive brand, create businesses, et cetera. And I was like, that's who's going to make it happen. And so when, then when I chatted with Leila, I was like, okay, well you got the make thing up and make thing happen. And I think there's a, that's why it's, it's worked really well for both of you. Right. And so Alex can make anything up and Leila can make anything happen. And that's a really powerful combination. And so my, my question for you, Alex, is if someone is thinking about that in their business, is there, is that the diagnostic or would you think about a different diagnostic?

So I think there's like, there's, so everything comes down to return on time, right? Like I think if you, if we boil everything down for the entrepreneurs, like you only have so much time and you have to get returns on your time. We try and get other people who have high leverage time, which is like, not only can I get somebody who can do something, but they're also bringing in 10 years that I don't have to learn to get that skill to then do this other thing. With the rate limiter, which is the whole concept of barrels, it's like you can only ship things so quickly and there's only so many opportunities that you can pursue. Like, and I'm a big advocate of focus, you know, aggressive advocate of focus, but you really never overexpand. You just under-talent. And I think the vast— and that under-talent is just this not enough barrels, right? You have 20 great ideas. You've got one life and there's one you. Now, if you had 20 barrels, you could do all 20. You've got Elon. He's got 6 big, you know, crazy opportunities. His highest leverage is his ability to attract barrels, probably more than anything else. But with, I, I wanna circle back to what you said with me and Layla. So I got to somewhere in the neighborhood of between $2 and $3 million a year. I can't remember the exact financials, but between $2 and $3 million a year when Layla and I met, that was about where I had kind of like capped as an entrepreneur. And that was for, I chased too many rabbits. I was too spread thin and I had 6 different businesses. I had all these different things going on. And then when Layla came into my life, she got me to focus on one opportunity and then she was able to basically make all these things happen and also at the same time push back and be like, great idea next year. And that from an order of magnitude perspective, that went from, I mean, you think about where we were there, $2 or $3 million a year as a solo entrepreneur to adding one other barrel, then took us to 9 figures plus, right? And it's like, okay. And that's where with Shanli Liu, it's like, okay, well there's two. And this is why I was saying the, you know, 1 plus 1 doesn't equal 2 or 3. It can equal, you know, 11. It can be a huge increase in throughput. And I think that having, you know, a third barrel makes it, I mean, we're excited about, you know, we've been talking for a year and for anybody who's, you know, curious, it's not like, hey, Charan's coming in because we're just going to like keep doing what we're doing. We have very big plans that we've been honestly laying since we started talking a year ago that have been in the works that you guys will find out about. I think that's fundamentally what we solve for is like with the highest leverage thing is just like not having to live Charan's life in order to to do that, we can just bring Shanli Liu in and then get the aggregate benefit of all my life and my experience, your life and your experiences, and then yours together. And that's where the skills stack and compound. So there's this framework that I like sharing a lot, which is like, if you think about, or I believe that the potential of a business is based on the aggregate skill set of the people contained within it. And if you are the person who has done every job in the business, then it means that literally only one brain has, is the max capacity of the business. And so if you were to imagine this as like a little triangle, it's like all of a sudden if you just add a second brain, how much higher the peak gets just from adding two kind of rate limiters or capacitors in the business. And when you add a third, the peak goes way higher in terms of the capacity for the business. That's where this gets really exciting. And there's a third kind of alpha for everyone, which is what are the opportunities that get unlocked that none of us could pursue on our own, but that we could only do in aggregator together. And I think that's where, that's where we get these more sophisticated and yet simpler, it's more, more complex to execute, simpler in concept, in concept outcomes that everyone can agree. Like, man, if we could just do this one thing, it could change everything. It's like, yeah. And that's where I'm like, yeah, we could change everything. And you guys are like, it will take more steps than that.

But I think it's really powerful though for for the person listening and watching to kind of decode a little bit of what Alex and Leila just shared is that we've experienced this. And I really, one of my favorite things about being at acquisition.com is this, where we could have a chat about something and then Leila will say, I got it. And then that's it. You don't have to worry 'cause Leila got it, right? Or we'll be talking about something and say, I got it. The conversation is over. And the more people that you can, that can say, I got it, is insanely powerful for an organization. Do I say I got it? You say I got it very often and I really appreciate that. Alex never got it. We sometimes have to text you under the table. This is your time to say I got it right now. No, no, but, and I actually think you made a video about this. You said, you know, how do you get scale? You get scale when you ensure that the leverage that is transferred gets transferred without a change in the performance in some way, right? Which is insane. And so probably my favorite 3 words that someone can ever tell me is I got it because I know that, and if they actually got it, it's super, super powerful. And when you have someone like that in your organization, I would support them, get out of their way, reduce friction, get them support, make sure whatever they want is taken care of. Not that you need a partner per se, but anybody that is, that can, that has that level of competence and that has that level of care, I would highly take care of them. And if you are in an organization right now and you feel like you want that recognition, say, hey, partner, manager, boss, whatever, I got it. And then deliver on the, I got it.

That is the fastest way to kind of building that, that trust with your, with your team. No, that's really good. You say, I got it all the time. And it's just like, if someone says this to me, I'm just like, I will ask no more questions. Like, as long as I, you know, as long as you got it, as long as there's qualifiers there. Yeah.

As long as I know they got it. Well, cuz I also think that the other thing it does for the person saying I got it, which what a lot of people don't realize is when you say I got it, there's an insane belief system and a responsibility that you put on yourself. 'Cause the reason I say I got it is I can't let Layla down. And so I will work super hard because I put those 3 words in front of Layla. And the next time I say it, and if I did not get it, then she's gonna be like, what the heck?

You know? Yeah.

So there is a, there has to be a 100% say-do ratio on I got it. You can't, you cannot screw up any time. And if you do, you're like, I'm so sorry, this is what happened. Let me go fix it.

Right?

So the, the number of I got it's that can happen in an organization will move the business so much faster.

It's a really good analogy. Now I'm thinking about it. I'm like, who says I got it the most? I can think of the top 2 people that say it to me the most. And I'm like, oh, I always appreciate it so much.

I'm like, oh yeah. Well, I'll throw this in. Like, I think, um, Bringing a partner on, I think, you know, this has been awesome, you know, for us, but trying to explain like right way to feel, wrong way to feel, I think just from a pattern recognition perspective might be helpful. One, we've been working for, you know, not working, but like we've been talking about this. So we've laid a lot of groundwork for this so that we can hit the ground running. But Sharon has given me and especially Layla attention back. And so it's like,, and I don't like using soft language, but I'll use it here and then I'll explain it. But like, it makes like, Sharon is making everything feel lighter. And so I see that as, okay, I only have so much time and so much bandwidth, which is even less than the time that I have in terms of like mental acuity. And all of a sudden having two-thirds of the things that I was formerly working on now just gone and being done at the same level or arguably higher because Sharon has more experience with these things. So we're paying down ignorance debt as we're kind of learning. The edge cases of what does the 9-figure to 10-figure marketing playbook look like? What does the 9-figure to 10-figure sales playbook look like? What does the 9-figure to 10-figure product playbook look like? We're trying to pay down this ignorance set as fast as we can across all these functions. But it's like, well, Sharan already did this on the public level, you know, in a public company. And before that in, in TELUS at a multibillion-dollar level, it's like, well, some of these legal infrastructure pieces, it's like, okay, well, we, we can and we'll learn it or We can just not have to pay the scar that I know, or the interest that is going to come due later because we just pay that debt down now. And I think that that habit of trying, being willing to sacrifice some today to not get destroyed tomorrow has served us really well. But from a feeling perspective, which I don't really tap into very much, it just, things feel lighter. And I think that if somebody comes into your organization, I'll say works at any level, but if someone comes into the organization and it feels heavier, It's, it's, it's not, that person is not helping you. They're not putting attention back on your plate so that you can then eat up the problems that you're uniquely qualified to solve at the higher level than you're currently solving them at.

No, I think that's really valid. I also think even, even in that case, like when you're bringing someone to make it feel lighter, whatever that may be, I think like for me, it's definitely very mental. It's also from a work standpoint, but like the mental, like knowing that even just like talking things through with you, it's just like, I just value that so much and I'm so grateful for it just to talk through things that I didn't have anybody in the organization to talk to about before. You know what I mean? It's like, of course, but we don't even work on the same things in the company, so it's different, which has just been like a, a sigh of relief of like me being like, this is shit, right? And you're like, that's shit. Or like, this is amazing, right? And you're like, that's amazing. I'm like, oh, okay. Like, it's nice validation. And then also like being able to run things by you and learn things that I didn't know. You know, when we, told the team that you were coming on, like, the, the way that I brought it up to everyone is like, guess who hasn't taken a company to a billion dollars before? Me. And I was like, so I would like to bring on somebody who has, like— and I think a big learning for me was that, you know, I, I was— and of course I didn't talk to you about it because you're very busy at the time, but like, I was so nervous to tell everybody, like, so nervous. So like, I've talked to one of my coaches. I talked to like two of my coaches about it. I'm like, how do I do this in a way that positions it really well? And they're like, well, what's the truth about this? And I was like, all these, everything that we just said here, right? And they're like, well, just tell the truth. And it's so funny because I told the whole team and that was exactly the frame I used, which was just like, I haven't done this before. Sharon has, we've been friends for this long. We've been talking to him behind the scenes for this long. Like these are all the things. And not one person had an adverse response. And it still has not, like, it has gone insanely well. So what I will say is that if, if you are bringing in somebody to help, you don't wanna like skimp out on how you bring them in, how you talk about it with your team. Um, even like onboarding, like it was fast and crazy, but like I built out everything and then you were like, I don't need all that. You were like, uh, I will do some of that, but it, you know, it's like you just never know.

We should, right? It's like you don't know. We should talk about how Sharon onboarded, 'cause I think that would be super helpful for people who are bringing in high-level executives, directors, partners.

Do you want to hit on that?

I mean, we can, it wasn't even as planned because I ended up having to— No, but I love what you did. I mean, so, you know, the first thing that Sharon did, which a lot of people, so this is, I think this is kudos to Sharon because he has zero ego, which is why he is as successful as he is. But a lot of, you know, partners, execs, even directors, depending, like leaders, I'll just say, might come into a company and just be like, All right, what's my 30-60-90? And there's nothing wrong with that. That's fine. But Tron just was like, okay, I'm going to meet every single person who works at acquisition.com from like the bottom of the org chart all the way up. And he was like, this gets me so much rapid context and I'll have rapport and, and, and, and he basically onboarded himself within 10 days and talked to, you know, 100+ people in that period of time and was like, he came back and was like, I understand what's going on now, which is better than like you trying to write a 16-page document that try and from, because the thing is, is it's always gonna be one person's perspective. Whereas if you get a hundred different perspectives, you actually get such a, such a, a three-dimensional view of the company rather than 2D kind of paper version. I'll also say that from a speed of growth perspective, if we think about the speed of a business can be derived from the speed of their ability to make decisions, right? Well, it's like then what, what speeds up decision-making ability? So one part is data. Well, actually, data is going to be the biggest one. But when you don't have, in the absence of data, you have patterns, right? You have basically past data that you can extrapolate in the future. And so to your point, Layla, it's like we might say, hey, based on reasoning, you know, just on logic and what we know about the world, we believe this is a good, a good, good direction or a good decision. And having someone who has that pattern that's already recognized to be like, yeah, already did that. Like, that's the right call. Or yes, and add this piece because this will come up later. It, it has compressed what would be maybe multiple hour, 2-hour long discussions to then being finally like, all right, let's just do it. But that whole process might take 2, 2 weeks or 4 weeks to make that call, which then can now be done in 30 minutes. But then tomorrow we have another 30-minute decision and the day after we have another 30-minute decision. But each one of those would've been 2 to 4 weeks, 2 to 4 weeks, 2 to 4 weeks. And like, that's where you can see why a company can grow at 10 times the rate, 100 times the rate of others because minutes versus months is a massive difference when we look at timescales for growth. And I think that's one of the other massive unlocks that, that, uh, I mean, I'm excited that you've already, already, already given us, but you know, even more in the future.

You mean just how we make decisions? Yeah. Yeah. I think part of that too is like, we're so, we're usually like this and, and I feel like you have the unique, like you've done a lot of things like by having both the sets of skills. So like you can flex on either side and so like you bring a really like grounding middle ground and I don't think I ever disagree with you.

No, no. Well, thank you. But the, I think the interesting part about the onboarding, which people need to know is the thoughtful, like Layla wrote me a, like a 16 to 20 page onboarding plan, which was amazing cuz, cuz that allowed me to saying, all right, let me read through that. And the interesting part about that was not the plan itself was seeing Leila's thought process on how the world works. And I thought, and I think that most people will just say, okay, cool. Hey, let's do a press release and bring this person on board. And hey, for the first few months, just meet people. I'm like, no, you had 90 days of like ramping up.

That's crazy.

Like you have the, you need to make, you need to make impact today. And so Alex hit the nail on the head where if they're, if the organization is somewhat larger, especially if there's a hybrid component to it, You can't wait for rapport. You need rapport and patterns very quickly. And so if you, if you, if you're talking to people and 5 of them say this is what they love about the company, that reinforces what that is. And if 3 of them say this is the same issue, that reinforces what that is. And you learn it very quickly and you learn it from natural patterns. And that also allows for rapport. So if, if you're newer in a company, I would suggest focusing on rapport and patterns. That would be very, very helpful. And the second is to be super impactful, you have to find the most granular thing that happens in the business. So for us, it was me going through every single line item in our P&L. Yeah, right. And so I know, you know, everything because where the money goes is where the business invests. And once you know that, you know where everything is, is that. So if you're in a marketing organization, you should know every single metric, every single channel, and that allows you to kind of figure out that is the pattern in a lot of ways. So, you— people think about learning top-down. You want to learn bottom-up because that allows you to know what the culture of decision-making happens. That's what's manifested in the bottom-up numbers. And if you do bottom-up, you can get perspective very quickly.

If you do top-down, it takes a lot of time. I think that's what I was most impressed with is I totally saw the bottom-up approach there. It's just like already being able to recall so many of the details. I was like, wow. Like just so fast. I don't even have anything insightful to say.

It was just like really, it was really impressive. Well, I think the pattern for me is that, you know, if we bring leaders in, in general, I mean, I think we've tended to, we talk about this publicly anyways, but it was just further reinforcing of the framework that like A-players don't usually need a long time to immediately start providing value. And when we hear someone who might say like, I'm going to need a quarter just to like get my bearings, it's like, Probably not the guy or the gal, right? Like every single player that I could name off the top of my head in this business, like immediately, I mean, within the first 5 days, you know, first work week was like, I got it. I can already understand this chunk. I'm going to start eating this and I'm going to understand these, but they hit the ground running. And, um, every time that I've probably been like, you know what, we'll give them a chance. It's like, it's never really worked out long-term or it's just been an also-ran. It's been like a, they're all right. Like they somewhat solve the problem and they're not a screaming hot pain right now. I'll deal with it later. But every A player hits the ground running.

And, you know, this is obviously no exception. I would love both your perspectives on this. And I, because hopefully this is helpful for folks watching as they're bringing people on or you're coming onto an organization, is you want to deliver artifacts as soon as possible. And it's not just, oh, I had impact. You want to deliver something real, tangible artifacts, something as soon as possible. And when you start producing people around you are like, wait a minute, he showed up, he tried, he showed up, he wrote a memo, he showed up, he made a video, he showed up, he set up a process, he showed up, he talked to a vendor, right? And so it's the email is not the artifact. The artifact is the artifact. And the more artifacts that you can ship early on, the more confidence you get and the more feedback you get. And you, you start to realize, so if you're coming in new to an organization, the more artifacts you can ship, the better.

And when you say artifacts, do you mean like organizational wins?

Correct.

Okay. Just through, hey, we read this memo, here's a video, here's how we're thinking about this.

Like something I always think about it as what do you have to show for it? Yeah.

What have you done this week? Which is a great Doge question, but you have to ask yourself, what do you have to show for it? And if you have nothing to show for it, it's okay, you made a decision, but early on you have to have something to show for that decision.

Otherwise you don't get cultural buy-in on that. No, I think that's one piece that people discount a lot, which is like It, I, I, I explain this to people. I'm like, listen, I can know what you're doing, but if the team doesn't see wins from you, they're not going to like assimilate you into the organization. Right. They're not gonna know why should I listen to this person? Because you're like, oh, well, no, ask Layla. I'm doing all this for 8 weeks behind the scenes.

They're like, okay, whatever. All this— don't be behind the scenes.

Yeah. Don't be behind the scenes. The 2 biggest piece of advice I give to everyone that asks me, cuz we have so many new people, they're like, what can I do? And I'm like, one. Don't tell people what to do when you're new. Like, don't go around telling people that something they do is wrong. Like, that doesn't make you smart, doesn't make you cool, it doesn't— that's not why you're here. Like, just watch, watch, just watch. I was like, the second thing is offer to help everybody. I'm like, just offer. Just like, hey, is there anything I can do to help you? Is there anything I can do to support you? Don't— like, if you do those two things, it's like— and one thing I've noticed with you is you're like, how can I support? How can I help? Is there anything I can do for you? Like, constantly asking those things. And it's like, Even if someone doesn't need something, it's like they feel like, wow, they, they asked if they can do something for me and they're brand new.

You know what I mean? And you always gain rapport from kind of the servant frame, right? It's like, it's not telling them, uh, what to do. It's asking them what you can do. Just a small pivot. And by doing that though, then it's like, now I've got one reward cycle with this person and one, especially if you come in from the position of above, right? If they know you have the authority. You flipping it and being like, hey, how can I help you? Like, I think that's the authority hijack, right? The thing that you could do that ultimately will gain you real influence rather than title-based authority in the business.

The one thing I will offer is the thing that made me feel the most welcome and secure was Layla's document because it showed me that she cared enough to spend all that time preparing for me. And I don't think most— I'm just gonna say most onboarding managers do that. Where imagine the anxiety of a new person coming on board anywhere in the organization. They wanna show up, they wanna be successful, they wanna do a good job, you know, but it is the first 2 to 4 weeks are actually the manager's responsibility, not the person's responsibility. And us putting in a little bit of effort upfront, showing them that you're saying, hey, this is a plan, here's the onboarding plan, shows that you care so much about the person coming on board as opposed to, oh yeah, we'll just introduce you around and watch your— no, you don't want to do that. And so I publicly want to thank you. I know how much effort went into that, but that allowed me to see your thinking and also feel your care, which we have a bunch of new leaders coming on board that are gonna work with us directly, and that it— you set the bar for me to think about them coming on that way, uh, and almost to guarantee their success. And so I want to take— I want to— my effort needs to guarantee their success because at the end of the day, we just want guaranteed success.

Yeah.

And so I want to, I want to do the effort and that, and you showed me how to do that.

That was super cool. Oh, I appreciate that. I, um, it's funny you say that because that is when I, I remember when I walked into a new job and they had a whole document packet and like basket for me. And the way I felt was like, I'd never had a job do that. And they had like 2 days where they spent so much time with me. It was all structured and it, I wanted to give more to them because of what I got there. And that was when it clicked for me of like, okay, when I build an organization, like the first impression of just like how much effort they're willing to put in. I didn't need half of it, right? And I didn't end up using half of it, but like that they were willing to made such a difference in just like feeling welcome because you're, you know, you're nervous and stuff. And so, I'm glad it was helpful. I know the document was definitely overblown and I did it out of complete anxiety of not wanting to.

No, I was, it was, I, it was awesome.

Yeah.

I was like, if this fails, it's my fault for sure. But that is the responsibility that, that the leader should take, right? That is, that is the responsibility because you spend all this time hiring going through the process, making the person feel special, come on board, and then you're like, welcome.

Like, you can't— Yeah. Or even the, you know, I think what a lot of people don't talk about, I, I prepared so much for issues with bringing, like telling people that you were coming in of like people being like, well, Layla, I wanna work with you on this, or I'm gonna like this, or like, who's this person? Like, what's going on? Like, how are we gonna make decisions? Like, I was completely prepared for all of that. Um, because that's what so many people told me like happens. And I was like, even though we have such a great culture and organization, like I just need to prepare for it. And I think a lot of people, that's, that's actually where I spent even probably just as much time, which was having the conversations with people one-on-one, talking to people. What does it mean? What does it not mean? What's changing? What's not changing for individuals and then for the company? And I think that alone is where a lot of people fail, is that they don't do the work when they're bringing in a new leader or a new partner to position them well, to step into the organization and be welcome. Because a lot of times they do a couple things, which like, one, they, they say it's gonna be better with this person. I don't say any expectations because I'm like, it's gonna be different.

Good job.

Thank you for not doing that. I saw the, the worst was like 3 years ago when a leader would like replace themselves. They're like, it's gonna be so much better with this. But I was like, you can't say— I knew, I was like, you can't say that because it's gonna at first feel so different. They're not gonna— they're gonna think, well, you said it was gonna be better. It's day 2. Why is it not better? It's like, well, they're new. What do you expect? It's like, well, you said. And so that's the first one was like, just don't set any of those expectations. Just say it's gonna be different. It's gonna be a change. Here's what the change is gonna look like. And I think the, the second piece to it is explaining how it, like, the highly impacted individuals, how's it, is it, what's going to happen and what's not going to happen? Like, what changes and what doesn't change? And I think that those are also really important to explain to people because a lot of people bring in someone like you and they're like, am I getting fired? Is this still happening? Like, what's changed? Like, there's all sorts of things that can go through their brain, so. I always just try to come up with like, what are the things that, what are the obstacles I anticipate ahead of time that I can just overcome before they even bring them to me? And I think that in itself, paired with what you just said, like if you do those two things, like you address either the communication plan for how you're going to communicate to the organization, and then there's a plan for when you bring the person in, I think that is how you set someone up for success so that when they walk in, people are excited for them to be there, not Scared or not annoyed or frustrated or worried.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm just excited for ACQ 3.0.

ACQ 3.0, that was your idea.

Well, you coined it. Natural progression, right? It is the natural progression. I think that's, that's really, I think that's a lot of stuff that, you know, people are going to start seeing us moving towards and when we allude to the big moves we make that it comes with acquisition.com 3.0. Um, but we're just preparing. We're, uh, what do you call it? What do you use?

Righting the ships. What's that term?

Digging the well.

I don't know. Digging the well.

Yeah.

Okay. I mean, I, I see it, I see it like as a progression of, like I would say Acquis, you know, 1.0 was us helping ourselves directly. I would say 2.0 was us helping ourselves directly and helping everyone else indirectly. So it's like if you document all these things, we show what we're doing. That's going to help a lot of business owners indirectly. We're not the one actually like setting up, you know, like taking calls for them. We're like, but hey, here's how we do it and here's how we do our marketing, here's how we do our sales, here's how we do these things in the business so we can help you grow and hopefully, you know, hit your goals. And I would say, you know, acquisition 3.0 is how can we help ourselves directly and help you directly? And so I see that as kind of the, the vectors, which is kind of the natural progression. But in order to do that, you know, from the first time we met until now, the size of the quote indirect audience went from a few thousand to now tens of millions that have directly been in our network versus the people even in our interested demographic. And so in order to do it and do it right and maintain our reputation, which is what we've worked such a long time to do, we want to make sure, I'll try not to be crude, but that it's fucking awesome and it being done right. And that if we can do that, then I think that we can get close to the kind of impact that I think all three of us want to have. Because you said this earlier, but like, it's hard for people to comprehend. It's like, Taron really doesn't need to do anything and we really don't need to work at all. We can just like live off the dividends from the buildings and the businesses that we own and like just work out all day.

We contemplated however many years ago when you were post-Telles and we were post-Jewels, like, should we just do family offices?

Like, just chill investor.

Well, that was the original, that's the original idea.

I know that was the original. It's weird.

And then I was like, but that idea was so like looking back, it was so, so small.

Yeah. It was also very, I mean, nothing wrong with serving yourself. I mean, I wanna be clear, like if you wanna do that for anybody who's listening, by, by all means do it. But I think that to have, like when I see the, the, the best entrepreneurs of all time, it's like they're, they're able to kind of like flip their selfish interest inside out so that it just kind of pulls the world. And I think that that's, I think it's something that all of us have wanted to do and it just takes more than 1 or 2 people to do it and do it right.

I just think like at the end of the day, you know, when I think about what we're building here and like how it started and such, I think it's because, you know, at the end of Gym Launch, for example, like it, we never, we didn't, you know, we got partners and then we, we were out, right? We never brought partners into the business to, to keep growing the business in a way that didn't feel completely exhausting because at some point it's not— this isn't about the work that you do in the business. It's about the decisions, the judgment, the leadership, the experience. And that's, you know, it's not like we're like, oh, Shanli Liu's gonna come and just do so much work. Like, it's like, I know you are because it's who you are, but it's like the judgment you bring, the decision-making, the expertise, like your thinking, your brain, right? And I think at some point especially like when we sold Gym Launch, like I was definitely at a point where like it had just run off the two of us. And I do think that I was at a point where I was like, I was okay for a minute, like in that brief moment of like thinking smaller because I was like, oh my God, I'm so tired. Like I literally was just like, I'm tired. Like I've been up since 4:00 AM, going to bed at 8:00 PM and I'm a fricking grandma. And like, it would be nice to just have something a little more, a little less demanding of me. Right. And it's funny cuz I look back and I'm like, it was just a skill deficiency. Which is like I didn't have the skill of doing a couple of things, which is like building a team that allowed for me not to feel that way every day and building a team where I actually— the like being tired at the end of the day was worth it because I had so much fun working with them as well as then, okay, maybe you shouldn't be the one making decisions all day. Like if I'm making 35 decisions a day, is that really a good thing to be doing at that point?

And I knew it wasn't. Well, I think that goes to Alex's point of being— having the, the under-talented, right? And the crazy part is How many times have we all experienced this where we— doesn't need to be a partner, but you hired one person and that person did so good. You're like, man, everything is so much better because Michael's here. Like that happened, right? And when that happens, imagine that over and over and over and over again. And that's when you get to do so many powerful things.

It's permanent. I got it. Which then you have an organization of, I got it, I got it, I got it, I got it. And then all of a sudden you create the space to then say, well, I still got some stuff. Like I can still go get stuff, but then all those I got it lets you go get. And I think that's what allows you to build the future because so many entrepreneurs like have this, it's their dream is really just a dream and never meets reality because they never have the opportunity to pursue it because they're still stuck under-talented in the business because they're constantly feeling like they have to play whack-a-mole because they don't fully complete the cycle. Like they get a three-quarter solution, but you still kind of like leave parts of yourself behind because you know that someone hasn't fully got it.

I think it's probably my, what I feel most proud of this team is just like, we just have such great individuals. You know, it's like everyone's so strong. And I think I used to be able to count on one hand how many strong people I had in an organization. And now it's like, I would have to count on one hand how many weren't, and I wouldn't have any to put on my hand right now. You know what I mean? Which is like,, I, I remember dreaming of that. And so I think at that point then you're just like, when we talk about the barrels, um, you know, I think to a degree it's like when you have the skills to build something amazing and excellent, you just realize at some point you just, you just need to hook with other barrels so that you guys can help. You know, it's what I talk about a lot, which is like you want a vision so big for something that you build that everyone's vision can sit inside of it. I think right now we see the vision for acquisition.com 3.0 specifically, and we all see how our visions for ourselves, our dreams fit inside of that vision.

And that's, that's when the magic happens. And I think it's, and I'll say this with, uh, jumping on the piggybacking on the talent piece, which is that I think that whether you like it or not, like, I, I mean, I talk to business owners every day and they're like, I want to help a million people lose weight. And I'm like, well, you have one brick and mortar store that has 100 customers, like gap between their, I think it's not even, it's not even a realistic dream. It's something that they say that other people say that's amazing. And so that's why they keep saying it more so than they actually want to do it because if they actually wanted to do it, they would behave differently. And so they have like their thing they say and then what they actually believe is possible. And I think that when you bring, when you get these other barrels in and you get more high-quality talent, your scope, your realm of believability expands. And so it's great to say, hey, we want to do this thing, but like, You know, on some level, like, what is reasonable or what is feasible with our existing capacity? And so we still, on some level, still extrapolate forward or project forward based on what we already have. And so when you bring those other people in, all of a sudden, like, your ability to see further, you're like, oh, I would never have considered that. But now that we have John, or we have so-and-so, like, oh, they can, they, we could actually connect these dots in a way that I never would have originally imagined because I would have thought I can't do that. And I don't know anyone else who can, but then when you meet that person, you're like, oh my God, all these other huge chunky things now enter the realm of possibility. And then it creates all these new connections that then expands the realistic vision rather than the someday that'll never happen vision.

It's totally fair. Yeah, the one quote that Alex actually probably would say it better than me is, this really hit me hard. And I was, I'm born a very driven person and in my 20s, I really believed that it was about the destination. In my 30s, I realized that it was about the journey. And then finally in my older 40s, I have finally realized that it's about the company and it is the people that you're with, the people that you build with, the people that you grow with, the people that you can see more and farther with, it's doing it with great people is what makes you have the ability to outwork everyone else. Because if you think about the destination all the time, you're like, man, I got it. That's what the grind is. I feel like I'm grinding and I feel tired and resentful. That's what happens because you don't have the company. Or then you go through this period of growth and everything is painful and you're like, at some point you're like, I don't need to do this anymore, right? And then, but when you have great company, you're like, well, wait a minute, if I don't know how to do this, I can ask for help. Can someone else do it? I got it. And then you realize that the growing and the joyfulness becomes so much more multiplied. The reason someone asked me this the other day, I said, the reason why I finally believe that it's about the company is because of this one thing. It allows me to work harder because there is no working smarter. It's like you realize you have the company so you can work harder.

And that's what's super, super powerful.

I feel that so hard. Well, the vision also expands because the timeline you think on it also expands. Because if you are miserable, then you want the misery to end on some level. And so you're like, well, I can only really think this far out because I don't want to do this for longer than this amount of period of time. So then it creates this rush and this pressure to get it all done as fast as possible, which is very like pushing energy. Like you're like, I have to just keep driving even though I don't want to. On the flip side, if you're like, I'm enjoying the company on this process. It's like, well, in 20 years we can build whatever we want. And so then it, it just, it creates a lot more fun and you can dream bigger if you have enough I got its and with those I got its, you enjoy those people. Then it's like, well, what do we want to do? Like, let's, like, let's fuck it up.

Like, let's have, let's have fun. I think that's why I've like had zero feeling of rush with acquisition.com. It's just like, It's like if there's one thing, it's like do what you love with people you love. And it's like find people that like you would want to be around even if they didn't work in your company. It's a big one. Like that has just been such a huge frame shift. You know what I mean? Um, I do want to ask you something though. I bet you people are wondering, especially like people who follow you, how's your content going to change?

So, so far the content has always been a very niche category king type content. And the crazy part is we've had a chance to build, you know, a 1.5 million TAM audience and build a billion-dollar business from it. And Alex, you talk about this, right? You go niche, you can actually create a lot of revenue from it. But I remember being at brunch with both of you and with my son Neil, and the idea of making content about what you're working on, that is the thing that I'm truly excited about. I read this quote, which was like, To write the book, you have to first live the book.

And which is that? Oh no, I don't think this is mine. No, I don't think, I don't think that's mine.

No, I don't think that's mine. It's like the days of, just like the days of Jim Rohn when you don't know, you just, you just kind of give Alex the credit for it. But if you have to write the book, you have to live the book. And what I'm really excited about is starting to just look at my calendar and just talk about what we are talking about, like what you and I have are Planning on launching is talking about what we are doing day to day. And I think that is the thing that people are missing. They don't see that. They see the, a lot of the how-to stuff, which is cool, but they don't see the, what did you do to help your business grow? So I'm looking forward to living the book and writing the book simultaneously.

Heck yeah, I'm excited too. And I think also just like for everyone that follows you, like, you know, it has been like niche, niche content, but like, And if you just take the word real estate out of any piece of your content, like so many people come to our events and they're like, oh, I follow Shanli Liu. I'm like, are you in real estate? They're like, well, no, but he's got good—

and I'm like, you're smart because that's what happened with Alex is like the early days of Gym Launch. I had a lawyer stop me and he's like, hey, I listen to your podcast. I was like, the Gym Secrets podcast? And they were like, yeah, it all applies. And I was like, well, yeah, but I say gym and membership rather than contract and services. And they're like, yeah, you just swap the words. Like, duh. And I was like, huh, well that's great. But, but I mean, Charron, like I'll just, one of the things that also made Charron unique for this situation is that he also had, he understood content. He understood personal brand, which is how do you take, like when you talk, talk about unicorns, it's like, okay, you find somebody who's, you know, the Michael Jordan at real estate, which is a massive, you know, market, but then also has the upside of running the businesses that capitalize on those opportunities, which is pure private equity. You know, like how do we, you know, increase enterprise value within the business and the ops itself of the people, the hiring, the recruiting, the marketing, sales, all of those components. But then there's also the like, oh yeah, and one of those companies was also a public company. And so then there's the public securities, public market, which also he happened to have this experience at Goldman Sachs for years before that. So he has kind of like the bottom-up approach of like what it's like on the floor of the, of, of kind of like the businesses that deal with the markets and then also being the target of, of those, those products and services that are sold. So it's like this 360 view from a business perspective, but then in terms of, okay, that's all amazing, but maybe if Sharon were 80, he wouldn't be able to come into this, you know, our current context and understand the, the dynamic nature of how business is continually, you know, changing and evolving, especially with where attention is going and how, how to, just how acquisition works in general right now. And so, you know, Real was built largely, or at least in recent, you know, on the back of a lot of Sharon's speaking engagements and his personal brand that brought in a lot of people, uh, to the company.

Right.

And so being able to marry all of these ideas and then appropriately value each of them so that we could mix those things into the most valuable thing for an entire audience or, you know, consumer base., is just, it's like, how do you recreate that? It's like, oh, I just need another person who had, you know, who's an immigrant who isn't afraid to work, came here, you know, was dumpster diving in the beginning and then also was able to go to one of the, you know, best schools in the US and then go to the best bank or what is considered the best, you know, investment bank in the world. And then also do the private growth 2 times to a billion-dollar level and do it publicly. It's just like, and also have the personal brand and also be someone that we like really get along with and share the values. It's like, yeah, let's just wait for the next Shan before we, before we try and bring somebody in to, to do what we want to do. And so, um, it's like you don't find another Shan, and, um, if you do get the opportunity to find another Shan, call me and don't, don't bring them. Um, but no, we're, we're just, uh, we're, we're super pumped.

So excited. Yeah. To have like, just genuinely. I think, you know, not going too much on my own, but like, it's just been so fun even though it's, I know it's hard and there's a lot of shit. It's still been fun. I remember it was like your fourth day. One of the members of our facilities teams messaged me and he was like, I just wanna say you seem lighter. Like, you just seem like you're smiling more and you just seem brighter. Like, is this because Sharon's here now? And I was like, oh my gosh, I think it is.

I was like, I'm just excited.

It's fun. That's awesome. That makes me happy.

Yeah.

I'm excited to build acquisition.com 3.0.

3.0. 3.0.