From Dad’s Basement to Selling Two Companies — 4-Hour Workweek Success Story

0:00 Because when you're first starting out, nothing's working.

0:02 Almost by definition, like you're starting something new.

0:04 At least in my experience, when I'm starting something new, nothing's working.

0:08 And then when something does, most people are like, "Okay, that works.

0:12 Now, let's go something else." But instead, you should just take that niche.

0:16 It's almost like a little niche when you're rock climbing.

0:18 Just take that niche and just double down, triple down, quadrup.

0:21 It should really be like 10x down on what works

0:24 because it's so rare that you find something that works.

0:26 And honestly, in most businesses,

0:27 if you can find one thing that works and scale it up,

0:30 that can get you pretty far.

0:32 Brian, nice to meet you finally.

0:34 Thank you for taking the time.

0:36 Hey, great to be here.

0:37 Brian, where should we begin?

0:38 I'm thinking maybe because the impetus for this is

0:43 somewhat around the connective tissue of the 4-hour work week.

0:47 Should we just begin with how on earth you and the 4-hour work week intersected?

0:52 Maybe we start there.

0:53 So, it intersected at a really weird and sort of low time in my life

0:58 where I had just started a PhD program at Purdue and I basically hated it.

1:05 It was just overall not great experience.

1:08 I went in gung-ho.

1:09 I'm going to be a scientist and all this stuff.

1:11 And then the hard reality of pipetting in a lab

1:14 and having an adviser breathing down your neck was like,

1:17 I can't do this anymore.

1:18 I'm out.

1:19 So, my plan was to get a job because I had a had a degree.

1:23 I was like, "Let me get a job as a dietitian." Unfortunately,

1:26 that didn't really work out and I ended up in my dad's basement.

1:30 What was the timing of this?

1:32 This was what year roughly?

1:34 This was 2008.

1:35 So, I think the book was relatively new then.

1:37 Yeah, 2008.

1:38 That would have been a year after publication, let's just say.

1:40 And also not exactly the hottest job market for people who may not recall.

1:45 It was a tough time overall because of the financial crisis.

1:47 totally unbeknownst to me as a you know going to graduate

1:51 school spending most of my time at bars drinking the great

1:55 financial crisis was like over my head never heard of it

1:58 [laughter] until I tried to get a job and suddenly it became

2:01 very real very fast so basically I was in my dad's

2:04 basement broke no girlfriend obviously no real prospects like I'm just kind

2:11 of lazily applying for jobs every morning and just sitting around

2:14 and watching Jerry Springer in the afternoon that's pretty much my day.

2:19 And then one day, I have an idea.

2:20 I'm like, I I should start something.

2:23 I don't know where this came from.

2:24 I'm like, I should start a search engine for nutrition questions.

2:30 When people ask like, how much vitamin C is in a carrot?

2:33 It'll just give them the answers.

2:34 This is like basically what an LLM would do way before

2:38 and someone that's not remotely qualified to come up with something like this.

2:42 So, I was like, how do I start a business?

2:44 I had never crossed my mind before.

2:46 I literally thought starting a business was like in the office

2:49 when Michael Scott gives this lecture and he's like,

2:50 "First, you need a building." So,

2:52 I'm thinking, "This is this huge undertaking I'm about to do." So,

2:56 I go to the bookstore to find a book to help me get started.

3:00 And I basically saw the 4-hour work week,

3:02 grabbed it, and it just sort of spoke to me.

3:05 What happened after that?

3:06 I blew my mind.

3:07 I read the book.

3:07 I'm like, "What?

3:08 I could start a business?" It's like it

3:10 was just a crazy mindblowing concept that me,

3:14 someone who has no experience, was totally broke, could start something.

3:17 Not necessarily be a smash hit, but you could start something.

3:20 So, basically, I just followed the book exactly as it was written.

3:25 I mean, I was like, I literally had notes in the margins.

3:29 You had those little Q&As's at the end or little steps at the end.

3:32 I would make sure I wouldn't go past that page until I did everything.

3:35 my dream reader.

3:36 [laughter]

3:37 I was like, I'm not going to go to the next page until I'm good and ready.

3:40 So, basically, I followed the plan and then created an ebook about nutrition.

3:46 How to help your back pain with nutrition.

3:48 We have so much to cover.

3:50 I I know I'm cheating a little bit,

3:52 but I I think it's fair to say that your first attempt

3:57 did not turn into the mega hit that you might have hoped.

4:01 [laughter] No, turns out it's hard to get traffic, right?

4:05 Or it can be hard to get traffic.

4:07 And if you don't have a budget for paid ads, well,

4:12 I guess necessity is the mother of invention or at least learning.

4:17 And just I want to add a sidebar here, which is this is so[ __] common.

4:22 It is incredibly common, right?

4:24 That you basically have your sort

4:26 of first love relationship seldom works out, right?

4:29 [laughter] But you learn a lot and that leads to something else.

4:33 But tell us about kind of what you learned and how you adapted

4:39 to that first experience.

4:40 I spent all this time on creating a product that I thought was helpful.

4:43 I thought was good and then it was like now what?

4:45 You know, how do you get people to actually see this thing?

4:48 Mhm.

4:48 And like you said to him, there's paid ads,

4:50 which wasn't really something that I could do considering I was broke

4:54 in my dad's basement having Dinty Moore beef stew for dinner every night,

4:59 or so-called free traffic, which I was like, "What free traffic?

5:02 How do how does that work?" So, of course,

5:04 I like went all in on that and eventually

5:07 sort of stumbled on this thing called search engine optimization,

5:10 which was like you can rank in Google

5:12 and people who are searching for what you sell, you can get in front of them.

5:14 And I was like, "Oh,

5:15 I use Google." And I never really like understood that there was

5:18 this whole world behind the scenes like figuring out how it works,

5:20 trying to game the algorithm and stuff.

5:23 And that sent me down the path of learning this thing called SEO.

5:26 Also, I would say just to paint a picture for folks

5:29 cuz I remember looking at this when I started my first,

5:32 let's call it real business.

5:34 Also, out of necessity when everybody

5:36 at my the startup I joined got fired in 20201.

5:41 Not a great time for most.com companies.

5:44 [laughter] So, I was working off of my soon to expire

5:49 Cobra Healthcare in California and eating also microwave dinners or I

5:55 remember there I had a couple of favorites at Jack

5:58 in the Box which was in the parking lot of a Safeway.

6:01 So, that was my nutritional intake.

6:04 Very similar it sounds like, right?

6:07 But slowly figuring out the mechanics behind

6:10 these things that we use every day, right?

6:12 and you took it certainly a lot further than I ever did.

6:15 It's the wild west.

6:16 I mean, SEO can be, especially those days, kind of the wild west.

6:20 So, you built up a huge kind of portfolio of domains.

6:27 It seems like something like close to 200 or over 200.

6:31 What was what was the game plan like when

6:35 you started getting into SEO and then flashing forward?

6:40 What was the sort of plan in terms of revenue generation?

6:44 The idea was you'd have these onepage websites rank

6:46 and then you'd have AdSense display ads on each of those.

6:51 And back then it was sort of a loophole

6:54 that if you had a domain that matched the keyword exactly,

6:58 then it was a massive advantage in the search results.

7:01 So I would have likeshampoo.org And [snorts] I would just write

7:05 like a thousand [laughter] words about why L'Oreal shampoo is great,

7:08 which I obviously don't really know a lot about.

7:10 For those who can't see the video, we are both completely bald.

7:13 Yeah.

7:14 [laughter] And yeah, then putting AdSense ads on the pages times 200.

7:21 And the idea is that you scale up enough and you know,

7:24 next thing a few steps later, you got a private island or something.

7:29 [laughter] Right.

7:30 That was the plan.

7:31 Rough rough island, right?

7:32 ABC dot dot dot and then private island.

7:37 Yeah.

7:36 So, [snorts] let's backst step for a second because

7:39 we can talk about the business and the business

7:42 experiments and adventures which we will and misadventures aka

7:46 panda death [clears throat] which we'll probably get to.

7:51 But if we're looking back to your reading of the book, right,

7:55 there are a couple of different directions

7:58 as a chooser and adventure map that you can take.

8:02 And part of that often times is figuring out your target monthly income,

8:08 doing exercises like dreamlining,

8:11 which people can find for free to figure out exactly what it is

8:15 that you are building as a lifestyle and the things you want to do, etc.

8:19 and you come up with this very precise,

8:22 not necessarily accurate, but it's a starting point number, right?

8:26 Where were you when you're going through all of this?

8:29 Because you can build a business for the sake

8:31 of building a business and generating all this cash,

8:33 but then the question is, what do you do with that, right?

8:36 How does it inform your life?

8:38 Were you thinking about that stuff at the time

8:40 or was it just get out of the basement,

8:42 need something besides have a proper meal?

8:45 Yeah, exactly.

8:45 [laughter] Have a meal that's not out of a can.

8:47 So I just wrote that in the whole streamlining section.

8:50 That was basically what I [laughter] wrote.

8:52 But it morphed a little bit.

8:53 At first it was that and then building the 200 websites.

8:56 At some point I was in Asia backpacking

8:58 and then my whole world changed to 3k a month.

9:01 I was like if you can get 3k a month in Thailand, you can live like a king.

9:04 So my whole goal just became to get 3k a month passive income.

9:08 That was like my entire focus.

9:10 So it sort of shifted once I had sort of a lifestyle that I tried and liked.

9:14 I was like I could live like a backpacker.

9:15 I can do this.

9:16 So then it just became 3K a month for a long time.

9:19 Did you hit the 3K a month before the Google slap,

9:27 which may be one and the same as the the Panda update.

9:30 I'm not sure.

9:31 May maybe those are two separate things entirely.

9:34 But where were you before things got pretty strongly corrected?

9:41 I was maybe at 3K a month around there for like a couple months.

9:44 Yeah.

9:45 had a good ride and then it kind of got slapped.

9:47 Didn't last long.

9:50 Yeah.

9:49 The first was a Panda update as you

9:51 mentioned which was a very content focused update by Google.

9:55 By Google.

9:55 It was an update that basically was if

9:58 your content is thin or repetitive or not helpful,

10:01 we're going to wipe you out.

10:02 And it was like a one day they push a button

10:03 and you know thousands of websites get completely obliterated including mine.

10:08 That's a rough Where were you when this happened?

10:10 Do you remember when you got the news?

10:13 I got slapped twice.

10:15 The first time didn't scare me straight enough,

10:17 so I went back to the I was like, "Oh,

10:19 I'll just do a different type of black hat

10:21 SEO and I'll get away with it." It didn't work.

10:23 So, that one I think I was in Thailand when it happened.

10:28 Mhm.

10:27 Let's then go to You get scared straight as you put it and you build your first,

10:33 as you as I think you've put it,

10:36 real site, right, which isn't la'.org, it's something else.

10:41 when you decided to hop to the white hat side of things,

10:45 what did you end up doing and why?

10:47 So, there was that first update and then a second update where

10:50 I was in Spain in Granada and I went to my hostel,

10:54 I checked the laptop and it was like again,

10:56 it was like a repeat of the Thailand experience.

10:58 Everything dropped.

10:59 This was a different set of websites that got

11:01 knocked out and I was like, you know what?

11:02 This is crazy.

11:03 Why am I doing this?

11:04 This is an insane way to live.

11:06 So then I was like, I'm going to build

11:07 this one real website and and I was kind of inspired

11:10 because there were these forums at the time

11:11 with these marketing people and they're basically like spam, spam, spam.

11:14 And there was always a there were a couple

11:16 voices in there of people who were like,

11:17 "Guys, you were, you know, build a real business.

11:19 What are you guys doing?

11:21 Like build something real that's durable that's not 100% rellyant

11:25 on Google." And I was kind of ignored those people.

11:28 And then once I got hit that second time, I was like, "Okay,

11:31 it's time to build something real." So I basically built

11:34 a sort of real site in the personal finance space.

11:36 Wrote real blog content.

11:39 Didn't do any shady spammy stuff and tried to keep it on the up and up.

11:43 So what is the bridge or what happens between that and then building back linko?

11:50 Like how do you end up segueing?

11:54 I mean I guess this could be like a very fast

11:55 montage in the sort of fictionalized movie of your life, right?

12:00 But [clears throat] what happened right to go from there to Back Linko

12:04 which ultimately you ended [clears throat] up

12:07 getting acquired what transpired between those two.

12:11 So once this site started to get a little bit of traction,

12:15 I was like, "Wow, this is a whole world I didn't know about.

12:18 Real marketing why SEO like and it was fun.

12:21 It was working and it was more enjoyable because I

12:24 didn't have to look over my shoulder that I was going

12:25 to get hit with an update next week." And it was

12:28 cool because I'm I'm reaching out to other websites and like,

12:31 "Oh, this is really helpful." And they're linking to me.

12:33 I'm not paying for links.

12:34 They're just like naturally doing it.

12:36 And I'm like, "How do I learn more about this?" Like this whole world opened up.

12:39 I'm like, "How do I get better at this?" And all the advice

12:43 that I read on all these white hat SEO blogs were basically vague advice.

12:48 Create great content.

12:50 Build relationships with other people.

12:53 You know, market your site, lead with integrity.

12:55 You're like, "Okay, what's my next step?" Very unclear.

12:59 Exactly.

12:59 It was as vague as you can imagine.

13:01 So then back linko is a case of sort

13:03 of creating the thing that you couldn't find.

13:06 Exactly.

13:07 One thing that I saw here in the prep notes which I was like, "Oh,

13:11 that's so smart and I wanted to highlight it is

13:18 and there there are a number of things obviously that you

13:20 ended up doing really well that that seem to have

13:24 set the stage for a lot of things that came.

13:26 One of them was digging through Google patents and engineer statements."

13:32 And I'll come back and sort of expand on why this is smart,

13:35 but it'll probably become very obvious once you explain why you did it.

13:39 Like why were you digging through

13:41 Google patents and and then engineer statements?

13:44 Are those part of the patents or those something separate?

13:49 Separate.

13:48 Okay.

13:48 Could you explain what you were doing?

13:51 When I launched back linko, I was like,

13:53 there must be other people like me who are getting into this whole world ofio.

13:57 They want to learn more about it

13:58 and they're disappointed about what's out there.

14:01 And it turned out there was.

14:02 I just didn't know how to reach them at first.

14:04 So I basically followed the same advice that I read for starting a blog,

14:08 which was, you know, you need to publish every week or every other day.

14:12 And that's how you build an audience.

14:14 You just publish and pray that people come.

14:16 So that's what I did.

14:17 People still give that advice.

14:19 [laughter] Publish and pray.

14:20 Yeah.

14:21 Exactly.

14:22 So yeah, I did that and bang my head

14:23 against the wall and I was like, you know what?

14:25 I have an idea.

14:26 I came up with a a actually creative idea for a post that would be

14:29 really special instead of just the stuff I

14:31 was putting out every week, which was good.

14:32 It was definitely actually decent to to give myself some credit,

14:36 but it wasn't anything that's going to grab you by the shirt and be like,

14:39 I need to read this.

14:40 It was just slightly above average than what was out there.

14:42 I was really going on that consistency play like

14:44 if I do this consistently over time there'll be

14:46 like a secret society that will just send me

14:48 traffic as a reward for [laughter] being so consistent.

14:52 I didn't really have the whole thing planned out to be honest.

14:54 I just thought I just knew consistency equal traffic

14:57 at some point and it honestly didn't for me.

15:00 So, I had this idea for a post which was

15:03 Google recently had said that there's 200 ranking factors in the algorithm.

15:07 So, I was like, let's just try to find them.

15:09 Obviously, a lot of it's going to be conjecture and guessing and speculation,

15:13 but let's just do a list of 200 instead

15:15 of the list of 10 or 20 that I'd seen out there.

15:18 [snorts] And then I got to like 55 and I'm like,

15:20 man, you have to really dig to find some of these.

15:22 And that's when I went through the Google patents.

15:24 And also people would interview Google engineers or they would give statements.

15:29 They'd be at a conference and they would give a talk and you

15:31 know one of the slides would mention a ranking factor that they're considering.

15:34 So it took a lot of digging.

15:35 It took like 20 to 25 hours to complete this single post.

15:38 And that's really why I was digging into all this stuff.

15:41 I [snorts] just want to add an addendum to that which

15:44 is people who have not heard of this approach.

15:47 For some folks they'll be like, "Oh,

15:48 I I've or someone else has done that." But it is incredible

15:52 what you can learn through reviewing patents and looking at very niche events,

16:01 industry events for videos and transcripts of presentations.

16:05 Right?

16:06 This was incredibly valuable when I was getting started as well,

16:09 mostly looking at at kind of closed door

16:12 or very small event presentations and things like that.

16:17 Mhm.

16:17 All right.

16:18 So, that was sort of a massive post that you really invested in.

16:24 25 hours.

16:25 It's not trivial, right?

16:26 I mean, that's that's a lot more presumably than

16:28 you're putting into the kind of publish and prey consistent

16:32 approach to just sliding a plate with like content

16:35 salad out the door and hoping that, [laughter] you know,

16:38 a leprechaun is going to show up and trade for a pot of gold, right?

16:41 So, what was the response to that post?

16:44 massive traffic and controversy.

16:48 Kind of everything you want in a piece of content to be honest.

16:51 I mean, you had the traffic, you had the wow factor,

16:54 and then you had the controversy,

16:55 which is like, those aren't Google's 200 ranking factors.

16:58 You know, no one knows those.

17:00 [snorts]

17:01 And then people saying, well, this is at least trying to come up with something,

17:04 and then people saying, well, it shouldn't do it.

17:06 So, there's like perfect little debate around it that was pretty lightweight.

17:09 You know, it's not anything super controversial,

17:11 but just enough to get people's attention.

17:13 So yeah, it brought in I mean I would

17:15 say I was probably getting like 150 visitors a month.

17:17 That probably brought in a couple thousand when I first put it out.

17:21 It's brought in millions since then.

17:23 What did you then follow that up with in terms of lessons learned coming up

17:32 with new rules for yourself in terms

17:33 of how you were going to approach the business?

17:37 How did that inform things going forward?

17:39 Once once you saw that response,

17:41 I just threw out the whole playbook I was doing.

17:45 Yeah.

17:44 Like I was using this consistency thing.

17:46 I would even have on Fridays I would have like a Q&A.

17:49 I would just put five questions and answer them.

17:51 And of course I wasn't getting any questions.

17:53 So I just completely made them up and then answer [laughter]

17:56 my own questions just to have something to put out there.

17:59 And I'm reading it.

17:59 I'm like why would anyone want to read this?

18:01 So then I [laughter] just scrapped the whole thing and was like,

18:04 I'm just going to put out something once a month

18:07 and it's going to be the best thing

18:08 on that topic that's ever been written by 10x.

18:11 And that was sort [clears throat] of how I

18:13 totally changed my content focus to quality over quantity.

18:17 You had a fun YouTube video on ultimately the acquisition of Back Linko

18:23 and [laughter] you got I guess the original email you got was like, "Hey,

18:27 we'd love to connect to like collaborate." And you're like, "Well,

18:30 that smells like every[ __] spam email I've ever received." So,

18:33 you just ignored it, right?

18:34 Yep.

18:35 [laughter]

18:35 As I remember, and we won't spend a ton of time on this, but what is Semrush?

18:40 This is the acquirer ultimately, but for people who don't know, what is Semrush?

18:46 They're essentially a marketing platform that help

18:49 you get better results from SEO, pay-per-click, and also now AI search.

18:56 And are they private, publicly traded?

18:57 They're publicly traded, right?

18:58 Yeah, it looks like on the New York Stock Exchange.

19:01 They got acquired by Adobe last year.

19:04 So, they will be part of Adobe I

19:06 think sometime this year when everything goes through.

19:09 Got it.

19:10 And they acquired you ultimately while they were public, right?

19:15 Yep.

19:14 I mean, there's so many good aspects to this, but do [laughter] you

19:18 want to do you want to tell the story about flying to Boston?

19:21 And I mean eventually this contact I can't remember his name

19:24 but since you ignored the first email he wrote and basically said

19:27 hey look we might be interested in buying your company like let

19:30 me be direct and you're like okay I'll reply to that one.

19:33 You told the story of flying to Boston.

19:35 I think it's pretty funny.

19:36 I also liked in your video and you said you know up

19:38 to that point I hadn't sold anything except for maybe a used car.

19:41 I think you said something like that.

19:42 I was like that's a pretty good line.

19:44 So the first Boston trip what happens there?

19:48 Like what's in your mind?

19:49 In my mind, I'm like, we're gonna close this thing.

19:52 Like, let's go go go to Boston.

19:54 It was really a meet and greet where the executive

19:56 team just wanted to meet me and chat about, you know,

19:59 see what I how I could help them,

20:00 how Bank Linko could fit into their their platform and their business.

20:05 And so, I spend the day with them in the office

20:08 and then afterwards we all go out to drinks to celebrate the deal.

20:11 And I'm like [snorts][ __] myself, right?

20:14 I'm like, what?

20:14 We're celebrating the deal now?

20:16 Like I didn't even see a I never saw a contract or an agreement or anything.

20:19 I'm like, "We're going to sign it like tonight." So,

20:22 we go out and we're at Legal

20:23 Seafood [laughter] in the Provincial Center taking shots.

20:27 Yeah, this is great, Brian.

20:28 This is going to be the best thing ever.

20:30 And I'm thinking, where's the contract?

20:32 When are we going to sign?

20:32 Like, I really thought right there.

20:34 They're going to Did I miss something?

20:36 Did I black out?

20:36 What happened?

20:37 Exactly.

20:37 I'm like, did I agree?

20:38 Like, is a verbal agreement enough for a deal like this?

20:42 So, yeah, I was way off on that.

20:43 It took two more months of due diligence

20:45 after that meeting for the deal to actually close.

20:48 You said two months.

20:50 Yeah.

20:50 Which for people who have never gone through it, right?

20:54 That can be very challenging if you don't have your ducks in a row, right?

20:57 Which almost nobody does unless they've kind of been through this before

21:01 or are venturebacked and they have people overseeing all this stuff.

21:05 Two months is pretty good, right?

21:06 Like it's painful but like man like due diligence can go on forever.

21:12 For people who are starting a company maybe they

21:17 never intend to sell it but hey you had not

21:20 gone into Backlinko thinking that you were going to sell

21:22 it right but they want to preserve the optionality.

21:25 I remember coming across and I haven't read it in a long time

21:27 but a book by John Warllo called Built to Sell which talks a bit

21:31 about this and I thought it was actually very good like a very

21:34 I don't want to say basic but pretty sort of foundational primer for some

21:37 of this stuff but what advice would you give to folks I mean one

21:41 comes to mind which I have also had to learn the hard way about

21:45 independent contractors but what are some

21:49 of the like tenets or sort of commandments

21:53 of like hey just in case one day you want to sell this thing.

21:56 Here are a couple of things that I learned.

21:58 Anything come to mind?

22:00 Independent contractors for sure.

22:01 Maybe you can expand on that, Sim, cuz you've had experience with that.

22:05 Look, if you ever want to sell something,

22:07 the the acquiring party is going going to want to know with some assurance.

22:12 And they'll have reps and warranties in the agreement that basically say, "Hey,

22:15 if you're if you miss something or you're not telling us the truth,

22:18 like there's going to be a world of trouble

22:20 and we'll probably be able to back out of the deal

22:21 and take all the money back." But they want

22:24 to know that everything they're buying is free and clear.

22:26 Right?

22:27 So if you've had, as I have and as you have in some cases,

22:31 well, I'll just speak personally, always maintain a very small full-time team,

22:36 but have used dozens and probably hundreds of certainly

22:40 hundreds of contractors over the span of decades.

22:43 And if you're building something and they want to see

22:47 they meaning the acquiring company every single contract to make

22:51 sure that someone isn't going to come out of the woodwork

22:53 and say hey I own a part of that.

22:55 Hey I contributed this and therefore I am

22:59 entitled to a piece of equity yada yada yada yada which if the deal is big

23:05 enough come out of the woodwork no matter what.

23:06 You see this with a lot of like tech IPOs and stuff.

23:09 As soon as they file the S1 getting ready to IPO,

23:11 then some rando comes out of the woodwork and says,

23:13 "I'm the seventh co-founder." And you're like, "What?" Like,

23:15 "No one's ever heard of this person."

23:16 And they just want nuisance money to go away.

23:19 So that's the relatively short and sweet on independent contractors.

23:24 This is going to be true also with pretty much any agreement or contract, right?

23:30 You just want to document, document, document.

23:34 Make everything formal.

23:35 no verbal, no handshake if you want to preserve the option

23:39 to cleanly and hopefully relatively quickly sell a company later.

23:44 Anything else that you would add to that, Brian?

23:47 If you don't have your finances in order, like you don't get P&Ls.

23:51 Yeah, that is something they obviously will care a lot about.

23:53 Luckily, I had a good accountant that did that stuff, so that wasn't a big deal.

23:56 The number one time sync for me was the independent contractors.

23:59 I mean, I'm like you.

24:00 I hired so many people that did one like

24:04 created like a blog post image or something or like

24:07 a social media image once for like 10 bucks and I had to go try to find them.

24:13 Basically have to hire like almost like a private investigator

24:15 to find these people cuz you don't even barely remember them.

24:18 Even people that ghosted me.

24:19 I had people that I paid like a deposit for work and they never even replied.

24:24 They totally they ghosted me and I still had to reach out to those people.

24:28 Of course, they're not going to reply.

24:29 But you have to show that you tried.

24:32 And then obviously since this experience,

24:34 every contractor that gets hired signs an ironclad agreement

24:37 that says you don't own any of this work.

24:40 Once you're paid, it's a property of blah blah blah.

24:44 And that [clears throat] made things a lot easier the second time.

24:46 But I I had no idea this independent

24:48 contractor thing was so important to the acquirer, but it absolutely is.

24:52 Yeah.

24:52 So, we we won't spend a ton of time on sort of what followed,

24:57 but there was one funny anecdote about the public announcement.

25:01 Could you just explain that [laughter] given the time zone differences?

25:06 I just I thought that one was great.

25:08 Time zone differences.

25:09 And I like I'm like early to bed kind of person.

25:12 So, they told me that, hey, Brian, you know,

25:15 we're going to announce this tomorrow and we're

25:17 going to announce it at 5:00 p.m.

25:18 Eastern.

25:20 And I'm like, "Oh man, I don't know.

25:22 Can you send it?

25:22 Is it possible to send it earlier?

25:24 That's like 10 p.m.

25:24 here.

25:25 I'm already kind of getting ready for bed." Basically say,

25:27 "I'm in my PJs at that point.

25:28 Is it possible to push this earlier?" And they said,

25:31 "No, because it's a public company.

25:33 Due to SEC rules, we have to make

25:35 these announcements after the markets close." [laughter] Yeah.

25:38 I was so embarrassed.

25:40 I was like, "Oh, yeah, right.

25:41 I forgot the like the league I'm playing in here." So you

25:47 sell the company presumably there's some type of [sighs] earnout or period

25:54 of time for which you're required to still work on backlinko right

25:59 who knows what the exact terms are of that but for people

26:02 who've never gone through it right you can have a vesting period

26:04 you can have an earnout where you get x percentage of the total

26:07 purchase price based on hitting or exceeding x y and z metrics

26:10 or whatever right so there's a period of time like that postacquisition,

26:16 let's just say because I know that was very stressful and you started grinding

26:19 your teeth and that kind of evaporated as soon as the deal was done.

26:22 Let's just flash forward like 2 or 3 months after the acquisition.

26:25 What does your what does your life look like?

26:27 Like what does a week look like for you if you remember?

26:31 It's honestly not that different because I had

26:33 another startup that I was already working on.

26:36 [clears throat] So I I was basically running on a treadmill and then I just

26:39 hopped onto another treadmill that was right next to it and just kept going.

26:43 So there wasn't a whole lot of downtime to really

26:47 reflect or analyze that one day that the announcement was made,

26:51 especially the next day because it was late here.

26:53 So like the next day was really when I was

26:55 sending messages to people and stuff and getting congratulations and whatnot.

26:59 But after that day, I was pretty much back working on the next thing.

27:04 Like didn't [clears throat] reflect too much on it.

27:07 So my life was more or less the same one day after.

27:14 [laughter] Looking back, are you basically like, "Hey, I'm a border collie.

27:17 I need to work or I'm going to go crazy." So, I'm glad I did that.

27:21 Do you wish you had approached it differently?

27:23 I kind of wish I approached it differently.

27:25 Yeah.

27:25 And looking back, I was wish I took some time off.

27:28 It's just tricky because you know how it is when you have a startup.

27:32 It's kind of a strange situation.

27:33 Like I had a new company that was growing.

27:36 at this old company that I sold and it felt weird to say to the new team like,

27:40 "Hey guys, I need to reflect about how great my life is.

27:44 I need to chill out.

27:45 You guys still work though.

27:46 Like you work your asses off.

27:47 I'm going to I'm going to chill on the beach

27:49 for a while." So it felt a little weird.

27:51 I felt like I kind of had to go back into the trenches with them right away.

27:54 Almost even more so to prove like look, I'm not done.

27:57 Like I'm not going to rest on my laurels.

27:59 We're still in it to win it.

28:00 financially at that point were you focused on the new company exploding topics

28:06 because you wanted to get to that sort of big pot of gold

28:10 at the end of the rainbow like what was the driver behind

28:13 that right I don't know to what extent you were sort of financially stable

28:17 had savings we don't have to get into all the nitty-gritty if

28:20 you don't want to but I'm just curious what was driving the involvement

28:25 in the new company for you it wasn't really 100% financial When I

28:30 sold back Linko before then I was probably okay for most of my life.

28:36 Then when I sold back Linko, it was like, okay, I'm probably good for forever.

28:39 And then I wouldn't have probably started

28:41 something else right away if I hadn't already.

28:44 So towards the end of Back Linko, when I was involved with it before I sold,

28:48 I was honestly getting a little bit bored with it.

28:50 Like I was bored talking about the same things,

28:52 writing about the same things, doing the whole course launch thing.

28:55 And I kind of wanted something new.

28:57 and I saw an opportunity where there were more trends than ever,

29:02 but I couldn't find a good tool for curating them that was

29:05 like here are all the trends in this space right now.

29:07 There was Google Trends, which is fantastic if you know about a topic

29:10 and you want to see how it's trending,

29:12 but what about a trend you've never even heard of?

29:14 And that's sort of where I realized the opportunity was.

29:17 So, it wasn't really purely financial.

29:19 It was more like this is kind of exciting and new.

29:22 I think it's a good opportunity as well and it'll

29:24 give me something to do between these sessions with back

29:26 linko which was it was also boring because it was

29:29 so optimized like I work like three hours a week.

29:31 It was like four-hour work week honestly at the end

29:33 like it was getting so much traffic on autopilot.

29:36 The launches were really easy to do.

29:38 Even courses were easier to create at the end

29:40 because it just had it all down to a science.

29:42 Even it was a totally different topic.

29:43 I knew exactly how to create a course.

29:45 So the challenge wasn't really there and this was

29:48 like okay new challenge new space and that's basically

29:52 it wasn't so much financial it was more just

29:54 to freshen things up and to try something new.

29:56 Yeah.

29:56 And you'd also already committed to other people right with this new startup.

30:02 So it makes a lot of sense when you had with backlink go so much on autopilot

30:08 the 3 hours per week right what were you doing

30:11 with the rest of that time because the most and we don't

30:16 have to dig into the the book too much here but if

30:18 I had to point to one chapter that people pay no

30:21 attention to because typically they're like oh yeah that'd be

30:23 a nice problem to have and they like forget about it is

30:25 the filling the void chapter filling the void chapter 4 work

30:28 week is really important so you don't go into like psychological freefall

30:34 [laughter] among other reasons.

30:34 But what were you doing with the rest of your time if Back Linko at one

30:39 point right when the flywheel was really spinning

30:42 was only occupying or requiring 3 hours a week?

30:46 I was bored.

30:46 Honestly, I wasn't filling it well.

30:48 I wasn't filling the void.

30:49 I was basically going to the gym, reading books, playing video games, nothing.

30:53 And that I think that was part of this and we this boredom was

30:57 I needed to reread that chapter

30:59 essentially and fill this with something meaningful

31:02 and I think that's why I was seeking another startup project.

31:05 Yeah.

31:05 100%.

31:06 I need to work.

31:06 I need to build something.

31:07 I'm not building this.

31:08 I'm just maintaining it.

31:09 Mhm.

31:10 [clears throat] So that's really what got me into exploring topics.

31:12 So honestly the filling the void chapter the whole

31:14 filling the void concept I really only took seriously recently.

31:18 Mh.

31:18 But before [clears throat] then I basically filled it with sort

31:21 of nonsense to be honest and then started another startup.

31:25 What were some of the things you did differently

31:27 with exploding topics after all the experience with back linko?

31:32 Maybe things that in retrospect you're like wow that was

31:35 a really smart decision and change and maybe somewhere like

31:39 okay lesson learned right would probably if I were starting

31:43 from scratch with exploring topics I would have done it differently.

31:46 anything come to mind in terms of good and quoteunquote bad decisions?

31:50 We can start with the bad one, which was how to monetize this site.

31:54 I had this very strange idea that we're going to create this awesome

31:59 free resource that anyone can visit and just see trends right away.

32:02 They can filter.

32:04 They can go by category.

32:06 And you think, oh, how you going to monetize that?

32:07 Logically, you think SAS, an upgraded version of what they're seeing for free.

32:11 And for some reason, I was like, a paid newsletter.

32:14 like let's create a paid newsletter.

32:16 So we created this paid newsletter that was

32:20 granted helpful in in like objective terms

32:23 but not necessarily for that person who

32:25 wants to see trends in their particular niche.

32:27 So we would send them a trend on like some sort of face cream and then on like

32:32 a car and then a battery and then a tech

32:34 startup and they would be like what is this?

32:36 People were I want just trends about e-commerce.

32:39 I just want trends about this one thing.

32:40 Like why are you sending me all this stuff?

32:42 And then people would also sign up thinking it's SAS

32:44 even though we said everywhere like paid newsletter, paid newsletter.

32:46 And they'd be like, I thought this was SAS.

32:48 I thought this was SAS.

32:49 That was our number one complaint.

32:50 And yeah, sometimes you just need to like get

32:52 that bean over your head because I was like, "Oh, SAS is so complicated.

32:55 I I mean, my co-founder was a coder, but I'm still like, oh,

32:59 we're going to have to hire developers

33:00 and I don't know anything about this whole

33:01 world UI." And for people who may be listening who don't recognize the term,

33:06 a lot of people will, but software as a service, right?

33:09 Think about Dropbox.

33:10 Maybe not the best example, but I mean Dropbox is a great example.

33:14 But with a lot of these products, there's a there's a premium version.

33:18 There's a version that you get to use for free and then

33:20 if you want a bunch of additional storage or features or access,

33:23 whatever it might be, then you pay $9.99 a month or whatever.

33:26 And there's like the basic, intermediate, advanced version, enterprise, etc.

33:30 That's SAS.

33:31 Sorry to interrupt.

33:32 I just want to define that.

33:33 Yeah.

33:34 But if you had told me that before we started, I would have been like, "Oh,

33:36 logically then we should have the premium advanced enterprise version

33:40 in the back end instead of the paid newsletter idea."

33:42 So that didn't really go well until we ultimately shifted

33:45 to what we should have been in the first place.

33:47 So that was sort of the bad decision.

33:50 Mhm.

33:49 The good decision was definitely investing in this data,

33:54 publishing data early on.

33:56 So with back linko, this is something I only

33:59 discovered after like five years of running the site

34:01 and then with exploring topics I was like

34:03 day one we're going to publish tons of data.

34:05 We're going to be the source that's another

34:08 strategy like be the source that of information

34:12 on technology software e-commerce trends anything trend

34:17 related we are going to be the source.

34:19 We're going to have the latest data.

34:20 we're going to have the best visuals and we're

34:23 just going to be the source for that information.

34:26 As opposed to writing how-to content, we really focus on datadriven content.

34:30 Did it work right out of the gate or was there a formula

34:34 that you realized worked after you

34:36 had a particular well-received publication of data?

34:41 It took a while to get going.

34:42 A lot of mistakes, a lot of posts

34:44 that weren't great or the topic wasn't a good choice.

34:48 What really helped us, what was sort of the smash hit were

34:51 these very specific stats that people look for.

34:55 So what I discovered through this process

34:57 was this stats page idea is nothing new.

34:59 Like people write, you know,

35:01 the biggest stats around the fitness industry or LinkedIn stats or whatever.

35:06 And those are fine, but usually journalists aren't

35:10 looking for LinkedIn stats or Tik Tok stats.

35:13 Some of them are and that's fine,

35:15 but most of them are consuming very specific like how

35:17 many users does Tik Tok have or how many people

35:21 use LinkedIn every day like daily active users or how

35:23 many posts are on LinkedIn every day like it's super specific.

35:26 So if you're able to find a credible stat around that then

35:31 you can crush it even if you're not the one that developed it.

35:34 Like a lot of times these are also buried in like PDFs

35:36 or white papers or again interviews that you have to pull out.

35:40 Like one of our biggest smash hits in this area

35:44 was how many users a chat GPT have.

35:46 Granted, we publish this early.

35:48 That's another thing that can help a lot.

35:49 If you publish one of the first or the first specific stats page,

35:55 then you get into this virtuous cycle where

35:57 you're very visible when someone's searching for that topic.

36:00 Then they link to you, they mention you, makes you more visible,

36:03 and then you just are like in this massive flywheel.

36:06 So, one of our best pieces was how many users does chatbd have

36:11 and every once in a while Sam Alman will give a talk and he'll

36:15 mention it or when they raise a round they'll mention it and all we

36:18 did was just document their user growth

36:20 based on these statements that they made.

36:22 The initial post probably cost hiring a freelancer

36:25 like 200 bucks and then to update it every couple months is like another

36:29 50 and it's been referenced like 3,000 times.

36:33 It's absolutely insane.

36:34 [laughter] they'll have the effort to reward ratio is nuts on that.

36:38 And of course, it's just like part of it

36:40 is is some pieces do better than others,

36:44 but we've noticed that that formula tends to work well.

36:46 If you can find a trending specific stat that bloggers

36:49 or journalists are looking for when they write about that topic,

36:52 they're very likely to reference you.

36:54 So, I read I'll give credit here.

36:55 This is on growthmanifested.com.

36:57 Found this doing research.

36:58 You were interviewed towards the end of that interview by Alex.

37:04 He asked you what the best piece

37:05 of business advice was that you've ever received.

37:07 Now, this may have changed and there's probably more,

37:09 but it was Noah Kagan advising you to double down on what works.

37:15 Could you expand on that?

37:17 And then I'm wondering if there are any

37:19 other sort of mantras or short pieces of advice

37:23 that you would also put on like the Mount

37:26 Rushmore of your best advice that you've received.

37:29 It sounds so simple,

37:31 but it's one of those pieces of advice that's simple but hard to follow.

37:35 Because when you're running a business,

37:37 there's like a million things to worry about, to focus on.

37:40 There's new opportunities, new challenges, other competitors,

37:43 you have an employee that's sick.

37:45 It's hard to really focus on like that little thing that works.

37:48 But I think this is especially important when you're

37:50 first starting out because when you're first starting out,

37:52 nothing's working almost by definition.

37:55 Like you're starting something new.

37:56 At least in my experience, when I'm starting something new,

37:58 I don't know, like nothing's working.

38:01 And then when something does, most people are like, "Okay, that works.

38:04 Now, let's go something else." But instead, you should just take that niche.

38:08 It's almost like a little niche when you're rock climbing.

38:10 Just take that niche and just double down, triple down, quadrup.

38:13 It should really be like 10x down on what works

38:16 because it's so rare that you find something that works.

38:18 And honestly, in most businesses,

38:19 if you can find one thing that works and scale it up,

38:22 that can get you pretty far.

38:23 Mhm.

38:24 Aside from the 4-hour work week, right, which was,

38:26 I suppose, a catalyst of sorts in the beginning,

38:30 were there any other Have there been any other books that stand

38:33 out or resources when someone comes to you and they're like,

38:36 I'm thinking about starting a business, right?

38:38 I'd like to start a business.

38:40 Are there any books or resources that you tend to recommend frequently?

38:46 For people that are just like, I want to start a business and they're like,

38:49 I don't know what to do, how to do it.

38:51 They're like totally green.

38:52 Then Ready, Fire, Aim is usually the book that I recommend.

38:55 You familiar with that one?

38:56 I've heard of it.

38:57 Michael Masterson.

38:58 [clears throat] What leads you to recommend this book?

39:00 It gets people into the action mindset,

39:03 like leaning towards action instead of analysis.

39:06 Mhm.

39:06 I was guilty of this when I first started

39:08 doing a lot of spreadsheets and analysis and business cards,

39:13 registering a company,

39:14 all those things that you can do later that don't really matter.

39:17 This gets you going on like the most important things

39:21 and then later you can always change course right but the key is

39:25 really like starting starting starting or like

39:27 Paul Graham says action produces information.

39:30 So if this is book basically will hopefully give people a kick in the butt

39:35 to get started instead of analyzing and then being like okay now I'm ready

39:39 just be like start today and then like change as you go.

39:42 I feel like that book is almost a litmitness test.

39:44 If you read that book and at the end you don't do anything,

39:47 then you're probably not ready.

39:51 Yeah.

39:50 The whole point is to get started and like it it gives you advice

39:53 on how to know you've got traction and what to do once you get traction.

39:56 So, I feel like if you just read the book and you're like,

39:58 "Okay, what's the next book to read?" [clears throat]

40:01 It's probably not the best approach.

40:02 So, that book is hopefully the the kick in the butt that someone needs.

40:06 This might be a tough question to answer,

40:07 but how would you define the startup costs for Back Linko and Exploding Topics?

40:15 Like in the first 3 months of those two companies existing,

40:20 how [snorts] much money was invested in each of those?

40:23 Like how much money was required slashinvested?

40:27 For Back Linko's case, a few hundred bucks at the most.

40:31 It was like domain, WordPress.

40:34 I probably hired someone to create like a basic blog design theme for WordPress.

40:42 Don't remember how much, but like if I spent a thousand,

40:45 I would I say that's a lot.

40:46 I was probably more like 500 bucks.

40:50 Mhm.

40:50 Because it's a blog.

40:50 I mean, really, at the end of the day,

40:52 there shouldn't be a lot of cost involved at that.

40:54 Exploding top was a lot different because I acquired

40:56 like a prototype version from someone for 75,000 to start

41:02 with and hire them as part and they

41:04 that that was part of their pay package as well.

41:06 So just on day one I was in with that much.

41:10 And then it was a redesign and a rebrand adding

41:14 more trends hiring a couple people to do some basic things.

41:16 So that was probably more like 90,000 something in that range.

41:20 Mhm.

41:20 [clears throat] But it was a unique situation cuz it wasn't built from scratch.

41:23 was acquiring someone and then that was also paying for some of their time.

41:26 It was kind of like hiring them as part of the acquisition

41:30 and that was paid out over the course of a few months.

41:32 So, I'm not exactly sure how much would be like in that first couple months,

41:35 but it was in that range.

41:38 Why did you acquire something and what

41:40 was the the deal structure of the acquisition?

41:43 I acquired it because I was trying to build

41:45 this exact thing myself and just stumbling and, you know,

41:49 stubbing my toe over and over again.

41:51 So, I knew that there was a an opportunity

41:53 for this like trend like I couldn't even describe it very well.

41:56 It's just basically you want to go to a website

41:58 and just shows you trends in whatever niche you're interested in.

42:01 And that sounds so simple, but nothing existed like that, believe it or not.

42:05 And I hired someone to build something like that.

42:08 And it was horrible.

42:09 I used Reddit, so we'd look at subreddits and we would see

42:12 how many times a word was mentioned or something and found nothing valuable.

42:16 The signal to noise ratio was completely backwards.

42:19 It was like for every 200 hits, one was like decent.

42:24 And then one day someone forwarded me this random

42:26 site this guy started and I'm like no this like this is exactly what I want

42:30 but it was even better than I had imagined.

42:34 Mhm.

42:33 So then it reached out to him and then

42:35 the deal structure was essentially buy it 100% straight up.

42:40 part of the acquisition cost will be you'll get paid that and then

42:44 on top of that if it goes well over the first

42:46 I think couple months then we can set up some sort

42:49 of part-time deal and if that goes well we can do full-time

42:52 and he would be helping you throughout that entire period of time

42:55 to determine help you determine if it's going well or not.

42:59 Exactly.

42:59 And he was the coder and developer behind the original version.

43:02 So he was best qualified to to continue to work on it

43:05 and improve it rather than hiring someone random to come in.

43:08 He it was his vision to start with and then I said basically if it goes

43:13 well with full-time for I think another month

43:15 or so we'll basically be co-founders on this thing.

43:18 The only rub will be if you want to want a lot of equity

43:22 then you know you're going to have to put money in to fund

43:26 this thing or if you prefer that you get more cash then you

43:30 can just get a proper salary and then I'll own most of the business.

43:33 So that's basically what we did.

43:34 He chose more money and then he owned a part of as equity in exploding topics.

43:42 How did you end up in Europe?

43:46 Love to be honest.

43:47 Yeah, that'll do it.

43:48 Yeah.

43:48 I mean, my wife, we met in Thailand many

43:53 years ago and then [snorts] we moved to Berlin.

43:56 This is actually a funny story partially from the 4-hour

43:59 work week because you mentioned Berlin as like this cheap place.

44:01 So, we're in Thailand looking at Craigslist [laughter] and looking

44:05 at all these apartments that are like palaces for €300 a month.

44:09 And we're like, Tim was right.

44:11 This is amazing.

44:12 Like, you can live like a king in Berlin for nothing.

44:14 So, as we're like flying there,

44:16 we send out all these emails like we're gonna and of course they're all scams.

44:20 It's like I'm lost and like I oh I'm out

44:23 of town but if and I lost my passport but if

44:26 you leave like this money into this Western Union like

44:29 oh we show up to Berlin we're in a hostel

44:33 for [snorts] like €8 a night in a 12 bed hostel while we

44:37 realized that this whole thing all these ads we're applying to is a scam.

44:40 No one uses Craigslist in Germany.

44:44 So then we eventually found apartment lived in Germany and she's Portuguese.

44:48 Mhm.

44:49 So we visited Portugal a number of times

44:50 while we lived there and eventually was like we

44:53 could freeze our asses off or we could live

44:54 in the sun like so much like the sun.

44:58 So yeah, that's basically how we ended up here.

45:01 [laughter] Yeah.

45:01 The thing about the 4 work week, right?

45:04 The principles and frameworks all still work.

45:06 Obviously some of the tech tools since they were last updated in 2009,

45:10 most of them are completely irrelevant.

45:12 Probably not going to use go to my PC at this point, right?

45:15 access your home computer remotely to do the work you need to do.

45:20 But the the pricing examples obviously have changed

45:24 right since it was first written in 2007209.

45:27 So the the principle the idea of geo arbitrage and applying that to what

45:34 you earn and how you pay contractors

45:37 employees and then your sort of living expenses.

45:40 It applies, but [snorts] definitely for anybody who's who ends up picking it up,

45:46 if if you read that doing something in Buenosares costs A, B,

45:50 and C, [laughter] I would go online and fact

45:53 check that because it's probably changed a little bit.

45:56 What are other sort of lessons learned or things

45:59 that you would like to share with folks?

46:01 Could be about your journey,

46:02 could be about mistakes along the way, really anything at all.

46:05 Because part of the value of these conversations is

46:08 that we can get into a lot of specifics

46:12 that are omitted in the magazine profiles of people

46:19 that end up reading like [snorts] a list of highlights, right?

46:23 And there's obviously a survivorship bias to begin

46:25 with if people appear on magazine covers.

46:28 I know that's an antiquated example to use,

46:33 but what else would you like to share with folks or anything else

46:35 you'd like to add just about the about the journey cuz it's not over.

46:39 It still goes.

46:40 One thing that I've discovered recently that I

46:42 wanted to share would be actually filling the void.

46:47 Mhm.

46:46 I felt the void after selling exploding topics

46:48 and and how I was able to fill the void.

46:51 Yeah, please.

46:52 So, set the stage for you like I sold back Linko and then

46:56 about two years later sold Exploding Topics

46:59 and was just kind of going full-time,

47:02 not super crazy working all the time because I was fairly efficient,

47:06 but still working all the time and then

47:07 went from that to like basically stopped to zero.

47:11 And a lot of people I think they have this feeling of listlessness,

47:15 no direction, maybe a bit of depression.

47:18 For me, the symptom was stress.

47:20 Like I think I was wired for stress not only just in general but also because

47:25 of the sale process is stressful and then

47:27 just because the sale is done your body and I think part of your like reptilian

47:32 brain doesn't really recognize that and it still

47:35 is looking it's looking for threats and it's

47:37 looking for opportunities and it's just not chilled out.

47:40 So I struggled for like two months with stress on my aura

47:44 ring my stress was like 2x baseline from after I sold.

47:49 And you'd think it'd be the opposite.

47:51 You'd be like, "This is great.

47:52 Like, I sold two companies.

47:53 I'm good for the rest of my life." Like,

47:55 "What is there to be stressed about?" And then

47:58 I realized what I needed was a hard reset.

48:01 That was the first step.

48:02 We went on a trip, got away from the environment,

48:05 got away from the day-to-day life,

48:08 and then it somehow was able to hack my brain to be like,

48:11 "Okay, you're safe or like things are chill now." So,

48:15 when I went back home, the stress was gone.

48:18 It was like back to baseline or below baseline.

48:22 What was the trip?

48:23 It was a trip to the south of Portugal to the Algarve.

48:26 Yeah, it's a nice spot.

48:27 So went to the beach.

48:28 Nice oranges.

48:29 Toasty.

48:29 Yeah, good orange.

48:30 Yeah.

48:32 [laughter] So spent some time down there and that was just like the hard reset.

48:35 I think you just need to get out of your environment.

48:37 But then when I got back, it was like stress is gone,

48:41 but now feeling a little bit bored.

48:44 Like that boredom was coming back.

48:45 And I was tempted to start another startup and I read

48:49 this someone sent me this who another friend who had a big acquisition.

48:54 He sent me this thing I think it was in the Yale School of Management

48:57 and it was basically they interviewed founders that had

48:59 just exited and they asked him their advice.

49:01 What was it like?

49:02 What were the good ups and the downs?

49:04 And they basically said when you sell

49:06 there were like psychological dangers that can occur.

49:10 One is that you lose your sense of structure.

49:13 The other is you lose your sense of purpose

49:15 and you lose your sense of connection with your team.

49:18 It all goes away like you have it and then one day you literally don't.

49:21 So different people react to it in different ways

49:23 but they warned that the a lot of case

49:25 studies in this paper were saying people that started

49:28 companies within a year of selling usually regretted it.

49:31 [clears throat]

49:32 So basically take a year and don't make any major commitments whatsoever.

49:36 So that's what I did.

49:37 It kept me from starting these I had all these ideas I'm going to start

49:40 a soccer and then I would be like wait a year wait a year

49:42 wait a year and then by the time a year came around I didn't

49:45 really want to because I was able to fill the void largely with tennis

49:49 for me tennis has been one activity checks all the boxes and fills this void

49:55 it's amazing then because if you think about it like if you want to have

49:59 fun you play video games or watch TV or something if you want to have

50:05 socialize you go out drinking if you want to exercise, you go to the gym.

50:08 If you want to get fresh air, you go for a walk.

50:11 Tennis has all these things like in one activity.

50:14 And if you want a community, you need to like whatever.

50:17 I don't know.

50:18 I mean, I actually don't even know how to do that outside of tennis.

50:20 That was the thing that changed was what I joined a tennis club

50:24 and [clears throat] there's a lot of other entrepreneurs there.

50:26 A lot of Americans, man.

50:27 It's like the 51st state over there, to be honest.

50:30 [laughter] It's getting a little crazy.

50:32 But [snorts] anyway,

50:33 so I filled the void with this community of people that are playing tennis,

50:37 trying to improve, obsessed with the game,

50:39 like watching YouTube videos, reading about it, practicing all the time,

50:43 and now I don't have that same sense of like wanting to start something new.

50:47 I love that.

50:48 And just a few observations since, as you would imagine,

50:52 since the book came out in 2007,

50:54 I've had the opportunity to sort of vicariously watch a lot of people

50:59 grapple with this and having worked with so many startups in angel investing,

51:05 granted in a kind of venture-backed environment,

51:08 but the a lot of the challenges are the same.

51:10 Yeah.

51:10 Whether you're coming out of for instance, you know,

51:14 I know guys in special operations, if you're coming out of running a company,

51:18 if you're coming out of starting and running a company,

51:21 when you lose, as you put it,

51:23 and I really liked the categories [clears throat] you mentioned, right,

51:26 when you lose the structure, when you lose in a sense,

51:29 the identity, when you lose the connection to team,

51:34 you can end up with a severe degree of vertigo, right?

51:38 and a a very precarious paradox of choice and something

51:45 like tennis and some people listening might think like what tennis

51:49 [laughter] probably even if it's not the forever solution

51:54 and the end all be all what it does just like getting

51:58 your your recommended daily allowance of essential amino acids and vitamins

52:04 and so on you're getting just enough that it provides

52:08 ides you with the psycho emotional sort of health and space

52:15 to think about things more clearly instead of being reactive.

52:18 You know what I mean?

52:19 Like you you're getting enough of all of those things and it provides you

52:23 with a buffer and a certain equilibrium

52:28 that allows you to think about things more clearly.

52:30 And furthermore, this is not necessarily a problem

52:33 you have to solve after everything vanishes, right?

52:37 You can you can think about this in advance

52:41 and experiment with things so that when you have like

52:46 a a real phase shift which in the context

52:49 of the 4-hour work week isn't necessarily selling a company.

52:51 It's just like once you get it to a high degree of automation

52:54 where it requires 2 3 hours a week if that to manage

52:59 which is more common than people might think what you do

53:02 with the rest of the time is a tremendously big question right.

53:06 Yep.

53:06 So, I love that.

53:07 Makes me want to go back to the Algarve.

53:09 Also [clears throat] can get a little toasty.

53:12 Could be worse.

53:12 Let's put it that way.

53:13 Yeah, it's a good country for tennis.

53:15 Brian, this has been super fun.

53:17 Where can people find you online?

53:20 Let's start with YouTube.

53:21 That would be the first place.

53:22 And then LinkedIn.

53:23 Brian Dean on YouTube and Brian Eden on LinkedIn.

53:28 Perfect.

53:28 That other Brian Dean must have grabbed that one.

53:30 [laughter] Brian, is there anything else you would like to say?

53:36 before we wind to a close.

53:39 This has been great.

53:41 That's it.

53:42 Thanks, man.

53:43 I know it's late, several time zones away,

53:45 and I appreciate being flexible on the timing.

53:47 So, thanks so much for taking the time, everybody listening or watching,

53:52 we will link to everything we discussed

53:55 in the show notes as usual at tim.blog/mpodcast.

53:59 And until next time, as always,

54:02 be just a bit kinder than is necessary to others.

54:05 and also to yourself.

54:07 Thanks for tuning in.