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

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

0:02 Almost by definition.

0:03 Like you're starting something new, at least in my experience,

0:05 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 do something else." But instead, you should just take that niche.

0:15 It's almost like a little niche when you're rock climbing.

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

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 Workweek,

0:46 should we just begin with how on earth you and the 4-Hour Workweek intersected?

0:52 Maybe we start there.

0:53 So it intersected at a really weird and sort of low time

0:56 in my life where I had just started a PhD program at Purdue,

1:03 and I basically hated it.

1:05 It was just overall not a great experience.

1:08 I went in gung-ho, 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 advisor 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.

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

1:30 What was the timing of this?

1:31 This was what year roughly?

1:33 This was 2008.

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

1:37 Yeah, 2008, 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.

1:48 Totally unbeknownst to me as a, you know, going to graduate school,

1:52 spending most of my time at bars drinking,

1:54 the great financial crisis was like over my head.

1:57 Never heard of it [laughter] until I started to get a job.

2:00 And suddenly it became very real very fast.

2:03 So basically I was in my dad's basement,

2:05 broke, no girlfriend obviously, no real prospects.

2:10 Like I'm just kind of lazily applying for jobs every morning

2:13 and just sitting around and watching Jerry Springer in the afternoon.

2:17 That's pretty much my day.

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

2:20 I'm like, I could 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,

2:38 way before and someone that's not remotely

2:39 qualified to come up with something like this.

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

2:44 I'd never crossed my mind before.

2:46 I literally thought starting a business was like,

2:48 in the office when Michael Scott gives his lecture and he's like,

2:50 first you need a building.

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

2:56 So 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.

3:04 What happened after that?

3:06 Yeah, it blew my mind.

3:07 I read the book.

3:07 I'm like, what?

3:08 I could start a business?

3:09 Like, it was just a crazy mind-blowing concept that me,

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

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

3:28 You had those little Q&As at the end of a 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.

3:37 [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 so I I think it's fair to say that your first

3:55 attempt did not turn into the mega hit that you might have hoped.

4:02 [laughter]

4:03 No.

4:03 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 it's sort

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

4:30 [laughter] Yeah.

4:30 But you learn a lot and that leads to something else.

4:32 But tell us about kind of what you

4:36 learned and how you adapted 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?

4:49 Mhm.

4:48 And like you said, Tim, 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?

5:01 Free traffic?

5:02 How How does that work?

5:03 So of course I like went all in on that and eventually

5:06 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,

5:13 you can get in front of them.

5:14 And I was like, oh, I used Google and I never really like understood

5:17 that there was this whole world behind

5:19 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,

5:33 also out of necessity when everybody at my the startup

5:38 I joined got fired in 2000 2001.

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

5:46 [laughter] So I was working off of my soon-to-expire

5:49 Cobra healthcare in California and eating

5:52 also microwave dinners or I remember there was I had a couple of favorites,

5:57 Jack 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?

6:08 Yeah.

6:06 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?

6:34 Like, when you started getting into SEO and then flashing forward,

6:39 what was the sort of plan in terms of revenue generation?

6:44 The idea was you'd have these one-page 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 like lorealshampoo.org and [snorts] I would just

7:04 write 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.

7:16 [laughter] And yeah, then I'm putting AdSense ads on the pages times 200,

7:20 and the idea is that you scale up enough,

7:23 and you know, next thing a few steps later,

7:26 you got a private island or something.

7:30 [laughter] You're right.

7:30 the plan.

7:31 Rough rough outline.

7:32 Right, a b c dot dot dot, and then private island.

7:36 Yeah.

7:37 So, let's [snorts] backstep for a second,

7:38 because we can talk about the business and the business

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

7:49 [clears throat] which we'll probably get to.

7:50 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 choose your own adventure map that you

8:01 can take and part of that often times is figuring out your target monthly income

8:08 doing exercises like dreamlining which people can find

8:11 for free to figure out exactly what it

8:14 is 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

8:41 and eat something besides eating ramen noodles?

8:44 and have a proper meal.

8:45 Yeah, in fact, have [laughter] a meal that's not out of a can.

8:47 So I just wrote that in the whole

8:49 dreamlining section that was basically what I wrote.

8:51 [laughter] But it morphed a little bit.

8:53 At first it was that and then building the 200 websites at some point

8:56 I was in Asia backpacking 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, oh I can 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 which may

9:27 be one in the same as the the Panda update, 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?

9:40 I was maybe at 3K a month around there for like a couple months.

9:44 Yeah, I had a good ride and then it kind of it got slapped.

9:47 Didn't last long.

9:50 Yeah.

9:49 The first was a Panda update,

9:51 as you mentioned, which was a very content-focused update.

9:54 By Google?

9:54 By Google.

9:55 It was an update that basically was if

9:57 your content is thin or repetitive or not helpful, we're going to wipe you out.

10:01 And it was like a one day they pushed a button and you know,

10:04 thousands of websites got completely obliterated, including mine.

10:08 That's a rough.

10:09 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,

10:18 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.

10:26 Mhm.

10:27 Let's then go to the you get scared straight, as you put it,

10:32 and you build your first, as you as I think you've put it, real site, right?

10:37 Which isn't lorealshampoo.org.

10:40 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

10:49 a second update where I was in Spain in Granada,

10:52 and I went to my hostel, I checked the laptop,

10:54 and it was like again, it was like a repeat of the Thailand experience.

10:57 Everything dropped.

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

11:01 And I was like, "You know what?

11:02 This is crazy.

11:02 Why am I doing this?

11:03 This is an insane way to live." So, then I was like,

11:06 "I'm going to build this one real website." And and I was kind

11:09 of inspired because there were these forums

11:11 at the time with these marketing people, and they were basically like,

11:13 "Spam spam spam." And there was always like there were

11:15 a couple 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?

11:20 Like build something real that's durable,

11:23 that's not 100% reliant on Google." And I was kind of ignored those people.

11:28 And then once I got hit that second time,

11:30 I was like, "Okay, it's time to build something real.

11:32 So, I basically built 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 Backlinko?

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, what [clears throat] happened, right?

12:02 To go from there to Backlinko,

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

12:10 What transpired between those two?

12:12 So, once this site started to get a little bit of traction, I was like,

12:15 wow, this is a whole world I didn't know about, real marketing, white hat SEO.

12:20 Like, and it was fun.

12:21 It was working, and it was more enjoyable cuz I didn't have to look

12:24 over my shoulder that I was going to get hit with an update next week.

12:28 And it was cool because I'm I'm reaching out to other websites,

12:31 and they're like, oh, this is really helpful, and they're linking to me.

12:33 I'm not paying for links, they're just like naturally doing it.

12:36 And I'm like, how do I learn more about this?

12:38 Like, this whole world opened up.

12:39 I'm like, how do I get better at this?

12:42 And all the advice that I read on all

12:44 these white hat SEO blogs were basically vague advice,

12:48 create great content, 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?

12:57 Very unclear, right?

12:58 Exactly.

12:58 It was as vague as you can imagine.

13:00 So, then Backlinko is a case of sort

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

13:07 Exactly.

13:07 One thing that I saw here in the prep notes,

13:10 which I was like, oh, that's so smart, and I wanted to highlight it,

13:15 is and there there number of things, obviously,

13:19 that you ended up doing really well that that seemed

13:24 to have 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

13:40 Google patents and and then engineer statements?

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

13:48 Separate.

13:48 Okay.

13:48 Could you explain what you were doing?

13:51 When I launched Backlinko, I was like,

13:53 there must be other people like me who are

13:55 getting into this whole world of white hat SEO.

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.

14:20 [laughter] Publish and pray.

14:20 Yeah, exactly.

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

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

14:25 I have an idea I came up with a actually creative idea for a post that would

14:29 be really special instead of just the stuff

14:30 I 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 and what was out there.

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

14:44 Like if I do this consistently over time,

14:46 there'll be like a secret society that will just send

14:48 me traffic as a reward for being [laughter] 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 equaled traffic at some point.

14:58 And it honestly didn't for me.

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

15:04 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 of the list

15:15 of 10 or 20 that I had seen out there.

15:19 [snorts] And then I got to like 55 and I'm like, man,

15:20 you have to really dig to find some of these and that's when I went

15:23 through the Google patents and also people would

15:25 interview Google engineers or they would give statements.

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

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

15:34 So it took a lot of digging.

15:35 So it took like 20 to 25 hours to complete this single

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

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

15:45 who have not heard of this approach for some folks they'll be like, oh,

15:48 I I've I 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, right?

16:05 This was incredibly valuable when I was getting started as well.

16:08 Mostly looking at at kind of closed door

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

16:17 All right, so that was sort of a massive post that you really invested in.

16:24 25 hours is 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 pray

16:31 consistent approach to just sliding a plate with like

16:35 content salad out the door and hoping that [laughter]

16:37 you know, a leprechaun's going to show up and trade for a pot of gold, right?

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

16:45 Massive traffic and controversy,

16:48 kind of everything you want in a piece of content honest.

16:51 Mhm.

16:51 I mean you had the traffic,

16:52 you had the wow factor and then you had the controversy which is like,

16:56 those aren't Google's 200 ranking factors, you know, no one knows those.

17:01 [snorts]

17:01 And then people saying, well,

17:02 this is at least trying to come up with something and then people saying,

17:05 well, it shouldn't do it.

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

17:10 You know, it's not anything super controversial

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

17:13 So yeah, brought in I mean,

17:15 I would 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.

17:22 What did you then follow that up with in terms of lessons learned,

17:31 coming up 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 once once you saw that response?

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

17:44 Yeah.

17:44 Like I was using this you 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.

17:55 And then answer the answer [laughter] my own

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

17:59 And I'm reading it I'm like, why would anyone want to read this?

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

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

18:06 and it's going to be the best thing on that topic's ever been written by 10X.

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

18:12 totally changed my content focus to quality over quantity.

18:17 You had a funny YouTube video on ultimately the acquisition of Backlinko and

18:25 [laughter] you got I guess the original email you got was like,

18:27 "Hey, would love to connect to like collaborate." And you're like,

18:30 "Well, that smells like every spam email I've

18:32 ever received." So you just ignored it, right?

18:35 Yep.

18:36 [laughter] As I remember.

18:36 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, paper click, and also now AI search.

18:56 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?

19:14 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 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,

19:30 let me be direct and you're like, "Oh, okay.

19:32 I'll reply to that one." Can you tell the story of flying to Boston?

19:35 I think it's pretty funny.

19:36 I also liked in your video when you said, you know,

19:38 up 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." So,

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

19:47 Like, what's in your mind?

19:49 In my mind, I'm like,

19:50 "We're going to close this thing." Like, let's 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 could how I could help them,

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

20:04 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?

20:13 I'm like, "What?

20:14 We're celebrating the deal now?" Like,

20:16 I didn't even see a con- 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 Sea Foods [laughter]

20:24 in the Prudential Center.

20:25 We're taking shots.

20:27 Yeah, this is great, Brian.

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

20:29 And I'm thinking, "Where's the contract?

20:31 When are we going to sign?" Like, I really thought

20:34 Did I miss something?

20:35 Did I black out?

20:36 What happened?

20:37 exactly.

20:37 I'm like, "Did I agree?" Like,

20:39 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?

20:51 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 venture backed and they have people overseeing all this stuff.

21:04 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,

21:16 maybe they never intend to sell it, but hey,

21:19 you had not gone into Backlinko thinking that you were going to sell it, right?

21:23 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 Warlow called Built to Sell,

21:30 which talks a bit about this, and I thought it was actually very good,

21:33 like a very I don't want to say basic,

21:35 but pretty sort of foundational primer for some of this stuff.

21:38 But what advice would you give to folks?

21:41 I mean, one comes to mind,

21:42 which I have also had to learn the hard way about independent contractors.

21:48 But what are some of the like tenets or sort of commandments of like, hey,

21:54 just in case one day you want to sell this thing,

21:56 here a couple of things that I learned.

21:58 Anything come to mind?

21:59 Independent contractors for sure.

22:01 Maybe you can expand on that, Sam, because you have experience with that.

22:04 Look, if you ever want to sell something,

22:07 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 and take all the money back.

22:23 But they want to know that everything they're buying is free and clear, right?

22:26 So, if you've had, as I have, and as you have,

22:30 in some cases, well, I'll just speak personally,

22:33 always maintained a very small full-time team, but have used dozens,

22:37 and probably hundreds,

22:38 I've I've certainly hundreds of contractors over the span of decades.

22:43 And if you're building something,

22:45 and they want to see, they meaning the acquiring company,

22:49 every single contract to make sure that someone isn't

22:52 going to come out of the woodwork and say, hey, I own a part of that.

22:55 Hey, I contributed this, and therefore I am entitled to a piece of equity.

23:01 Yada yada yada yada,

23:03 which if the deal's big 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 S-1 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,

23:15 "What?" Like 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.

23:30 All right?

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

23:33 Make everything formal.

23:35 No verbal, no handshake.

23:37 If you want to preserve the option to cleanly

23:40 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 Yep.

23:51 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 sink for me was independent contractors.

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

24:00 I hired so many people that did one like created like a blog post

24:06 image or something or like a social media image once for like 10 bucks.

24:10 And I had to go try to find them.

24:13 Basically, I 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 it like

24:21 a deposit for a work and they never even replied.

24:24 They totally They ghosted me.

24:26 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 that says,

24:39 "You don't own any of this work.

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

24:44 And that made [clears throat] 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.

24:53 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?

25:05 [laughter]

25:05 Given the time zone differences, I just I thought that one was great.

25:08 Time zone differences and I'm like I'm like early to bed kind of person,

25:11 so they told me that hey Brian, you know, we're going to announce this tomorrow

25:17 and we're 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 out Is it possible to send it earlier?

25:23 That's like 10:00 p.m.

25:24 here.

25:25 I'm already kind of getting ready for bed.

25:26 Basically saying I'm in my PJs at that point.

25:28 Is it possible to push this earlier?

25:30 And they said, no, because it's a public company.

25:33 Due to SEC rules, we have to make these announcements after the markets close.

25:39 [laughter] Yeah, 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.

25:46 So, you sell the company.

25:49 Presumably, there's some type of

25:54 [sighs] earn out or period of time for which

25:56 you're required to still work on Backlinko, right?

25:59 Who knows what the exact terms are

26:01 of that, but for people who have never gone through it, right?

26:03 You can have a vesting period,

26:04 you can have an earn out where you get X percentage

26:07 of the total purchase price based on hitting or exceeding X,

26:10 Y, and Z metrics or whatever, right?

26:12 So, there's a period of time like that.

26:14 Post acquisition, let's just say because I

26:17 know that was very stressful and you started

26:18 grinding your teeth and that kind of evaporated as soon as the deal was done.

26:22 Let's just flash forward like two or three 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?

26:30 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 Mhm.

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 reflect or analyze.

26:48 That one day that the announcement was made,

26:51 especially the next day cuz 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.

26:58 But after that day, I was pretty much back working on the next thing.

27:03 Like Mhm.

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

27:08 Mhm.

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,

27:19 so I'm glad I did that." Do you wish you had approached it differently?

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

27:24 Yeah, and looking back, I was wish I took some time off.

27:28 It's just tricky because you know how it is.

27:30 When you have a startup, it's kind of a strange situation.

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

27:36 I had this old company that I sold and it

27:38 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 sit on the beach for a while." So,

27:50 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." Financially at that point,

28:02 were you focused on the new company, Exploding Topics,

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

28:09 pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

28:11 Like what was the driver behind that?

28:14 Right, I don't know to what extent

28:15 you were sort of financially stable, had savings.

28:18 We don't have to get into all the nitty-gritty if you don't want

28:20 to, but I'm just curious what was driving

28:23 the involvement in the new company for you?

28:27 It wasn't really 100% financial.

28:29 Like when I sold Backlinko, before then,

28:33 I was probably okay for most of my life.

28:36 Then when I sold Backlinko, it was like, "Okay,

28:38 I'm probably good for forever." And then I wouldn't have

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

28:44 So, towards the end of Backlinko, 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.

29:04 That was like, here are all the trends in this space right now.

29:07 There was Google Trends,

29:08 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, it was more like,

29:20 this is kind of exciting and new.

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

29:24 And it'll give me something to do between these sessions with Backlinko,

29:26 which was It was also boring cuz it was so optimized.

29:29 Like, I worked like 3 hours a week.

29:31 It was like 4-hour work week, honestly, at the end.

29:33 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 I just had it all down to a science.

29:42 Even if it was a totally different topic, I knew exactly how to create a course.

29:45 So, the challenge wasn't really there.

29:47 And this was like, okay, new challenge, new space.

29:50 And that's basically It wasn't so much financial,

29:53 it was more just to freshen things up and to try something new.

29:56 Yeah, and you'd also already committed to other people,

30:00 right, with this new startup.

30:02 So, it makes a lot of sense.

30:04 When you had with Backlinko so much on autopilot, the 3 hours per week, right?

30:10 What were you doing with the rest of that time?

30:13 Because the most and we don't have to dig into the the book too much here,

30:18 but if I had to point to one chapter

30:20 that people pay no attention to cuz typically they're like,

30:22 oh yeah, that'd be a nice problem to have and they like forget about it,

30:24 is the filling the void chapter.

30:26 Filling the void chapter of the 4-hour work week is

30:28 really important so you don't go into like psychological free fall,

30:34 [laughter]

30:33 among other reasons.

30:34 But what were you doing with the rest of your time if Backlinko at one point,

30:39 right, when it the flywheel is really spinning,

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

30:46 I was bored, honestly.

30:46 I wasn't feeling it well.

30:47 I wasn't filling the void.

30:49 I was basically going to the gym, reading books, playing video games.

30:53 Nothing I think that was part of this ennui, this boredom was I needed to reread

30:58 that chapter essentially and fill this with something meaningful.

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

31:05 Yeah, 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.

31:10 Mhm.

31:10 [clears throat] So, that's really what got me into Exploding Topics.

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

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

31:18 Mhm.

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

31:21 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 Backlinko?

31:32 Maybe things that in retrospect you're like, "Wow,

31:35 that was a really smart decision." and change and maybe somewhere you're like,

31:38 "Mhm, okay." Lesson learned, right?

31:42 We're probably if I were starting from scratch with Exploding Topics,

31:45 I would have done it differently.

31:46 Anything come to mind in terms of good and quote-unquote 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, they can go by category.

32:06 And you think, "Oh, how are you going to monetize that?" Logically,

32:08 you think SaaS, an upgraded version of what they're seeing for free.

32:11 And for some reason, I was like,

32:12 "A paid newsletter." 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

32:30 and then on like a car and then a battery and then a tech startup.

32:35 And they would be like, "What is this?" People were like,

32:37 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 SaaS,

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

32:46 paid newsletter, and they'd be like, I thought this was SaaS.

32:48 I thought this was SaaS.

32:48 That was our number one complaint.

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

32:52 get that beaten over head cuz I was like,

32:54 oh, SaaS is so complicated.

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

32:58 we're going to have to hire developers and I

33:00 don't know anything about this whole world, UI.

33:03 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, maybe not the best example,

33:11 but I mean, Dropbox is a great example,

33:14 but with a lot of these products, there's a there's a freemium version,

33:18 there's a version that you get to use for free,

33:20 and then 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 SaaS.

33:31 Sorry to interrupt, I just wanted to define that.

33:33 Yeah, but if you had told me that before we started,

33:35 I would have been like, oh, logically,

33:36 then we should have the premium, advanced,

33:39 enterprise version 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 Backlinko, this is something I only

33:58 discovered after like 5 years of running the site.

34:01 And then with Exploding 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 strategy,

34:08 like be the source that of information on technology,

34:14 software, e-commerce trends, anything trend-related,

34:18 we are going to be the source.

34:19 We're going to have the latest data, we're going to have the best visuals,

34:22 and we're just going to be the source for that information.

34:25 As opposed to writing how-to content, we really focused on data-driven content.

34:30 Did it work right out of the gate,

34:31 or was there a formula that you realized worked

34:35 after you had a particular well-received publication of data?

34:40 It took a while to get going.

34:42 A lot of mistakes, a lot of posts that weren't great,

34:45 or the topic wasn't a good choice.

34:47 What really helped us, what was sort of the smash hit,

34:51 were 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.

35:08 But, usually journalists aren't looking for LinkedIn stats, or TikTok stats.

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

35:15 but most of them are looking for something very specific,

35:16 like how many users did TikTok have,

35:19 or how many people use LinkedIn every day, like daily active users,

35:23 or how many posts are on LinkedIn every day.

35:24 Like, it's super specific,

35:25 so if you're able to find a credible stat around that, then you can crush it.

35:32 Even if you're not the one that developed it.

35:33 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

35:43 in this area was how many users did ChatGPT have.

35:46 Granted, we published 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,

35:56 where 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 ChatGPT have.

36:11 And every once in a while, Sam Altman will give a talk,

36:14 and he'll mention it, or when they raise a round, they'll mention it.

36:18 And all we did was just document their user

36:20 growth based on these statements that they made.

36:22 The initial post probably cost hiring a freelancer like 200 bucks.

36:27 And then to update it every couple months it was like another 50.

36:30 And it's been referenced like 3,000 times.

36:33 It's absolutely insane.

36:36 [laughter] The love the effort to reward ratio is nuts on that.

36:38 And of course it's just like part of it 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 growthmanifesto.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?

37:16 And then I'm wondering if there are any

37:18 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 first starting out.

37:51 Because when you're first starting out, 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 do 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, quadruple.

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 up.

38:22 That can get you pretty far.

38:24 Mhm.

38:24 Aside from the 4-Hour Workweek, right?

38:25 Which was 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." Are there any

38:41 books or resources that you tend to recommend frequently?

38:46 For people that are just like,

38:47 "I want to start a business." And they're like, "I don't know what to do,

38:50 how to do it." They're like totally green, then Ready,

38:53 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 Mhm.

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

39:00 It gets people into the action mindset,

39:02 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?

39:24 But the key is really like starting, starting,

39:26 starting or like Paul Graham says, action produces information.

39:32 So if this is book basically will hopefully give people a kick

39:34 in the butt to get started instead of analyzing and then being like,

39:37 "Okay, now I'm ready." Just be like, start today and then like change as you go.

39:42 I feel like that book is almost a litmus 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?" Mhm.

40:00 [clears throat] 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 Backlinko 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 {slash} invested?

40:27 For Backlinko'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 Mhm.

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

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

40:46 I was probably more like 500 bucks.

40:50 Mhm.

40:50 Cuz it's a blog.

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

40:52 there shouldn't be a lot of costs involved with that.

40:54 With Exploding Topics, it was a lot different because I acquired like

40:57 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 Mhm.

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

41:13 adding 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 I wasn't built from scratch.

41:23 It 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 it would be like in that first couple months,

41:35 but it was in that range.

41:37 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 for this like trend.

41:55 Like I couldn't even describe it very well.

41:56 It was just basically, you want to go to a website and just

41:58 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 It used Reddit, so we'd look at subreddits and we

42:11 would see how many times a word was mentioned or something.

42:14 We 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 site this guy started,

42:27 and I'm like, "No, this.

42:29 Like this is exactly what I want." But it was even better than I had imagined.

42:33 So, then I reached out to him,

42:34 and then the deal structure was essentially buy it 100% straight up.

42:40 Part of the acquisition cost will be you'll get paid that.

42:43 And then on top of that, if it goes well over the first,

42:46 I think couple months, then we can set up some sort of part-time deal.

42:50 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.

42:58 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 and improve it.

43:06 Rather than hiring someone random to come

43:08 in, he it was his vision to start with.

43:10 And then I said basically if it goes well

43:13 with full-time for I think another month or so,

43:16 we'll basically be co-founders on this thing.

43:17 The only rub will be if you want to want a lot of equity,

43:21 then you know, you're going to have to put money in to fund this thing.

43:26 Or if you prefer that you get more cash,

43:29 then you 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, I mean, my wife we met in Thailand many years ago,

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

43:56 This is actually a funny story.

43:58 Partially from the four-hour workweek,

43:59 cuz you mentioned Berlin as like this cheap place.

44:01 So, we're in Thailand looking at Craigslist,

44:04 [laughter] and looking at all these apartments

44:06 that are like palaces for €300 a month, 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, we send out all these emails like,

44:17 we're going to And of course they're all scams.

44:20 It's like, I'm lost and I I like I Oh, I'm out of town,

44:23 but if And I lost my passport,

44:25 but if you leave like this money in this Western Union.

44:29 So, we show up to Berlin.

44:31 We're in a hostel for [snorts] like €8 a night in a 12-bed hostel while

44:36 we realize that this whole thing all these ads we're applying to is a scam.

44:40 No one uses Craigslist in Germany.

44:43 So, then we eventually found apartment, lived in Germany, and she's Portuguese.

44:49 Mhm.

44:49 So, we visited Portugal a number of times when we lived there,

44:51 and eventually it was like,

44:52 we could freeze our asses off or we could live in the sun.

44:56 Like, so let's live in the sun.

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

45:01 Yeah, [laughter] the the thing about the 4-hour workweek, right?

45:03 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 GoToMyPC at this point, right?

45:14 To access your home computer remotely to do the work you need to do.

45:20 But the the pricing examples obviously have changed, right?

45:24 Since it was first written in 2007-2009.

45:27 So, the the principle, the idea of geoarbitrage and applying that to what

45:33 you earn and how you pay contractors,

45:37 employees, and then your sort of living expenses, it applies, but [snorts]

45:43 definitely for anybody who's who who ends up picking it up,

45:46 if if you read that doing something in Buenos Aires costs A, B, and C,

45:52 [laughter]

45:51 like go online and fact-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, could be about mistakes along the way,

46:04 really anything at all because part of the value

46:07 of these conversations is that we can get into a lot

46:11 of specifics 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.

46:32 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.

46:51 Please.

46:52 So set the stage for you like I sold

46:55 Backlinko and then about 2 years later sold Exploding Topics.

46:59 And we're just kind of going full-time.

47:02 Not super crazy working all the time because I was fairly efficient but still

47:06 working all the time and then 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

47:31 brain doesn't really recognize that and it's still

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

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

47:40 So I struggled for like 2 months with stress on my aura ring.

47:45 My stress was like 2x baseline from after

47:49 I sold and you think it'd be the opposite.

47:51 You're like this is great.

47:52 Like I sold two companies.

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

47:54 Like what is there to be stressed about?

47:57 And then 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 when I went back home,

48:17 the stress was gone.

48:17 It was like back to baseline or below baseline.

48:21 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 to the beach.

48:28 Nice oranges.

48:30 Toasty.

48:29 Yeah, good oranges.

48:32 [laughter] So spent some time out 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,

48:40 but now feeling a little bit bored.

48:44 Like that boredom was coming back and I was tempted to start another startup.

48:48 And I read this Someone sent me

48:51 this who another friend who had a big acquisition.

48:54 He sent me this thing.

48:55 I think it was in the Yale School of Management and it was

48:57 basically they interviewed founders that had just

48:59 exited and they asked them their advice.

49:02 Mhm.

49:01 What was it like?

49:02 What were the good ups and the downs?

49:03 And they basically said, "When you sell,

49:06 there are 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.

49:18 Like you have it and then one day you literally

49:20 don't." So different people react to it in different ways,

49:23 but they warned that the the lot of case studies in this paper

49:27 were saying people that started companies within

49:29 a year of selling usually regretted it.

49:31 Mhm.

49:31 [clears throat]

49:32 So it's 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,

49:39 I'm going to start a startup and then I'll be like,

49:41 "You know, wait a year, wait a year,

49:42 wait a year." And then by the time a year came around,

49:44 I didn't really want to because I was able to fill the void largely with tennis.

49:50 Mhm.

49:49 For me, tennis has been one activity

49:53 that checks all the boxes and fills this void.

49:55 It's amazing, man, because if you think about it,

49:58 like if you want to have fun, you play video games or watch TV or something.

50:04 If you want to have socialize, you go out drinking.

50:06 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 of these things like in one activity.

50:14 And if you want a community, you need to like whatever, I don't know.

50:18 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 Mhm.

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.

50:31 [laughter] It's getting a little crazy.

50:32 But [snorts] anyway,

50:33 so I filled a 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, I've had the opportunity to sort of vicariously

50:58 watch a lot of people grapple with this.

51:00 And having worked with so many startups in angel investing,

51:05 granted in a kind of venture-backed environment,

51:07 but the a lot of the challenges are the same.

51:11 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, when you lose,

51:22 as you put it, and I really

51:23 liked the categories [clears throat] you mentioned, right?

51:26 When you lose the structure, when you lose, in a sense, the identity,

51:30 when you lose the connection to team,

51:33 you can end up with a severe degree of vertigo, right?

51:38 And a very precarious paradox of choice.

51:43 And something like tennis, and some people listening might think like, "What?

51:49 Tennis?" [laughter] Probably.

51:52 But even if it's not the forever solution and the end-all, be-all, what it does,

51:57 just like getting your your recommended daily allowance of essential

52:02 amino acids and vitamins and so on, you're getting just enough

52:07 that it provides you with the psycho-emotional sort of health

52:14 and space to think about things more clearly instead of being reactive.

52:18 You know what I mean?

52:19 Like 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 and experiment

52:42 with things so that when you have like a a real phase shift,

52:47 which in the context of the 4-hour workweek 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,

52:58 which is more common than people might think,

53:01 what you do with the rest of the time is a tremendously big question, right?

53:07 Yep.

53:06 So, I love that.

53:07 Makes me want to go back to the Algarve, also.

53:11 [clears throat] Can get a little toasty.

53:12 Could be worse, let's put it that way.

53:13 Yeah, it's a good country for tennis.

53:15 Brian, this has been super fun.

53:16 Where can people find you online?

53:20 Let's start with YouTube.

53:21 That would be the first place and then LinkedIn.

53:23 Brian Dean on YouTube and @BrianEDean on LinkedIn.

53:28 Perfect.

53:28 The other Brian Dean must have grabbed that one.

53:31 [laughter]

53:33 Brian, is there anything else you would like to say before we wind to a close?

53:39 This has been great.

53:41 That's it.

53:42 Thanks, man.

53:42 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.

53:50 Everybody listening or watching,

53:52 we will link to everything we discussed in the show

53:56 notes as usual at tim.blog/podcast and until next time,

54:01 as always, be just a bit kinder than

54:04 is necessary to others and also to yourself.

54:07 Thanks for tuning in.