In Search Of Excellence - Sean Mike Kelly: Viral Marketing and the Power of Social Media | E132

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

Sean Mike Kelly is a serial entrepreneur and an influential advocate in the Web 3.0 space. From launching Jersey Champs during his freshman year of college to navigating the volatile world of cryptocurrency investments, Sean’s entrepreneurial journey is marked by both spectacular successes and educational setbacks. In this enlightening episode of “In Search of Excellence,” hosted by Randall Kaplan, Sean delves into his unique experiences growing up with immigrant parents, his early business ventures, and the profound lessons he learned about the psychological impact of financial highs and lows. He also shares insights into the critical roles that adaptability, mentorship, and a positive mindset have played in his career. Engaging and deeply personal, this episode offers valuable perspectives on entrepreneurship, resilience, and the pursuit of excellence.0:00 - Introduction to Sean Mike Kelly and his journey from college entrepreneur to multimillionaire.2:14 - Early financial lessons and the psychological impact of perceived wealth.5:20 - Sean’s multicultural background and how his parents’ immigrant stories shaped his perspective on money and success.9:37 - Starting Jersey Champs and the pivot to selling masks during the COVID-19 pandemic.13:48 - Lessons learned from early business ventures and coping with financial uncertainties.18:03 - The role of influencers and strategic marketing in the growth of his businesses.22:25 - Sean discusses the importance of adapting business strategies to market changes.26:39 - Reflections on financial freedom and the volatile world of cryptocurrency investing.30:52 - The significance of networking and mentorship in Sean’s career development.35:10 - Insights into managing personal and professional life, and the ongoing learning process.39:55 - How Sean’s family values and work ethic have influenced his business practices.44:30 - Sean talks about overcoming introversion and the impact of positive thinking.48:45 - Final thoughts on entrepreneurship, preparation, and the importance of mindset in achieving success.Sponsors:Sandee | Bliss: BeachesWant to Connect? Reach out to us online!Website | Instagram | LinkedIn

So you made $10 million and you lost $10 million. Yeah, well, I made, but I never realized it. But on paper, I had $10 million and I could have sold it for US dollars and I didn't do it. You gotta know when to sell. Exactly, my greed kicked in and that's when I took a step back and realized, wow, this is a psychological game.

It's a player versus player game. Welcome to In Search of Excellence, where we meet entrepreneurs, CEOs, entertainers, athletes, motivational speakers, and trailblazers of excellence with incredible stories with all walks of life. My name is Randall Kaplan. I'm a serial entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and the host of In Search of Excellence, which has started to motivate and inspire us to achieve excellence in all areas of our lives.

My guest today is Sean Kelly. Sean is a serial entrepreneur, Web3 advocate, an incredible podcaster with over 11 million followers on Instagram, 1 million followers on YouTube, and 400,000 followers on TikTok. During his freshman year in college, Sean started a company called Jersey Champs, which sold custom jerseys in partnerships with rappers, athletes, and influencers, and later sold it after dropping out of college. And after that, he started a company that sold $17 million worth of masks and other supplies during the coronavirus pandemic. Sean is the host of the number one marketing podcast, The Digital Social Hour, where he interviews celebrities, entrepreneurs, and industry

experts from all walks of life. Sean, it's a true pleasure. Welcome to my show, In Search of Excellence. So I want to start with my family. Your mom was born in China, both your parents from different countries. Your dad was a computer programmer. What were they like and what kind of influence did they have on you growing up? Wow, you did your research, man. No one's ever said that before. Yeah, growing up in a multicultural background was really interesting looking back at it now. Cause I got two really different perspectives. So my mom was an immigrant from China, came here with 20 bucks in her pocket, didn't speak English, scrubbed floors, worked her way up to become a self-made millionaire from a nine to five job. So I witnessed the work ethic from her. My dad, similar story, immigrant,

grew up on a farm working really, really hard. But he was a genius. So his IQ was 150 and he had a lot of mental problems too. So I grew up around that and that ended up playing a big role on me too. We could dive into that later. Yeah. So how did they go from, your mom go from scrubbing floors to becoming a millionaire? That's pretty incredible. Pretty insane. Just hard work, man. That Asian immigrant mentality is hard to beat. So she did that for a few years and eventually learned English, worked her way into a sales position, and she's still at the same company. Erickson, a telecommunications company. Yeah, it was Telcordia before it got acquired.

And then, so I know she's in sales and marketing there. So did she become a millionaire based on commission revenue or? Both. Her base plus commission. So she did that for 25 years now she's at amazon and so and your dad sells books now for on amazon and ebay yep watched him do i think a million dollars in books and this was when i was a kid so a million back 15 years ago was a good amount in sales and is he still doing that right now uh he stopped it was on the side um he had a main job and he did that on the side for a long time. But I think these book scanners started coming out. So it removed his skill level

because he could just eye a book and know the value. Right. But you were younger at the time. So were you saying to yourself, Amazon is new and are people selling books? These were not his own books. He was brokering books on Amazon. Brokering books. We would go to dumpsters. We'd go to book sales. He could eye any book and know how much it's worth. It was the craziest skill I've seen. When you're that smart, it's almost like a savant-like skill. So he's getting discarded books or he's getting them at used bookstores where they're 99 cents and he's basically flipping them on Amazon?

Yeah, Amazon and eBay. And I would help him ship them too. Using keywords? Because how does a guy who has absolutely no experience compete with Amazon, for example, where you can buy used books on Amazon? Yeah, well, I think back then it was easier. You could just list books for the cheapest price and undercut people, but now it's a lot harder.

You need volume. So let's go to seventh grade. You're selling candy. You make $20 a day some days. And tell us what happened and why you got suspended from school yeah it's so pathetic that they make your your own students think this way but I guess the school had vending machines and I don't know what the kickback is like where that money goes to exactly but this teacher was just so upset and she's like this huge lady probably 250 pounds I'm walking to

my bus stop in one hand i have a bag of money other hand the rest of my candy left for the day and i'm smiling like there's a huge smile on my face 20 bucks as a kid is a lot back then huge yeah because you didn't really have many expenses so uh yeah she said what is that i'm like i just sold candy she said come with me right now it takes me to the principal's office. So I missed the bus going home. My mom had to pick me up. And they suspended me, man, for selling candy. For how long? I think it was a day or something.

But I had to stop selling. So that was the part that sucked. You snuck out of the house at night to get the candy. Yeah. 10, 11 o'clock at night. Crazy story. So I would sneak out at Wegmans. Have you heard of Wegmans?

Yeah. Yeah, they're big on the East Coast. And you said it was two to three miles from your house. Yeah. So I had to either bike or run and I think they closed at midnight. So I would leave at 11, be like the only person in the whole grocery store. One day I came home, my dad pulled a gun on me because he was on drugs and he thought it was a robber or something. So he's literally pointing a Glock at me from the upstairs. I'm a kid. How old were you at this point?

Probably in middle school, probably seventh grade, so 13. So he pulls a gun on me. I'm begging Dad not to shoot, and he still didn't understand the situation because he was so messed up on drugs. So I had to hide in the bathroom that night. There's a bathroom right by the front door. So the doors were locked. Were you upstairs,

this kind of thing where you see on TV, where you open the window, you hop out the window, or you're just kind of tiptoeing out the front door? I left the front door open. So I walked in, as soon as I walked in, he's there with a gun. It's like midnight pointing at me. There's a bathroom to my left. So I walk in there and hide there for like an hour until he went back to his room and fell asleep. So let's talk about college and the start of your first real company. Talk to us about spending $250 on a design and then spending a thousand dollars and how you got started in your dorm room and kind of what happened from there. Yeah. So I was broke in college, even though I grew up in a family like middle-class, they, one thing I love about that is they didn't give me any money or anything. It was normal in high

school for their parents to buy the car. I was the only kid that didn't have a car in high school. So shout out to my parents for not doing that. At the time, I hated it. Believe me, I hated it. But shout out to them for doing that. But yeah, in college, I was broke and drop shipping was hot at the time. And I really took advantage of that wave. And I did pre-orders because I didn't have enough money to order inventory. Right. Tell us though, first, what you were making and why you were making them and where the idea for that came from. Because it's a little different than selling t-shirts, which a lot of people were doing. Yeah. So everyone was doing t-shirts and I think that market's super saturated for people watching this, trying to

start t-shirt companies. Cause I still get DM daily about that. Please don't do that. Jerseys on the other hand, at the time weren't as saturated. So I would go to fraternity parties and tailgates. Every guy was wearing a jersey. So I knew there was a huge market. Sports is big in America, obviously. So I did a pre-order for this Toronto jersey. Drake dropped an album at the time, the rapper, and I had like views and the number six and Toronto on the front. And that was the first jersey. And I think we sold 100 of those. You sold out what you made.

And you paid $250 for someone to make the design for you? Yeah, because I didn't know what the going rate was. So I overpaid for sure. But it ended up working out. Yeah. So tell us how you got influencers to wear them, which is very, very tough to do. It's so important now to do it, but before social media really exploded,

it was still a great way to do it, right? Free advertising of Kim Kardashian, where's your stuff? Good things are going to happen to your brand, right? Kendall Jenner. So how are you doing this? I mean, what was your first rapper? And you can't look up their email addresses, so where are you doing this i mean what was your first rapper and you know you can't look up their email addresses so where are you finding these people yeah you can't look up their emails but you could get their agents there's a few websites um booking agent info and the handbook those are

two that i used to use um but dms i feel like worked better so i would dm 100 people a day on instagram until i was blocked basically right And I did that for probably two years straight. So just from sheer volume and I see everything as a numbers game. And I still have that mentality today when I was doing the mass, which we'll get into. I was emailing probably hundreds a day as well. And that's how we were able to do good revenue there. Right. So who was the first rapper?

And then I want you to tell us about Donald Trump and how he just just crazy change your entire career crazy i still remember that day vividly uh it was probably khaled and then logic um i don't listen to rap anymore but at the time those two artists were pretty hot and then tell us about donald trump and what happened there crazy it wasn't planned i wish i could say it was some elaborate marketing scheme but uh someone bought one of my jerseys and he was front row at his rally i guess and had access to trump and handed it to him and then we got a whole video of him holding it front and back and how did people know it was yours my logo is on the bottom right but it's small yeah it's super small what'd you do take it it's like on these uh football

replays where where you blow it up i mean yeah he probably didn't have that blow-up mechanism back then yeah i guess people just had to trust it the video was a little blurry but surreal moment because my my father was a huge fan of him even though very controversial but in 2016 he was always talking about him yeah i have a trump story i'm gonna tell you and then i want to go back to the t-shirts. Let's do it. So my best friend's getting married at Mar-a-Lago, this is 2015 2014 and Mar-a-Lago is a very nice place Trump owns it. We all know it now, but it was a hedge fund

Conference he's in the financial business. So there's all kinds of wealthy people there. Yeah, and Trump is there When he's the tenth candidate in the race, he's the joke candidate, just announced, never gonna win. And he comes down, right? He's schmoozing with people saying, hello, everyone's getting their photo with him. And I said, oh, let's go take a picture. My wife wanted none of it. She had met him before,

knew his sons used to live in New York. So, and she doesn't like taking pictures My wife wanted none of it. She had met him before. Newest sons used to live in New York. And she doesn't like taking pictures with celebrities or famous people. She's never going to do that. Got it. Me, yeah, sometimes I'll do that. Good branding. Yeah, it was good branding. My son was 10 at the time.

So we have a great picture of Donald holding my son Charlie, looking directly into the camera. And it's cool. It's my son's looking directly into the camera. And it's cool. It's my son's screensaver today. And the only post that I made there is one of these men will be president one day, hashtag 2040. Wow. Thinking it's going to be my son, not Donald Trump.

Because 2040, I kind of did the math. You know, he'll be kind of in his late 40s now, but it's kind of just amazing how someone can go from dark horse, no candidate, to no chance of winning to what he's done as a president, whether you like him or not. It's coming from the rear and winning the race is... Unheard of, especially for president, because you need a lot of money. Yeah.

I mean, he raised a lot of money, and he's still raising a lot of money. Not spending his own money, but he's... Yeah, he just raised $50 million the other day in Bar Lago. Yeah, one night. Nuts. And he could do that once a week, probably. Yeah. Well, we'll see.

It's going to be interesting. Yeah, I know people that have paid $100K just to be at a dinner right next to, like, at his table. Yeah. Let's go back to selling t-shirts, because I know you tell have paid 100K just to be at a dinner right next to, like at his table. Yeah. Let's go back to selling t-shirts because I know you tell people today don't do it. Back when I was in college, I went to University of Michigan,

greatest school on the planet, and I saw some people selling t-shirts and I didn't have money. So I thought, all right, so and these were people that I befriended. One of them is Brad Keywell has become one of my best friends. He was on my show.

They started four public companies. Groupon was the fourth. It was the fastest company at the time to a billion dollar valuation. And Uptake, his company that he started was the fastest company to a $2 billion valuation. He signed the giving pledge, but he got going in college.

Actually, he got going when he was six years old selling greeting cards. So when you see someone doing something in college, I thought, well, it's an inspiration, right? If they can make money selling T-shirts, so can I. So I took $500 of my Burmese money, and today you can just go online, right? You can buy T-shirts. You can see what kind of cotton they are, you can see photos. Back then there wasn't any of that.

I said, I want to make a University of Michigan inspired t-shirt. And I called and I remember, thank you God, I'm in the yellow pages, right? So you're calling one by one and you're on the phone and I don't know what I'm at. I'm 18 years old

and I just want some pizza money. So I get the t-shirts, I copied and today you can do this, but back then it was loose. So just do it was a slogan. It was huge. They have that trademark font and I made just do a t-shirts for Michigan and then Michigan was in the final four. So it was road to final four, just do it. It was maize and blue. It was a very good looking shirt. And I made shirts previous to that,

but I sold them in the dorm, door to door. So I think there's 11 or 12 dorms at Michigan. I went through every single hallway, every single dorm. I got kicked out of almost every one. I go on the back door and it was a very invaluable. It was a great experience for me because i i learned margins were big i sold the short sleeve for 12 cost me five long sleeves were even more killer six dollar cost falling for 18. wow and so and by the way these are heavy so you're lugging around the boxes yeah yeah right You got 50 shirts with you. It's not a great thing. But one of the

great lessons of that was the art of cold calling. So let's talk about your cold calling. I know you've done it for your career. How important is cold calling to our success? Oh my gosh. I know you've done more volume than me, but I more of a cold email but cold email cold call i'll group them in the same group changed my life that's how i did 17 million dollars in ppe sales i didn't know a single person i sold to right um so we'll we'll get to the ppe in a minute i want to go back to political issues in high school and really the regulation of that. You had a principal remove one of your jerseys

because it was anti-patriotic or something in a football game. How the hell does that happen? What happened and how the hell does that happen? I know. I woke up to that. Pretty crazy. Someone wore the Trump jersey to a football game and the principal kicked him out of the whole game. Isn't that nuts?

It's nuts. Just for wearing a Trump jersey. So this kid's in the stands? Yeah, he's in the stands. And the principal comes over, hey, Joe, come with me. Joe's looking around with everyone there. Yeah. Is that what I do?

Crazy. And that just goes to like all the programming schools are doing these days. I mean, they should never have political influence like that. It's crazy to me. It's crazy. So all businesses struggle before they get going. I've never heard of one, by the way, that didn't struggle. Yeah. So you started the Jersey business. You had a lot of issues. So you got two partners who stole from you. You had jerseys that didn't come. You had a hundred grand locked in PayPal that that you couldn't get out yep so and

you're young and that's a shit ton of money yeah so how are you dealing with those and then there's something at a festival as well i think you had a hundred shirts come they didn't come people you know pissed off so how do you overcome those challenges and you're young so it's not like you have the maturity where you've done this before. Yeah, at the time, I really hurt because all these numbers are relative. So even though it sounds small back then, it was a lot for me. Like 100K being locked in PayPal was the difference of the business being shut down versus doing a million dollars the next year. So, yeah, it was just tough. Luckily, I had a really good support system.

And I was watching a ton of videos on YouTube and courses and stuff and had some mentors to help me guide through the process. But e-commerce is tough, man. The margins are thin. Payment holds are common. So it's just something I don't do anymore. But yeah, I sent 100 jerseys to that music festival, never got paid. That sucked. And I just never fronted people again after that. I always got paid first. So you mentioned something that I think is very important to the importance of mentors in our lives. We'll talk about the people that you studied before later in life in your career, but what mentors did you have and how important are mentors in our success? Yeah, I had some that I just watched, which I consider a mentor. So back then it was Gary V,

Tai Lopez, Patrick Bet-David really liked his show back then. And then I have some in-person mentors now that I could just text. I'd say Dan Fleischman is one of them, Matthew Morgan. These are eight, nine figure guys, but they also have a really balanced life, which is important to me these days because I've achieved the money part of what I wanted to do at a very young age. And now it's more about health and lifestyle for me. Right, so sometimes we're in businesses that kind of peak and then they fall. We'll talk about the mask business in a second. But after the jersey, you pivoted into e-commerce.

So what was that like? What motivated that? And then talk about your rise and your arc and then kind of the downside of what happened there. Yeah, I did e-commerce for five years. It was great, learned a lot, never made a killing. And I also wasn't fulfilled. So I was making 50K a year the first three years. This was in college and when I dropped out, which was decent, nothing crazy. And then once I got into, I think, crypto from there, that's when I became a millionaire. And then I realized I could use that money to

start doing what I actually like, podcasting, mentorship, stuff like that. And talk to us about the crypto game. I was in the crypto game a little bit. It was kind of crazy. Not kind of crazy, it was fucking crazy. Insane. You had people with no experience running anything. I mean, they didn't even work in a coffee shop ever,

let alone manage a single dollar, manage a single person who were writing white papers. And papers for those people who don't know is a plan with this crypto currency which is actually worth absolutely nothing when had a plan that it's going to be used and we're talking about altcoin so we're talking about things that are not bitcoin primarily not bitcoin yep which people knew and then they're raising $100 million, $200 million on a deal. You've got all these people promoting this coin that has ultimately no value and you've got to get into this deal. So talk to us about that and who you knew and how you made money in that space. A lot of it's timing, man. I remember this one kid in my high school,

2015. It might have been 2014 oh my gosh so he was mining crypto everyone made fun of him mining it yeah so tell people what that is so mining is basically uh you use a bunch of fast computers and you mine it and then you collect fees basically it's hard to like explain but basically you're creating bitcoin yeah by plugging in a computer using power hopefully that you don't pay for electricity right a lot of people were doing it at work so they have to pay for electricity at their house so they're creating their own bitcoin yeah so that's one way of making money and everyone made fun of him i mentioned to him a few months ago he has 10 million dollars and everyone in uh yeah bitcoin everyone made fun of him in high school i was the

only one who was semi-interested but that's one way of making money so there's people mining they buy giant warehouses adam waitsman is one of them there's guys doing eight nine figures a year just mining it's probably the most passive form of income i've ever seen and then if bitcoin goes up it's just like a double win you know what i mean right so that's one way of making money the alt coins you mentioned earlier is how i made my money so i I made $10 million at 25 years old. And 80% of people would probably lose that money in their 20s. And it happened to me.

And I was like, wow, that is crazy. Because I felt like I was so disciplined. And it happened. You were flipping the altcoins. Because if you had held the altcoins, most of them are worth pennies on the dollar. Zeroes, I think 99%. I was a speaker on stage at, I think it was the largest crypto conference in Los Angeles at the time in 2017 in the wave. So there are all these people, a couple of people had paid to be on the stage.

They were promoting their own shit, which again was just ridiculous. Most people didn't know that they had paid to get on there. And I said, there may be 2,000 people there. And I said, this thing's going to end badly. And 95% of these companies are going to go bankrupt. I think it was 99.9% have gone bankrupt. There's going to be class action lawsuits everywhere. And this is weird, right?

I'm in a tie. I've got my name's up on the board. And I was heavily booed. Wow, look at you now. Heavily, heavily booed. I mean, these are young people who had no experience. Everyone is into crypto. It's the fastest way you can make money.

Not now, but it was back then. Well, even now. I mean, there's still altcoins popping now. But you've got to get in and out or you're screwed. So I got caught holding the bag on some stuff and lost $10 million in a few months. So you made $10 million and you lost you're screwed. So I got caught holding the bag on some stuff and lost $10 million in a few months. So you made $10 million and you lost $10 million. Yeah, well, I made, but I never realized it.

But on paper, I had $10 million and I could have sold it for US dollars and I didn't do it. Right, so that's also a lesson that you gotta know when to sell. Yeah, exactly. My greed kicked in and that's when I took a step back

and realized, wow, this is a psychological game. It's a player versus player game. So many things about life are about relationships. And for me, my ability to get into some of these crypto deals was because I had the resume to do it and I had relationships. And if I didn't have them, people would find them for me. And people like to say, oh, Randy's got this, he's done this and that. It helps credibility. If I'm in their deal and I was not promoting anything, but people would use my name.

And so it allowed me to get into a lot of deals. We made money like you. We lost money as well. I mean, timing is everything, right? These coins can go down 80% in a day. And they did. And the interesting thing, by the way, there isn't a single altcoin

that has a single effective use in the world today. Not one that I can think of. Yeah. I mean, you can argue Ethereum and Solana, but really what is it? If you look at the bigger picture, you're right for sure. So relationships have been a huge point.

It has been a huge, important part of your success. Let's talk about your mother and speaking Mandarin and how you were able to take advantage of relationships in a very difficult time to get a certain product with supply chain issues. Yeah. So I used to speak it fluently, actually, because she when I was a baby, I was in China for a couple of years, but I forgot it because I just wasn't practicing. But my mother grew up in China, so she had connections and could speak it. So during the pandemic, she had a friend at a big PPE company out there, I think one of the biggest in the world, called Cinefarm, and she brokered some deals for me. You were able to get the mask? Yeah. We signed with an authorized 3M distributor, so we were an affiliate for them.

Okay. It was important to have credibility to have 3M, which was leading mask maker in the world. Yep. N95 mask. And there was another mask that was even more, I don't know what the word is, better than that. The medical grade one? Yeah. N95?

Yeah. There was KN95, which was the cheap stuff from China. Right. And then N95, which was from 3M. one. Yeah. There's N95. Yeah. There was KN95, which was the cheap stuff from China. Right. And then N95, which was from 3M. Right. Okay. So you see people needing this, you're reading about it. You can't get masks. Prices of masks have gone up three and four times, right? Price gouging for people. And you say, Hey, Hey mom, can you get me some masks or where did the idea come from? Yeah, no, literally that I would see it in the news, these hospitals and government struggling to get masks. I'm like, why is that? That shouldn't be an issue. And, uh, especially gloves, nitrile gloves and gowns and stuff. So I just, uh, my

biggest skill is connecting people. So I knew I could, I could take advantage of that, but here's the crazy part on the $17 million. Guess how much profit I'm in 1.7 million. Cause he had 10% margin. Wow. How'd you know that? Because I did my research on you'm in? 1.7 million because you had 10% margin. Wow. How do you know that? Because I did my research on you. Oh, wow. But yeah, you would assume it's way higher though, right? Right. If you just see that number. So I learned a lot from doing that, from cold calling, cold emailing. So let's talk about that because we cold call, cold email now in a lot of our businesses. So tell us about the services you use, setting up Google alerts,

how important it is to read the news and then react and say, hey, what's going on here? And then walk us through the process because as I was reading about what you did, I said, shit, that's the exact same thing that we're doing. Yeah, those Google alerts are fun, man.

I do it with podcasting right now too. So tell people what that is for Don't Know and then what's the value of that and your your success yes you could set up google alerts for search terms so i think mine were uh mask shortage uh gown shortage just any type of alert where a hospital or something some company would need ppe so as soon as uh an article would pop up i would know within hours step one yeah so set that up whatever business you're in set that up right for what your service is step two step two i use zoom info so that's also similar to google alerts but they set up uh i forget what it's called there's

a term on zoom info but it's similar to google news to to do what what was in zoom they would basically know if companies were in need of a certain product or service and rank it from zero to 100 on the score. So I think it's based off if the company employee emails are searching terms on Google, they track all that. Okay. So they'll know if a company is in need of a product or service and it's really targeted and it gives you their email to contact.

Okay. So emails are in Zoom. We use Lucia and we've used reach yeah and we've used a whole bunch and and the cost is not a lot it's 50 to 100 a month yeah same thing i use apollo now rocket reach yeah it's all the same and man that's how i get a lot of podcasts yes too it's such a big database you could sell anything on those yeah i mean we get uh emails daily i'm sure you do too we get emails for for Salesforce customers or Salesforce people. And you can actually go and contact these companies and say,

I want restaurant email list of people that manage restaurants or own restaurants. You could use it for anything, man. So I host networking events. This is a bit of a tangent, but in a new city every month and I get 500 people in the room every month with very little ad spend because of Apollo.

I just email. Right. Email campaign. Okay, so walk us next. So you've got the search terms. You found a niche in the market. Yeah. You're reading about it every day.

We are all reading about it. We're seeing it on the news every day. Shortage, shortage, shortage. You have the connections. You're now set up search terms where you're getting identifying potential customers. Then you have to find out the identity of the people at these companies.

So for those people who don't know, who are you targeting as your customer? So not only the company, you're not gonna target the CEO of the company. So who are you targeting and then how do you determine that? For me and for PPE at the time, it was chief procurement officer because they have the final say in purchasing. If I couldn't get them, it'd be someone else in procurement and try to work my way up. And that was basically who I was looking to email or cold call. And it was just a numbers game, man. And just when you had

the targeted leads, it made the number game a lot better a lot easier the close rate was pretty high what is the close rate i mean the close rate in that business that specific time was a very unique period of time the close rate is going to be massively high yeah it's not i mean it's 90 plus i i would have said once they realize that you have 3m masks yeah and they're not counterfeit masks well it was there was a lot of competition but on the 3m side it was definitely high but for otherfeit masks. Well, it was, there was a lot of competition, but on the 3M side, it was definitely high. But for other stuff, gowns and gloves, it was lower. I'd say one thing I learned at a young age, I was unsuccessful lawyer. I wrote 300 letters looking for a job. Everyone said, you're crazy writing to the CEOs of some of these biggest companies. And I got all of these meetings during During that year-long process, what I call a letter-writing campaign,

emailed a senior investment banker at Bear Stearns and just going through the meetings and said, okay, well, I want to meet some more people. Who can you introduce me to? Because it's all about meeting people, shaking their hand and ask for the order. And he said, well, I can't do that, but Bear Stearns has a very successful,

well-known media conference in Laguna Beach. And he said, if you want to hunt moose, go where the moose are. It was great advice. Yeah. So because all the CEOs of the company were there, Michael Eisner, Sumner Redstone, the head of every media company in the world, BMG.

And I just went there armed and ready to roll. I mean, I was ready to just fire away. I met so many people, got a ton of meetings. Some people became my friends. Nice. And it was really great. So talk to us. You mentioned conferences.

What's your advice to people who want to get in and meet these people? Should they go to these conferences where there's 500 people? Can they really make a difference? Here's the best hack I've ever seen. I've said it once. You have to host dinners around these events. And it's going to be a hefty bill because you're paying for six to eight people. But the long-term networking value from that dinner is amazing.

So you want to invite the VIP guests or the speakers to the dinner and have that at any conference you go to. If you can't afford that, then offer to be a videographer of one of the speakers. Do it for free and just follow them around all day and meet people. So I'd say if you do one or two or both of those, you'll be in a good position. But how are you going to invite people that you don't know? I mean, here's Randy Kaplan. No one knows who he is.

You're going around and say, Hey, you want to come to a dinner at Carbone? Yeah. And people are going to look at you. I'm not going to that. Then. I mean,

I didn't invite her to dinners before. Yeah. And I don't mean to be snooty about it. Uh, but I always want to know who else is there. And by the way, it's rude to ask who else is coming. It's very rude. And there are times where I've been rude and I've done it because I don't

want to sit there and say, fuck, I really don't want to be here. I've got kids and I like being home for dinner every night. And it's one of these things where I don't know if I should go. And then I'm always worried about, I mean, today I have a little bit of a name and have some kind of credibility. I've thought about doing that, but I haven't done it before. David Meltzer does it really well. Have you been to any of his? No, but I want to meet him. I know he's in Los Angeles and I definitely want to get him on my show. Yeah. So he does a phenomenal. So he'll do it in a new city and then he'll charge people a thousand bucks. So he'll make 20, 50 K every dinner. Right. And, uh, he'll have a big celebrity there. So the 20 people, that's why they're paying to meet and be close with a

celebrity like Drew Brees or someone. Yeah. But yeah, I think for someone like you, it wouldn't work on, but I think they can find six to 10 people at the conference, uh, VIP attendees or people in their industry and just invite those guys start there. You were a natural born entrepreneur, right? A lot of people are not. So you never had a boss. You never worked for somebody else. A lot of people think they don't want a boss either. So what do you tell on the 18 year old kid or college graduate today? Say, I don't really want a real job. I don't know what I want to do. And I don't want to be a slave and sitting at a desk all day. Should they go out on their gut and go start a new business? And can you learn to be an entrepreneur if you don't have the DNA? I would say not at first to the first question. I look back at what I sacrificed.

I had gray hairs at 21. I had no friends, wasn't close to my family, and just sacrificed so much and was making 50K a year those first three years. So I would say to work for someone else at first, if I had to redo it again with the knowledge I have now, would be a safer route. I like what Cody Sanchez kind of teaches people. Which is? Get a job first.

She made, I think she saved a million or so, working a nine to five, and then went out on her own and did her own stuff. My goal is to make a million dollars before I was 30 years old. I think you made your first million at 24 years old. Yeah, 24, I believe. And I thought, all right, I'm gonna,

I started as a lawyer. I figured, all right, well, I gotta go make some money. I gotta save money. And then I wanted to figure my, not every year was $40,000 a year. And when I ultimately left, I didn't make a million dollars by the time I was 30, but I had 10 years to bet on myself because I'd saved $400,000. And I think it's really important that you have, if you have gone to college, you may have some debt, you got to pay off the debt.

It's very, very risky to just say, I'm going to go do something. Yep. Agreed. So does influencer marketing work today? I have a lot of friends who own companies that say, all right, you know, even people that own the company say, you know, it's really bullshit, but people are still paying for it because everyone is doing it. So you have corporate clients and say, well, we got to do it. Someone else is doing it. Our competitors are doing it. Does you have corporate clients and say, well, we got to do it. Someone else is doing it. Our competitors are doing it. Does it work? Not like it used to.

Before, you could just pay any influencer, have them promote any product, and there might be a good chance you make money. But now it really has to be aligned. But you do see some campaigns work out. But from an influencer point of view, it actually makes more sense for them to start their own company now. Because they'll make way more than just getting paid to post a brand. Look at Logan Paul, look at Mr. Beast, look at that girl, Emma Chamberlain with the coffee company. There's so many other creators starting their own brands now. So I'd recommend influencers to do that instead of getting paid to post stuff they don't care about. Is it more effective to have a star

power like Ryan Reynolds or someone making, you know, as, as the face of a brand in the VC business, I always felt like it was very rare to have a celebrity promoter because it's still the VC. It's a very high risk game, but when it hits big, it hits big today. Uh, what do you think about the use of having stars to promote your brands? Do you need it to be successful? And does it really help? I guess is the real question. I don't think you need it. It might help on the branding.

And if you use it for ads in the right way, it might help. But look what Ryan did with his company. I mean, he sold for what? A billion dollars? Yeah. The mobile company. So I can't knock that dude. Yeah.

I think he made $300 million on that deal. Crazy. More from that than acting, I bet. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Not a bad. And it's a long- than acting, I bet. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Not a bad. And it's a long-term capital gain as well. Oh yeah. So only like 15% tax? Well, 20, 20%. Don't know where he lives. Yeah. You know, probably lives in Florida or Nevada. Hopefully not Cali.

Yeah. Hopefully not Cali. Yeah. We pay a lot of tax. How important is it for people to go and study their mentors to learn when they're not in the classroom? People don't really do that. You did it. And it was like a class for you. You're taking notes on it like it's a real class in school. What's your advice to people who are just not doing that and who really want to learn from people who they may not be their personal mentors, but they can be your your mentors on youtube because you can learn a shit ton of things from them it's crazy to me that more people don't do that you're the most prepared up man i've ever seen by the way so that's awesome thank you

but uh yeah that's that's goals right there for real i've never seen a host do that much preparation so i think your show is going to kill it i appreciate that thank you but for me i still do it i watch probably three podcasts a day right now, or I listen to an audio book and I'm probably learning at least three to four hours a day. And back then it was way higher. It was probably eight to 12 hours a day, just videos nonstop, TED Talks, Gary Vee, Patrick Bet-David, Tom Bilyeu. And I attribute so much of my mindset to watching stuff like that. Really want to talk about how has extreme preparation led to your success? Can you talk about some examples

about preparation, getting results that would not have been possible had you not done it? Yeah, I think I'm a bit different with you in that regard. I know there's levels. Bradley does no prep. I don't know if you knew that.

No, I didn't know that. Dropping bombs. Yeah, so no prep. He gets a one-sheeter before the episode starts. And there's people that can pull that off. I'm somewhere in the middle if you knew that. No, I didn't know that. Dropping bombs. Yeah, so no prep. He gets a one-cheater before the episode starts. And there's people that can pull that off. I'm somewhere in the middle between you and him. I'll do about an hour, I'd say, per guest.

And I'll use AI, so I'm cheating a little bit. But I think it's a tool that everyone should use in the space just to learn faster. So I'll go through. That's why I asked what shows you've been on because I went on them and used AI to summarize them for me. And then I took the most interesting points I found and came up with some questions. So that's my process. You give a lot of advice on your show.

You get a lot of, you had, I don't know, thousands of guests at this point. And I always find on my own show, I come in and I come in with preconceived notions of what's worked for me. Then I learn what's worked for people. And that's really the goal of our shows, right? Is to bring people on from all walks of life to motivate people to hear how they became successful.

So taking all the data and your own success, what do you think are the three most important ingredients of success? I'd say for me, because it's probably different for everyone, work ethic, mindset, and I'd say probably networking and connections. Those are the three things that propelled me to where I am. So I'd focus on those. And it's been an interesting journey because we had the trauma growing up. So I was not talkative at all. Neither was I. The fact that I'm a podcaster is mind-blowing. I was a huge introvert, super shy. we had those the trauma growing up so i was not talkative at all there was like this is the fact i'm a podcaster is mind-blowing i was a huge introvert super shy didn't want to talk to anyone

so i think being able to adapt if i had a fourth one to add that's been major too yeah my best friend who knew me for a long time said it's really amazing what you've done randy because you started you could get, you couldn't get, like you couldn't go into a restaurant. Here you are, you got your own show. You're about to go out and do some paid corporate public speaking on the topic of extreme preparation

in front of thousands of people. But you've come a long way. I've come a long way. And it's been great. One of the most important things I think that people overlook is the difference between positivity and negativity. And you are an incredibly negative, pessimistic person growing up.

Your girlfriend told you that. So explain why, and then explain kind of the lightning bolt that hit you and how you changed and how the changes affected your life. Yeah, So bad, man. And you get normalized to it, right? So both my parents and I hate to put blame on people, but this is kind of just what happened. So I would come home. I'd be one of the best athletes in school. So I could run a mile in four minutes, 40. So that's amazing. Yeah. I could have probably went D1 and pursued that, but I would come home from a track meet, tell my mom I won this race, got 440. She wouldn't give a shit.

She would just say like, oh, good job. Not even that. So just any type of news to her was a negative reaction. And I think she got that from her parents or something. I don't know. And same with my dad. I could tell him anything and just so pessimistic. And he left on really bad terms with his parents.

So he brought that up every day. Didn't his dad beat him every day? His dad beat him every day and he just had so much trauma that he never dealt with. So he would just always bring it up instead of addressing it and just rubs off on me. So once I got out of that environment and that's kind of mean to say because it's my parents,

but once I was on my own and with my girlfriend, anything she would tell me, negative response. Isn't that crazy? It's crazy. It could be the best news. You didn't know it at the time either. I didn't know. Don't recognize it's different.

Subconscious. It was so built into my subconscious. And she could be like, I aced this test. My mom's doing well. Just anything. And it'd be crazy, man. So I had to rewire my brain. But it's hard to do.

So I think that's very important because a lot of people are very negative. Yeah. Very negative. But you can't just, if you've been that way your whole life. So did you go to therapy to do this? Were you reading books on this?

Were you meditating on this? Because it's hard to do. I mean, that's part of your DNA. It is super hard. I tried all of that. Therapy didn't really work on me. Books, I mean, they're good to know, but applying it is a whole different story. Just reps, just straight reps, just talking to thousands of people at conferences. And now I can see subconscious cues and like body language reactions. So when I'm telling someone good news or bad news, and I can just see their reaction and know if they support me or not. I've trained myself to do that.

I think attitude is almost everything, right? When you walk into work every day, if you're grumpy or have a negative reaction, have a frown on your face, it's contagious. And if you're a leader, people are following your mood, right? So as part of my coaching, I tell people, hey, you shouldn't give a shit if you just had a fight with your wife, your kids, or you just blew a deal or something. You got to walk in with an attitude,

regardless, a great attitude, regardless of what's going on in your life. And, you know, one of the most, the most common asked questions in the world is... Attitude. How are you? Oh, how are you? Right? The most commonly asked question in the world. And how many people get that wrong?

So many people just say good, right? Right. Good is a B. 3.0. You want to be a 3.0? It's the easiest thing someone can do walking into a room. How are you? I'm getting by.

I've had better days. You know, doing all right. I can't get, you know, can't wait till I get off. Yeah. It should be, I'm doing phenomenal. I'm great. I'm outstanding. I'm having an amazing day.

Even if you're not, no one gives a shit. Yeah, no one cares. No one cares. That took me a while to realize. They really don't. Yeah. And it's the easiest thing to start off a meeting or anything or a greeting and it takes no work and most people will get it wrong. Absolutely. A ton of coaching on that. That was the biggest mindset shift for

me, by the way, when I realized no one cares. Because they really don't. Yeah. And it sucks to say like it sounds kind of negative, but it was, I just used to be scared of being judged a lot. So when I had that shift, it was major. By by the way i'm not saying fake it to make it i'm saying if you have close friends who you trust girlfriend wife family parents people really care of you i think it's important for you to tell them i'm not doing well right now yeah because mental health is so important absolutely and i think people who, but just to employees or people you meet on the street, I just don't think, I just have a different mentality

in terms of how you should go about that. Before we finish today, I want to ask some more open-ended questions. I call this part of my podcast, Fill in the Blank to Excellence. Are you ready to play? Let's do it. Let's do it.

The biggest lesson I've learned in my life is. Wow. That's deep. Biggest lesson I've learned in my life. I'd say to cherish life because I mentioned earlier, I've had three near-death experiences and each one of those, if I died at that moment, I wouldn't have been fulfilled in my life. My number one personal goal is.

Have kids. My biggest regret is not being closer with my father. My biggest fear is letting my fiance down. The craziest thing that ever happened to me in my life is. Craziest. I would say Trump, Trump wearing, showing one of my jerseys at his rally. One of the things that we didn't talk about

is how much revenue that actually generated from you. So why don't you tell everybody? Yeah, it was six figures overnight, which at the time I was 22 years old. So that was a lot of revenue for me. The one thing I've dreamed about

doing for a long time, but haven't is? Go to space. It's possible now. is you're gonna do it we'll see i got some flat earthers on the show saying there's no space yeah there's no space so where do they think all these spacex rockets i don't know 10 years from now i want to be doing podcasting if you could go back in time and give your 14 year old self one piece of advice what would it be oh 14 so that's high school uh don't go to college what's the best advice you can give

to 50 year old parents today uh maintain your relationship with your kids i think when they go off to college and they go out in the real world, a lot of parents are disconnected. The best advice for a recent 21-year-old college graduate is? Internship. I'm going to ask you a couple questions about internship now, just because we're on that topic, because we have one more question to go after this. Internships are very competitive. This year for our program

of 36 kids, we have 4,000 applications. It's become a thing. It's hard to get a job. And it's a 12-week formal program. I spend 60 to 90 minutes a day with the interns. Speakers come in each week. If you want to be a speaker, we'd love to have you. And I have a bunch of friends who will do this just because we're friends. Yeah. I'd love to support. Thank you. And that'd be really dope. So I appreciate that. And I think internships are so important. They're so competitive to get. So how does someone Citadel, for example, Ken Griffin's firm, got 29,000 applicants for summer jobs last year. Holy crap.

I mean, you can Google this. When I heard it, it was hard. Yeah. Hopefully Ken will come on my show. I met him, asked him, really hope he does it. So Ken, we're going to send you this clip, but I really want you to do my show. Please do my show.

I think a lot of creativity will go into it. What's the best piece of advice you have for someone looking at Citadel working at jump this summer, how to stand out among the crowd? Yeah. I didn't know the numbers were like that. When I said internship, I mainly meant just working under someone being mentored by someone, maybe for free. When I was just starting out, I i emailed gary v and said i'd work for you for free so i was willing to do that did he respond he didn't he didn't respond i should find the email hopefully i didn't delete it but uh yeah for those companies it'd be tough i heard a lot of connections are involved at that level is that true a lot of what like if you have personal connections with people at the company at these these companies, you know, I think it varies. I think

at our company, just because I know a lot of parents and a lot of parents have kids looking for summer internships. We hire lead interns from the previous summer to run the program. They do all the sifting, interviewing, hiring. I want to empower them. Lead interns go on to do whatever they want to do. It's the only job that 19-year-olds can't have the green light to hire someone and manage their peers. Got it. So we've got kids working at Goldman Sachs

and investment banking, which you probably know is an incredibly hard job to get. Yeah. Matt Hickerson is here. He's my right-hand person. He's sitting right there. Was an intern. Came dressed his first day in a suit and tie.

Did a test run from 90 minutes away to find out how he got to work. Stayed late till 11 o'clock at night when it's his unpaid internship. You have to get credit for the internship. School credit. Proactively send stuff. So I think you got to do stuff like that, stand out among the crowd to be the best. A hundred percent. I have personal assistants I'm interviewing after episodes today, and I didn't even look at their resumes because I just

would rather see what they're willing to do in person, feel out their energy. Right. We look at the resumes. If there's a period out of place, if there's a comma where there shouldn't be, if the formatting is wrong, we don't even look and what's crazy is yeah i mean if they don't have that level of detail these are easy things to fix yeah so would they be making careless errors at our company i i can't have them missing a period a letter they're sending out to a client it's a reflection on me it just looks terrible over a period that's insane over a period, a letter they're sending out to a client, it's a reflection on me. It just looks terrible. Over a period. That's insane.

Over a period. Wow. Right. And it's a resume. They're looking for a job. This is a job that's going to put food on the table, pay the rent, pay their bills. They're going to be spending more time at work than anywhere else.

And if they can't see that a period is missing in the resume, something's fucking wrong. I do not want them working at our company. They're not going to work at the company. And there are sources online, Grammarly, which if you don't have Grammarly on your computer, you're not working at our company either. I have that. It's good.

There's no reason to have a spelling mistake and there's no reason not to have a missed period. Yeah, it makes you sound really intelligent. It's just, you know, there's no need for it. These are low-hanging fruit mistakes that nobody should make that could not only kill your chance for a job, but could kill your career. Right.

Just imagine you're working at Goldman Sachs. You got a major presentation. You go in there. You're meeting with David Solomon, the CEO. It takes you five years to get there. You go in with your PowerPoint presentation. There's a misspelled word you're done yeah done done absolutely what's the one question you wish i'd asked you but didn't

uh huh one question oh i guess uh what what guest do you want to get on your podcast besides me what guest do you want on your podcast yeah of course right uh it's got to be rogan man i grew up watching him with my dad we watched every single episode growing up for five years straight so he's the goat to me you have the ability now you have the clout i'm sure to get to him so what's the plan there yeah so just my plan with these big guests is to get people around them first establish credibility have those people have great experiences on the show, and then eventually I'll go for the ask. I'd say within three years we'll be on.

Yeah. I'm also guessing Joe's going to be on my show within three years. I'm going to have Tony Robbins, Elon Musk. You already had Dana, so you're right there. Yeah.

Dana was great. Yeah. Yeah, super pumped. So appreciate you being on my show. Absolutely. I'm a huge fan, Sean, and I think this is great we learned a ton about you and I think people are really going to love it yeah it was cool to get that side out of me good job man

yeah appreciate you thanks for being here