Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Zillow Co-Founder Spencer Rascoff's Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

There are more resources than ever on how to start your own business— but not all of these resources are good ones. You don’t need to have run a business successfully to start an Instagram and say you have, right? So if you are thinking of starting your own company, you should to be informed by the brightest minds who will give you real advice, not any of the phony hacks and short-cuts and clickbait. Today, Nicole speaks with one those bright minds, Spencer Rascoff, entrepreneur and company leader who co-founded Zillow, Hotwire, dot.LA, Pacaso, Recon Food, Queue, Path, Supernova's family of SPACs, and 75 & Sunny. Spencer gives his advice and lessons on growing a business from the ground up, and what entrepreneurs need to know about this moment in the startup world.

I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash. But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start, or even too complicated, if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full-time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you.

I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself.

Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. In the last few years, new business applications in the U.S. have been coming in at record highs. This means many Americans are looking to turn their hobbies into jobbies. And there are receipts. There are many factors at play here, but one biggie is the very public surge in layoffs since

2020. And some of these furloughed employees have decided that this was their sign that they needed to try their hand at entrepreneurship. Or they started a business because they had no other choice in order to put food on their table. I'd argue that another big reason for the uptick in new small businesses is the rise of the founder-creator-influencer category. There are more resources than ever to start your own business, but not all of these resources are good ones. You don't need to have run a business successfully in order to start an Instagram and say you have, right? So if you're thinking of starting your own business, I want you to be informed by the brightest minds out there who will give you real advice, not any of the phony hacks and shortcuts and clickbait out there. So today I'm bringing on one of those

bright minds, serial entrepreneur Spencer Raskoff. And if you don't know who Spencer is, you're about to. You'll also hear how he feels about the term serial entrepreneur. Here he is. Spencer Raskoff, welcome to Money Rehab. Thank you for having me. Excited to be here. I'm excited to have you. You have so many success stories. Co-founder and former CEO of Zillow, co-founder of Hotwire, sold to Expedia, investor in more than 100 startups now with 75 and Sunny. What else would you like to really highlight? Because if I keep going through this, it's going to take the whole episode. You're very kind. So let's start with the big lessons from Zillow. I think some of our listeners are going to be curious about that as a

case study. In your series, How to Start Up, you say that Zillow didn't start with the idea. It started with the team. I find that so interesting. Can you tell that story? Sure. And actually, this is true of a couple of my startups where people who wanted to start a company together just kind of hung out and started exchanging ideas and thinking about what they were passionate about. And that's how we started Zillow. So I had sold my company Hotwire to Expedia, and I had been at Expedia for about a year and decided it was time to do something more entrepreneurial. And so I left with two other folks who were execs and actually the founders of Expedia. And then we added one or two more folks. And we sat in a conference room for, gosh, maybe three months or more just talking and kind of shooting the shit and about what's

important to you. What services do you love? What are you doing in your life right now? And all three of us were buying houses all at the same time. And we quickly realized that here we were in 2005 and the internet was more than 10 years old and there still was no category defining company that empowered the consumer. There were plenty of real estate websites at the time, but those real estate websites all prioritize the industry, the real estate agent, the brokerage, the multiple listing service. And so we had this idea to try to build something that was consumer first in the real estate space. And Zillow was born. So interesting that you were just sitting around shooting this shit, as you say. I think of it differently. I think of like a problem first

and then say, hey, is anyone going to fix this problem? And I kind of look around and I say, oh, crap, that's going to be me. So I guess there are two ways to look at this. Neither way is better. But just to be clear, you didn't start the business just for the sake of starting a business, right? No. I mean, I think it's very important to have founder market fit. There's no such thing as a great founder. There's only a great founder for a particular idea. And we were passionate about real estate when we left online travel, left Expedia and Hotwire. We didn't really know that.

It came through that discovery process of just discussing what's important to you. What do you care about? What problems do you think need to be solved? And it's very important for founders to have a direct connection to the problem, to feel really passionate so that every day they wake up and want to work on that thing. And if you're not personally connected to that problem, then it'll go nowhere. So if that same group of founders had started working on an enterprise security business or a tech-enabled restaurant chain or whatever, I don't think we could have done it. It's because we wanted to work together and we were passionate about real estate.

Yeah, it was something that was top of mind. In the early days, how did you start to test whether or not that idea that you guys were all talking about or caring about would actually have legs? Because it's one thing to have the idea, care about it with your buddies, care about it with your co-founders, and then for other people to care about it. Once we decided that the strategy would be to create a consumer-first real estate portal, we asked ourselves, okay, well, what do people really care about when it comes to homes? And most real estate sites at the time answered that question with what's for sale. And we said, what's for sale is interesting and important. But I think what your house is worth is even more interesting, more shocking, more voyeuristic,

more potentially viral. And so when we launched Zillow in 2006, we launched with 40 million Zestimates, values on many homes in America, about half of the homes at launch, and no listings. And now people forget this, or maybe they never knew it, but it wasn't until two years after launch that Zillow actually added listings of what was for sale. For the first two years, Zillow only had Zestimates and publicly available data. And so it was all about information transparency, not real estate listings. We only added listings of homes for sale and then apartments and homes for rent much later once we had become a traffic juggernaut through the power of the Zestimate. But this was before real estate porn was a thing.

Yeah. I mean, Zillow sort of created real estate porn as a thing. I mean, there were always people, and I used to say this when we were starting out at Zillow, there were always people that would go to open houses for fun. I was one of those people. I would see signs in my neighborhood or drive to a better neighborhood on a Sunday if I didn't have anything better to do. This was before I had kids and just go see open houses. And then of course, when I had kids, I'd start dragging my own kids to those open houses. And a lot of people are like that. Real estate voyeurism has always been a national pastime,

but it wasn't until Zillow and the internet and then Zillow and the smartphone that it really took off as the real estate porn that we know today. Yes, it's made me feel like I'm not alone in my addiction. So you give startup founders some awesome advice. You say, look for things with a big TAM, low NPS. On this show, we really try to decode all the alphabet soup of the business world. And there is so much. Can you explain those terms and how startup founders should think about them? Sure. TAM is a total addressable market. It's just another way of saying how much money is there in this space. And so when you say that, you're right, I do recommend high TAM, low NPS. What that means is big total addressable

market. So there's lots of money spent in the category and low NPS. NPS is net promoter score. And net promoter score is a measure of how much people like a product or an industry. And generally speaking, it's calculated by you ask somebody, would you refer this service to a friend? And if 100% of people would refer it to a friend, that's a 100 NPS. Sorry, actually, that's 100 positive. And then you subtract the people that would not refer it to a friend. So the delta of those two is the net promoter score. Delta is changed.

Sorry, delta is changed. Thank you. And so a good net promoter score would be something like in the 60s or 70s. That means quite a bit more people recommend it than recommend against it. Apple has like a 60 something NPS, you know, maybe companies get up to a 70 something NPS. So 100 is not a thing. Yeah, exactly. 100 is not a realistic NPS because they're always going to be detractors. So big TAM, low NPS, for example, healthcare is a huge TAM, right? There's billions, trillions of dollars spent in the

healthcare industry. Low NPS means generally people are dissatisfied. They don't like the hospital, the doctor, the insurance companies, they're unhappy about everything. So healthcare is an area where there are probably a lot of great startups to be built because it's a big TAM, low NPS. Real estate, big TAM, 1.4 trillion of residential real estate sales a year, 100 plus billion of real estate commissions, 30 billion of real estate advertising. And there's lots of money sloshing around real estate. It's something like 15% of our gross domestic product. So that's 15% of the economy is in real estate. So big TAM, but low NPS, meaning everybody finds it to be a pain in the neck. No NPS, meaning everybody finds it to be a pain in the neck. Nobody likes their real estate agent. Nobody likes home shopping. Definitely nobody likes home selling.

It's just it's a very unpleasant thing. So that makes it ripe for startups. And how do you dig into those numbers? Well, TAMs are very easily determinable through the Google or now the chat or whatever, right? I mean, you can, you can easily figure out those numbers. Census data produces a lot of this good research, but there's an important thing when you dig into TAM, which is to understand SAM, serviceable addressable market. And this is a problem that many founders encounter. They don't understand the difference between SAM and TAM.

So for example, what's the TAM for, let's say you were starting a company that was going to create a podcast and you went to investors and said, Hey, you know, we're going to make money by having ads on the podcast. And they'd say, okay, well, what's, what's the Tam? And you'd say, well, the total addressable market of all of advertising is a hundred billion dollars. Well, okay, that's the TAM, the total addressable market, but what's the SAM, right? The serviceable addressable market is how much money is spent on podcasts focused on business and finance distributed through

these platforms in the United States, which is where most of your listeners are. Okay, hold on. Now, all of a sudden that SAM is a lot smaller than your TAM. And so investors and entrepreneurs need to really understand the difference between the total addressable market and the serviceable addressable market. Totally. Because every presentation starts with like, this is a trillion dollar opportunity, right? Yes. Yes. How do you feel about those slides? And then the big hockey stick obviously is the next line. They create skepticism among a good investor. So I think it's useful for founder pitches to cop to the Sam. So basically say, look, I understand that this market's massive, but realistically,

this is how much of it I and my startup and my idea and my team can truly go after. And even if that's a much smaller number, at least it's more realistic and therefore credible. I feel like there's a Sam and Tam show, like a Ren and Stimpy or something. There's something there. For sure. For sure. They're friends. And obviously, Sam is part of Tam, but Sam's a lot smaller. You also give the advice, be realistic about exits. You've had some mega exits, of course, and always be planning for M&A. So what does that look like? Because I think the jury's out on whether or not entrepreneurs should come in leading with the M&A options or

saying, no, I love this company. I'm not going to sell it. I'm going to build it. It's my baby forever and ever at the end. So if you're raising institutional venture capital, which means a venture capital round from a real VC, a venture capital firm, you should not be focused on an M&A exit. You should believe that the idea is big enough and the opportunity is big enough that it could be a publicly traded company, which means it could be worth over a billion dollars because generally that's kind of a threshold above which you can go public, below which it's very difficult to go public. And so to get to a billion plus dollar valuation, you probably need at least a hundred million of revenue, maybe two or 300 or four or 500 million of revenue. So it has to be an idea big enough for a couple hundred

million of revenue and therefore a billion dollar plus publicly traded company in order for venture capitalists to invest in it. Now, there are plenty of great ideas and plenty of good companies that should be started and will be successful that have a smaller opportunity than that. And I don't want to discourage entrepreneurs from doing that. Just realize that you're not going to be able to raise institutional venture capital because the whole name of the game for VCs is to swing for the fences. Like their business model is predicated on spreading a lot of chips out on the table. Like their business model is predicated on spreading a lot of chips out on the table. You know, think of the roulette table and accepting a lot of zeros.

But two or three of their roulette bets are going to pay off big, 100x, 1000x, 10,000x. And just like roulette, and hopefully it returns better than roulette overall, but that's their business model. So they're only going to invest in companies that they think do have that potential. If you have an idea that's smaller than that, that you can only see a path to 5 million of revenue or 10 or 20 or 50 million of revenue, and maybe you see a path to the company being worth 50 or $100 million to sell to another company, bootstrap it or raise friends and family capital

from non-institutional investors, from people, because VCs are not going to fund you. So don't waste your time. Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash, but I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of

high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host.

And now for some more money rehab. Because institutional investors are kind of like a nesting doll of investors, right? Like they have investors. Like I'm an LP in a fund, right? And so I want a return. That fund needs a return. And to pass it on to me, they obviously need a bigger return. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up.

Actually, this, I think, is misunderstood or just not well known among founders, which is where does this money come from, right? When you get a check from Sequoia or crosscut or m13 kleiner perkins or andreessen harwoods or whatever where is that money coming from because the fact is and this will surprise some listeners it's not sitting there in their checking account you know let's use andreessen harowitz for example so they've got a venture capital fund let's say it's a billion dollar fund and let's say they put $10 million into your startup, they're not going to the Andreessen Horowitz checking account and taking out $10 million

out of the billion dollars. What they're doing is they issue a capital call, a capital call to their limited partners or LPs. And their limited partner- Thank you for doing that, by the way. I'm like dark in place. I was about to do it because you're the GP of your fund, which is general partner. Yes. So the GP at Andreessen Horowitz, the general partner, that's the person that you meet with and you try to convince them to invest. That GP issues a capital call to the LPs, the limited partners. And so now the LPs are University of California endowment or a firefighter's pension or a high net worth individual, a rich person. Or like family office. A family office,

which manages money for rich people. They're all limited partners. And so they'll have maybe a $10 million commitment or $100 million commitment to the fund. And so they'll get a capital call that says, okay, we just invested 10 million in this new startup. Send us your piece of it, which might be $50,000 or $500,000 or whatever. So they call the capital and then pass it on to you as a startup. The reason this is important is these GPs, these partners at venture firms, they answer to somebody. They answer to their investors, to their limited partners. And those folks, those limited partners, they have a lot to say about how the GPs invest. So for example, right now, those LPs are pretty pissed off that the GPs, the venture firms,

invested so much at very high valuations in 2001 and 2002. And one of the reasons that as we record this conversation in spring of 2023, one of the reasons that it's a pretty difficult, bad, hard funding environment is that the LPs have told the GPs, hey, slow down. You called so much of our capital over the last couple of years and you over-invested at these really high prices. I know you think this is a great company that you should invest in right now, but maybe you should slow down a little bit and catch your breath and be more miserly about valuation. And so anyway, it's important to know where the money comes from. It doesn't actually come from the venture firms. It comes

from their investors. It is a really important distinction, and I'm really glad you underlined it too, because everyone does have a boss, even when you're raising money, right? You're an entrepreneur to be your own boss. So it's interesting that you say, if you're going to build a $50 million company, try to bootstrap it. Instead, this is coming from the GP himself. I'll tell you a quick story. So Maveron, which is a top venture capital firm based in Seattle that has invested in a couple of my companies, and I'm an LP at Maveron, meaning that I invest in their funds. They had a portfolio company CEO meeting a couple months ago, and they had a couple of their LPs attend. And they did an LP panel where they spoke to the CEOs of portfolio companies of Maveron. And it was Boston Children's Hospital and the MIT Endowment

and, oh gosh, I think it was the Audubon Society. So these huge nonprofits that each have, you know, 5, 10, 25 million in the Maveron fund as limited partners. And it was so interesting to hear them talk. They're like, look, if this Maveron fund that has invested in all of your startups, if it's a 5X fund, then I at Boston Children's will be able to add another 25 beds to our intensive care unit. And then the Audubon Society person says, you know, if this is a 5X fund versus a 3X fund, that's the difference between us being able to buy another million acres of the rainforest in South America to protect it versus being only able to buy

100,000 of acres in the rainforest. So like, it was really eye-opening for the portfolio company CEOs to understand, like what actually happens when we create an exit for the VCs. It's not just that they buy a bigger house in Palo Alto, it's that they're- Well, they do that too. They do that too, exactly. But it's that their LPs get more money returned to them and then they go and invest it in whatever their business or nonprofit. Beds and forests. Yeah, that's a really important perspective for sure. And you're also dealing with

a ton of headwinds with the fall of SVB and the aftermath and funding in general. So entrepreneurs are obviously concerned that VC funding is going to dry up, that another bank is going to collapse. There's all these recession fears, of course, that we're dealing with. So how do you diagnose the startup landscape right now? It's a tough time to be raising money. It starts with higher interest rates. And we now have a 5% interest rate up from basically a 0% interest rate just a year or two ago. The reason that is so important is let's think back to the conversation we just had about the limited partners.

If you're running the MIT endowment and you can now put a billion dollars in money market funds that earn 5% interest, which means it's totally risk-free. Come hell or high water, you're going to get 5% back from basically the government. That's pretty attractive. No longer do you have to chase yield. In other words, no longer do you have to give all tons and tons of money to venture capital firms to invest because you did that back when interest rates were zero. So three years ago, if you put your money in the bank, basically you earned zero. And as a result, in order to chase returns, you gave more and more money to private equity investors and venture capital investors.

Well, now that interest rates are higher, the limited partners are giving less money to the venture capital firms. And that is what has risen the bar for startups that are having a harder time raising because those VC firms are being more selective. So it starts with the higher interest rates. And then number two, it goes to the comps, which are down so much. Comps means comparable companies. And so every privately held venture capital firm has a basket of comps, whether you realize it or not, that investors think about.

it or not, that investors think about. So in the case of Picasso, for example, we comp to Airbnb and Zillow and Redfin and Offerpad and other digital marketplaces in and out of real estate. Most of those companies are down 50 to 75% as compared with two or three years ago. So when investors look to do an investment round in a private company like Picasso, they either consciously and or subconsciously look at the public comps and that impacts companies' valuation. So those are the two main reasons why it's a pretty difficult funding environment here in mid-2023. Well, comps are like real estate too, right? You can't price your house without knowing the comp of the area and you can't price your company without knowing the similar companies out there.

I guess I have to rewrite my books too, by the way, because that low interest rate environment, it was like, don't put your money in CDs or the bank. But now they're actually, there's like 5% CDs right now. So the whole game is changing. The guts of the system. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, and what you describe in your books in the individual consumer level, just amplify that the person that runs a $20 billion endowment at MIT is making the same decision about what to do with their cash as the reader of one of your books is trying to decide what to do with their $10,000. But it impacts the economy the same way, just obviously a bigger scale with the big institutions. And that very directly, although it's easy to forget,

but it very directly impacts startup funding as well. And what do you say to founders right now who are thinking about taking on debt, convertible notes, all sorts of other instruments instead of raising money and diluting them? I think it's very dependent on the specific business. So I just got together this morning. I had a I do sort of a monthly-ish coffee with five to 10 founders of other unicorn companies. Those are privately held companies worth more than a billion dollars. Thank you. You're welcome. You totally understood the assignment of this show. I want to get an A on this podcast. And this is the conversation we were having is what type of debt instruments should these companies be getting? So for example, one of the companies is a

subscription consumer e-commerce company. And so they have a lot of receivables revenue, meaning they have a lot of revenue that will be paid to them by consumers as their credit cards get charged for the subscription product that they sell. And so that company is able to factor those receivables, which basically means go to a bank and get paid upfront today for the promise to pay the bank back over time as they charge customer credit cards. So for that type of business with a lot of subscription recurring revenue, revenue that comes over and over, that is a great financing product for that business. But I'll contrast that with, I was on the board of another company, an e-commerce company in the women's fashion space

that had debt. And it basically crushed the company because when we had headwinds, we cut everything we could. We cut headcount, we cut office space, we cut marketing spend, but there was this monthly number every single month, a couple hundred thousand dollars a month of interest from the debt that we just couldn't get out from under. And ultimately the company, we sold it for a very small amount of money, but it was the debt that really crushed that company. So different strokes for different folks, depending upon your specifics, it can make a lot of sense, but sometimes it can also really damage the company. I'm not sure if I'm going to get a bill for this conversation because I wanted to ask you about being on the intro platform where you can book time. A lot of business leaders are on this

platform. You are Jason Pfeiffer, who I co-host another podcast with. He's the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, friend of the show, Ali Webb, Drybar founder, and a lot of others. So like, how did that happen? Did they approach you? Yeah. Tell me about the idea of selling your time. Sure. So Intro is an LA-based early stage company that I'm an investor in. So they pitched me to invest in the seed round, which I think was led by Andreessen Horowitz, if I remember correctly. And I invested personally because it's right up my alley. It's all about democratizing access to mentorship and to knowledge. And I love doing podcasts like this. I have two of my own podcasts. I love teaching. And what intro does is, as you described, it lets people book time with experts to get advice. And so I am on it as an expert.

You can book time with me. I do charge a lot for my time there. I give the money to charity, but it's a great product. It's a great way to book time with experts for all sorts of different topics, everything from health and wellness to startup advice to interior design and fashion. And I just I love the idea of helping people hack mentorship and advance their knowledge by piggybacking off of what others have learned before. Well, you're a good man for donating the proceeds. The majority of folks don't do that, though. And this is kind of the rise of this author expert category and culture. As people are starting to think about monetizing their expertise, like, is it a bad look? Is it

something that you should give out for free? How should you think about valuing your time? It's a great question. I mean, we all have a price on our time. It's just not always so explicit. I think of boards of directors as the most obvious comparable to this. I mean, I sit on a couple boards. Generally, they meet four to six times a year for typically a day each time. And then there's probably another six to eight days a year kind of sprinkled throughout the year for extra advice. And for publicly traded companies, big companies, it's usually two or $300,000 is the board compensation for being on those boards. And for smaller private companies, it's usually about half that. So there is sort of an implied hourly rate already for advice from people that have done it before. And intro just provides a little bit more transparency and accessibility to that. I mean, I've done tons of these now through intro, like hundreds and hundreds of them. And people leave reviews for me. I usually get great reviews and they always,

almost always say to me like, oh my God, you just saved me six months of time. Or you, you know, I was going to do X and now I'm going to do Y. And this is after just like a half hour conversation with them. And as a result, I'm going to save a ton of time'm going to do Y. And this is after just like a half hour conversation with them. And as a result, I'm going to save a ton of time or money at my business. So I'm not trying to advertise booking time with me. I'm just trying to answer your question. No, please do. The new world is one in which mentorship is achieved through a variety of different ways of listening to people on podcasts, of reading their LinkedIn articles, of following people

on Twitter, of watching their TED Talks. And you can learn a lot. I mean, there's so many more resources out there today than there were 20 years ago when I, or 25 years ago when I was starting my first company. Back then it was like, go read a couple of books if you want to learn from experienced people. But now there are just so many more resources. And I think that's fantastic. I think you're right. And people value stuff that they pay for. That's true too. Yep. I mean, I get a lot of very sexy slips into my DM, mostly about like, what is lately, what is alpha or beta in the finance world? And also like, can I pick your brain? Which is also like one of my biggest pet peeves. And so I think about this idea of like selling your time.

It's your most valuable asset. And this is coming from money rehab. You can always get more money. You can't get more time, right? Does being on intro make you think about your time differently? I know in the corporate world, meetings kind of come in two flavors, right? Like 30 minutes or 60 minutes, but people are now paying by 15 minutes for your time. So has that changed the way you think about it? It does. It does. I put a different dollar amount

in different settings. So like this morning, I was thrilled to spend two hours with a couple of peers learning about their business challenges. Obviously, I didn't charge them for my time because I got as much out of it as I put into it. A lot of people who have said, Spencer, you're one of my mentors. And I'm like, have we met before? Yeah. Who are you? Yeah. And they're like, no, no, I follow you on Twitter. I read your stuff. I listen to your podcast. Like I'm a student of your, of your startups, of your businesses. And that is super cool. And I feel that way about a couple other folks. Like, I feel like Satya Nadella at Microsoft is one of my mentors. Now I've met Satya a couple of times.

I know him a little bit. He knows me a little bit, but we don't text, we don't talk regularly. But I read his book. I watch him on YouTube. I follow him on social. He's one of the leaders that I'm super impressed with. And I try to model myself after a lot of what he does. And I consider him a mentor, even though he does not consider me a mentee. Yeah, I think it's an important idea to change this idea of mentor anyway. I think of my peers as my biggest mentors as well, not like this old paradigm of some older person within your business telling you advice. So I love that you bring that up. I've seen you called a serial entrepreneur in a lot of places.

How do you feel about that title? I kind of have mixed feelings. Well, you know, serial killers have kind of, they've kind of ruined that adjective, but I like it otherwise. It does just sort of describe me. I find problems that I have in my life and I feel passionate about and I try to solve them by starting companies. But yeah, I guess serial entrepreneur is, you know, I'll take it if that's, people have called me worse. So I guess it's, I guess I'll take it. Well, you've killed it. Nice. Well, I see what you did there. Well done. Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin. Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoie. Our researcher is Emily Holmes.

Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram at moneynews and TikTok at moneynewsnetwork for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.