The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - How To Invest, Raise Money, Start A Business, & Determine If You Are An Entrepreneur With David Hauser

Episode Date: September 4, 2020

#292: On today's episode we are joined by entrepreneur, speaker and angel investor, David Hauser. David is best known for co-founding the Grasshopper Group, a virtual telephone service acquired by the Citrix Systems for $170 Million. On this episode we discuss how to invest as an angle investor, how to raise money and when to raise money for your business, how to start a business, and how to figure out if you are an entrepreneur.  To connect with David Hauser click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by Pique Tea Ever since I discovered Pique Tea, I’ve been obsessed. I now incorporate at least a cup of Pique into my daily routine and it’s really been increasing my productivity levels. Pique Teas are made from organic high quality tea leaves and ingredients sourced from around the world, delivering up to 12x more antioxidants than any ofor heavy metals, pesticides and toxic mold so you know you’re getting the best stuff.    Use code “SKINNY” for 10% off piquetea.com. They rarely (if ever) have sales so you’d definitely want to check this out! P.S. This discount does not apply to their fermented pu’er due to their limited quantity.ther tea. What’s better is that they are all Triple Toxin Screened This episode is brought to you by Jenni Kayne Jenni Kayne’s recipe for home and wardrobe: combine one part effortless style with two parts comfort. Add a dash of refined simplicity. Jenni Kayne believes in finding your version of the daily uniform—elevated pieces that make getting dressed the simplest part of your routine. Make getting dressed the easiest part of your routine at www.jennikayne.com and get 20% off your first order when you use code SKINNY at checkout. Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. You need quick efficient workouts. There is three different levels. There's easy. There's intermediate. There's beginner It's so crystal clear so easy to do i've been doing it so much at home I even did it while I was traveling this weekend and we also have wellness tips skinny hacks skinny secrets Lots of healthy recipes and even cocktails so head to the app store and definitely search the skinny confidential You can't miss it. It's like this pink vintage bathing suit. Click it, download it. It's $7.99 a month, or you can buy the yearly plan for $74.99 per year, which works out to a discount of $6.25 per month. That's like two cups of coffee and you have your trainer right at your fingertips. I mean, test it out. Let me know what you guys think. And with that, let's get into the show.

She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her. You can teach the skill sets that are important, reading a balance sheet and an income statement and how do you manage people and what does HR look like? Those are all skills, right? And you can teach those, but you can't teach someone to be an entrepreneur, right? And I think that plays out very specifically is when they do their business plan competitions, right?

There's just some teams that are better than others. And that's because not everyone's an entrepreneur, right? And I think that divides them out very quickly. Happy Friday, everybody. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. That clip was from our guest of the show today, American entrepreneur, speaker, and angel investor, David Houser. On today's episode, we're covering a lot of ground, talking all about resources to raise capital for a business, what it means to be an entrepreneur, how to be effective throughout the day, and how to prioritize your health.

For those of you that are new to the show, my name is Michael Bostic. I'm an entrepreneur and brand builder, most recently the CEO of the Dear Media Podcast Network. My co-host today, pretty much every day of my life, every day of my life, my wife, Lauren Everts. Can't get enough of me. I'm just over here drinking my matcha, which we'll get into in this episode. I really like this episode with David because we've never had someone really talk about angel investing. I think it's something that is not talked about enough and the behind the scenes isn't talked about enough. So to have him on the podcast and to be able to pick his brain was a real treat. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of young people too, any people that are thinking about starting a business and they think, oh, if I

don't go and raise a bunch of money and get an investor that they can't do it. And I think this conversation with a prolific angel investor and entrepreneur kind of contradicts that. And so I think it also alleviates a lot of the stress that some of us may have in thinking about, oh, if I launch a business, I got to go and raise all this money. We really kind of break that myth down and talk about how to launch a business without a bunch of capital to begin with. And we talk about all the different gives and takes when you are bringing on capital. So who is David Houser? David Houser is an American entrepreneur, speaker, and angel investor. He is best known for co-founding the Grasshopper Group, a virtual telephone service acquired by

the Citrix Systems for $170 million in 2015. Houser is a founding member of the National Entrepreneurs Day and has co-founded a number of tech companies, including Grasshopper, Chargify, Spreadable, Pop Survey, Deck Foundry, and others. We cover a lot of ground here with a very fascinating guy. Guys, David Houser, welcome to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. This is the Skinny Confidential Him and Her. David Houser in the studio. Not sure where to start with you. There's a lot we can unpack here. Maybe we could talk about what... Have you always been in Nevada? What's going on out there right now? That's a great question. So I grew up in New York, actually lived in Boston

for 10 years where I started grasshopper. Now I've been in Nevada for almost nine years. Okay. And what's the main reason to go out there outside of like some of these nutty states and their taxes? Obviously having a 0% income tax in Nevada helps. But for me, warm weather, I was done with cold weather. And I wanted to be in a big enough city, but not a big city. I was over traffic. I grew up in New York, downtown New York, right? New York City. And I just didn't want that anymore. And for me, Las Vegas has all of the things you can want from a big city, amazing restaurants, places that COVID a little different now, activities, things to do, shows, but none of the other problems, right?

I can get to the airport from my house in 15 minutes. And you're off the strip or you're on the strip? Yeah, no, I'm off the strip. Yeah, everybody that goes, because the way we do Vegas So you're not next to the Spearmint Rhino? No, no, no. I'm out in Henderson where it's like a normal place. I love that place. What's the Spearmint Rhino, Lauren? When you're just like really drunk and you just want to go to a good strip club. That is the best strip club. Yeah. David, any commentary on that? You do know because you've gone with me.

Well, I don't know. I'm guessing the wrong guy. Who knows? I don't even know what that is. What is that, a pet store? I mean, some people might have ended up at the library, which was a place out further in Henderson that people went to after a long night of drinking. But Vegas has lots of stuff, right?

It's across the board. Because the way we do Vegas now, especially as we're older, listen, we can't hang anymore. So what we do is we go and we'll get on one of those JetSuite X-Flights because that's like the easiest thing. That's how I got here today.

I love JetSuite. It's the best. But you fly in at like maybe seven, eight at night, go out to dinner, party, maybe recover at the pool the next day and then get right the hell back. Can't stay too long. That place will take your soul.

You know what my favorite restaurant there is? Tell me. Carbone. Oh, I haven't been there in a long time, actually. It's so good. It's so good. You got to go. It's nice because you can get one in New York charter to get into. That one's always available. Anyways, let's go back. There's a lot we can unpack here. So how would you describe yourself now? You're an entrepreneur, angel investor, but when you go out and you're giving the boilerplate, how do you describe yourself to people? That's a really hard one because after I sold Grasshopper, I lost a lot of my identity because

for 10, 12 years, I was the Grasshopper guy, the guy that did that. My family knew me as that, everyone, and just lost that. So now it's hard. I've described myself as an entrepreneur, but people are like, okay, what do you do? I don't know. I work on a bunch of different businesses. And what I've discovered is really interesting is the businesses that involve food, people can identify with and understand right away. So it's an easier explanation to say, oh, I run this company that does this and it's in the food space. Oh my God, I eat food so we can identify, right? Okay, you run Grasshopper. I don't really understand what that is. It's a challenge, right?

When people don't get it. For those that don't understand what Grasshopper is, I told you when we were walking in, it's the service that we use when you call into this show. What is it? 1833 Skinnies or something? Yeah, you can call it. And that's how you leave voicemail.

And then we answer it sometimes. But that's, it explained in a nutshell, you built it and then you exited it. Yeah, so it was a virtual phone system for entrepreneurs was our core target. So press one for sales, two for support, on hold music, transferring, all of those things you'd expect from a big phone system that's expensive to put in the office, just totally virtual. That is awesome. So we had Dr. Jason Diamond on the podcast and we asked him how he got into what he does and he told us this whole elaborate epiphany of how he realized he wanted to be in facial sculpting. Like he was

little and he had this friend and the friend got in a car accident and like he saw the friend's face and was fascinated. Is there an epiphany that you had when you were a child that you can go back to and pinpoint that you had an epiphany that sort of set the tone of what you're doing? Yeah. So what's interesting is Grasshopper obviously was in telecommunications. I had no desire to be in that space, right? That's not what we were about. We were about empowering entrepreneurs to succeed.

That was our core purpose. And when I look back, the only thing that resonates the most is when I was a kid, all I knew is I wanted to be an entrepreneur. There was nothing else for me. But was the word, I feel like the word when we were young wasn't like, how did you know that? Describe what you mean. So I had a severe learning disability.

So for years, I went to tutoring three to four days a week. A lot to get through that. I was many years behind in reading for the rest of my class. And all I wanted to do was prove myself that I was as good as other people, right? And the easiest way in my mind to do that was to do my own thing. I knew that I couldn't go work somewhere else. I had to build something on my own. So as a kid, I sold jewelry. I just naturally did those things to just prove myself. And then I found the computer and I was able to design web pages and do that stuff. And from there, it just continued.

So if someone comes to you and they're like, I'm 21 years old and I want to be an angel investor, what do you say? That's a great question. First, I would say don't do it. Why? Why? So I actually don't think it's a good way to make money at all. First, I would say don't do it. Why? Why? So I actually don't think it's a good way to make money at all. So if I look at my portfolio today, probably about 100 investments over a 15-year period, maybe a little bit less, it's probably break-even, right? Probably. So in terms of building wealth, it's not helpful, I don't think, unless you're running a very large portfolio with a very, very specific thesis and a bunch of stuff. In essence, running a VC firm in some smaller scale.

And the only thing I get out of it is learning, right? So I was having, someone asked me this the other day, like, why do it at all? For me, it's the return on investment in terms of learning, right? Can I meet interesting people? Can I learn a new industry? Can I apply what I've learned in that industry to a different one? How can I discover more things that I wouldn't otherwise get exposure to? That is genius. I've never heard it explained like that. That makes sense. You're like going to school, but not school. Yeah. And you're still

paying for it. Yeah. Yeah. You're still, you're still paying for it. Yeah. Yeah. You're still paying for it. It's just a different one. Didn't Tim Ferriss have a thesis like that where he basically said, like, how much can I save on college tuition by investing in companies? And so he's like, basically I'll learn something by investing and I'll end up spending the same amount of money as if I were to go to college. I think that's like how he got started in investing at some level. Yeah. I haven't heard that specifically. And obviously, he has a different approach now, I think. But if I can meet someone interesting and learn something new, that to me is far more valuable than the return of a 3x or 4x return on capital. Can you give us an example? Give us an industry that you knew nothing about that you came into

and invested in. You just learned a wealth of knowledge. Yeah. So today, I have a company called SuperFat. It's in the CPG space. I knew nothing about this, right? Except I had an investment, two investments in the CPG space. So I had two investments in that space. I learned how it works, what the margins look like, how do you promote the product. I was involved in a marketplace as well that promoted products for other consumer packaged goods, right? All of that, I wouldn products for other consumer packaged goods, right? All of that. I wouldn't even have thought about it, right?

Outside of that investment. I think even people I meet, right? So we were talking about Noah earlier, right? I met him through my business and then we invested together and we did other things together, right? That type of relationship doesn't happen if you're not doing those things. It's just the truth. People get mad about it. Sometimes you got to pay for access to certain things. And like, that's the,

that's the barrier to entry to meet people that are circling around in those, in those circles. I wanted to, I wanted to go back a little bit because we have a lot of young people that listen to this show and a lot of them, you know, are aspiring business owners or they want to create their own. And I always talk about it on the show, like one of two ways, like one, it's about self-awareness and really figuring out like, are you really an entrepreneur? Are you somebody that could really thrive working for an entrepreneur in an organization? And I think like one is not better than the other. I actually think the path of an entrepreneur is a lot lonelier and sometimes a little bit more miserable. And it has to be a true calling if you're actually going to go through a lot of

the suffering that is going to take place with a path that's not always defined. So one, maybe you could speak on that a little bit. And then two, for young people that think they're an entrepreneur, maybe we can get into a little bit like what the first steps would be and we can break it up. Yeah. So, I mean, I think about that a lot as entrepreneurial spirit compared to being an entrepreneur. Right. And I think you can have a deep entrepreneurial spirit and identify with that. And that's the type of person that should work in an entrepreneurial organization. Right. They need some guidance. They need some structure, but they have that spirit, right? Compared to the person who wants to be the entrepreneur. And I went to Babson College. And so I have a conflict here in that it's an entrepreneurial school. They teach

entrepreneurship, but I actually don't think you can teach entrepreneurship. I agree, right? You can teach the skill sets that are important, reading a balance sheet and an income statement. And how do you manage people and what does HR look like? Those are all skills. Right. And you can teach those, but you can't teach someone to be an entrepreneur. Right. And I think that plays out very specifically is when they do their business plan competitions. Right. There's just some teams that are better than others. And that's because not everyone's an entrepreneur, right? And I think that divides them out very quickly. Hold up. Let's take a quick break to discuss my obsession. So I looked into my blood type and turns out I am not that great with coffee. I've been drinking matcha. Okay, so the brand I use is Peak Tea. And what I do is I get their Sun Goddess Matcha and I put it at the bottom of my cup. And then I put a little bit of almond milk and a lot of water and ice. And then I just froth it up.

You could froth it up before you put the ice in it too. I'm just messy like that. But the point is this matcha is the best. It gives you an energized zen, if you know what I mean. So you're energized, but you're also zen and you're not jittery like you are on coffee. No surprise, I've been feeling a lot better since cutting out coffee.

And I do have a cup once in a while. Sometimes I'll have one a day. Sometimes I'll have one a week. It just depends. But what I like about matcha is there's so many benefits. So Peak Tea's Sun Goddess Matcha has gut support, healthy digestion. So this tea contains polyphenols, which helps support the growth of beneficial gut bacteria necessary for healthy digestion. This is huge. I'm all about the gut. It also provides, like I said, a calm energy. Their tea

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I'm telling you, replace one cup of coffee with it. Try it. You will feel so good. That's P-I-Q-U-E-T-E-A.com code skinny. So what do you think the core traits of an entrepreneur are if you were to dumb it down for maybe someone sitting there and they're like, I wonder if I am an entrepreneur, if I'm not like maybe they have the spirit and maybe they're not, or maybe they actually are an entrepreneur.

I try to like maybe help young people figure out the direction in life and like really become self-aware to understand like, hey, like what they actually are. Because it took me a very long time to figure out what I want to do, but I always knew that I wanted to do my own thing. Yeah. So I think the first is someone who can take on a lot of risk, but also understands how to calibrate risk, right? Because being an entrepreneur doesn't mean just doing risky things. It means understanding the risk reward and making decision after decision

that takes on a certain amount of reasonable risk again and again for the reward you want in return, right? And then to me, it's just a lot about how you feel like it is a hard journey. Right. Like today we see all sorts of great successes and we see on the media and we've created this founder culture. A lot of people call it where it's great to be a founder and entrepreneur. Yeah. It is great, but we only see the successes, right? We don't see the failures and it's a hard, hard journey. I also think it's, and Michael said this to me the other night, I was like complaining about something and he goes, you signed up for an isolating journey. And that really resonated when you said that to me the other night. It can be really isolating. To just call one of your

family members and vent about something and maybe they're not an entrepreneur, there's a disconnect. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's even isolating within a company, right? Because you have to stand in front of team members and employees and give a positive image, even when things aren't 100% positive, right? And you can't always share those same struggles with even team members, right? And it's just a different journey. And we have to make payroll and we got to do all of these things. And if you're not an entrepreneur, you don't understand that, right? Yeah. I think about what's gone on this year with COVID.

And I think some of the things personally that I think every entrepreneur has struggled with this, but these are unprecedented times and the market went to shit and people don't know what's going on and things are closed down. And luckily this medium has maybe benefited in some ways from this because people are listening to podcasts more, but you're in this office right now. And this is what I call it's just like overhead, overhead, overhead. Nobody's in here but us. But I the entire time, like right in the beginning, everyone's like, Oh my God, what's going to happen to my job? What's gonna happen to my life? What do I do? And if you're leading an organization, and you go into panic mode, and you start spiraling, like that's not just going to affect you, it's going to affect everybody around you,

their families. And so it's like, in a way, you're also carrying burdens that not everybody else needs to carry. And it's not necessarily by choice. It's just by necessity if you are taking the place of the head of an organization. I think at the same time, you're dealing with how do I deal with my house, right? Like, how do I make sure I can pay my bills at the same time, pay all of my people so they can do the same thing, figure out the government programs, figure out the loans, like all of these things all at the same time. And also be creative and think marketing and strategy and evolution. How do you keep everybody else calm and keep them inspired and keep them to the point where

they're not spiraling and that they feel secure? It's an interesting nuance that I think presents itself every once in a while as a business starts to get on, get a little rockier. Like if we, while we're dealing with a circumstance like this, and it's, these are things that when you think about being an entrepreneur, like I never, you don't sit around and dream, oh, one day there's going to be a global pandemic and I get to navigate that. This is something like nobody wants to deal with, but you're just, you have to. And like, it's not something where you could say, hey, well, I'm quitting and I'm just going to do something else because essentially like you're, I'm accountable to a lot of people within the organization.

I can't let them down. And I think it's things that I wish more entrepreneurs would talk about, which is like more of the struggles and more of the areas where people feel isolated or lonely. Because I think what we see is the end result and the reward and like, and that's all great, but it's not, it's not always like A to B. Like there's a lot between there. Look, it took us 12 years to sell our business and we weren't even intending to sell it. We were just building a great business, but 12 years in, we were successful because we sold it.

I thought we were successful far before that. And I think emotionally was much better when I ran the business than when I sold it. I have more money have more money now, right? Like in a bank account, like it doesn't really matter, but emotionally it was much more rewarding to run the business and to be in there with the people every day and to deliver results, right? That was a much more rewarding experience for me. Tony Robbins always says that the opposite of depression is progress. And so that's why you're in there and you're progressing and you're moving towards a goal. And then Mark Manson came on and said, you reach the goal and you think it's going to be everything you ever dreamed of. And that comes with a whole different set of problems.

Yeah. You have more money, but then it's more things to manage and more stuff. And it's just, it doesn't bring any more happiness, right? I think there's a level, like I was living a life that I loved, right? I lived in the house I wanted. It was a nice house. I drove the car I wanted. I could go on vacation.

Like beyond that level, I don't think anything really matters, right? And there's just a lot of headache and problems that come with having more money, right? And it sounds silly to complain about, right? But that's just the reality of it. And it was more rewarding to run the business. Let's talk about that for a little bit and go back. So you're running the business, obviously. It's successful in its own right, obviously, which is why somebody wanted to come and buy

it in the first place. But when you were running it and then you got the offer to sell, take me back to that moment. Was that an exciting moment? You're like, oh, this is great. I've made it. And then what happens after you sell? Yeah, so we never wanted to sell at all.

So it was a hard, hard decision where this was a more than a year and a half process from being approached to selling the business. And people always say like, why did you sell? Right. And I think there's two things that as a, as a founder and entrepreneur, I think about one is, is someone willing to pay me far more than I know the business is worth because I have near perfect information, right? Like I'm in the business day to day. No one could have better information. And I know what I would value it at, right? Is someone willing to pay far more than that? Okay. If the answer is yes, I have to think about it, right? And then what does it mean as an entrepreneur to have all of your net worth tied up

in one thing? It's a very risky scenario, right? COVID could happen, right? The business could just disappear. So part of it is I got a little bit older, I'm 38 now, I was saying, how do I de-risk that a little bit? And it didn't mean I had to sell the business, but how do I not have everything tied up in one private company, right? In terms of net worth. Those two things just said the timing was right. And then there was a bunch of other smaller things like they kept the brand, which we cared about a lot. They cared for our employees. There was a lot of other requirements. But to me as a founder, those are the two first ones. What do you think makes a really good leader? It's a hard question. I think a great leader changes over time. So rather than having one

core quality, I think a great leader actually has to change and grow with an organization over time. So in the early days, that meant that I was in the business day to day doing things. As things progressed, it meant that I had to step back and give up control and allow other people to do things, right? So it's more about a progression over time based on where the organization is and what it needs. So I think if we look at the best leaders in organizations, their skill set actually changes over time. And it's not that they were great at one thing or another. They knew how to apply it at the right time. That's a great answer. They're adaptable. We talked a little bit off the mic about your health.

And I feel like a lot of men who are working their ass off- And women. I think it's both. Okay. Okay. I'm looking at you. Sometimes can neglect their health. I feel like they put all their energy into their business and then the health gets neglected. When did you start to realize that was a problem? I wish I had realized way earlier. And it's interesting as I look back because we, we understood in our company how important it was. We had yoga, we had healthy snacks, we had, we promoted all of these health things and I didn't do it. Right. So I knew deep down, like from a productivity standpoint, from a health perspective, like all of those things

were the right things to do, but I didn't do it. Right. And I wish that I had, for me, it was a long journey. I would say over 10 years of realizing one, I wasn't healthy, then figuring out what I was going to do about it. And the real crystallization came after doing all sorts of diets, um, training for an Ironman, a half Ironman, running the Boston Marathon, and being at the half Ironman, putting on the spandex bike shorts, and having like fat roll over the top. And I'm like, wait a second, what's going on here? Like I've now reprioritized and focused on health, and it's still not working. Right? And that was a really demoralizing time. So what did you do from there?

I really stepped back and said, I want to change everything. Stop listening to what other people have to say and find what really works for me. And I had followed just conventional wisdom, eat a low fat diet, exercise more. I did it to the extreme. This was 20, 30 hours a week of exercise training, right? So I couldn't do more. And it wasn't working for me. Were you just exhausting your cortisol? I was exhausting everything. I was overeating to keep up energy. I was doing all sorts of bad things. But again, I was just saying, well, it's low fat, so it must be okay, right? Like, it's no problem. Just eat more. And that clearly was not working at that.

We look at now, So what do you think was the shift? What started working? The biggest shift for me was diet. And I said, I just want to test the most extreme, right? I've done what I've quote unquote supposed to do. Like, how do I find the most extreme? So I did a vegan diet for six or eight months. I did a ketogenic diet. I did a carnivore diet. Like I wanted the farthest extremes, right? Cut out everything. Eat only broccoli. Like I don't care what it is. I wanted to figure out like how far could I go and figure out if something worked.

And it was an interesting journey because I lost weight eating vegan. I felt like crap. And for me, I've actually discovered what diet works for me. And it's definitely a high fat ketogenic like diet, but a lot more vegetables than typical, probably a lot more carbs than you would see in a normal ketogenic diet, but all coming from whole vegetables. Okay. And so, but you do incorporate meat now into the diet or? Yeah, 100%. Yeah. A pure vegan diet just didn't work for me after a few months, but I did it for eight months. Well, I think it's good that you say for me, because like we interview all walks of life, all sorts of diets have talked in here. And I think

this is where people get in trouble is they, it has to be a vegan diet or a keto diet or a paleo, whatever it is. But I think you really need to figure out the specific diet that works for your genetic makeup because they just blanketly applying like, Hey, this diet to each individual, it doesn't work in my opinion. And you know And I'm no health expert, but after interviewing so many people, the people that we've found to be in the best physical condition are the ones that have identified a diet that's worked for them. And I think the data plays that out really well, right? If we look at the data, the reason that it's so confusing nutrition is we see, oh, in Greece, they eat this way and Asia, they eat this way. And it's both very different.

And there are sets of people that are very healthy, right? It's because we are made up differently and we need to discover how we feel the best and how we operate the best and the foods that we should eat. Although I think now blanketly there's probably some statements we can make, don't eat processed sugar and processed food. That I think is pretty generally accepted in the health space. Don't drink a 12-pack of Diet Coke, all those things. Yeah. That's not helping.

People come to this show and they're like, well, you introduced me to this person. You introduced me to that person. They told me to eat this way. Lauren and I both, you got to do your own research if that works. We want to present all walks of life and all different types of people. But then the listeners or all of us individually have to go into our own research on what diet actually works for me individually with my genetic makeup. I think figuring that out, going to your doctor, getting your hormones measured, like all of these things that you can do to figure out what works and what doesn't. And I think people need to understand that that's a better approach than just taking a blanket statement and saying, like, hey, I'm going to just do that thing for myself and that's going to work. Or just pulling little tips from everyone, tiny little tips, and then applying the little tips. It doesn't need to be the whole shebang. You don't need to do exactly what

someone's doing. For me, if I don't eat red meat, it's okay for a while. But if I don't eat it for a very long period of time, my body legitimately craves it. It has to be good quality meat, but I can tell. It says, hey, you're missing this. You need to go get this resource. And it's weird. Some other people can go without meat and never feel the effect. But for me, personally, my body does better with some red meat. Oh boy, oh boy. Am I excited to tell you about Jenny Kane. So basically, Jenny Kane believes in finding your version of the daily uniform. They have elevated pieces that make getting dressed the simplest part of your routine. We are working home right now we want to look cute but we want to be comfortable so what i bought off their site just because we are quarantined and i want to be comfortable but

i also want to look cute is this huge oversized cardigan you could get it in a small but i got it in a large because i like a really big cardigan with a tight pant. It's like very, very soft material, big buttons, black, goes with anything. You could wear like a white collared shirt under it. You could wear a tank. You could wear a bra. It's so fun. I've been wearing it nonstop. I also got this candle and it's like this earthy candle. I'm really into earth tones right now because I feel like we're inside so much. So I have this fountain that's earth tone and now I have my candle to match it. You can get both of these things that I bought on their site. They have all kinds of curated staples inspired by nature. It's very effortless aesthetic of California living. Some of their other signature pieces that people are

loving are their mules. They come in leather, suede, and shirling. They also have, like I said, super cozy sweaters that you can wear year round. This sweater that I bought, it's like I said, a button-up cardigan. I will wear it like forever. It's so cute and so classic. Make getting dressed the easiest part of your routine at JennyKane.com and get 20% off your first order when you use code SKINNY at checkout. That's J-E-N-N-I-K-A-Y-N-E.com, promo code SKINNY. Check out that black cardigan that I got. It is so good. And definitely get the earthy candle. The important thing to realize too is what we're talking about is like further optimization,

right? Like most people, all they need to do is just stop eating processed foods and junk, right? Like just eat some vegetables, eat some meat. Like we can talk about the quality of meat and should it be grass fed or not and all of these other things. But like that's the remaining 20%. Sure. Like let's get to the 80% and most people have not gotten there. And the steps are pretty simple, right? Just don't buy stuff in the middle of the supermarket. Yeah. We've also talked

about eating within the right windows of time, not right before bed, or maybe like waiting right when you wake up. I know a lot of people call it fasting and there's different ways to do it. But I also think if you go and eat a slice of pie and a cake right before you go to bed each night, and then you don't get a good night's sleep, like that's not going to work. It doesn't matter how good your diet is. Like you can't do things like that. It's going to spike your blood sugar. It's going to spike all sorts of things and knock your hormones out. And so I think like just basic things like that. I agree with you. I just think naturally, right? Like in general was the human body designed to eat right before bed?

Probably not, right? Like it was dark out. We maybe had a fire to cook if you look really far back, right? And I'm not a big believer in like, let's run around outside barefoot because that's what our ancestors did. But our bodies are made a certain way, right? And it takes many generations to get there. We probably weren't eating right before bed, right? Just naturally wasn't happening. So I shouldn't have eaten that gluten-free cookie last night in the dark.

I want to talk about your micro struggles, like little tiny struggles that you maybe were dealing with day after day after day when you were running the company. It could be something like for me, one of my struggles is I went from a solopreneur to an entrepreneur. That switched, like everything was on my own terms. And now I have people that I need to worry about. Is there anything that was a micro struggle for you? Yeah. So for sure, at the early stage of the company, the transition from moving from being a doer and having me just tell people what to do to having strategic thinkers, like I wanted to control everything, right? And so the first step is I stopped doing everything, but I just tell people, you do this, come back to me,

you do this, come back to me. Right. And that struggle took years every day thinking like, how do I get out of that mindset and allow people to come to me with real strategic direction? Here's what I'm going to do and why, and here's how I'm going to do it rather than me just saying, go do this. So give me more of an example. So your employee comes to you and says what? So the difference is the employee where I kind of project manage them and say, okay, you're going to go out and do these four marketing tasks and come back to me, compared to the person who says, here are the seven things I'm going to do for marketing. Here's the result I expect, and I'm going to come back to you when I'm done.

I need to write that down. Well, because essentially like you still are the bottleneck if you're just project managing everything. I think the way I think about it is we'll take Dear Media, for example, I'd say, Hey, like I really want to start incorporating more video. And I think this strategy could be very good for marketing and visibility and also to differentiate us and establish the brand, all these things. But I know I'm not the person that can do it. And if I sit there and micromanage everybody, I ultimately can't get that process. So I go and find people that are going to come back and tell me like, hey, this is how I'm going to launch your video strategy.

And this is how I'm going to do it. And I give them the leeway to do it. That is such a good tip. I'm going to apply that. Normally, my team texts me every morning at 9, 15 and tells me what they're working on. Instead, I should have them bring me some ideas 15 and tells me what they're working on. Instead, I should have them bring me some ideas instead of just managing what they're working on. Ideas and then to execute on and then to measure it. But like, yeah, I think if you,

any process where you can slow it down means like you are the bottleneck. Yeah. I've been known to be the bottleneck sometimes. But I have to say, I love the daily meeting, right? So this for me is actually really important for how we became so successful. And people are always like, get rid of meetings, get rid of meetings. For us, every company I'm involved in has a daily meeting for everyone. And it might be split up into different groups or whatever, but a daily meeting between five and seven minutes long, that's exactly what you just said, which is, what am I working on? What have I accomplished? Where am I stuck? And it's not

about necessarily managing the tasks, but it's about everyone being accountable and sharing, and then figuring out, not on that call, but where people are stuck. Because our job as managers and leaders is to get people unstuck. I want to go further back. And this may be hard. I mean, you've drummed up so many businesses that are investing in so many different things, but there's a lot of young people, like I said, listening. And this may be hard. I mean, you've drummed up so many businesses or invest in so many different things, but there's a lot of young people, like I said, listening, and they may have an idea for a business. And they're saying like, how do I get started? What's the first thing? Lauren and I have answered that in our own way enough times, so we can just skip over our opinion. But if you're talking to a young person and you're

trying to coach them on how to get a business off the ground, and let's just use the framework of this is an entrepreneur you're talking to. What are the first few things you tell them? Yeah. So this is really simple. It's just go out and do something. I really don't care what it is because I get too many people that come to me and pitch me on this and I'm going to do that. And a year later, I'm like, what'd you do? Nothing. Right. So honestly, just do something because every step forward is something you learn. Is it the right customer? Will they pay for it? Do I have the right product or not? Can I make it?

All of these questions we can talk about and we can give you frameworks and say, ah, think about this, think about that, or you could just go do it, right? Well, can I make the product? I don't know, right? Try making it, right? So to me, it's all just do something

every step forward again and again. And forget all of the other stuff. Don't listen to the do these four business plan steps, do this, do that. All that's a waste of time. What do you think young people focus or any entrepreneur focus on in the beginning that's a waste of time? I mean, there's a lot of things, but like if you were to like some things that you catch young people thinking about all the time, like, hey, you don't need to worry about that right now. Like that's, stop with that. I think the first one is too much planning, right? So like a financial model and like, yeah, I want to know the business metrics.

Will this work from a model perspective? Do I care what revenue is at in year two or three? No. Like that's just a waste of time and effort. You're just guessing, right? And so I think too much planning and then people get stuck in that planning, right? Well, a year ago I decided I was going to do this. Okay, sure. You also didn't have any information you have today. So does it matter? So planning. And then I think the other one is probably just listening to too many people. Just like your diet thing. It's too much content.

And just you have to have some conviction, right? As an entrepreneur. And that's why I hate this word pivot that everyone uses, right? Oh, I pivoted my business. No, just have some conviction and stick with something. Like that to me, that's the same as starting out, right? Like you just can't listen to all the advice. Pick something that you love, do it and be convicted in what you're doing. I think that's one thing that VCs and money guys, maybe you excluded, have where they've done a disservice to entrepreneurs. We can talk about this in a second, but you started getting in this VC model and go to venture scale businesses. And their model, like you say, I mean, is we're going to invest in a few things. Some are going to lose a lot of money. Some will

break even. And we're going to have one or two unicorns, and that's going to support the whole portfolio. But what it does is if you're an entrepreneur and you take a lot of money, some will break even and like we're going to have one or two unicorns and that's going to support the whole portfolio. But what it does is if you're an entrepreneur and you take that type of money, you get put in this short window of time, two, three, four years and like you got to build this massive business and exit it. And I think that's where we're getting into a space where people lose conviction because they get scared like, wait, if I don't hit that venture scale to go and sell this thing for $100 million or a 10x, you know, it's really easy to get away from your conviction, say, I gotta go.

Because at that point, you're not really following your model, you're following the money guy's model. And I think maybe you could talk about that a little bit and we can get into investing stuff. Yeah, I think we've also failed entrepreneurs in that way because we've set up this dynamic where they have no portfolio,

but the VC or the money person does have a portfolio. So you're just like a number, you're a line item on a sheet. I have one chance. The VC has 20 chances, right? And he or she only needs to hit one, right? And so without that portfolio approach, we've created this culture

where you have to shoot for all the way up here. There's no middle ground or death, right? Like those are the options when you take money. And I think it's just a bad dynamic that we've created. And it sets up a lot of companies for failure because you don't have to get to venture scale. That's just not what has to happen for every business, but it's the ones we hear about. Yep. You could just have a really cashflow positive business with low overhead and good margins and like control and live an amazing life.

There's many millionaires that have done exactly that that we never hear about. And you have autonomy. Yeah. What do you look for in a deck? And what do you look for in someone when you're investing in them? That's a great question. So I see a lot of pitch decks, a lot. And I could probably rate them and figure out which is better,

but I honestly don't care about that anymore. I care about the core metrics, right? So what does the revenue look like? What does profitability look like? How far are they from profitability? I only invest in companies today that are doing a million dollars a year in revenue and are profitable or near break-even profit. So you don't invest in the idea to start.

You invest when they're already making money. Yeah. Okay. So that's one of the requirements. What about the person that you're investing in? Do they need to be something like, do you look for charisma? Do you look for intelligence? I think the core that I look for is really, are they a hustler, right? Are they willing to go out and do the hard work? Because I think that's the difference between success and not, right? Did they go to this school or not? I don't think it matters. Are they willing to go out and do the hard work? Because I think that's the difference between success and not, right? Did they go to this school or not? I don't think it matters. Are they willing to do the hard work every day?

And are they willing to do it fast? Because I think that in the stage of zero to a million, it's about speed. A million to 10 million, it's about speed combined with process, right? Past 10 million is a whole different story. And I'm trying to think what else I would look for. I know other requirements I have after I've made the decision I'm interested. Like they have to read one of these two books about process and daily meetings and things like that. Which books? Scaling Up or Traction. Both the same process, same idea. This guy's name that did Scaling Up again. It's been a while. It's a burn harness. Yeah, Purple Book, right? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. It's a great Yeah. With the gazelle. Yeah. Traction's the same thing, just different names for the same process. If I'm going to invest, I'm giving you one of these books and you better have read it. Okay. I have a question. So, and this is maybe a selfish question. When you're looking at a deck, are you looking at the business or are you looking more at the person? Are you looking at both? I think it's a combination. The piece that's most important as a deck is, is someone able to present the idea in a concise and direct manner? Because to me, that plays out throughout the business, right? Can they communicate as a leader, same way other places? Can they sell, right? The

pitch deck is a sell, right? And I will not take a phone call if I have not seen the pitch deck ahead of time, where I'm not like, I don't want people to sell me on it on the phone. I don't want to hear them talk through it. Like you have to be able to in a PDF of whatever number of pages sell me on this. Okay. This is a serious question. How many times have you been at dinner trying to chill, drinking a glass of wine and someone fucking tries to pitch you? So I guess I don't go to restaurants that much and I don't drink anymore. So maybe not that circumstance.

Outside of those. It happens a lot, huh? It's happened enough. It actually doesn't bother me. It doesn't. No. So I've had interesting conversations from it. So I wouldn't say it's bothered me.

I don't think I've ever invested that way. So that might be a clue for people. So one company I did invest in was actually a founder who knew I was going to be in San Francisco, I believe, and said, I'll drive you to the airport if I can pitch you my business. Smart. And I said, okay. First of all, I love the concept. He knew I was there.

So he had some information. It's convenient, right? I of all, I love the concept. He knew I was there. So he had some information. It's convenient, right? Like I need a ride anyway to the airport. What else am I going to do during that time? And he was clearly a hustler, right? Like he thought this out. He had his pitch ready to go and I invested in the business. That's cool. Your partner, how does she play with your business? She is a great support in so many ways, just in terms of my diet changes again and again and again, and probably to the most extremes. But I think honestly, she has the hardest job, which is our kids. That I could not do. There is no way I could do what she does on a daily basis. The support, and I think ultimately she just understands as an entrepreneur,

there's a lot of ups and downs, right? And she is willing to accept that in probably a way that most people shouldn't. Like if it's my emotions going up and down, if it's financial success going up or down, like all of those things and being accepting of it and understanding of it, I think is the most important for any partner. If someone is listening to this podcast and wants to pitch you or an angel, what's the most effective way to do it besides the airport? Is it to email? Is it like, what is a way that's unique that you've seen? And maybe we could also touch on a little bit on raising capital.

Because I think also we've gotten to this culture where it's like raise, raise, raise all this capital. We've made some announcements here. But like I said, this is the first business I actually brought on outside capital for. Before that, it was all bootstrapping everything. And we can get into that later. But I want you to touch on a little bit, like when you think it's appropriate to bring on capital, if ever, like at what stage of the business, like what boxes you should check if you're going to do it and maybe bootstrapping versus bringing on capital. I think it's important to touch on.

Yeah, it's a great conversation. So to your question, I would say there's two things. One is how I like to be pitched, right? And then the typical advice, right? The typical advice is get an intro, make sure it's not a cold email, like all of these typical things to do in the process. I actually don't like any of that. I find intros to be annoying as hell, right? Like it's kind of silly, but I would prefer a well

written cold email that lays this out for me very clearly. David, this is why you'd be the best investor for this. Past experience, whatever, whatever. Here's why the business is successful today. One or two, three bullet points at the most. Here's the pitch deck, right? No, can we get on a phone call? No, no, no, no. Like just lay it out really, really simply. That's what works the best for me. I think that is atypical, but it works. Because people always feel like they have to go above and beyond. I say this too, like in an email, it should be so concise. What's the point? You're taking someone's time. That's what it seems to me that you're really about. Like even when a guy is taking you to the airport, that helped you with your time. So it sounds like the time thing is important. Yeah. And also I want to filter stuff. So I want to get it by email first because my filter is always, can I cover this on an email

before a phone call? Because I can do 10 times more emails in the same period of time that I do one phone call, right? So how can I be most efficient? And again, same with pitches, right? I can read through that. And that's why it has to be well done, very clear, and have a clear call to action, right? This is what we are going to do when.

That's it. Can you speak to Michael's point about raising capital and why? I think, yeah, I want to talk about this. I think a lot of young entrepreneurs, they see all the headlines of this person raised this and this person raised that. And they think, oh, I can't do a business unless I raise all this capital. And like previous, my first 10 years of my career, like I said, I never raised a single dollar of outside capital the first time. And I had success with some success, some failure. But I think it's important to talk about that it can be done if you bootstrap it and have

an effective business plan. And sometimes capital, outside capital masks a maybe failing or flawed business model. Yeah. So I have this ongoing personal conflict with this. Like Grasshopper, we raised no outside money ever. We also were building an industry 12, now 14 years ago that there was no cloud computing, that none of these things existed.

So it was actually quite expensive for us to get going. I think that's changed even much more today where the capital required is even less. So my general belief is very, very few businesses should raise money, right? This is a hard statement to make when you invest in companies, right? Because I'm trying to convince people that have a over a million dollar a year business that are growing

profitably to take money, right? So there has to be another value add there. But I think most businesses, they just don't need to raise money, especially at the early stage. So I think the important thing to think about as a founder is optionality, right? Every time you take money, optionality starts to go away, right? Now, if I take money early on, even more optionality goes away. The ultimate scenario is I am able to build a business up to a certain scale and then take money. Now I have unlimited options, right? It could be a sale of the business. It could be an IPO. It could be running it profitably forever. There's lots of options at that stage compared to early on. Yeah. You get more autonomy and more control. Yeah. I don't think people realize like how much

control they give up if they bring on too much capital early. Yeah. And I'll give you a great example of Grasshopper, right? Without having any money, we were able to build profitably again and again and again, year over year. But the most important decision we made was not to go into the voice over IP industry, which I believed very quickly was becoming a commodity. However, VCs, competitors in our space that had VC money did that. They had more top line revenue, negative profit. Ultimately for those founders, one of the companies went public. Their success on a monetary basis was far less than ours, right? So like at every step of the way, those metrics did not work out for the founder or the company

because we said, no, we don't want to go up market. We don't want to compete in a commodity space. We're going to provide a high value service that people are willing to pay for and pay a lot for. So before we jump off this, what are the boxes that you think need to be checked if you are going to bring on capital? Yeah. So I think first is, does scale really matter, right? So that means as you get bigger, do you get more successful just inherently in that, right? So if that's more attention, more people, like those types of things, does that matter in the business? Does first mover advantage really make a difference, right? And an honest conversation about it, because everyone's like, yeah, it always matters

to be first. First, most of the time it doesn't, but there are cases where it does. Are there two-sided marketplaces, right? So do I need a buyer and a seller, right? Think Upwork or something like that. That takes capital and scale over time to make it work. Highly capital intensive businesses that need long periods of R&D, hardware, things like that. I think even hardware today is starting to scale back. But again, my default is no, most don't. Okay. So what if you're just, not if you're just starting out, what if you, let's take an influencer. What if an influencer wants to launch product? And are they supposed to use their own money? Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. I would use my own and I would be really scrappy about it, right? Like how can I build the smallest part to prove

it out? At Grasshopper, the best thing about not having money was we never overhired. We never hired the wrong people because it was our money, right? I had to put food on my table. Wow, that's a good point. I don't know if I've ever talked about that on this show, the history of Dear Media, but me and my partner, we put in our own money. And you're 100% right. The whole time, it's like, we were doing, I was doing all the sales and all the signing and all the stuff. And I was watching every fucking dollar because when it's your own money, I'll just say like your nuts are on the table. You don't have the luxury of just burning a bunch of venture capital because it's your, it's like it was Lauren and I's livelihood.

And so we didn't bring on any capital. We just went straight to series A when we got there. And a lot of the boxes you mentioned had to be checked for this type of business. I'm in the same camp with you where I recommend so heavily to entrepreneurs to put their own, like one, it's going to test your metal and say like, can you actually stomach a lot of this? And two, you're going to be so much more responsible, in my opinion, with the business in the early days, which helps you effectively build a profitable and strong business. Like we got to the point where we actually didn't need capital to continue running. We just need capital, obviously, to scale. But we could have just kept a cash flow positive business and gone and gone

and gone. And I think we wouldn't have got there if we brought on money early on. I think we would have just not had the discipline to get it where it needed to be. I think the key is you just said discipline, right? It's that idea that when it's your money and you're thinking about it that way, it's the discipline to hire when you need to, to fire when you need to, to do all of those things that may get delayed otherwise, right? And I think what ends up happening is you create a business model that works and then you add money to that to scale. Yeah. We got to 21 shows with only seven employees doing all, and that's with sales production, everything. And I started taking meetings, I won't say the names, but with other large networks. And they started telling me how many people it took them to produce a show. And I was like, Oh, that's interesting. We're doing that

with a third of the people to do the same amount. Right. But so, but your model continues though, right? Yes. And it's the same model. We haven't changed. Like it's still, we still take a third of the people to do what a lot of these networks do on their own. And whenever I tell people like, Hey, we can produce all of these shows with X amount of, we won't get into it, but with this many people, people kind of scratch their head and say how, and I think the reason is, is so many of these other businesses got so big with so much capital that they just start plugging all these people without actually measuring like, do you really need all those people? And I think now in a COVID environment, when companies start making cuts, a lot of these cuts are never coming back because companies are realizing, wait a minute, I didn't need 100 people

to run this business. I actually needed 60, but they just didn't have the discipline to begin with. A lot of capital is going to be found. It'll be interesting to see what happens with the economy now because many of these jobs, and I hate to be like a rain cloud, are not coming back solely because a lot of businesses are going to realize, maybe I don't need the capital of that office. Maybe I don't need that many people working on the project. Maybe I can do this remote. This is a time where we're going to heavily audit a lot of our operations. To me, I think about it this way. This pressure of COVID created a scenario very similar to self-funded or bootstrap

companies. You had this downward pressure pushed on you to become efficient very quickly, right? So I think ultimately it will be good for businesses to be there. And I think in time, the jobs will come back as things grow, but they will be different jobs, right? Because we've now found we could be more productive and more efficient with this group of people. Yeah. And look what happens in the market. Like say you're a publicly traded company and like the stocks take a dive and all of a sudden your business constricted and like maybe you're a segment, like I could talk about podcasting, maybe like this podcasting network is a segment of this larger radio business. But if that radio business stock is now in the shit, like that segment of podcasting, like it's going to get

to cuts. You're gonna have to figure out like, how do I operate this? It's happening a lot. And I think in ways, like if you were to look at any silver lining with what's gone on this year, and there's a lot of bad, like it's also, I think, going to create a lot of responsible operators and responsible companies, because you have to be. Yeah, for sure. Before you go, how do you set your morning up for success? Is there anything you do and if there's not just be honest and be like I fucking roll out of bed and you know No, no, so i'm definitely on the the morning routine group of people and I have this conflict with people sometimes like that's stupid It's about finding your own routine one. So my routine is very specific. I get up in the morning same time

No alarm clock. So just naturally wake up what time time? It's usually about 5.45 to 6 a.m. I just wake up. I also go to bed pretty early. So last night I went to bed at 10.30. That's pretty late for me because I got in late. Wake up. I do the thing you're not supposed to do, which is I read emails in bed on my phone. Everyone says don't do it, but it works for me.

I think it's okay if it's not like spiking your cortisol in the morning. If you find calm there. And, I read some of like the daily emails I get and things that like have content. I'm not reading like- It spikes your wife's cortisol though to have blue light in our face in the morning saying email, email, email. Yeah. But we rarely sleep in the same bed. Oh, okay. Well, I've heard that works too. You can get another house next to me. We'll do a tunnel. That's fine with me. Go ahead.

And then I try to work for a little bit. I have my first daily meeting at 7.15 AM, take my daughter to school, drop her off 7.30 to 7.45. Drop off has changed a little bit lately. It's still good. I then go to the gym, practice yoga. So that's usually at 9, 9.15, depending on when the class is. Shower and get ready at the gym and then go to work. So I try to start my day in the office around 10.30, 11 a.m. I never schedule meetings before 11 a.m. You said something interesting though, and you said this before, you said you take a meeting at 7.15. Yeah. And then you said you go to your daughter's school at 7.30, which means your meeting is five minutes, I would think, right? Oh yeah, 10 minutes at the most. Okay, talk a little bit about that before you go, because that's interesting.

You do five to 10 minute meetings all day long. No. So, I mean, the daily meetings are always that length, but Mondays are our weekly meetings. So those are about an hour. Okay. But yeah, so daily meetings are always five to 10 minutes at the most, depending on number of people. And that meeting only has three people in it.

So it's usually pretty short. Okay. The only reason it's that early is because part of the team's on the East Coast and they want to be able to start their day. So it seems like a reasonable thing to do compared to me saying, no, can't do it till 11, which is pretty much your afternoon on the East Coast. I'm the same. I have to get a personality before I take a meeting. 11 is my time too. Book, podcast, resource that you can leave our audience with that's brought you extreme value? So we talked about two books, Scaling Up and Traction. I think that has added the most business value. Book that I've read most

recently or reread, I should say, Sapiens. Really love that. I read all of Yuval's books. Sapiens is by far the best. And if you like that Evolution of Everything by Matt Ridley is great too. But when I reread that, I also identified with new things. It was really enjoyable to read it again. I'm trying to think what else. What's the podcast? Does Homo Deus, I haven't read it yet. Does it still apply with everything that's going on? Or is it like, how accurate was he with? That's a good question. I think it was relatively accurate because it was more about thought

process. There was other stuff. I think it was relatively accurate because it was more about thought process. There was other stuff. I think it relates. Okay. What's the podcast, Noah's podcast that you were on that you said that you liked? Oh, Noah Kagan. It's Okay Dork. Okay.

I'm going to listen to that. Yeah, I really loved that. Did a great interview with him. Probably see him. What's today, Tuesday? I'll see him tomorrow in Vegas. Cool. Maybe you guys should go to the Spearmint Rhino.

No, go to Carbone. Then the Spearmint Rhino. I think we're meeting for tea or something in the afternoon after yoga. What's the Spearmint Rhino again? A pet store? Yeah, a pet store. Where can everyone find you? Pimp yourself out. Davidhauser.com. I have a weekly email that I do send out every week. I want to touch on that. You're finding a lot of enjoyment in that. What's in the newsletter? Yeah. So it's usually about three topics that I'm to, I do send out every week. And now I want to touch on that. What's in like, you're finding a lot of enjoyment that what's in the newsletter. Yeah. So it's usually about three topics that I'm thinking about, usually links to other things with my opinion or thoughts on it, things I'm watching, doing, reading, testing, whatever it is.

And I found the most enjoyment from it in creating content to share has just made me a better person. And I always felt challenged doing blog content. It seemed like such a chore. I could never get into it. Like I do it for a month or two months or at one point, I probably did it for about a year. And it just every day, I'm like, oh, man, I got to do this again. The email has just brought me a lot of joy in doing it. And in sharing just made me better. And do you feel the people that are on a newsletter compared to a blog or a little like those people that are subscribed to the newsletter, like they're really there for you. Like a blog, you can stumble into people's blogs. I feel like the engagement of a

newsletter, similar to a podcast is those people are there because they want to hear what you have to say. And it's also a more open conversation, right? Like someone can hit reply right away. And we get into deep conversations about, I disagree with this, or I disagree with that. Or, hey, have you thought about this? Have you watched that? Those types of conversations have been far more valuable than a comment on a blog. I think I'd like doing a newsletter because I like- It's a good idea. Because the thing, I agree. I tried to do this blog I was going to do. And I'm like, I don't have time for this. And it felt like a chore. And it felt like to me, I was a really bad student.

And it felt like homework. It felt like, oh my God, I got to write another essay for the teacher. And I hate doing it. But the newsletter, you can just go on a tangent, talk about anything you want and build that little community. I try to keep it short too. Because the content I like to consume is relatively short. So three bullet points.

You should be able to read my email in a few minutes. I'm going to subscribe to it. Okay, I can't help it. I have to give you this idea. Yeah. So Ryan Holiday does a newsletter too, just like you. I get it. Okay. I love him. Yeah. I'm gonna subscribe to your newsletter too. I think I'm gonna love it. And then on top of that, what he does now is he does three minute podcasts, which I feel like is so you. Oh, wow. I haven't even thought about that. And he does it twice a week. And so when I do a freezing cold shower in the morning, I put on his podcast and I just get inspired like the Daily Stoic, you know. It's built off of his Daily Stoic newsletter.

I think that if you ever think of doing a podcast, just based on this conversation, you're all about time. You said your five minute meetings, you should do five minute little podcast segments. I love that. I didn't even think about that. I think that's another thing people don't think about in podcasting is they think they got to be like the next version of this or like a Joe Rogan or a Tim Ferriss. And that's, it's a lot of work, obviously, like it's a whole thing. But if more people could just jump in and say, hey, there's gonna be a five minute bite of what I'm thinking this week or this day. It's easy to get into. I think it gets over that fear of, oh my

God, how do I do this for an hour? How do I do this five times a week? All of those things. To me, it's the same as a blog, right? Oh, I just don't want to do that again, right? I write the newsletter and it's, oh, that was fun. If I could turn on a five-minute podcast from you that said how to pitch, how to build a deck, What's the most annoying thing that people do when they reach out to investors? That is such a quick way for me to consume content. I would love it. Yeah. I'm stealing this. I'm listening. I'll be listening in the shower. That's creepy, but I will be. David, thank you so much for coming on. Everyone can find you. You said at David

Hauser on Instagram. That's H-A-U-S-E-R. Come back anytime. And if we ever come to Vegas, we'll let you know. Yeah, please. Thanks for having me. Carbon. Wait, don't go. Do you want to win a bottle of Woo More Play? It's coconut oil lube and it will enhance your sex life.

All you have to do is leave your favorite part of this episode on my latest Instagram at the Skinny Confidential and someone from the team will drop into your inbox and send you some Woo. It's fun. You'll love it. will drop into your inbox and send you some woo. It's fun. You'll love it. And with that, we will see you on Tuesday.