17 Years of Online Ventures, with Matt Giovanisci of Swim University
The Failory Podcast
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Full episode transcript -

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Hello. Welcome to another episode of Hillary Podcast, where we swimming the backstroke with founders and reflect on their past projects to unlock insights that will help you make a splash in your business. Today I am Brendan Honda Co. And on this episode, I'm very excited to be joined by match Geovany She, who is the founder at Swim University, a 15 year old website that releases videos, blog's and other fun pieces of content, help pool and hot tub owners maintain their amenities around the middle. Assume university, though. Matt launched Spruce, a SAS company that helped business owners monitor the health metrics of their company. What initially was a 60 day Web app challenge that Matt undertook Spruce turned into a larger, longer project that turned out to be rife with learnings, along with those and the insights from running a company for 10 plus years.

In this episode, Mad and I discussed the marginal value of failure and why more founders had republic about them. What really makes good content and mats terrible experience with ruby on rails? Sit tight, get a notebook ready and thank you for listening. This podcast wouldn't be possible without the help of our friends Over at Referral Bureau, The all in one platform could design and run flexible referral programs that grow your bottom line. If you're tired of wasting money on Facebook ads or writing tons of content that never rank on Google but already have loyal customers, you should definitely try a referral program. The Dollar Flight Club grew its business by 13% and holiday pirates added 300,000 emails in less than a month after setting up their referral programs. The best thing about all of this is that you can get started in minutes with their no code widgets, and if you sign up today, you can get 20% off with the code fail ary +20 Try it now for 14 days without any cost at referral hero dot com Once again, that's a referral hero dot com Hello and welcome to another episode of The Hillary podcast, your one stop shop for filled ventures and the founders behind them. My next guest has done a multitude of things from taking press photos with his indie rock band,

where he you know he doesn't know what he's doing with his hands. He released a rap album. He built multiple websites and he did podcast before It was cool. My next guest has seemed to have done it all. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. I have a match of uneasy.

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Hey, how are you? You You're right. I don't know what to do with my hands.

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Well, like he had such

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a good interest. I've never heard that I love

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that. Absolutely. Well, like the photo for folks who are, like, trying to look at what we're talking about. But thank you so much for being on the podcast,

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man. Yeah, I appreciate

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it. So, yeah, You know, I love to just like if you're comfortable, like, just like, have you introduced yourself just, like give a brief, like elevator pitch of who

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you are. Oh, okay. I run a website called some university dot com and teach people how to take care of their pools in hot tubs. And I've been doing that since 4 4006 and kind of parlay that into multiple other digital publishing brands, such as money lab dot co. Which is probably how you found me. And I have another site called Brew cabin dot com and I used have a site called roasted coffee dot com. And I run a podcast with my buddy. All this in money matters and we have some software together called last. So, so kind of, Kind of just like used from university, Has this springboard because I grew up in the pool industry. And so it was like, Oh, Aiken, learning design a website. Do have to take care of pools. Let me marry those two things together and created this online brain which has brought me to Teoh here to

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now. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I just loved it like scaling back. Or we read on your website that you you know, you've worked in the coal industry in New Jersey since you were, like, 13 on and you know, you into done five. Your mother remain for, like, $9 then eventually have to rebound it for, like, $150. Yeah,

I'd love to. Just, you know, talk about that. Like, where did the idea for a swim university came about? You know, like I think this is, like, the earliest I've ever heard. Like someone working on something when they were 13.

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So I've been in the industry since I was 13 and it was many years after that. When I learned how to design websites. I was about 20 years old and my band needed a website. And so I learned how to code in HTML and CSS and PHP and I was working at a pool store at the time. And so I thought, you know, an actual business. Once the band failed, I was like, Oh, an actual business Could be, you know, trying to build a website around pool care, which is what I was doing at the time. And so I literally just came with the names of university, kind of out of nowhere. Bought the domain name for her yet 9 $10 whenever it was at the time.

Off go. Daddy, you know, told my friends I was gonna build this site and I was gonna be huge and was kind of all talked for a while and didn't really do anything with it. Lost a domain name, had to buy back for $100. And then I ended up starting at, you know, because one I had to pay $100 to my friend, who was my bass player at the time told me to just suck it up and do it. And I was like, OK, I wo

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I did. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I'd love to just spin this into question about, like, you know, your entrepreneurial path. You know, Did you ever know you were going to be a founder? I'm just curious, you know, you go through like, multitude of jobs and, like, I guess I'm just curious. Like when it it really click for you that you wanted to. You don't become a founder of your own company and like, go from like that into software,

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etcetera. I think I always want it to be my own boss. I'd never really liked working for people. I don't do well with authority, so I really did, like, almost bought a pool store. When I was I think it was 20. I had a backer and everything. We were gonna go by a poll store. Actually, the first full story I worked out when I was 13 was for sale, and I was talking to the owner and we were gonna do it, and we ended up not doing it. But that was my first sort of for, you know, like,

springboard into running my own pool company. And even before that, I had done little things when I was a kid to make money, and it's always been kind of a hobby of mine. And I always knew that at some point in life, I didn't know what it was gonna be. I think probably at one point I may have thought I was going to start a software are a website design company. So I knew I had always gonna do something. I just didn't know what it was gonna be. And then when I came up with some university, I was like, Okay, this is

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what it's gonna be a Yeah, absolutely. You know, and that's a good Segway into something I love to unlock. But something I would say court here, you know, skill. Set his web development. Or, you know, you wanted to start like a web dot bowman company. You know, how did you pick that up? And it's something you've learned ever since you were 13. And I hate to like, you know, asked two questions here,

but and like I think this is like Super courtiers, School said. Like, What would you say today is like a core skill set valuable for, you know, younger folks were listening to continue developing and keep intrinsic to their person until the future, if that

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makes sense, Yeah, I say this even now the fact that I know how to code in HTML and CSS and PHP and I even did a little bit of Ruby and Java script. Even the fact that I know how to do that is my biggest superpower in this world. And most of what I do is digital publishing. I'm writing and creating multimedia. I have a content business, but because I know how to do that kind of stuff, I feel invincible on the Internet. I can do whatever I want to. I could build anything that I can think of I can make. And that was something that I did not know was going to be a think. When I first learned how to design websites, I wasn't sitting there going Oh, I'm gonna be invincible from the Internet. I you know the time again the reason I even started. It was because we couldn't afford to pay a designer to build a website.

And I had time because I was working at a pool company in the middle of the winner. So we weren't, you know, in the New Jersey, So we weren't getting a lot of customers. And I had time to sit there and read, and I read books on how to do code, and I would pull up note pad on the PC and start, you know, hammering away and then just kept refreshing the browser and see what we come up. So it was trial and error for a long time, but that's device I would give. I absolutely consider it a superpower knowing how to code. I mean, my skill set is definitely an HTML and CSS like That's my strong stuff. Aiken.

Do PHP become dangerous enough? And I'm dangerous enough with JavaScript, but just html CSS, which is really, really simple. You could do a lot with that. Sure,

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Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's really good. Yeah, I think like coding and special, like in the you know, like how much people are getting paid today, just like basic weapon. Feldman, etcetera. It's like a good hobby to have. Yeah,

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I agree. Yeah, you get

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to build what you want. Yeah, absolutely. And so I'd love to just, you know, take this chronologically and move away from, you know, 13 year old math. Love to just dive deep in the spruce, which is okay. Which is your field

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started? Yeah, One of many,

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sir. I play this game with, like, you know, Founders. But if you have to, you know, described what's Bruce did to like a 10 year old Mobius a spruce was doing. I couldn't I couldn't do

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that. It's like trying to explain cess not even that, like, because what spruce did was so specific the idea came from, you know, I run an online business. I run some university, and I have developed this spreadsheet where I would just track my metrics every month I would log in and I would say, Oh, this is how much traffic we got, you know, in the month of January, whatever. And then I would say this is how many email subscribers we earned. And this is how much revenue we made. And I would I would write all of these stats and and then I had a bunch of formulas that would say, like,

This is our churn rate. This is our traffic to email conversion raid. This is our percentage of how much we're making on digital products versus affiliate products and stuff like that and this spreadsheets available at Money Lab. I talk about it all the time. I use that every month. And in fact, it was just the beginning of a new month, and I went to my numbers manually like I always do. But I showed this to Jason Zuck, who was my business partner in the in Spruce. And he said, We should turn this into an automated app of some kind. So where you connect, you know, Google analytics and your email account, and you're whatever.

However, you use whatever used to make money to ones like kind of Hub, where it would pull in all this data, and it would spit out basically like a health score, like how well your business was doing your online business. And the idea is great. I still believe in the idea. I think it's kind of like the if you're not familiar with Baron Metrics. It's kind of like, you know, bare metrics, but for a content business, you know, And that was the idea. And the goal was to try to do it in 60 days, to try to build the app very quickly and at the time was just me and Jason is in the 1st 30 days and I decided to build it,

you know? So I designed it because that's I'm a designer and, you know, I obviously come up with a spreadsheet, and Jason was kind of like the project manager and marketing guy. And so he was writing all the emails, the people, and we were like building a buzz for this thing. We were talking about it on money lab, and I decided to code the prototype. I wanted Teoh kind of throw together the prototype and for some dumb reason, and I regret this probably more than a lot of things in life. But I decided to learn a completely new programming language to build spruce at the time. And still to this day, like I operate very well with PHP. I understand PHP because WordPress is developed in PHP and back when I first was coating.

That was the kind of standard, you know, that the standard language with my sequel. So it was like my sequel, PHP like I understood it. And yet for Spruce, I decided to try Ruby on rails and just I kind of knew the concepts of programming. But I didn't know what get was. I didn't know what you know. What's that? What do you call that? I forget. Think whatever get is I? I didn't know what that WAAS and I had to learn that, and I had to learn about Post GREss, which instead of my sequel,

was a different database system. I had to learn about spinning up Dino's with Roku. It was all these new tech stacks that I wasn't familiar with. And yet I'm trying to build a prototype when I should have just developed it in PHP and used something even a simple is WordPress to kind of like be the base. So that it I didn't really have to worry about hosting and stuff. Yeah, but that's not what I did. S o. I burned out really hard in those 1st 30 days. There's video proof of me kind of losing my shit. And from there we ended up bringing in 1/3 person as a founder to do the coding for us. And so now we weren't a company of, like two co founders that were 50 50. We were now three co founders that were 33 33 33 the person we brought in was just the developer and, you know, had kind of looked at what I had done and said,

This is this is crap and wanted to restart everything from scratch. So that's what we did. We started everything from scratch, and I think the program at the time I think he was trying to use rails and was just like, I'm not a rails guy. I was trying to work with your software and it just wasn't working. And so I think a couple months went by what he was just struggling and decided that he wanted to code the whole thing and go, which at the time was fairly new. I mean, I know that people use it now, and I think it's pretty popular, but at the time I was like, Well, I have never heard ago had a look it up. And so I was like, we're going to start this whole thing over again.

We're gonna be using this another language that, like, I can't even help you with as a coder. And then, you know, he had a part time job, like, just like all of us did. And everything was kind of riding on him to develop, because it's like we couldn't do anything until he had developed. And we ended up getting rid of him and replacing him with another developer who decided to pick it back up in Ruby, I believe, but want to start the whole thing from scratch, you know? So this is like, we're now talking 34 months.

We're past our 60 day challenge idea. We barely have a prototype, but we have a marketing sales page and people were signing up for it. You know that we had a bunch of customers, like early adopters for this thing. And because, you know, Jason, I both had our own audiences that we were talking to this about. And so yeah, so then it became all right. We have this new thing. We're starting from scratch. I had to redesign everything. And you know, the app still did the same thing.

It's still we still have. The same idea is just, you know, now we have a new design we're trying to like, you know, reinvigorated again and that it became just a really kind of like ego thing where I kind of was like, I have lost control of the project. You know? I wasn't on the same page with Jason, and I was Conrad at the time, was the other guy, and I just felt like it wasn't my thing anymore. Like I had lost control of it and I was getting in fights with them. And I'm not an easy person to work with. Like I'll be the first to admit that, like,

I'm not, you know, it's not probably 100% my fault, but I just had a vision and I had a very I have a very specific way of doing things, and I have a timeline. I expect people to get shit done and and when it doesn't happen, I get upset or ask why. What's the problem here? What's the bottleneck and and then at the same time, you know most of the customers I think we had at the time were like, I know a lot of them personally, and they were just texting me like, what's going on with this? You know, we paid money, you know?

Where is this software? And I just kept having toe put it off, and at a certain point I walked away. I was like, Look, I don't think this is gonna work with the team that we have. There's now Jason and I were both marketers and we had a developer like we really needed more developers and less marketers. So I felt there was an imbalance in, like, you know, who was running the company and what are skill sets and what we brought to the table. I thought, Well, you know, if I was a developer and could help, at least there'd be to developers and a marketing guy.

But it wasn't the case. And so I ended up just kind of saying to them to two of them, I was just like, I can't do this anymore. I have other things I can dio, but you guys run with it like please, like, if I'm holding you back, which I assumed I waas, you know, I was just like I'm out and they bought me out for a tiny little amount. And I was great. It was like all the stress was gone was that was done. And then I think we know I haven't talked to them about it, but I'm pretty sure they sold it. I think it's still up and running,

but I think someone else is working on it. So that was to me. Huge failure, low distress. You know, in hindsight, so many things I would have done differently. And I mean, I could even explain those things if you want. So one of the things I would have done is I probably wouldn't have brought on a co founder, especially because, you know, I'm the one who did the design and was doing the coatings. I'm like, All right, why don't really need a partner at that stage,

so I wouldn't have had a partner that state. Sure, I would have developed the prototype on my own kind of and really kind of slap it together, like, really just kind of like, Is this a viable product or not? You know, Is this something that people are gonna enjoy. And I probably would have done it with WordPress. I probably would have used. And this is sounds like it sounds crazy to even say, because it's like, Well, why would you do that? But because I know WordPress so well I would have used WordPress is log in system is at least the base right? And if I'm just throwing together a prototype,

it really doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be the thing, So I would have done it that way, and I would have, you know, probably made it all manual. I wouldn't have tackled AP eyes as early as I did because I was trying toe, you know, connected the Google analytics a p I, and then convert kid and mail chimp in all these other AP eyes, it just would have been a nightmare. That's kind of do that, and it was a nightmare to do that. But I would have done it where it was just like, hey, you manually entered this data and it'll show you these stats and in a look decent and that's what I would have done and I would have showed that to people and perhaps have gotten some paying customers to start using it at that level at that stage.

And then I believe I would have. You know, once I had some customers paying for this manual platform that I thought was super useful, I would have probably hired a developer to execute exactly the vision that I wanted executed in the language that I wanted executed in because I really like doing SAS design. I like working on the HTML in the CSS, and if I'm familiar with the language, I mean, I was familiar enough with Ruby. I'm familiar enough with PHP or even Python and what it shows in one of those three languages and said, We're gonna design this in this language, you know, obviously we could switch the language later down the road, but at least I'll be able to help the programmer with the design part, so I would have designed at first and then had a programmer hook it all up for me. So, yeah,

that's probably what I would have done, and I would have taken things more manual approach, and I would have taken things a little bit slower and I wouldn't have got in partners involved so early. You know, I think I would have definitely, you know, in the future have given up some equity to say somebody who does marketing or somebody who does development to kind of, like work on it with me. Once we knew that there was customers that this was something that people were interested in using and that there was, ah, actual demand for But, you know, we kind of barreled our way through it. And, you know, that's kind of how money lab works in general,

right? Just, like, have an idea. I throw everything I've got at it and either burn out or it's somewhat successful or neutral in some way, just like a may kind of outcome.

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Yeah, you know, like, thank you so much for being vulnerable. I'd love to just, you know, scale it back and, you know, just like, think about spruce from a higher level. I guess what I'm curious about is this, you know, you talk about you comparing it to bear metrics, but, you know, for, like,

content creators, I'd love to just, you know, know about like the ecosystem that you're building spruce. And you know why? Was it something that more so that you wanted first from university? Or was this you know, something that you knew, Like other businesses would

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need etcetera. You know, that's a good question. Because I definitely wanted it for some university because I was using a spreadsheet and my spot. She was fine. I still use it. Yeah, Jason, when I showed it to Jason, I showed this spreadsheet to him. He was the one who kind of put it in my head that this would be really cool as software. And I was like, Yes, this would be cool if I didn't have to enter this information in every month. And in fact, I could go check it on it every day. And I would see this,

like, growth. That would happen. It would be like an entire dashboard of KP eyes for my online business. And I look at something like bear metrics and I just think like bear metrics for sass. You kind of need it. It's like it's perfect. But I mean, I think when we definitely had customers, so people were interested in this idea. But, you know, looking back on it. I don't know. I guess I still believe in the idea. I mean,

I want to sit here and say that, you know, maybe it wouldn't have worked, But I don't believe that, I think, actually would have worked. But the difference between Baron Metrics and something like spruces biometrics on Leigh connects to, like, you know, three or four different things you know, connects to strike pay Pal Braintree, Where? Spruce? Because of the idea that it's mixing data points, it's a mixing. Data points from,

say, something like Google analytics and something like Mail Chimp and taking numbers from both of those things and displaying to you like mathematic equations. Based on that, you're dealing with a lot of AP eyes. You're dealing with a lot of connection points. It's sort of like if you're if you use something like mint right and you have all these connection points all your different bank accounts. You know, a lot of times those things break and they there's a lot of upkeep there as a software, and you're relying very heavily on this data coming from an outside source rather than you know, controlling the data yourself with, say, manual input. And then what happens when you know you don't have an a p I key yet for something like, oh, this person uses, you know,

convert kid over mail chimp. Well, we don't support convert kit yet, and it's like, Does the software become obsolete until we do or can they just manually enter data until we have that? You know, And that was my whole thing was I was really into this idea of, like, manual data entry until we have a P I connections. And I don't think everyone on the team saw eye to eye on that idea because it's like, Well, what's the point of having software when you know, a spreadsheet is where you enter manual data? Why would you need software to do that? But I think the software is really just a giant calculator at that point, saying like,

hey entered this data and we're gonna show you cool shit with that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So that's kind of the

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overview. No, no. Yeah, absolutely. You know, like, I'm so excited. You talk about this project with so much figure, you know, it kind of like Segways into my next question, but we've compared to the bear metrics. But do you think like there's space for spruce like, Do you think there's any products on the market that it is like solving the problem that's Bruce was addressing, like, Do you think Spruce has, you know,

a chance to both flourish and also, like, belong in the market? You know, competing gin, spare metrics, etcetera?

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Well, yeah, so it wouldn't be competing against the company. Like Para metrics, you know, because I've read a bunch of stuff that's like, we're carving out our own next. You know, this is something that doesn't exist, And it was like, You're innovating something. But that's really hard to sell, right? Because it's like, Well, you know, how do you sell this thing that no one knows they want yet,

But as soon as you told people about what it could do, it's immediately like, Well, I want that, you know, if you're if you run a business where you know, you rely on something like Convert Kit and Google, you know, in traffic and s CEO, and you have all these different pieces, all these different software products, and we were the connecting point. Now I'm pretty sure. And I could be wrong about this. Yeah, And this had come and gone.

Even by the time we started Spruce, there was an app that was being developed called center, and it was being developed by, I believe lead pages. And I believe that's what was called And I'm kind of like thinking of this off top my head of the moment, but I believe it was kind of the same idea where that it was an A P I connection tool to a dashboard. Now, another example of what we were trying to do is something like gecko board gecko board allows you to connect all your different AP eyes together in display different, You know, KP eyes on the dashboard. And you know, now you can do that kind of stuff with Google Data Studio, right? The problem with those pieces of software or where we sort of were different is we basically told you what the KP eyes were. You couldn't create your own KP eyes. We were basically saying,

OK, here are the things to look out for. It was sort of a philosophy on top of, you know data points. So it was like, OK, you know, Google Analytics is your traffic, and this is how many subscribers you have. And here's some data points in between. Those two things is like a waterfall, right? As people come into your website, they subscribe here newsletter and they buy your products. And so it was sort of this, like,

this kind of waterfall effect, and that's what we're going for. And I think there really wouldn't have been any competition for us to do that. And I think is probably why there's nothing that exists because I think it is just too many variables. I think the A p I connection point thing is very difficult to manage, So

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yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I don't mean to probably here, but this is like more, you know, you've shown it in the podcast, but like, you know, you keep this really, really like long 12,000 like this Really, really well written 12,000 like, sort of like I want to say, like a journal like Spruce Road map. You know, like you talk about designing your first mascot like designing the lumberjack and then like it was like super super personal like inside of like what you're actually feeling and, like,

you know, intermix are like, you know, woven into the fabric of that was like, you know, like the burnout, like visual, like the text version of Like, you like burning out in real time. And I'd love to just, like, spin this into a question about you know where today a lot of a lot of people like frame or like, a lot of people like to, you know, hide their mistakes and really keep, like,

make it look so they're like, Oh, they're started was always like, you know, on the up like they're starts always been growing and, like lots of people would not keep their failures public. I guess I'm just curious on you know your thoughts on why you do

27:6

this. Yeah, One is because I think authenticity is just so rare, and I tend to lean towards people who come across this authentic. I tend to buy the products that those people create. I like people who are not afraid to be riel and to be I mean, we're all human and human beings fail, and human beings are stupid. And an end smart in all the things we all have these, you know, sort of tendencies in these areas of our lives. That but like, yeah, I mean, I don't want to be an editor of my my existence. Yeah, well,

you know, I think not that I'm going on the Internet, you know, one of things I don't dio is I don't share my life in social media. I don't go on Twitter and talk about, like, just shit that I'm doing in my regular personal life. I don't go on instagram and take pictures of, like, you know, the scenery that I'm in. I like to be present. I like to go and do those things and, like, that's my life, You know,

that's not for everybody. Doesn't mean I'm editing it out. It just means that, like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not as compelling enough like no one wants to see me like I'm not a concert me out. It's like, No, I think it's interesting to say I have an idea. I'm going to execute this idea. And I'm not gonna hide the fact that, you know, this was a mistake, and I'm going to show you it when I created money lab.

That was the idea from the very beginning, which was to say, You know, I'm kind of behind the scenes, doing all these things on some university and what have you And so I was like, Well, what if I showed that, like, what if I showed all this work that I do all this, you know? Hey, I want to do a new podcast like I'm gonna show you how I create the theme song. Like I'm gonna do that from scratch. And if I don't know how to do what I'm gonna I'm gonna bear on my way through and I'm gonna show that. Then on top of that, I'm gonna show you every single time that I mess that up.

Or that would be editing right. That wouldn't be telling the truth if I was truly just journaling every single thing that I was doing. And so not only do I try to journal like the actual steps that I take to do whatever project that I'm working on, I also want to show the thought process behind everything without preaching, because that's the thing that I avoid the most on money lab is preaching. I don't tell you how to build a Web app in 60 days. I am showing it's not called how to build a Web app in 60 days. It's called building a Web app in 60 days or whatever, and I think it's more compelling as a form of content to tell a story. You know, all the ups and downs, not just what you're doing, but all of the thoughts and behind why you're even doing the thing that you're doing. And one of the biggest things that I dislike about the Internet and especially in what I consider my niche, which is the online business space, is a lot of positive.

And like this whole, you conduce to it at you or the idea that you know Hey, I did this thing. I failed. But here's what I learned in the process. You know, it's always like, you know, I failed, but here's why. That's great, you know, to be honest, failing blows, it's awful. I hate it.

I don't like failing, but I'm also not a competitive person, right? I don't need to spin to myself and to my ego and to the rest of the people who follow me that, yes, I failed, but because I wanted to because I was trying this thing. No, I want to be out there and I want to say to them I failed. I'm a huge fuck up. Don't listen to me like I'm human, You know, I want to be that voice that says, you know, get out there, do your thing fail,

you know, learn from your mistakes. But then don't be the person who spins it into a positive. Like sometimes you can just say that sucked. Yeah, yeah, you know, and be honest about that, like, yeah, you know, working on Spruce. It was hard. It sucked. And it's something more than it was fun and more than it was like that. I was excited about it.

And I'm not afraid to admit that. I mean, it's true, but I'm not going to sit there and say like, Oh, thank God I went through that because, you know, boy, I learned X. You know, I wish I didn't go through that. I don't want to go through that. That was horrible. You know, it was a horrible like, you know,

it was a year of my life or whatever, just like constantly thinking that this thing is is there and it's not working and it's just like Oh, you know. But hindsight is 2020 and it's like everyone wants to spin it. But, you know, sometimes

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things. So, you know, yeah, absolutely.

32:0

You know, And that's like, That's what I want to point out with money. Lab is it's just the truth. It's just the absolute truth and the absolute, you know, into my truth. You know, the thing that I go through and not no, not necessarily for everybody. But I don't think money Lab would be that compelling of a website if I succeeded in everything, if every story of every piece of content. And I wrote, you know, came out as well. I tried and I failed. But guess what I learned X or it's like it's always like,

you know, just another beautiful day in the neighborhood. It's like, No, no, I don't think this is compelling. Sometimes, like, you know, even Infinity War has to end, you know, not to spoil anything, but, you know, that's like my favorite Marvel movie ever, because I was not expecting that. So it was just like, I think we need more

32:48

of that. No. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, like to just keep things through, like, short, like I was like, Yeah, I think it's like also really good to just Yes. Sometimes it just sucks. Yeah, sometimes it just sucks. That's okay. And that's that's that's life.

That's what all the people say. No. And you know, I love to just like or like, take this. Yeah, in the same. Or like, just move this chronologically. But post spruce, You know, this is, like, kind of new for us because I think in the past, the cadence has been, you know,

failed startup into, you know, learning or like taking this like, sabbatical and then, like, moving into, like, a successful startup. But we're talking about Swim University. Some university is the company that you started when you're, you know, 13. And like while you're doing money lab or while you're doing spruce like Swim University was still something you were hacking on on the side. I hope, like this game that, you know, like the question that I ask the founders like more so applies here But if you have to explain what Swift University did to a 10 year old, what do you say? Some university Did

33:46

we teach Mommy and Daddy had keep your cool clear?

33:50

Absolutely. And just moving back into, like, the big boy world. But you're doing this. Do you know content? You have blog's. You have everything under the hot summer sun. You're doing it. And, you know, I'd love to just, like touch on this red. I'm just in honesty, like, just very, very in awe of like the growth.

You know, I hope these numbers are, like, okay to, like, share. But you know that 40 k revenue in 2014 around 150 k 2015 and then 350 k 2018 and 320 90. And, you know, like I guess one question to this distill it down is like, you know, how are you doing

34:24

this? Yeah, content. I mean, that's it. You know, it's pumping out the jams is the way I put it. It's just, you know, the idea that one. I've been doing this since, you know forever. So I feel like some university just has, like, an age on it. You know, it has this,

like level of trust on it, which is great. And we have a philosophy at some university about the way that we teach things on the Internet the way that especially something like pool care, because full care, I mean and most people probably won't know this because I'm not sure if a lot of people actually do take care of pools. I mean, only like, what, 10 million pools in the United States and not everyone takes care of them. But the idea is like it's all its water chemistry. It's really confusing. And in fact, there's a lot of websites out there that purposefully make it confusing because again, the people who are running it have ego, right? And they have this thing where they're like,

I need to be the smartest person in the room and explain how friggin why oxidation is important in shocking, and it's like, Who cares with that, like to the average person, like they don't need to really know the science behind it. They just need to know like they want the outcome right. This is classic, you know, SAS selling. It's just like, you know, tell me the benefits, not the features. And I think a lot of other educational sites talk a lot about the features and not a lot about the benefit and what it is that you're ultimately trying to dio. No one wants to be a backyard chemist. They just want their pool clear.

And so that is always been our philosophy and the even with hot tubs is that our goal is to make this a simple it's possible for you. We do give you science. By that science has to be digestible because we're talking to the average consumer. We're talking to the average person. We're not talking to chemists. We're not talking to people who give a shit about that either. So looks like, Hey, you know, this is a person who works, you know, 40 50 hours a week and has, like, one day to use the pool. And it's like that's the one day, you know,

to use the pool, and that's what they want to do most that day. They want to spend 15 minutes in their mind of how to take care of it, and so I think, really sort of understanding who are visitors are and who these people are and then developing educational material to service those people is what has set us apart. And I believe that that is mainly true in a lot of different professions. It's like, you know, if you look at something like Home Brewing, which is another site that does deal with chemistry, and that is also, you know, a site that I run that is very different because the people who are behind that of people that want to understand home bring it's a hobby for them. They do you want to devour that information. They do you want to become, You know,

the similar to what it would be a backyard chemist in the pool industry that they want, the kind of the over information. And so that site has a very different sort of educational approach to You know that so because we've targeted the keywords that people were searching for and we're answering the questions as best as we possibly can in the easiest for me, possibly can. Google's rewarding that tow us and saying that like, yeah, if

37:35

you want to learn about pool, clearly

37:36

this is the site. That's all they do, man. They do it, they do it well. And then at the same time, in order to increase revenue, we we really kind of like focused on, you know, some university again has a philosophy of what if, you know, thinking of our site as a mom and pop shop, right? It's like, Hey, you're in town. You have a pool party coming up.

You go to the local pool store. The friggin expert, that cool lord is sitting there in this throne and you go like what? You know, You walk up to the pool Lord and you're like, Hey, you know, my pools green and I'm having a party this weekend like, what do I dio? And that Lord is sitting there and they say, OK, here's exactly what you're gonna do in their write down everything. And then they're gonna recommend exactly what products you need to put in your pool in order to get it to what you want, right? And so they're not gonna give you a 1,000,000 choices, because why would they do that?

Why would they give you seven choices you don't even know? The difference is between these choices, and I think like in the pool world, specifically, I don't give choices. It's like, this is the shock we recommend. This is the algae side we recommend. This is the skimmer we recommend. This is the things that we recommend because personally, I've used all this shit throwing up like I did all of it and I did all this research and and so I could go on the Internet even and look at, you know, this information and is still down in, like that's a good skimmer because of this. This this and this because, you know,

I've used thousands of skimmers over my life and that one just makes the most sense to me. And so we sort of look at some university as two things. One. It's an ever evolving textbook. It's not a magazine. It's not like Hey, every month we're gonna come out with a new newsletter. It's gonna be different information, and we're just gonna keep publishing and publishing and publishing all this new stuff. And now you're sitting on this big fat collection that magazines, and it's impossible to find what you're looking for. Instead, we let the things from University is a giant textbook that has a new addition every year. And yet you replace right and so it's locked in the amount of content that's on it, you know, in in the scope that we cover.

But we're always keeping that content up to date, and we're always refining it to make it simpler and easier and more, you know, help people actually take care of their pools. And then at the same time, we're also recommending the products that we've actually used in all the years that I've been doing this. And I think that that in, like all of those things combined, have built an immense amount of trust. People come back to us every single year and go like this is the site. If this is what they recommend, I like it because they conveyed it, you know, in a language that I was able to understand and their site looks great and they've been doing this for a long time, and clearly they recommend one product. It's like,

Okay, I don't need to think it's just there and yeah, that is I think the why university has been so successful is because of the philosophy behind and not necessarily the work ethic. You know, like we're not publishing like crazy. We are publishing thoughtfully, and the same thing goes with the rest of my sites to like Money. Lab is in a perfect example of, like, you know, you don't get a new email every single week with a new piece of content you're getting, you know, stuff that I've you know, it's like when it comes out, it's big. It's a big sort of like, you know, well thought out thing.

41:4

Yeah, absolutely. You know, like there's a lot of comparisons there to like, you know, really understanding your customers, like good content strategy and really just like I don't know. I think I've also had the take of like, newsletters were like, You know, if you released slowly but like released lots of good content versus released the same thing every week, you know, there's like, a bit of annoyance that comes to like the latter verse of the former. Yeah,

41:24

it's it's quality over quantity for sure, you know. And then and I believe that, you know, quality just stands. The test of time and quantity sort of loses in the long run and it's unsustainable.

41:35

So, you know, just like being honest about it, like just coming from like, another newsletter. It's like, once you just have to, You know, there's some weeks where, you know, if you just have to release every week on, like, a basis is like sometimes they're weeks where you know, the news is not as good as, like, some other weeks and, you know,

yeah, you just have to just put it out. Even those, like, not your best work. So I feel like Yeah, absolutely. So, like, I can definitely, you know, sympathizer like I could definitely feel what you're coming from, you know? But I love to just, like bridge the gap between if any, you know,

between spruce and Swim University. But I know you know, you've been working on some university, like, even though you are working on spruce for a while, you know, while you were living like rails. But, you know, post, you know, the buyout and post I guess you weren't there for it. But like when spruce was sold, is there any, you know, tangible insights that you took from spruce that you brought over into Swim University Post Project

42:21

in the Swim University. No, Sure, I have taken what I've learned from Spruce and applied it. Teoh Other software. I've done two pieces of software since Spruce. One of them was a WordPress plug in. And then the other one was just that WordPress plug and rolled into another WordPress. Blufgan. So, yeah, I've learned my lesson. I guess with the biggest lesson I think I've learned from Spruce was like, I really should have gotten things out earlier and quickly and worked within my wheelhouse. And so that's exactly what I did when I created Ernest was we were able to do that product in 40 days, which is also a money lab, and I hired a developer hired,

you know, one guy to execute my exact actually know. At the time it was, ah, partner. And then I ended up moving over to Ah, I bought my partner out again. Another lesson learned again and then ended up hiring developer. And that's when things really started to churn because in a good way, I was what was in charge, and I was in charge, and I was doing the thing that I was good at, which was the front and stuff. And my developer was doing things that he was good at, which is the back and stuff. And he was working really hard with that.

And it works really well. And I that relationship worked great. And even the relationship that I have with Andrew now when working on Lassa, which is our most recent software project again also you can find on money lab. But you know that that one makes so much sense because there was two things that I learned. One was that if you're gonna pick a founder or you're gonna like, team up with somebody like that person, better be the opposite of you and fill the other side of whatever is needed. So, like Andrew is a developer, that's what he does. And I am a designer and marketer, and that's what I dio. And so our skill sets complement each other and is the perfect combination for a great SAS business. And the other part of it is we didn't go 50 50 because I believe that development is so much harder than the work that I have to do, which is,

you know, once I create the design and once I've coated it, I'm really not gonna be tweaking it all that much. I'm not gonna be changing it are, you know, and that work is something I can do very, very quickly. Whereas development is so much more time consuming and so much you know, there's so much riding on it, and it's something that I value way more than the skill set that I have. And so when we started last so or when I joined last. So I am not a 50 50 partner, I'm only a 30% partner. And the reason I did that was because one I knew that I was never gonna be able to keep up work wise with what Andrew was doing and to is that I wanted to give 30% of a ship, not like I didn't want tohave Ah 100.

45:14

You know, like give 100% right,

45:16

right? Yeah, to give all of my effort towards a thing, cause, like, I mean, not that it won't work out, but then I can do the things that I'm already working on and not feel like I don't feel guilt in that business. so where I felt a lot of guilt when I wasn't pulling my weight because I was, like, a 50% partner Or, you know, for example, like even with Ernest, it was like, you know, my developer kind of stopped working on it because we weren't selling and it's like,

Yeah, he's and makes so much sense that makes you know, like, if if the product isn't selling, which was my job, why are you gonna work harder on it on your end? And so I think that there was an imbalance there, and I've always kind of work to solve that. And I think Andrew and I have really kind of like our communication is just like we kind of over communicate because it's just like being in a relationship with anybody where you know, communication and saying what's on your mind and not hiding and not sure cause something is how you get to, you know, the truth and how you I think you get to respect as well. So yeah, a lot of those lessons from Spruce have sort of crossed over into really just the idea of partnerships and software that I have now developed with Andrew? Yeah,

46:30

absolutely. And, you know, like, I think some university like something or like, one of those start ups, Or like, one of the companies that we've talked to that, you know, been in action. Or like, still around, like the founder still around for, you know, 13 14 years right now. Or it. And I'm just curious,

you know, I guess you know what keeps you going. You know, like ever since 13 are, like, what keeps you going, you know, despite, you know, failure chair. And, you know, like, I know you talked about, you know, being,

you know, quote unquote fun, employed for a little bit, you know, 40,000 revenue in 2014. Did you say fun? Employed? Yeah. Uh,

47:4

yeah, Yeah. Is Ah, that's a way to put it. So, to be clear, I didn't start working on some university when I was 13. I just started in the pool industry at that age, and I didn't start working on some university, told us 20. Okay, sure. But what keeps me going and this is like I talked about this before, and this is not for everybody. I'm not a person who gets inspired like I'm not spiritually I'm not looking at, you know, instagram photos of a sunset and it's like you can do it. Get up today. It's like, I don't

47:37

care. The motivational posts tread,

47:39

right? Yeah, it's not me. I thrive on negative motivation. And that means, like, you tell me I can't do something. I'll do it. And that was what's started. Some university, which was me constantly talking about how I was going to start from university. And then my friend finally like saying to me, You're all talk, dude, you know, you're just bullshitting us now. And that was my wake up call to be like Okay,

well, then I'm gonna now I'm gonna actually do it. And the thing that gets me up every morning is this idea that I never, ever wanna work for somebody ever again. I don't want a boss. I'd rather when I say I rather live in a cardboard box and work for anybody else again. And I will. And I honestly believe that I know I probably won't live in a cardboard box, but I will find a business to do where I am either the boss or in charge and never have to answer to anybody because that's my motivation, right? That's what keeps me going. And so I wake up and I like doing this kind of work, even though it is, you know, writing about pool algae or talking about, you know,

even talking about failed start ups. It's like, you know, decided to do this at night is what I do, man. Like I could do this all day. I could talk about this stuff all the time. It's a hobby of mine. And so that's the other thing, too, is that I look at all of this as a hobby. It's just a hobby that pays well, and it didn't used Teoh. It does now, and I could always use more money. But to not be grateful for where I am today,

it would be silly. It would be like, you know, I may not have the coolest, sexiest story of the other founders out there who went from like you read my numbers, you know, $350,000 a year is just me, right? It's like, but that doesn't sound like a lot compared to let the millions and you know the 67 figure eight figure businesses out there. But that's my story, and I'm proud of it. So I think that's the other thing, too. Like I like this shit like waking up every day and doing it so and I won't say that I love it. I'm never gonna say I wake up. I get to wake up every day and do what I love. No, I get the wake up every day and do whatever the fuck I want to dio And that is the rial sort of like that. Is it in any day I wake up and I don't have that control is the day I need to check myself.

50:5

So no. Yeah, that's really, really good. You know, I think like lots of us in the audience or like me, even like I aspired to hopefully get there one day. But yeah, you know, I love to just I hope this is like too much of a like a curveball question, but, you know, for, like, swim universe like you get up. You have, you know,

the Hawaiian shirt on and like you're talking, you don't like there's like, be like I've seen one of the videos and, like, you know, the Hawaiian shirt on and like, you're just talking about, you know, pool algae, etcetera. And then I've watched, you know, you drop the rap album in the past about, you know, the being the entrepreneur and, like,

you just go to, like, lots of these links to, like, just produce, like content were like, I think, like, I think people would like, really enjoy consuming, I guess I'm just curious, you know, from someone who's been working, I guess in, you know, the marketing slash designs lush, I guess. Contents based for a long time. What Something. You know that you've seen folks get wrong about content.

50:55

Oh, my God. I could probably talk about that for our Yeah, it is a curveball only because I didn't think about it beforehand. But I think a lot of people get held up on the numbers of content. You know, like the fact that you have to do it constantly that you have to have a lot. Look, it's all about the number. It's all about bigger and batter, and it's really not about that. And it's just an impossible thing to convey right It's like when you read an article out there like, How long should my block post be? The averages? 2000 words. We've done the math, and we've checked out millions of block post in the average numbers.

2000. Okay, well, that's some horseshit. Because, you know, do you really want to read? You know, 2000 words on how a mouse works or, you know, what's a guitar pick made out of its like its plastic? There's a very simple answer to that, and we don't need to know the mechanics. I think, you know, people get hung up on numbers when it comes to content,

and I think that that is unfortunate. And the other thing I think that people get wrong is what story is. I don't think people really know. Its story is, you know, most people don't study it, and I'm not not that I would say that I'm a student of story or that I do story or not, but I do study it a little bit.

52:18

You know, there's some things that

52:19

are just not interesting, you know, and it's like and there's sometimes things are not a story, but I hate when people say they're storytellers, I bums me out because I'm just like, Well, I get what you're saying, but are you really telling a story like our bloggers telling a story like no man, you're giving me, like, a magazine style of your fucking day and I don't care, you know? So maybe you should sit down and craft something. Maybe you should sit down and really, you know, think about it, work hard on it and come up with something that is compelling and that it's interesting not just to you,

but to others and to I don't know, you know, and even like with money lab. You know, I'm not the only person that looks at the stuff, you know, when I'm writing a journal entry about, you know, Spruce, or if I'm talking about, like what I'm doing now, which is like starting a podcast in a really low competition niche and seeing if that works, you know, I run that by other people to see like, Is this interesting? Am I saying this right?

Is this the right order of operations? Like, you know, every once in a while, you know, I might nail it which is very rare. But then sometimes I'll get like, Well, why? What's the Why in this? Why are you doing this? And were like, Why did you choose to use this software over this one? Like and I have to go back in and say, OK, you know what,

Right? Okay, here's why I did it. And then I also have to, like, maybe reorder things in this story because how would he was supposed to know when something happened? So it really is that there's a lot of editing, even in the things that you read on money lab, which may seem like stream of consciousness journal entry style things. But those things are thought out. You know, those those entries are thought through or I kind of like will go in just spitball go in like, just kind of, like, freeform, right?

And then, you know, have others come in and sort of reorganize it or like, maybe help me punch up some of the jokes too, because I don't not always that funny, but I might write a sentence and I will sit there and try to rewrite the sentence to make myself laugh. Yeah, Yes, I think you know, it's funny. You're so yeah, I mean, just like attention to detail and less focus on how many letters it took. You know how many characters or how many words or how Maney, how long your block posted How many images, like the correct answer is always,

however many it takes? Yeah, yeah, you know, in the same with, you know, your site. It's like I tell people, you know, like people like they just published articles and articles and articles and just keep publishing and like, wool. At a certain point, you're just publishing. The quality starts to diminish over time, and it's like you can't I don't know. That's kind of what I feel about just content in general is that the quality over time just sort of diminishes if you're more focused on the output in the numbers rather than the actual content itself.

No, no. Yeah, absolutely. That's good. If that makes any sense. Yeah. Trying to articulate the apple?

55:11

Yeah, that's really good. I hope this isn't too much of a curable either. But, you know, growing up or like, at least not for me, you know, lots of the media that I'm consuming, you know, it glorifies, you know, just like tech startups. Lots of these huge funding rounds, you know, acquisitions, mergers,

etcetera. And I love you know, your take of someone who is working on, you know, swim University. And like, I think I talked about this with a founder in the past on the podcast. But I think, ah, lot of it is like there's not a lot of people who glorify, you know, the SNB, even though they are profitable, who are, like, you know,

making more in revenue than like these start ups. Like, even though they're like turning out there like pushing out like another AI, just like n Plus one of like what another company is doing. There's not a lot of people who talk about, you know, the smaller companies were like the SNB's. And, you know, I just love you're taking someone who's working on, like a profitable hybrids business, you know, out of the space. Like, I guess, Yeah, that's what I'm gonna ask, you know, like, What's your take

56:5

on this? Who cares? Let's take, actually, just like you said that the thing that I brought up to my attention was, you know, I use this app. It's called front. Yeah, that's for email. You go on their website right now. There's a pink bar. The top that says we've raised 59 million in Serie C funding. Read the story. Here, do no one cares. You know,

you and I might care because we're in the space. But how many people that use front, actually you raised? Yeah, like who cares? Like, why don't you use that real estate for something that I was gonna help me manage my email better? You know, I don't know. That's how I feel about like, I understand that that's content for certain people. And then, you know, that's great. I don't know. I think like the question is sort of like What's the difference between these,

like large businesses and the smaller businesses? And I think there's so much more. If you look at all of the start ups that have raised funding, I feel like they all have the same story. We're not learning anything new here, right where if you went and interviewed a bunch of small business owners like everyone got to where they are, I feel like completely differently, you know? And it's so much more interesting to talk Teoh, a founder who, you know, it was just kind of doing this as a scrappy, you know, person, and not just trying to go and get as much money and get a buy out as fast as possible. It's a much more interesting to talk to somebody who's like Oh,

no, no, no. I plan on doing this for the rest of my life. This is why I like this. And that's kind of how I feel about, you know, some university and just what I do for a living. Everything they're never have. I once entertained the idea that, like I would sell some university. I've sold businesses before, but I wouldn't looks to universities like the thing that got me here. So I kind of cherish it. And I feel like I'll be the only person whoever uses that and you know, it's probably never going to be a $1,000,000 business,

and I'm completely okay with because I dont have any stress. I don't have to worry about 50,000 employees. Yeah, I worry about three. You know what it's like and leaving them It's like we're kind of, you know, we're friends. There's nothing stressful about it, but I get to earn a living and do whatever I want. So, no, I think that's a way more interesting story

58:27

to tell, you know? Absolutely. Yeah, that's really good. You know, this is, you know, the failure podcast tradition. But like Matsuoka, you know, March March 2nd, 2020. Had Teoh go back in time and, like, talk to you know, Matt Circle like post Bruce.

You know, after you know, like your post buyout, like, Super, you know, burn out of rails, etcetera. And, like, you know, this is just, like transitioning into your any founder. You know, out there who is listening who? You know,

whether it be in the trenches right now, whether it be, like, you know, going super City or like going super well for you. I guess. You know, What do you say, toe? You know, math. You know, in that moment,

59:4

you mean post the host of failure? I would have said See, See, this is what you get when you lose. Focus on what you're actually good at when you try to do something that you're not good at and you have no real interest in. And you're just on Lee concerned about growth and money. And this is what you get for that. You get this stress, you get toe own this story about yourself, you know, you get this failure and shame on you for

59:38

this is this is my negative motivation.

59:41

Shame on you for losing. Focus in on what got you here in the first place, you know, And I always That's a battle I think I will always wrestle with, which is, you know, they want to grow. I want to be even I want to make more money I want to do all this stuff And I keep forgetting that like the thing that got me here was caring about the content creation and doing that and being good at making videos and making podcasts and multimedia things that, like, you know, artistic will Artist ical. Yeah, article things rather than like development. I was never a programmer. I was always ah, designer first And I've always, you know,

had I think pretty good taste and what content is. And so as soon as I tried to do something off the beaten path of what I was kind of always been good at, You know, it's sort of like, Oh, no wonder you crashed in Bern. No wonder, you know, you're not in your wheelhouse, but, you know, I mean, that's just me. You know, I have a hard time staying focused on the singular thing because you know of shiny object syndrome and all that stuff. And so and,

yeah, I constantly get hit with that reminder, and I'll never learn my lesson. But, you know, I'm glad I did constantly get hit with it all the time. So at least it's like bumper bowling, like it's keeping me in the lane. But if it looks sloppy,

60:59

absolutely, you know, quick shoutout money lab, Danko, anything you're reading around or like any anywhere our listeners could find you on the Internet. You know, Twitter, social media, if you know,

61:9

if you're interested in, you know, anything that I've said in this podcast. Definitely money lab taco. I mean, that's just like I mean, what we have a podcast that we do every Monday, and we have videos that we're doing. We have content that we're putting out, and when I say we it's really just me and yeah, it's like a kind of a fun little brand email. There's email, you know? Yeah, I would say money lab would be, you know, unless you

61:35

in a swimming pool, it's gonna money. Absolutely. You know, And if any of our listeners air, you know, looking to, you know, start their dream of, you know, their new Andy been where Matt could, you know, just joined on. And you guys can take supercool press photos. Definitely. Reach out. Definitely,

definitely. Reach out. Absolutely. Matt, thank you so much for being on the podcast. It's been

61:53

a pleasure. No,

61:54

I appreciate it, man. Thank you. Yeah. That was another episode of the Hillary podcast. We're doing a bunch of these in the future. Stick around and stay too. Thank you for tuning into this episode of the Hillary podcast. I've been Brendan Hindalco, and once more, I'd like to thank our friends over at referral hero for making this podcast episode possible. If you're looking to grow your business organically through word of mouth, make sure to check out their tool that allow you to create and grow a referral program within minutes. More than 7000 companies are using it, already generating over 30 million leads, and now you can get it to for 20% off with deCODE Fail ary 20 Try it now for 14 days without any cost at referral.

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