hello. Welcome to another episode of the Hillary podcast where we pulled us. Go back on Founders Journey and take a look at the earlier projects that led them to where they are, uncovering the insights along the way that you can apply to your business. Today I am Brandon Hindalco, and on this episode, I'm extremely excited to be joined by Bernard Home, one of the co founders at Clear Scope. Bernard has a very impressive entrepreneurial history that spans back to 2012 where he ran a Dickey's Barbecue pit franchise in Texas with the six figure winnings he made from playing online poker in college, this episode was truly an interesting one. Instead of honing in on one particular Pasfield venture like we usually do with Bernard's experience across multiple industries and companies, we agreed that I'd be nice to approach, touching on the insights that he took away from each of them accompanying these In this episode, Bernard and I touch on the ability to package services at the top of the normal distribution, the idea of building things on a whim that has accompanied him across his entire journey. A running joke in the S E O industry and what to do when you get $87 in venture capital. Sit tight,

get another big ready and thank you for listening. This podcast wouldn't be possible without the help of our friends over at Referral Hero, the all in one platform to 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 Hillary Podcast, your one stop shop for failed ventures, and they're fun days. Um, today I'm so excited to have Bernard Huang on the podcast, who is who's historically studied economics at beauty A. He's made 100 $20,000 playing online poker between 19,000 then and received $37 or received $87 in venture capital for matches.

Sadowski and recent Horowitz. He's also previously part of 500 side of distribution team. And he's the current co founder. It mushi labs and clear scopes. Hello, Bernard. Thank you for being in the five. Cassidy.

Okay, Brandon, Thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

No, no. Yeah, absolutely. You know, you've done, like, all these great, great things, but I love to just scale it back. You know, um, and bring it back to, like, the beginning. If you'd love Teoh. I love if you could,

Like, just introduce yourself. Maybe, like, give yourself a like 30 is like an elevator pitch on. Like what you've done. Um, And what you're doing now?

Of course. So long story short. The reason why I'm here on the failure fail ary podcast. It's because you just had a track record of mostly failure. I would say early on as, ah, as a young kid aways entrepreneurial started four games break dance clubs in middle school. I always knew that my mind was set on being an entrepreneur and fast forward on 31 years old. Now I'd say it's been a challenging and failing of they last 10 years to really get myself to this point. So success definitely doesn't come overnight, for most people accept when it comes. When it rains, it pours.

No, absolutely. I love that. You know, I love to, you know, after this podcast, maybe talk about, like, the break dancing clubs that you started. But I love to just, you know, scale it back to, um, your first ever failed quote unquote venture. Um, this is the Dickies barbecue pit that you bought in Texas with your poker winnings.

I love you. Could, you know, just contextualized this. Um, just talk about this a little more.

Yeah. So backtrack in college, right? I was kind of the heydays of online poker. We're talking poker stars. Full tilt, the Chris Moneymaker era. Where is the guy? Qualified from pokerstars and the like, a really small satellite and then went on to win the World Series of Poker in 2004 and PokerStars it a monumental job glorifying the skies. Win and I caught on to the trend, so I say, I don't know. I got to get myself into some some online poker. Need a little over $120,000 playing no limit Texas. Hold them. And somebody,

some friends of mine approached me with a an idea of taking over a foreclosed Dickie's barbecue pit, which is a French I Zobel barbecue restaurant in Austin, because I was going to school at University of Texas at time. The rationale was we could get it off the market for cheap because the restaurant was foreclosed. And when we did the math on paper, assuming that we could hit the same revenue numbers up the previous owner hit, we would actually be making money because he had to go through financing loans that made his overall costs higher. So looking at just the numbers on the paper were like, Yeah, this is a solid by. We should be cash flowing 2 to $3000 per month. No problem. And that was the reason why I got into the Dickies barbecue pit. I also for good measure, ran the idea by my dad. And he was like Bernard,

No, look, sound on paper. So I had the sign off from the dad. The money in the bank account. I said, Why not

The mess checked out and like, it was all good, not

checked out. So it's all

good? Yeah, absolutely. And this was, like just for like, context was this, you know, freshman year, sophomore year in college,

this waas junior year. Wow. So I was 20 years old at the time, And, um kind of like failing out of school. Kind of guy graduated with a 2.71 g p a. Because it barely went to class because I was like, Well, I could go to class and all asleep listening to the professor. Or I could stay up on Thursday night till 6 a.m. Playing online poker, making hundreds if not thousands of dollars. So why wouldn't I be the one that, um So that's that's what Ah, a bit more context about

none of the absolutely. And like, I assume I would hope I'm right in assuming that like this was never there was not your That was your first rodeo in the restaurant industry. Like you've never owned a restaurant in the past. I love to just, you know, catcher, I guess Experience of, you know, juggling being a student, you know, like making online poker on the side, are making money, playing online, poker on the side, and, like running the Dickies barbecue pit. How is that?

Yeah, honestly. So Brennan and I were speaking a little bit before the broadcast, and Brendan was like, man, and doing this of meeting battle through this. And guess what? I'm only 19 and done. My dude man reminds me of a younger version of myself. I was learning to code, um, doing the stickies barbecue thing, playing online poker, try and could put a class and, you know, living on red bulls and five hour energy drinks. And honestly,

like looking back on it now, I didn't really do a good job juggling any of it at the end of the day, right? You hear the conventional wisdom over and over again, which is like, get great sleep, take care of your body and everything else will fall into place. And as a 20 year old, rather egotistical, prideful person at the time because I was making good amount of money buying a restaurant that I have on top of this world. Um, I was not doing a good job with any of that stuff, but as a 20 year old, you kind of can get away from it. Get away with it, as in your body can rebound,

it can recover. And you just Oh, well, this this isn't so bad. And as I've grown older, if I If I even considered pulling an all nighter, which I would not I'd be like debt. I just completely dysfunctional, probably the next day and the next next day and the analysis reverberating effect. So I feel like the core cause if I'm like, look back in hindsight of all of this cookie, my hand in multiple cookie jars was really the fact that nothing specifically waas taking off slash something I was really truly passionate about. And so as a result, it was very easy to spread myself very fed, right? Yeah,

online poker was great, but it was also very taxing, very tiring. It's not like every day you walk into your to play and you make money, you're literally flipping a coin 55% of the time. You're gonna win 45% of time. You're gonna lose. Obviously, you flip it 1000 times, you're gonna end up with 550 wins, 450 losses, probably. And there's your $100 that's what you're doing. But some days you go in and, well, it just happened that lady luck was not on my side.

And so it was a very gruelling grind and at the same time, the restaurant All right, there's a lot of a lot of problems with that which will get into in just a bit. And so, yeah, I was teaching myself to code toe also kind of explore different paths. And I would say that OK, yes, I was spreading myself thin and that inherently is bad and I was unnecessarily focused on anything. But the thing that you should do what you're doing while you're young is just getting as much perspective as as you can write, increasing your experience, your network, your perspective, and thus contributing to your future net present value. And the thing is, when you do find something that sticks and you'll know when it's six.

It's just this like thing Where that Wow. Okay, like I This is something that, like, I want to go all in on then at that time, go all in on that But before that, yet spread yourself, then It's not a bad thing, but you should view it in the lens of right. I'm gaining experience. I'm gaining perspective. And that's why I'll do all of these things. And, yeah, you might do him all fairly well, but not excellently. And that's kind of the, uh, court take away.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, thank you for saying I think, um, one thing like I really just want to touch on like I'll get into is like, um I think like, you know, when you're young, I don't know. I think one of my one of my close mentor said this. But like when you're young, you know, you have, like, the capacity just like outbreak, just like anyone who is like or than you And like so,

you know, like you could have the, you know, four time a week. All nighter, Teoh, push code. Do whatever designed like a new products fact, But like when you're older, I mean, like, I think that's like, even now I feel like I'm a little jaded to like the all nighter, even though, like I do pull something like constantly is very, very taxing.

Um, you know, I'd love to just I definitely know resonate with what she said, Um, I made, like, got a little lost their because, like, I was just talking, you know, like it was just like I was taking a lot of the advice to heart. But I love to just like, you know, bring it back to, like, the Dickies barbecue,

I guess. You know, you talked about, um, things just being, like, not sticky, right? Um, what was the moment there like, what was the pivotal point running the restaurant when you knew this wasn't something you would do, you know, full time in the future or when would you know? You know, were there moments that you could illustrate that led to the flight in every failure?

Totally. So I think that as someone who played online poker did fairly well that my overall skew of how the world works in terms of money just simply didn't have as many data points. So I assumed that I could just buy a franchise like you could envision buying like a McDonald's and financing it. And that was, it is was gonna start generating money for me. But I had a zero experience in man management and zero experience with actually just business in general. So there are a lot of problems that we, as four co owners had. And I would say that the biggest problem is what I call least common denominator syndrome. Please. Common denominator syndrome stands for the fact that say, you're in a spend shirt with four other people and everyone's equal stake. Everyone has then 20% of the business. The problem with five people having 20% of the business and being fairly inexperienced is that everyone's going toe look at everybody else's contributions and say, Oh, OK, person number two or number three is literally not contributing anything,

and I'm having to come in on weekends or nights to do ships. Well, what the hell is that? What? Why should like this person who's Person number three like needs to like step up their game? But as a 20 year old who was just simply in a lot of different ways, not well equipped with communication skills, management skills, right? I just simply didn't feel that involved or that, like into that business, just as a 20% stake holder, right? It's different now where me and my co founder, we're 50 50. If I do something,

I get 50% of the benefit, or 50% of the consequence. So there is that conventional wisdom that whole Graham wrote in an essay on his ah corpus of startup stuff where it's like, Don't found the company with, Well, don't solo found the company. And also don't I found the company with, like, more than three founders. Something like that that I feel like is a good than like experience that I took away. It's like OK, when you found a company with more than three. Just the overall steak or skin in the game that somebody has within that company just tends to be not. Maybe not nearly enough that it should be so That was problem number one, and then problem number two was that I didn't understand the concept of systems which finally enough. If you study poker,

poker is simply just a system, and it's actually the one of the things that can separate winners. Extreme winners from extreme losers. So let's talk about what I mean by systems. When you first get started with anything, really in life, people are going to tell you, Oh, Brendan or Bernard, you're not so good at soccer or violin or school, and a lot of times you take that personally. But you just say, OK, I'm somebody who is just not good at violin where, as a matter of fact, there is,

like a layer of abstraction that actually goes above that. Which is to say that, Okay, now, in terms of poker, you can come and say I am losing money at poker. Therefore, I am bad at poker. Well, the thing is, when you're playing poker, what you are doing is that you're performing a sequence of logical decisions, and when you're actually losing at poker, what's losing is not you, but you're Siris of logical decisions. Therefore,

what you should then think about is that when you're a losing poker player, the system that you are subscribed to is a losing system. Therefore, to improve, you enhance the system and study the flaws in the system, and then you become a better player. And that's essentially then, how one should think about and the Faten, right? If you're a bad violin player, it's not because you're necessarily bad at violin, but they're bad at practicing violin or you're just simply not practicing. And so that's then the objective for you to fix. If you wanted to get better and then you understand. Okay, well,

if I play one hand and I lose that, that's okay, because right this poker game is a game of variants and luck. And I know that over 1000 situations that overall and come up net positive so that you condensed start to abstract away a bunch of that emotion that's tied to you as a clear and you as a person, as it relates to then the business or the thing that you're trying to get better at. And that is then something that I had no actual concrete idea about. But I was doing fairly well. I just didn't know that that system based approach that I had her poker applies to running anything right, So a standard operating procedure in business speak is literally a checklist of things that somebody is supposed to do for something. So if you open a restaurant, you should have a standard operating procedure that says something along the lines of open the lights, sweep the floors, make sure that the fries are in the fryer basket. The fryer is up to temperature and all of that stuff, and the most well run businesses have the best flesh out standard operating procedures. This is none is a defense against the fact that employees or people a make errors and be are going to leave or do whatever they want to do,

regardless of the fact. So systems then turn essentially people into human cox, where you say, OK, do exactly this in this order, And what we struggled with was that some employees were good and some employees were bad and good ones would can't believe, because it's a blue collars with a job, and we would then higher in that employees and things that needed to be done wouldn't get done on. We would sit around and scratch our heads and say, Oh, man, like we have a employee problem. Well, problem that we had was that no one was really feeling super accountable or is a maybe a couple of people that were pretty accountable, but they got worn out because they were doing all the work. And I was one of the lazier one.

So I was, like, just sitting on the sidelines by also then right? We didn't have a reputed herbal system. I would just hand out to employees used to say, OK, do exactly this. Okay, You're not doing it. You're fired. All right. Ah, very important thing that I learned about that as well. So it's things just didn't get done, which, like Phil, fail fire inspections. We would, um no one wanted to really step up because no one had that much skin in the game in terms of equity perspectives. And over the course of 13 months straight went out of business.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, thanks for being vulnerable. And then I'm just like, taking this chronologically. You I asked him graduate Uta and then move on to becoming one of the co founders at most. Um, I most like

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. So there's online poker thing. I got tired of it. I think at the end of ah, like doing it for a few years, I Well, the thing is, it became more and more difficult to winter. So, and the reason why that happened is because the United States passed these laws that made it illegal to gamble online. And poker was always in that gray area where people would argue, Well, it's not really grappling. You're it's a game of skill, and it's great,

right? It is definitely a game of skill, but it is also perform of gambling. So they made it really difficult for people to put money online with credit cards. They ban all of the visa MasterCard's from allowing deposits online, so became very difficult for people to put money online, and as a result, people then just stopped putting money online. And the thing about poker is that if you're winning somebody else's losing, and if there's not that many people that are losing players still playing poker, well, then you're 55 45 coin flip becomes guess what, 51 49 or 50 50 and so that then starts to wear on you when the pool of players starts heat operating. So I said, OK, right.

This was a thing that was good while it lasted, but I gotta get out. I do something that's investing in a more long term pass because this thing not a long term path in with the state of how things are going. So I obviously this is around now, like 2011. It's like Yeah, startups, accelerators, Let's let's go! And I had a couple of friends who applied to their Techstars or Y Combinator 500 500 was around at that time and beta spring and they got an interview to Beta Spring, which was based in Providence, Rhode Island, for a educational startup idea. And then I just happen to catch up with them one day and I was like, Yeah, I'm doing this,

like on my poker thing. I've also just been teaching myself how to do some front end and back and development, and I'm really interested in start out similarly. Oh, why don't you just a joy in our teeth? Because, you know, we've got this interview and why not? How long? It's like I Why not? Let's go, Uh, topped on Teoh these two friends. I got this interview and we got it. They gave me $1000 a Gadahn right on. Still,

like, kind of thinking to myself, man, And I just like I just oh, like in my hoe karmic six cigarettes got into an accelerator like season break. So we got in, um, and also at the same time that the reason why I was teaching myself out of code was because I was like, Man, this brick and mortar of this restaurant saw that's not dust like, let's not much that, like the software software seems to be what's up? My breaking heart. And that's a lot of hard work. Um, on Syria, we we got in and we went through the accelerator broke up?

Yeah, absolutely. I love to just, you know, scale back here. Um, you know, you talk about are you graduate, Uta? And you like, I assume, like the rial professional industry work you've had, you know, not in software was just like the Dickies barbecue pit. I guess I'm just curious. You know how, why or what made you want to be a founder?

You know, like even though this opportunity of just, like, joining, like a team, just like super like on the swat there. Um, I'm just curious, you know, like how? What? You know, Why didn't you look for a job in industry or what made you, you know, get excited about startups and, like, accelerators,

etcetera? Yeah. You know, I think this just been like a deep seated feeling that I've felt from a very young age where I've always just wanted to do whatever I want to dio, however I want to do it. And the idea of working for somebody else never really felt terribly appealing. And so, as a result, I was always the guy that would go out and try a bunch of stuff. And I would say that I had enough of a taste of success of all of the things that I did try which made me want more. And that's then what? I was operating off.

Yeah. Yeah. So then you you know, you joined this team of your friends who just got it. Who got an interview at Beta spring, and they got a spotted bass spring and you say it was like an educational startup. Did that You know Did that change? And like, when did that change? Because I have it as a mobile. CRM?

Yes. Yes. So it changed, like every other week. Our idea. We were all over the place as I was back in the day. Um, yeah. So it was an educational start. Start up. But then we were like, OK, well, I don't know how this came about, Like, forget finer details, but we're like,

let's make a cloud address book, right? And this is keeping minuses. And 20 like, 11 where Cloud was not nearly as ubiquitous as it once it does sound the now, but we're like, Yeah, well, make your contacts sink your own to your computer. And, um then literally that same week, Apple got on the stage on worldwide developer conference and announced iCloud Well, hot man, our ideas dead. But I cloud is it's just gonna do exactly this. Let's not do that.

Let us do like, uh, a kick starter. But for startups is also not inherently a bad idea. But again, the mindless Unlike 20 years old, we have $20,000 of capital toe work with, and so we we literally called it starter or on that, uh, we ran with that idea for a couple of weeks. And the mentors and the like, the partners a beta spring like man. What are you guys doing? Fund the use of that? You could start thinking that funds other funds. You're not experienced enough.

You know how the network connections. Nor do you have the capital to pull something like that off. And as a young, stubborn 20 year old entrepreneur, which most entrepreneurs are at the start stubborn white dot Dude, we know better than you do. And you usually don't know better than you notes dio, but yeah, so we run with that. And then it was like, three weeks, the demo day. But we still had nothing like no traction, no product on then. The ah, the be partners at data string were like,

Look good, you need something, So I'm gonna tell you what's good. What is good is a mobile crm. As that's what you're gonna build. And we had no better idea, So it was not okay. That's what we're gonna build in ways that And then we did it at that. No day. And I'd say the product itself was well, a mobile CRM definitely is old. So it got something about attraction?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I was like, we were talking about this, but I thought it was, like, a little similar to or, you know, reported for email. But, you know, for a mobile where you know, it even created, like,

sort of like this, like, caller i d it showed up. You know, they showed their phone there, email of their, you know, calendar, any notes that you've had about them, unlike your screen. Um, And then you guys pivot again to, ah, Mobile secretary after the mobile serum.

Yeah. So that was around the era where, like, voice to text, like Siri essentially was like, becoming more of a thing. So there is this, like STK called, like Dragon Dictation, which I feel like Apple may have purchased. In any case, it was like, Oh, it would be really cool. Have bullets, just like you would just talk to your phone. Ah,

you would say, you know, give it commands like, Oh, call Brendan back one week from now and it would revived you the culprit. Then back when we from now on. So we made that happen. Except, um I think that our hearts were just not in it like he did nine. Now, I'm like a 21 year old, maybe a 22 year old. I'm building mobile assistant software, and I have literally not felt the pain that I am, like designing this product or realtors. We call them Road of War in years.

Realtors. People that are literally in their car, driving around doing sales, were actually using our product there like, Dude, just This is amazing, right? I can pop up the call, tell my mobile assistant or mobile secretary most to log some notes until my crn and yeah, this is totally it. But my co founder and eyes hearts, we're just not I was really into it, but, um, so we ended up shutting back down because we also just didn't have the right mindset in the right experience, too. Pull off like this. Like in never?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm just curious or like, this is kind of like a nuance, you know, But I guess you know, in the position where you were where you know you're running us uh, start up and like, it's, you know, the distraction. There's people who are giving you validation every day. Who are saying, Yeah, I love this product. Um,

you know, I guess I'm just Is Was it just because you and your co founders, like, didn't, you know, find real joy? Or like you guys weren't really solving a problem that you guys liked, that you ended up shutting down most Sekar

kind us? I think if I'm to break this down into a few different pools of percentages that then some up to the reason why we just couldn't execute properly upon what we had, I would say one. And this is perhaps one of the most common with young founders is shiny object syndrome, right? Like your look. We're looking around us. We're seeing Instagram pop up self or face cell to Facebook for a $1,000,000,000 for seeing of I and be like the new cool, hot shit that all our peers are like all raving about. And here we are building a business to business application that well, clearly is not very sexy at all. And so our minds were just simply always wandering to say well like, is there something better right? Is the grass greener? If we were to release something cool like all kickstart or that thing is cool or at all is creative, all these really dope projects are coming out. And so there was that link early,

feeling a promo of, like way have something, but it's not like and it's working, but, like, couldn't there be something better? And actually, I think though some of the wisest words that, like, make a lot of sense, our life just got to keep chopping wood right. You find something that works and it's making money and you're getting traction, then, yes, like it's a grind and you're gonna keep chopping wood and you just keep chopping the wood until you're rich or it's not working anymore, in which case you sell it and then you find something else.

So that was like a very significant bucket. Was this like always chasing after something that could be better, even though we had something pretty good and then the second part of it, which also kind of wraps into this, was the experience right? Like I had never truly dealt with startup failure from a technology or software perspective, so I didn't even know how good I had it, right. It was just like, OK, like, back in that day, you could kind of just build it and they would kind of just come, come. You could I mean, you had,

like, stoke the fire a little bit, which was a lot easier back in 2011 because you were just, like, release a TechCrunch article on my oh, my God. Right before red check Crushed back. Like, you know, you got, like, a wired mention on Oh, my God. People read wired back then and then all of a sudden, 10,000 insults, whatever you're like off the recent.

So it was just, like, Okay, like that didn't seem too hard on. So my inexperience of like running and building something up from scratch also didn't make me recognize that we had something like that. Good. And then the last bit was just like business might. I'd also didn't have that business mine to, like, say OK, actually, right. What is the revenue model? That would make sense. And, you know,

are we charging per subscription? Are we charging her license? Obviously everyone now charges per subscription because that's the good stuff for the business, right? Predictable revenue. But back then I had no idea what were the right business models are or the right pricing points that you should test pricing constantly. You should do all of these different things. So just take that those three Chinese objects and drum, Um, my inexperience with growing and acknowledging something valuable And, um, my inexperience with capturing about you.

Uh, yeah. And I'm just curious. Do you think there is space for most like today to exist

That I feel like that's where you see, you know, Google assistant? That's where you feel like the Serie That's essentially what most sack could have been. Yeah, could have been, but we were well, like, ill equipped to have executed on it as beautifully as all of these other people have breath. And so at the end of the day, then, right, the ideas are a dime a dozen, and it really does come down to execution

like yeah, and yeah, and I think fundamentally, you know, they kind of moved away from where you guys didn't think was sexy. They pushing a Google assistant in Syria for consumer. When I guess you're working for, you know, business business s Oh, you know, just like moving forward chronologically again. But you go from most sick and then, you know, that shuts down and then you are There's a period of you know, there's a period of about maybe 45 months before you become the co founder of Food by people that start up or like, a company. That's I I loved. I loved the Navy knows simplicity.

Yes, yes. So all right, all throughout this right again, I'm like a kind of replica of what you're doing. I've coated a you commerce website for a food blogging friend of mine who wanted to sell Macron's online on, and she was doing fairly well, like getting a grant to Brandon orders through this like PHP Web site that I built for her and honestly, men, there's an opportunity here specifically because the United States I had to just pass some laws called cottage food loss that made it legal for people to bake from home and sell it. And I had to be specifically baked goods. You could Google conduit cottage food laws, but they were passed in, like 2013 or 2012 and every state as their own requirements. Some states don't allow it. It's a state by state sort of thing. And I will remember because I was talking to somebody about most SEC,

like in the accelerator program. He was this guy who built since so be, which sold to Group Me, which sold to Skype, which holds to Microsoft on. And he distinctly doesn't remember telling me this. But I remember him like this, and he was like Bernard, there are like, four reasons why a technology start up would come to exist. I know as well what are those When he was like, all right, get either saves people time. It saves people money. Something legally has changed to make something possible that was not possible before. And society has changed too,

then want to adopt something that was previously looked upon as, uh, like not favorable. So a societal change, a legal change or a thing that makes people money or saves people time. We like your your application needs to fall into one of these buckets or else is that in the water before it even started and now like looking back on it. It's like it's a high level framework of evaluating, like business ideas, right? Consumers? If you're targeting consumer, it's completely different playing field because consumers are like cats do whatever they want. Leisure is like this weird concept to stay anyway, So if you're operating with them business business, that's what it has to do. Medica,

ideally like, fit into all of those trends, makes people money, saves people time. Something legally has changed and society is more willing to adopt that thing. So I was looking at my friend's website that I built. I mean, oh, shit, there's an opportunity right? Is gonna help people make money and it's now legally possible, right? And those are like, kind of where massive amounts of money are made very quickly. Like when lead weed is legalized in California, Then NASA amounts of wealth generated very quickly something Okay,

I got to do the stick and take advantage of, um, food by people are like we her website that I built for her was literally called macaroons by J. But hey, so we're like all the natural extension of this would be food by people and s Oh, yeah. I went back from New England to Austin because she was in Austin, and the co founder that I'm currently working with was my co founder, then for food by people. And we did that for about eight months. Got nowhere. Well, we've got a few like home bakers on board, but really, I think it's still a good idea. I just think about also.

I didn't have the network, the network and the experience to pull it on. I think the marketplace like that has to You have to raise, probably like we didn't raise money. We raised $87. I have to raise a fair amount of money and then understand the unit economics. Understand the like platform be kitsch problem. So if you're doing any kind of market place, the problem with most marketplaces is that things will just be taken off the market place. I used to say, You sell me some cookies and I really like your cookies. Well, the next time I buy your cookies, chances are I'm gonna have your email or your phone number, and I'll just text you and the I want your cookies. But let's just forget this food by people thinking because they take,

like, 20%. Let's just transact and I'll give you the cash and everyone top here. And so that's what happens with most platforms is what we catch, Um, in which case there are ways to solve. For that, you could imagine Airbnb uber get right. These are marketplaces that have solved for that. So it's either than you want very infrequent one time transactions that are large amounts of dollars. So Airbnb, right? Then you could imagine a world where food by people just does, like catering for large events, right? And so it's a like a one to your thing.

But then someone places a large order. The next year it might look for a different vendor, and that's an interational. Could work or you need a very lo like No, it doesn't have to be low. It's a high frequency like agnostic service, so you can imagine, like cookie delivery or people picking you up, dropping you off at some other place. You don't care who does it just as long as somebody doesn't want, and the high frequency amount of it means that you can take you know 10,000 transactions at $5 each, and that would be perfect. You'd make about dollars at that point or vice versa. Right? You take, um,

you have $1000 catering orders, and then you do 50 of those. Yeah, that would then also work where you get, like, screwed over is in, like, the middle of the pack. In any case, like, I didn't really understand any of this either. But it is just like people would transact, and we just see them to superior. And really Oh, man, how are you gonna make money?

We take 10% of a $24 a dozen cookie order we make you know, $4.80 on were like, Man, we need, like, 200 of these per month toe happen to make $1000. I'm not gonna work like where this is not going to get the ball. You to make the unit economics that this even happened? Because every time somebody does that, then like, we don't see them.

If you Absolutely yeah, And then you know something I would love to touch on here is just you know, you guys is huge. investment round. You know, you raised $87 in total. You guys are food by people. Was part of a like a project out of macho Syglowski. He, you know, pick maybe pen startups to give, like, $37 to you and then a 16 z jumped on your bandwagon and also provided $50 dollar $50? Yeah, we're not missing, you know, millions here.

Just like 87 straight of dollars. What did you guys spend you know, the money on or was there anything you know? Like, what was being part of this? Like, I'll be it very, you know, like jokey but like, you know, like like an actual

idea. Yeah. Yeah. So, Ma Che, he's the founder. A pin board. He literally was, like, satirical on Silicon Valley. Essentially. And he was just like, You don't need money from venture capitalists. Toe. Get something off the ground. You just need to do it up. And really,

what you need is like grit, execution in a little bit of press on years, I I can give you the little bit of press, but I can't give you the grit in the execution that's still letting you. And so he jokingly created this thing. He'll be like prosperity, like cloud, whatever. I don't know you. And then it blew up on hacker news, which is, like, y Combinator is like forums. And it was just like, yeah, apply.

And he liked manually selected from, like, 300 applicants, like 10 people who could actually do something with execution and a little bit of press. And so, like, we qualify in that realm. At that time, though, I was still very bullish on venture capital was all They would do this, get some better capital, and, you know, blow this up because that's kind of the way that the media was portraying. Most successful companies just take and capital you grow takes a more venture capital. I p m That's how you succeed.

So, um yeah, I didn't really realize, though at the time that, like, his whole thing, was like a satire upon venture capital. And so we kind of like butted heads about that business sale. I'm gonna use this toe symmetric palpable. What are you doing?

Any way you like those?

Yeah, for $87 then. Ah ah, really like that. But anyway, So it was just a basically a publicity's stunt that got us again of unto attraction. But I also just didn't really understand what getting attraction men tary and like, how to capture the value from that traction efficiently and effectively. So always just really good at getting traction and really bad monetizing the traction on it was then, at that point, where will my bank account literally ran dry? I think I had, like, $80 left, and I was like, OK, I clearly just don't know what I'm doing. I am. I'm gonna throw in the flag, I go move to San Francisco, join a Y Combinator startup and see how see how it's done over in the land of unicorns and so that I moved to San Francisco enjoying that this y Combinator startup called reporting to close.

Yeah, and then that eventually gets acquired

that eventually gets acquired after I'd say a good 656 years. Yeah, my court take away with working at a y Combinator startup in Silicon Valley. The heart too tech, is that Yeah, it's something that I recommend. If you're interested in running your own ship starting your own start up at some point that you dio because, well, A when I move there on like, Okay, what's what's so special about here? The Why does why Khamenei or say, You have to come here for three months. She even belong in the programme, whereas techstars and whatever all I know is coming to Seattle like what? What is it about San Francisco? And what I learned is that it's really just the density of talent and the density of money,

as in people who have been succeeding in tack or want to work in tech end up in Silicon Valley. Right and Silicon Valley is filled with hustlers, and a lot of the hustlers are people like you and I, and people like you and I, we get started. We get successful because we go to people and we ask for help so you can envision a world. Call it 10 years from now, where you are fairly successful. You're running some software. Business is doing really well, and someone approaches you. Who's 19? It was in Berkeley who's hustling. They're but off and they say, Brandon, I love to grab coffee with you.

Pick your brain right you've done so Well, what are you gonna do? You gonna help this person? Because that was you 10 years ago. Whose That's what Silicon Valley is filled up with. So driving coffee, corrupting drink. That's what people do, like literally nonstop, like people do it. You people help you. And so there's this, like, kind of like pate over, pay it backward, kind of like mentality.

Where I was once you and you know, we're all in this together, it's very eco. J. Murray Very Ah,

everyone knows

you turn around. And Simitis? Yes. So that's why I would recommend going. But probably now add a caveat. It's probably more important if you're like a nontechnical person, because if you're a non technical person, non technical means like cannot code. Um, your value that you bring to the early stages of a business is usually net work. So there's a saying like you're nontechnical, your network is your net worse, and it's a pretty good way of summing up that that's true, right? As the non technical founder, should you become one in the future. Anybody?

Your job is to get sales, write it in a startup you have really two functions. Build product, get sales. You cannot build a product that you get sales. So, uh, anything other than that is essentially just wrapped up into that, right? Okay, you could do design work. Okay, That's building products. You can, like, run Facebook ads. Well, that's getting

saying Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've done a great job. You know, like, over this, like, interviewer all over this talk of, like, just like, distilling lots of things down, you know, like, high level or is like, this is the four reasons you need to fill the star of the yeah, does really

the problem with marketplace. And

I think that's like, that's

what you learned through. Like, uh, failing, right.

And then yes. Oh, I love that you touched on this topic of, you know, being like a nontechnical employee because you join you joined 42 floors as a growth hacker. Yeah. Um, yeah. And then you were a part of it as or did you leave prior to getting acquired?

I did leave prior to it getting acquired because what I learned was that the court take away when I, like, came to San Francisco. Is that like I wanted to know what it was like and what was the secret sauce. But then when I got on the inside of a start up, I realized that there was no secret sauce. People do go to San Francisco because, like I mentioned, there is a density of talent, a density of money, which tends to breed more serendipity. But there was no super sauce right. The founders were figuring it out, too. There's it's was like not a specifically magical place. And Ma Che waas for the most part, right?

You needed you grip, you need a hustle. You need a bit of luck blind, but then that's it. Some ideas do require a bit of capital talking hardware or things that are within revamping the finance industry. But outside of those, you could just be one guy is sitting in his boxers coding in a garage somewhere and one other guy being a salesperson, going around knocking on doors and don't really need that much venture capital to get most things off the ground. And so, after about a year, 18 months, a year and 1/2 Oh, yeah, from there was nothing super crazy about here. I'm ready to go, helping to it again.

And so I partnered with the same co found there in the food by people era. He also moved out to San Francisco, see what it was like over there. He's been the technical co founder of, um, well, clear scope of Mushi labs of all of the recent things that I've done, and he pitched me on this idea of a coaching class or for competitive Cave A has called Game Runners, which was named because there was this coaching flat or online poker. All right, where we it's called Card a Runner and you would subscribe for late 99 bucks a month. And these really high level online poker pros would make videos much like Linda our skill share. How about two playing online poker? But the thing about online poker, because that is very tied to money. If you can increase your system,

where your knowledge by a person and you're playing $1000 buy $1000 buy ins, 100 bucks is literally a drop in the bucket to people paid that they did fairly well. We're that Let's take this, but help kids get better at Leak of alleged, sir. And like I said, I still had Hadn't settled on me that OK, we'll do. Kids have money? No. Really? Okay. Well, then who has money? The parents Do parents pay for their kids to get better at a game? No.

Currently, obviously, like is did the Elektronik sports things a trend that will, I think, continue to grow. But we're went back the same marketplaces. There's leakage for seeing kids. We like one shouldn't got some press and got some users that kids be like, Oh, you want toe? You want toe train on Friday night at 9 p.m. And then one could be like, Yeah, let's do it on then. You know, like that an hour before will send, like,

a message through our platform. Like Sorry. My mom, My mom is making you sleep early tonight, you know, like I just can't do it like, dude, how are you gonna bake, like, $10,000 above, like, pay for our red in San Francisco to stay lives Not gonna happen, but than the serendipity part was that I did this growth work for 42 floors, 42 floors, part of the Y Combinator and 500 startups network people would go to them and say, Wow,

when I Google San Francisco office space, you show up number one also New York City also of man, huh? How did you do it? And then they would just point to me and the well, he did it it. If you want to help, you should go talk to him. So, like all these like door dash problem old trails compass, right? They all came because I do. The people at 42 floor says that you're the guy to go to you for this s CEO stuff, and then I'm working on game runners. I tell them No, no,

no. I'm working on this game runner big shouldn't go fight somebody else. And now it is. All right, man. Well, we just raised, like, $50 million we need some help with this stuff. So you just let us know how awesome availability. And then my bank account is again running dry game runners, not buddy. And, like, 100 And I look at each other way, dude.

Well, we just take this buddy from these adventure packed narratives. Do consulting were baked coming to us say we have muddy and we watch services. So then we transitioned into a search engine optimization consulting where that's where it started to click. Oh, you gotta sell something that people want to buy. Hopefully, there's a lot of those people, and they're willing to pay a lot of buddy. Obviously, you could, like, adjust those levers where you could say OK, a huge amount of people paying a small amount of money has your neck. And then for a small amount of money, paying a small amount of people paying a huge amount of money.

That's your enterprise like software or resource planning software's. But then right anywhere in the middle is fair game as well. And so that's where, like the concept that's product market fit are you have a product, you have a market and you have a business model. And that's how it's to gut this. And that's where collisions. Okay, right, we'll be selling something people want to pay for. Or else we're just not gonna be making buddy. Yeah, yeah, consulting. I do you recommend consulting as like an intermediary step for anybody who's say considering like making the leap from Ah, like,

say, in house or like a side hustle. Like do some consulting. It teaches you how to sell. It teaches you how to negotiate out of package at a set. Expectations How did deliver how to be business competent? And these are all very important skills that I've picked up through consulting. Right? If someone emails you, it's not OK to let that email sit in your inbox for a week. 24 hours is about my going like Paradyne. I didn't you know, it'll be returned at least by the 24 hour mark. Obviously, I try to do that sooner, and then it teaches you the importance of following up right when you like.

Asked someone paid by my stuff oftentimes will just not respond to you right on. Then, when you're like that, it started just like oh, okay. I guess that's done. Well, guess what people have their lives to write. Just because they don't respond to you doesn't mean that, you know? So I when I was, like, framing all of this like not now means not know right that they're like they happen literally. Say no, I'm good. I'm not gonna buy this sentence.

I don't know, But if you didn't reply, if you're like, OK, like, I don't have the budget. Okay, well, let me follow up in another three months and another quarter. Maybe you'll have budget that, and you'd be surprised. Like people are like, Oh, great. Yeah. Like now I have budget,

and it's like, Okay, there you go. Right. Or like someone literally Oh, it slipped my mind because my kid was sick that a and other things just piled up.

Yeah. Yeah. You got the cell? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I'll said, Look, I'm gonna We're gonna cut this out. But I just wanted to check, like, very good on time. I know. We had, like, until 10. 30.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I probably have to run in there like, about five minutes.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because I want to feel, like, kind of just get into mushi labs. Tell Lincoln maybe

Yeah, yeah, let's talk about that and then I'll have to run.

Okay. Sure. Sure, Yeah. I don't want to just like it into, like, a lot of time, but yet so Yeah, sure. You know, like, last unpacked their you know special shoutout Hong soo, who has been here co funder for, you know, like lots of the start ups, but yeah, and then,

you know, San Francisco, I guess you know, being like distribution adviser. And like, talking to, like, all the stars and like, talking about S E O. You move forward to finally and over, like after your 10 year runner, like your ex CIA run, you move into Mushi Labs. Um, you know, I love to play this game with finders,

but, like, would you I you know, I love if you could, you know, explain If you were talking to a 10 year old and said, Like when did you she allowed to do or what is clear? What is clear scope do, Um what would you say?

Yeah, I would say we help people. Yeah, like when you do a search on Google, you help people show up higher off. That's a few. Right? So that class of, um, thing is what people would call search engine optimization because optimizing your website to show up higher up when people do searches on Google. That then is what we did at Mushi Labs as a consulting agency. Lots of takeaways from consulting. I realized Now I have a bit more time, so happy to talk a bit more, Um, so early on then in search engine optimization consulting move, she labs.

We have no idea how to do Consulting Way just knew how to do search engine optimization, which is different than doing search engine optimization consulting, because you have to get paid for your work. But, like, how do you get paid for your work classically, when you're getting started with any form of consulting, the easiest thing to get started with is dollars per hour, because it's very quantifiable, and it's very easy for somebody to understand se undoing consulting work for you. I come to you and say, Brendan, I will help you do search engine optimization and we will cost $25 an hour. Sure, you say, OK,

that's not so bad that how many hours do you think it would take for you to optimize my website? That I could say well, to do the keyword research? Would you still say explore the range of our search queries that someone could type into Google that you would want to capture that might take 10 hours, you say. Okay, well, that's perfectly fine. Them talking $250 hour and I know what I'm going to get. And so I do it. I give it to you. So get here is an invoice for $250. Hate me, and that's great until it's not great. And where it gets not great is now. Let's come back and redo this theoretical example.

You come to me and you say, Bernard, I want some. I want to rank better on Google. I'll have my brand to show up better and I say, OK, Brendan, this could be $500 an hour like hell. There's no way I'm hang you $500 an hour because that's is absolutely absurd. However, Now let's redo this again with this $500 an hour like that. So we were going to people when we first got started, and we said $100 in our stuff easy, so that was too easy. 1 50 an hour PC. That was too easy.

Looks like 2 50 an hour. People are like, Ah, you know, I pay my developers like less than that. So you're charging me more? That's not okay. And so we're like, OK, 2 50 an hour is not okay. All right. What is OK, what if I did this instead? Right? You came to me and say, Bernard,

I want to buy some search engine optimization consulting from you. And I say, OK, well, here's how our process works. We will conduct a he worked research strategy audit. And during the course of this on it, we will give you the range of search wearies and their associate ID. Like put 10 show from an audience perspective that you could hope the capture and this would cost you $2500. How is that OK, Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah, it's like, Well Ha ha. Little did you know,

not only crossed us, say five hours. Now, we're making $500 an hour, but I'm not saying $500 Eller, which is scary. But I'm saying this more abstract thing that then you say Yes, I will buy that. And so that's how you learn tow package. Because we find okay through these dollars for our engagements up? Yes. We're going through the same motions, Right? And when somebody comes to you and they say, OK, I want to buy something from you.

It's very scary for them to hear from you. Well, what do you want? It's like Well, I mean, I I don't know, right, Like, I want more traffic. But if you came to me and you're like, I want to buy something from you and I'm like, OK, this is exactly what you're going to get, how long it's gonna take and exactly how much you're gonna pay. Then you're OK then I can make an informed decision on whether or not I want to buy. It is though dollars per hour works really well with,

like, close friends. But it breaks down when you're trying to then like, scale it into a actual agency because people just are like, Well, I'm not just gonna pay you to, like, do some stuff for 10 hour E. I just don't know what I'm gonna you

know. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

And so we we learned the package. Then we learned toe like package into a monthly thing where it's like OK, well, the thing about consulting is that it starts and it ends, and that's not good,

because you

want to be able to know that when it like when? Because it could just randomly And sometimes when you're doing dollars for hourly, whoever you're working with us like I'm leaving the company and it's like, Oh, shit. Now I have no client. Um And so then you start packaging by these, like, monthly things where you say OK, well, every month you're gonna get a report that's going to, you know, run the diagnostics on your website, and that's the leg monthly report. And that's why you should pay us 3 to $5000 per month on top of a you know, three months introductory period where we have to do a lot more custom work that's gonna cost $10,000 each of those months and then months 3 to 9. You have then this,

like reporting period, where you're implementing the recommendations that were suggesting, and we are reporting on the changes that you're seeing happen with your site and, um, all of that and fits together. So when it comes to consulting services, the conventional wisdom, which is true is that you should always be charging more So we went from, say, an audit for 3500 to 10,000 to 40,000. Literally. We were proposal on, like a client that we worked with Bernard. I did a request for proposals, not seven of them. And yours was Ted times more expensive than the other. But you called me, is I? But that's why I want to work with you. Add

this. Got you must be like for letting you Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And when it comes to pricing, it's just the most arbitrary thing in the world. Pricing is just you and this. Is that like a mathematical way of thinking about it? You thought about a normal distribution. You want to be exactly in the middle, where 50% of the people say no. And big B percent of the people say yes. And if you're selling stuff, this is services, by the way, not like software as a service or physical product. But you're selling consulting services, and everyone's like, Yeah, and you're, like,

literally only getting like 20%. No. And you're not charging. And, uh, because dealing with bad clients is actually like one of the worst things that an agency suffers from, which is that you're bad clients. Usually you're Peredo rule. Your 20% contributes for the 80% of headaches or your good lions. They're the ones who just pay you on time. We love your work. Everything's good. And the 20 per they don't pay you on time. They're always, like, not satisfied with the amount of work that you've done.

And you guys just like fire those clients, clean them a men and raise your prices so that you can then deflect against, like, another five. Sure bad leads. That kind of stuff.

Yeah, absolutely lost. Lost the impact there. I think I think also like one thing. Just like I on top of mind right now for me. Is this like, you know, you go from Dickie's barbecue pit road were taken from their like, you go from food to, you know, like, um, software to help, like sales. And then you go back to food or you work in, like, gaming and you move into,

like s e o. You know, I love and like I think a lot of these, like, sends some experiences. You go into like you dive deep because of you know, like what other people say or like, you know, like, spur of the moment. Kind of like, Oh, yeah, I can join your team or Oh, yeah, Bernard's the guy to go to If you look at the talk s CEO home or like Oh,

yeah, you know, Hong Soo, let's just do this, you know, $37. Let's let let's let people sell things because of this, Like new U. S law. I love. You know, I mean, I'd love to just, like, get your take. I think it be interesting to,

you know, like I think a lot of you know, the conventional wisdom today of startups is building things. People want their like, building a problem that you have, I guess, in your regard, you know, like building. You know, you build things that other people want. You build things that I like, spread that woman cool things. What's your what's your like philosophy behind that?

Yeah, I don't know. I would say a lot of it is just kind of serendipity. I go with the flow, um, as an a lot of people will have, like, plans like I want to be this. I want to be that. But a lot of those planets just often go awry where they're just too rigid or not to, um in line with how you're you were changing as a person and how society is changing as their view on whatever it is that you want to do. And I would say everyone's got their own path. So this was just simply my path. I've seen a lot of people do really well who are just, you know, from an early age I'm gonna be an engineer and now they're an amazing engineer, and that's perfectly hide for a whole lot of people.

But I would say I have more of the type of person who goes with the flow and is open to whatever opportunities present themselves and whatever opportunities that I create through hustling through meeting people like you fright. And that's to say I do feel like it is a balance of keeping an open mind, but also kind of sticking to your morals and sticking to your passions. And that's to say everyone's equations different with that, you know, I might be OK. 70% go with the flow 30%. I just wanna, like, start something on my own. I don't care what it is, where, as it could be, like vice versa. Where? Okay,

I know. I want to change the way education works, and I'm open to things within education. But I do think that it's also this, like, thing that Okay, sure. Bang your head against the wall for some amount of time. Either the wall is gonna break or your head is gonna break. And if you're finding that the wall is not breaking that, it means you should probably like, you know, be a little bit more open minded about what you're doing, because it's probably not working.

Yeah, those that was a very clever analogy of, you know, I like I was reading some of you know, this stuff you have on clear scope and you were talking about, you know, the S e o industry as one, or like a space filled with, you know, misinformation and snake oil. Um, I'd love to just get your thoughts, you know? Why do you think this is air? Like, what is it about sdo that, like,

makes it so easy to, you know, dupe other people. Um, that's why it's so important to like a business.

Yeah. So the whole reason is because Google has explicitly not been clear about how search engine optimization works. And almost everything else you could imagine is fairly clear. You want to buy ads on Facebook? Goto the Facebook ads manager and they say okay, for three cents, hears a click. Fair enough, or AdWords right. Be paid component for whatever $3 depending when you key word here is a traffic right for even influence your marketing. Those say okay for $4000 you get three instagram posts and they blawg post. And here is the size of my audience. Everything is usually then tied straight to this is what you're paying. This is what you're getting is very attributable. We'll look at your Google analytics and say Yes, I got exactly what I picked for, but with search engine optimization,

it has been a black box, right? Nobody really knows how the algorithm works. That's why when I get up, give talks about S e. On my S CEOs like doctors, doctors don't really know what's going on with your body, but their guesses are probably more accurate than your common person gestures, and so that and the algorithm is constantly evolving. So what used to work two years from now? It may not necessarily work or may not necessarily work as well today, And that's them where people get stuck when it comes to CEO, because they might have worked in house at a large company, call the Amazon for 2010 to 2015 and then they come out. And then some other person's like, Yes,

we want you to work here and say Okay, well, let me bring exactly what I was doing that and lose on here. But guess what? It's 2016 now, and what you were doing from those five years may just be completely outdated. And you don't really even know because you go to like another large company. We'll call it, say, Home Depot, and there's very hard to attribute this whole search thing anyways, because Google does actually make it fairly difficult to and so that. And there's like at least 200 different things that, like feed into the algorithm. We're talking like back links and click through rates and content and time like page load, speed and bones,

friendliness and balance raid, right And all these things and they're not all wrong. They're just like 200 things that fit into it. So you could say, OK, I'm gonna buy a bunch of back links and that would work because that is one of the things that feed into the thing. And so literally anybody could run around and say, OK, you need to increase your click for rape and they're not wrong, right? So you can literally just make all of these recommendations point blank and they would work. But the best S CEOs are the ones you like really dissect. Why are the ones that are running experiments saying, Okay, I see for this class of search that when I improved the click through rate, it's actually not as beneficial than if I say at a video and adding a video to the content,

say someone searching for how to play guitar. Well, guess what if you like, literally searched for right now you got a video like in the above the fold like featured snippet. And that's because, well, a video will better teach somebody how to play guitar, then a text, the base piece of content right and like you can now take back as like a high level concept and spread it across all classes of queries. If someone's looking for news about the Corona virus, well, content used to be published within the last hour for 24 hours. Or else it's not new news, right? So you're then dissecting it at a more granular level and say, OK,

well, when someone does a search for this, there are, like over 200 factors that go into this algorithm. But for this particular class of search, say, Corona virus, it's recency is a huge part of how Google is perceiving that wait for that particular factor. And so that's then you know the whole thing, and there's this joke amongst CEOs. It's like you pay an S E 0 $25 an hour and you get like, 1000 back links. You pay an S CEO like 100 like as a like a up problem. Your is a problem. I want Mauricio no point more back weeks. You pay a good SC of $150 on our and they'll give you like a a good piece of content on you, like a and s CEO over $250 an hour. And he or she says it depends.

Uh, yeah, I'd love to just, you know, transition from there into, um, just one last thing I'd love to touch on. But like, um, what do you think? You know, for folks out there who are like listening, you know, like corroding like small medium businesses. Um, and like, you know,

I mean, like, just trying to, like, rank up. What do you think they get wrong about Aecio? What do you think you know is like paying a consultant like something that they really do or like, Is there any you know, like, actionable advice that they can, like, do to, like, incident? Like, just, like, bump? There s you up.

Ha ha. That is things. Yeah, questions. And, um, the short answer is just there's no one size fits all I remember. Like it. It does really depend. And really, the thing that you should ask yourself is like, Why do you even want s CEO to be getting with you? People just want s CEO because, well, it's quote unquote free traffic. And why wouldn't you want more CDO, but really right.

You should test using AdWords like bidding on keywords where you say, OK, if I were toe rank well, organically, then just bid on it. You pretend like a ranking well, organically what you're not, But you're just renting that spot and saying, Okay, well, then, is this lead or this piece of traffic that I'm getting from that as a key word from search engines, even valuable to be getting with. And a lot of people don't even have that answer. And at that point, it's just like,

well, test to make sure that it's valuable for you. Search in general is valuable for you, and then you can start investing the nest CEO and then one level deeper from that. It gets into this concept that Google's algorithm is no longer a keyword driven algorithm. So right, if you search for plumbers, they're not going to give you like tad and pieces of content of sides like plumbers, plumbers infer that you probably want a plumber that's near you and then the in for even further that yes, there. But there's a lot of plumbers that are near you. So why don't we give you a selection of beat Best mummers that are near you and some plumbers that are locally right? So you get the yelps and then you'll get the light Bernard's plumbing in Austin, where you can contact, or Nard, who is a plumber in Austin,

Texas. So Google's inferring all of this stuff when you do a search now, and people still are stuck in the Arab saying, I want O rank for plumber. I know you want to ring for plumber in Austin, Texas. Both say that has a lot less search while you true, but you're not going to show up if someone searched for plumber in Atlanta because you're not a plumber. Plan did not work, and that's like the very surface level of it that makes sense. And then it gets way deeper than that right of someone Searches content marketing. This result hunt. What is content market content, Marketing examples how to do content marketing Because this is the range of problems we have with in the topic of content marketing, and these content are answering those questions so you don't rank for content marketing by just saying content Marketing 101 right. You answer the problem that the user is likely to have, which is show me some examples. How do I get started with it? And that's how you

Yeah, like long tail. You mean, like, you know, like I but more nuance. And I think it's like it touches back on the topic of like, you know, would you rather have, like, a super super nuance, like, you know, keyword that you own That is, like, you know, only viewed by,

like, 10 people. But these 10 people are, like, you know, will convert vs, like, you know, you own plumbers, you know, like you're the number one ranked plumbers. But, like, not a lot of people will conveyed, even though they see you on the top spot. Yeah,

that's really good. Um, I'd love to. You know, like, this is like a question that I always ask, like towards the end. But, you know, if you're you know, Bernard, circa 2020 year, like, now and then you know you're talking to I guess I'd love to, you know, like just like maybe Bernard sick.

Uh, post most sec post, maybe food by people. So, like we're talking, you know, Bernard, circa 3 13 And like, just like I guess if you have, if you could talk to yourself. You know, like the growth that you've made from, um, before to know, What would you say?

Honestly, I would say something along the lines off. Take better care of yourself. Uh, yeah, Something along with, you know, get more sleep, healthier food. Be more wary of what's consuming your energy, like from a relationship or, ah, focus perspective, right? I think it's taken me. And it's still something that I have to constantly remind myself is that there's just a finite amount of energy that everybody should have or will have in a given day. And there's a very real opportunity cost that is fairly hidden when you say yes to say your buddy who aren't really that close with Hu pings you right because you're like getting some amount of traction or success with whatever it is you're doing.

It's like, Hey, Brendan, let's But let's catch up, describe some coffee and you're like, not excited about it. But you Well, you know, let me help him and then afterwards. Really, man, that was a total waste of time. It's like stop doing those that extrapolated everything else, right? If you pull an all nighter and then like you're knocked out for two days because you've got 12 more hours in one day, then your net like productivity increase was like,

say, negative 12 hours like OK, well, stop doing that and sound doing eating a pizza. For now, you're feel terrible. And obviously it's like in hindsight and even now it's like that makes total sense. But like then you're in in the field, on the battlefield and then you know it happened. And then, of course, just like yeah, why not? Right? Like I haven't seen you in a while. I don't feel too strongly about you,

but let us catch up and then I catch up in white. I'm tired, and it's like that energy could have been spent towards me and meeting my own needs. And I have been struggling specifically that through and through time, where I'll put other people's requests and other people's needs before mine often just without giving it a second thought. And these day, and that's kind of within the whole concept of life. Take better care of yourself, right? Say no to the things you should be saying. You should. I kind of like do this by default, which has been a gift and a strength. But everything is a default white list for me. Where then I add some black lists will be I okay. Innocent until proven guilty is essentially that way of thinking where someone says,

Oh, yeah, like, let's meet up its default. Yes, And then if I'm not feeling good, then it's no. And Michael founders like the exact opposite default. Everything is blacklisted and that only a few things that white list. And as a result, I think he's kept a lot more like mental stability and like grounding throughout this whole process, which is a trade off, right? I think people like you and I, we just kind of acquiesce, probably toe helping people because,

well, right, why not like this? All good. But there is a why not, which is you're not getting as much sleep, and you're not, really say, getting enough time to reflect upon what you actually need as a person because you're just being inundated with requests and email, slack notification, tweets and whatever. And really, when all of that chatter and kind of guys down, then your life, man, what have I been doing?

Right. And if you're not protective of your time, people were just gonna come and take it, because that's what you do. Like, Brandon do this for May, and then you'll be like, OK, OK, OK, OK. And now, like, five years later, where you at, right where My friend didn't do this for me.

And you're like, No, now, I'm not gonna ask you probably, which is good and bad, but yeah, it's a just be wary of that.

Yeah, absolutely. Bernard, you know, so much to take away, like, so much for me to think of us. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. You know, I love if you you know, quick plug, clear scope that I owe, you know, work in our listeners, find you and, you know, Twitter Link or anything you want to plug right now, like newsletter.

Anything, Uh, the best way to reach me these days on Twitter to be at Bernard J Long, So B e r N e r D J H u A and G. You can find me on there. Um, I'm usually fairly good about responding, Teoh. Everything that I get. So feel free to pick me there. And thanks for having me, Brendan. This is a wonderful time. I wish you the best on all of your failures moving board, which unsure will inevitably lead to success is because that's what happens.

Absolutely. You know, thank you. You know, if any of our listeners are looking to raise a $37 venture capital around me and Bernard Bernard will raise the 37 I'll follow on. I get you $50. We'll see. Well, we'll see where you take it from there, you know? Yeah, But, Bernard, thank you so much for being on the show. Um, you know, I had a great three time.

I love I hope you had to say no. And that was another episode of the Hillary podcast. Thank you for listening. We're working on a bunch of these red nasa. Thank you for listening. And state team, thank you for tuning into this episode of the Fail Ary 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.