BREAKING: Shaan Sells the Milk Road - A Conversation With the Buyers

Shaan Puri

We were getting to know you guys to decide like do we wanna do this do we wanna actually partner with you guys and and do a deal together we would ask you a bunch of questions like at dinners or at the bar or whatever and your guys' stories and answers were so entertaining that I was like dude these guys need to come on the podcast if the I was like if I had just recorded this dinner this would have been like one of the best podcast episodes we've ever done probably probably the best what's up y'all sean here this is a special episode my company the milk road just got acquired so the news is out and I can finally talk about it I've been kinda hinting at it on the podcast for those who are listening and yeah if the news is out this episode is me and the dudes who bought it so you're gonna meet these guys and you're gonna see who why would I sell right like we started this thing it grew like crazy it was profitable like the thing was working so why sell and I talk a little bit about that but the biggest reason honestly was these guys these are people that I wanted to be able to work with and get to know better and they're people that I thought if I give them you know this company and I own I still own a minority stake in it that minority stake in 5 years is gonna be worth a lot because I believe in these guys and what they've done they've done it before they've built and sold companies worth you know over 100 of 100 of 100 of 1,000,000 of dollars and I think they're gonna do it again here this the the episode is is a little funny it starts off a little slow but then around 15 minutes in we're done talking about the acquisition I'm frankly I'm done talking a little bit and I let these guys shine and they tell stories about you know their early projects like how they you know all the different projects they worked on some that failed spectacularly and some that succeeded you know their philosophy around business and negotiations and stuff like that it gets really good after that so definitely stick through if you like this podcast like if you like my first million you will like these guys I'm gonna just I'll build the characters you got mike who is this like workhorse so anybody who likes you know a grinder somebody who's scrappy somebody who can bounce back from defeat he tells a ton of stories about like basically getting his ass kicked almost failing and then somehow pulling it off so mike is this workhorse of a guy I've gotten to see him in action with the milk road this guy is like lives in the details and in the weeds it's amazing and then kendall is the opposite he's like how can I work smarter not harder he's the mister shortcut he is the guy who finds a way to make something happen right like you know he you know he's the guy who hacked the tesla referral program and ended up getting multiple tesla roadsters and he's the guy who did the same thing with uber and lyft and has like you know uber credits for life and lyft credits for life he's just a guy who's gonna solve the puzzle and and get the shortcut solution he'll he will find the clever the clever way to get it done so these 2 guys are awesome and and I think you guys you guys really like them so enjoy this episode alright so we should we should do this so welcome to the show I've been telling you guys you gotta come on for a couple months now and I'm glad we're doing this so we will I think we should frame this in a couple ways we got together because you guys just bought my company you bought the milk road and so we're gonna talk about that we're gonna talk about how that happened how that went down why you guys decided to do it good stuff like that then we're gonna talk a little bit about you know what's the plan but really the thing I thought would be the best out of this conversation my sort of secret plan was when we were getting to know you guys to decide like do we wanna do this do we wanna actually partner with you guys and and do a deal together we would ask you a bunch of questions like at dinners or or at the bar or whatever and your guys' stories and answers were so entertaining that I was like dude these guys need to come on the podcast if the I was like if I had just recorded this dinner this would have been like one of the best podcast episodes we've ever done probably probably the best and so then I was like alright my job here is to somehow recreate that dinner because actually there's a lot of pressure I know how good this episode could be if I do my job and usually with a guest you know hey they show up they do whatever they're gonna do but in this case I've heard the stories myself so I gotta find a way to to recreate that that was my challenge you guys it's it should be easy it's you know just you're you're gonna tell your stories and I think at the end of this people will know a little bit about what happened with milk road but also a lot about you guys because I became a fan of you during the process of doing the deal and I think a lot of other people are gonna become fans of you guys too during this because you guys are pretty low key and why is that why are you guys like so under the radar and I asked this as a guy who's like I'm constantly on the stage being like look at me you know I'm great and then I meet people who are really really great and they're not trying to do that so what's the is it don't have time is it shy what's the reason that you don't do that let's start with you

Kendall Saville

I think it's probably **shy**, and it's just something that I never thought I needed to do. Then, when I met you, I'm like, "I'm doing everything all wrong."

Shaan Puri

But we had a hilarious day. I don't know how this happened, but somehow, when we were hanging out in San Francisco—where I usually don't go—the joke on the pod is that I don't leave my house. However, when I do leave my house, I occasionally get bumped into and someone will say, "Oh hey, love the pod." For some reason, that day, something was going my way. Like, I don't know, 6 or 7 people stopped us in a row. You guys must have been like, "What the hell's going on?" What was your reaction to that?

Kendall Saville

I was like, "Did you plan this?" I could not believe how many people were coming up to you. You know, I'm a big fan of the pod. I'm doing this project; I did an MFM search engine. It was insane!

Shaan Puri

yeah that was pretty crazy yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

like the guy from the hospital he's like I just came from the hospital looking for sean

Shaan Puri

that was a little crazy

Kendall Saville

I was like do you have security cameras yeah

Shaan Puri

He does. He said, "I just came from the hospital." Then we were like, "Oh, okay." Later, somebody was like, "Why did he come from the hospital? Did anybody catch that?" We had no explanation. Yeah, because he had like a "patient has escaped" sticker on his shirt, basically. But I'm glad you guys are doing it. So let's start with the Milk Road. People want to know, you know, the news just came out today. This pod will come out right after that. We sold it, and people want to know how that went down. I could tell it from my perspective, but maybe, I don't know, let's do it from your perspective. How did this all happen?

Kendall Saville

Yeah, for sure. So Carter, who is our finance [person], was a big fan and he shared it with us, Mike and I. We subscribed to it, and every time we'd open it we're like, "Oh, they're doing it so well! They're doing it!"

Shaan Puri

a while back or

Kendall Saville

Like, three months ago, okay? Every time we read it, we talked about it. We talked about the memes, how funny it was, but also how informative it was. That's kind of what we're trying to do with Biffo. It's just like, make the best content and actually have people read it. I feel like, you know, you could have 10,000 words, but that doesn't mean much to people. It's like, how do we get that 750 words that really punches? I feel like that's what you guys have done. It came to a point where I'm like, we should talk to these guys, but at that time, we hadn't.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and I think we reached out to you guys. I remember having a conversation with Ben about growth. It was like, "Ben, you know those sites that are just like, I don't know, what's the price of Bitcoin? What's the price of Ethereum?" I was like, "What if we just go on there and, like, I don't know..." So I was like, I remember telling him, "It's probably just some 19-year-old kid. Let's just offer him a dollar for every email subscriber. Let's just see if they'll put our ad up." I think that's how we reached out, right? He got in touch with one of you guys about that. Ben reached out.

Michael Wittmeyer

To I don't even know who, somebody got back to us. You know, it wasn't something we were going to do. We weren't... it was like offering a dollar per subscription or whatever.

Shaan Puri

turns out you weren't a kid yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

We're 32, we weren't 17, but we just wanted to meet you guys so we thought, "Let's take the meeting." And yeah, about 10 minutes into that, we were messaging on the side saying, "We gotta buy this thing. We've gotta figure out a way."

Shaan Puri

The funny thing is, I don't know if I told you this, but that same day, we've just been full force working on Milk Road. This is the best! Yeah, it's going to be awesome. Yep, dude, we're just working every day. I'm a big "pat on the back" kind of guy. Every day, I basically tell Ben, "This is amazing! We've launched this thing in only this many months, and we're already growing this fast. It's going to be so good this many years in. You know it's going to be great." Then one day, I hit Ben with a curveball in Slack. This is the same day I go, "How much would you sell this for right now?" And he's like, "What? I don't know. Do you want to sell it?" I was like, "What? That's not what I said! I said, how much would you sell it for?" He's like, "Maybe this number." And I was like, "Yeah, I think my number is like, you know, that + 1." He was like, "Okay, what do you even do with that?" And I was like, "Let's see if we could sell it." I'm very impulsive like that. I wake up one day, and that's how I got my dog. I just woke up one day and said, "Hey, get in the car! We're going to go find a dog." We were like Craigslist-ing in the car to find dogs, and we got a dog that day. That's kind of what happened with this. So literally, he calls me back later that afternoon. He's like, "Dude, so weird! I just talked to these guys, and they mentioned on the call if you'd ever be interested, blah blah." I was like, "Well, who are they? I've never heard of these guys." And he's like, "No, they're legit." I was like, "What?" He's like, "Yeah, I googled them and whatever. One of them built like the largest... I don't know how you describe it... like the largest gold website."

Michael Wittmeyer

gold ecommerce precious metals ecommerce

Shaan Puri

Precious metals eCommerce site. So basically, JM Bullion is the name of it. If you want to buy or sell gold, silver, or whatever, you can do it there. I knew that name because my brother-in-law buys from JM Bullion. He had been telling me, you know, as he's stashed away a little like coins in his safe. I'm like, "I can forgive you, man." He had been telling...

Michael Wittmeyer

me screw up his orders yeah

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he gets it every time. He's like, you know, whatever. He's hoarding gold. So, you guys had built that. That was a couple hundred million dollar company, and then you had done the same thing in the sports betting side. Same thing, like roughly a hundred million dollars worth of exits. I was like, "Oh, these guys are actually super legit." Okay, scratch the whole 19-year-old kid, offer him a dollar. Let's see what we can get these guys to offer us. And then that's sort of how the deal evolved from there. So, that's like how we met. Then, actually making a deal, somebody said this the other day. They go, "The rule of... they call it the rule of 5." They say in any deal, it's going to fall apart five times. If it's going to get done, it's going to fall apart five times. I think we kind of did that.

Kendall Saville

oh we did we did

Shaan Puri

Maybe three or four times at least along the way, I do have a question about it. This isn't just about how it all happened, but it's a question I've been wanting to ask. I get to put you guys on the spot here: **How could we have negotiated better?** So, I asked Ben, "What can we ask these guys on the pod?" He goes, "Yeah, ask him about the deal negotiation." I thought, "Yeah, I should ask him, could we have gotten more?" That was my first acquisition, and that was the question I asked the CEO. He was like, "You couldn't have gotten a dollar more." I was like, "That feels good, but it feels like a lie. It's never actually the case." So, from your guys' perspective, **how did we negotiate?** Give us a grade and tell us how we did.

Michael Wittmeyer

I would say it was a -

Kendall Saville

I was gonna say a

Shaan Puri

b okay

Kendall Saville

Yeah, I mean, I would give everyone almost a B around, you know, the table. I feel like each one of us at one point kind of thought, "This isn't gonna work."

Shaan Puri

mhmm

Kendall Saville

And it wasn't as straightforward as you'd like a deal to be, but as you said, both my deals... every time I was like, "It's not gonna work," you know, for one reason or another. You get to the point where they're over here, I'm over here, and we're not getting anywhere close, right? And then, you know, you figure it out or you walk away. And we had those walkways with you, I think, twice.

Shaan Puri

yeah I think you

Kendall Saville

guys did it one time and we did it another time yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

yeah I said a - because at the end like when we made that final know the last little chunk

Shaan Puri

yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

We were... that was it for us. We just said, "We're walking if this doesn't work." We talked about this last night. I think one thing that would have helped a lot is that he has a non-compete on gambling, as we talked about. One of the times it fell apart was when we just got into the diligence after we'd already agreed on a number. And there was... oh God.

Shaan Puri

that I was a degenerate

Michael Wittmeyer

There's a little more gambling revenue, gambling-sponsored revenue there than we thought. I think that if that had come out a lot earlier, you guys probably could have guided us better. Like, "Hey, well for next month we're gonna target this stuff." Yeah...

Shaan Puri

Yeah, we didn't know that was a problem. We were like, because it's not in front, we don't have a non-compete, so we're like, "This is great." Yeah, that was alright. That's good.

Michael Wittmeyer

we did talk about it at dinner you did yeah the when we met you yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

Oh yeah, at that dinner, I did come out. Yes. Alright, so let's talk about how this deal kind of evolves. Why do you buy a business like this? What's the thinking? What's the rationale? And you guys have been on the seller side; you've sold your businesses. What's the difference in the mentality there?

Kendall Saville

mike you wanna take this one

Michael Wittmeyer

Yeah, so, you know, the reason we bought you guys is that we felt like everything we were doing was just going to work a lot better on their brand. So, like, the SEO play, which is our thing, you know, we're building these content-driven sites that we want to rank in Google for, you know, money terms in crypto, like "buy Bitcoin," "lend Bitcoin," and all those sorts of things. We have that, and we...

Shaan Puri

We should explain your guys' magic, your superpower. Your superpower is that when somebody goes to Google and they say, "Buy gold online," "Best place to buy gold," or "Best place to bet on whatever," your guys' whole career is basically ranked number one for that. You did it with sports betting, and before that, you did it with poker, and even before that, you did it with other stuff. We'll go into some of those funny stories in a second, but that's your guys' secret sauce. I was like, "Why do they need a newsletter? The newsletter doesn't do that. That's not the answer." But there is some, I don't know, synergy there for you.

Michael Wittmeyer

Yeah, so it's, you know, just this brand component of like Google has really moved towards rewarding brands that users are actually going to Google and searching for. For example, "Milk Road" is being searched 100 times a day, and that's such an indicator to Google that humans are interested in this brand. The same goes for JM; JM is getting thousands of searches a day for JM Bullion. So, when we were building our sites, like DefiRate.com was the one that we merged into Milk Road. No one's out there really looking for this site, you know? We're just trying to figure out how to get it on Google so eventually it will become a brand. For us, it was like, "Hey, we get to jump forward, you know, a year in this journey if we buy this newsletter, buy the website, roll it in, and then, you know, reap these benefits forevermore." You're going to continue to get really amazing backlinks because you do all these awesome interviews. It was, you know, that was my piece.

Kendall Saville

And I think, too, it was really complementary, you know? Like the newsletter content could go on the website. We'd be able to be in the inbox of our users, along with... Hey, you know, there's a different segment of our users that are gonna go to our website. So those types of ways to reach people are really exciting for us. That was kind of like why they have the brand. They have a voice, and... you know, they have a really complementary [approach].

Shaan Puri

you

Kendall Saville

know

Shaan Puri

and it was working during the bear market

Michael Wittmeyer

yeah our

Kendall Saville

our business that's the biggest

Shaan Puri

Our business was still growing and generating revenue and profit during the crypto winter, which is hard because if you're not, like, you know, when Bitcoin's price goes down, there's a lot less people searching, "How do I buy Bitcoin right now?" And so, or like, you know, if DeFi implodes or whatever, then people aren't looking to borrow or lend at the same rates. So I think that also helps because it was like...

Michael Wittmeyer

oh this

Shaan Puri

is a business that will work even in the winters yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

and you had diversified advertisers they're not all crypto companies

Shaan Puri

so we're

Michael Wittmeyer

like yeah this can work even if crypto is dead for a while

Shaan Puri

And so the question on our side was, "Do we want to sell? Why sell? Do we want to sell?" I think there's probably a three-pronged answer to that. The first answer is that a lot of decisions get made through your nature, your personality. I've gotten to know my nature a little bit over the last few years, and it is very much that I'm good at starting things. I'm good at finding something from nothing. However, taking that something and just fine-tuning it day after day, making it better—which is where most of the value is created in business—is not something that I get super excited about. That was always hard for me because I could create something, get it off the ground, and get it to work. But as it worked, my interest would fade. You know, it sounds like a personal thing. I sort of knew that. So I said, "If I'm getting a good deal now, but I know it would be better if I held it for four years, great. But am I really going to have the same energy I have today four years from now?" I can't know that. That's true for me as an operator. Whereas about you guys, and I'll go into why I thought you would be much better owners of the business, is that you're like that. Mike is an absolute animal in the workforce. I actually, we've been working together a little bit now, and I see your level of attention to detail is crazy. You are looking at this email, you know, in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, then the feedback, and you do it again the next day.

Michael Wittmeyer

I love it you know

Shaan Puri

I was like, "Wow, this guy is an animal." I thought, "Okay, maybe he's just doing that at the beginning." No, that's just kind of who you are.

Michael Wittmeyer

Yeah, I mean that was, you know, with JM, the same thing. Like, myself and the other partner who I ran that with, we were probably like the biggest readers of the Gold and Silver subreddit, like, on the planet. We just wanted to ingest all this information. What are the people thinking? You know, and that's really how we got so many wins—just observing that and implementing those things.

Shaan Puri

So, I asked you guys some questions before the pod to get to know you better. I made a Google Doc and I was like, "What do you do for fun?" or something like that. One of your things was uphill skiing or something.

Michael Wittmeyer

Yeah, so I've got a buddy that's gotten into backcountry skiing. That's like, instead of, you know, going to the resort and riding the lift up, you're just sort of in nature, right?

Shaan Puri

the fun nice thing everybody likes

Kendall Saville

yeah yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

You have to manually get yourself up this hill. So, a few years ago, he convinced me to go do one of these things. It was in, I think, Yellowstone Park. We didn't see another human the entire day. You're truly in the middle of nowhere.

Shaan Puri

are you hiking basically up a mountain or crawling

Michael Wittmeyer

For this, this was fairly tame. So basically, it's called a split board, which I use. It looks like a snowboard, but it breaks down the middle and the bindings rotate. So it basically turns into skis. Then you put these things on the bottom called skins, which originally I think used to be seal skin, and that's where it came from. Now it's just like some fancy fabric, and it will only slide one way. So you can kind of slide up the hill with poles, like cross-country skiing up the hill, and then it won't slide backwards. Right? So yeah, you fight your way up the hill. It takes several hours to do this, and it's like a 5-minute ride down, so there's not a huge...

Kendall Saville

payoff there just like little children coming down

Shaan Puri

as you're like brutally climbing things by inch up this hill

Michael Wittmeyer

And then the cool thing is you can do it at resorts too. So our trip this year, we were at Whitefish, Montana, and I was doing this in the resort. You do get a lot of respect from people coming down the hill when you're trudging up the hill. It's a good feeling, you know?

Shaan Puri

yeah no respect for me

Kendall Saville

I like yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

I love sean

Shaan Puri

you do kinda like shane yeah you are doing the wrong thing

Michael Wittmeyer

sean's riding the lift up and down

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. I don't even get off this... but that was like, to me, when I heard you say that, I was like checked out completely. The way you exercise or the way you vacation basically is the way you work. Yeah, which is just like a maniacal grind, and I love that because if you do that in any business, you're gonna increase the outcomes. So that was because we still own a good-sized chunk of the business. I wanted to know that that was gonna be worth something someday. That would be the only way that I could make this deal worth it. Okay, there's the upfront cash and all that good stuff, that's great, but your boy's gonna spend that. I'm gonna blow through that in some way. So I need to know that the "what if" or "what could have been" will actually get played out. That way, out of my curiosity, I'll know what would have happened if we had kept at it and focused on it. Well, let me just hand it to these guys who are super focused, and now we get to know. And then also, you get the reward of it too if it had some work now. Yep, so that was one on your side. It's like, that's Mike's super problem. This guy is literally willing to climb up the hill, like, you know, he doesn't understand how skiing works and enjoyment works, which is great.

Kendall Saville

and then

Shaan Puri

It's like, alright, so let's suppose this guy, Kendall. He's the same way. Is he also just like absolutely not a super grinder? No, Kendall's Mr. Shortcut, and I love this. So we were talking, and I was like, "Alright, what did you guys do before this?" Before this, I kept digging. Tell the story of... I don't know, let's pick one of them. Let's do the Tesla one, the Tesla hack. Because once you told me this story, I was like, "Oh, this guy's super clever. He's gonna find a way. Like, he's just gonna find the shortcuts that we would need to, like, you know, make this thing super successful." So, tell that story.

Kendall Saville

Yeah, so I had a Tesla, and at the time they had the Tesla referral program. Basically, they gave every owner a unique code, and to get 5,000 supercharger miles, you actually had to use it. People were searching for it, and I was like, "Perfect! That's what I do for a living - I rank in Google." So when you searched "Tesla referral code," my site was number one.

Shaan Puri

I sent

Kendall Saville

what was it called

Shaan Puri

like just referral code.com no

Kendall Saville

It was actually FareEstimate.com. I basically made, for just a fun side project, a Lyft versus Uber comparison. So you just put in "I'm going here" and you know what's the difference between the two, right? And so I just made a [version] for Tesla on that.

Shaan Puri

and by the way that itself

Michael Wittmeyer

that's another one

Shaan Puri

That was another one of your little shortcuts. You didn't want to ever pay for Uber again, right? Like, or Lyft, because you would just get referral credits from that too, right? Exactly.

Kendall Saville

So basically, on that site, the way I monetized it was: "Here's my referral code when you sign up for one or the other." I literally had unlimited Uber and Lyft for years... literal years. And I shared it with some friends. They'd be like, "Hey, you know, I want some. Can you put my code for a little bit?"

Shaan Puri

yeah so

Kendall Saville

I'd do it for a month for them, and they'd be like, "I don't need anymore. I am done." Then it would just be like the next friend, the next friend.

Shaan Puri

that's hilarious

Kendall Saville

But then, you know what happens? These programs are like, "Okay, this is kind of weird." You know, there's certain code... Yeah, exactly. So they kind of cut you off after a while, but until then, you can reap the benefits.

Shaan Puri

So, you had the Uber/Lyft shortcut, which is getting your free Ubers and Lyfts. Then you were like, "Oh, Tesla!" So you made a /roadster and /tesla... like, extension basically. And you were ranking for when people were looking for Tesla referral codes.

Kendall Saville

Exactly. So, I sent like hundreds of people to buy cars, and you needed to send like, I think, 56 to get a Tesla Roadster.

Shaan Puri

was that like the peak prize of the repair program yeah

Kendall Saville

exactly but you know we're we're we're

Shaan Puri

roadster is like what like a $100 or something

Kendall Saville

it was 200 50 yeah oh yeah 200 or 250 depending on like the model

Shaan Puri

they never gave it they never gave it to you

Kendall Saville

well they haven't released it

Shaan Puri

what do you mean oh oh the new roadster

Michael Wittmeyer

the

Kendall Saville

The newest one? Yeah, so they were like, "Hey, when we do it, you know, in 2019, we're gonna give every..."

Shaan Puri

how many did you win I mean how much did you earn

Kendall Saville

So, I earned like $1.75. I had sent more referrals, but I think Tesla was like, "Alright, you know, we're gonna give you $1.75."

Shaan Puri

you know what do you do with the 0.75 I don't understand

Kendall Saville

I think you have to pay the you know the difference between when they do

Shaan Puri

So you'll be like, "Send it to me without the trunk. I'll take the three-fourths car wheels. I'll take the convertible. Thank you."

Kendall Saville

And then, you know, I did that and I was like, "Alright, well hey Dad, you have a Tesla. Do you want a Roadster?" "Sure, son. I want that." And so I put his code in, and then did it with my brother-in-law. So, you know, we have a lot of Roadsters that might be coming. We'll see.

Michael Wittmeyer

it's like the oprah thing you get

Shaan Puri

A roadster? You got a roadster? Yeah, yeah, that's amazing! So you did that. You also did other ones too. Let's talk about some of the other ones you did. I was asking you, how did you even learn that there's this SEO affiliate game? Right, so SEO is just people searching for stuff on Google. If you can get to the top, you're going to get a lot of free customer traffic. Then, affiliate is... well, what do you do with that free customer traffic? They want something. You can pass that kind of qualified lead, that high intent customer, to the website, and they have affiliate programs. So you'll get the kickback. That's how you got the roadster. That's how you got the Uber credits and all that. So how did you even figure out this was a thing? I want to hear that from both of you guys. This is your game, and it's a game I didn't know about until much later in life. But you guys discovered it kind of early. I want to hear the origin story. How did you guys even get into that?

Kendall Saville

Yeah, so this was during the "Moneymaker" era. You know, the World Series of Poker was a big thing. All of my friends and I were playing poker, just around the house and then online. There were a bunch of poker sites, and I saw one of the poker sites had a poker chip set that they would give away for free. I was like, "Well, how does that work? Nothing in life is free." I figured, oh, they're giving it for free because they're getting like $250 per person they end up sending. So at that point, I was like, "Perfect! I've got a lot of friends." I'm just going to kind of make the difference. I'll give them $50 to deposit, and I'll make the $200 that I get paid from the casinos, sportsbooks, and poker at that.

Shaan Puri

And so you do that with like 6 friends

Kendall Saville

and ran out of them

Shaan Puri

at that. Right

Kendall Saville

You know, it was... it was great, and then it was like, "Okay, well now I need to actually figure out how to do this." And that's kind of how I got into... "Oh, I need to figure out how to create websites." I can do this with just like random people.

Shaan Puri

and you're you're a teenager at this time I'm in college yeah oh you're college okay

Kendall Saville

Yeah, so I was in college. Mike was actually a teenager at that time, and I just had to figure it out. I mean, my first big break was actually misspelling "Paradise Poker."

Shaan Puri

what do you mean so how did that go down

Kendall Saville

Yeah, well, so at the time when you searched in Google, they didn't have autocorrect. So basically, you misspelled "Paradise Poker" and you'd get misspelled websites with that. And so I was like, "Perfect! I'm not a very good speller, so I can come up with a lot of variations."

Shaan Puri

I couldn't tell you to spell paradise poker right now actually

Kendall Saville

And so, I came up with a lot of variations and got them to rank in Google for every misspelling. It was crazy because, all of a sudden, they just started seeing traffic. I started sending them, obviously, to the real Paradise Poker. I made a cut of them, and literally, my last year of college was paid for. I was basically telling my parents, "I've got this. I've got room, board, and education because I'm making free money online."

Shaan Puri

were they like what do you mean son like you know did they know about this the whole time or not really

Kendall Saville

I had to kind of tell them. They were... I was a little worried because I was like, "Poker? Gambling?" You know, they're gonna be like, "Oh, what's my son into? Is he doing this?" Right? But my dad was actually... he looked at me and he was pretty proud because he was like, "Oh, you're kind of like, you know, the picks and shovels of it." Right? You're not actually doing it, you're enabling people to do it, and the people that choose to do it...

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and you said something real quick like, "We got to the top of Google." Did you have to do anything interesting to get your misspelled "Paradise Poker" to be number one? Or was it just that your domain name automatically made it number one at that time?

Kendall Saville

Well, the beauty of it was there was just no competition. No one else was actually trying to misspell "Paradise Poker" on purpose. Maybe they would misspell it once, but I would have it like 8 times. So I was the best misspeller of Paradise Poker and literally was number 1 for most of the [keywords].

Shaan Puri

And I sent you the thing that's going on right now with the Kia car, where Kia rebranded their logo. It looks like "KN" instead of "Kia." Google searches for "KN car" are suddenly spiking because people see it on the road and they're like, "Oh, that's cool! What is that? What is the Cayenne car?" I was like, "This feels like a Kendall thing." I asked Kendall, "What would you do with this?" What was your answer?

Kendall Saville

So, I had a buddy in fleet sales, and that's where they sell a ton of cars via online. I would make a deal with someone like that at the dealership. I would say, "Look, I can get you a lot of traffic." I would create websites that would literally go for all the newest cars, right? The 2023 Kia [models], whatever it was. But obviously, I'd spell it with the "K-N" [to avoid trademark issues]. Then I'd make a deal with them like, "I'm going to send you this... I want 20% of all those leads."

Shaan Puri

And what is your... what would your website look like at that time? Would it be like, "Hey, this is the K N car, go ahead and buy it," or would you just make it look like the Kia website? What would you actually do?

Kendall Saville

I think I would just explain it like, "Hey, you know, it looks like it says 'KN', but it's actually 'Kia'. And here's the reasons why this car is really cool, and here's a form to actually buy this car. I can get you a great deal on it."

Shaan Puri

right

Kendall Saville

And then, you know, obviously send that lead over and everyone's happy with that. They actually find the car that they wanted. You know, it wasn't a Kia, but it was the Cayenne car that they had found.

Shaan Puri

how much do you think somebody can make if they they did this what's your range what's your estimate of how how that would play out

Kendall Saville

if you if you

Shaan Puri

did a good job of executing that

Kendall Saville

I think if you did a good job... I mean, the problem now is Google autocorrect. So Google now, I even did the searches myself, right? It goes to the actual Kia like, "Hey, I know what you're trying to do." So you'd have to kind of find that... like where doesn't it do that? Is it the App Store or is it some other place to do that? I think you could... I mean, when you get like a really good misspelling of really high-priced items with a decent margin, you know, you could make $100 or $1,000 [in profit].

Shaan Puri

Reza Osman, you kind of had a similar origin story. You played poker and then discovered the poker affiliate game.

Michael Wittmeyer

Yeah, so I was basically a degenerate gambler when I was 15 or 16. My friends and I would play poker in home games, just $5 or $10, whatever. This was when poker was on TV all the time, in like 2005. I just kept losing all my money, so I would have to go to the local grocery store to the Western Union or whatever, give them $100 cash, and they would send it to, you know, Cambodia or wherever it was going. Then I would just lose that. I was like, "I need to find some other way to reload my poker account because I'm busted."

Shaan Puri

not I need to stop no exactly where am I getting real faster

Michael Wittmeyer

Next hit. Yeah, so then I saw that they had the "refer a friend" thing on the website. They would pay you like $75 or whatever to get your buddies to sign up. So, I had all my friends sign up, same as you. When I ran out of friends, I was like, "Same as him, I gotta figure out a way to get strangers to do this for me." I ended up coming across this forum called, I think it was called Poker Affiliate World back then. It was basically a lot of people who were doing this that would share, you know, what was working and what wasn't. It was a very friendly community that I was kind of surprised by. I don't know why people were telling me this, but...

Shaan Puri

sure they're kinda competing right

Michael Wittmeyer

Yeah, we were all like... we were competitors, yep, and just ended up becoming friends as well. So I just learned through doing that. Started a website... I convinced my parents to lend me like a couple hundred dollars to buy a domain and set up, you know, web hosting and everything. I told you this, or I put in that document that when I sold my first site, which was probably 9 or 12 months after that, it was for $32,100.

Shaan Puri

nice which

Michael Wittmeyer

was like $1,000,000,000 to me

Shaan Puri

back then

Michael Wittmeyer

And I got all... It was like a check. I cashed it, took all the cash home, and you know, spread it out on the desktop.

Shaan Puri

spreading it out is his money that's the big goop move for sure

Michael Wittmeyer

And then I repaid my parents, and that was a very sentimental moment for me.

Shaan Puri

That's amazing! Yeah, didn't you have something where your neighbor did something for you? Your neighbor lent you some money or something like that? Was it like a lemonade stand story or something like that?

Michael Wittmeyer

Well, I like the first thing I did for work. One of my neighbors needed some landscaping work done. I'm like, "We'll give you $20 or whatever to come over and do it." It was on a Saturday, and the night before I was, you know, out with the boys, had a few *sodas* [likely alcoholic beverages], and was a little hungover that morning. I made it to like 10 AM before I had to tap out.

Kendall Saville

I was telling the guy

Michael Wittmeyer

like I just can't do this right now

Shaan Puri

that was the that was the first and probably only job you had

Kendall Saville

yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

I just had, you know, random stuff like that. I had a... I lasted one day on a... Another neighbor had a bread company, so they would have to deliver the bread every morning to restaurants, right? And my dad was friends with him, so he's like... you know, I'm sure trying to get me to do something: "You need to go work with Mr. Anzavine for the day." It was like a 4 AM wake-up call to do that. So I lasted one day at that as well. I was like, "There's no way." [I] shoveled snow for one day. So I had a lot of one-day jobs.

Shaan Puri

day business of you really had any real jobs it sounded like you

Michael Wittmeyer

never had a real job

Shaan Puri

No, so you never had like a corporate go and like, you know, "Here's your first day at the new company." You didn't have that at all?

Kendall Saville

I did not. I basically had a summer job. It was like a temp job agency that places you in different positions. One of them was at Dell, working with warranties. Then I realized, I can't work for someone else. This is just not me. You know, I want to work for myself. I want to set my own hours, and I want to make a lot of money. Yeah, like my mom always said, when you were younger, all you said was, "I want to be a millionaire. I want to make a bunch of money." And she's just like, "Alright, sure. Let's see what happens." But you know, that was just kind of my general sense of it, and I was like, I need to figure out a way to make it.

Shaan Puri

You also said something like, "I don't like the idea of working really hard and someone else making money off that."

Kendall Saville

exactly I'm

Shaan Puri

gonna make the money off that

Kendall Saville

Like, I mean, that's what you know, being an employee, right? You're making the owner's money. I just couldn't get around that. I was like, I need to be the owner of the business.

Shaan Puri

Dude, I find it hard sometimes to recruit people because I fundamentally don't want to do this trade. I get some security, certainty, and experience, but you get the upside. You know, I get my salary, but you get the upside of my work. I almost find it hard to even recruit people to work at this because I'm just like, "I don't know, man." I just... I philosophically don't love this path. But then I also need to hire employees all the time, so I'm like, you know, it's not really productive. You ever have that? Oh, totally.

Kendall Saville

And I feel like... actually, it's been one of the most rewarding things about my company: watching the people grow. You know, we would hire them and I'd say, "Oh, I just need you to kind of write a couple pages of content." And then they do a really good job, and it's like, "Oh, do you want to be the editor of this website?"

Shaan Puri

and

Kendall Saville

Then, "Oh, do you want to manage other people?" And so, you know, the businesses I sold... I made sure the people that I was working with got really great jobs because I feel like, sure, I made a lot of the money, but I want to make sure that your career is set and you are in the best position possible to really, you know... [succeed].

Shaan Puri

crush it where where you

Kendall Saville

know with what you're doing

Shaan Puri

and what did you do after your first sale you did a a retirement party

Kendall Saville

yeah so I had this idea I was like okay you know what I did it I'm done

Shaan Puri

and you were like 30 something

Kendall Saville

I was about 33, I believe, and I was telling all my friends, "I'm gonna rent out a restaurant and we're just gonna celebrate my retirement." You know, it'll be great because I'm not gonna be 65, I'll be like 33, and it'll be great. So we rented out Lazy Bear in San Francisco, and I had all my friends and my family there. It was awesome. We then had a party bus.

Shaan Puri

they didn't even really know about your business

Kendall Saville

No, I mean, that was another thing for me. I've always been, you know, not one to brag about it. I feel like what I do is kind of just what I do, and there's no reason to be, you know, boastful about it. Yeah, so for actually the first year after I sold the business, I didn't tell anyone. I just wanted to live with it and be comfortable with it myself before I told other people. I had a three-year earn-out, so after the three years is when I did my retirement party. So, you sat on that news for a long time? I did, yeah. Well, yeah, I sat on it for a year, told people, but then I had two years left with them. Once I was done with that, I was like, "It's retirement time! I'm done, let's do it!" So, I rented Lazy Bear, rented a bar, had a party bus, and it was awesome. But then, literally, like three months later...

Shaan Puri

at the were you at this party

Kendall Saville

you were supposed to come

Michael Wittmeyer

why did I not come

Kendall Saville

you had some some excuse

Shaan Puri

I think I was hungover again. Yeah, that's a podcast. Like, this guy's almost hungover. I don't know who's talking about it. No, I can't remember.

Michael Wittmeyer

I don't remember why I didn't come, but I do remember that when he did sell that one, I had left the gambling space. So I knew he was doing well, but I didn't know what was really going on. He was in Dallas for something, I can't remember what, and I went over to their hotel room. Him and his wife, Tess, had a bottle of champagne. They're like, "We're gonna open this to celebrate the sale." I was like, "Oh, you know, congrats. That's awesome, man." Then I went home, Googled it, and I was like, "Oh..." I texted him, "Alright, I *really* mean it. Congrats now." Like, "Wow."

Shaan Puri

we can it's in the news right like that one sold for I think 45,000,000 40,000,000

Kendall Saville

it was actually 50,000,000 total but I kind of sold it twice to the company yeah which was kind of a weird story

Shaan Puri

explain that how does that work so first time you sold it

Kendall Saville

For what? So, the first time I sold it for like $15,000,000 plus, you know, a bunch of equity. What happened was, at that time, New Jersey was big. That was like the first legal state that had, you know, casino and poker. So we focused on that. We did really well.

Shaan Puri

Well, let me explain because I think people won't know the context here. So, you go from online poker, then online poker collapses, and now that whole affiliate game is kinda dead because the US just shut down online poker.

Kendall Saville

yep

Shaan Puri

What most people did was they went offshore or international because it was still illegal in certain places or in certain ways. That's where most people went. You did something different. That was the obvious market, but you went for a kind of non-obvious pivot, which was in the whole United States. One state was going to legalize, I don't know if it was all gambling or sports betting or which one.

Kendall Saville

They basically didn't have sports betting, but it was poker. It was casino, and casinos are like the big players. So that's kind of the one that was really exciting.

Shaan Puri

So, gambling was legal in New Jersey and only New Jersey. I remember at that time it was like, "Well, how do you build a business around one state?" It just didn't sound big, and I don't think it sounded big to most people. So, most people didn't do that, right? You kind of found the hack that nobody else was really competing for. What would be the search term people were looking for that you wanted to rank?

Kendall Saville

New Jersey online casino was like the big one. And you're right, all of my competitors were perfect. You know, we still have 49 other states, and the regulators at that time said, "If you choose to promote in New Jersey, you cannot do anything else." They didn't want the offshore and the legal regulated market together. I was like, "That's perfect! I want to be a big fish in a small pond." So I started that business, and it was going well. But there was one competitor, Chris Grove, and he was really good at content. He had his game figured out. I was much more into the revenue side of the business. So we talked for a while, and we were like, "This is what I'm doing, and this is what you're doing." We realized we were the only people in this market. If we combined, we basically owned this market, right? So it was an easy decision.

Shaan Puri

then you have pricing power

Kendall Saville

exactly

Shaan Puri

Because otherwise, if you're an affiliate and the company says, "Oh, instead of giving you $200, I'll give you $20," you're just like, "Well, you're my revenue stream and you just changed the price on me." That's not great. I think that's one of the problems most people in the affiliate game fall into: you're at the whim of your affiliate partners. But if you become kind of like almost more important, you're like, "I'm the only acquisition source for customers, so this price is the one I'm comfortable at."

Kendall Saville

Exactly! It was crazy because, you know, we were able to get $1,000 per player that we sent through New Jersey online casinos. Wow! So, yeah, it worked out really well for us. Literally, the first month we partnered together, we both made way more money than we did apart. And, you know, within two years, Containment Media, the company that purchased us, came knocking. They were like, "We have to buy you because we've heard at conferences, we've heard from, you know, people in the industry that you guys are the biggest, and we want to own the biggest."

Shaan Puri

so they buy it once

Kendall Saville

So, they buy it once and that's it. It was just New Jersey. What I told them was, "We're not gonna sell. Why would we sell? We have 49 other states that eventually will legalize." So, I came up with the idea that, "Alright, we'll sell you New Jersey and for any future state, we'll get 50%." So, we'll be kind of 50/50 partners for every state, right? They said sure; they didn't really care at that point. I think they were just more focused on New Jersey and being the biggest affiliate in the U.S. market. So, it was great. We started running it. You know, I had a 3-year note, as I mentioned. The first year was good, and that's when sports betting actually got legalized. Then the business started booming. New Jersey had it, but then a lot of other states were really excited about offering it to the people in their state. So, they started legalizing, and all of a sudden, we had like 10 states coming online. The company was like, "Whoa, we cannot give you 50% of this. This is just too much liability." And so, we were like...

Shaan Puri

okay

Kendall Saville

Yeah, no problem. We'd... you know, here we just need a big check, right? And they did, and they were like, "We have to come up with a situation that works for us and works for you." So, you know, it was part stock and part cash. In total, it was around $50,000,000.

Shaan Puri

yeah that's amazing and that company is public listed right

Kendall Saville

yep they're publicly listed in the swedish stock exchange

Shaan Puri

Did you go to the Swedish Stock Exchange and ring the bell? I wish that would have been cool! So, that's kind of like your big win story. Now, let's do Mike's big win story. How does one go from "I'm gambling and losing money in poker" to "I get my friends to sign up for a referral program" to "I own this company that does, like, I don't know, multiple billions in gold sales every year"? Right? So, how does that happen? Where does that come from?

Michael Wittmeyer

Yeah, so basically, I was in the gambling industry, like he was. When the shit hit the fan, I sold. I made the wrong call when I sold.

Shaan Puri

like the 32100 no so this was

Michael Wittmeyer

This was later on. I sold it for $565,000, and I think I was 19 then.

Shaan Puri

So, to sell a business for $565,000, what was it doing at the time? It must have been doing a lot, but the future was too uncertain.

Michael Wittmeyer

It was doing like $30,000 to $40,000 a month, but I just didn't know what was going to happen from that. So, I sold that and then, you know, I'm on top of the world. Yeah.

Shaan Puri

and you're how old

Michael Wittmeyer

you're like I'm 19 at this. Drop out of college yeah I'm going for it

Shaan Puri

like I guys I figured it out

Michael Wittmeyer

Figured out life. Yeah, so I'm like, "God, I can do this affiliate thing in any space." So I tried a bunch of different plays: - I did it in the dating space - I tried to do it like selling business cards online (that was a complete failure) And just really... [it] was this...

Shaan Puri

where the spirit of ice thing happened

Michael Wittmeyer

that was around that time yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

tell that tell that story

Michael Wittmeyer

so when I you know around that

Shaan Puri

age you

Michael Wittmeyer

I was out at Penn State, having some fun. There was this trend that was like "icing" people, right? Like Smirnoff Ice.

Shaan Puri

right

Michael Wittmeyer

if you we should have brought one yeah

Shaan Puri

you should have brought one yeah if you

Michael Wittmeyer

present it to someone they had to get on a knee and chug it so like guys I knew at college and high school they were into this

Kendall Saville

by the

Shaan Puri

way most genius marketing campaign ever

Michael Wittmeyer

yeah it was so good

Shaan Puri

someone needs to just redo that enough time has passed just replay that same thing

Michael Wittmeyer

do a milk milk chug yeah

Shaan Puri

you'll lay on your back and chug it like a gallon of milk

Michael Wittmeyer

So, there was a website called BrosIcingBros.com where people would send in their best pictures of this happening. There were all these creative ones. Like, there was one I remember where a guy was super hungover in the morning and went to open his toilet. They had put plastic over the toilet, and there was a Smirnoff Ice sitting there.

Shaan Puri

he had

Michael Wittmeyer

To like chug it at 7 AM, me and my buddies would send these pictures back and forth. We thought it was funny. Then I somehow ended up reaching out to the guy that ran it. I was like, "I think this is cool. Do you have any interest in selling it or, you know, doing anything with it?" I ended up working on a deal to buy it and I gave him $25,000 for it. There was no monetization at all. It was like, "I think this is cool. It has a lot of traffic. I can figure something out here." I was really excited. I told my buddies, "You know, I just bought that site, right?" They were like, "You're the man!" and "Congrats!" They wanted to get their pictures up, whatever. Then literally the next day, I got an email from Sprint's office of services saying we were infringing their trademarks or whatever. They said we had to take all the pictures off the site. The essence of the site was the pictures; it didn't work without them. So basically, I just shut that down after 24 hours and wrote it off.

Kendall Saville

didn't you try to blur it weren't you saying you were gonna blur it

Michael Wittmeyer

I talked to the prior owner because I told him I was, you know, looking for any ideas. He said, "Well, you could try blurring them out or whatever."

Shaan Puri

I mean does this seem a little coincidental it was the next day like did this guy make a phone call

Michael Wittmeyer

I know yeah it's no wonder but yeah it's a nice loss for me it was nice learning

Shaan Puri

okay so you're the world's trying to humble you are you getting humbled or not really you're just like teflon

Michael Wittmeyer

very successfully humbling me

Shaan Puri

okay yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

It was kind of like a 2-year period where I went from everything working really well to... nothing was working at all. Especially having, you know, left school. My parents were very much against that decision, so it was a dark time for me.

Shaan Puri

like you

Michael Wittmeyer

Know, is this gonna work? Is it not? Am I gonna get egg on my face? Do I have to go back to college? Whatever. So, one of the guys I knew from the poker affiliate world was doing some affiliate websites in the gold and silver space. There was this company that had just spun up an affiliate program, and Jeremy Yanke, a guy we know, was managing it for him. So, he's like, "You guys should look at this." Whatever. I decided to invest in this guy's business. His name was Jonathan, and I was just gonna help him build these sites. Let's see if we can turn it into something. Over maybe 6 or 9 months, we built up some traffic. It was making like $5 a month. You know, it was a side thing for me. I was trying to do other stuff, and kind of out of nowhere, the company we were sending everybody to just killed their whole affiliate program. So, we went from making, you know, $5,000 a month to just $0. You know, this looked like another just completely...

Shaan Puri

blown got iced again mike gets iced just getting

Michael Wittmeyer

Iced... yeah. And then my partner, credit to him, I was again doing it. It's like, "Well, there's nothing to really do here. There's no other affiliate programs." We had actually gone to that company that cut us off and offered to sell them the website. Like, you know, this thing was sending you, I don't know, 200 buyers a month or whatever it was. You know, just kind of backing into what you're paying us on an affiliate basis. Just give us $40 for it and we'll, you know, you can have lead generation for a long time. They just never replied to us. So we had no path to monetizing it. So I was, yeah, I was writing it off. And then my partner is like, "We should just sell this stuff ourselves." That sounded like... you can imagine how much of a nightmare that sounded. It was insane if you're an affiliate because you never talk to customers. You don't... like, there's no employees really. It's a very simple business.

Shaan Puri

there's no product here it's it's

Michael Wittmeyer

it's you're

Kendall Saville

kind of a middleman yeah like you're like in between people and the product

Michael Wittmeyer

yeah so I I was like this is crazy I don't wanna do any of this but he's like I'll do all the

Shaan Puri

it's like gasps in the affiliate form of the what are your business

Kendall Saville

exactly you're gonna sell products products yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

So he's like, "I'll do all the inventory, shipping, customer phone calls, all that stuff. I'll do it all. You just help with getting traffic and putting some more money in."

Shaan Puri

yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

So, I was like, "Alright, let's give this a try." And so, yeah, I mean, credit to him. It wouldn't have happened if he hadn't pushed so hard to...

Shaan Puri

this is this is andreas or this is somebody else

Michael Wittmeyer

this is jonathan so that was the jm was jonathan and mike

Shaan Puri

okay

Michael Wittmeyer

and kind of a funny story

Shaan Puri

on that sounds very regal and official yes

Michael Wittmeyer

like great story

Shaan Puri

jonathan and mike's mike's gold shop versus jm bullion like that's a

Michael Wittmeyer

So, step up. We knew so little about this space when we started that we named it **JM Bullion** using our initials. We had no idea that one of the largest refiners of gold and silver in the world is **Johnson Matthey**. So, we actually got a big boost early on because people thought we were their retail arm. It was a nice little accidental win, and we didn't get any cease and desist, so that was nice. Yeah, we spun this thing up, and it went live in **October of 2011**. The idea was we were just going to drive our old traffic to the new e-commerce site **jmbullion.com**. It was crickets the first few weeks—like zero. I don't think we got an order for three weeks, and I honestly think that was like my mom's friend. She told him to go do it or something.

Shaan Puri

but you don't give up at that.

Michael Wittmeyer

I didn't give up and you know just kept trying to figure stuff out how can we make this work

Shaan Puri

What's that conversation like? You're 3 or 4 weeks in, you go to the office. Does anybody say anything, like, "Hey guys"?

Michael Wittmeyer

Yeah, well there was no office, so that was easy. It was my partner who had all the gold to success. Yes... no office. My partner had all the gold in his little desk drawer in his basement. It could all fit in like the tiny little... [drawer].

Shaan Puri

case you're in the basement you're like no gold is leaving the drawer right now yeah it's

Michael Wittmeyer

Staying in the drawer, it was so early that I wasn't really worried about that. You know, like what we're doing right now, it's early. It takes years to build these things. But we have kind of a funny story about this. We eventually, out of nowhere, started getting big orders, and we didn't change anything. So we were very confused as to what was going on here. We were getting big credit card orders from repeat customers over and over again. We were like, "Alright, we've hit it! This is gonna work." So for like two months, this went on. We were getting like $30,000 to $50,000 in revenue a month. Or no, I'm sorry, it wasn't that much. It was probably around $30,000 to $50,000. Then, literally on Christmas morning, my partner texted me, "Kind of weird, have you seen the checking account?" I was like, "No." So I go and pull it up on my phone, like Christmas morning with my family around.

Shaan Puri

the whole thing

Michael Wittmeyer

We pulled up the checking account and we're like, "We're negative $40,000!" All of it was fraud. Every single order was like credit card chargeback fraud. We just didn't know anything about any of this stuff. So we had so many of those moments along the way where it was really just two kids, you know, figuring out how to run a gold business. There were a lot of pitfalls that we fell into and, fortunately, they didn't kill us.

Shaan Puri

and so all right so you recover from that

Michael Wittmeyer

Yeah, so I had to put more money in. I was pretty much on the ropes at this point. It was like everything that was going in... now this was it. This was going to work or not.

Shaan Puri

it was tough you're stressing

Michael Wittmeyer

I'm stressing at this. Yeah and this is where

Shaan Puri

you start uphill skiing in gymnasiums yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

So the real turning point for that company was when I just took a really honest look in the mirror. I said, "Here's JM, here are the 5 biggest companies." I looked at these various metrics: how good is their website, how's their pricing, product selection, how fast do they ship, customer service, whatever. I basically did a little scorecard for everybody and I realized: **There's no reason anyone would ever buy from us. We're just worse at everything.** We had less selection. We didn't even... we were so small we couldn't get a wholesale account.

Shaan Puri

right

Michael Wittmeyer

So, we were just buying from the cheapest retailer and marking it up. You know, Jonathan and I were answering the cell phone; our cell phones were the 800 number. If we were available, we'd answer it. It was just, again, like, "Why would someone buy from us?" So, what I landed on was that the only lever we could really pull here was to undercut everyone because this is a commodity. It's like buying gasoline. If there's a store here and a store there, and that one's a penny cheaper, you're going to pull in there. So, I thought, "Let's just cut it and see what happens." If we can get volume and make that work, I know we're going to be able to figure out margin as we go. You're going to get economies of scale. We did that, and it worked. We started to see the revenue really grow. Through 2012, we were starting to do like $1,000,000+ a month in sales, which back then we were really pumped about. The problem with this company was that it was super capital intensive because you had to stay ahead of the inventory.

Shaan Puri

right

Michael Wittmeyer

So, if you were going to be able to ship fast, it had to be... you know, in the drawer when they order. I did another round. I put in, I think, my last $100K basically. Then we outgrew that and I was like, "We need someone." I knew no bank was going to give us any money. We put a deck together and sent it to like 60 different angels or VCs and just... zero responses. Absolutely nothing. Not even like a "No, thank you." So I was thinking, "Who could I get to invest in this thing?" And I called him. So he was our first angel investor.

Shaan Puri

and you knew him personally at the time

Michael Wittmeyer

Yeah, so because we were competitors in the space and we went to all the conferences together. We were both around the same age and, you know, just liked to go out, have dinners and stuff at conferences. So we were friends, and he had told me after I sold my gambling business, "You know, whatever you do next, let me know. I would like to invest." So I was like, "Okay."

Shaan Puri

you get the call I was

Kendall Saville

like hey I need to cash that in

Shaan Puri

now what happens you get the call what's your did you even know he was doing this in the meantime

Kendall Saville

I did, you know... I got it. I was excited about being able to be a part of it, but I was like, "I don't wanna be operational." You know, for me, I was just like, "I'm trying to do this gambling business." But I was excited about Mike. You know, Mike made really good websites, and I was like, "If anyone's gonna figure it out, it's gonna be Mike." So basically, I invested in him. You know, it was... I feel like we had a quick negotiation. It...

Michael Wittmeyer

was like 24 hours

Kendall Saville

yeah yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

you did a great deal

Shaan Puri

yeah I mean

Michael Wittmeyer

he had all the leverage it was like we were either gonna go under or he

Kendall Saville

was gonna write this check so it's always like so you got

Shaan Puri

an a + for that dude

Michael Wittmeyer

was the a + yeah

Kendall Saville

And it was like just speed. It was affiliate, you know? We always call it like "affiliate speed," where it was just like we kind of had a handshake agreement, and then I just wired in the money.

Michael Wittmeyer

like we probably did we didn't sign anything yeah yeah but

Kendall Saville

it was like I trust you

Shaan Puri

did you

Kendall Saville

put you

Shaan Puri

put in what like a couple 100 k or

Kendall Saville

I think a 100 k

Michael Wittmeyer

It was 100, and then this was another A+ move. He negotiated another rider of, "I get to do another 50 at the same valuation at my option," which he then did a few months later as we were growing.

Shaan Puri

Okay, so you put in $150,000. That ended up being a good return for you. Like, what's the multiple on that?

Kendall Saville

I think it was at what 20,000,000

Michael Wittmeyer

yeah like 23,000,000

Shaan Puri

You... that's what you netted out? Yeah, that's why I'm in. I'm not sure about the valuation. No, because like in Silicon Valley, it's like, "Oh, you invested in a seed thing, oh it's at a $20,000,000 valuation." No, no, you're saying no.

Michael Wittmeyer

he was in like it was maybe a $1,000,000

Shaan Puri

or $2,000,000 I think

Michael Wittmeyer

We said it was worth **$1,000,000**. No, I don't... maybe **$700,000** or something was the valuation. And yeah, sold it for **$175,000**. Wow!

Shaan Puri

so you got amazing return there you turned up a 100 k ish into $20,000,000

Kendall Saville

thanks mike yeah

Shaan Puri

yeah do do I mean do you what what what do you budget for pappy

Michael Wittmeyer

ran a

Shaan Puri

nice auto

Michael Wittmeyer

of pappy yeah

Kendall Saville

it was you know know let's you know we could do another business together

Shaan Puri

sure right

Kendall Saville

I'll actually help this time

Shaan Puri

there you go yeah there you go

Kendall Saville

that that was good

Hubspot

Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best. HubSpot: "Grow better." So, you okay? So you do that? That's amazing. You get the phone call, you do that, you...

Michael Wittmeyer

get just

Shaan Puri

more money but it seems like you're just gonna have this problem again

Michael Wittmeyer

And we did [the deal] like 3 months later. So we get his last, you know, 50 [percent] or whatever it was, and then we were really... This was starting to grow pretty quick at that point. We were up to probably $4,000,000 a month in revenue, and it was starting to hockey stick. So I was like, you know, we...

Shaan Puri

what are you doing to get so much traffic it's seo basically

Michael Wittmeyer

Yeah, so that's when the SEO really started to kick in. Initially, it was like, "We're gonna price cheaper. We're gonna make this appealing to people." Then people started, you know, we got the return customers and got the backlinks going on the site.

Shaan Puri

What do you call this exercise you did where you're like, "I took an honest look in the mirror," and I said, "It's kind of like, why would I want to date a 10? Why would a 10 date me?"

Michael Wittmeyer

exactly that

Shaan Puri

Right, that's basically what you were saying. It's like they have all these websites they can choose from. Why would they be choosing us? Shouldn't more companies do that? I feel like most companies don't actually do that exercise.

Michael Wittmeyer

because it it can be painful because the the answer often isn't what you want it to be right the mirror doesn't look that great

Shaan Puri

that the world is wrong and it's not dumb it's there

Michael Wittmeyer

so that's you know something I've tried to use over my career and it's been helpful

Shaan Puri

That's amazing! Yeah, I think more people should do that exercise. Also, when you do that, I think it forces clarity. Where are we going to be great? You know, what are we going to be great at? You decided, "We're going to be great on price first, and then we're going to be great on these other things later." Okay, so you do that, it grows, grows, grows. You do this for 8 years, and then you sell. Hallelujah! So that's kind of like your big wins. I want to know, give me some stories along the way on either of the big wins. Maybe a story of something you look fondly at in the early days, like one of those wins that felt really good. And then maybe a moment that felt bad. I don't know if you have any stories on either one of those. I'd love to hear them.

Michael Wittmeyer

Yeah, this was kind of a mix of good and bad. So that first year, I think it was before you were in, we had gotten an order from a guy. It was for like $20,000, which was a big order for us back then. He paid us, we shipped it, you know, it was delivered, everything's fine, we go on our way. Then we hear from him like a week later that, you know, "I was out of town, there's no gold here. I don't know what happened." And again, we were so naive; we didn't even have shipping insurance back then, so there was just nothing there. So we dug in pretty far and we're like, "You know, UPS has the GPS coordinates on your doorstep. The driver has signed an affidavit that he delivered it there," you know, all this stuff. But this guy just kept digging in harder. He did this like... there's a site called ripoffreport.com where anyone can go on there and file like, "Hey, this company or person screwed me," and he did that. We were so early that there were no Jam Boy reviews anywhere. So when people searched that, that was the number one thing that came up. It immediately hit us; probably 30% of our sales just fell off because in the gold space, everyone checks.

Shaan Puri

right

Michael Wittmeyer

Like, they're always worried about getting, you know, rug pulled. Yeah, so it was really hurting us. This guy then went into like this kind of sob story of, "You know, that was my kid's college fund. My kid's not gonna be able to go to college. You're gonna ruin his life unless you make this right," whatever. I was really starting to stress about this. You know, that's not a good feeling. I don't know this person, but you wouldn't want anyone to feel like that. So as this draws on and we're not finding a conclusion, I was basically like, "We delivered it, you know, we're washing our hands of this thing." I had caved in.

Shaan Puri

and I

Michael Wittmeyer

was like I'm gonna personally write this guy a check for 20 and that that would have been like the end of my checking account

Shaan Puri

right there

Michael Wittmeyer

And because I couldn't even sleep at night, I was feeling so much guilt about this. I had drafted the email that I was going to send to him, and I thought, "I'm gonna sleep on this one more night just to be sure." That morning I woke up, and UPS had gone with the police to his house. As soon as the police were there, he found it in his closet. So that one had a happy ending, thankfully, but that was another learning moment for us. I thought, "Okay, well obviously we need to figure out the delivery insurance side of this business."

Shaan Puri

yeah painful painful lessons learned but

Michael Wittmeyer

you gotta do it

Kendall Saville

So I think one would be Facebook and the other is Facebook.com.

Shaan Puri

wait okay so what are these

Kendall Saville

So, at the time, originally it was facebook.com that was, you know, Facebook's domain name. I was in college, so I was part of it. Eventually, they dropped the "the," and I knew right away, I was like, "I'm gonna domain squat on things that they're gonna..."

Shaan Puri

type wrong

Kendall Saville

You know, Paradise Poker, you know, same thing. But I'm gonna do it for Facebook. So I got the K is by the M, so that's why I registered Facebook.

Shaan Puri

like on the keyboard the k e board wow you're a man of science

Kendall Saville

I I didn't

Shaan Puri

even realize the precision that you took to this

Kendall Saville

and then you know people forget

Shaan Puri

the dotcom

Kendall Saville

So they, you know, they end up putting the ".com" and then ".com" again. The crazy thing about it was I got to see basically Facebook's slide growth... crazy hockey stick!

Shaan Puri

I just went to faceboom.com you know where it goes

Kendall Saville

I have no idea

Shaan Puri

facebook it goes to facebook now they they also figured this out

Kendall Saville

Yeah, so they might have figured it out one way, but at the time, I actually ended up selling Faceboom.com for like $20,000. You know, someone came and was like, "Hey, there's a lot of traffic coming here." At that time, you'd have just like, you know, PPC type ads, just really basic text link ads, and you'd make like, you know, $0.10 per click. But there was enough traffic where it made it worthwhile, so I sold it to them and I was like, "Sweet! I still have Facebookcom.com. I'm excited to sell this one." But little did I know, a big old packet of papers comes from Facebook and they're like, "Hey, that's our trademark. Do you want to fight this or do you want to hand it over?" It was a very easy choice to give them the domain name, so at least I got to sell one of them.

Shaan Puri

that's that's pretty good did you

Michael Wittmeyer

you gotta tell the itwitch story

Shaan Puri

what was that one

Kendall Saville

well I almost went blind or at least I thought I was

Shaan Puri

I thought this was gonna be a misspelling like not twitch.com I twitch

Kendall Saville

So, like, on my first company, you know, the regulators said, as I mentioned, "You can't do offshore. If you're gonna do regulated, you have to do regulated." One of my competitors, I think, told on me and said, "I think Kendall's doing both." I was like, okay. I didn't know any of this, and I was at an industry conference when one of the regulators was like, "Hey, I'd like to meet you for coffee."

Shaan Puri

I was like

Kendall Saville

alright is this something I should be worried about he's like no no no

Shaan Puri

Just come. It's like when Chris Hansen's like, "Pizza's inside, come on in." You don't come for the pizza.

Kendall Saville

So, I just, you know, I walk up there, we sit down, and I think this is going to be a really friendly conversation. He's like, "So, we can do this the hard way or the easy way." At that time, I'm stunned. I'm just kind of like, "Oh no, do I run?" Then he's like, "You know what? We've had reports that we think you're doing the offshore. What are you going to say about this?" At that time, I was like, "I'm not going to say anything. I'm not going to incriminate myself." But it was wrong. All these pages were basically algorithmically updated with these offshore ads that I had no control over, right? But he didn't know that because he wasn't really familiar with domain parking pages, etc. At that time, I was like, "I need to talk to my lawyer, and then we can talk to you." And you have a lawyer figured out? I did not have one.

Shaan Puri

that movies that tell me that I need to say these words

Kendall Saville

Exactly. So then, I mean, that was a terrible feeling, but I was like, "Okay, you know what? I'm gonna talk to a lawyer. We'll be able to kind of outline why what he thinks is not actually happening." But then I get an email from them, and they're like, "We need you to come to New Jersey." I was like, "Oh no, they want to arrest me. They want to get me in their jurisdiction, and they are going to arrest me." At that time, I was talking to my wife, Taz. I said, "There's something wrong with my eye." She said, "Oh, you know, it'll be fine." I was like, "Yeah, I think it'll be fine," but I was kind of seeing little specks, and it got worse and worse. At one point, I was like, "I can't read a menu." So I went to a specialist, an eye specialist, and he thought I had a detached retina. He was like, "Oh my gosh, we gotta get you into surgery and all these other things." Then he looked a little harder and was like, "No, no. Actually, have you been stressed lately?" I said, "Very stressed. Very, very stressed." He said, "Yeah, you know, we've seen this. It's just a common thing. You're just stressed; you'll be fine." So to end the story, I had to go to New Jersey to talk to the regulators, and I wanted to bring a lawyer, but they were like, "Nope, don't bring a lawyer."

Shaan Puri

sued them for

Kendall Saville

the twitch they got exactly

Shaan Puri

Got you! You blinded me with your "hard way, easy way" bullshit at the coffee shop.

Kendall Saville

And then they're like, "Do not bring a lawyer because we'll make it hard on you." I was like, "Oh my God!"

Shaan Puri

oh they told you that

Kendall Saville

yes they told me that

Shaan Puri

So, oh man, I wouldn't know what to do. Yeah, I wouldn't know. Okay, am I... are they just... is this a play? Is this a good cop, bad cop type of thing? Are they pushing me around, or is this real?

Kendall Saville

Yeah, I had no idea, but I was just like, "Alright, no lawyer." I mean, I'm going to listen to them this time. But which is funny because the first time they said, "Hey, everything's alright, just come see us." I sit there at the office, looking around, and I'm like, "Okay, I haven't been arrested yet," which is good. They sit down and they're like, "Okay, well, talk to us about being an affiliate." Then it was like this super cordial conversation. I ended up saying, "Okay, yeah, these few things weren't what they seemed, and here's why." Then they're like, "Okay, you know, that's fine, but we just want to learn more about affiliates." They were like, you know, the first regulators in the United States, and they had never really talked to a large affiliate because we were the only one at that time.

Shaan Puri

Right

Kendall Saville

So then they just kind of wanted to, you know, do a fact-finding mission and it all worked out. I didn't go blind, and you know...

Shaan Puri

I'm here today so I feel like it all worked out blind and in jail I ended up not blinded

Michael Wittmeyer

not in jail did you like pack

Shaan Puri

a jail bag what what was the prep there

Kendall Saville

I did not, but my wife was in a hotel. I was just like, "Okay, well, you know, we have enough clothes."

Shaan Puri

If we need that, it is amazing! You guys are also kind of like life hack, life experimenters. I feel like you find the clever angles in business, and you do that with life as well. You don't just do things exactly the way others do them; you're like, "Well, why don't I just do this instead?" You've done this, and I feel like you do the same thing with certain lifestyle experiments. So, tell us about some of those. What are some things that you guys do in your day-to-day life that are maybe just not standard, not exactly what anybody else is doing? Because I think for the people listening, and myself included, I love hearing when people don't just follow a very standard playbook. It makes me wonder, "Oh, what's the thought process behind that? Why do they do that?" And nine times out of ten, I don't do it myself, but I like hearing those. Do you guys have any kind of interesting lifestyle choices or experiments that you do?

Kendall Saville

I think the first one for me was, you know, I was having twins. I was telling my wife, "Look, we're having twins! This is insane!"

Shaan Puri

She's like, "Yo, I know." Yeah, she's like, "They're in need. I have to do the breast, actually. I'm having twins."

Kendall Saville

And I was like, "We need to get some help. We need experts." So what I did was... I talked to an agency and I just kind of, you know, cast my net wide and far. I was like, "I want to find someone that can help us raise these kids."

Shaan Puri

so you took this seriously like on your to do list was like I'm going to do a search I told the expert

Kendall Saville

You're doing the hard part; I'll do the easy part and just try to find someone who has done this before that can really help us along the way and make our lives easier. I found this twin expert. She actually lived in New Jersey, and we ended up hiring her for four months for the babies' first four months. She basically worked with them night and day, 18 hours a day. Part of it was training us. You know, with a dog, they say, "You don't train the dog; you train the person." It was kind of the same with us. She put them on an insane schedule where if one was sleeping, the other one was sleeping. If one was eating, the other one was eating. Now they're super trained. After four months, they slept through the night, and they were very schedule-oriented. We'd look at the time, and if it was 2 o'clock, we'd know they needed to eat right then, and they were ready for it.

Shaan Puri

they were both just just totally ready sleep at the same time

Kendall Saville

At the exact same time, like always, they really kind of synced up. That made life so much easier because I couldn't imagine.

Shaan Puri

right then

Michael Wittmeyer

it's like

Shaan Puri

2 with that

Kendall Saville

yeah yeah exactly we basically have like one kid that ends up being 2

Shaan Puri

that's amazing what about you yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

I mean, I followed him on some of this stuff. After he sold, one of the splurges was he hired a chef to cook for him. When I heard that, I was like, "Oh, that sounds really bougie." I don't know, that sounds cool. Then he was telling me about it, and I was like, "Yeah, this makes a lot of sense. Why would I... I can eat healthier. You know, I don't have to think about it. I don't have to think about what I'm gonna eat," etcetera. So I ended up finding somebody as well. I've come out to see him a few times in the last few months, and when we'll be eating, I can see him looking at me because he's so competitive. I know he wants to know, "Is this better than what I'm eating at home?"

Kendall Saville

and sadly

Michael Wittmeyer

the answer is yes

Shaan Puri

but you'll never give me that satisfaction last night

Michael Wittmeyer

I finally fessed up

Shaan Puri

last night

Michael Wittmeyer

I fessed up yeah

Shaan Puri

That's amazing! Yeah, you're a foodie, and for you, it's like, "Oh, you're a foodie, that makes sense." But actually, you're more of an efficiency guy. People don't really realize how much mental and physical energy goes into feeding yourself three times a day, or in my case, feeding kids as well. We have a chef, and it's the same thing. It's like, "Alright, if I just don't have to make decisions, I eat healthier, and it tastes better because I'm not good at cooking, but this person's great at cooking." I was like, any money I could spend on a car or a nice whatever, I would way rather do this. I would rather have one less employee at work and do more myself than sacrifice on this, for sure.

Michael Wittmeyer

Yeah, and it's like I think we've both gotten a lot better at, you know, if you have a problem, you can think about "How can I fix this problem? How can I solve the problem tactically?" or whatever. Or you can just think about "Who can fix this for me?" And that path is, you know, so much more efficient for you. You can focus on your superpower, and it's obviously been what we've done.

Shaan Puri

And you guys are different from most people who come on the show and also from most people I hang out with. You know, we're here in San Francisco, which is mostly tech, Silicon Valley. Tech is not like yours. We build websites, but anybody who works in tech here would be like, "What do you mean? You're making a WordPress site with a referral link? That's not software." You know, it's not a software startup in the same vein that most people consider. You guys also don't go raise money from venture capitalists. You don't do a lot of the things that Silicon Valley companies do. What do you guys see as the benefits of that? Are there parts where you're like, "Oh, maybe I should start doing some of that," and what parts are you like, "No, my way is different, but I think it's better for these reasons"? Do you guys have any opinions on that?

Michael Wittmeyer

Yeah, for sure. So, I grew up in Buffalo, New York, and I just was never exposed to any of that stuff. I didn't know what I didn't know. I was just trying to figure out how I can do what I'm trying to do. Actually meeting you and spending more time out here has opened my eyes a lot to that side of the world. I think, you know, for us, the benefits of funding it ourselves are obvious. We control it. There's no one else asking us, you know, "Do this or do that?" or "Where's this revenue target?" etc. So, we can think really long-term about the business, and I love that. We're the decision-makers, and we move fast. It's like once a decision needs to be made, it's like, "Hey, what do you think?" "Here's what I think." "Alright, let's go." I think one thing you probably lose, though, is— in my opinion—it's harder to have like the really big outcome. If you look at the things we're doing or have historically done, it's hard to be like a $10 billion company from that stuff. I think going the other path, you know, it's still very, very rare, but it does happen, right? You don't hear a lot about companies that just self-funded the whole way and then IPO'd for $100 billion, right? That doesn't really happen.

Kendall Saville

And I think too, you lose time. For us, it was always about operating the business efficiently and profitably. So, things would take time. You'd watch another competitor raise a bunch of money and do some really exciting things, and you're like, "That's really cool. That's not me at this." But I can see the merits of it. For me, I've always been a control freak. I was like, "I don't want to work for someone else." I think with venture capital, it's kind of the same thing, right? That is part of it. With this acquisition, I feel like you're on our team. I don't feel like it's just, you know, "You're going to be on the board, and we're going to be able to make really big decisions together," rather than, "Hey, I invested in you. Are we 10 times yet?" You know, like that type of thing.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, totally! And what about, you know, business philosophies? I've heard, as we've been talking, some of your guys' "isms." It's like, "Oh, these are Candelisms," these are "Mic-isms" of a sort. But I've only worked through for a very short amount of time, so I don't know a lot of them yet. I'm sure you have them, right? Nobody goes through years and years of building businesses without coming up with some operating philosophy. Like, you know, "Here's how to work," "Here's how to negotiate," "Here's how to build," "Here's how to stay the course," or whatever. Do you guys have any that stand out to you? Like, "These are my pillar ones." This is something I really believe in, and I can kind of tell a story that maybe goes along with that one. It's a bit of a hard question, but if you do have an answer, I find this to be a really valuable one.

Kendall Saville

I mean, for me, I feel like you're gonna be right a couple times in your life, and if you think you're gonna be right, swing big. You know, for example, with Domain or with Bitcoin, I saw it. I was super interested in it. I was like, "This could be really cool."

Shaan Puri

or what time frame are we talking

Kendall Saville

here this is 2013

Shaan Puri

okay

Kendall Saville

You know, this could be really cool or it could go to zero. But I have this inclination that it could be, you know, way bigger. I think it has a chance too. It kind of brings me back to my dad. This was in the nineties. He was a computer programmer and he was telling our family, "Domain names are gonna be big." I was like, "Oh, that's cool, Dad." He was like, "No, they're gonna be big. Every person or company is likely gonna want one." He bought our last name, Savelle.com, but didn't really buy anything else at that time. He could have bought, I looked it up, like poker.com, home.com.

Shaan Puri

so he was right

Kendall Saville

But I didn't swing hard exactly. So when I was looking at Bitcoin, I was like, "This is my domain names." I just started buying Bitcoin and I thought, "I am just gonna hold it and see what happens." No matter what, I didn't want to sell. I wish I didn't sell, right? So I'm still holding it today.

Shaan Puri

And you, you bet big at that time. Or I shouldn't say you bet big because you don't often have to put 100% of your chips on it. It's like, this is one that can go big, so I don't even need to put my entire stack in it. I just need to put enough where if this works, it means something. You know, exactly.

Kendall Saville

Yeah, no, I mean I really didn't... I probably put a couple hundred thousand dollars in at that point. I was like, you know, I'll just wait it out. I think it was around $80 to $90 per Bitcoin.

Shaan Puri

And then... now you've seen ups and downs along the way. Did you feel tempted to sell or to, you know, like get out? Exit either because: 1. "I got a bunch of profit" or 2. "Oh man, bad news, bad news, bad news... Bitcoin's crashing, maybe I should just get out."

Kendall Saville

Not really. I feel like, you know, it was always like, "Oh, there's going to be a huge tax set." When it was really high, that's what I feel like. And then as it's low, I'm like, "You could still..." you know, I still think it's got a long ways to go, right? So for me, I'm just like, this is a long hold. We'll see when that changes. But I mean, that's why we started this company. You know, we're really excited about crypto, and we think there's a big future here. So at this point, I'm just going to... you know, I might die with it.

Shaan Puri

I remember when so I discovered about the same time 2013 2014 and I won't tell you the whole story but like let's just fast forward a little bit so I buy a little bit of bitcoin I'm like alright great I'm in the game baby and there was a run where bitcoin went to I was buying at like 400 400 was like my average buy price and then bitcoin runs up to 3,000 at the time and I go to a wedding and I go to my cousin's wedding and my aunt so imagine like an indian auntie like you know she's just like not who you not somebody who I would think would say the word like bitcoin or ethereum she said the word ethereum actually so I was like what the hell and she was like oh yeah bitcoin's very good and I was like oh why do you why do you say that and I was like immediately my face just dropped because I was like there's no way that she is like the one who's on the trend and she's like yeah it's very good and I was like what and yeah it goes up and I was like that's the whole thinking like she's like yeah last month it was this now it's this and before that it was even lower it was like oh my god this is like a bubble and I was like I had read about this bubble shit like because I graduated 2010 so I missed the whole dotcom bubble by a long shot I missed 2008 crisis I was a sophomore in college I didn't care what's going on in the world and so I was like I think this is one of those bubble things and I was like you know what maybe I should take some profits and so I go and I try to sell everything on coinbase but coinbase had limits oh thank god how much you could sell at a time and so I like maxed out the limit for 1 week and I think I did it for another week and I was like ah I'm getting exhausted like by then the like the fear had like dissipated or whatever and then bitcoin runs up to 20 k and I'm like you know I'm like oh my god on the biggest hit and then it crashed back down I was like wow I have to really have a bit more of a of a plan as to what I'm gonna do with this am I gonna hold this forever am I going to hold it to a certain.

Shaan Puri

What is driving my belief in this? I don't want to be at the whim of, like, "Oh, I hear something and it scares me." The taxi driver told me something that made me bullish or bearish or whatever. We're at a point right now where probably sentiment about crypto is at, I don't know, the lowest it's been in maybe ever, but definitely the lowest it's been in a while. For a lot of people, they weren't around for the 2014 crash or whatever, or the 2018 crash. This is their crash, where they're like, "Oh, crypto turned out to all be a scam." I guess FTX is... I didn't know what was wrong with all this. So that's kind of where people are at. What gives you... what is your belief based on for crypto? Like, why do you think this is going to be a thing?

Kendall Saville

I feel like digital money needs to be a thing. We were literally trying to wire money into this company, and it wouldn't work. It was just like, "What?" You know?

Shaan Puri

what do you mean it wouldn't work what was happening well it

Kendall Saville

was mike had the real issue but it took you a week

Michael Wittmeyer

So, we both use the same exact bank. We're with Citi. Oh, I'm going to call them back.

Shaan Puri

shout out shout out

Michael Wittmeyer

Yeah, yeah. And the same exact wire instructions. This is just a PDF. We both sent them to our, you know, people there. I said, "I want to wire whatever it was into the company." The next day, I get the notice from Mercury. His hits, and I sent mine like 4 hours before his. The whole day, I never saw mine come in, so I'm like, "That's weird." They had called me, you know. I did the... yeah, I answered all the questions. I had to do the DocuSign, like, text, you know, all this stuff. The wire never goes. So I finally have to reach out to them again, and I'm like, "What's going on with this?" They come back to me and say the wire instructions are wrong. I'm like, "Well, the same bank with the same PDF sent the money." So that was an example where, like, on crypto, that would have been a 10-second, you know, transaction. So I agree with him. You know, I'm probably even more into the... you know, I don't love the government control over all of the fiat currency stuff. I think we're seeing, you know, we've started to see, and we're probably going to see more of the ramifications of that with, you know, debt, inflation, those sort of things. And, you know, having another option, I think, is nice.

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah. So, in the same way, the government makes all the rules of where you live. But if you don't like the way that the government makes those rules, you have a choice. You can move to a different jurisdiction and operate by different rules. If you don't like the way that the government manages the money system by printing more money or whatever it may be, then you could opt into a different monetary system that's not controlled by the government. It's controlled by a set of source code, and the code lives and runs on its own. Anyone from anywhere in the world can say, "You know what? I don't like my country's monetary system as my base system. I'm going to opt into this one that makes a lot of sense to me." Why do you think people have such a... what do you think are maybe... let's put it this way: what do you think are the fair criticisms? If you heard the phrase "steel manning," it's like when you argue the other side in good faith. You say, "Here's the best argument I could see against it." What would that be for crypto?

Kendall Saville

I think a big issue is that there are a lot of scammers in the industry. They are able to operate because they don't have many of the checks and balances of the current system. I believe there are good reasons for this in crypto, but it also allows these people to engage in nefarious activities. I was telling people recently, "You know what? Crypto does look really bad." You can't really argue that point. But at the same time, there are moments when crypto looks really good.

Shaan Puri

Are, by the way, it wasn't Bitcoin that did something bad. Yeah, right, exactly. You have to sort of separate the two. If somebody runs a real estate scheme and scams their investors, and you think you're investing in some property, they're just pocketing the money and running away with it. Or they do something bad to the property. Whatever it is, it's not real estate that was the scam; it was the scammer that was the scam. I think that's the hard part. Crypto has such a playing field, right? It's a money business, so there are so many people that can scam. It almost associates Bitcoin with the underlying thing itself, which is, you know, it's like a rock. It's not doing anything. It associates that with the scam, even though it was the human being who decided to trick people in order to make that happen. That's the hard thing to disentangle.

Michael Wittmeyer

yep

Shaan Puri

Do you... what was your reaction to all the stuff that was going down? Right? We're in the Slack channel talking about, you know, the daily edition, and it feels like, you know, "Bad News Bears" for like, you know, 30 days in a row. Mike, what you were living through each of those days?

Michael Wittmeyer

editions yeah

Shaan Puri

were you what did you go were you surprised with the ftx thing what what was your reaction to that

Michael Wittmeyer

I was stunned by that. I mean, you know, I, like a lot of people, viewed them as almost like a Coinbase blue chip—right? Rock solid. You know, I felt good putting my money on there. I would have recommended them to anyone, so I was really shocked. Same with Genesis. Yep, I have money on Genesis that I don't know what's going to happen to it, but that one was pretty stunning too. What's been interesting for The Milk Road in our business is, you know, this has actually been a good thing for growth. We cover the news, and there's certainly been a lot of news. So we're seeing record subscriptions coming in. The reader scores have been really good. People seem to be very interested in following this despite the fact that it's been very negative. So, you know, another piece of why we liked your business is that it's less correlated, in our minds, directly to crypto prices.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's true. Amazing! Do we leave anything that we should have talked about? Did we miss any good stories or facts that you guys wanted to cover?

Kendall Saville

I don't think I have anything

Michael Wittmeyer

nothing comes from me

Shaan Puri

Alright, well, where should people find you guys? I think a lot of people are going to listen to this. But yeah, these guys are cool, obviously Milk Road. Where do they find you guys personally? I know Mike, congratulations! Did you tweet for the first time today?

Michael Wittmeyer

I had my first tweet so

Shaan Puri

my first tweet yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

First tweet about acquiring the Milk Roads. Yeah, my Twitter handle is **@MikeWhitmire**, which Kendall helped me acquire earlier.

Shaan Puri

Last night, it's like the news is going out this morning, and Mike's like, "Hey, is anybody around to help me figure out how to tweet? I've never really tweeted, let alone a thread. Is there a button?"

Michael Wittmeyer

yeah and then it was like

Shaan Puri

all I did was just laugh yeah I provided 0 help I was like this is hilarious

Kendall Saville

and I'm like you're the expert

Shaan Puri

I'm not doing anything no this is hilarious

Michael Wittmeyer

Basically, Ben helped me out, but it was like a **shit show** for both of us. He sent his out this morning and misspelled "Milk Road" in the first tweet. He's trying to get that autocorrect going.

Kendall Saville

I was trying to, you know, figure out a way, but yeah, I totally misspelled it. Then I deleted the first tweet because the tweet thread is still there. I didn't realize it for like 20 minutes, and everyone's like, "What is wrong with your Twitter profile?" I'm like, "I don't know, I think Twitter's messed up." You at least use Twitter. I do use Twitter more than Mike, but I wouldn't say...

Shaan Puri

It's still not prolific, Mike. I think you should actually make your Twitter bio because you have no picture. You had no picture.

Kendall Saville

at the top

Michael Wittmeyer

so I added a picture

Kendall Saville

I did

Michael Wittmeyer

a bio

Shaan Puri

You should keep the no picture, no tweets, just the thread. And your bio should be: "I don't tweet. I do actual work." That should be your whole persona, and everybody should follow that.

Michael Wittmeyer

And that's actually... You asked earlier about why we don't do that stuff, and something that came to mind for me was: Do you remember back in the day, in the poker affiliate world, where all the mid-tier to small affiliates had their blogs?

Kendall Saville

yes

Michael Wittmeyer

like the personal blogs so everybody would like I had like mikewhitmeyer.com right you had something I think

Kendall Saville

yep

Michael Wittmeyer

And we would all, you know, muse about what we were doing in our businesses, this and that, doing these posts, feeling good. Then we were at one of these conferences, and who was the big jam investor? He was like the biggest poker affiliate probably in the world back then. There was this other guy that was similar. Neither of those guys did any of that stuff. I'm like, every night we're out in the clubs at these guys' tables, you know, hoping they'll give us like their drinks. It was kind of eye-opening for me. I'm like, there's probably a correlation here.

Shaan Puri

maybe I should do it with those guys exactly yeah

Kendall Saville

maybe I should do the work and not do the work about it blog yeah

Shaan Puri

can you tell any stories because this guy sounds like a legend who who is this person

Kendall Saville

he's definitely a legend

Shaan Puri

what are some of the the crazy

Michael Wittmeyer

yeah yeah he's a pretty private guy but he he has he's got a great story

Shaan Puri

we could also by the way we could bleep his name

Michael Wittmeyer

yeah okay

Shaan Puri

so then it could just be like you can tell the story without the name

Michael Wittmeyer

we can tell all of

Shaan Puri

his stories

Michael Wittmeyer

So, crazy story... He's from there, grew up there. Very not well off, very poor. Had to leave school in 8th grade to start making money for his family, whatever.

Shaan Puri

what did he do in the 8th grade

Michael Wittmeyer

he was like working at a hotel or something like that bar bar

Shaan Puri

at a bar yeah yeah yeah

Kendall Saville

his family I think his family worked there or dad owned it

Michael Wittmeyer

yeah something like that

Shaan Puri

gotcha

Michael Wittmeyer

And so, I think the first thing he did was become the biggest eBay power seller. He was selling CDs and stuff on there. He became pretty big and made a bunch of money. Then you...

Shaan Puri

know was he just early or is he really good or no

Michael Wittmeyer

no he started the same time as us

Kendall Saville

He was smart. He was basically rolling up all the smaller affiliates because he had better deals with all the operators. So, he'd buy someone, and you know, it'd be a small affiliate, and they're like, "Oh, I'm making like 5 times." For him, it was like, "This is 2 years' earnings or 1 year."

Michael Wittmeyer

he bought my site it's how I knew him

Shaan Puri

My friend, we have one super smart buddy who has his dominant position in his game. I can't say who, otherwise I'll give it away. But he has the same strategy where he's like, "Yeah, now it's unfair." He goes, "I just go to them and they quote me some multiple, but I have a better deal with the payment providers or the affiliate partner. So they think they're selling at four times earnings, but it's actually two. The moment I sign the deal, it'll go into my payment terms, and my payment terms are just superior." So he's like, "I could just buy these all day, and I don't have to come up with a genius idea to even grow them because it's baked into just the fact that I have more scale. Therefore, I have better terms, and what they think costs X or drives Y revenue is actually a different variable for me."

Michael Wittmeyer

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. So that's exactly why he bought my business, my poker affiliate business, back then.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and so he was smart in that he was rolling these up. But were other people not rolling them up back then? He sort of...

Michael Wittmeyer

started that yeah

Kendall Saville

I feel like he was kind of a pioneer in our small industry

Michael Wittmeyer

He's just like... if you give him a business and an Excel sheet and a few weeks to look at it, he's gonna come back with: "Here are the 3 things that this could be doing that would 10x it." And that's really what he did for us at JM too. I learned so much from him. I'm a completely different business person now after 10 years of working with him than I was before.

Shaan Puri

like what's an example that he did at gm maybe that was a

Michael Wittmeyer

One thing he helped me a lot with was... especially early on, I would really ride the wave of emotions. Like, you know: - All the credit card chargebacks hit? I'm in despair, on my deathbed. - We have our first $100,000 day? I'm ready to IPO.

Shaan Puri

right but it

Michael Wittmeyer

He used to joke with me, saying, "If we were publicly traded and you set the stock price, it would swing like 1000% a day." One thing he really helped me with was zooming out and thinking in 5 to 10-year increments. If you frame things like that, nothing really ever seems like that big of a deal. There are very few things that happen to you or your business that are going to materially change your trajectory over 5 to 10 years. As an example, to his credit, he put a million into JM shortly after Kendall made his first angel investment. A week before it was going to close, we had done all the documents, and it was ready to go. Then, our credit card processor threw us out, and that was like half of our revenue just gone. It was a Visa thing; it wasn't just them. They said, "This is the underlying network."

Shaan Puri

is yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

They're growing too fast. We need a big cash reserve. We're going to work with these guys. They asked us, "Can you send us your financials? We need a P&L and a balance sheet." We didn't even know what a balance sheet was, so there was nothing we could send to them. Unsurprisingly, they threw us out. I had to go back to them, sort of hat in hand, to be like, "So, yeah, this happened. Are we still going to do this or not?"

Kendall Saville

he was

Michael Wittmeyer

just like totally understand if

Shaan Puri

you yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

just it's like we really need to we really need those

Shaan Puri

we'd love it if you would though

Michael Wittmeyer

And he's just like, "You know, we're gonna figure this out." He still cut the check, and we did figure it out. There were probably 10 more of those times along the way that he helped me think about things. Yeah, the longer increment.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, because with crypto right now, like, I mean, people would have said, "Oh, it's impossible to sell Milk Road during this time." With a good deal, you can sell anything, but with a bad deal, it's impossible to get a good deal right now. I think as a general rule of thumb, that would have been true. But I've always... I hate anything that's like, you know, this sort of conventional wisdom because it's like, "Dude, I'm in the outlier business." Creating a successful startup is an outlier. Yep, I'm trying to be, you know, super happy, super rich, and super fit. That's an outlier. So I don't really need any advice that is about what the general outcomes are. Instead, I need advice on how to create outlier outcomes. So with this, I was like, "Okay, well, what would have created an outlier outcome?" Okay, crypto's gone. You know, the industry gets shook. All the big companies, they gotta freeze; they can't make some flashy acquisition right now. That would be impossible. Okay, so I need basically independently wealthy individuals. Right? That's the first criteria. Second, a lot of people are gonna say, "Oh, bad news in crypto. Oh, I maybe shouldn't do this. Maybe I should see how this is gonna play out." No, I need somebody who's got long-term conviction, thinks in 5 to 10-year increments, and believes in the fundamentals. They understand that there are gonna be ups and downs, and actually during the downs is the time to make acquisitions and do things like this. This is the time to play offense.

Michael Wittmeyer

I feel like everyone on twitter there's a lot of twitter threads about this is the time to build

Shaan Puri

yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

I agree I'm not on twitter I'm doing that

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. The builders aren't reading your thread. So, that's how we ended up finding basically the perfect partner at that time to do this. I feel like the outlier... you know, if you're going to play an outlier game, you have to think in terms of what creates that outcome, not what's the average outcome. Right? Because the average outcome is not the thing you want anyways. For sure. Yeah, cool guys, this was amazing. Kendall, you didn't throw up!

Kendall Saville

I did it! I did it! Kendall was really nervous before we started. Yeah, I was. I was like, "Do we have any booze around?"

Shaan Puri

yeah but you did you did great so

Kendall Saville

that was awesome thank you

Shaan Puri

what's your twitter handle which people

Kendall Saville

at kendall saville

Shaan Puri

saville s a v

Kendall Saville

I l l e

Shaan Puri

yep and then

Michael Wittmeyer

at mike

Shaan Puri

mike give him a follow how many followers you got

Michael Wittmeyer

I'm over 200

Shaan Puri

now I'm over 200

Michael Wittmeyer

Triple big day! Big day! Yeah, Mike Whitmire. W-H-I-T-M-I-R-E.

Shaan Puri

You guys might get recognized now when you walk on the streets. You might get a little hit of that fame. Yeah, actually, you know what was funny? Right when we had met the last time before we did the deal, we were walking out of that coffee shop. I was like, "Alright, see you later," and you went to go get your Uber. Then there was a guy who was sitting right there the whole time. He was waiting, I guess, and he kept looking at us. He said, "Hey Sean, I love the podcast, man! I'm traveling from Pittsburgh. I'm just here for the day. Can't believe I bumped into you!" And I was like, "Dude, you should've said that when the guy who might buy the company was there. That might've helped a little. Just, you know, a little juice to the truth."

Michael Wittmeyer

joking about that after I'm like sean probably just paid all these ads because it

Kendall Saville

it was a genius order us up yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

I was like it it worked like great job

Shaan Puri

When we were selling our first company, I did stuff like that. I knew it was to a larger company; it was like the big FANG company. So, corporate development was like the who's who paying attention to you at that time. They would follow me on Twitter or Instagram, stuff like that. I would just post like a ticket to Seattle, you know, a one-day trip. "Anybody around in the evening?" It's like, okay, why would he go to Seattle? Who's in Seattle? Why would he go for a day? That's gotta be a misnomer. Oh, they're talking to them. I'd come back and be like, "You know, when it rains, it pours." I would just post these cryptic things because, in my mind, I was like, "I'm just planting the seed, baby." I have no idea if this did anything, but in my head, I was like, "I'm really playing everybody off of each other." I thought I was just like, you know, "Leonardo DiCaprio, catch me if you can" type of guy. That's just... Alright guys, that was awesome. Yeah, we're good.

Michael Wittmeyer

thank you

Kendall Saville

thank you so much and one thing is milk road's hiring

Michael Wittmeyer

yeah oh yeah yeah we're so we're

Kendall Saville

Looking for, like, you know, those A-players that have done it before. Because, you know, we want to scale this and do it as quickly as we can.

Shaan Puri

And I should just say, when we were looking at this deal, we actually had a higher offer that we turned down. One of the reasons why I told Ben was that I went to your Twitter feed and I saw your tweets from back in the day that were like, "CryptoPunks, cool." I think CryptoPunks are cool, actually. I looked at the date and what the price was then. What were people thinking then? You were ahead of the curve. Then you had another one about this exchange that you had invested in, Reign. I was like, "Oh dude, I've been trying to get into Reign." I had tried to invest at that time. I was like, "He was in there early." I feel like if I just hang out with these guys more, I'm going to get more value out of something completely unrelated to Milk Road. There’s going to be some random thing, and you're going to be like, "Oh dude, that's a Roadster." Yeah, exactly! Can I just throw me a Roadster? I was like, there's going to be something like that I'm going to get just out of hanging with you. I'm a big believer in that. If you find exceptional people, you don't even have to have a plan. Just hang with them. Find some routine or value exchange where you're going to be in each other's orbit all the time because something good's going to come out of that. So similarly, if somebody wants to work at Milk Road, I would say, "Cool, it's going to have good pay. It's a cool project. People really love the product." That's all true. But also, the same reason I wanted to sell and work with you guys is the same reason really anybody should want to do that. If you heard the stories on this podcast, you're probably like, "God, these guys are awesome." They went through a bunch of shit, figured stuff out, and they play their own game. Those are the type of people you want to work with. Even if you're like, "Someday I want to be more entrepreneurial than I am today," you want to get a job where you're kind of in direct proximity with people who are very much like that because it'll change the way your own brain works.

Michael Wittmeyer

for sure you wanna get in shape hang out with fit people yeah it's like for sure

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah. When we... what was the body fat challenge? Did you win? Last time we hung out, you were at like day...

Michael Wittmeyer

that's how we're gonna finish the pod

Shaan Puri

yeah I gotta know

Michael Wittmeyer

so

Shaan Puri

what was the challenge you you were at the end of a challenge so I'm at the end of a yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

I'm in a group called **Entrepreneurs Organization**. I'm in a forum with seven other Dallas entrepreneurs. We meet monthly and do a retreat once a year. In advance of the retreat, everybody sets a fitness goal. Everyone puts in like **$500**. If you hit your goal, you get your money back; if you don't, it goes towards funding the retreat.

Shaan Puri

so no win just first off yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

Just to not lose and avoid the shame, maybe three months out, everybody sets their goals. I thought I was like 15% body fat at that time, so I was like, "I'm gonna get to 10. I've never done that before. I'm gonna go for it. Let's do it!" So, I slammed it down on the table and said, "Boys, I'm doing it!" Then I started working really hard for the next two months. A month out, I thought, "I'm gonna go get a DEXA scan to see." I think I'm probably around 11% body fat, somewhere in there. I've gotta be.

Shaan Puri

really close there

Michael Wittmeyer

I'm almost there. I had leaned out in the mirror, and I go and get the decks, and I was 157. So, I was nowhere near where I thought I was. Then, I really like killed myself that next month, and I ended up getting down to like 121.

Shaan Puri

12 more okay

Michael Wittmeyer

But lucky for me, some of the guys didn't schedule Dexas. So the body fat guys were like, "We're going to consider it acceptable to use those scale things." On the scale, I was like 8 something, so I got my $500 back.

Shaan Puri

okay well yeah the good guys did that

Michael Wittmeyer

but the reality is I did not I did my goal yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

you were like really hardcore about it

Michael Wittmeyer

no strong

Kendall Saville

you were like not eating any of the carbs it was just like really sad you were just kind of in the corner

Shaan Puri

yeah it was definitely sad

Kendall Saville

oh man like the chef just made this really cool thing and

Shaan Puri

I can't eat any of it... or like, does Mike really do this $500 something? It's like, no, Mike needs to not lose. Mike does not like to lose at *anything*. Yep, and he set himself a stupid goal that he has...

Michael Wittmeyer

to hit now next year though I'm gonna get it

Kendall Saville

Yeah, what I would have done is I would have been like, "What am I now?" and just like doing done, like 1% under that. Just make sure I win.

Shaan Puri

yeah

Kendall Saville

right mike wants to make his life hard go up bill

Michael Wittmeyer

No, last year I probably weighed around 175 or 180 pounds or something like that. Everyone at the table did a weight loss thing, so I just thought that's what these were. It was like one of the first years we did it. I was like, "Well, I want to get down to 175." And they're like, "Well, where are you now?" I'm like, "178."

Shaan Puri

what what do you want

Kendall Saville

me to do

Shaan Puri

It was £40. Yeah, it's not my fault you guys have been slacking. You need to write a book called "Going Uphill."

Michael Wittmeyer

going uphill yeah

Shaan Puri

I will I feel like that's gonna be your your book

Michael Wittmeyer

yeah it'll be the bio

Shaan Puri

you know when you're done working then you can start tweeting your your uphill about your uphill book

Michael Wittmeyer

I actually have one last uphill story away yeah

Shaan Puri

give it to me

Michael Wittmeyer

So in Whitefish this year, I mentioned we were doing... I was doing this in the resort, and they would open it like an hour before the lifts ran. Only the people going uphill, I guess just because it's safer - there's not a ton of people coming down. There was one morning, it was like negative 10 wind chill. They actually never even opened the resort that day; it was too windy. It was just miserable out. So I was like, "Alright, perfect! Optimal conditions!" I suit up...

Shaan Puri

you rang

Michael Wittmeyer

I suit up and get out there. I had just gotten ready; I'd never done this in a resort before. I really had only done this maybe five times with my buddy, who was always like the sherpa, helping me figure stuff out. So, there's this route you have to take up the hill, and I was the first one going. It was like 6 AM, and I'm just marching straight up that path. I'm feeling good. Then there's this one section. Because I'd done it a few times, I knew there was this one section that was pretty steep. There were a few times going up that the skins would start to slip a little bit, and I was getting really scared because I don't ski. So, if this thing...

Kendall Saville

turns around I'm like

Michael Wittmeyer

I can't do anything. I'm going straight up this thing, like marching. The wind's blasting me, the ice is blasting me, and I'm one step away from the top. I take the step, and it slips. The whole thing just falls apart, and I'm falling backwards downhill, doing the somersault thing. The skis go flying off, and now I'm at the bottom. I am very humbled now because I realize there are like 20 people behind me who just watched that. I'm gathering all my stuff, and they're helping me out. I look up the hill because they're starting to go, and all of them are zigzagging back and forth, so it's not as steep. I was going straight, flying directly up the hill. I'm like, "Oh, that's why they're not falling." I wouldn't have it any other way.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, there you go. Metaphorically awesome! Well, thanks guys for doing this. I know it's a little out...

Michael Wittmeyer

of your comfort zone

Shaan Puri

but I'm glad you guys did it yeah

Michael Wittmeyer

thanks for having us

Kendall Saville

appreciate it cool alright