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

Shaan Puri 0:00 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? Um, 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 th- I was like, if I had just recorded this dinner, this would've been like one of the best podcast episodes we've ever done. Prob- probably the best. [upbeat music] What's up, y'all? Shaan here. Uh, this is a special episode. My company, The Milk Road, just got acquired, so the news is out, and, um, I can finally talk about it. I've been kinda hinting at it on the podcast for those who were listening. And, um, yeah, the news is out. This episode is me and the dudes who bought it. [laughs] So you're gonna meet these guys, and you're gonna see who... Uh, w- 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. Uh, 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, I still own a minority stake in it, that minority stake in five years is gonna be worth a lot 'cause 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, uh, hundreds of million do- hundreds of millions of dollars, and I think they're gonna do it again here. Um, the s- the, the episode is, is a little funny. It starts off a little slow, uh, but then around 15 minutes in, we're done talking about the acquisition, and I'm, frankly, I'm done talking a little bit, and I let these guys shine. And they tell stories about, you know, how- their early projects, like how they... You know, all the different projects they worked on, some that failed s- spectacularly and some that succeeded. Um, 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. Uh, 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. Um, 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. Uh, and then Kendall is the opposite. He's like, "How can I work smarter, not harder?" He's the Mr. Shortcut. He is the guy who finds a way, um, 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 [laughs] with Uber and Lyft, and has, like, you know, Uber credits for life and Lyft re- credits for life. He's just a guy who's gonna solve the puzzle and, uh, and get the shortcut solution. He will, he will find the clever, the clever way to get it done. So these two guys are awesome, and, um, and I think you gu- you guys will really like them. So enjoy this episode. [upbeat music] Um, all right. So we should, we should do this. So welcome to the show. I've been telling you guys you gotta come on-

Kendall Saville 3:10 Yeah

Shaan Puri 3:10 ... uh, 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. [laughs] You bought The Milk Road.

Kendall Saville 3:19 We did.

Speaker 3:19 We did.

Kendall Saville 3:19 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 3:19 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? Um, 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 th- I was like, if I had just recorded this dinner, this would've been, like, one of the best podcast episodes we've ever done. Prob- probably the best. And so then I was like, all right, my job here [laughs] is to somehow-

Kendall Saville 4:09 [laughs]

Speaker 4:09 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 4:09 ... recreate that dinner. 'Cause actually, there's a lot of pressure. I know how good this episode could be if I do my job. [laughs] And, uh, 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. So that's my challenge. You guys, it, it should be easy. It's, you know, um, just you're, you're gonna tell your stories. And

Shaan Puri 4:30 I think at the end of this, people will know a little bit about what happened with The Milk Road, but also a lot about you guys. 'Cause 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. 'Cause you guys are pretty low-key. And why is that? Why are you guys, like, so under the radar? And I ask this as a guy who's like, I'm constantly on the stage being like, "Look at me."

Kendall Saville 4:50 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 4:50 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? We'll start with you.

Kendall Saville 5:01 I think it's probably shy, and it's just something that I never thought I needed to do. And then when I met you, I'm like, "I'm doing everything all wrong."

Shaan Puri 5:11 Well, we had a hilarious day where [laughs] I don't know how this happened.

Kendall Saville 5:15 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 5:15 But somehow with, when we were hanging out, uh, in San Francisco, where I, I usually don't... The, the joke on the pod is I don't leave my house. Uh, but when I do leave my house, I'll once in a while get bumped into and be like, "Oh, hey, love the pod." For some reason that day, something was going my way, and, like, I don't know, like six or seven people stopped us in a row. And you guys must have been like, "What the hell's [laughs] going on?" What was your reaction to that?

Kendall Saville 5:37 I was like, "Did you plan this?"

Shaan Puri 5:38 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 5:39 I could not believe how many people were coming up to you, and, you know, "I'm a big fan of the pod. I'm doing this project. I did a MFM search engine." Like-

Shaan Puri 5:48 Yeah

Kendall Saville 5:48 ... it, it was insane.

Shaan Puri 5:49 Yeah, that was pretty crazy. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 5:51 Yeah. Like, the guy from the hospital, he's like, "I just came from the hospital-"

Shaan Puri 5:54 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 5:54 "... looking for Shaan."

Shaan Puri 5:55 That was a little creepy. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 5:55 I don't know what that means. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 5:57 I was like, "Do you have security cameras?" Because-

Kendall Saville 5:59 He, he said, he goes, "I just came from the hospital."

Shaan Puri 6:01 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 6:01 And then-

Shaan Puri 6:03 We're like, "Oh, okay. Yeah." And then later somebody was like, "Why did he come from the hospital?" [laughs] Like, did anybody catch that? [laughs] And yeah, we had no explanation.

Michael Wittmeyer 6:10 Yeah. Yeah.

Shaan Puri 6:11 Uh, 'cause he had like a, you know, like the patient has escaped-

Michael Wittmeyer 6:14 Yeah

Shaan Puri 6:14 ... you know, sticker on hi- on his shirt basically.

Michael Wittmeyer 6:17 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 6:17 Um, but I'm glad you guys are doing it. Uh, so let's start with The Milk Road. People wanna know, uh, you know, the news just came out today, this pod will come out right after that. Um, we sold it, and people wanna know how that went down. I can tell it from my perspective, but maybe, I don't know, let's do it from your perspective. C- w- how did, how did this all happen?

Kendall Saville 6:37 Yeah, for sure. So Carter, who is our finance, was a big fan, and he shared it with us, Mike and I, and we subscribed to it, and every time we'd open it we're like, "Ugh, they're doing it so well."

Shaan Puri 6:50 This was a while back or like recently?

Kendall Saville 6:51 This is six months ago.

Shaan Puri 6:52 Okay.

Kendall Saville 6:53 And, you know, every time we read it, we, we talked about it. We talked about the memes, how funny it was, but also how informative it was, and that's kinda what we're trying to do with Bitfo, is 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, uh, words that really punches.

Shaan Puri 7:15 Yeah.

Kendall Saville 7:15 And I feel like that's what you guys have done. And, uh, you know, it came to a point where I'm like, "We should talk to these guys." But at that point we hadn't.

Shaan Puri 7:22 Yeah.

Kendall Saville 7:23 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 7:23 And I think we reached out to you guys. I remember having a conversation with Ben about growth, and it was like, Ben, you know those like sites that are just like, I don't know, what's the price of Bitcoin?

Kendall Saville 7:32 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 7:32 What's the price of Ethereum? I was like, what if we just go on there and like, I don't know, go, I don't know, so I was like, I remember telling him, I was like, "It's probably just like some 19-year-old kid, like-

Kendall Saville 7:39 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 7:40 ... just offer him like a dollar for every email subscriber. Let's just see if they'll put it up- put our ad up." And I think that's how we reached out, right? He got in touch with one of you guys about that.

Michael Wittmeyer 7:48 Yeah. So Ben reached out to I don't even know who, somebody.

Shaan Puri 7:50 Yep.

Michael Wittmeyer 7:50 And got back to us, and, you know, it wasn't something we were gonna do. We weren't, he was like offering a dollar per sub or whatever.

Shaan Puri 7:56 Right. Turns out you weren't a kid. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 7:57 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 7:58 We're actually 32, we weren't 17. Um, but we just wanted to meet you guys, so we're like, let's take the meeting, and, uh, yeah, about 10 minutes into that we were messaging on the side. It's like, "We gotta buy this thing."

Shaan Puri 8:08 Well-

Michael Wittmeyer 8:08 Like, we've gotta figure out a way.

Shaan Puri 8:09 The funny thing is, I don't know if I told you this, but that same day, uh, like we had just been full force working on Milk Road. This is the best.

Michael Wittmeyer 8:15 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 8:15 It's gonna be awesome.

Michael Wittmeyer 8:16 Yep.

Shaan Puri 8:16 Dude, we're just every day, and like I'm a big like pat- pat on the back, self pat on the back kinda guy.

Kendall Saville 8:20 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 8:21 Every day I'd basically tell Ben, "This is amazing. We've launched this thing and only in this many months we're already growing this fast. It's gonna be so good. This many years in, boop, you know, it's gonna be great." And then one day I just hit Ben with a curveball in Slack, and this is the same day. I go, I go, "How much would you sell this for right now?" And, uh, he's like, "What? Like, I don't... Do you wanna sell it?" And I was like, "I d- that's not what I said. I said how much would you sell it for right now?" He's like, "Uh, maybe this number." And I was like, "Yeah, I think my number's like, you know, that plus one." And he was like, and then he was like, "Okay. Um, what do you wanna do with that?" And I was like, "Let's see if we can sell it." [laughs]

Kendall Saville 8:54 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 8:54 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 8:54 And I was like, I'm very impulsive like that, like I'll just wake up one day.

Kendall Saville 8:57 Mm-hmm.

Shaan Puri 8:58 That's how I got my dog. I just woke up one day and I just said-

Kendall Saville 8:59 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 9:00 ... "Hey, get in the car, we're gonna go, let's go find a dog." And we were like Craiglisting in the car to find dogs, and we got a dog that day. And that's kinda what happened with this. And so literally he tell, calls me back later that afternoon and he's like, "Dude, so weird. I just talked to these guys-

Kendall Saville 9:13 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 9:13 ... and they mentioned on the call if you'd ever be interested blah blah." And I was like, "Ah, well, who are they? I, you know, I've never heard of these guys."

Kendall Saville 9:21 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 9:21 And then he's like, "No, they're legit." [laughs]

Kendall Saville 9:22 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 9:22 And I was like, "What?" He's like, "Yeah, I googled them and whatever," and like he's like, "One of them built like the largest..." I don't know w- how you'd describe it, like the largest gold website?

Michael Wittmeyer 9:31 Yeah. Gold e-commerce. Precious metals e-commerce.

Shaan Puri 9:33 Precious metal e-commerce site.

Michael Wittmeyer 9:35 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 9:35 So basically JM Bullion is the name of it.

Michael Wittmeyer 9:37 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 9:37 If you wanna go buy, sell gold, silver, whatever, you can go do it there. And I knew that name because my brother-in-law buys from JM Bullion.

Michael Wittmeyer 9:44 Oh, nice.

Shaan Puri 9:44 Right? So he's, so he had been telling me, you know, uh, as he's like stashing away little-

Michael Wittmeyer 9:48 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 9:48 ... like coins in his safe. [laughs] I'm like, "All right, good for you, man." [laughs] Um, he had been telling me-

Michael Wittmeyer 9:53 I'm glad we didn't screw up his orders or whatever.

Shaan Puri 9:54 Yeah, yeah. He, he gets it every time and he's like, you know, whatever. He's hoarding gold. So you guys had b- you 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, you know, roughly $100 million worth of exits, and I was like, "Oh, these guys are actually super legit. Okay. Um, scratch the whole 19-year-old kid, offer him a dollar."

Kendall Saville 10:17 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 10:17 Let's see what we can get these guys to offer us.

Michael Wittmeyer 10:19 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 10:19 And then that's sort of how the deal-

Michael Wittmeyer 10:23 Yeah

Shaan Puri 10:23 ... evolved from there. And so, so that's like how we met. Then actually making a deal, uh, somebody said this the other day, they go, "The rule of..." They call it the rule of five. They go, "In any deal it's gonna fall aw- fall apart five times."

Kendall Saville 10:36 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 10:36 "If it's gonna get, if it's gonna get done [laughs] it's gonna fall apart five times." And I think we kinda did that.

Michael Wittmeyer 10:41 Oh, we did. We did.

Shaan Puri 10:41 Maybe three or four times at-

Michael Wittmeyer 10:43 Yeah

Shaan Puri 10:43 ... at least, um, along the way. I do have a question about it, which is not just how it all happened, but it's a question I've been wanting to ask, and I get to put you guys on the spot here.

Michael Wittmeyer 10:52 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 10:54 How could we have negotiated better? So I asked Ben, I go, "What, like where can we ask these guys on the pod?" He goes, he goes, "Yeah, ask them about the deal negotiation." I go, "Yeah, I should ask them could we have gotten more?" 'Cause that was the f- the f- my first acquisition, that was the question I asked, uh, the CEO. And he was like, "You couldn't have got a dollar more." And I was like, that feels good, but it feels like a lie. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 11:12 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 11:12 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 11:12 It's never actually the case.

Michael Wittmeyer 11:14 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 11:14 So from your guys' perspective, how did we negotiate? Give us a grade, and, uh, tell us how we did.

Michael Wittmeyer 11:19 I would say it was a A minus.

Kendall Saville 11:22 I was gonna say a B.

Shaan Puri 11:23 Okay.

Michael Wittmeyer 11:24 A B, okay.

Kendall Saville 11:24 Yeah. I mean, I mean, I would give everyone almost a B around, you know, the table. I feel like each one of us at one point kinda were like, "Ah, this isn't gonna work."

Shaan Puri 11:32 Mm-hmm.

Kendall Saville 11:33 And it wasn't as kinda straightforward as you'd like a deal, 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 of they're over here, I'm over here, and we're not getting anywhere close.

Shaan Puri 11:48 Right.

Kendall Saville 11:49 And then, you know, you figure it out or you walk away. And, you know, we had those walk aways, uh, with you I think twice.

Shaan Puri 11:55 Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 11:55 Yeah.

Kendall Saville 11:55 I think you guys did it one time and we did it another time.

Michael Wittmeyer 11:57 Yeah. Yeah, I said A minus 'cause at the end, like when we made that final, you know, the last little chunk-

Shaan Puri 12:02 Yeah

Michael Wittmeyer 12:03 ... we were, that was it for us. We had said We're walking-

Shaan Puri 12:06 Yep

Michael Wittmeyer 12:06 ... if this doesn't work. Um, we talked about this last night. I think one thing that would've helped a lot, so he has a non-compete on gambling-

Shaan Puri 12:13 Yeah

Michael Wittmeyer 12:13 ... as we talked about. And, you know, one of the times it fell apart was we got to, into the diligence after we'd already ag- agreed on a number, and there was-

Shaan Puri 12:22 We found out I was a degenerate gambler. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 12:23 [laughs] There was a little more gambling reve- a gambling sponsor revenue there than we thought. And I think that if that had come out a lot earlier, you guys probably could have guided us better to, like, "Hey, well, for next month we're gonna target this stuff," and-

Shaan Puri 12:35 Yeah

Michael Wittmeyer 12:35 ... you know, so on and so forth

Shaan Puri 12:35 Yeah, we didn't know that was a problem. We were like-

Michael Wittmeyer 12:37 Yeah

Shaan Puri 12:37 ... 'cause it's not a problem. We, we don't have a non-compete-

Michael Wittmeyer 12:39 Yep

Shaan Puri 12:39 ... so we're like, "This is great." Um, yeah. No, that's all right. That's, that's good.

Michael Wittmeyer 12:42 Yeah. We did talk about it at dinner.

Shaan Puri 12:44 You did? [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 12:45 Yeah. The, when we met you.

Shaan Puri 12:46 What-

Michael Wittmeyer 12:46 Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 12:47 Oh, yeah, yeah, at, at that dinner, yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 12:48 Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 12:48 It did come out.

Michael Wittmeyer 12:49 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 12:49 Um, all right. So let's talk about, you know, how this deal kind of evolves. Why do you buy a business like this? What's the, 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, in the mentality there?

Kendall Saville 13:05 Mike, you wanna take this one?

Michael Wittmeyer 13:06 Yeah. So, you know, reason we bought you guys, we felt like everything we were doing was just gonna work a lot better on their brand. And so, like, the SEO play, which is our thing, you know, we're building these content driven sites that we wanna rank in Google for, you know, money terms in crypto, buy, buy Bitcoin, lend Bitcoin, all those sorts of things, having a brand-

Shaan Puri 13:24 Yeah, actually, we, we should explain your guys' magic.

Michael Wittmeyer 13:25 Sure, yeah.

Shaan Puri 13:25 Your superpower.

Michael Wittmeyer 13:26 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 13:26 Your superpower is somebody goes to Google and

Shaan Puri 13:30 they say, "Buy gold online."

Michael Wittmeyer 13:33 Yep.

Shaan Puri 13:33 Best place to buy gold, best place to, um, you know, bet, you know, on whatever, and your guys' whole career basically is rank number one for that.

Michael Wittmeyer 13:43 Yep.

Shaan Puri 13:43 And you did it with the sports betting and the gold, but before that you did it with poker, before that you did it with other stuff, and, like, we'll go into some of those-

Michael Wittmeyer 13:50 Yeah

Shaan Puri 13:50 ... funny, funny stories in a second. Um, but that's your guys' secret sauce, to which I was like, why do they need a newsletter? The newsletter doesn't do that. That's, that's not, that's not the answer. But there is some, I dunno, synergy there for you.

Michael Wittmeyer 14:04 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. Like Milk Road is being searched hundreds of times a day, and that's such an indicator to Google of, like, humans are interested in this brand. Same with JM. JM's getting thousands of searches a day for JM Bullion. So, like, w- 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 up in Google so eventually it will become a brand. So for us it was like, hey, we're, we get to jump forward, you know, a year in this journey if we buy this-

Shaan Puri 14:37 Right

Michael Wittmeyer 14:37 ... uh, newsletter, buy the website, roll it in, and then, you know, reap these benefits forever more. You're gonna continue to get really amazing back links because you do all these awesome interviews. Um, it was... You know, that was my, my piece.

Kendall Saville 14:47 And I think, too, it was really complimentary. You know, like the newsletter content could go on the website. You know, 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. And so, you know, those type of, uh, ways to, you know, reach people are, like, really exciting for us.

Michael Wittmeyer 15:07 Yeah.

Kendall Saville 15:07 And so that was kinda like, all right, they have the brand, they have a voice, and, you know, they have, uh, you know, a really complimentary, uh, you know, news-

Shaan Puri 15:18 And it was working during the bear market.

Michael Wittmeyer 15:20 Yeah.

Kendall Saville 15:20 That's the biggest thing.

Shaan Puri 15:20 Our, our business, our business was still growing and generating revenue and, and profit during the crypto winter-

Michael Wittmeyer 15:25 Yeah

Shaan Puri 15:25 ... which is hard for... 'Cause if you're not, like, you know, when Bitcoin's price goes down, there's a lot less people s- searching, "How do I buy Bitcoin right now?" You know? And so, uh, or, like, you know, DeFi implodes or whatever-

Michael Wittmeyer 15:35 Yeah

Shaan Puri 15:35 ... well, then people aren't looking to borrow or, or lend at the same rates. Uh, so I think that also helped-

Michael Wittmeyer 15:39 For sure, yeah

Shaan Puri 15:40 ... 'cause it was like, oh, this is a business that will work even in the winters.

Michael Wittmeyer 15:42 Yeah. And you had diversified advertisers. They're not all crypto companies, so-

Shaan Puri 15:45 Yeah

Michael Wittmeyer 15:45 ... we're like, "Yeah, this can work even if crypto's dead for a while."

Shaan Puri 15:48 And so the question on our side was, do we wanna sell, right? Why sell? Do we wanna sell? And I think, you know, there's probably a three-pronged answer to that. The answer is, first, uh,

Shaan Puri 16:01 a lot of decisions just get made through, like, who you... Your nature, your personality. And I've gotten to know my nature a little bit over the last few years, and it is very much a, I'm good at starting things. I'm good at finding the, the, the something from nothing. But taking the something and just fine-tuning it day after day, making it better, which is where most of the value is created in business [laughs] , is, uh, not something that I just get super excited about. And so that was always hard for me, because I could create something, get it off the ground, get it to work, and then as it worked, my interest would fade. And, you know, so that was like a personal thing. I was, I, I sort of knew that, so I said, "If, if I'm getting a good deal now but I know it'd be better if I held it for four years, great, but am I really gonna have this same energy I have today four years from now?" I can't know that that's true for me as a operator. Whereas with you guys, and I'll, I'll go into why I thought you guys would be much better owners of the business, was you're like that. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 16:59 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 16:59 Mike is a absolute animal work- workhorse. I a- actually, uh, like, we've been working together a little bit now, and I see your level of detail, attention to detail is crazy. Like, you are looking at this email, you know, like, in the morning-

Michael Wittmeyer 17:14 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 17:14 ... in the afternoon, in the evening, then the feedback-

Michael Wittmeyer 17:17 Yeah

Shaan Puri 17:17 ... and do it again the next day. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 17:18 Yeah. No, I love it, you know?

Shaan Puri 17:19 I was like, wow, this guy is [laughs] this guy's an animal.

Michael Wittmeyer 17:22 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 17:23 Um, and I thought, okay, maybe he's just doing that at the beginning. Nope, that's just kinda who you are.

Michael Wittmeyer 17:27 Yeah. I mean, that was, you know, with JM, same thing. Like, myself and the, 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-

Shaan Puri 17:36 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 17:37 ... 'cause we just wanted to ingest all this. What are the people thinking, you know? And that's really, we got so many wins just observing that, implementing those things, so.

Shaan Puri 17:44 I asked you guys some questions before the pod to get to, like, a, I made a Google Doc, and I was like, "What do you do, like, I don't know, for fun or something like that?" [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 17:52 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 17:52 Like, are you, like... [laughs] And your, one of your things was uphill skiing or something. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 17:57 Yeah. So I've, I've got a-

Shaan Puri 17:58 What the hell is that? [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 18:00 I've got a buddy that's gotten into backcountry skiing, so that's like instead of, you know, going to the resort, riding the lift up-

Kendall Saville 18:06 You're just sort of in nature, and you have to-

Shaan Puri 18:07 Right, the fun, nice thing everybody likes

Kendall Saville 18:09 ... you have to-

Shaan Puri 18:09 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 18:09 Yeah, yeah. [laughs] You have to, you know, manually get yourself up this hill. So, um, a few years ago he convinced me to go do one of these things, and it was in, um, I think we were in Yellowstone Park. We didn't see another human the entire day.

Shaan Puri 18:20 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 18:21 You're truly in the middle of nowhere.

Shaan Puri 18:22 Are you hiking basically up a mountain-

Kendall Saville 18:23 So basically like-

Shaan Puri 18:24 ... or are you crawling? What are you doing? [laughs]

Kendall Saville 18:25 [laughs] Uh, for this, this was fairly tame. So basically it, it's, it's a, it's called a split board, what I use. So it's a, it looks like a snowboard, but it breaks down the middle and the bindings rotate, and so it basically turns into skis. And then you put these things on the bottom called skins, which originally I think used to, uh, be seal skin is, is where it came from.

Shaan Puri 18:43 Yeah.

Kendall Saville 18:44 Now it's just like some fancy fabric, and it'll only slide one way. So you can kinda like slide up the hill with poles.

Shaan Puri 18:49 Gotcha.

Kendall Saville 18:49 You're like cross-country skiing up the hill, and then it won't slide backwards.

Shaan Puri 18:52 Right.

Kendall Saville 18:52 So yeah, you like fight your way up the hill. It takes several hours to do this.

Shaan Puri 18:56 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 18:56 It's like a five-minute ride down-

Shaan Puri 18:58 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 18:58 ... so there's not a huge payoff there. But it's-

Shaan Puri 19:00 Just like little children coming down-

Kendall Saville 19:01 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 19:02 ... as you're like brutally climbing-

Kendall Saville 19:04 Yeah

Shaan Puri 19:04 ... inch by inch up this hill.

Kendall Saville 19:05 Yeah. And then the cool thing, you can do it at resorts too. So our trip this year we were at, um, Whitefish, Montana, and I was doing this in the resort. And you do get a lot of respect from people coming down the hill when you're like trudging up the hill.

Shaan Puri 19:16 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 19:16 So it's a good feeling, you know.

Shaan Puri 19:17 Yeah. No respect for me. I-

Kendall Saville 19:19 Yeah, you're-

Michael Wittmeyer 19:19 You're making your life harder

Shaan Puri 19:21 ... this guy is insane. Yeah. [laughs] You are doing the wrong thing. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 19:22 Shaan's riding the lift up and down.

Shaan Puri 19:24 Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 19:25 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 19:25 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 19:25 Yeah, I don't even get off. This is... But that was like, to me when I heard you say that, I was like, checks out completely.

Kendall Saville 19:32 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 19:33 The way you exercise or the like, the way you vacation basically-

Kendall Saville 19:37 Yeah

Shaan Puri 19:37 ... is the way you work.

Kendall Saville 19:38 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 19:38 Which is this like maniacal grind. And I love that because that's, if, I mean, if you do that in any business you're gonna increase-

Kendall Saville 19:45 Sure

Shaan Puri 19:45 ... the outcomes.

Kendall Saville 19:46 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 19:46 And so that was... Because we still own like a, a, a good size chunk of the business. And so, you know, I wanted to know that that was gonna be worth something someday.

Kendall Saville 19:54 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 19:54 And so that would be the only way that I could make this deal worth it was, okay, there's the upfront cash and all that good stuff. That's great. But, um, your boy's gonna spend that. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 20:03 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 20:03 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 20:03 I'm gonna blow through that through, you know, some-

Kendall Saville 20:05 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 20:05 ... some way. Um, so I need to know that like the what if, what could have been, will actually get played out. And like-

Kendall Saville 20:12 Sure

Shaan Puri 20:12 ... that way I'll just my curiosity I'll know. What would have happened if we had kept at it and focused on it?

Kendall Saville 20:16 Sure.

Shaan Puri 20:16 Well, let me just hand it to these guys who are super focused-

Kendall Saville 20:19 Sure

Shaan Puri 20:19 ... and let's now we get to know. Uh, and then also there's, you know, uh, you get the reward of it too if, if it ends up working out.

Kendall Saville 20:25 Yep.

Shaan Puri 20:25 So that was one. On your side it's like, that's Mike's super power. I'm like, this guy is literally willing to climb up the hill.

Kendall Saville 20:30 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 20:31 Like with this like, you know like [laughs] he doesn't understand how skiing works-

Kendall Saville 20:35 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 20:35 ... and enjoyment works, which is great.

Kendall Saville 20:37 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 20:37 And then it's like, all right, so what's this guy Kendall? Is he the same way? Is he also just like this-

Kendall Saville 20:40 Absolutely not

Shaan Puri 20:41 ... super grinder? No. Kendall's Mr. Shortcut.

Kendall Saville 20:44 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 20:44 And I love this. So we were talking and I was like, "All right, um, what'd you guys do before this? Before this?" And I kept digging. Tell the story of, I don't know, let's pick one of them. Let's do the, uh, the Tesla one, the Tesla hack. 'Cause once you told me this story I was like, like 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, tell that story.

Kendall Saville 21:08 Yeah. So I had a Tesla, and at the time they had the Tesla referral program. So basically they gave every owner a unique code. And to get, you know, 5,000 supercharger miles you actually had to use it, so people were searching for it, and I was like, "Perfect." I, you know, that's what I do for a living. I rank in Google. So when you searched Tesla referral code, my site was number one. I sent-

Shaan Puri 21:33 What, what was it called? Like teslareferralcode.com or something?

Kendall Saville 21:35 It was... No, it was actually fairestimate.com.

Shaan Puri 21:37 Okay.

Kendall Saville 21:37 I basically made like for just a fun side project, uh, a Lyft verse Uber comparison. So you'd just put like, "I'm going here. You know, what's the difference between the two?"

Shaan Puri 21:46 Right.

Kendall Saville 21:47 And so I just made a /tesla on that.

Shaan Puri 21:50 And by the way, that itself racked up-

Kendall Saville 21:52 That's another one. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 21:52 That was another one of your little shortcuts. You didn't wanna ever pay for Uber again, right? Like or Lyft, 'cause you would just get referral credits from that too, right?

Kendall Saville 21:58 Exactly. 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." And, uh-

Shaan Puri 22:06 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 22:06 ... literally had unlimited Uber and Lyft for years.

Shaan Puri 22:09 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 22:10 Literal years. And I shared it with some friends. They'd be like, "Hey, you know, I, I want some. Can you put my code for a little bit?"

Shaan Puri 22:15 Yeah.

Kendall Saville 22:15 So I'd, you know, do it for a month for them, and they'd be like, "I don't need it anymore."

Shaan Puri 22:18 I'm loaded. Yeah. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 22:19 I am done.

Shaan Puri 22:20 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 22:21 And then it would just be like the next friend, the next friend.

Shaan Puri 22:23 That's hilarious.

Kendall Saville 22:24 But then, you know, what happens is like these programs are like, "Okay, this is kind of weird. The, you know-

Shaan Puri 22:29 One super user

Kendall Saville 22:29 ... there's certain codes."

Shaan Puri 22:30 Yeah. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 22:30 Yeah, exactly. So they kinda cut you off after a while, but until then you kinda can reap the benefits.

Shaan Puri 22:36 So, so you had the Uber, Lyft shortcut, which was getting you free Ubers and Lyfts. Then you were like, "Oh, Tesla." So you made a /roadst- /tesla-

Kendall Saville 22:44 Yep

Shaan Puri 22:44 ... like extension basically, and you were, you were ranking for when people were looking for Tesla referral code.

Kendall Saville 22:50 Referral code. 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. Uh-

Shaan Puri 22:59 Was that like the peak prize of the referral program?

Kendall Saville 23:01 That is the peak prize.

Shaan Puri 23:02 Yeah, okay.

Kendall Saville 23:02 Exactly. But, you know, I'm still waiting for it.

Shaan Puri 23:04 Refer- Roadster, Roadster's like what? Like 100 grand or something.

Kendall Saville 23:06 It was 200.

Michael Wittmeyer 23:06 250, right? Yeah.

Kendall Saville 23:07 Yeah. Or yeah, 200 or 250 depending on like the model.

Shaan Puri 23:09 They never gave it, they never gave it to you?

Kendall Saville 23:11 Well, they haven't released it.

Shaan Puri 23:13 What do you mean? Oh, oh, the new Roadster.

Michael Wittmeyer 23:14 The new one.

Kendall Saville 23:14 The newest, yeah.

Shaan Puri 23:15 The newest one, yeah.

Kendall Saville 23:15 So they were like, "Hey, when we do it, you know, in 2019, you know, we're gonna give every, everyone-"

Shaan Puri 23:19 So how many did you win? I mean, how much did you earn?

Kendall Saville 23:21 So I earned like 1.75. I had sent more referrals, but I think Tesla was like, "All right. You know-

Shaan Puri 23:28 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 23:28 ... we're gonna give you 1.75." And then, um, you know-

Shaan Puri 23:31 But what do you do with the .75? I don't understand.

Kendall Saville 23:33 [laughs] I think you have to pay the r- you know, the difference between them-

Shaan Puri 23:35 Oh, okay. Gotcha

Kendall Saville 23:35 ... when they do. Um, so it'd be like a-

Shaan Puri 23:37 I'd be like, "No, send it to me without the trunk."

Kendall Saville 23:39 [laughs] Yeah.

Shaan Puri 23:39 Like I, I'll take the 3/4 car. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 23:41 Three wheels.

Shaan Puri 23:42 I'll take the convertible, thank you. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 23:45 And then, um, you know, I, I did that and I was like, all right, well, "Hey, Dad, you have a Tesla. Do you want a Roadster?" [laughs]

Shaan Puri 23:52 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 23:53 "Sure, son. I want that." And so I put his code and then did it with my brother-in-law.

Shaan Puri 23:58 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 23:59 So you know, we have a lot of Roadsters that might be coming. We'll see.

Michael Wittmeyer 24:04 It's like the Oprah thing. You get a Roadster.

Kendall Saville 24:05 Yeah. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 24:06 You get a Roadster.

Shaan Puri 24:06 Yeah. Yeah, that's amazing. So you did [laughs] so you did that.

Kendall Saville 24:09 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 24:10 You also did other ones too. Let's do some of the other ones. You did, uh... I was asking you how did you even- ... learned that there's, like, this, like, SEO affiliate game, right? So SEO is just people are searching for stuff on Google. If you can get to the top, you're gonna get a lot of free customer traffic. Um, and 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, 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-

Kendall Saville 24:38 Yeah

Shaan Puri 24:38 ... that's how you got the Uber credits and all that. So how did you even figure out this was a thing? Uh, I wanna hear that from both of you guys 'cause this is y- this is y'all's game.

Kendall Saville 24:46 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 24:47 And it's a game I didn't know about till much later in life, but you guys discovered it kinda early. I wanna hear f- the origin story. How did you guys even get into that?

Kendall Saville 24:54 Yeah, so this was, like, during, like, the money maker. You know, World Series of Poker was a big thing, and, you know, all of my friends and I were playing poker just around the house and then online. You know, there was a bunch of poker sites, and I saw one of the poker sites had, like, a poker chip set, and they would give it to you for free. And I was like, "Well, how does that work? Nothing in life is free." And 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, and I'm just gonna kinda make the difference. W- I'll give them 50 bucks to deposit, and I'll make, you know, the $200 that I get paid from the, uh, you know-

Shaan Puri 25:34 Okay

Kendall Saville 25:34 ... casinos and sports books and poker at that point.

Shaan Puri 25:37 And so you do that with, like, six friends.

Kendall Saville 25:40 And ran out of them at that point.

Shaan Puri 25:41 [laughs] Right.

Kendall Saville 25:41 You know, it was like, it was, it was great, and then it was like, okay, well, now I need to actually figure out how to do this. Um, and that's kinda how I got into, like, oh, I need to figure out how to create websites. I, I can do this with just, like, random people.

Shaan Puri 25:54 And you're, you're a teenager at this time.

Kendall Saville 25:56 I'm in college, yeah.

Shaan Puri 25:57 Oh, you're in college. Okay.

Kendall Saville 25:58 Yeah, so I was in college. Mike was actually a teenager at that time, and, uh, you know, just had to figure it out. And I mean, like, my first big break was actually misspelling Paradise Poker.

Shaan Puri 26:08 [laughs] W- what do you mean? So how did that go down?

Kendall Saville 26:10 Yeah, well, so at the time, when you searched in Google, they didn't have autocorrect. So basically, you misspelled Paradise Poker-

Shaan Puri 26:18 Mm

Kendall Saville 26:18 ... and you'd get misspelled websites-

Shaan Puri 26:20 [laughs] Right

Kendall Saville 26:20 ... with that. And so I was like, perfect. I'm not a very good speller, so I can come up-

Shaan Puri 26:25 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 26:25 ... with a lot of variations.

Shaan Puri 26:26 Right. I couldn't tell you how to spell Paradise Poker right now, actually. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 26:29 [laughs] And so I came up with a lot of variations and, you know, got them to rank in Google for, like, every misspelling.

Shaan Puri 26:35 Right.

Kendall Saville 26:36 And it was crazy because, like, all of a sudden, I 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, it was, like, paid for. I was basically like, "Parents," like, "I've got this. You know, I've got room, board, you know, the education," because I'm making free money basically online.

Shaan Puri 26:54 Were they like, "Well, what do you mean, son?" [laughs]

Kendall Saville 26:56 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 26:56 Like, did they know about this the whole time or not really?

Kendall Saville 26:58 I had to kinda, like, tell them. They were like... I was a little worried because I was like, poker, gambling-

Shaan Puri 27:02 Yeah

Kendall Saville 27:02 ... you know, they're gonna be like, "Oh, what's my son into? Is he doing this?"

Shaan Puri 27:05 Right.

Kendall Saville 27:05 But my dad was actually like... He looked at me, and he was, like, pretty proud 'cause he was like, "Oh, you're kinda like, you know, the picks and shovels-

Shaan Puri 27:11 Right

Kendall Saville 27:12 ... of it," right? You're not actually doing it. You're enabling people to do it-

Shaan Puri 27:15 Right

Kendall Saville 27:15 ... and the people that choose to do it.

Shaan Puri 27:16 Yeah. And you, you said, you said something real quick like, "Uh, we got to the top of Google." Did you have to do anything interesting to get your misspelled Paradise Poker to be the number one, or was it just like that was your domain name, so it automatically was gonna be number one at that time?

Kendall Saville 27:31 Well, the beauty of it was there was just no competition. No one else was actually trying to misspell Paradise Poker on purpose.

Shaan Puri 27:37 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 27:37 Maybe they would misspell it once, but I would have it, like, eight times.

Shaan Puri 27:40 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 27:41 So I was the best misspeller-

Shaan Puri 27:43 Right. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 27:43 ... of Paradise Poker and literally was number one for most of the keywords.

Shaan Puri 27:46 And essentially the thing that's going on right now with the Kia car, where Kia rebranded their logo. It looks like KN instead of Kia, and Google search for KN car is, like, suddenly spiking 'cause people see it on the road. They're like, "Oh, that's cool. What is that? What is the KN car?"

Kendall Saville 28:03 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 28:03 And I was like, "This feels like a Kendall thing." [laughs]

Kendall Saville 28:06 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 28:06 And I was like, "Kendall, what would you do with this?" What, what was your answer?

Kendall Saville 28:09 So I, you know, I had a buddy in fleet sales, and, like, that's where they, you know, sell a ton of cars via online. And I would make a deal with someone like that at the dealership. I would say, "Look, I can get you a lot of traffic." And so I would create websites that would literally, you know, go for all the newest cars, right? The, you know, the 2023, you know, Kia whatever it was, but obviously spell it with the KN.

Shaan Puri 28:31 Right.

Kendall Saville 28:32 And then, you know, make a deal with them. Like, "I'm gonna send you this. You know, I want 20% of all those leads."

Shaan Puri 28:36 And what is your... what would your website look like at that time? Would it be like, "Hey, this is the KN car. Go ahead."

Kendall Saville 28:41 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 28:41 "Go buy it," or would you be like, you know, would you just make it look like the Kia website? What would you actually do?

Kendall Saville 28:46 I think I would just, you know, explain it. Like, "Hey, you know, it look, it's, it-

Shaan Puri 28:49 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 28:49 ... it says KN, but it's actually Kia. And, you know, here's the reasons why this car is really cool."

Shaan Puri 28:55 Right.

Kendall Saville 28:55 "And here's a form to actually buy this car."

Shaan Puri 28:57 Right.

Kendall Saville 28:57 "And I can get you a great deal on it."

Shaan Puri 28:58 Right.

Kendall Saville 28:59 And then, you know, obviously send that lead over, and, you know, everyone's happy at that point. They actually find the car that they wanted. You know, it wasn't Kia, but, you know, it was the, uh, KN car that they had found.

Shaan Puri 29:08 And how much do you think somebody could make if they, they did this? What's your range? What's your estimate of how, how that would play out if you, if you did a good job of executing that?

Kendall Saville 29:15 I think if you did a good job... I mean, the problem now is Google autocorrect.

Shaan Puri 29:18 Mm.

Kendall Saville 29:18 So Google now, I even did the searches myself.

Shaan Puri 29:21 Right.

Kendall Saville 29:22 It, it's goes to the actual Kia. Like, "Hey, I know what you're trying to do."

Shaan Puri 29:25 Right.

Kendall Saville 29:26 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, like, other, you know, place to do that?

Shaan Puri 29:33 Right.

Kendall Saville 29:33 And 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 hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Shaan Puri 29:43 Mm-hmm. That's awesome. And you kinda had a similar origin story, playing poker and then discovered the poker affiliate game.

Michael Wittmeyer 29:52 Yeah, yeah. So I was basically a degenerate gambler-

Shaan Puri 29:55 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 29:55 ... when I was 15 or 16. Um, my friends and I would play, you know, poker in home games, just five, 10 bucks, whatever. This was when poker was on TV all the time-

Shaan Puri 30:04 Right

Michael Wittmeyer 30:04 ... in, like, 2005, and I just kept losing all my money. So I would have to go to- You know, the local grocery store to the Western Union or whatever-

Shaan Puri 30:11 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 30:11 ... give them the 100 bucks cash. They would send it to, you know, Cambodia or wherever it was going.

Shaan Puri 30:16 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 30:16 Um, and then I would just lose that, so I was like, "I need to find some other way to reload my-

Shaan Puri 30:21 Correct [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 30:21 ... my poker account, 'cause I, I'm busted."

Shaan Puri 30:23 Not I need to stop.

Michael Wittmeyer 30:24 No, I need to... [laughs] Exactly.

Shaan Puri 30:25 Where am I gonna reload faster? [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 30:27 Get that next hit. Get that next hit, yeah. So then I saw it, that they had, like, the refer a friend thing on the website, and they would pay you, like, 75 bucks or whatever to get your buddies to sign up, so I had all my friends sign up, same as you. And when I ran out of friends, I was like, same as him, like, "I gotta figure out a way to get strangers to do this for me," and ended up coming across this, uh, forum called, I think it was called Poker Affiliate World back then. And it was basically a lot of people who were doing this, that would share, you know, what was working, what wasn't. It was a very friendly community that I, I was kinda surprised. Like, I don't know-

Shaan Puri 30:59 Yeah

Michael Wittmeyer 30:59 ... why people are telling me this, but-

Shaan Puri 31:00 Yeah, 'cause they're kinda competing, right?

Michael Wittmeyer 31:02 But yeah, we were all comp- like, we were competitors-

Shaan Puri 31:04 Yep

Michael Wittmeyer 31:04 ... and just ended up becoming friends as well. Um, so just learned through doing that, started a website. Uh, my... I convinced my parents to lend me, like, a couple hundred bucks to buy a domain and set up, you know, web hosting and everything, and I, I told you this, or I put in that document that, like, when I sold my first site, which was probably 9 or 12 months after that, it was for $3,200-

Shaan Puri 31:24 Nice [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 31:24 ... which was like a billion dollars to me back then.

Shaan Puri 31:26 Yeah. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 31:27 And I got all... It was, like, a check. I cashed it. I took all the cash home and, you know, spread it out on the desk like this.

Shaan Puri 31:32 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 31:32 And then like-

Shaan Puri 31:33 Spreading it out is-

Michael Wittmeyer 31:33 Spread out

Shaan Puri 31:34 ... that's the, the big noob move, for sure. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 31:36 Yeah. And then took the, you know, repaid my parents, and that was, like, a, a very sentimental moment for me.

Shaan Puri 31:41 [laughs] That's amazing.

Michael Wittmeyer 31:43 Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 31:43 Didn't you have something where your neighbor did something for you, your neighbor, like, lent you some money or something like that?

Michael Wittmeyer 31:48 Um-

Shaan Puri 31:48 Was it, like, a lemonade stand story-

Michael Wittmeyer 31:50 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 31:50 ... or something like that?

Michael Wittmeyer 31:51 Well, I... Like, the first thing I did for work, my, one of my neighbors needed some, like, landscaping work done, and like, "We'll give you, you know, 20 bucks or whatever to come over and do it." And it was on a Saturday, and the night before I was, you know, out with the boys-

Shaan Puri 32:03 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 32:04 ... had a, had a few sodas.

Shaan Puri 32:05 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 32:05 And, uh, was a little hungover that morning, and I made it to, like, 10:00 AM before I had to tap out-

Shaan Puri 32:10 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 32:11 ... and was telling Kayla, like, "I just can't do this right now."

Shaan Puri 32:13 That was the, that was the first and probably only job you had.

Michael Wittmeyer 32:15 That was... Yeah, I just had, you know, random stuff like that. Um, did that. I had a, well, I lasted one day on a... Another neighbor had a, a bread company, so they would have to deliver the bread every morning to restaurants.

Shaan Puri 32:25 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 32:26 And my dad was friends with him, so he's like, you know, I'm sure trying to get me to do something.

Shaan Puri 32:29 Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 32:29 You need to go work with, uh, Mr. Anzovine for the day. It was like a 4:00 AM wake-up call to do that, so lasted one day at that as well.

Shaan Puri 32:36 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 32:36 I was like, "There's no way." Shoveled snow for one day. Uh-

Shaan Puri 32:38 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 32:39 So I had a lot of one-day businesses.

Shaan Puri 32:40 Neither of you really had any real jobs, it sounded like. You-

Michael Wittmeyer 32:43 I never had a real job, no.

Shaan Puri 32:44 So you never had, like, a corporate go and, like, you know, "Here's your first day at the, the new company." You didn't have that either.

Michael Wittmeyer 32:49 I, I did not. I basically had, like, a summer job, it was, like, a temp job agency that kind of places you different places, and one of them was, like, Dell warranties. And then I, I realized then, I was like, "I can't work for someone else." Like, this is just not me. Uh, you know, I wanna work for myself, I wanna set my own hours, and I wanna make a lot of money.

Shaan Puri 33:07 Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 33:07 Like, my mom always said, like, "When you were younger, all you said is, like, 'I wanna be a millionaire.'"

Shaan Puri 33:11 Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 33:12 "I wanna make a bunch of money." And she's just like, "All right, sure, you know, let's, let's see what happens." But, um, 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, like, to make it work."

Shaan Puri 33:22 You also said something like, "I don't like the idea of working, working really hard and someone else making money off that."

Michael Wittmeyer 33:28 Yeah, exactly. Like-

Shaan Puri 33:29 I wanna make the money off that. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 33:30 Like, I mean, that's what, you know, like, being an employee, right, like, you're making the owner's money.

Shaan Puri 33:34 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 33:34 And I just, like, I couldn't get, like, around that. I was like, "I need to be the owner of the business."

Shaan Puri 33:39 Dude, I find it hard sometimes to recruit people, 'cause I'm like, "I fundamentally don't want to do this trade of, like, I get some security and certainty and experience, but you get the upside. You know, like, you know, I get my salary, but you get the, the, the upside of my, my work." I, I almost find it sometimes hard to even recruit people to work at this point, 'cause I'm just like, "I don't know, man. I just, I, I philosophically-

Michael Wittmeyer 34:04 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 34:05 ... don't love this path," but then I also need to hire employees all the time. So I'm like [laughs] you know, it's not, it's, it's not very productive. You ever have that, that problem?

Michael Wittmeyer 34:11 Oh, totally. And I feel like, actually, it's been actually one of the most rewarding things of my company, is, like, watching the people grow. You know, we would hire them and I'd say, like, "All right, I just need you to kinda, you know, write a couple pages of content." And then they'd do a really good job and it's like, "Oh, do you wanna be the editor of this website?"

Shaan Puri 34:27 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 34:28 And then, "Oh, do you wanna manage other people?" And so, like, you know, the businesses I sold, I made sure the people that I was working with got really great jobs. 'Cause I feel like, you know, sure, I made a lot of the money, but I wanna make sure that, like, your career is set and you are in the best position possible to really, you know, crush it where, where, you know, with what you're doing.

Shaan Puri 34:48 And what'd you do after your first sale? You did a, a retirement party. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 34:53 Yeah, so I had this idea. I was like, "Okay, you know what? I did it. I'm done."

Shaan Puri 34:57 And you were, like, 30-something, 33?

Michael Wittmeyer 34:58 Yeah, I was, like, 33, I believe. And, you know, I was telling all my friends, like, "I'm gonna rent out a restaurant and, you know, we're just gonna, like, celebrate my retirement and, you know, it'll be great because, you know, I'm not gonna be 65. I'll be, like, 33, and it'll be great."

Shaan Puri 35:13 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 35:13 So we rented out Lazy Bear in San Francisco, and I had all my friends and my family, and it was awesome. We then had a party bus.

Shaan Puri 35:21 And they didn't even really know about your business.

Michael Wittmeyer 35:23 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 kind of be, you know, boastful about it.

Shaan Puri 35:35 Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 35:36 So for actually the first year after I sold the business, I didn't tell anyone. And, and then after a year, 'cause I just wanted to live with it, and I just wanted to kind of be comfortable with it myself before I then told other people. Um, and so I had a three-year earn-out, so after the three years is when I did my retirement party. And-

Shaan Puri 35:55 So you sat on that news for a long time. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 35:57 I did. Yeah, well, yeah, I'd sat on it for a year.

Shaan Puri 35:59 30, yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 35:59 Told people, but then I had two years left with them. Once I was done with that, I was like, "It's retirement time." Like, "I, I'm done. Let's do it." So rented Lazy Bear, rented a bar, had a party bus, and it was awesome. But then literally, like, three months later-

Shaan Puri 36:13 Did anybody at the... Were you at this party?

Michael Wittmeyer 36:15 You were supposed to come.

Shaan Puri 36:16 Why did I not come?

Michael Wittmeyer 36:17 You had some-

Shaan Puri 36:18 Oh

Michael Wittmeyer 36:18 ... some excuse. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 36:20 I think I was hungover again.

Shaan Puri 36:21 Yeah. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 36:21 This podcast, like, this guy's always hungover. I don't know what he's talking about.

Shaan Puri 36:24 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 36:24 No, I can'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, I knew he was doing well.

Shaan Puri 36:31 Yeah.

Kendall Saville 36:31 But I didn't know, like, what was really going on. And he was in Dallas for something, I can't remember what, and I went over to their hotel room, and him and his wife Tess had a bottle of champagne. They're like, "We're gonna open this, celebrate the sale," whatever. I was like, "Oh, you know, congrats. That's awesome, man." And then I went home-

Shaan Puri 36:46 Googled it

Kendall Saville 36:46 ... I looked it up, and I was like, "Oh," and I texted him. I was like, "All right. I really mean it. Congrats now," like.

Shaan Puri 36:52 [laughs] Well, we can s- it's in the news, right? Like, that one sold for, I think 45 million, 40 million?

Kendall Saville 36:56 Well, it was actually 50 million total, but I kind of sold it twice to the company-

Shaan Puri 36:59 Yeah

Kendall Saville 37:00 ... which was kind of a weird story.

Shaan Puri 37:01 So e- explain that. How does that work?

Kendall Saville 37:02 So-

Shaan Puri 37:02 [laughs] First time you sold it for what?

Kendall Saville 37:04 So first time I sold it for, like, 15 million plus, you know, a bunch of equity, and what happened was, like, at that time, New Jersey was big, and 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 37:21 Well, let me explain, 'cause I think people won't know the, the context here. So you go from p- online poker, then online poker collapses, and now that whole affiliate game is kind of dead 'cause you, US just shut down online poker.

Kendall Saville 37:32 Yep.

Shaan Puri 37:32 [coughs] What most people did was they went offshore, or international, 'cause it was still illegal in certain places or in certain ways. That's where most people went. And you did something different. Like, that was the obvious market. You went for kind of a non-obvious pivot, which was in the whole United States, one state was gonna legalize, I don't know if all gambling or just sports betting or what, which, which one was it?

Kendall Saville 37:58 They, they basically at that point didn't have sports betting, but it was poker, it was casino.

Shaan Puri 38:03 Okay.

Kendall Saville 38:03 And casinos are, like, the big players, so that's kind of the one that was really exciting.

Shaan Puri 38:06 Right. So, so gambling was, was legal in New Jersey, and only New Jersey. And I remember at that time it was like, well, how do you build a business around one state? That's so, it just, like, it 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, like, found the, the hack that nobody else was really competing for this, like, uh, what was the, what would be the search term people were looking for that you wanted to rank?

Kendall Saville 38:28 New Jersey online casino was, that was, like, the big one. And you're right. Like, all of my competitors were like, "Perfect," you know, like, "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, you know-

Shaan Puri 38:43 Ah

Kendall Saville 38:44 ... the, the offshore plus the legal regulated market. And I was like, that's perfect. I wanna be, you know, a big fish in a small pond. So I started that business. It was going well, but there was one competitor, Chris Grove, and-

Shaan Puri 38:59 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 38:59 ... he was really good at content, and he had, like, you know, his game figured out. I was much more into the kind of revenue side of the business. And so I talked and w- w- you know, we both talked for a while and we were like, you know, "This is what I'm doing. This is what I, what I'm doing," and, like, we were like, "We're the only people in this market. If we combine, we basically own this market."

Shaan Puri 39:19 Right.

Kendall Saville 39:19 And so it was an easy decision.

Shaan Puri 39:21 Then you have pricing power.

Kendall Saville 39:22 Exactly.

Shaan Puri 39:23 With, 'cause 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, is you're, you're at the whim of your, 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 39:49 Exactly, and it, it was crazy because, you know, we were able to get $1,000 per player that we sent, uh, through New Jersey online casinos.

Shaan Puri 39:58 Wow.

Kendall Saville 39:59 And, uh, 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, Containing Media, the company that purchased us, uh, you know, came knocking, we're like, "We have to buy you. Uh, 'cause we've heard at conferences, we've heard from, you know, people in the industry that you guys are the biggest, and we wanna own the biggest."

Shaan Puri 40:21 Right. So they buy it once.

Kendall Saville 40:22 So they buy it once, and at that point it was just New Jersey, and what I told them, I was like, "We're not gonna sell. Like, why would we sell? We've, we have 49 other states that eventually will legalize." And so I came up with the idea that, all right, we'll sell you New Jersey, and any future state we'll get 50% of. So we'll be kind of 50/50 partners for every state.

Shaan Puri 40:45 Right.

Kendall Saville 40:45 And 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 US market.

Shaan Puri 40:52 Right.

Kendall Saville 40:53 Um, so it was great. We started running it. You know, I had a three-year, and, as I mentioned, the first year was good, and that's when sports betting actually got legalized. And then the business, you know, started booming in terms of, you know, New Jersey had it, but then a lot of other states were really excited about offering it to their, you know, to the people in their state. So they, um, started legalizing, and all of a sudden, basically we had like 10 states coming online, and the company was like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa."

Shaan Puri 41:22 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 41:23 "We cannot give you 50% of this. This is just too much liability." And so we're like, "Okay. Yeah, no problem. We, you know, here, we just need a big check."

Shaan Puri 41:33 Right. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 41:34 And, [laughs] and, and they did, and they were like, "We have to, we have to come up with a situation that, you know, works for us and works for you." And so, you know, it was part stock and part cash. So in total it was around 50 million.

Shaan Puri 41:46 Yeah. That's amazing. And that company, uh, is publicly listed, right? Containing Media, so.

Kendall Saville 41:50 Yep, they're publicly listed, uh, in the Swedish Stock Exchange.

Shaan Puri 41:53 Swedish Stock Exchange, nice. Um, did you go ring, like, the bell in Sweden like I-

Kendall Saville 41:57 I, I, I wish. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 41:58 That would've been cool. [laughs] And so, so that's kind of like your, kind of like the big win story. Let's do Mike's big win story. So how does one go from I'm gambling and losing money in poker-

Kendall Saville 42:11 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 42:11 ... I get my friends to sign up for a referral program, to I own this company that does, like, I don't know, m- m- multiple billions of ... gold sales every year, right?

Michael Wittmeyer 42:22 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 42:22 So it's like how does that happen? Where, where does that come from?

Michael Wittmeyer 42:25 Yeah. So basically, I was in the gambling industry like he was, and when the shit hit the fan, I sold. So I made, like, the wrong call, whereas he-

Shaan Puri 42:33 That was like the 3,200?

Michael Wittmeyer 42:35 No.

Shaan Puri 42:35 Or-

Michael Wittmeyer 42:35 So this was, this was later on. I sold... I was further into it. I sold for 565,000.

Shaan Puri 42:40 Gotcha.

Michael Wittmeyer 42:40 And I was, I think, 19 then, so that-

Shaan Puri 42:42 And so to sell a business for 565,000, what was it doing at the time? Like-

Michael Wittmeyer 42:45 It was-

Shaan Puri 42:45 ... it must have been doing a lot, but th- the future was too uncertain.

Michael Wittmeyer 42:49 It was doing, like, 30 to 40K a month, but it just... I didn't know what was gonna happen for that.

Shaan Puri 42:53 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 42:53 So I sold that, and then, you know, I'm on top of the world.

Shaan Puri 42:56 Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 42:56 I'm like, "I've got this."

Shaan Puri 42:57 And you're how old? You're like-

Michael Wittmeyer 42:58 I'm 19 at this point.

Shaan Puri 42:59 Ni-

Michael Wittmeyer 42:59 Drop out of

Michael Wittmeyer 43:00 college.

Shaan Puri 43:00 Yeah. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 43:00 I'm, I'm going for it.

Shaan Puri 43:01 Guys-

Michael Wittmeyer 43:01 Like, I got this figured out

Shaan Puri 43:02 ... I figured it out.

Michael Wittmeyer 43:03 Figured out life. Yeah. So I'm like, "All right. I can do this affiliate thing in any space."

Shaan Puri 43:07 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 43:07 So I try 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, like-

Shaan Puri 43:16 Was this where the Smirnoff Ice thing happened?

Michael Wittmeyer 43:18 Uh, that was around that time too.

Shaan Puri 43:19 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 43:19 Yeah, yeah. So-

Shaan Puri 43:20 Tell that, tell that story. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 43:22 So, um, when I w- you know, around that age-

Shaan Puri 43:24 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 43:25 ... you know, I was out. That was at Penn State. I was having some fun. Uh, and there was this trend that was, like, icing people.

Shaan Puri 43:31 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 43:31 So like Smirnoff Ice.

Shaan Puri 43:32 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 43:32 You would, if you presented it to someone-

Shaan Puri 43:33 Just demonstrate. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 43:34 Yeah, yeah. You should have brought one. Yeah.

Shaan Puri 43:35 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 43:36 You present it to someone, they had to get on a knee and chug it.

Shaan Puri 43:38 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 43:38 So, like, guys I knew at college and high school, they were into this.

Shaan Puri 43:41 By the way, most genius marketing campaign ever.

Michael Wittmeyer 43:43 And yeah, it was so good.

Shaan Puri 43:43 Someone needs to just redo that.

Michael Wittmeyer 43:44 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 43:44 Enough time has passed.

Michael Wittmeyer 43:45 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 43:45 Just re-

Michael Wittmeyer 43:46 You're right

Shaan Puri 43:46 ... replay that same thing.

Michael Wittmeyer 43:47 You're right. Yeah. Do a milk, milk chug contest.

Shaan Puri 43:49 [laughs] Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 43:50 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 43:50 Yeah, lay on your back and chug a, like, a gallon of milk.

Michael Wittmeyer 43:53 Um, so I... There was a website called brosicingbros.com where people would send in, like, their best pictures of this happening. So there were all these creative ones like w- there was one I remember where a guy was super hungover in the morning and went and opened his toilet, and they had put plastic over the toilet, and there was a Smirnoff Ice sitting there.

Shaan Puri 44:09 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 44:09 He had to, like, chug it at 7:00 AM. So we, me and my buddies would send these pictures back and forth. Like, we thought it was funny, and then I just somehow ended up reaching out to the guy that ran it, and I was like, "I think this is cool. You know, have any interest in selling it or, you know, do anything with it?" Ended up, uh, working on a deal to buy it, and I gave him $25,000 for it. There was no monetization at all.

Shaan Puri 44:29 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 44:29 It was just like, "I think this is cool. It has a lot of traffic. I can figure something out here," and I'm really excited. I tell my buddies, like, "Yo, I just bought that site."

Shaan Puri 44:36 Right. You're the man.

Michael Wittmeyer 44:37 Everybody's like-

Shaan Puri 44:37 Yeah

Michael Wittmeyer 44:37 ... everybody's like, "Congrats." Yeah. They're like, "We wanna get our pictures up," whatever. And, um, the ne- literally the next day, uh, got an email from Smirnoff Ice cease and desist.

Shaan Puri 44:47 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 44:47 That we were infringing their, you know, trademarks or whatever, and like-

Shaan Puri 44:50 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 44:50 ... "You have to take all the pictures off the site." And the, the, the point of the site was the pictures.

Shaan Puri 44:53 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 44:53 It didn't work without the pictures. So basically just shut that down after-

Shaan Puri 44:56 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 44:56 ... 24 hours and just, you know, wrote it off. But-

Shaan Puri 44:59 Didn't you try to blur it? Weren't you saying you were gonna blur it?

Michael Wittmeyer 45:01 The, the... I talked to the prior owner, 'cause I told him I was... I was just like, you know, "Any ideas?" And he's like, "Well, you could try blurring them out or whatever." And it just-

Shaan Puri 45:07 I mean, doesn't it seem a little coincidental it was-

Michael Wittmeyer 45:09 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 45:09 ... like the next day? Like, did this guy make a phone call? [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 45:11 I know. It's no wonder, but yeah.

Shaan Puri 45:13 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 45:13 It's a nice loss for me.

Shaan Puri 45:14 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 45:15 Nice, nice learning.

Shaan Puri 45:15 Okay. So y- you're... The world's trying to humble you. Are you getting humbled or not really? You're just like-

Michael Wittmeyer 45:20 The world is very-

Shaan Puri 45:20 ... Teflon

Michael Wittmeyer 45:20 ... very successfully humbling me.

Shaan Puri 45:22 Okay.

Michael Wittmeyer 45:22 Yeah. It was, it was kind of like a two-year period where it just... I went from everything worked really well to, like, nothing was working at all, and especially having have, uh... You know, I had left school, and my parents-

Shaan Puri 45:32 [coughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 45:32 ... very much were against that decision, so it was, it was a dark time for me.

Shaan Puri 45:35 Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 45:35 Like, you know, is this gonna work? Is it not? Am I gonna l- get egg on my face, have to go back to college, whatever? Um, so one of the guys I knew from the, the poker affiliate world, he was doing some affiliate websites in the, the gold and silver space, and there was this company that had just spun up an affiliate program, and a, uh, Jeremy Yankee, a guy we know, was managing it for him. So he's like, "You guys should look at this," whatever. Um, so I decided to invest in, uh, this guy's business. His name was Jonathan, and I was just gonna help him, like, build these sites. Let's see if we can turn it into something. And over, like, maybe six or nine months, we built up some traffic. It was making, like, five grand a month. You know, it was, it was a side thing for me.

Shaan Puri 46:12 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 46:12 I was trying to do other stuff. And, um, kinda out of nowhere, the company we were sending everybody to just killed their whole affiliate program, so we went from making, you know, 5K a month to just zero. You know, this looked like another just completely blown-

Shaan Puri 46:24 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 46:24 ... investment.

Shaan Puri 46:24 Got iced again.

Michael Wittmeyer 46:24 Yeah, got iced again.

Shaan Puri 46:25 Mike gets iced. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 46:26 Just getting iced. Yeah. Um, and then my partner, like, credit to him. I was, I was again was viewing it as like, well, there's nothing to really do here.

Shaan Puri 46:33 Just pack it in.

Michael Wittmeyer 46:33 There's no other affiliate programs. Um, we had actually gone to that company that cut us off and, and offered to sell them the website. We're like, "You know, this thing was sending you, I don't know, 200 buyers a month or whatever it was. You know, just kinda backing into what you were paying us on an affiliate basis, just give us 40 grand for it, and we'll, you know, you can have lead gen for a long time." And they just never replied to us, so we, you know, we had no path to, 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." And that sounded like... You can imagine how much of a nightmare that sounded-

Shaan Puri 47:05 Insane

Michael Wittmeyer 47:06 ... if you're an affiliate, 'cause you never talk to customers. You don't-

Shaan Puri 47:08 Yeah

Michael Wittmeyer 47:08 ... like, there's no employees really. Like, it's a very simple business.

Shaan Puri 47:11 No, no product. You have-

Michael Wittmeyer 47:12 Yeah. It's, it's, it's-

Shaan Puri 47:13 You're kind of a middleman.

Michael Wittmeyer 47:14 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 47:14 Like, you're, like, in between people and the product.

Michael Wittmeyer 47:16 Yeah, 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 47:20 It's like gasps in the affiliate forum.

Michael Wittmeyer 47:22 It's like [gasps] what is happening?

Shaan Puri 47:23 Real business? [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 47:25 Exactly. Yeah.

Shaan Puri 47:25 You're gonna, gonna sell physical products?

Michael Wittmeyer 47:26 Physical products. Yeah. So he's like, "I'll, I'll do all the inventory, shipping, customer phone calls, all that stuff. I'll do it all. Like, you just help with get traffic and put some more money in."

Shaan Puri 47:35 Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 47:36 So I was like, "All right. 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 47:41 This is, uh, this is Andreas or this is somebody else?

Michael Wittmeyer 47:42 This is Jonathan.

Shaan Puri 47:43 Okay.

Michael Wittmeyer 47:43 So that was the JM, was Jonathan and Mike.

Shaan Puri 47:45 Okay.

Michael Wittmeyer 47:46 And kind of a funny story on that.

Shaan Puri 47:47 Sounds very regal and official.

Michael Wittmeyer 47:49 Official. Yeah. So great story on that.

Shaan Puri 47:50 Like, Jonathan and Mike's Gold Shop versus JM Bullion.

Michael Wittmeyer 47:53 Yep.

Shaan Puri 47:53 Like, that's a-

Michael Wittmeyer 47:54 So-

Shaan Puri 47:54 ... that's a step up

Michael Wittmeyer 47:55 ... we knew so little about this space when we started that we named it JM Bullion using our initials, and we had no idea that, like, one of the largest refiners of gold and silver in the world is Johnson Matthey.

Shaan Puri 48:05 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 48:06 And so we actually got a big boost early on-

Shaan Puri 48:08 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 48:08 ... 'cause people thought we were their retail arm.

Shaan Puri 48:11 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 48:11 Like, it was a nice little accidental win, and we didn't get any cease and desists, so that was nice.

Shaan Puri 48:15 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 48:15 Um, so yeah, we spin this thing up. Uh, you know- It went live I think October of 2011, and the obj- the idea was we're just gonna point all our old traffic at the new e-commerce site, jmbullion.com, and it was, it was crickets the first few weeks. Like zero or I don't think we got an order for three weeks, and I honestly think that was, like, my mom's friend who-

Shaan Puri 48:33 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 48:33 ... she had, like, told him to go do it or something. Um-

Shaan Puri 48:36 But you don't give up at that point.

Michael Wittmeyer 48:38 We didn't give up, and you know, just kept trying to figure stuff out. How can we make this work?

Shaan Puri 48:41 What, what's that conversation like? You're three, four weeks in. You go to the office. Like, does anybody say anything? Like, "Hey, guys, uh..."

Michael Wittmeyer 48:48 Yeah. Well, there was no office, so that was easy. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 48:50 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 48:51 It was... My partner had all the gold-

Shaan Puri 48:52 The secret to success.

Michael Wittmeyer 48:53 Yeah, yeah. No office. My partner had all the gold in his little desk drawer in his basement.

Shaan Puri 48:56 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 48:57 It could all fit in, like, the, the tiny little filing cabinet.

Shaan Puri 48:59 Okay, so you're in the basement, you're like-

Michael Wittmeyer 49:00 Yeah

Shaan Puri 49:00 ... "No gold is leaving the drawer right now."

Michael Wittmeyer 49:02 Yeah, gold's staying in the drawer. Um, it was so early that it w- I wasn't really worried at that point.

Shaan Puri 49:08 Okay.

Michael Wittmeyer 49:08 You know, you... Like what we're doing right now, it's early, you know, you're... You know it takes years to build these things. Um, but we [laughs] kind of a funny story on this. We eventually out of nowhere start getting, like, big orders, and we didn't change anything, so we're very confused as to what's going on here.

Shaan Puri 49:22 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 49:22 Big credit card orders. Uh, repeat customers over and over and over.

Shaan Puri 49:26 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 49:26 We're like, "All right. We've- we've- we've hit it. Like, this is gonna work." And so for like two months this goes on.

Shaan Puri 49:32 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 49:32 We're getting like 100, 200K of revenue a month. Or no, I'm sorry. It wasn't that much. It was probably 30 or 50 grand. And literally on Christmas morning, my partner texts me, he's like, "Kinda weird. Have you seen the, the checking account?" I was like, "No," and I go and pull it up on my phone, like, Christmas morning with my family around, looking at the thing.

Shaan Puri 49:48 Yeah. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 49:49 Pull up the checking account, we're like negative $40,000. All of it was fraud. Uh, every single order-

Shaan Puri 49:55 Oh, wow

Michael Wittmeyer 49:55 ... was, like, credit card chargeback fraud. We were j- we just didn't know anything about any of this stuff, so-

Shaan Puri 49:59 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 50:00 ... 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, and there were a lot of pitfalls that we fell into, and fortunately didn't kill us.

Shaan Puri 50:09 [laughs] And so, all right, so you recover from that.

Michael Wittmeyer 50:12 Yeah, so I had to put more money in. I was pretty much on the ropes at this point.

Shaan Puri 50:14 Right. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 50:14 Like, it was, it was, like, everything it was going in now.

Shaan Puri 50:17 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 50:17 This was, this was it. This was gonna work or I was done.

Shaan Puri 50:19 You're stressing?

Michael Wittmeyer 50:20 I'm stressing at this point, yeah.

Shaan Puri 50:21 Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 50:22 And-

Shaan Puri 50:22 This is where you start uphill skiing in Switzerland. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 50:24 This is where I start uphill skiing, yeah. So the, really the turning point for that company was I just took a really honest look in the mirror, and I said, "Here's JM. Here's, like, the five biggest companies." Like, if I look at these various, you know, metrics or whatever, you know, how good's their website, how's their pricing, product selection, how fast do they ship, customer service, whatever, and I just basically, like, did a little scorecard for everybody. And I was like, "There's no reason anyone would ever buy from us."

Shaan Puri 50:47 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 50:48 We're just worse at everything. We have less selection. We didn't even... We were so small we couldn't get a wholesale account.

Shaan Puri 50:53 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 50:53 So we were just buying from the cheapest retailer and marking it up. Um, you know, me and Jonathan were answering the cell phone. That was, our cell phones were the 800 number.

Shaan Puri 51:00 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 51:00 You know, if we were available, we'd answer. It was just, again, like, why would someone buy from us? So what I landed on, I was like, "The only lever we can really pull here is we're just gonna undercut everyone," 'cause this is a commodity, and it's like buying gasoline. If there's a, if there's a store here and a store there, and that one's a penny cheaper, you're gonna pull in there. So I'm like, "Let's just cut it and see what happens." 'Cause it, 'cause if we can get volume and, you know, make that work and, and see the top line grow, I know we're gonna be able to figure out margin as we, as we go. You know, you're gonna get economies of scale. Um, so we did that, and that did work, and then we started to see the revenue really grow. So through 2012, we were starting to do, like, you know, a million-plus a month in sales, which back then we were really pumped about, and the problem with this company was it was super capital-intensive 'cause you had to stay ahead of the inventory.

Shaan Puri 51:45 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 51:45 So, like, if you were gonna be able to ship fast, it had to be, you know, in the drawer-

Shaan Puri 51:48 Yeah. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 51:48 ... uh, when they order. So I, I did another round. I put I think my last 100K in basically, and then we outgrew that, and I was like, "We need someone..." I, no bank's gonna give us any money. We put a deck together and sent it to, like, 60 different, you know, uh, angels or VCs and just zero responses. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 52:05 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 52:05 Absolutely nothing. Not even like a "No, thank you." Um, so I was thinking, like, who could I get to invest in this thing, and I, uh, called him. And so he was our first angel investor.

Shaan Puri 52:14 And you knew him personally at the time?

Michael Wittmeyer 52:16 Yeah, so 'cause we were competitors in the, in the space.

Shaan Puri 52:18 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 52:18 And we went to all the conferences together, and we were both around the same age, and you know, just liked to, you know, go out, have dinners and stuff at conferences. Um, so we were friends, and he had told me after I sold my gambling business, he's like, "You know, whatever you do next, let me know. I would like to invest." So I was like, "Hey, man."

Shaan Puri 52:34 So you, you get the call.

Michael Wittmeyer 52:34 I was like, "Hey, I need to cash that in." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 52:36 Yeah, now [laughs] now what happens? You get the call. What's your... Did you even know he was doing this in the meantime?

Kendall Saville 52:40 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."

Shaan Puri 52:46 Yeah.

Kendall Saville 52:46 Like, you know, for me, I was just like I'm trying to do this gambling business, you know? And but I'm 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." And so basically I invested in him, and, um, you know, it was... I, I feel like we had a quick negotiation. It was like-

Michael Wittmeyer 53:07 It was like 24 hours.

Kendall Saville 53:08 Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 53:08 Yeah. You did a great deal.

Kendall Saville 53:09 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 53:10 I mean, you had all the leverage. It was like we were either gonna go under or he was gonna write this check, so. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 53:14 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 53:15 It's always like that.

Kendall Saville 53:15 So you got an A+ for that deal. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 53:16 Yeah, it was the A+, yeah. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 53:18 And it was, like, just speed. It was affiliate. Uh, you know, we always call it, like, affiliate speed, where it was just like we had kinda had a handshake agreement, and then I just wired him the money.

Michael Wittmeyer 53:26 Right. We didn't, we didn't even sign anything.

Kendall Saville 53:28 Like, we probably didn't have documents.

Michael Wittmeyer 53:28 Yeah.

Kendall Saville 53:28 No.

Michael Wittmeyer 53:28 Yeah.

Kendall Saville 53:28 But it was like, "I trust you."

Shaan Puri 53:30 Did you, you put in, what, like a couple hundred K or?

Kendall Saville 53:31 I think 100K.

Michael Wittmeyer 53:32 It was, it was 100 and then you, this was another A+ move. He negotiated, like, another rider of, like, I get to do another 50 at this same valuation at my option, which he then did a few months later as we were growing.

Shaan Puri 53:42 Okay, so you put in 150K.

Kendall Saville 53:43 Yep.

Shaan Puri 53:44 That ended up being a good return for you? Like-

Kendall Saville 53:47 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 53:48 ... what, what's the multiple on that?

Kendall Saville 53:50 I think it was at, what, 20 million?

Michael Wittmeyer 53:51 You got, like, 23 million, yeah.

Shaan Puri 53:54 You, that's what you r- netted out?

Kendall Saville 53:55 Yeah, that was my net.

Shaan Puri 53:56 So 150K in, 20... [laughs] I'm not sure about the valuation. [laughs] No. 'Cause, like, in Silicon Valley, it's like-

Michael Wittmeyer 54:01 Oh, oh, oh, yeah

Shaan Puri 54:01 ... "Oh, you, you invested a seed thing? Oh, was that a 20-million valuation?" [laughs] No, no. You're saying-

Michael Wittmeyer 54:05 No, he was in at, like...

Shaan Puri 54:06 I don't-

Michael Wittmeyer 54:06 It was maybe a million bucks or something.

Shaan Puri 54:08 Like a million or two million valuation.

Michael Wittmeyer 54:09 Everything was... We said it was worth a million bucks.

Kendall Saville 54:10 No. I don't-

Michael Wittmeyer 54:11 Maybe 700K or something-

Kendall Saville 54:12 Yeah

Michael Wittmeyer 54:12 ... was the valuation, and yeah, I sold it for 175.

Shaan Puri 54:15 Wow, so you got a amazing return there. You turned 100K-ish into 2- 20 million bucks.

Kendall Saville 54:19 Thanks, Mike.

Michael Wittmeyer 54:20 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 54:20 Yeah. Do you, do, what, I mean, do you, uh... What, what, what do you, what do you do for Papi brand?

Kendall Saville 54:24 He's, he's sent me-

Michael Wittmeyer 54:24 He bought you a nice bottle of Papi. Yeah. It was, you know.

Shaan Puri 54:26 [laughs] And I'll let you, you know, we can do another business together.

Kendall Saville 54:29 [laughs] Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 54:30 Yeah.

Kendall Saville 54:30 I'll actually help this time.

Michael Wittmeyer 54:31 There you go.

Shaan Puri 54:31 Yeah, there you go. That, that was good

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Shaan Puri 54:50 So you... Okay, so you do that. That's amazing. You get the phone call, you do that.

Michael Wittmeyer 54:53 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 54:53 You get this more money, but it seems like you're just gonna have this problem again.

Michael Wittmeyer 54:56 And we did, like-

Shaan Puri 54:57 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 54:57 ... three months later. So we get his last, you know, 50 or whatever it was, and then we were really s- this... It was starting to grow pretty quick at that point. We were up to probably 4 million a month in revenue, and it was starting to hockey stick. So it was like, you know, we need-

Shaan Puri 55:08 And what are you doing to get so much traffic? It's SEO, basically?

Michael Wittmeyer 55:11 Yeah. So that's when the SEO really started to kick in. So initially it was like, "We're gonna, we're gonna price cheaper. We're gonna make this appealing to people."

Shaan Puri 55:16 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 55:17 And then people started... You know, we get the return customers, get the backlinks going, the site got really-

Shaan Puri 55:20 What- what do you call this exercise you did, where you're like, "I took an honest look in the mirror, and I said-"

Michael Wittmeyer 55:25 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 55:25 It's kinda like, why would it... You know, I wanna date a 10. Why would a 10 date me?

Michael Wittmeyer 55:29 That's exactly that. Yeah.

Shaan Puri 55:30 Right? That's basically what you were saying, is like-

Michael Wittmeyer 55:31 Yeah

Shaan Puri 55:32 ... they have all these websites they can choose from. Why would they be choosing us?

Michael Wittmeyer 55:35 Yep.

Shaan Puri 55:36 Shouldn't more companies do that?

Michael Wittmeyer 55:37 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 55:37 I feel like most companies don't actually do that exercise.

Michael Wittmeyer 55:40 Yeah. 'Cause it, it can be painful, 'cause the, the answer often isn't what you want it to be, right?

Shaan Puri 55:43 [laughs] Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 55:43 The mirror doesn't look back, right? [laughs]

Shaan Puri 55:44 It's not that the world is wrong and d- dumb.

Michael Wittmeyer 55:47 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 55:48 It's that-

Michael Wittmeyer 55:48 Yeah. So that's, you know, something I've tried to use over my career, and it's been helpful.

Shaan Puri 55:52 That's amazing. Um, yeah, I think more people should do that exercise. And, and also when you do that, I think it, uh... It forces clarity.

Michael Wittmeyer 56:02 Mm-hmm.

Shaan Puri 56:02 Where are we gonna be great?

Michael Wittmeyer 56:03 Yep.

Shaan Puri 56:03 You know, where, where, what are we gonna be great on? And you decided, we're gonna be great on price first, and then we're gonna be great on these other things later.

Michael Wittmeyer 56:09 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 56:09 Okay, so you do that. Grows, grows, grows. You do this for eight years. You sell. Hallelujah. Um, so that's kinda like your, your, your big wins.

Michael Wittmeyer 56:16 Mm-hmm.

Shaan Puri 56:16 I wanna know... Give me some stories along the way on e- either of the big wins. Maybe a story of, uh, you know, something you look fondly at in the early days of, like, you know, one of those, like, wins along the way that felt really good, and then

Shaan Puri 56:30 maybe a moment that felt bad. I don't know. If you have any stories o- on either one of those, I'd love to hear them.

Michael Wittmeyer 56:34 Yeah. Um, this was kind of a mix of good and bad, but... 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, a big order for us back then.

Shaan Puri 56:46 Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 56:46 And he pays us, we ship it. You know, it look- it's delivered. Everything's fine. We go on our way. And then we hear from him like a week later that, you know, "I was out of town. Uh, there's no gold here. You know, I don't know what happened here."

Shaan Puri 56:57 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 56:58 And again, we were so naive, we didn't even have, like, shipping insurance back then.

Shaan Puri 57:01 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 57:01 So this, there was just nothing there. Um, so we dug in pretty firm. We're like, you know, "UPS has the GPS coordinates on your doorstep. You know, the driver has signed an affidavit that he delivered it there," you know, all this stuff. But this guy just kept digging in harder, and he, he did this, like... There's a site called ripoffreport.com-

Shaan Puri 57:18 Okay

Michael Wittmeyer 57:18 ... where anyone can go on there and file, like, "Hey, this per- company or person screwed me," and he did that. And we were so early that, like, there were no JM Bullion reviews anywhere. So when people searched that, that was the number one thing that came up, and it, it immediately hit us. Like, probably 30% of our sales just fell off.

Shaan Puri 57:33 Wow.

Michael Wittmeyer 57:33 'Cause every- in the gold space, everyone checks.

Shaan Puri 57:35 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 57:35 Like, they're always worried about getting, you know, rug pulled.

Shaan Puri 57:37 Scammed. Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 57:38 Yeah. So it was really hurting us. And, um, this guy then went into, like, this kinda 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, you're gonna ruin his life unless you make this right," whatever. And I was really starting to stress about this. [laughs] You know, that's not a good feeling. And I don't know this person, but you wouldn't want anyone to, to feel like that. So as this draws on and we're not finding a conclusion, UPS basically is like, "We delivered it. You know, we're washing our hands of this thing." Um, I had caved in, and I was like, "I'm gonna personally write this guy a check for 20K."

Shaan Puri 58:10 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 58:10 And that, that would've been, like, the end of my checking account right there.

Shaan Puri 58:13 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 58:13 And... 'Cause I, I couldn't even sleep at night. I was feeling so much guilt about this. And so I had... I drafted the email that I was gonna send to him, and I was like, "I'm gonna sleep on this one more night just to be sure."

Shaan Puri 58:23 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 58:23 And that morning, I woke up, and UPS had gone with the police to his house, and as soon as the police were there, he found it in his closet. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 58:30 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 58:32 So that one had a, a, you know, a happy ending thankfully, but, uh, that was another learning moment for us of like, "Okay, well, obviously we need to figure out the, the delivery and insurance side of this business." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 58:40 Right. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 58:41 Yeah. Anything from you?

Shaan Puri 58:42 Yeah. Painful, painful lessons learned-

Michael Wittmeyer 58:43 Painful, yeah

Shaan Puri 58:43 ... but you gotta do it.

Michael Wittmeyer 58:44 So I think, uh, one would be, uh, Faceboom and Face- the... or facebookcom.com.

Shaan Puri 58:51 [laughs] Wait, what? Okay, so what are these?

Michael Wittmeyer 58:53 [laughs] So at the time, originally it was thefacebook.com. That was, you know, Facebook's domain name. And, you know, I was in college, so I was part of it, and eventually they dropped the the. And I knew... Like, right away, I was like, "I'm gonna domain squat on things that they're gonna type wrong."

Shaan Puri 59:13 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 59:14 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 Faceboom.

Shaan Puri 59:22 Like, on the keyboard, the keyboard.

Michael Wittmeyer 59:23 On the keyboard. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 59:24 [laughs] Wow, you're a man of science.

Michael Wittmeyer 59:26 Yes. Yes.

Shaan Puri 59:27 I, I didn't even realize the precision that you took to this. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 59:30 And then, you know, people forget the dot.

Shaan Puri 59:32 Faceboom.com.

Michael Wittmeyer 59:33 So they, you know, they, you know, end up putting the com and then .com again. And the crazy thing about it was I got to see basically Facebook's, like-

Shaan Puri 59:41 Growth. Yeah

Michael Wittmeyer 59:42 ... crazy hockey stick.

Shaan Puri 59:43 By the way, I just went to faceboom.com. You know where it goes?

Michael Wittmeyer 59:46 I have no idea.

Shaan Puri 59:47 Facebook. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 59:48 Right.

Shaan Puri 59:48 It goes to Facebook now. [laughs] They, they also figured this out.

Michael Wittmeyer 59:51 [laughs] Yeah, so they, they might have figured it out one way, but at the time, I actually ended up selling faceboom.com for, like, 20K. You know, someone came and was like, "Hey, there's a lot of traffic coming here." You know, at that time you'd have just, like, you know, PPC-type ads, just, like, really basic text link ads, and you'd make, like, you know, a 10 cents per click. But there was enough traffic where it made it worthwhile. Um, so I sold it to them, and I was like, "Sweet, I still have, you know, facebookcom.com."

Shaan Puri 1:00:21 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:00:21 "I'm excited to sell this one." But little did I know, like, a big old packet of papers comes from Facebook, and they're like, "Hey, that's our trademark."

Shaan Puri 1:00:31 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:00:31 "Do you wanna fight this, or do you wanna hand it over?" And it was a very easy choice to give them the domain name.

Shaan Puri 1:00:36 Right. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:00:36 So at least I got to sell one of them.

Shaan Puri 1:00:38 That's, that's pretty good. Did you, uh-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:00:39 You gotta tell the Iswitch story. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:00:42 What was that one?

Kendall Saville 1:00:43 Well, I almost went blind [laughs] or at least I thought I was

Shaan Puri 1:00:47 I thought this was gonna be a misspelling, like-

Kendall Saville 1:00:49 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:00:49 ... not twitch.com, I twitch.

Kendall Saville 1:00:51 [laughs] 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." And one of my competitors, I think, told on me and said, "I think Kendall's doing both." And so I was like, "Hmm. Oh," and so I didn't know any of this. And I was at an industry conference, and one of the regulators was like, "Hey, well, I'd like to meet you for coffee." And I was like, "All right. Is this something I should be worried about?"

Shaan Puri 1:01:21 Right.

Kendall Saville 1:01:21 He's like, "No, no, no. Just, just come."

Shaan Puri 1:01:23 It's like when Chris Hansen's like, "Hey-

Kendall Saville 1:01:25 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:01:25 ... pizza's inside. Come on in." [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:01:27 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:01:28 You don't go for the pizza.

Kendall Saville 1:01:29 Yeah.

Kendall Saville 1:01:30 So I just, I, you know, I, I walk up there. We sit down, and I think this is gonna be like a really friendly conversation, and he's like, "So we can do this the hard way or the easy way."

Shaan Puri 1:01:40 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:01:41 And, uh... And, like, at that time, I'm, like, stunned. I'm just kinda like, "Oh, no. Do I run?" [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:01:46 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:01:47 And so then he's like, "You know what? You know, we, we've had reports that we think you're doing the offshore, and, you know, what are you gonna say about this?" And at that time, I was like, "I'm not gonna say anything. You know, I'm not gonna incriminate myself," but I... But it, it was wrong, you know? All, all... Like, these pages were basically, um, algorithmically updated with these offshore ads that I had no control over.

Shaan Puri 1:02:10 Right.

Kendall Saville 1:02:10 But he didn't know that 'cause he wasn't really familiar with domain parking pages, et cetera. But at that time, I was like, "I need to talk to my lawyer-

Shaan Puri 1:02:19 Yeah

Kendall Saville 1:02:19 ... and then we can talk to you, and we-

Shaan Puri 1:02:20 Do you have a lawyer?

Kendall Saville 1:02:21 ... can all figure it out. I did not have a lawyer. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:02:22 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:02:23 I called a lawyer.

Shaan Puri 1:02:23 In the movies, they tell me that I need to say-

Kendall Saville 1:02:25 Yes, yeah

Shaan Puri 1:02:25 ... these words. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:02:27 Exactly. So then, the... I mean, that was a, you know, 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, you know, why, you know, what he thinks is not actually happening." Um, but then I get a email from them, and they're like, "We need you to come to New Jersey." And I was like, "Oh, no. They wanna arrest me."

Shaan Puri 1:02:48 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:02:48 "They wanna get me in their jurisdiction, and they are going to arrest me." Um, and at that time, I was like... I was like talking to my wife, Tess, like, "There's something wrong with my eye." And she's like, "Oh, you know, it, it'll be fine." And I was like, "Yeah, I think it'll be fine," but I'm, like, kinda seeing little specks, and it, like, got worse and worse. And at one point, I was like, "I can't read a menu."

Shaan Puri 1:03:11 Damn.

Kendall Saville 1:03:12 Um, and I went to a... Then so I went to a specialist, an eye specialist, and he thought I had a detached retina. And he was like, "Oh my gosh, we gotta get you into surgery," and all these other things. And then so then he kinda looked a little harder and was like, "No, no, actually, have you been stressed lately?" Very stressed.

Shaan Puri 1:03:30 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:03:30 Very, very stressed. And he's like, "Yeah, you know, we've seen this. You know, it, 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, talk to the regulators, and I wanted to bring a lawyer, and they're like, "Nope, don't bring a lawyer."

Shaan Puri 1:03:47 You should've sued them for the twitch they caused.

Kendall Saville 1:03:49 Yeah, exactly. Like, I almost got blind-

Shaan Puri 1:03:50 You blinded me-

Kendall Saville 1:03:51 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:03:51 ... with your hard way, easy way bullshit [laughs] at the, at the, at the coffee shop.

Kendall Saville 1:03:55 Yeah. [laughs] And they're, they're like, "Do not bring a lawyer 'cause we'll make it hard on you." And I was like, "Oh, my gosh."

Shaan Puri 1:04:02 Oh, they told you that?

Kendall Saville 1:04:02 Yes, they told me that. So-

Shaan Puri 1:04:04 Oh, man, I wouldn't know what to do.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:04:05 Yeah, that's what they always say.

Shaan Puri 1:04:06 I wouldn't know, okay, am I... Are they just... Is this a play?

Michael Wittmeyer 1:04:09 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:04:09 Is this a good cop, bad cop type of... Are they pushing me around, or is this real?

Kendall Saville 1:04:12 Yeah, I had no idea-

Shaan Puri 1:04:13 So what would you... What should-

Kendall Saville 1:04:14 ... but I was just like, "All right, no lawyer." Like, I mean-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:04:16 Yeah

Kendall Saville 1:04:16 ... I'm gonna listen to them this time, but which is funny 'cause the first time they, you know, "Hey, everything's all right, and-

Shaan Puri 1:04:21 Yeah

Kendall Saville 1:04:21 ... just come see us." And I sit there. I'm at the office. I'm looking around. I'm like, "Okay, I haven't been arrested yet, which is good."

Shaan Puri 1:04:28 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:04:28 [laughs] They sit down, and they're like, "Okay, well, talk to us about, you know, being an affiliate." And then it was, like, this super cordial conversation, and I ended up saying, like, "Okay, yeah, the, these few things weren't what they seemed, and here's why." And then they're like, "Okay, you know, that's fine, but, you know, we just wanna learn more about affiliates" because they were, like, you know, the first regulators in the United States, and they had never really talked to a large affiliate and 'cause, you know, we were the only one at that point.

Shaan Puri 1:04:55 Right.

Kendall Saville 1:04:55 So then they just kinda wanted to, you know, do a fact-finding mission, and it all worked out. I didn't go blind, and, you know-

Shaan Puri 1:05:01 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:05:01 ... I'm here today, so I feel like it all worked out.

Shaan Puri 1:05:03 You could've either been blind and in jail-

Kendall Saville 1:05:05 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:05:05 ... and you ended up not blind and not in jail. It was perfect.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:05:06 Did you, like, pack a jail bag? W- what was the prep like? [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:05:09 I, [laughs] I did not, but my wife was in a hotel, and I was just like, "Okay, well, you know, we have enough clothes if we need." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:05:17 That is amazing. [laughs] You guys are also kinda like life hack, life experimenters. I feel like you g- just like the way you like finding the, the clever angles in business, I feel like you do that with, with life of like you don't just do things exactly the way others do them. You're like, "Well, why don't I just do this, you know, instead?" Uh, and you've done the s- I feel like you do the same thing with certain, you know, like, I don't know, lifestyle experiments. So tell us about some of those. What are some things that you guys do with your day-to-day life that is maybe just

Shaan Puri 1:05:45 not standard, not, not exactly what anybody else is doing? 'Cause I think for people listening, they, and myself included, I love hearing when people don't just, like, follow a, uh, you know, a very standard playbook 'cause it makes me wonder, oh, what's the thought process behind that? Why do they do that? And 9 times out of 10, I don't do it myself, but I like hearing those. Do you guys have any, uh, kinda like interesting lifestyle choices or experiments that you do?

Kendall Saville 1:06:07 I think the first one for me was, you know, I was having twins, and I was telling my wife, like, "Look, we're having twins. This is insane."

Shaan Puri 1:06:14 She's like, "Yo, I know."

Kendall Saville 1:06:15 Yeah, yeah, she's like-

Shaan Puri 1:06:16 They're in me

Kendall Saville 1:06:16 ... "I have to do the brunch."

Shaan Puri 1:06:17 Actually, [laughs] I'm having twins. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:06:20 And I was like, "We need to get some help. Like, we need experts." And so what I did was, you know, I talked to an agency, and I just kind of, you know, cast my net wide and far, and I was like, "I wanna find someone that can help us raise these kids."

Shaan Puri 1:06:34 So you took this seriously. Like, on your to-do list was like-

Kendall Saville 1:06:37 Yes

Shaan Puri 1:06:37 ... "I'm going to do a search-"

Kendall Saville 1:06:39 I told them, I was like-

Shaan Puri 1:06:39 "... for an expert"

Kendall Saville 1:06:39 ... "You're doing the hard part. I'll do the easy part and just try to find someone that has done this before that can really help us along the way and really, like, kind of make our lives easier." And I found this twin expert

Shaan Puri 1:06:52 She actually lived in New Jersey and we ended up hiring her for four months, for the baby's first four months, and she basically worked with them, like, night and day, 18 hours a day with them. And, you know, part of it was training us. You know, with like a dog-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:07:07 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:07:07 ... you know, they're like, "Oh, you know, you don't train the dog, you train the person."

Michael Wittmeyer 1:07:09 Right.

Shaan Puri 1:07:10 And it was kind of the same with us. And really, she put them on, like, an insane schedule where if one was sleeping, the other's won- one was sleeping. If one was eating, the other one was eating. And now they're, like, super trained. So after four months, they slept through the night and, you know, they were just, like, very schedule-oriented. We'd, like, look at the time, it's, like, 2:00, "Okay, they need to eat right now." And they were, like, ready for it.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:07:32 And they would both just eat-

Shaan Puri 1:07:34 Just totally ready

Michael Wittmeyer 1:07:34 ... sleep at the same time.

Shaan Puri 1:07:35 Yeah, at, at the exact same time, like always. So they really kind of synced up, and that lit- made life so much easier. 'Cause I couldn't imagine-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:07:42 Right. Then it's not one kid

Shaan Puri 1:07:43 ... not dealing with that. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:07:44 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We basically have, like, one kid that ends up being two. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:07:48 That's amazing. [laughs] What about you?

Michael Wittmeyer 1:07:51 Yeah. I mean, I followed him on some of this stuff, so he, after he sold, he, um, one of the splurges was he hired a chef to, like, cook for him. And when I heard that, I was like, "Oh, that sounds really, like, bougie. I don't... You know, I don't know."

Shaan Puri 1:08:03 Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:08:04 "That sounds cool. I don't know." And then, um, he was telling me about it, and I was like, "Yeah, this makes a lot of sense." Like, why would... I can eat healthier, you know, I don't have to think about it.

Shaan Puri 1:08:11 [coughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:08:11 I don't have to think about what I'm gonna eat, et cetera. Um, so I ended up finding somebody as well, and then I've come out to see him a few times the last few months. And when we'll be eating, I can, like, see him looking at me because, uh, he's so competitive.

Shaan Puri 1:08:24 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:08:24 I know he wants to know-

Shaan Puri 1:08:25 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:08:25 ... like, is this better than what I'm eating at home?

Shaan Puri 1:08:28 Ah. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:08:28 And sadly, the answer is yes. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:08:31 [laughs] But you'll never give him that satisfaction, let's just-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:08:33 I, last night-

Shaan Puri 1:08:33 ... now

Michael Wittmeyer 1:08:33 ... I finally fessed up

Shaan Puri 1:08:34 Yeah. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:08:34 Last night I fessed up. Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:08:36 That's amazing.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:08:36 Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:08:37 Yeah, you, uh, you're a foodie, and you... So for you, it's like, oh, you're a foodie, that makes sense. But actually, you're more of, like, a efficiency guy, and so, you know, people don't really realize how much mental and physical energy goes into s- feeding yourself-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:08:49 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:08:49 ... three times a day or feeding, in my case, kids also. And so we have a chef as well, and it's the same, same thing. It's like, all right, if I just don't have to make decisions, and I eat healthier, and it tastes better, 'cause I'm not good at cooking, this person's great at cooking.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:09:02 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:09:02 I was like, "Any money I could spend on a car, a nice, nice whatever, um, I would way rather do this." I would rather have one less employee at work and do more myself-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:09:12 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:09:12 ... than, than, like, sacrifice on this.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:09:14 For sure. 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?" Like, "How can I solve the problem tactically?" Or whatever. Or you can just think about, "Who can fix this for me?" And, and that path is, you know, we- so much more efficiency for you. You can focus on your superpower, and, you know, that's obviously been what we've done.

Shaan Puri 1:09:34 And you guys, you guys are different in, uh, from most people who come on the show, and also most people I hang out with, 'cause I'm... You know, we're here in San Francisco. It's mostly tech, Silicon Valley. And tech is not like... Like, yours, like, we build websites. But anybody who works in tech here would be like-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:09:49 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:09:50 ... "What do you mean?" You're like, "You're building-"

Michael Wittmeyer 1:09:50 Yeah. [laughs] That's not tech

Shaan Puri 1:09:50 ... "You're making a WordPress site with a, a referral link. What are you..."

Michael Wittmeyer 1:09:54 Exactly.

Shaan Puri 1:09:54 That's not, like-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:09:55 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:09:55 ... software. Uh, you know, it's not a software startup in the same, same vein that most people consider. Um, and you guys also don't ra- go raise money from venture capitalists. You don't, like... You don't do a lot of the shit that, like, Silicon Valley companies do. What do you guys see as, like... What do you like about that that 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 1:10:19 Yeah, for sure. Um, so I, like, I grew up in Buffalo, New York, and I just was never exposed to any of that stuff. So I, I didn't know what I didn't know.

Shaan Puri 1:10:26 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:10:26 So I was just trying to figure out, how can I do what I'm trying to do? Um, 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, you know, obvious. We control it. There's, there's no one else that's asking us, you know, "Do this," or, "Do that," or, "Where's this revenue target, et cetera?" So we can think really long-term about the business, and I love that, you know, we're the decision-makers. And, and we move fast. So it's like, when decision n- needs to be made, it's like, "Hey, what do you think? Here's what I think. All right, let's go." Um, I think one thing you probably lose though is it's... In my opinion, it's harder to have, like, the really big outcome. If, like, the things we're doing or historically have done, it, it's hard to be, uh, be, like, a $10 billion company from that stuff.

Shaan Puri 1:11:06 Mm-hmm.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:11:06 And I think going the other path, you know, it's still very, very rare, but it does happen.

Shaan Puri 1:11:10 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:11:10 You don't hear a lot about, "They just self-funded this the whole way, and then-

Shaan Puri 1:11:13 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:11:13 ... IPO'd it for $100 billion," right?

Shaan Puri 1:11:14 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:11:14 That doesn't really happen, so...

Shaan Puri 1:11:16 And I think, too, you lose time. Like, for us, it was always like we always wanted to operate the business efficiently and profitably. So things would take time, and you'd, you'd watch another competitor, you know, 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 point, but I can see the merits of it." But I think for me, I've always been like, I'm just, again, a control freak. And I was like, "I don't wanna work for someone else." And I think with VC, it's kind of the same thing, right? Like, that is part of it. And, you know, with this acquisition, I feel like you're on our team. Like, you know, you're, we, it's, I don't feel like it's kind of, you know, you're gonna be on the board, and we're gonna be able to make really big decisions together rather than, "Hey, I invested in you. I just, you know, are we 10 times yet?" You know?

Michael Wittmeyer 1:11:59 Right. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:12:00 Like, that type of thing.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:12:01 Yeah, yeah, totally. And what about, um, you know, I guess, like, business philosophies? So, uh, I've heard, as we've been talking, some, like, some of your guys's, like, isms. It's like, oh, these are Ken- Kendall-isms, these are Mike-isms, of the sort of, like... But I've, I've only worked with you for a very short amount of time, so I don't know a lot of them yet. But I'm sure you have them, right? Nobody goes through years and years of building businesses without coming up with some operating philosophy of, like, you know, "Here's how to work. Here's how to negotiate. Here's how to build. Here's how to,

Michael Wittmeyer 1:12:30 like, stay the course or whatever." Do you guys have any that stand out to you as, like, you know, these are my, like, these are, these are kind of my pillar ones? This is, this is, like, I just really believe this, and I can kind of tell a story that maybe goes along with that one. And it's a, it's a bit of a hard question, but it's, I find these... If you do have an answer, I find this to be a really valuable one.

Shaan Puri 1:12:49 Yeah. 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.

Kendall Saville 1:12:59 Um, you know, for example, with domain- or with, um, Bitcoin, I, you know, I saw it, I was super interested in it. I was like, this could be really cool, or we could-

Shaan Puri 1:13:10 What, like, timeframe are we talking here?

Kendall Saville 1:13:11 This is 2013.

Shaan Puri 1:13:12 Okay.

Kendall Saville 1:13:13 You know, it c- this could be really cool, or it could go to zero, but I have this, like, inclination that it could be, you know, way bigger, and I think it has a chance to. And it kind of brings me back to my dad, and this is in the '90s. He was a computer programmer, and he was, like, telling our family, like, "Domain names are gonna be big." And I was like, "Oh, that's cool, Dad. Yeah," you know?

Shaan Puri 1:13:33 Mm-hmm.

Kendall Saville 1:13:33 And he was like, "No, they're, they're gonna be big. Every person or company are likely gonna want one." And he bought our last name, saville.com, but didn't really buy anything else at that point.

Shaan Puri 1:13:43 Right.

Kendall Saville 1:13:44 He could have bought, I looked it up, like poker.com, home.com.

Shaan Puri 1:13:46 So he was right, but didn't swing hard.

Kendall Saville 1:13:49 Exactly, and so when I was looking at Bitcoin, I was like, this is my, you know, domain names. Um, so I just started buying Bitcoin, and I was like, I am just gonna, like, you know, hold it and just see what happens, what, you know, no matter what, I don't want that, you know, I wish I didn't sell.

Shaan Puri 1:14:05 Right.

Kendall Saville 1:14:06 So I'm still holding it today.

Shaan Puri 1:14:07 And you, you, you bet big at, at that time. Um, or I, I shouldn't say you bet big, because you don't often have to put 100% of your chips on-

Kendall Saville 1:14:16 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:14:16 ... on it to, f- 'cause it's like this is one that it can go big, so I don't even need to put my, you know, my entire stack in it. I just need to put enough where if this works, it means something. You know?

Kendall Saville 1:14:27 Exactly.

Shaan Puri 1:14:27 Like-

Kendall Saville 1:14:27 Yeah, no, I, I mean, I really didn't. I probably put a couple hundred thousand dollars in at that point.

Shaan Puri 1:14:31 Yeah.

Kendall Saville 1:14:32 But I was like, you know, I'll just wait it out. At that point, I think it was around 80 to $90 per Bitcoin.

Shaan Puri 1:14:38 And then now you've seen ups and downs and ups and downs along the way. Did you feel tempted to sell or to, you know, like, get out, e- exit, either, either 'cause I got a bunch of profit, or oh man, bad news, bad news, bad s- bad news, Bitcoin's crashing, maybe I should just get out?

Kendall Saville 1:14:56 Not really. I feel like, you know-

Shaan Puri 1:14:57 [coughs]

Kendall Saville 1:14:57 ... it was always like, ugh, there's gonna be a huge tax hit.

Shaan Puri 1:15:00 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:15:00 And, you know, so, uh, so when it was really high, you know, that's what I feel like, and then a- as it's low, I'm like, it could still, you know, I still think it's got a long ways to go.

Shaan Puri 1:15:09 Right.

Kendall Saville 1:15:10 So I, for me, I'm just like, this is a long hold, and, uh, you know, 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 gonna, you know, I might die with it.

Shaan Puri 1:15:24 W- I remember when, um, so I discovered about the same time, 2013, 2014, and, um, 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, all right, great. I'm in the game, baby.

Kendall Saville 1:15:36 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:15:36 And, um, 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, uh, 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-

Kendall Saville 1:15:59 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:15:59 ... she's just like, not who you, not somebody who I would think would say the word, like, Bitcoin-

Kendall Saville 1:16:05 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:16:05 ... or Ethereum. She said the word Ethereum, actually, so I, I was like, what the hell? Um, 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, 'cause 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, I was like, "What?" And yeah, "It goes up." And I was like, "That's the whole thinking?" Like [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:16:31 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:16:31 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, 'cause I graduated 2010, so I missed the whole dot-com bubble by a long shot. I missed 2008 crisis. I was a sophomore in college. I didn't care what was going on in the world. And so I was like, I think this is one of those bubble things. [laughs] 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, thank God-

Kendall Saville 1:16:59 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:17:00 ... on how much you could sell at a time. And so I, like, maxed out the limit for one week, and I think I did it for another week, and I was like, ah, I'm getting exhaust- like, by the end of, like, the fear had, like, dissipated or whatever. And then Bitcoin runs up to 20K, and I'm like-

Kendall Saville 1:17:12 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:17:12 ... you know, I'm like, oh my God, I'm the biggest [laughs] idiot. And then it crashes back down, and I was like, wow. I have to really have a bit more of a, 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 point? What is driving my belief in this so that I'm not just at the whim of, like, oh, I hear something and I, it scares me, and the taxi driver told me something, and it-

Kendall Saville 1:17:34 Mm-hmm

Shaan Puri 1:17:34 ... made me bullish or bearish or whatever on it. Um, we're at a point right now where probably sentiment about crypto is, like, I don't know, at the lowest it's been in maybe ever, but definitely, uh, lowest it's been in a whil- a while, and for a lot of people, they don't, they weren't around for the '14 crash or whatever, this '18 crash. It was like this is their crash, where they're like, oh, crypto turned out to all be a scam, I guess? FTX was a, I, I didn't know, what, what was wrong with all this? So that's kind of where people are at. Um, what gives you, what is your belief based on for crypto? Like, w- why do you think this is gonna be a thing?

Kendall Saville 1:18:13 I feel like digital money needs to be a thing. Like, we were literally trying to wire money into this company, and it wouldn't work.

Shaan Puri 1:18:19 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:18:20 And it was just like, what? You know, like-

Shaan Puri 1:18:21 What do you mean it wouldn't work? What was happening? [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:18:23 Well, it was Mike had the real issue.

Shaan Puri 1:18:25 But it took you a week.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:18:26 So we, we both used the same exact bank. We're with Citi.

Shaan Puri 1:18:30 [laughs] Ooh.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:18:31 I'm gonna, I'm gonna call them out on this.

Shaan Puri 1:18:32 Shout out, yeah, shout out. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:18:32 I'm gonna call them out on this, yeah. And, um, same exact wiring instructions. There's just a PDF. We both sent them to our, you know, people there, 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 four hours before his, and I, 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 voi-

Kendall Saville 1:18:51 Different

Michael Wittmeyer 1:18:52 ... yeah, did, answered all the questions. I had to do the DocuSign, like text, you know, two auth, all this stuff. Wire never goes, so I finally have to reach out to them again, and I'm like, what's going on with this? And they come back to me and say- The wire instructions are wrong. [laughs] And I'm like, "Well, the same bank-

Shaan Puri 1:19:07 Yeah

Michael Wittmeyer 1:19:07 ... with the same PDF sent, [laughs] sent the money." So that was an example where like on crypto, that would've been a 10-second, you know, transaction.

Shaan Puri 1:19:14 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:19:14 So I- I agree with him. You know, I'm probably even more into the, you know, don't love the government control over all of the fiat currency stuff. I think we're seeing... You know, we're- we've starting to see and we're probably gonna 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 1:19:31 Right. Yeah, so in- in the same way, like, uh, uh, government makes all the rules of- of where you live, right? But if you don't like the way that the government makes those rules, you have a, you have choice. You can move to a different jurisdiction. You can operate by different rules. Uh, if you don't like the way that the government manages the money system by printing more money or, uh, whatever it may be, then you can opt into a different monetary system-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:19:56 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:19:56 ... that's not controlled by the government, that's controlled by, you know, a set of, uh, source code, and the code, you know, lives and runs on its own. And anybody 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 gonna opt into this one." That makes a lot of sense to me.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:20:12 Mm-hmm.

Shaan Puri 1:20:13 Why do you think people have, like, such an... Like, what do you think are maybe... Let's put it this, put it this way. What do you think are the fair criticisms? So, well, um, if you've heard of the phrase steel manning, but like, you know, it's like when you argue the other side in good faith, you say, "Here's the, here's the best argument I could see against it." What would that be for, for crypto?

Michael Wittmeyer 1:20:31 I think, like, a big one is there are a lot of scammers in the industry, and, you know, they're able to do that because they don't have a lot of the checks and balances of the current system. And I think there's a lot of good reasons why that's the case in crypto, but also what allows these people to do these kind of nefarious things. Um, you know, I was telling people recently, I was like, "You know what? Crypto does look really bad." Like, there's no, you know... You can't really argue that fact.

Shaan Puri 1:20:57 Right. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:20:57 But cryptos look really bad, you know, a lot of times. But then at other times, it looks really good. You know, there are-

Shaan Puri 1:21:03 By the way, it wasn't Bitcoin that did something bad, right?

Michael Wittmeyer 1:21:06 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:21:06 Yeah, exactly. You have to sort of separate the two, right? Like, um, if somebody runs a real estate scheme and scams their investors, and you're, you think you're investing in some property, they're just pocketing the money and running away with it, or they, you know, they do something bad to the property, whatever. It's not real estate that was the scam.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:21:23 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:21:24 It was the scammer that was the scam. [laughs] And I think that's the hard part is that crypto has... It's such a playing field, right? It's a money business, so there's so many people that can scam, so it al- almost associates Bitcoin or the underlying thing itself, which is, you know, it's like a rock. It's, uh, it's, 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, right? Like, that- that's the... I think that's the- the hard thing to disentangle.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:21:53 Yep.

Shaan Puri 1:21:54 Do you, um... What was your reaction to, like, all the shit that was going down, right? We're in the Slack channel talking about-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:22:00 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:22:01 ... you know, the daily edition, and it- it feels like, you know, bad news bears for, like, you know, 30 days in a row. Mike, what, you were living in each of those editions.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:22:07 I was living it, yeah. Um-

Shaan Puri 1:22:08 Were you... What, did you go... Were you surprised with the FDX thing? What, what was your reaction?

Michael Wittmeyer 1:22:11 Yeah, I was stunned by that. I mean, the, you know, I, like a lot of people, viewed them as, you know, almost like a Coinbase.

Shaan Puri 1:22:16 Blue chips, yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:22:17 Just rock solid, you know, feel good putting your money on there. I would've recommended them to anyone, so I- I was really shocked. Same with Genesis.

Shaan Puri 1:22:24 Yep.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:22:24 You know, we have, I have money on Genesis that I don't know what's gonna happen to it, but that one was pretty stunning, too. Um, what's been interesting for The Milk Road and our business is, you know, this has actually been, for growth, a good thing, right? We cover the news.

Shaan Puri 1:22:37 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:22:37 And there's certainly been a lot of news, so we're seeing, you know, record subs coming in. The- the reader scores have been really good. People seem to be very interested in following this despite the fact that it's been very, you know, negative.

Shaan Puri 1:22:47 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:22:47 So, you know, it's another piece of why we liked your business. It's less correlated in our minds directly to crypto prices.

Shaan Puri 1:22:52 Yeah, yeah. That's true.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:22:54 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:22:54 Um, amazing. Uh, did we leave anything that we should've, should've talked about? We miss any good stories or, uh, or facts that you guys wanted to cover?

Kendall Saville 1:23:03 I- I don't think I have anything.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:23:05 All right. Nothing comes to mind.

Shaan Puri 1:23:05 All right. Well, where should people find you guys? 'Cause I think a lot of people are gonna listen to this and be like, "Yeah, these guys are cool." Obviously Milk Road, but, like, where do they find you guys personally? I know, Mike, you, congratulations. Did you tweet for the first time today?

Michael Wittmeyer 1:23:16 I made my first tweet today.

Shaan Puri 1:23:17 First tweet, yeah. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:23:18 First tweet about acquiring The Milk Road, so yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:23:20 Twitter-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:23:20 My Twitter handle is MikeWittmeyer, which Kendall helped me acquire earlier, so.

Shaan Puri 1:23:24 Last night, it's like the ag- the news-

Kendall Saville 1:23:27 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:23:27 ... going out to this morning, and Mike's like, "Hey, um, uh, anybody can help me, anybody around to help me figure out how to tweet? Uh, a th... I've never really tweeted let alone a thread." [laughs] So he's like, "Is there a button for the thread?" [laughs] Like, what do you mean?

Michael Wittmeyer 1:23:40 Yeah, and then it was like-

Shaan Puri 1:23:41 All I did was just laugh.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:23:42 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:23:42 I- I provided zero help. I was like-

Kendall Saville 1:23:44 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:23:44 ... "This is hilarious." And I'm like-

Kendall Saville 1:23:46 You're the expert

Shaan Puri 1:23:46 ... "I'm not doing anything. No, this is hilarious."

Michael Wittmeyer 1:23:48 Thankfully Ben helped me out.

Shaan Puri 1:23:49 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:23:49 But it was like a shit show for both of us. He sends his out this morning. He misspelled Milk Road [laughs] in the first tweet.

Shaan Puri 1:23:54 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:23:55 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:23:56 He's trying to get that autocorrect going there.

Shaan Puri 1:23:57 Exactly, yeah.

Kendall Saville 1:23:58 I was trying to, you know, figure out a way. But yeah, I, I totally misspelled it, and then I deleted the first tweet 'cause-

Shaan Puri 1:24:04 Now it was a tweet thread

Kendall Saville 1:24:05 ... the tweet thread, now the thread's still there. And I di- I didn't realize it for, like, 20 minutes, and everyone was like, "What is wrong with your Twitter profile?" I'm like, "I don't know. I think Twitter's messed up." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:24:14 But you at least use Twitter. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:24:16 I do use Twitter more than Mike, but I wouldn't say-

Shaan Puri 1:24:19 You're still not prolific.

Kendall Saville 1:24:20 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:24:20 Mike, I think you should actually make your Twitter bio, 'cause you have no picture. You, you had no picture at a time.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:24:24 I, so I added a picture. I did the bio.

Shaan Puri 1:24:26 Uh, you-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:24:26 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:24:26 ... you should keep the no picture-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:24:27 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:24:27 ... no tweets, just the thread.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:24:29 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:24:29 And your bio should be, um, "I don't tweet. I do actual work."

Michael Wittmeyer 1:24:33 Yeah. [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:24:33 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:24:34 And that should be your whole persona.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:24:35 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:24:35 And everybody should follow that.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:24:36 Yeah.

Kendall Saville 1:24:36 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:24:36 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, like, mid-tier to small affiliates had their, like, blogs?

Shaan Puri 1:24:48 Yes.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:24:48 Like, the personal blogs. So everybody would, like, I had, like, mikewittmeyer.com.

Shaan Puri 1:24:52 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:24:52 You had something, I think.

Shaan Puri 1:24:53 Yep.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:24:54 And we would all, you know, muse about what we were doing in our businesses, this and that, doing these posts, feeling good. And then we were at one of these conferences, and [censored] who was the, the big jam investor, and he was, like, the biggest poker affiliate probably in the world back then, and this other guy, [censored] that was similar- Neither of those guys did any of that stuff.

Shaan Puri 1:25:12 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:25:12 And I'm like, every night we're out in the clubs at these guys' tables-

Shaan Puri 1:25:16 [laughs] Yeah

Michael Wittmeyer 1:25:16 ... you know, hoping they'll give us, like, their drinks. And it was kinda eye-opening for me. I'm like, "There's probably a correlation here." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:25:21 Maybe I should do what those guys do.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:25:22 Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:25:23 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:25:23 Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:25:23 Maybe I should do the work-

Kendall Saville 1:25:24 And do the work

Michael Wittmeyer 1:25:24 ... and not do a blog about it

Kendall Saville 1:25:25 And not do the blog. Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:25:26 Can you tell any [beep] stories? 'Cause this guy sounds like a legend. Who, who is this person?

Michael Wittmeyer 1:25:30 He is definitely a legend.

Shaan Puri 1:25:31 What are some of the, the crazy [beep] stories?

Michael Wittmeyer 1:25:33 Yeah, yeah, he's a pretty private guy, but he, um, he has, he's got a great story.

Shaan Puri 1:25:37 We could also, by the way, we could bleep his name.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:25:39 Yeah, okay, perfect.

Shaan Puri 1:25:40 So then it could just be like...

Michael Wittmeyer 1:25:40 Yeah. Excellent

Shaan Puri 1:25:40 ... you can tell the story without the name.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:25:42 Now we can tell all the good stories.

Shaan Puri 1:25:43 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:25:43 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:25:43 Um, so, a crazy story. He's from [beep] . He grew up there, very, uh, not well off, very poor. Had to leave school in eighth grade, um, to like go start making money for his family, whatever. Um-

Shaan Puri 1:25:57 What did he do in the eighth grade? How did he-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:25:58 Uh, he was, like, working at a hotel or something like that, bar, bar. Um, and-

Shaan Puri 1:26:02 At a bar? [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:26:03 [laughs] Yeah, yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:26:03 Yeah, like, owned-

Shaan Puri 1:26:03 His family, I think his family worked there-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:26:05 His dad owned it

Shaan Puri 1:26:05 ... or dad owned it.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:26:06 Yeah, something like that.

Shaan Puri 1:26:07 Gotcha.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:26:07 Um, and so I think the first thing he did was he was, like, the biggest eBay powerseller.

Shaan Puri 1:26:13 Mm.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:26:13 And he was selling, like, CDs and stuff on there. He became pretty big, made a bunch of money. Um, and then, you know-

Shaan Puri 1:26:19 Was he just early, or is he really good, or both?

Michael Wittmeyer 1:26:21 No, he started the same time as us, and-

Kendall Saville 1:26:22 He was smart. Like, he was-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:26:23 He was incredibly smart

Kendall Saville 1:26:24 ... basically kind of roll 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 like, "Oh, I'm making, like, five times," and he, for him it was like this is two, two years-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:26:36 Yeah

Kendall Saville 1:26:36 ... earnings.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:26:37 Yeah, he bought-

Kendall Saville 1:26:37 Or one year

Michael Wittmeyer 1:26:37 ... he bought my site, is how I knew him.

Shaan Puri 1:26:39 My, uh, we, we have one super smart buddy who is, has this, like, dominant position in his game. I can't say who, otherwise it would give it away. But he has the same strategy where he's just like, 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 I, they think they're selling at four times earnings, but it's actually two. The moment I sign the deal, they'll go into, it'll go to my payment terms."

Michael Wittmeyer 1:27:07 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:27:07 "And my payment terms are just superior." And so he's like, "I could just buy these all day, and I don't have to, like, come up with a genius idea to even grow them because, like, it's baked into just the fact that I have more scale, and therefore I have better terms, and therefore, like, what they think costs X or drives Y revenue is actually a different nu- variable for me."

Michael Wittmeyer 1:27:27 Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, so that's why, exactly why he bought my business.

Shaan Puri 1:27:29 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:27:30 My poker, my poker affiliate business back then, yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:27:32 And so he was smart in that he was rolling these up. No, but was that, were, were other people not rolling them up back then?

Michael Wittmeyer 1:27:37 He sort of started that-

Kendall Saville 1:27:38 Yeah

Michael Wittmeyer 1:27:39 ... I would say.

Kendall Saville 1:27:39 I feel like he was kind of the pioneer-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:27:40 bought a, bought a bunch from him

Kendall Saville 1:27:40 ... in our small industry.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:27:41 He's, he's just like a, if you give him a business and, like, an Excel sheet and a few weeks to, like, look at it, he's gonna come back with, like, "Here are the three things that this could be doing that would, like, 10X it." And that's really what he did for us at JM too, was I learned so much from him. Like, I, I'm a completely different businessperson, you know, after 10 years of working with him than I am now.

Shaan Puri 1:27:59 Like, what's an example that he did at JM, maybe that was a fore-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:28:02 One thing he helped me-

Shaan Puri 1:28:03 ... good insight?

Michael Wittmeyer 1:28:03 Yeah, one thing he helped me a lot with was, um, I, especially early on, I would really ri- ride the wave of, like, you know, all the credit card chargebacks hit, I'm in despair on my deathbed.

Shaan Puri 1:28:13 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:28:13 You know, we have our first $100,000 day, like, I'm ready to IPO.

Shaan Puri 1:28:16 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:28:16 Like, but it was just this very... He, he used to joke with me, he's like, "If we were publicly traded and you set the stock price, it would swing, like, 1000% a day."

Shaan Puri 1:28:23 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:28:23 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:28:24 Um, and one thing he really helped me with was zooming out and thinking, like, into five to 10-year increments. And, and if you frame stuff like that, nothing really ever seems like that big of a deal.

Shaan Puri 1:28:35 Right.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:28:35 There's very few things that happen to you or your business that are gonna materially tr- change your trajectory over five to 10 years. So, like, an example, to his credit, befor- he put, uh, a million into JM shortly after Kendall did his first angel investment. Like, a week before it was gonna close, we had, we had done all the documents, it was ready to go, our credit card processor throws us out, and that was like half of our revenue-

Shaan Puri 1:28:57 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:28:57 ... was just gone. And, and it was like a Visa thing. It wasn't just them. They're like, "This is, they're-"

Shaan Puri 1:29:01 The underlying network.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:29:01 Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:29:02 Just-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:29:02 "They're growing too fast. Like, we need a big cash reserve. We're gonna work with these guys." They asked us, they're like, "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.

Shaan Puri 1:29:11 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:29:11 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:29:11 Like, we, there was nothing we could send to them.

Shaan Puri 1:29:12 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:29:13 So unsurprisingly, they threw us out. And I w- I had to go back to him sort of hat in hand and be like, "So, uh, yeah, this happened. You know, are we still gonna do [laughs] do this or not?"

Shaan Puri 1:29:23 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:29:23 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:29:24 And, uh, he was just like-

Shaan Puri 1:29:25 "Totally understand if you, uh..."

Michael Wittmeyer 1:29:26 Yeah. He's, it's like, "We really need the, we really need this." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:29:28 "Well, love, love it if you would, though." [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:29:30 And he's just like, "You know, we're gonna figure this out." And he still cut the check, and we did figure it out. And there were probably 10 more of those times along the way that he, you know, just helped me think about things in, yeah, the longer increments.

Shaan Puri 1:29:41 Yeah, 'cause with crypto right now, like, I mean, people would've said, "Oh, impossible to sell Milk Road during-"

Michael Wittmeyer 1:29:46 Mm-hmm

Shaan Puri 1:29:47 ... "this time," and, and with a good deal. You could've sell with anything with a bad deal, but it's impossible to get a good deal right now. And I think as a general rule of thumb, that would've been true, but I've always, I, I hate, uh, anything that's like, you

Shaan Puri 1:30:00 know, this, like, sort of conventional wisdom because it's like, dude, I'm in the outlier business. Like, creating a successful startup is an outlier.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:30:06 Yeah.

Kendall Saville 1:30:07 Yep.

Shaan Puri 1:30:07 Uh, I'm trying to be, like, you know, super happy and super rich and super fit. That's an outlier. Like-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:30:12 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:30:13 So I don't really need any advice that-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:30:16 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:30:16 ... is about what the general outcomes are. Instead, I need advice on how to create outlier outcomes.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:30:21 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:30:21 And so with this, I was like, "Okay, well, what would've created an outlier outcome?" Okay, crypto's going, you know, ev- 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, [laughs] right?

Michael Wittmeyer 1:30:39 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:30:39 That's, that's the first criteria. Second, a lot of people are gonna say, "Oh, bad news in crypto. Oh, I, I, maybe I shouldn't do this. Maybe I should see how this is gonna play out." And no, I need somebody who's got long-term conviction, thinks in this five to 10-year increments, and, uh, believes in the, you know, the fundamentals and understands that there's gonna be the ups and downs, and actually during the downs is the time to, like, make acquisitions-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:30:59 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:30:59 ... and do things like this.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:31:00 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:31:00 Like, this is-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:31:01 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:31:01 ... the time to play offense, right?

Michael Wittmeyer 1:31:02 Yeah. I feel like everyone on Twitter, there's a lot of Twitter threads about this is the time to build.

Shaan Puri 1:31:05 Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:31:05 It's like, I agree. I'm not on Twitter. I'm doing that.

Shaan Puri 1:31:09 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:31:09 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:31:09 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:31:10 Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:31:12 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:31:12 The builders aren't reading your thread. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:31:15 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:31:15 Yeah, so, so and then that's how we ended up finding, you know, basically the perfect partner at that time, um, to, to do this. And so- I feel like the, uh, the outlier, you know, if you're gonna play an outlier game and you're g- you know, you have to... If you want an outlier outcome, you gotta like play only by r- you on- only have to think in terms of what creates that, not what's the average outcome, right? Because the average outcome's not the thing you want anyways, so.

Kendall Saville 1:31:40 For sure. Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:31:40 Um, cool guys. This was amazing. Uh, Kendall, you didn't throw up. You-

Kendall Saville 1:31:44 I, I did it. I did it.

Shaan Puri 1:31:45 [laughs] Kendall was really nervous before we started.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:31:47 Yeah, I was.

Shaan Puri 1:31:48 Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:31:48 I was like, uh, "Do we have any booze around or..." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:31:50 [laughs] Yeah. But you d- you did great. Uh, so that was awesome.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:31:53 Thank you.

Shaan Puri 1:31:53 Uh, what's your Twitter handle and what's your people?

Michael Wittmeyer 1:31:55 @kendallsaville.

Shaan Puri 1:31:57 Saville, S- A- V-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:31:58 I- L- L- E.

Shaan Puri 1:31:59 Yep, and then-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:32:01 @mikewittmeyer.

Shaan Puri 1:32:01 Mike.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:32:02 Mike. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:32:02 Give him a follow. How many followers you got? Are we double digits?

Michael Wittmeyer 1:32:04 I'm over 200 now.

Shaan Puri 1:32:05 [laughs] Okay.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:32:05 Over 200, yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:32:06 Triple digits, man.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:32:06 It's a big day, big day. Uh, yeah, Mike Wittmeyer, W- I- T- T- M- E- Y- E- R.

Shaan Puri 1:32:12 You guys might get recognized now when you walk on the streets.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:32:14 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:32:14 You might get a little-

Kendall Saville 1:32:15 I doubt it

Shaan Puri 1:32:15 ... a little hit of that fame.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:32:17 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:32:17 Actually, you know what was funny? Right when we had met the last time before we did the deal, um, we were walking out of that coffee shop and I was like, "All right, bro, see you later," and you, you went to go get your Uber. Right then, there was a guy who was sitting right there the whole time. He's waiting. Like, 'cause he kept looking at us. And he's like, "Hey, uh, Shaan." He's like, "You know, love the podcast, man. I'm, I'm traveling from Pittsburgh. I'm just here for the day. Can't believe I bumped into you," blah, blah, blah. And I was like, "Dude, you should've said that when the guy who might buy the company was here."

Michael Wittmeyer 1:32:44 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:32:44 "That might've helped a little. Just, you know, that little-"

Michael Wittmeyer 1:32:46 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:32:46 ... j- little juice to the video."

Michael Wittmeyer 1:32:47 We were joking about that after. I'm like, "Shaan probably just paid all these actors to come-"

Shaan Puri 1:32:50 Yeah, it was a genius move

Michael Wittmeyer 1:32:51 ... brought it all up. Yeah, I was like, "It, it worked. Like, great job." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:32:54 When, when we were selling our first company, I did stuff like that where I was like, um, I knew the c- it was like it was to larger comp... It was, like, the, the big fang companies, so it was like corp dev was like the-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:33:04 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:33:04 ... who's b- who's paying attention to you at that time. And so they would follow me on Twitter or on Instagram, stuff like that. So I would just post like a ticket to, like, Seattle.

Kendall Saville 1:33:14 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:33:15 You know, one day trip, anybody around in the evening? And 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 business meeting.

Kendall Saville 1:33:23 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:33:23 Ooh, they're, they're talking to them. I would come back and be like, "You know, when it rains, it pours."

Kendall Saville 1:33:28 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:33:28 And it's like... And I would just post these cryptic things 'cause in my mind, I was like, "I'm just planting the seed, baby."

Kendall Saville 1:33:34 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:33:34 I have no idea if this did anything, but, uh, in my head, I was like, "I'm really playing everybody off of each other."

Michael Wittmeyer 1:33:40 I love it.

Shaan Puri 1:33:40 I thought I was just like, you know, Leo-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:33:41 Mastermind, man

Shaan Puri 1:33:42 ... yeah, yeah, catch me if you can type of guy. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:33:45 That's awesome.

Shaan Puri 1:33:46 All right, guys. That was awesome.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:33:47 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:33:47 Yeah, we're good.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:33:47 Thank you.

Kendall Saville 1:33:48 Thank you so much, and one thing is, uh, Milk Road's hiring, you know?

Shaan Puri 1:33:51 Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:33:51 Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're stoked. Yeah.

Kendall Saville 1:33:52 We're looking for, like, you know, those A players that have done it before because, you know, we wanna scale this, and, uh, do it as quickly as we can.

Shaan Puri 1:33:59 And I should actually say, I, um, like, when we were looking at this deal, we, we actually had a, a higher offer that we turned down. One of the reasons why, I told Ben, I was like, 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." And I like looked at the date, I looked at what the price was then. Like, what were the, what were people thinking then? And you were like ahead of the curve. Then you had another one, this exchange that you had invested in, Rain, and I was like-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:34:26 Yep

Shaan Puri 1:34:27 ... "Oh, dude, I've been trying to get into v- v- uh, you know, into Rain at that..." I, I had tried to invest at a point in time. I was like, he was in there early. And I was like, I feel like if I just hang out with these guys more, I'm gonna get more value out of something completely unrelated to Milk Road. Just there's gonna be some random... You're gonna be like, "Oh, dude"

Michael Wittmeyer 1:34:44 Tesla Roadster? [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:34:45 Yeah, yeah, exactly. [laughs] Kendall might just throw me a Roadster. I was like, there's gotta be something, like, that I'm gonna get just out of hanging with... Like, I'm a big believer in that. Like, if you find exceptional people, you don't even have to have a plan. Like-

Kendall Saville 1:34:58 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:34:58 ... just hang with them. Find some routine or value exchange where you're gonna be in each other's orbit all the time because something good's gonna come out of that. And so similarly, if somebody wants to work at The Milk Road, I would say, like, cool. It's gonna have good pay. It's a cool pr- project. People really love the product. That's, that's all true. But also, like, the same reason I wanted to, to sell and work with you guys is the same reason really anybody should wanna do that. Like, if you heard the stories on this podcast, you're probably like, "God, these guys are awesome. Like, they, they went through a bunch of shit, but they figured stuff out and they play their own game." Those are the type of people who you wanna, like, work with, even if you're like, "All right. Someday I wanna be au- mo- more entrepreneurial than I am today," you wanna get a job where you're kind of in direct proximity with people who are very much like that 'cause it'll change the way your own brain works.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:35:44 For sure. You wanna get in shape, hang out with fit people.

Shaan Puri 1:35:47 Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:35:47 It's like, for sure, yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:35:48 Yeah, when we... What, what was the body fat challenge? Did you win?

Michael Wittmeyer 1:35:50 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:35:52 What w- uh, last time we hung out-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:35:54 Oh

Shaan Puri 1:35:54 ... he was at, like, day-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:35:56 This is how we're gonna finish the pod. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:35:57 Yeah, I gotta know.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:35:58 Um, so-

Shaan Puri 1:35:59 What was the challenge? You, you were at the end of a challenge, a body fat-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:36:02 So I'm in a, yeah, I'm in a group called Entrepreneurs' Organization. I'm in a forum with seven other, uh, Dallas entrepreneurs. We meet monthly. Um, we do a retreat once a year. And in advance of the retreat, everybody sets themself a fitness goal, and everybody puts in like 500 bucks that if you hit your goal, you get your money back. If you don't, it goes towards funding the retreat.

Shaan Puri 1:36:20 Right. So no win, just a break even.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:36:21 It's just to not lose. Yeah, just to not lose-

Shaan Puri 1:36:23 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:36:23 ... and avoid the shame. Um, so maybe three months out, everybody sets their goals, and 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, you know, slam it down on the table. I'm like, "Boys, I'm doing it." And then, uh, I, I start working really hard the next two months, and a month out, I'm like, "I'm gonna go get a DEXA to see." Like, I think I'm probably 11, somewhere in there. Like, I gotta be really close.

Shaan Puri 1:36:48 I'm almost there.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:36:49 I'm almost there. And I had, like, weaned out in the mirror materially. And I go and get the DEXA, and I was 15.7. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:36:54 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:36:56 So I was nowhere near where I thought I was.

Shaan Puri 1:36:58 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:36:58 And then I really, like, killed myself that next month, and I ended up getting down to, like, 12.1, so.

Shaan Puri 1:37:03 12.1, okay.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:37:04 But lucky for me- Some of the guys didn't schedule DEXAs, so the body fat guys were like, "We're gonna consider it acceptable to use those scale things." And on the scale, I was like eight something, so I got my 500 back.

Kendall Saville 1:37:14 [laughs] Okay, well, yeah, the good guys won in the end.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:37:16 But the reality is I did not hit my goal. Yeah.

Kendall Saville 1:37:18 [laughs] Yeah, you were, like, really hardcore about it.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:37:21 I know. I know. I'm strong.

Kendall Saville 1:37:22 And you were, like, not eating any of the carbs. It was just, like, really sad. You were just kind of in the corner like- Yeah, it was definitely sad ... "Oh, man. Like, the chef just made this really cool thing, and I can't eat any of it?"

Michael Wittmeyer 1:37:30 Yeah.

Kendall Saville 1:37:31 Or like, "Does Mike really do this $500?" [laughs] Yeah, it's like, no, Mike needs to not lose.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:37:34 This is-

Kendall Saville 1:37:35 Mike does not like to lose-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:37:36 Yep

Kendall Saville 1:37:36 ... at anything.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:37:37 Yep. Yes.

Kendall Saville 1:37:37 And he set himself a stupid goal-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:37:39 Yep

Kendall Saville 1:37:40 ... that he has to hit now. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:37:41 Next year, though, I'm gonna get it.

Kendall Saville 1:37:42 Yeah. Uh, what I would've done is I would've been like, "What am I now?" And just like do, done like 1% under that- [laughs] ... and just, like, make sure I win.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:37:49 Yeah. Well, last year-

Kendall Saville 1:37:49 Mike wants to make his life hard and go uphill.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:37:51 No, last year, I, I was, I probably weighed like 175 pounds or 180 or something like that, and everyone at the table did, like, a weight loss thing, so I just thought that's what these were. It was, like, one of the... I think it was the first year we did it. And so I was like, "Well, I wanna get down to, you know, 175."

Kendall Saville 1:38:06 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:38:06 And they're like, "Well, what are you now?" I'm like, "178." [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:38:09 [laughs] Well, wait, well, what do you want me to do? It was 40 pounds, you know? [laughs] Yeah. It's not my fault you guys have been slacking. [laughs] Yeah, you need to write a book called Going Uphill.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:38:19 Going Uphill.

Kendall Saville 1:38:19 Yeah.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:38:19 I love that. Yeah.

Kendall Saville 1:38:20 I feel like that's gonna be your, your book.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:38:21 That's a good title. Yeah, that'll be the bio.

Kendall Saville 1:38:22 You know, when you're done working, then you can start tweeting your-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:38:25 Yeah

Kendall Saville 1:38:25 ... your uphill-

Michael Wittmeyer 1:38:26 Yeah

Kendall Saville 1:38:26 ... about your uphill book. [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:38:27 I actually have one last uphill story you'll like.

Kendall Saville 1:38:29 Yeah, give it to me.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:38:30 So in Whitefish this year, I mentioned we were doing the... I was doing this in the resort, and they would open it, like, a hour before the lifts ran, so only the people going uphill, I guess just 'cause it's safer. There's not a ton of people coming down. [clears throat] So there was one morning, it was, like, -10 wind chill. Um, they actually never even opened the, the resort that day. It was too windy.

Kendall Saville 1:38:48 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:38:49 It was just miserable out. So I was like, "All right."

Kendall Saville 1:38:51 [laughs] This is perfect.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:38:52 Opt- optimal conditions.

Kendall Saville 1:38:53 Yeah, exactly.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:38:54 Optimal conditions. So I suit up-

Kendall Saville 1:38:55 You ran? [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:38:57 I suit up and get out there, and, uh, I had just gotten, like... I'd never done this in a resort, and I really had only done this maybe five times with my buddy who always was like the sherpa. He was like-

Kendall Saville 1:39:08 Yeah

Michael Wittmeyer 1:39:08 ... you know, helped me figure stuff out, whatever. So there's this route you have to take up the hill, and I was the first one going. It was, like, 6:00 AM, and I'm just, I'm going straight up that path. I'm, like, marching, doing well, feeling good, and then there's this one section, 'cause I had done it a few times, so I knew. There was this one section that was pretty steep, and there were a few times going up that the skins would, like, start to slip a little bit, and I was getting really scared, 'cause I don't ski.

Kendall Saville 1:39:32 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:39:32 So, like, if this thing turns around, I'm like, "I, I can't do anything. I'm gonna [censored] down."

Kendall Saville 1:39:35 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:39:36 And so I'm going straight up this thing, like, marching. The wind's blasting me. The ice is blasting me. And I, I'm one step away from the top, and I take the step, and it slips, and the whole thing just falls apart, and I'm falling backwards downhill, doing the somersault thing. Like, the s- skis go flying off, that whole thing. So then I'm at the bottom, and I am very humbled now, 'cause there's, like, 20... I realize there's, like, 20 people behind me who just watched that happen.

Kendall Saville 1:40:00 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:40:01 And I'm gathering all my stuff. Like, they're helping me out. And I look up the hill, 'cause they're starting to go, and all of them are zigzagging back and forth-

Kendall Saville 1:40:10 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:40:11 ... so it's not as steep, and I was going straight line-

Kendall Saville 1:40:13 Straight line

Michael Wittmeyer 1:40:13 ... directly up the hill. I'm like, "Oh, that's why they're not falling." [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:40:16 [laughs]

Michael Wittmeyer 1:40:18 Wouldn't have it any other way.

Kendall Saville 1:40:19 Yeah, there you go. [laughs] Metaphor of life.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:40:21 [laughs]

Kendall Saville 1:40:22 Awesome.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:40:23 Yeah.

Kendall Saville 1:40:23 Well, thanks, you guys, for doing this. I, I know a little out of your comfort zone, but I'm glad you guys did it.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:40:26 No.

Kendall Saville 1:40:27 Thank you.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:40:27 Thanks for having us. Yeah.

Kendall Saville 1:40:27 Appreciate it.

Michael Wittmeyer 1:40:28 Cool.

Kendall Saville 1:40:29 All right. [upbeat music]