From Dad’s Basement to Selling Two Companies — 4-Hour Workweek Success Story

1. 0:00 – 0:32

   Preview.

   1. BDBrian Dean0:00

      'Cause when you're first starting out, nothing's working, almost by definition. Like, you're starting something new, at least in my experience, when I'm starting something new, nothing's working. And then when something does, most people are like, "Okay, that works. Now let's go something else." But instead, you should just take that niche, it's almost like a little niche when you're rock climbing, just take that niche and just double down, triple down, quadruple... It should really be like 10X down on what works.

   2. TFTim Ferriss0:24

      Mm-hmm.

   3. BDBrian Dean0:24

      But it's so rare that you find something that works, and honestly, in most businesses, if you can find one thing that works and scale it up, that can get you pretty far.

2. 0:32 – 2:19

   From PhD pipettes to Dad's basement to Jerry Springer.

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:32

      Brian, nice to meet you finally. Thank you for taking the time.

   2. BDBrian Dean0:36

      Hey, great to be here.

   3. TFTim Ferriss0:37

      Brian, where should we begin? I'm thinking maybe because the impetus for this is somewhat around the connective tissue of The 4-Hour Workweek, should we just begin with how on earth you and The 4-Hour Workweek intersected? Maybe we start there.

   4. BDBrian Dean0:53

      So it intersected at a really weird and sort of low time in my life where I had just started a PhD program at Purdue, and I basically hated it.

   5. TFTim Ferriss1:05

      [laughs]

   6. BDBrian Dean1:05

      It was just overall not a great experience. I went in gung ho, "I'm gonna be a scientist," and all this stuff, and then the hard reality of pipetting in a lab and having an advisor breathing down your neck was like, "I can't do this anymore. I'm out." So my plan was to get a job because I had a, had a degree. I was like, "Let me get a job as a dietician."

   7. TFTim Ferriss1:26

      Mm-hmm.

   8. BDBrian Dean1:26

      Unfortunately, that didn't really work out, and I ended up in my dad's basement.

   9. TFTim Ferriss1:30

      What was the timing of this? This was what year, roughly?

   10. BDBrian Dean1:33

       This was two thousand and eight. So I think the book was relatively new then.

   11. TFTim Ferriss1:37

       Yeah, two thousand and eight, that would have been a year after publication, let's just say, and also not exactly the hottest job market for people who may not recall. [laughs] It was a tough time overall because of the financial crisis.

   12. BDBrian Dean1:48

       Totally unbeknownst to me as a, you know, going to graduate school, spending most of my time at bars drinking. The great financial crisis [laughs] was, like, over my head. Never heard of it-

   13. TFTim Ferriss1:58

       [laughs]

   14. BDBrian Dean1:58

       ... until I tried to get a job, and suddenly it, it became very real, very fast. So basically, I was in my dad's basement, broke, no girlfriend obviously, no real prospects. Like, I'm just kind of lazily applying for jobs every morning and just sitting around and watching Jerry Springer in the afternoon.

   15. TFTim Ferriss2:17

       [laughs]

   16. BDBrian Dean2:17

       That's pretty much my day.

3. 2:19 – 3:48

   The 4-Hour Workweek finds its dream reader—marginal notes and all.

   1. BDBrian Dean2:19

      And then one day I have an idea. I'm like, "I c- I should start something." I don't know where this came from. I'm like, "I should start a search engine for nutrition questions." When people ask, like, "How much vitamin C is in a carrot?" it'll just give them the answer. This is, like, basically what an LLM would do, [laughs] but way before and someone that's not remotely qualified [laughs] to come up with something like this.

   2. TFTim Ferriss2:42

      [laughs]

   3. BDBrian Dean2:42

      So I was like, "How do I start a business?" I'd never crossed my mind before. I literally thought starting a business was like in The Office when Michael Scott gives his lecture and he's like, "First, you need a building."

   4. TFTim Ferriss2:51

      [laughs]

   5. BDBrian Dean2:52

      So I'm thinking this is this huge undertaking I'm about to do, so I go to the bookstore to find a book to help me get started, and I basically saw The 4-Hour Workweek, grabbed it, and it just sort of spoke to me.

   6. TFTim Ferriss3:05

      What happened after that?

   7. BDBrian Dean3:06

      It blew my mind. I read the book, I'm like, "What? I could start a business?" Like, it was just a crazy mind-blowing concept that me, someone who has no experience, was totally broke, could start something. Not necessarily be a smash hit, but you could start something. So basically I just followed the book exactly as it was written. I mean, I was like... I literally had notes in the margins. You had those little Q&As at the end or little steps at the end. I would make sure I wouldn't go past that page until I did everything.

   8. TFTim Ferriss3:35

      My dream reader. [laughs]

   9. BDBrian Dean3:37

      [laughs] I was like, "I'm not gonna go to the next page until I'm good and ready." So basically I followed the plan and then created an e-book about nutrition, how to help your back pain

4. 3:48 – 5:26

   A first product flops, free traffic beckons, plus SEO.

   1. BDBrian Dean3:48

      with nutrition.

   2. TFTim Ferriss3:48

      We have so much to cover. I, [laughs] I know I'm cheating a little bit, but so I, I think it's fair to say that your first attempt did not turn into the mega hit that you might have hoped. Um. [laughs]

   3. BDBrian Dean4:03

      No.

   4. TFTim Ferriss4:03

      Turns out it's hard to get traffic, right? Or it can be hard to get traffic. And if you don't have a budget for paid ads, well, I guess necessity is the mother of invention or at least learning. And just I want to s- add a sidebar here, which is this is so fucking common. It is incredibly common, right? That you basically have your sort of first love/relationship seldom works out, right? [laughs]

   5. BDBrian Dean4:30

      Yeah.

   6. TFTim Ferriss4:31

      But you learn a lot and that leads to something else. But tell us about kind of what you learned and how you adapted to that first experience.

   7. BDBrian Dean4:40

      I spent all this time on creating a product that I thought was helpful, I thought was good, and then it was like, now what? You know, how do you get people to actually see this thing?

   8. TFTim Ferriss4:48

      Mm-hmm.

   9. BDBrian Dean4:48

      And like you said, Tim, there's paid ads, which wasn't really something that I could do considering I was broke in my dad's basement-

   10. TFTim Ferriss4:55

       [laughs]

   11. BDBrian Dean4:56

       ... having Dinty Moore beef stew for dinner every night, or so-called free traffic, which I was like, "What? Free traffic? How, how does that work?"

   12. TFTim Ferriss5:03

       [laughs]

   13. BDBrian Dean5:03

       So of course I, like, went all in on that, and eventually sort of stumbled on this thing called search engine optimization, which was like you can rank in Google, and people who are searching for what you sell, you can get in front of them. And I was like, "Oh, I use Google," and I never really, like, understood that there was this whole world behind the scenes, like figuring out how it works, trying to game the algorithm and stuff. And that sent me down the path of learning this thing called SEO.

5. 5:26 – 7:36

   The 200-domain AdSense empire (featuring two bald men hawking shampoo sites).

   1. TFTim Ferriss5:26

      Also, I would say, just to paint a picture for folks, 'cause I remember looking at this when I started my first, let's call it real business, also out of necessity when everybody at my, the startup I joined got fired [laughs] in two thousand, two thousand and one. Not a great time for most dotcom companies. [laughs] So I was working off of my soon-to-expire COBRA healthcare in California and eating also microwave dinners or I remember there were... I had a couple of favorites, Jack in the Box, which was in the parking lot of a Safeway, so that was my [laughs] nutritional intake. Very similar it sounds like, right?

   2. BDBrian Dean6:06

      Yeah.

   3. TFTim Ferriss6:06

      But slowly figuring out ... the mechanics behind these things that we use every day, right? And you took it certainly a lot further than I ever did. It's the Wild West. I mean, SEO can be, especially those days, kind of the Wild West. So you built up a huge kind of portfolio of domains, it seems like, something like close to 200 or over 200. What was, what was the game plan? Like, when you started getting into SEO and then flashing forward, what was the sort of plan in terms of revenue generation?

   4. BDBrian Dean6:44

      The idea was you'd have these one-page websites rank, and then you'd have AdSense display ads on each of those. And back then, it was sort of a loophole that if you had a domain that matched the keyword exactly, then it was a massive advantage in the search results. So I would have, like, lorealsampoo.org, and I would just write-

   5. TFTim Ferriss7:05

      [laughs]

   6. BDBrian Dean7:05

      ... like, 1,000 words about why L'Oréal [laughs] shampoo is great, which I obviously don't really know a lot about.

   7. TFTim Ferriss7:10

      For those who can't see the video, we are both completely bald. Yeah. [laughs]

   8. BDBrian Dean7:16

      And yeah, and then putting AdSense ads on the pages times 200, and the idea is that you scale up enough and, you know, next thing, a few steps later, you got a private island or something.

   9. TFTim Ferriss7:28

      [laughs] You're right.

   10. BDBrian Dean7:30

       That was the plan. Rough, rough outline.

   11. TFTim Ferriss7:32

       Right. ABC, dot, dot, dot, and then private island.

   12. BDBrian Dean7:35

       Yeah.

6. 7:36 – 9:19

   Dreamlining: From "escape the basement" to "3k a month in Thailand."

   1. TFTim Ferriss7:37

      So let's backstep for a second because we can talk about the business and the business experiments and adventures, which we will, and misadventures, AKA Panda death, um, [laughs] which we'll, we'll probably get to. But if we're looking back to your reading of the book, right, there are a couple of different directions as a chooser and adventure map that you can take, and part of that oftentimes is figuring out your target monthly income, doing exercises like dreamlining, which people can find for free, to figure out exactly what it is that you are building as a lifestyle and the things you wanna do, et cetera, and you come up with this very precise, not necessarily accurate, but it's a starting point number, right? Where were you when you're going through all of this? Because you can build a business for the sake of building a business and generating all this cash, but then the question is, what do you do with that, right? How does it inform your life? Were you thinking about that stuff at the time, or was it just get out of the basement, need something besides-

   2. BDBrian Dean8:43

      Yeah, it was get out of the basement-

   3. TFTim Ferriss8:44

      ... Twitchy more stew

   4. BDBrian Dean8:44

      ... have a proper me-

   5. TFTim Ferriss8:45

      [laughs]

   6. BDBrian Dean8:45

      Yeah, exactly. Have a meal that's not out of a can. So I just wrote that, and the whole dreamlining section, that was basically what I wrote. [laughs] But it morphed a little bit. At first it was that, and then building the 200 websites at some point, I was in Asia backpacking, and then my whole world changed to 3K a month. I was like, if you can get 3K a month in Thailand, you can live like a king.

   7. TFTim Ferriss9:04

      Mm-hmm.

   8. BDBrian Dean9:04

      So my whole goal just became to get 3K a month passive income.

   9. TFTim Ferriss9:08

      Mm-hmm.

   10. BDBrian Dean9:08

       That was, like, my entire focus. So it sort of shifted once I had sort of a lifestyle that I tried and liked. I was like, "I could live like a backpacker. I can do this."

   11. TFTim Ferriss9:16

       Mm-hmm.

   12. BDBrian Dean9:16

       So then it just became 3K a month

7. 9:19 – 10:27

   When Google's Panda update slapped the internet (and Brian's empire).

   1. BDBrian Dean9:19

      for a long time.

   2. TFTim Ferriss9:19

      Did you hit the 3K a month before the Google slap, which may be one and the same as the, the Panda update, I'm not sure. May- [laughs] maybe those are two separate things entirely. But where were you before things got pretty strongly corrected?

   3. BDBrian Dean9:40

      I was maybe at 3K a month [laughs] around there for, like, a couple months.

   4. TFTim Ferriss9:44

      Yeah.

   5. BDBrian Dean9:45

      Had a good ride, and then it kinda got slapped. Didn't last long.

   6. TFTim Ferriss9:48

      Yeah.

   7. BDBrian Dean9:49

      The first was a Panda update, as you mentioned, which was a very content-focused update.

   8. TFTim Ferriss9:54

      By Google.

   9. BDBrian Dean9:55

      By Google. It was an update that basically was if your content is thin or repetitive or not helpful, we're gonna w- wipe you out, and it was, like, a one day, they push a button and-

   10. TFTim Ferriss10:04

       [laughs]

   11. BDBrian Dean10:04

       ... you know, thousands of websites got completely obliterated, including mine.

   12. TFTim Ferriss10:08

       That's a rough... Where were you when this happened? Do you remember when you got the news?

   13. BDBrian Dean10:13

       I got slapped twice. The first time didn't scare me straight enough, so I went back to the... I was like, "Oh, I'll just do a different type of black hat SEO, and I'll get away with it." It didn't work.

   14. TFTim Ferriss10:23

       Yeah.

   15. BDBrian Dean10:23

       So that one I think I was in Thailand when it happened.

   16. TFTim Ferriss10:26

       Mm-hmm.

8. 10:27 – 13:01

   Scared straight: Black hat to white hat via a hostel in Spain.

   1. TFTim Ferriss10:27

      Let's then go to you get scared straight, as you put it, and you build your first, as you, as I think you've put it, real site, right? Which isn't lorealsampoo.org. It's something else. When you decided to hop to the white hat side of things, what did you end up doing and why?

   2. BDBrian Dean10:47

      So there was that first update and then a second update where I was in Spain, in Granada, and I went to my hostel, I checked the laptop, and it was like, again, it was like a repeat of the Thailand experience. Everything dropped. This was a different set-

   3. TFTim Ferriss10:59

      Mm

   4. BDBrian Dean11:00

      ... of websites that got knocked out.

   5. TFTim Ferriss11:01

      Mm.

   6. BDBrian Dean11:01

      And I was like, "You know what? This is crazy. Why am I doing this? This is an insane way to live." So then I was like, I'm gonna build this one real website. And, and I was kind of inspired because there were these forums at the time with these marketing people, and they're basically like, "Spam, spam, spam." And there was always a, a, there were a couple voices in there of people who were like, "Guys, you are... You know, build a real business. What are you guys doing? Like, build something real that's durable, that's not 100% reliant on Google." And I was kind of ignored those people.

   7. TFTim Ferriss11:28

      Mm.

   8. BDBrian Dean11:28

      And then once I got hit that second time, I was like, "Okay, it's time to build something real." So I basically built a sort of real site in the personal finance space, wrote real blog content, didn't do any shady, spammy stuff, and tried to keep it on the up and up.

   9. TFTim Ferriss11:43

      So what is the bridge or what happens between that and then building Backlinko? Like, how do you end up segueing? I mean, I guess this could be, like, a very fast montage in the sort of fictionalized movie of your life, right? But what happened, right? To go from there to Backlinko, which ultimately you ended up getting acquired What transpired between those two?

   10. BDBrian Dean12:12

       So once this site started to get a little bit of traction, I was like, wow, this is a whole world I didn't know about, real marketing, white hat SEO. Like... And it was fun. It was working, and it was more enjoyable 'cause I didn't have to look over my shoulder that I was gonna get hit with an update next week.

   11. TFTim Ferriss12:27

       [laughs]

   12. BDBrian Dean12:28

       And it was cool because I'm, I'm reaching out to other websites and they're like, "Oh, this is really helpful," and they're linking to me. I'm not paying for links. They're just, like, naturally doing it, and I'm like, how do I learn more about this? Like, this whole world opened up, and like, how do I get better at this? And all the advice that I read on all these white hat SEO blogs were basically vague advice, create great content, build relationships with other people-

   13. TFTim Ferriss12:52

       [laughs]

   14. BDBrian Dean12:53

       ... you know, market your site.

   15. TFTim Ferriss12:54

       Lead with integrity. You're like, "Okay, what's my next step?" Very unclear, right?

   16. BDBrian Dean12:58

       Exactly. It was as vague as you could imagine.

   17. TFTim Ferriss13:00

       So

9. 13:01 – 15:00

   Backlinko is born.

   1. TFTim Ferriss13:01

      then Backlinko is a case of sort of creating the thing that you couldn't find?

   2. BDBrian Dean13:06

      Exactly.

   3. TFTim Ferriss13:07

      One thing that I saw here in the prep notes, which I was like, oh, that's so smart, and I wanted to highlight it, is... [sighs] And there, there are a number of things obviously that you ended up doing really well that, that seem to have set the stage for a lot of things that came. One of them was digging through Google patents and engineer statements, and I'll come back and sort of expand on why this is smart, but it'll probably become very obvious once you explain why you did it. Like, why were you digging through Google patents and, and then engineer statements, are those part of the patents or are those something separate?

   4. BDBrian Dean13:47

      Separate.

   5. TFTim Ferriss13:48

      Okay. Could you explain what you were doing?

   6. BDBrian Dean13:51

      When I launched Backlinko, I was like, there must be other people like me who are getting into this whole world of white hat SEO. They wanna learn more about it, and they're disappointed about what's out there, and it turned out there was. I just didn't know how to reach them at first. So I basically followed the same advice that I read for starting a blog, which was, you know, you need to publish every week or every other day, and that's how you build an audience. You just publish and pray that people come. So that's what I did.

   7. TFTim Ferriss14:17

      People still give that advice. [laughs]

   8. BDBrian Dean14:19

      A lot.

   9. TFTim Ferriss14:19

      Publish and pray. Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

   10. BDBrian Dean14:22

       So yeah, I w- did that and banged my head against the wall, and I was like, you know what? I have an id- I came up with a, a actually creative idea for a post that would be really special instead of just the stuff I was putting out every week, which was good. It was definitely actually decent, to, to give myself some credit, but it wasn't anything that's gonna grab you by the shirt and be like, "I need to read this." It was just slightly above average than what was out there. I was really going on that consistency play. Like, if I do this consistently, over time there'll be, like, a secret society that will just send me traffic as a reward for being so consistent. [laughs]

   11. TFTim Ferriss14:52

       [laughs]

   12. BDBrian Dean14:52

       I didn't really have the whole thing planned out, to be honest. I just thought... I just knew consistency equaled traffic at some point-

   13. TFTim Ferriss14:58

       Mm-hmm

   14. BDBrian Dean14:58

       ... and it honestly didn't for me.

10. 15:00 – 17:22

    The 200 ranking factors post: 25 hours of patent-digging, a million visitors.

    1. TFTim Ferriss15:00

       Yeah.

    2. BDBrian Dean15:00

       So I had this idea for a post which was, Google recently had said that there's 200 ranking factors in the algorithm. So I was like, let's just try to find them. Obviously, a lot of it's gonna be conjecture and guessing and speculation, but let's just do a list of 200 instead of the lists of 10 or 20 that I'd seen out there. And then I got to, like, 55, and I'm like, man, you have to really dig to find some of these, and that's when I went through the Google patents. And also, people would interview Google engineers-

    3. TFTim Ferriss15:27

       Mm

    4. BDBrian Dean15:27

       ... or they would give statements. They'd be at a conference, and s- they would give a talk and, you know, one of the slides would mention a, a ranking factor that they're considering. So it took a lot of digging. This took, like, 20 to 25 hours to complete this single post, and that's really why I was digging into all this stuff.

    5. TFTim Ferriss15:41

       I just wanna add an addendum to that, which is people who have not heard of this approach, for some folks they'll be like, "Oh, I, I've... I or someone else has, has done that," but it is incredible what you can learn through reviewing patents and looking at very niche events, industry events, for videos and transcripts of presentations, right?

    6. BDBrian Dean16:05

       Mm.

    7. TFTim Ferriss16:05

       This was incredibly valuable when I was getting started as well, mostly looking at, at kind of closed door or very small event presentations and things like that.

    8. BDBrian Dean16:17

       Mm.

    9. TFTim Ferriss16:17

       All right. So that was sort of a massive post that you really invested in. 25 hours is not trivial, right? I mean, that's, that's a lot more presumably than you're putting into the kind of publish and pray consistent approach to just sliding a plate with, like, content salad out the door and hoping that, [laughs] you know, a leprechaun's gonna show up and trade for a pot of gold, right?

    10. BDBrian Dean16:40

        [laughs]

    11. TFTim Ferriss16:41

        So what was the response to that post?

    12. BDBrian Dean16:44

        Massive traffic and controversy, kind of everything you want in a piece of content, to be honest.

    13. TFTim Ferriss16:50

        Mm-hmm.

    14. BDBrian Dean16:51

        I mean, you had the traffic, you had the wow factor, and then you had the controversy, which is like, "Those aren't Google's 200 ranking factors. You know, no one knows those." And then people saying, "Well, this is at least trying to come up with something," and then people saying, "Well, they shouldn't do it." So there's, like, perfect little debate around it that was pretty lightweight. You know, it's not-

    15. TFTim Ferriss17:10

        Mm-hmm

    16. BDBrian Dean17:10

        ... anything super controversial, but just enough to get people's attention. So yeah, it brought in... I mean, I would say I was probably getting, like, 150 visitors a month. That probably brought in a couple thousand when I first put it out. It's brought a million since

11. 17:22 – 18:16

    New rule: One post a month, 10x better than anything out there.

    1. BDBrian Dean17:22

       then.

    2. TFTim Ferriss17:23

       What did you then follow that up with in terms of lessons learned, coming up with new rules for yourself in terms of how you were going to approach the business? How did that inform things going forward once, once you saw that response?

    3. BDBrian Dean17:41

       I just threw out the whole playbook I was doing.

    4. TFTim Ferriss17:43

       Yeah.

    5. BDBrian Dean17:43

       Like, I was using this consistency thing. I would even have... On Fridays, I would have, like, a Q&A. I would just put five questions and answer them, and of course I wasn't getting any questions, [laughs] so I just completely made them up and then answer, answer my own questions just to have something to put out there. And I'm reading it, I'm like, "Why would anyone wanna read this?"

    6. TFTim Ferriss18:01

       [laughs]

    7. BDBrian Dean18:01

       So then I just scrapped the whole thing and was like-

    8. TFTim Ferriss18:04

       Yeah

    9. BDBrian Dean18:04

       ... I'm just gonna put out something once a month-

    10. TFTim Ferriss18:06

        Hmm

    11. BDBrian Dean18:06

        ... and it's gonna be the best thing on that topic that's ever been written by 10X, and that was-

    12. TFTim Ferriss18:12

        Mm-hmm

    13. BDBrian Dean18:12

        ... sort of how I totally changed my content focus to quality over

12. 18:16 – 19:14

    Semrush comes knocking—Brian ignores the email.

    1. BDBrian Dean18:16

       quantity.

    2. TFTim Ferriss18:17

       You had a fun YouTube video On ultimately the acquisition of Backlinko and [laughs] how you got... I guess the original email you got was like, "Hey, would love to connect to, like, collaborate." And you're like, [chuckles] "Well, that smells like every bullshit spam email I've ever received." So you just ignored it, right?

    3. BDBrian Dean18:34

       Yep.

    4. TFTim Ferriss18:34

       [laughs] As I remember. And we won't spend a ton of time on this, but what is Semrush? This is the acquirer ultimately, but for people who don't know, what is Semrush?

    5. BDBrian Dean18:46

       They're essentially a marketing platform that help you get better results from SEO, pay per click, and also now AI search.

    6. TFTim Ferriss18:56

       And are they private? Publicly traded? They're publicly traded, right? Yeah, looks like on the New York Stock Exchange.

    7. BDBrian Dean19:01

       They got acquired by Adobe last year, so they will be part of Adobe, I think, sometime this year when everything goes through.

    8. TFTim Ferriss19:09

       Got it. And they acquired you ultimately while they were public, right?

    9. BDBrian Dean19:13

       Yep.

13. 19:14 – 20:50

    Legal Sea Foods: Taking celebratory shots while wondering where the contract is.

    1. TFTim Ferriss19:14

       I mean, there's so many good aspects to this, but [laughs] do you wanna, do you wanna tell the story about flying to Boston? I mean, eventually this contact, I can't remember his name, but since you ignored the first email he wrote, and ba- basically said, "Hey, look, we might be interested in buying your company," [laughs] like, let me be direct. And you're like, "Oh, okay. I'll reply to that one." Can you tell the story of flying to Boston? I think it's pretty funny. I also liked in your video when you said, you know, "Up to that point, I hadn't sold anything except for maybe a used car." I think you said something like that. I was like, "That's a pretty good line." So the first Boston trip, what happens there? [laughs] Or, like, what's in your mind?

    2. BDBrian Dean19:49

       In my mind, I'm like, "We're gonna close this thing." Like, "Let's go. Go to Boston." It was really a meet and greet where the executive team just wanted to meet me and chat about, you know, see what I co- how I could help them, how Backlinko could fit into their, their platform and their business. And so I spend the day with them in the office, and then afterwards we all go out to drinks to celebrate the deal. And I'm like shitting myself, right? I'm like, "What? We're celebrating the deal now?" Like, I didn't even see a co- I never saw a contract or an agreement or anything. I'm like, "We're gonna sign it, like, tonight." So we go out and we're at Legal Sea Foods in the Prudential Center. Just taking sh- shots. "Yeah, this is great, Brian. This is gonna be the best thing ever." And I'm thinking, "Where's the contract? When are we gonna sign?" Like, I really thought right there they were gonna drop a contract.

    3. TFTim Ferriss20:35

       Did I miss something? Did I black out? What happened?

    4. BDBrian Dean20:37

       Yeah, exactly. I'm like, "Did I agree?" Like, is a verbal agreement enough for a deal like this? [laughs] So yeah, I was way off on that. It took two more months of due diligence after that meeting, uh, for the deal to actually close.

    5. TFTim Ferriss20:48

       You said two months?

14. 20:50 – 24:51

    Due diligence hell: Hunting down ghosted freelancers and the contractor commandments.

    1. BDBrian Dean20:50

       Yeah.

    2. TFTim Ferriss20:50

       Which for people who have never gone through it, right, uh, can be very challenging if you don't have your ducks in a row, right? Which almost nobody does unless they've kinda been through this before or are venture backed and they have people overseeing all this stuff. Two months is pretty good, right? Like, it's painful, but, like, man, like, due diligence can go on forever. For people who are starting a company, maybe they never intend to sell it, but hey, you had not gone into Backlinko thinking that you were gonna sell it, right? But they wanna preserve the optionality. I remember coming across, and I haven't read it in a long time, but a book by John Warrellow called Built to Sell, which talks a bit about this, and I thought it was actually very good. Like a very, I don't wanna say basic, but pretty sort of foundational primer for some of this stuff. But what advice would you give to folks? I mean, one comes to mind, which I have al- also had to learn the hard way about independent contractors. [laughs] But what are some of the, like, tenets or sort of commandments of like, "Hey, just in case one day you want to sell this thing, here are a couple of things that I learned." Anything come to mind?

    3. BDBrian Dean21:59

       Independent contractors for sure. Maybe you can expand on that, Tim, 'cause you have experience with that.

    4. TFTim Ferriss22:05

       Look, if you ever want to sell something the, the acquiring party is go- going to want to know with some assurance, and they'll have reps and warranties in the agreement that basically say, "Hey, if you're, if you miss something or you're not telling us the truth, like, there's gonna be a world of trouble and we'll probably be able to back out of the deal and take all the money back." But they wanna know that everything they're buying is free and clear, right? So if you've had, as I have and as you have in some cases... Well, I'll just speak personally. Always maintained a very small full-time team, but have used dozens and probably hundreds, uh, sh- uh, certainly hundreds of contractors over the span of decades. And if you're building something and they want to see, they meaning the acquiring company, every single contract to make sure that someone isn't gonna come out of the woodwork and say, "Hey, I own a part of that. Hey, I contributed this and therefore I am entitled to a piece of equity," yada, yada, yada, yada. Which if the deal is big enough, come out of the woodwork no matter what. You see this with a lot of, like, tech IPOs and stuff. As soon as they file the S one getting ready to IPO, then some rando comes out of the woodwork and says, "I'm the seventh co-founder." And you're like, "What?" Like, no one's ever heard of this person, and they just want nuisance money to go away. So that's the relatively short and sweet on independent contractors. This is gonna be true also with pretty much any agreement or contract, right? You just want to document, document, document, make everything formal. No verbal, no handshake. If you wanna preserve the option to cleanly and hopefully relatively quickly sell a company later. Anything else that you would add to that, Brian?

    5. BDBrian Dean23:47

       If you don't have your finances in order, like you don't get PNLs-

    6. TFTim Ferriss23:50

       Yep

    7. BDBrian Dean23:50

       ... that is something they obviously will care a lot about. Luckily, I had a good accountant that did that stuff, so that wasn't a big deal. The number one time sink for me was independent contractors. I mean, I'm like you. I hired so many people that did one... like created like a blog post image or something, or like a social media image once for like ten bucks.

    8. TFTim Ferriss24:10

       Mm-hmm.

    9. BDBrian Dean24:10

       And I had to go try to find them. Basically had to hire like [chuckles] almost like a private investigator to find these people 'cause you don't even barely remember them. Even people that ghosted me. I had people that I paid a, like a deposit for work and they never even ... replied. They totally [laughs] they ghosted me.

    10. TFTim Ferriss24:26

        [laughs]

    11. BDBrian Dean24:26

        And I still had to reach out to those people. Of course, I'm not gonna reply. But you have to show that you tried. And then obviously since this experience, every contractor that gets hired signs an ironclad agreement that says, "You don't own any of this work. Once you're paid, it's a property of blah, blah, blah."

    12. TFTim Ferriss24:44

        Mm-hmm.

    13. BDBrian Dean24:44

        And that made things a lot easier the second time, but I'd, I'd no idea this independent contractor thing was so important to the acquirer, but it absolutely

15. 24:51 – 25:46

    SEC market-close rules vs. Brian's 10 p.m. bedtime.

    1. BDBrian Dean24:51

       is.

    2. TFTim Ferriss24:51

       [laughs] Yeah. So we, we won't spend a ton of time on sort of what followed, but there was [laughs] one funny anecdote about the public announcement. Could you just explain that? [laughs] Given the time zone differences, I just [laughs] I thought that one was great.

    3. BDBrian Dean25:08

       Time zone differences, and I like... I'm, like, early to bed kind of person, [laughs] so they told me that, "Hey, Brian, you know, we're gonna announce this tomorrow, and we're gonna announce it at 5:00 PM Eastern." And I'm like, "Oh, man, I don't know. Can you send it out... Is it possible to send it earlier? That's, like, 10:00 PM here. I'm already kind of getting ready for bed." [laughs] Basically saying, "I'm in my PJs at that point. Is it possible to push this earlier?" And they said, "No, because it's a public company, due to SEC rules, we have to make these announcements after the markets close." [laughs]

    4. TFTim Ferriss25:38

       [laughs]

    5. BDBrian Dean25:38

       Yeah. I was so embarrassed. [laughs] I was like, "Oh, yeah. Right. I forgot the, like, the league I'm playing in here." [laughs]

16. 25:46 – 29:56

    Post-acquisition: Hopping from one treadmill to the next.

    1. TFTim Ferriss25:46

       [laughs] So you sell the company. Presumably, there's some type of earn out or period of time for which you're required to still work on Backlinko, right? Who knows what the exact terms are of that, but for people who've never gone through it, right, you can have a vesting period, you can have an earn out where you get X percentage of the total purchase price based on hitting or exceeding X, Y, and Z metrics or whatever, right? So there's a period of time like that. Post-acquisition, let's just say, because I know that was very stressful and you started grinding your teeth, and that kind of evaporated as soon as the deal was done.

    2. BDBrian Dean26:22

       Yep.

    3. TFTim Ferriss26:22

       Let's just flash forward, like, two or three months after the acquisition. What is your, what does your life look like? Like, what does a week look like for you, if you remember?

    4. BDBrian Dean26:31

       It's honestly not that different because I had another startup that I was already working on.

    5. TFTim Ferriss26:36

       Mm-hmm.

    6. BDBrian Dean26:36

       So I, I was basically running on a treadmill, and then I just hopped onto another treadmill that was right [laughs] next to it and just kept going. So there wasn't a whole lot of downtime to really reflect or analyze. That one day that the announcement was made, especially the next day, 'cause it was late here, so, like, the next day was really when I was sending messages to people and stuff and getting congratulations and whatnot, but after that day, I was pretty much back working on the next thing. Like-

    7. TFTim Ferriss27:04

       Mm-hmm

    8. BDBrian Dean27:04

       ... didn't reflect too much on it.

    9. TFTim Ferriss27:07

       Mm-hmm.

    10. BDBrian Dean27:07

        So my life was more or less the same one day after.

    11. TFTim Ferriss27:10

        [laughs] Looking back, are you basically like, "Hey, I'm a border collie. I need to work or I'm gonna go crazy, so I'm glad I did that"? Do you wish you had approached it differently?

    12. BDBrian Dean27:23

        I kinda wish I approached it differently. Yeah. And looking back, I was m- wish I took some time off. It's just tricky because you know how it is. When you have a startup, it's kind of a strange situation. Like, I had an, a new company that was growing. I had this old company that I sold, and it felt weird to say to the new team, like, "Hey, guys, I need to reflect about how great my life is. I need to chill out. You guys still work, though. Like, you work your asses off."

    13. TFTim Ferriss27:47

        Yeah. [laughs]

    14. BDBrian Dean27:47

        "I'm gonna, I'm gonna chill on the beach for a while."

    15. TFTim Ferriss27:50

        Yeah.

    16. BDBrian Dean27:50

        So it felt a little weird. I felt like I kinda had to go back into the trenches with them right away, almost even more so to prove-

    17. TFTim Ferriss27:56

        Mm-hmm

    18. BDBrian Dean27:56

        ... like, "Look, I'm not done. Like, I'm not gonna rest on my laurels. We're still in it to win it."

    19. TFTim Ferriss28:00

        Financially at that point, were you focused on the new company, Exploding Topics, because you wanted to get to that sort of big pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Like, what was the driver behind that, right? I don't know to what extent you were sort of financially stable, had savings. We, we don't have to get into all the nitty-gritty if you don't want to, but I'm just curious, what was driving the involvement in the new company for you?

    20. BDBrian Dean28:27

        It wasn't really 100% financial. Like, w- when I sold Backlinko, before then, I was probably okay for most of my life. Then when I sold Backlinko, it was like, "Okay, I'm probably good for forever." And then I wouldn't have probably started something else right away if I hadn't already.

    21. TFTim Ferriss28:44

        Mm-hmm.

    22. BDBrian Dean28:44

        So towards the end of Backlinko, when I was involved with it before I sold, I was honestly getting a little bit bored with it.

    23. TFTim Ferriss28:50

        Mm-hmm.

    24. BDBrian Dean28:50

        Like, I was bored talking about the same things, writing about the same things, doing the whole course launch thing, and I kinda wanted something new. And I saw an opportunity where there were more trends than ever, but I couldn't find a good tool for curating them that was like, "Here are all the trends in this space right now." There was Google Trends, which is fantastic if you know about a topic and you wanna see how it's trending, but what about a trend you've never even heard of? And that's sort of where I realized the opportunity was. So it wasn't really purely financial. It was more like, this is kind of exciting and new. I think it's a good opportunity as well, and it'll give me something to do between these sessions with Backlinko, which was... It was also boring 'cause it was so optimized. Like, I worked like three hours a week. It was like four-hour workweek, honestly, [laughs] at the end.

    25. TFTim Ferriss29:33

        Yeah.

    26. BDBrian Dean29:33

        Like, it was getting so much traffic on autopilot. The launches were really easy to do. Even courses were easier to create at the end because I just had it all down to a science. Even if it was a totally different topic, I knew exactly how to create a course. So the challenge wasn't really there, and this was like, okay, new challenge, new space, and that's basically... It wasn't so much financial. It was more just to freshen things up and to try something new.

17. 29:56 – 31:25

    Backlinko on autopilot, boredom on full blast, and the chapter everyone skips.

    1. TFTim Ferriss29:56

       Yeah, and you'd also already committed to other people, right, with this new startup.

    2. BDBrian Dean30:02

       Yeah.

    3. TFTim Ferriss30:02

       So it makes a lot of sense. When you had, with Backlinko, so much on autopilot, the three hours per week, right, what were you doing with the rest of that time? Because the most, and we don't have to dig into the, the book too much here, but if I had to point to one chapter that people pay no attention to, 'cause typically they're like, "Oh yeah, that'd be a nice problem to have," and they, like, forget about it, is the filling the void chapter. [laughs]

    4. BDBrian Dean30:26

       Yeah.

    5. TFTim Ferriss30:27

       Filling the void chapter of the four-hour workweek is really important so you don't go into, like, psychological free fall, [laughs] among other reasons. But what were you doing with ... the rest of your time if Backlinko at one point, right, when it, the flywheel-

    6. BDBrian Dean30:41

       Yeah

    7. TFTim Ferriss30:41

       ... was really spinning, was only occupying or requiring three hours a week?

    8. BDBrian Dean30:46

       I was bored, honestly. I wasn't filling it well. I wasn't filling the void.

    9. TFTim Ferriss30:49

       Mm-hmm.

    10. BDBrian Dean30:49

        I was basically going to the gym, reading books, playing video games, nothing... And that, that, I think that was part of this ennui, this boredom was-

    11. TFTim Ferriss30:57

        Yeah

    12. BDBrian Dean30:57

        ... I needed to reread that chapter essentially and fill this with something meaningful, and I think that's why I was seeking another startup project.

    13. TFTim Ferriss31:05

        Yeah, 100%.

    14. BDBrian Dean31:06

        I need to work. I need to build something. I'm not building this, I'm just maintaining it.

    15. TFTim Ferriss31:09

        Mm-hmm.

    16. BDBrian Dean31:10

        So that's really what got me into Exploding Topics. So honestly, uh, the filling the void chapter, the whole filling the void concept I really only took seriously recently.

    17. TFTim Ferriss31:17

        Mm-hmm.

    18. BDBrian Dean31:18

        But before then, I basically filled it with sort of nonsense, to be honest, and then-

    19. TFTim Ferriss31:22

        [laughs]

    20. BDBrian Dean31:23

        ... started another startup.

18. 31:25 – 34:30

    Exploding Topics: The paid newsletter mistake vs. the obvious SaaS play.

    1. TFTim Ferriss31:25

       What were some of the things you did differently with Exploding Topics after all the experience with Backlinko? Maybe things that in retrospect you're like, "Wow, that was a really smart decision and change," and maybe some where you're like, "Hmm, okay, lesson learned," right? Where probably if I were starting from scratch with Exploding Topics, I would've done it differently. Anything come to mind in terms of good and quote unquote bad decisions?

    2. BDBrian Dean31:50

       We can start with the bad one [laughs] , which was how to monetize this site. Had this very strange idea that we're gonna create this awesome free resource that anyone can visit and just see trends right away. They can filter, they can go by category, and you think, "Oh, how are you gonna monetize that?" Logically, you'd think SaaS, an upgraded version of what they're seeing for free. And for some reason I was like, "A paid newsletter." Like, let's create a paid newsletter. So we created this paid newsletter that was, granted helpful in, in, like, objective terms, but not necessarily for that person who wants to see trends in their particular niche. So we would send them a trend on, like, some sort of face cream, and then on, like, a car, and then a battery, and then a tech startup, and they would be like, "What is this?" People were like-

    3. TFTim Ferriss32:37

       [laughs]

    4. BDBrian Dean32:37

       ... "I want just trends about e-commerce. I just want trends about this one thing. Like, why are you sending me all this stuff?" And then people would also sign up thinking it's SaaS, even though we said everywhere, like, "Paid newsletter, paid newsletter," and they'd be like, "I thought this was SaaS. I thought this was SaaS." That was our number one complaint. And yeah, sometimes you just need to, like, get that beaten over your head because I was like, "Oh, SaaS is so complicated." I, I mean, my co-founder was a coder, but I'm still like, "Oh, we're gonna have to hire developers, and I don't know anything about this whole world. UI."

    5. TFTim Ferriss33:03

       And for people who may be listening who don't recognize the term, a lot of people will, but software as a service, right? Think about Dropbox, maybe not the best example, but, I mean, Dropbox is a great example, but with a lot of these products there's a f- there's a freemium version. There's a version that you get to use for free, and then if you want a bunch of additional storage or features or access, whatever it might be, then you pay $9.99 a month or whatever, and there's, like, the basic, intermediate, advanced version, enterprise, et cetera. That's SaaS. Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to define that.

    6. BDBrian Dean33:33

       Yeah, but if you had told me that before we started, I would've been like, "Oh, logically then we should have the premium [laughs] advanced enterprise version in the back end instead of the paid newsletter idea." So that didn't really go well until we ultimately shifted to what we should've been in the first place. So that was sort of the bad decision.

    7. TFTim Ferriss33:49

       Mm-hmm.

    8. BDBrian Dean33:49

       The good decision was definitely investing in this data, publishing data early on. So with Backlinko, this is something I only discovered after, like, five years of running the site, and then with Exploding Topics I was like, "Day one, we're gonna publish tons of data. We're gonna be the source." That's another strategy, like, be the source that... of information on technology, software, e-commerce trends. Anything trend related, we are gonna be the source. We're gonna have the latest data, we're gonna have the best visuals, and we're just gonna be the source for that information. As opposed to writing how-to content, we really focused on data-driven content.

19. 34:30 – 36:54

    Data-driven content and the ChatGPT user stats flywheel.

    1. TFTim Ferriss34:30

       Did it work right out of the gate, or was there a formula that you realized worked after you had a particular well-received publication of data?

    2. BDBrian Dean34:40

       It took a while to get going, a lot of mistakes, a lot of posts that weren't great or the topic wasn't a good choice. What really helped us, what was sort of the smash hit, were these very specific stats that people look for. So what I discovered through this process was this stats page idea is nothing new. Like, people write, you know, the biggest stats around the fitness industry or LinkedIn stats or whatever, and those are fine, but usually journalists aren't looking for LinkedIn stats or TikTok stats. Some of them are, and that's fine, but most of them are looking for something very specific, like how many users does TikTok have, or how many people use LinkedIn every day, like daily active users, or how many posts are on LinkedIn every day. Like, it's super specific. So if you're able to find a credible stat around that, then you can crush it, even if you're not the one that developed it. Like, a lot of times these are also buried in, like, PDFs or white papers or, again, interviews that you have to pull out. Like, one of our biggest smash hits in this area was how many users does ChatGPT have? Granted, we published this early. That's another thing that can help a lot. If you publish one of the first or the first specific stats page, then you get into this virtuous cycle where you're very visible when someone's searching for that topic, then they link to you, they mention you, makes you more visible, and then you just are, like, in this massive flywheel. So one of our best pieces was how many users does ChatGPT have? And every once in a while, Sam Altman will give a talk and he'll mention it, or when they raise a round they'll mention it, and all we did was just document their user growth based on these statements that they made. The initial post probably cost hiring a freelancer like 200 bucks, and then to update it every couple months is, like, another 50, and it's been referenced like 3,000 times. It's absolutely insane. [laughs]

    3. TFTim Ferriss36:34

       [laughs]

    4. BDBrian Dean36:35

       The lo- the effort-to-reward ratio is nuts on that. And of course, it's just, like- Part of it is, is some pieces do better than others, but we've noticed that that formula tends to work well. If you can find a trending specific stat that bloggers or journalists are looking for when they write about that topic, they're very likely to reference you.

20. 36:54 – 38:24

    Noah Kagan's advice: Double down on what works—then 10x down.

    1. TFTim Ferriss36:54

       So I read... I'll give credit here. This is on growthmanifesto.com. Found this doing research. You were interviewed. Towards the end of that interview by Alex, he asked you what the best piece of business advice was that you've ever received. Now, this may have changed, and there's probably more, but it was [laughs] Noah Kagan advising you to double down on what works. Could you expand on that? And then I'm wondering if there are any other sort of mantras or short pieces of advice that you would also put on, like, the Mount Rushmore of your best advice that you've received.

    2. BDBrian Dean37:29

       It sounds so simple, but it's one of those pieces of advice that's simple but hard to follow. Because when you're running a business, there's, like, a million things to worry about, to focus on. There's new opportunities, new challenges, other competitors. You have an employee that's sick. It's hard to really focus on, like, that little thing that works. But it's... I think this is especially important when you're first starting out, 'cause when you're first starting out, nothing's working, almost by definition. Like, you're starting something new. At least in my experience, when I'm starting something new, I don't know, like, nothing's working. And then when something does, most people are like, "Okay, that works. Now let's go something else." But instead, you should just take that niche. It's almost like a little niche when you're rock climbing. Just take that niche and just double down, triple down, quadru- It should really be, like, 10X down on what works.

    3. TFTim Ferriss38:16

       Mm-hmm.

    4. BDBrian Dean38:16

       But it's so rare that you find something that works, and honestly, in most businesses, if you can find one thing that works and scale it up, that can get you pretty far.

    5. TFTim Ferriss38:23

       Mm-hmm.

21. 38:24 – 40:06

    Ready, Fire, Aim—the litmus test for would-be founders.

    1. TFTim Ferriss38:24

       Aside from The 4-Hour Workweek, right, which was, I suppose, a, a catalyst of sorts in the beginning, were there any other... Have there been any other books that stand out or resources when someone comes to you and they're like, "I'm thinking about starting a business," right? "I'd like to start a business."

    2. BDBrian Dean38:39

       Mm-hmm.

    3. TFTim Ferriss38:40

       Are there any books or resources that you tend to recommend frequently?

    4. BDBrian Dean38:46

       For people that are just, they're like, "I wanna start a business," and they're like, "I don't know what to do, how to do it," they're, like, totally green, then Ready, Fire, Aim is usually the book that I recommend. You familiar with that one?

    5. TFTim Ferriss38:56

       I've heard of it.

    6. BDBrian Dean38:57

       Mike Masterson.

    7. TFTim Ferriss38:58

       Mm-hmm. What leads you to recommend this book?

    8. BDBrian Dean39:00

       It gets people into the action mindset, like leaning towards action instead of analysis.

    9. TFTim Ferriss39:05

       Mm-hmm.

    10. BDBrian Dean39:06

        I was guilty of this when I first started, doing a lot of spreadsheets and analysis and business cards, registering your company, all those things that you can do later that don't really matter.

    11. TFTim Ferriss39:17

        Mm-hmm.

    12. BDBrian Dean39:17

        This gets you going on, like, the most important things, and then later you can always change course, right? But the key is really, like, starting, starting, starting, or like Paul Graham says, "Action produces information."

    13. TFTim Ferriss39:30

        Mm-hmm.

    14. BDBrian Dean39:30

        So if this book basically will hopefully give people a kick in the butt to get started instead of analyzing and then being like, "Okay, now I'm ready."

    15. TFTim Ferriss39:39

        Mm-hmm.

    16. BDBrian Dean39:39

        Just be like, "Start today," and then, like, change as you go. I feel like that book is almost a litmus test. If you read that book and at the end you don't do anything, then you're probably not ready. [laughs]

    17. TFTim Ferriss39:50

        [laughs] Yeah.

    18. BDBrian Dean39:50

        The whole point is to get started and, like, it, it gives you advice on how to know you've got traction and what to do once you get traction. So I feel like if you just read the book and you're like, "Okay, what's the next book to read?"

    19. TFTim Ferriss40:00

        Mm-hmm.

    20. BDBrian Dean40:00

        It's probably not the best approach. So that book is hopefully the, the kick in the butt that someone

22. 40:06 – 43:42

    Startup costs: $500 for Backlinko vs. $90k to acquire Exploding Topics.

    1. BDBrian Dean40:06

       needs.

    2. TFTim Ferriss40:06

       This might be a tough question to answer, but how would you define the startup costs for Backlinko and Exploding Topics? Like, in the first three months of those two companies existing, how much money was invested in each of those? Like, how much money was required/invested?

    3. BDBrian Dean40:27

       For Backlinko's case, a few hundred bucks at the most. It was, like, domain, WordPress. I probably hired someone to create, like, a basic blog design theme for WordPress.

    4. TFTim Ferriss40:41

       Mm-hmm.

    5. BDBrian Dean40:42

       Don't remember how much, but, like, if I spent 1,000, I would... I would say that's a lot. I was probably more, like, 500 bucks.

    6. TFTim Ferriss40:49

       Mm-hmm.

    7. BDBrian Dean40:50

       It's a blog. I mean, really, at the end of the day, there shouldn't be a lot of costs involved with that. With Exploding Topics it was a lot different because I acquired, like, a prototype version from someone for 75,000 to start with and hire them as pa- and they... That, well, that was part of their pay package as well. So just on day one, I was in with that much.

    8. TFTim Ferriss41:09

       Mm-hmm.

    9. BDBrian Dean41:10

       And then it was a redesign and a rebrand, adding more trends, hiring a couple people to do some basic things. So that was probably more, like, 90,000, something in that range.

    10. TFTim Ferriss41:20

        Mm-hmm.

    11. BDBrian Dean41:21

        But it was a unique situation 'cause it, it wasn't built from scratch. It was acquiring someone and then that was also paying for some of their time. It was kind of like hiring them as part of the acquisition, and that was paid out over the course of a few months, so I'm not exactly sure how much it would be, like, in that first couple months, but it was in that range.

    12. TFTim Ferriss41:37

        Why did you acquire something, and what was the, the deal structure of the acquisition?

    13. BDBrian Dean41:43

        I acquired it because I was trying to build this exact thing myself and just stumbling and, you know, stubbing my toe over and over again.

    14. TFTim Ferriss41:51

        [laughs]

    15. BDBrian Dean41:51

        So I knew that there was a, an opportunity for this, like, trend. Like, I couldn't even describe it very well. So it's basically you wanna go to a website and it just shows you trends in whatever niche you're interested in. And that-

    16. TFTim Ferriss42:01

        Mm-hmm

    17. BDBrian Dean42:01

        ... sounds so simple, but nothing existed like that, believe it or not. And I hired someone to build something like that, and it was horrible. They used Reddit. So we'd look at subreddits-

    18. TFTim Ferriss42:11

        [laughs]

    19. BDBrian Dean42:11

        ... and we would see how many times a word was mentioned or something and found nothing valuable. The signal-to-noise ratio was completely backwards. It was like for every 200 hits, one was, like, decent. And then one day someone forwarded me this random site this guy started, and I'm like, "No, this! Like, this is exactly what I want." But it was even better than I had imagined.

    20. TFTim Ferriss42:32

        Mm-hmm.

    21. BDBrian Dean42:33

        So then I reached out to him, and then the deal structure was essentially buy it 100% straight up. Part of the acquisition cost will be you'll get paid that. And then on top of that, if it goes well over the first, I think, couple months, then we can set up some sort of part-time deal. And if that goes well, we can do full-time.

    22. TFTim Ferriss42:52

        And he would be helping you throughout that entire period of time to determine, help you determine if it's going well or not.

    23. BDBrian Dean42:58

        Exactly. And he was the coder and developer behind the original version, so he was best qualified to, to continue to work on it and improve it.

    24. TFTim Ferriss43:06

        Mm-hmm.

    25. BDBrian Dean43:06

        Rather than hiring someone random to come in, he... It was his vision to start with. And then I said, basically, if it goes well with full-time for, I think, another month or so, we'll basically be co-founders on this thing. The only rub will be if you want to want a lot of equity, then, you know, you're gonna have to put money in to fund this thing, or if you prefer that you get more cash, then you can just get a proper salary, and then I'll own most of the business. So that's basically what we did. He chose more money, and then he owned a part of, as equity in Exploding Topics.

23. 43:42 – 45:02

    How love and a Craigslist apartment scam in Berlin landed Brian in Portugal.

    1. TFTim Ferriss43:42

       How did you end up in Europe? [laughs]

    2. BDBrian Dean43:46

       Love, to be honest.

    3. TFTim Ferriss43:47

       Yeah. That'll do it. [laughs]

    4. BDBrian Dean43:48

       Yeah, I mean, my wife, we met in Thailand many years ago, and then we moved to Berlin. This is actually a funny story, partially from The 4-Hour Workweek, because you mentioned Berlin as, like, this cheap place. So we're in Thailand-

    5. TFTim Ferriss44:02

       [laughs]

    6. BDBrian Dean44:03

       ... looking at Craigslist, and looking at all these apartments that are like palaces for 300 euros a month. And we're like-

    7. TFTim Ferriss44:10

       Right

    8. BDBrian Dean44:10

       ... "Tim was right. This is amazing."

    9. TFTim Ferriss44:12

       Yeah.

    10. BDBrian Dean44:12

        Like, you can live like a king in Berlin for nothing. So as we're, like, flying there, we send out all these emails.

    11. TFTim Ferriss44:17

        [laughs]

    12. BDBrian Dean44:17

        Like, "We're gonna move to Berlin." And of course, they're all scams. It's like, "I'm lost," and I, like... I, "Oh, I'm out of town, but if... And I lost my passport, but if you leave, like, this money into this Western Union-"

    13. TFTim Ferriss44:28

        Oh, no. [laughs]

    14. BDBrian Dean44:28

        I'm like, "No!" We show up to Berlin. We're in a hostel for, like, eight euros a night in a 12-bed hostel while we realize that this whole thing, all these ads we're applying to, is a scam. No one uses Craigslist in Germany. [laughs]

    15. TFTim Ferriss44:43

        [laughs]

    16. BDBrian Dean44:44

        So then we eventually found an apartment, lived in Germany, and she's Portuguese.

    17. TFTim Ferriss44:48

        Mm-hmm.

    18. BDBrian Dean44:49

        So we visited Portugal a number of times while we lived there, and eventually it was like, we could freeze our asses off, or we could live in the sun. Like, so-

    19. TFTim Ferriss44:56

        [laughs]

    20. BDBrian Dean44:57

        ... let's live in the sun. So yeah, that's basically how we ended up here.

    21. TFTim Ferriss45:01

        Yeah, the,

24. 45:02 – 46:40

    Geoarbitrage still works—just don't trust the 2007 pricing.

    1. TFTim Ferriss45:02

       the thing about The 4-Hour Workweek, right, the principles and frameworks all still work. Obviously, some of the tech tools, since they were last updated in 2009, most of them are completely irrelevant. Probably not gonna use GoToMyPC at this point, right? To access your home computer remotely to do the work you need to do. [laughs] But the, the pricing examples obviously have changed, right? Since it was first written in 2007, 2009.

    2. BDBrian Dean45:27

       Mm-hmm.

    3. TFTim Ferriss45:27

       So the, the principle, the idea of geoarbitrage and applying that to what you earn-

    4. BDBrian Dean45:34

       Yep

    5. TFTim Ferriss45:34

       ... and how you pay contractors, employees, and then your sort of living expenses, it applies. But definitely for anybody who's, who, who ends up picking it up, if, if you read that doing something in Buenos Aires costs A, B, and C, [laughs] go online and fact-check that because it's probably changed-

    6. BDBrian Dean45:55

       Yeah

    7. TFTim Ferriss45:55

       ... a little bit. What are other sort of lessons learned or things that you would like to share with folks? Could be about your journey, could be about mistakes along the way. Really anything at all, because part of the value of these conversations is that we can get into a lot of specifics that are omitted in the magazine profiles of people that end up reading, like, a list of highlights, right? And there's obviously a survivorship bias to begin with if people appear on magazine covers. I know that's an antiquated example to use. But what else would you like to share with folks, or anything else you'd like to add just about the, about the journey? Because it's not over. It still goes.

25. 46:40 – 48:37

    Post-exit stress: Oura Ring at 2x baseline and the Algarve hard reset.

    1. BDBrian Dean46:40

       One thing that I've discovered recently that I wanted to share would be actually filling the void.

    2. TFTim Ferriss46:46

       Mm-hmm.

    3. BDBrian Dean46:46

       I felt the void after selling Exploding Topics and, and how I was able to fill the void.

    4. TFTim Ferriss46:50

       Yeah. Please.

    5. BDBrian Dean46:52

       So set the stage for you. Like, I sold Backlinko, and then about two years later, I sold Exploding Topics. And was just kind of going full time, not super crazy working all the time because I was fairly efficient, but still working all the time, and then went from that to, like, basically stop to zero. And a lot of people, I think, they have this feeling of listlessness, no direction, maybe a bit of depression. For me, the symptom was stress. Like, I think I was wired for stress, not only just in general, but also because of the sale process is stressful. And then just because the sale is done, your body, and I think part of your, like, reptilian brain, doesn't really recognize that, and it still is looking... It's looking for threats, and it's looking for opportunities, and it's just not chilled out. So I struggled for, like, two months with stress on my Oura Ring. My stress was, like, 2x baseline from after I sold, and you'd think it'd be the opposite. You'd be like, "This is great. Like, I sold two companies. I'm good for the rest of my life. Like, what is there to be stressed about?" And then I realized what I needed was a hard reset. That was the first step. We went on a trip, got away from the environment, got away from the day-to-day life, and then it somehow was able to hack my brain to be like, "Okay, you're safe," or like, "Things are chill now." So when I went back home, the stress was gone. It was, like, back to baseline or below baseline.

    6. TFTim Ferriss48:21

       What was the trip?

    7. BDBrian Dean48:23

       It was a trip to the south of Portugal, to the Algarve.

    8. TFTim Ferriss48:26

       Yeah. It's a nice spot.

    9. BDBrian Dean48:27

       So went to the beach.

    10. TFTim Ferriss48:28

        Nice oranges. Toasty.

    11. BDBrian Dean48:29

        Yeah. Good oranges. [laughs]

    12. TFTim Ferriss48:32

        Depending. [laughs]

    13. BDBrian Dean48:32

        Yeah. So spent some time down there, and that was just, like, the hard reset. I think you just gonna get out of your environment.

26. 48:37 – 49:49

    Why founders who launch within a year of selling usually regret it.

    1. BDBrian Dean48:38

       But then when I got back, it was like stress is gone, but now feeling a little bit bored Like that boredom was coming back. And I was tempted to start another startup. And I read this... Someone sent me this, who – another friend who had a, a big acquisition. He sent me this thing, I think it was in the Yale School of Management, and it was basically they interviewed founders that had just exited, and they asked them their advice.

    2. TFTim Ferriss49:01

       Mm.

    3. BDBrian Dean49:01

       "What was it like? What were the good ups and the downs?" And they basically said, "When you sell, there are, like, m- psychological dangers that can occur. One is that you lose your sense of structure. The other is you lose your sense of purpose, and you lose your sense of connection with your team." It all goes away. Like, you have it, and then one day you literally don't. So different people react to it in different ways, but they warn that the, the lot of case studies in this paper were saying people that started companies within a year of selling usually regretted it.

    4. TFTim Ferriss49:31

       Mm.

    5. BDBrian Dean49:32

       So it's basically take a year and don't make any major commitments whatsoever. So that's what I did. It kept me from starting these... I had all these ideas. "I'm gonna start a startup." And then I would be like, "No, wait a year, wait a year, wait a year." And then by the time a year came around, I didn't really want to because I was able to fill the void largely with tennis.

27. 49:49 – 51:10

    Tennis as the ultimate void-filler: Fun, fitness, community, and fresh air in one sport.

    1. TFTim Ferriss49:49

       Mm.

    2. BDBrian Dean49:49

       For me, tennis has been one activity, checks all the boxes and fills this void. It's amazing, man, because if you think about it, like, if you wanna have fun, you play video games or watch TV or something. If you wanna have s- socialize, you go out drinking. If you want exercise, you go to the gym. If you wanna get fresh air, you go for a walk. Tennis has all of these things, like, in one activity. And if you want a community, you need to, like, whatever. I don't know. I mean, I actually don't even know how to do that outside of tennis. That was a thing that changed, was what? I joined a tennis club.

    3. TFTim Ferriss50:23

       Mm-hmm.

    4. BDBrian Dean50:24

       And there's a lot of other entrepreneurs there. A lot of Americans, man. It's like the 51st state over there, to be honest.

    5. TFTim Ferriss50:30

       [laughs]

    6. BDBrian Dean50:30

       It's getting a little crazy. But anyway, so I f- filled the void with this community of people that are playing tennis, trying to improve, obsessed with the game, like, watching YouTube videos, reading about it, practicing all the time, and now I don't have that same sense of, like, wanting to start something new.

    7. TFTim Ferriss50:47

       I love that. And just a, a few observations since, as you would imagine, since the book came out in 2007, I've had the opportunity to sort of vicariously watch a lot of people grapple with this. And having worked with so many startups in angel investing, granted in a kind of venture-backed environment, but the, a lot of the challenges are the same.

28. 51:10 – 53:15

    The paradox of choice after exit: Structure, identity, and vertigo.

    1. BDBrian Dean51:10

       Yep.

    2. TFTim Ferriss51:10

       Whether you're coming out of, for instance, [chuckles] you know, I know guys in special operations, if you're coming out of running a company, if you're coming out of starting and running a company, it, it, when you lose, as you put it, and I really liked the categories you mentioned, right? When you lose the structure, when you lose, in a sense, the identity, when you lose the connection to team, you can end up with a severe degree of vertigo, right? And a, a very precarious paradox of choice. And something like tennis, a- and some people listening might think, like, "What? Tennis?" [laughs] You're probably... But even if it's not the forever solution and the end all be all, what it does, just like getting your, your recommended daily allowance of essential amino acids and vitamins and so on, you're getting just enough that it provides you with the psycho-emotional sort of health and space to think about things more clearly instead of being reactive. You know what I mean?

    3. BDBrian Dean52:19

       Yep.

    4. TFTim Ferriss52:19

       Like, you're getting enough of all of those things, and it provides you with a buffer and a certain equilibrium that allows you to think about things more clearly. And furthermore, this is not necessarily a problem you have to solve after everything vanishes, right? You can, you can think about this in advance and experiment with things so that when you have, like, a f- a real phase shift, which in the context of the 4-Hour Workweek isn't necessarily selling a company. It's just, like, once you get it to a high degree of automation, where it requires two to three hours a week, if that, to manage, which is more common than people might think, what you do with the rest of the time is a tremendously big question, right?

    5. BDBrian Dean53:06

       Yep.

    6. TFTim Ferriss53:06

       So I love that. Makes me wanna go back to the Algarve also. [laughs] Can get a little toasty. [laughs]

    7. BDBrian Dean53:12

       Could be worse, let's put it that way.

    8. TFTim Ferriss53:13

       Yeah, it's a good country for tennis.

29. 53:15 – 54:08

    Parting thoughts.

    1. TFTim Ferriss53:15

       Brian, this has been super fun. Where can people find you online?

    2. BDBrian Dean53:20

       Let's start with YouTube. That would be the first place, and then LinkedIn. Brian Dean on YouTube, and @BrianEdean on LinkedIn.

    3. TFTim Ferriss53:27

       Perfect.

    4. BDBrian Dean53:28

       That other Brian Dean must have grabbed that one.

    5. TFTim Ferriss53:29

       [laughs] Brian, is there anything else you would like to say before we wind to a close?

    6. BDBrian Dean53:39

       This has been great. [laughs] That's it.

    7. TFTim Ferriss53:42

       Thanks, man. [laughs] I know it's late several time zones away, and I appreciate you being flexible on the timing. So thanks so much for taking the time. Everybody listening or watching, we will link to everything we discussed in the show notes, as usual, at tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, as always, be just a bit kinder than is necessary to others and also to yourself. Thanks for tuning in

Episode duration: 54:19