Patrick Campbell: The Billion $ Quilting Industry And Using Spy Secrets To Gain A Competitive Edge

All right, we are live. Uh, what's going on, man? How are you?

What's up? What's going on, gentlemen?

So we have Patrick Campbell. What the company was ProfitWell.

Yeah.

So started, but originally it was, it was something else for first, right?

Yeah. We called it Price Intelligently. So we did a little piece of pricing software, morphed into pricing software and service. A lot of service actually, and then started building this metrics tool and all that kind of fun stuff. And then recently sold to Paddle, which is a payments infrastructure product, if that makes sense.

And the headline, the headline price was $200 million and you bootstrapped the company. And I think in a tweet you said you owned— I don't know if it was you and your co-founder or company owned, but like you guys owned almost all of it, right?

You do, you do seem like you're cultivating that trillionaire energy that we like to see. So I gotta say, I'm getting the vibe. I'm getting that, I'm getting that extreme satisfaction and relief vibe that comes when you sell a company.

Well, Sean, ask him where he just moved to.

If only you knew how tightly wound I am. So yeah, that's interesting.

Ask him where he just moved to. Go ahead, tell him.

Where did you just move to?

Uh, I moved to Puerto Rico for all of the obvious reasons. Just put it out there. Um, just to be very clear. Very obvious reasons why I moved here. And it's 80 and I'm not a huge fan of the heat, but I am like basically recording with a 6K camera right now. And that's, that's that trillionaire energy where it's like, where do you put the money? I don't like cars. So I got a really cool, like dope setup basically.

I mean, that bookshelf needs a little upgrade too, if I must be honest here.

I feel like, you know, this was literally like IKEA. I don't have anything behind me. Like, let's throw some books up and kind of go from there. So we'll get there. We'll get There. there.

So what, what exactly did you guys— well, I, I, we used you, I believe, but I think we got— I think we used you for free. And I was like, how did these guys make money? What exactly did you guys do?

And when you, you reached out to us and you were like, hey, I think you, do you listen to the pod? Is that kind of why you reached out?

Of course. Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad to hang out with the 12-year-olds from a recent episode.

I learned something.

Yeah.

You said something which kind of tipped me off. You were like, I grew up in Wisconsin doing hoodrat shit. Hat tip to Sam. And I was like, oh, okay. He knows the inside jokes. He knows about sometimes you just want to do hoodrat shit.

Uh, of course. That's why we're getting a ranch built in Utah right now. Everything's going to be great. Like that's, that's, that's the hoodrat world there.

Are you really? You're building a ranch in Utah?

Yeah, that's the goal. So I grew up in Wisconsin, right? So I grew up like literally milking cows as a kid and like, you know, kind of having the, let's say the Sam Parr lifestyle. Like my dad has no idea what I do. He's like just confused. He thinks I'm being a tax evader, moving to Puerto Rico, like all that kind of fun stuff. Which you are. Blue collar.

Sam, he's like you, just more rich. Yeah, yeah.

What'd you say, Sean?

That's funny.

Yeah, yeah. I said he's like you, just more rich.

It looks like it. That's what it seems like.

I do what I can. I think the difference is Sam's living a little, like I'm like all in, like just still like nose to the grindstone. But yeah, I grew up in Wisconsin and then after school I moved to DC. I worked in US intelligence and then worked in, um, tech in Boston. And that's kind of when I got into the, to the business space basically.

But what I was going to say is you reached out intelligently because we get a bunch of people who are like, hey, would love to come on and tell my story. It's like, yeah, I'm sure you would. Who wouldn't want to come on and tell their story? Like, I also like to get, you know, free fame. But the, the thing you did was you sent us like, I don't know, 6 or 7 bullet points. You're like, uh, here's, you know, here's some stuff I can talk about. And then you sent us, I would say like 5 or 6 really interesting things. So I kind of want to hop around on those. Uh, Sam, did you have a favorite one that you liked from these?

Uh, okay. Well, let's, so do you have it in front of you? It's Hidden Industries.

I got in front of me. So, yeah, that's the juicy one. That's the juicy one. So basically you said, I think we have the largest subscription financial database in the world, right? Like you, you guys have 100%, $20, $30 billion of annual recurring revenue flowing through your system, which is just a bunch of data that will tell you, I bet you there's some things that are like, huh, no way they make that much. Right. There's like some surprising niches that, that make a lot of money. And then there's maybe some trends or benchmarks. So, so take it where you want it. But I think that's one that's going to be super interesting for? I know I want to know what I want to know the answer. So I know people listening will too.

Quilting just means like making a blanket that has like designs on it, right?

Uh, for the most part. Um, now as a mom, a Midwest mom who does hardcore quilting, like there's a lot of other stuff like our house, we didn't have pictures up. We had quilts that were hung of like different designs and all kinds of stuff. But yeah, every major milestone in my life, I got a quilt. Like I have 6 quilts in Puerto Rico that are useless to me just given how like warm it is here.

Mom, what's— there's, there's paint. I see you went to someone else's house. They had a painting on the wall. It's like, no, no, you don't need that.

Just put a blanket on the wall. You need quilts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great soundproofing.

It's really good sound deadening. But yeah, it's really interesting because like that market has gone wild, like even like knitting, like crafts, that type of stuff. And what's really interesting about it is like, especially in the subscription space, there's a lot of these built-in type projects that these companies have started taking advantage of. So there's this thing called Block of the Month Club that has been around since quilters have existed. You create a block of a quilt every single, you know, month basically. And it's like a community type thing. Um, so there's something there. Quilt retreats are a huge thing, like quilt retreats. Like, I didn't know about that. Like all of these mostly like middle-aged or older women coming together, like hanging out and staying up all night talking and like, you know, quilting. So that's one space, the craft space, knitting, all that kind of stuff is really interesting. Another one that's interesting is, uh, basically old people, uh, before you move on, before Sam, do you know stuff about quilting?

I feel like you have knowledge about this stuff.

No, I don't, but I'm looking at— I just Googled block of the month club. So that, that's like a, that's like a genre of clubs. That's not like the name of a, of a club. Right. And I just, I'm just looking. Yeah. Or I don't know, a style. And I'm looking up what these are and what these are. And I'm looking at the businesses. It wouldn't shock me if some of these are doing 9 figures. So $100 million plus in subscription revenue based off just some of their traffic. Like there's Craftsy, there's Annie's. Kitclubs.com. Uh, do you know anything about these?

Yeah. So there's, there's, there are definitely 9-figure companies in the space. I'll put it that way.

And then 9 figures a year. So $100 million plus in subscription revenue for sell. And they basically, like, I don't know what differentiates all of them. I'm just clicking on the ads, but they just sell, like, they send you a block. You know what a block is, Sean?

Like just one square patch of the quilt, a square patch.

And during the holidays, this is making my dreams come true right now.

Just this whole like learning you guys right now.

People think that I am Midwestern. I grew up in like an urban environment. So I grew up in like the city. So we didn't, we weren't exactly quilting, but we basically what they do is they, they send you a patch, like a, like a block, like a 6-inch by 6-inch block. And it looks like it's like got like pumpkins and a snowman on it. And that's like the holiday version of, uh, what do you do with that?

You stitch that into the other blocks that you've been getting.

New school company that I would look at?

Uh, so the one I was describing, uh, these moms, while you're looking at that up, these moms, these quilters are not using Instagram a lot. It looks like I'm like looking up quilting on Instagram and Facebook groups real heavy.

They are Facebook groups. They're the Facebook group. I've seen, I saw just researching while I'm here. I'm looking at tons of highly engaged quilting Facebook groups.

Well, it's also interesting. Like you'll even in Boston, like there'll be these little like meetups. So the younger community, they're kind of going through knitting into like quilting because it's like, oh, you get to build something. The designs are a lot more modern, all that kind of fun stuff. But yeah, it's an interesting, interesting world. Missouri Star Quilt Company is the one that I was referencing, the YouTube kind of, kind of world.

How big is that?

Uh, I don't know their revenue individually. I don't think they have a subscription.

Sean, have you heard of Hallmark? You know, Hallmark cards?

Of course.

So neighbor used to own like 50 Hallmark stores. Really? I was like, how is this? How are these people so rich? And they're like, oh, we— now they own like 100 Hallmarks.

So Hallmark is an interesting company related to this. And I'm— everything I'm saying is, is off the top of my— off memory. So I may be wrong, but They— Hallmark is a privately owned business. It's owned by a family. And I think it's one of the largest privately owned companies in the world, in America. And they do $5 billion a year in revenue. And I think that they make money in two ways. They, uh, have these stores that are franchises and they just sell cards. So Hallmark just sells cards. And then the other thing that's kind of weird is they own Hallmark Media, which is a Hallmark TV station channel. Yeah, yeah, where they make like— it's a joke, it's like a genre, Hallmark movies, which is like sappy movies that moms like. But I wouldn't be surprised if they own, like, if they're just like, uh, you know, behind the scenes in the quilting game, just calling the shots, you know what I mean?

They're deep in the underground quilt game.

Yeah, big quilt. Yeah.

There's only one, one I fear. It's Big Quilt coming after us. In fact, we should stop laughing about this.

So it's those companies, man. They're huge. Some of the big originals, they're huge.

This, this hobby, I think has legs for a couple reasons. One is, um, it has a bunch of factors that individually are strong characters of like, you know, potentially good businesses, but when you stack them, it becomes even more valuable. So it's like, this is a stacking of trends. So you have the trend of DIY and crafts at home, right? Then you have the trend of oddly satisfying, which is you've seen these videos of people cutting sand or like ASMR stuff like this, which is like, there's a therapeutic benefit to doing these things, tac— like these repetitive, tedious, clean, straight lines, you know, stuff with your hands that you can do that has like a, a tactile feel to it. Then you add on community.. And it's like, oh yeah, people get together and they do this together. Okay. So now this is an excuse. It's like, you know, guys get together, play poker or something like that.

It's like, yeah, yeah.

We don't all really, you know, we're not trying to be the best poker player, but it's just an excuse to sit around and bullshit. And so you start stacking these on top of each other. Then it's like nostalgia because people are making quilts out of like their kids' clothes and stuff like that because, you know, they don't want to— yeah. What do I do with these old stuff? And then all it becomes this, like this, like memory and this heirloom. And I'm like, you know, I have a blanket that my grandma made before she passed away. And it's like, that means something to our family because she made it, right? It's like a memory of her. So you stack all these things on top of each other and now you have this, like, you know, sort of like this, uh, you know, Long Island iced tea of a business where you stacked all these different, you know, things into one cocktail. And it's, it's just a strong, you know, son of a bitch.

Additionally, I think, uh, maybe you could kind of tell me if this is true or not, but from my experience, most people in Silicon Valley and young people, they're like, we're going to make this app or this widget for like millennials or Gen Z. In reality, every business that I know of personally that are the majority of my friends who own businesses that sell stuff to women in Middle America between the ages of 30 and 60, hands down, has the highest loyalty and engagement and lowest amount of churn. Is that accurate? Other than businesses, I'm talking about a group of consumers.

Sean, have you ever been doing— have you been doing Applebee's lately?

Oh, hell yeah. Chili's and Applebee's, baby.

Have you really been doing Applebee's?

Yes, I have.

That's hilarious. Um, so do you know how their whole shtick is like even though it's a chain, it like, they, they put like the neighborhood baseball team on the wall, which who knows if it's actually from that neighborhood. Like, you know, whenever you go there, they make it feel like that. Well, I had a friend that worked on the advertising part of, of Applebee's, and one time we had to go there and like order everything on the menu and drink and eat it all. It was horrible. But I was like, Tony, this food is like quite bad. Like, this is horrible. I don't like, I don't, I don't think you're going to be able to make this cool. Like, you know, you're telling me like a, we, it was like a nuclear green, like limeade. Like I was like, dude, this is horrible. I don't want to drink this shit. This is awful. Or like one time I thought—

Why does the cheese taste like beans and the beans taste like cheese? What's going on? Yeah.

Well, they, they sent over something. I'm like, I don't know what this is. And so we dipped it in there and it was icing. Uh, like it was like a side of icing. And I was like, dude, this is horrible. Why do people like this? He's like, well, it's mostly middle America and they call them, I believe that they called their ideal customer a Jim Bob. Which is someone who is in their 50s, 60s, and 70s and has a little bit of money but wants to continue going there because it feels like it's the last, like, hurrah for the neighborhood and they're supporting their neighborhood and they're willing to put up with the crappy food because it somehow feels like their way of life is under attack. And this is like the last, like, thing that represents their neighborhood, even though it's some huge national chain.

The world is changing so much. And this is all— this is the one staple That like you walk in and it feels exactly the same as it did when you were 14.

Right.

Oh, what were we going to say?

You don't even know any overweight overworked moms in Texas, do you?

Well, you end up not chasing fads. Like, there's a lot of fads, like business built on, built on fads, right? And those are great businesses, right? Like we hear about them all the time. The guy who, what was it, the, um, the teeth, like I can't remember, like the, the hillbilly teeth. You remember this at gas stations? Like apparently like $20 million, like business, right? Like the Snuggie, huge fad, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars, I believe, in revenue. But like something like quilting has been around forever. It's not sexy, right? But the targeting gets really interesting. And like some of the other things, right? Like you guys talk about this a lot where it's like services business, you know, lawn care, HVAC, all these other things end up being like stuff that sticks around for a long time. And, you know, through the businesses that you don't really hear of, and there's a lot of opportunity in terms of roll-up or like flipping the model that, you know, was basically being used by the folks that are the incumbents.

So what are some of these other—

Sorry.

We went a long-ass time on quilting, but talking about quilting, baby. It's great. What else you got? What are some other, uh, kind of niches that you like?

Yeah. Yeah. So a really good example, it's not a huge company because it's a one-man shop out of Boston, is Nanograms. It's basically a, um, I don't know if you email or you post it on Instagram and then it automatically sends a postcard to your nana or to, you know, whomever you want to send it to. Um, so there's some really interesting things that are happening there where like you have high disposable income in a certain group, low amount of time that wants to be spent necessarily with like, you know, their parents or their grandparents, depending on, you know, the, the personality. And as basically the trend that's happening is there's a huge portion of population that are aging. So you're seeing like the multiples on things like old folks homes or hospice care actually increasing pretty substantially, which is kind of crazy. And then there's, there's, there's got to be more technology plays. I don't have like a giant technology play there. I just have seen like a number of people like start to build on that particular trend. And then the last one, which I think is really interesting, is death. That sounded terrible. I find death interesting. No, I'm not that, that scary. But there are 4 or maybe 5 companies that basically own everything in the literal last mile of your life. Coffins, um, uh, the, the funeral service homes, everything that's being sold in the funeral service homes, even like how memories and kind of like that last part looks. Um, there are some businesses that have tried, but because of like the 5 people kind of owning everything and multi-billion dollar companies, what's the big ones essentially have been I don't have the names in front of me. I know someone tried 5 years ago, um, a guy named Dave Balter in Boston basically tried to start a like memory, um, company where basically you would load up memories essentially. And then all of a sudden you would get that information back, um, via Alexa. So you could be like, oh, Alexa would tell me about my grandpa or something like that. And what happened like 6 years ago or something with him, um, in an adventure. But, um, He was the one telling me that like, basically he would go visit, you know, these companies like, hey, maybe I could sell to these companies. And they were all like buttoned up suits, you know, all that kind of fun stuff. And so that's a space that I think given the aging population, there's probably something there that makes sense as well.

Gotcha.

Okay. Let's, let's switch gears real quick. You had said something else, which was, um, let's do some quick hits. Okay. So let's try to do these. Uh, give me the kind of the quick, quick jab on these. You said. I used NSA learnings to do competitive intelligence. What the hell are you talking about?

And how did you get that NPS stuff?

Oh, he said he sent a fake NPS.

I straight up sent surveys to their customers. Sent surveys to their customers.

So walk me through that. Walk me through all your research methodologies. This is crazy fascinating.

Yeah. Yeah. So, um, there's two, there's two main sources of information. There's moles and then mass data. Moles are like qualitative, like almost like customer development product conversations. These are former employees. These are, you know, customers I know that are friendly to me. They're not going to switch because of whatever, but I can like talk to them.

Okay, let's pause at former employees. You go, you find, okay, this person used to work here. What happens? What is the, what is the guy—

I do this all the time.

Present this way. Yeah, me and Sam have talked about this on the pod once.

But totally. So I, like, you meet them at a conference. Uh, oh, it looked like on Twitter that didn't end well. They weren't like, after 4 long, wonderful years at so-and-so, I've now moved on. But it was like, I'm now over here, right? They took out the competitor name. That's someone I want to like, like a better phrase, target and have a conversation with and be like, hey man, how's everything going?

Like that type of a thing. Um, and again, you're not going to get a vast amount of information, but again, it's about collecting different points, right? And then I've talked to an investor and then I've talked to an investor who's thinking of investing in the company. And then I've talked to like some customers who are officially churning from the product. And all of a sudden, I can start putting this together. But the, the more fascinating stuff, and that's color, right? Like that's color that kind of guides your analysis, because you as an analyst, what you're trying to do is you're trying to predict what's going to happen, or based on some sort of stimulus, what they're going to do, right? So if all of a sudden something comes in, or there's a feature that's launched, or some sort of messaging or marketing thing that happens, what are they going to do? And that's going to help you respond to whatever they're going to do, right? And prepare for it, right? So that was really interesting because you almost get like feel from those types of people. Like, oh, it turns out like there's an exodus. A lot of people are leaving. That's great. Let's step on the gas here. But the real kind of secret sauce is what, you know, Sam started asking about, which was there are many lists of customers that you can find. Um, if they have some sort of a snippet, obviously built with Clearbit, all those types of things, right? That's one. Everyone likes to talk about their customers, right? So they have case studies. That's 2. Everyone likes to put the logos on their website. That's 3, right? And so you're looking at social, you're looking at BuiltWith, you're looking at all these logos. And then I'm like, well, who's the main customer, right? I can go find all those email addresses, right? And you're not looking for like, oh my God, I have 10,000 people because most of these people don't have 10,000 customers, right? But what you're looking for is enough that then I'm going to start sending on an every 3-month basis a survey or every other month I'm going to send an NPS survey and then I'm going to send So what domain do you send the survey from?

Like, yeah, like the name plus feedback, like feedback.com or something, or what?

There's a couple. I don't want to go too deep, but like, like, probably like if it's— reputation's already fried on this.

So like, um, but let's say you're, let's say you're trying to, uh, let's say you're creating a HubSpot competitor and you want to get HubSpot NPS information. You send an email that it's like, um, uh, hubbackfeedback.com or like gethubspotfeedback.com or something like that.

What are you talking about?

What is basically he's saying? What, in plain English, what he's saying is You, you learned this stuff. If you go tell the product team, hey, here's, here's what they said they want, or here's what you should build. Screws 'em up. They screws 'em up. They don't, they don't build the right stuff. But if you go to the marketing team and you say, here's what's, here's what pain points were most important to them, or here's what benefits were most important to them, or here's what, here's how they ranked these guys versus us. The marketing teams, if you have that competitive intel as part of your process, a marketing team will perform better than a marketing team without that competitive.

Perfect example. Real world example. We start hearing, this is the early days of the metrics product. We realize getting accuracy for metrics is actually incredibly difficult because it's not like marketing metrics that can be like 5% off, like financial metrics. If you tell me I have this much money that's supposed to be in my bank account, I'm making decisions based off that. It has to be 99.9%, if not 100%, right? So we start feeling this just as a product team. All of a sudden we start hearing from some of my, like, my, my moles, if you will, and they don't know that they were these people, just to be clear. It's not like I turned them and they're like, you know, there's drops and everything like that. But also I start hearing like, ah, yeah, we're using it, but the accuracy sucks, right? So all of a sudden we start hearing this totality of information. All of a sudden that is our core marketing strategy. Every single time. Comparison pages, we didn't do that many of them, but every single comparison page is the number one thing. All of our ads, like competitive ads, that's what they were. And then over time, all of a sudden that became their homepages, right? Because they're reacting to us rather than us reacting to them because we found the snippet that makes the most sense. And The most like aggressive thing, um, if this doesn't sound aggressive enough, is so I have all this data, I have all this information, I've collected it, I've synthesized it.

I know, by the way, do you keep that like a spreadsheet or like a Notion and you're making, and you're writing like narrative formats?

Sam, I think you're— the look on your face, tell me what you're thinking right now.

I think I'm very good at research and I'm very good at doing what I do, which is like doing the exact same thing of finding moles, getting intel, reverse engineering. You have said, I think I'm a 9 out of 10. You have said some, some things to me that I realize that there's another couple levels that I can go to improve. It's pretty magical. Uh, that, the, that, that's pretty amazing.

Yeah. Well, then keep in mind, like I have all this market data, right? So that was interesting too, because all of a sudden I can understand, like, so for example, COVID hit. Again, I can't look at anyone's accounts and we're very, very, um, very, very like strict about that, but I can see, oh, this sector that has 50+ accounts, which is our terms, this sector's tanking, this sector's taking off. I can change my marketing almost instantly. Right. And when you have some competitive intel, especially on segments, like I knew the segments that our competitors were going after and I knew the segments we were going after. Um, it just helps feed the wheel. And when you're feeding the wheel and you're getting that PhD in your business, which I think is really important if you're, if you're going all in. Like all of a sudden it's like now a lot of the decisions, like we don't have to think about because it's like, we know what's happening. We know what strings being pulled. Let's react to it. Let's respond to it and kind of go from there.

How much of your time is spent on that? Sorry, go ahead, Sean.

Well, now it's the best way possible.

It's a system now. So it's a system. So I don't spend that much time. I just get the collect, right? And it's just documentation, right? So for example, I have names, like I know I have, I have 6 names that I can tell you. Of users of a competitor of ours. I see them pretty regularly, especially since events are back. I'm friends with a couple of them, right? And I'm not like, I, I'm not hiding the fact, like, hey, how's it going with competitor A, right? Like, I'm not hiding it, right? Like, and that's the thing that like, there's a point here where I think you're, you're kind of being an asshole, like, and you're, you know, being like conniving. And then there's a point where you're just like being smart and collecting data. Um, and I try to stay like, obviously on that part of, of the divide, if that That makes sense.

Do you ever think about turning— would you ever turn that into a business?

Sean and I had, we brainstormed this a lot and we were talking about how we both use Glassdoor reviews because because even though like Glassdoor is typically like either fake or incredibly happy employees or like disgruntled employees, there's not really a middle. But like you could still get a lot of interesting information from there and you get information from like LinkedIn. Like they'll say like, you know, I manage a pipeline of a $10 million a year business and like, oh, thanks for telling me. And like we would like, we, we, we brainstorm this idea of this business where we, I think we called it like I Spy or something or like it involved like spying on like many people in a, in a particular industry and just sending you an email because you can use like Facebook Ads Manager and be like, oh wow, these guys just made a switch. They are now targeting older women as opposed to younger women. Uh, and we called it like Spy Something. And it's kind of funny, you worked for the NSA, you, you, you, you don't, you are the spy that we were talking about. So like, it is kind of interesting. I do think actually a business could be built doing this.

I can't find this client info.

Have you heard of HubSpot?

HubSpot is a CRM platform.

Platform, so it shares its data across every application.

Every team can stay aligned. No out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot. Grow better. I think the problem is, is that— so I've been talking about customer development, customer research, because you should do all of this for your customers. That's what you first start with rather than your competitors. The competitors stuff sounds sexier, right? But I think that like I used to talk when I give talks at conferences or like events all about customer development. 15% of people, like, care. And then even when you give them, like, everyone cares, everyone tweets the tweet, oh yeah, you should talk to your customers, right? 15% of people actually do the work. And then when you actually take care of the work for them and just give them the data, and this is the one risk of this type of a business, I'm sure there's a big business in it, but then they, like, don't know what to do with it, right? And so all of a sudden it's like, okay, you're kind of giving people information, which that's probably fine because it's a vitamin then, like, they don't, they like that they have it, right? But then actually implementing on stuff, like, they probably don't do it. And that means, like, I don't know, if you get, if you get a 36-month customer, like, I'll take it, right? Like, they don't need to be 60 months necessarily for, for you to build a big business, right?

You're doing one other thing that I find fascinating. Uh, actually, actually, well, there's two. You said you're— I'll start with the less fascinating one. You said you're buying a shit ton of debt for pennies on the dollar and gonna forgive it. So what's, what's actually going on there?

Everyone wants to be MrBeast. On a long enough timeline, everyone wants to be MrBeast. That's what I feel. Life theory.

I like it.

No. So like, here's the thing. I, I'm probably going to reinvest everything that I got into this until I can do business.

Did you say how much? How much did you make from the sale?

Trying— I got to work with a lot of people. So I'm trying not to be super over or under 9 figures. I'm not going to say what I got. Let's just put it that way. But I had to do it.

I was, I asked you if it was over or under $100 million and it took you a minute to think about it. So what I'm going to assume is that it's that number, give or take 30%.

Uh, give or take 30%. Yeah. Let's just, let's, but like, again, part of it's stock. It's not all cash. Like there's a lot of different factors here that we, I don't want to get into, but I am, I'm going to, I'm fine right now. Like, I'm gonna do fine, if that makes sense. So, um, but I want to reinvest it all because, like, again, I'm not a car guy. I'm not like— and again, I've had it for like 2 months. I went from— like, this is a fun fact— I did the whole Dave Ramsey, don't have any debt, pay off the house as soon as possible thing. So in January, I had $20,000 in my bank account and a paid-off house. Like, that was it. And then this happened. So, um, I haven't adjusted to it is what I'm trying to say. So like, this might change in like 6 months, but I want to like, you know, I want to go all out and go all out, not in a way of like, you know, like fancy cars and stuff like that, but like in stuff that's really interesting and gets me on the quickest path to learning. And one of the reasons for the debt thing, um, and also the, I don't know if you're going to bring up the other one, but like the debt thing was this, the debt market's just crazy. Like it's insane, right? It's, it's, it's insane how much debt there is, how that debt is purchased. I don't understand it. Um, and this is one of the ways that I can like really understand it and also do some good in the world where it's like, I can buy a bunch of debt for pennies on the dollar. I can understand how that system works, how debt collectors work, how the debt collectors sell to another debt collector. Um, and then also like obviously forgiveness.

Make it simple. What, what debt have you bought? What, how are you buying debt? What debt are you buying? How are you buying it? What are you doing with it?

Yeah, yeah. I'm, I have not actually purchased the debt yet, right? I am basically exploring right now. I just put some feelers out because that's the other thing, the debt market.

Who did you reach out to, to see if you can acquire some debt?

See, that's the interesting part. That's about to, was about to bring It's so shadowy that like there's not like a website that's like, we buy all the debt and then sell the debt and all that kind of stuff. There's nothing. So I have a buddy, um, I think he's, I don't know if he's cool with me saying his name, but he used to, he runs a really cool subscription conference now, but he used to do this and I was asking him, he was on like the board of one of these debt agent, like, uh, associations, like a business association. And I was like, hey man, isn't it scammy? And he was explaining to me that like in that market, there's like 20% of the market that's like very bad. Like those are the ones you hear all the stories about threatening people. The other part of the market, like he was in this, he was like, you just call people and be like, hey, like, what can you do? Right? Because he bought it for pennies on the dollar. So he's like, give me 30%. Great. Like he made money, they get it done, all that.

And this is like someone who owns that market. This is like someone who owes $2,000 because they got an X-ray or took an ambulance or— yeah, I don't know, whatever else you have credit card debt for.

Right? Yeah. And the other thing is the reason, the reason this is interesting, and this is like to kind of speak a little bit more like how I'm thinking is like, I don't want to build a Quilt company, although it would be fascinating. Don't get me wrong. Like I, the stuff Palmer Luckey is doing in defense, I'm, I'm all about it. The stuff that like, uh, Aaron Swartz did, uh, before his passing, like in terms of opening up, uh, databases that were, that were behind, um, gateways, but supposed to be free and making them free. Like that's the type of stuff I want to do. And like, like, if you look at debt, money in politics, and defense, those are three giant areas where like, there's huge things holding us back. Um, cost-plus pricing in defense is holding us back. Palmer's working on it. Debt, there's just so much debt. Um, most of it's student, or not most of it, but a lot of it's student debt. And so like, there's something interesting there of like, how can you make money, but also like, not be a jerk, right? And also like, you know, take that burden off people's plates. And then politics, money in politics, there's something there because I don't think we're just going to magically have of, you know, people wake up and be like, let's vote against having this much money in politics. So like, what's a world look like where you accelerate the money in politics and hopefully break some of the logjams and kind of go from there. So that's, that's, those are the 3 things I really think about, um, in terms of like post-Paddle life, if that makes sense.

And, uh, Sam, you want to do anything on those? Otherwise there's one other.

Yeah. Well, before we, I want to get to this last one. This is interesting, but I do want to do a quick, I have a quick question, which is. You, you're 32, right? 33? How old are you?

Uh, yeah, 30, 33. Yeah, I turn 34 in a couple months.

So you're 33, 34. You just made a huge sum of money. Have you done the math to when you become a billionaire? Uh, I'm sure you have. And, uh, how does it feel to have such a huge sum at such a young age? I mean, that's pretty wild, right?

When you were younger, were you kind of like highly competitive at anything? Or like, you know, you between ages, I don't know, 12 to 18, did— if you look back now, if you were like a, a researcher just getting to observe you behind the glass panel, would you have seen anything in the way you behaved that would lead you to think, oh, this guy is going to have like a really interesting career in life? Or would you have looked like an, you know, an average teenager at that time?

Um, yeah, so I had a not— I don't know how Sam would look at this. I had like a Midwest childhood, let's say, a bad Midwest childhood, which is like the things that happened to me like would clearly be abuse today, but maybe back then like they were like okay. And so, um, so there was that. And I think that like that makes me an incredibly insecure human being. Like I'm incredibly insecure about like most things, but What I kind of learned, and I don't know if this was trial and error, but I had some good like mentors in life, is like instead of like taking that and go become, you know, a deadbeat, like channel it, right? Like use that anxiety, like, and channel it. The one thing in the answer to your question, um, fun fact, I am a national champion debater. Um, so I, uh, I did speech and forensics, um, in, in high school.

Should I make the joke, John? Yeah, John, or do you want to?

Would you consider yourself a master?

12-year-olds, 12-year-olds. I love it. Yeah. So I, I did, uh, by the way, so this is the thing, this segment, I don't know if you heard this.

We did this segment on here. I said, I've observed these 3 patterns. People who are amazing at debate go on to do amazing in business. People who are amazing gamers can go on to do amazing. Um, and I think poker was maybe my other one, but those 3 are like, not, you wouldn't associate that with success in the business world, but they have like this. I just keep seeing it over and over and over again.

Well, so you know what it is. So I did, um, so I like, I was doing football and like wrestling and all that stuff. I had to have foot surgeries for whatever, some reason. And basically I was like, oh, I can't, I can't do wrestling that season. So I went and started doing what's called forensics when you're in high school. And then I was like, oh, you can get scholarships. So I went to the school I went to on scholarship to do this. And it was one of the best schools in the country for it. It's Bradley University, like lovely school, but like as the Northwestern kids would make fun of us in Illinois, like you get a public school education at a private school price, basically, unless you're on scholarship, that type of a thing. And if you think about it, so what I was doing is, at least in college, for 40 hours a week, 4 years, I was synthesizing information and structuring arguments and getting to root cause, right? Which are these things that we always talk about. I never wanted to go into business. I, my dad still thinks I should be a doctor. I was going to go into law, but you know, more people were graduating, you know, in law school than actual legal jobs when I graduated. So long story short, it was one of those things where it was like, you know, I can synthesize information really quickly. Right. And that's like, I talk a little faster and all this other stuff. And so I think that's, that's helped me a lot because literally our marketing strategy in the early days was I just write blog posts and I can write them pretty quickly and they're relatively deep. They're not all gems, but you know, it's one of those things that, that definitely helped me and I use it. I probably use it every day.

You wanna go to the last one, Sean? This is the most interesting one.

You're doing, you're also doing a hostile takeover of a publicly traded person. So I saw this, is this guy, I don't know how you say it. I've only heard background. K Mikey M is his like handle.

And so there's this guy. Yeah.

Yeah. Tell the story. What, what, who's this guy? What did he do? And then what the heck are you doing?

Okay. So again, quickest path to learning. That's, I think that's really important for like entrepreneurs, executives in general. Mike Merrill, like 13 years ago, 2008, something like that, he became the first publicly traded person. So he sold shares in himself. He's— there's an interface. The website is a little buggy sometimes, but there's an interface. He sold shares, he gets the money, but then what he does is he gets to choose to put votes up. And then the people who bought shares vote their shares. And he doesn't do little stuff. Like he does little stuff like what color glasses should I get? So a lot of the things we probably don't want to make decisions on ourselves, which is really interesting Hack, but he also, what he'll do is he goes and he'll put, should I move in with my girlfriend? He puts that up for a vote. The debate is fascinating because some of them are his friends and his family. And then there's just randos in Connecticut being like, I've known Mike for like a long time through the project. I don't think this makes sense. He said this like 3 years ago, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's fascinating. So I knew about this, uh, girlfriend versus girlfriend.

What's the URL again? Say that, spell it out.

K-M-I-K-E-Y-M, K-M-I-K-E-Y-M.com. And, um, so I, I got a little money and I was like, I've, I don't know what it's like to like do a takeover of a company. Right. And this is when Elon Musk was like doing his stuff with Twitter. And so long story short, I was like, oh, this could be fascinating. One, because there's like, I don't know how people react when this stuff happens. And so he put an auction up for, um, additional shares. And this is what he does every so often when he needs some cash. He'll actually put an auction up and people can buy, presumably if it's a Dutch auction, under the share price. Right. And I did like—

by the way, do you get anything as a shareholder? There's no dividends. There's no like—

nothing like that. You can sell your shares. People buy like shares. So like I put my shares up and get money, like actually get cash.

Right. Dude, look at Sean. Go to the website. So he just says the things. So look, let me give you an example. It's called the Finger Holders contract gig. I guess Finger Holders is the name of the company, but the short— the TL;DR is, should I take a short-term gig contract coordinating the development of a community around the launch of an NFT project called Finger Holders?

Should he take a job? Yeah.

And then it goes the whole background of like, why I'm interested in this, why do I want to do this, what are the contract details, how much they're going to pay me, what's the proposal. And then there's 300, I think there's like a crazy amount of comments that says like, pros, working on a project sounds fun. Cons, NFTs are divisive and may alienate some of your shareholders. And there's like incredibly thoughtful discussion on why he totally— or should—

How much did you pay for the 2,000 shares? Uh, it was like $13,000.

And so then his market cap is only like, uh, it's, it's not, it's It's 130,000 where everyone gets in. Yeah. So right now he's got, I think, 16,000 shares or something that are, have been sold and the share price I haven't checked today, but there's a share price. It goes up and down based on like purchases and stuff, but he's worth it.

It's in the 6-figure range.

I think ballpark. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. So if you owned all the shares, theoretically, that's the value. But then the other thing is the community makes it interesting. So I go speak at the shareholder conference and I go, hey, and it's on YouTube. And I say, listen. I'm doing a hostile takeover of Mike. Here's why. Like, I think the project's undervalued. You guys voted to like make him not go on social media. Like, that doesn't make sense. Like, in order to get more people, he has to like do this, blah, blah, blah. I think. And then all the questions are like, well, what about like, is this good for Mike? Because there's a lot of his friends, like his actual in-person friends. And I was like, listen, I think what's good for, what's good for the share price is good for Mike and vice versa. And I talk about it like I talk about it. It's like a half hour interview I did. And then everyone, and then there's all these people, especially the people who don't know him, who are like, I think Patrick, I think the takeover is good for the project. I think it's this.

You only need to go through lulls, 500 to 1,000 more shares roughly to control the vote, you thought?

Uh, no, no, I already, I already had— I got 1,930 out of the auction, right? Right.

But you said each vote has about 5,000 and you just need—

yeah, you just need 51. It's never, it's never one-sided. It's never one-sided.

So like, if, if it's 2,500, you already can swing whatever vote.

And, and what's funny is I'm texting him and I'm like, hey man, just so you know, here are my intentions. Like, it's like a little, it's a little takeover, right?

That, that's cool. That's like, that's some insider trading though. No.

Uh, no, I didn't, I didn't do anything.

It's like, where are you? Elon goes and talks to Parag and he's like, hey, look, I'm doing this and here's what I want to do with Twitter. And also there's kind of nothing you could do about it, but I'm going to inform you because that just seems like, you know, the standard, the right thing to do.

Yeah. What does, uh, what is, what obligation does this guy have to follow what you say? Like, we know what if he just says, ah, fuck off, I'm done with this project.

And I mean, he could shut the project down. I don't know. Like, so first, before I started doing this, I started tweeting to him about what happens if there was a hostile takeover. Elon Musk seems interesting, right? Cause I wanted to see like, is this like, it's, is this going to be a good investment? Probably not. But like, I'm learning. I can't tell you how much I'm learning. Learning, right? Because all of a sudden it's like, oh, interesting shareholder meeting, they responded to this. And these aren't like the investors that I want to be working with for the rest of my life, but it's really fascinating. Um, he has never, to my knowledge, in 13 years gone against what a vote has said.

But he could.

It's all in good faith. He could. I mean, there's no— yeah, there's no like, oh my God, I can sue him or anything.

Also, he gets to choose what he puts up for vote. So if he's like, yeah, you know, I just want to move in with my girlfriend, I don't have to put it up for a vote.

But there has been some talk of you get to burn some of your shares in order to put a vote up for a vote, which is fascinating. It's, he's been covered by Wired, Atlantic, all kinds of stuff. It's, it was in a lull and I'm injecting some excitement into it again. And yeah, I'm looking at the price chart.

So it looks like it's, it started 2008. It opened at $1.99, it looks like. And it basically was like between $1 and $3. Then it kind of peaked in 2013. Maybe he got some press or something like that. It was $13. $13.50, something like that. And then for the last 6 years, it's basically been flat at roughly $4 or $5. Time for a takeover. And, and now it's $6.85 right now.

And so, um, it was about $5 when I started the takeover.

This is far more interesting to be as small as it is, right? I mean, to be as cool, to be as unknown of a project, it feels, it's, it feels unknown to be as unknown of a project as it is. It's been around since 2008.

It's pretty undercovered, right? Well, so in the beginning he got a lot— he was like on the Today Show. He was on all kinds of stuff. And then he did— because what was interesting is he's had some epics with it. Like a project was, I think it was called the Girlfriend Project, and it was literally about his relationship. His girlfriend buys shares. His ex-girlfriend is still a shareholder, I'm pretty sure. His current— I don't know if it's his wife or not— is like a share. Like, and that was the end of the shareholders meeting, was his ex-girlfriend and his current girlfriend or wife having a conversation. It was the most interesting, like, half hour I have ever seen in my life because they were just, and they're friendly. I think there might be friends, but just them talking about Mike. And it's kind of beautiful because you have all these people who, like, are there just from a money perspective or just a fascination perspective in my case, or from a love perspective, like, supporting this guy and, like, trying to make the right decisions for him. So I think it's brilliant. Like, as soon as I announced this on Twitter, we got some inbound from, like, some like, I don't think they're, they're documentarians or something like that. Like, I don't know if it'll come with anything, but it's like, it's a fascinating story that I think deserves more, more, more give. So I'm glad you asked about it. Cause you guys have a pretty medium audience. So it's great.

There's, there's even like a, what happens when I die? Like unlike a company, I will die. So what happens to my shares after I die? There's like, this is pretty crazy. I mean, it kind of makes no sense in that, like, yeah, there's, there's, yeah, it's completely nonsensical. Yeah.

But bro, you bought $150,000 $1,000 image of a monkey. So like, this is, you know, like, did you buy an ape?

Punk.

You got a punk. Oh, you're a punk guy. This is from Ape Fest.

So this is my nice, this is my fun little— yeah, it was a 50, it was a coin flip to, uh, use the Milk Road portfolio. Either we buy up, uh, an ape or a punk. And they were the same price on that day. And we knew that the, the purchase was gonna have to happen. The Bored Ape was about to buy the punks. And so it was like, what do we, Which asset should we buy knowing this news is about to break or has just broken or something? And we flipped Punk and then Apes went through the roof.

It pumps up and flat or down. Everything's down now too. It's interesting. Very interesting.

Dude, check this out. So if you go to Mike's blog, so there's news.kmikeym.com where he like, it's ran like a shareholder company. I mean, like a, like the investor relations page of a publicly traded company. And he has a list of all of his principles. And on health, it says like, as of October 23rd, 2019, I'm in favor of experimenting with psychedelics. And you click psychedelics and there's a like notes from a board meeting about like who voted and why they voted and what is the reason and what the reasoning is and how they are or are not going to start doing psychedelics. Then in 2016, I will not take a psyllium pills. I don't know what that is. Um, and it's like talks about why he wanted to take them and everyone's voting and he has like an update on that. And then like entertainment, um, shareholders will have direct control over my television, television watching. I will— and then 2019, I will watch Spider-Man. Um, subscriptions, yeah, yeah, I will not subscribe to Spotify.

Uh, yeah, some of these are like stupid, like the glasses one, it says that 34 users voted with 18 1,800 shares. So 34 people participated in that vote for the glasses. I guess that was not a very, uh, not a very big one. Let's see this.

And if I believe he's put— I haven't— I'm pretty sure people like who he's voting for, like, president up, like he's done stuff like that as well, which gets really fascinating.

Yeah, but that's just as meaningless as the glasses thing.

Interesting. He is in, uh, I believe he's in Oregon, so I'm not sure. I mean, he's in a state that is, is going to vote one way or the other anyway. Wow. Yeah.

2020, I will endorse Bernie Sanders for president.

Okay. Amazing. Listen, man, this was— this was fun. I'm glad you came on and— Yeah, good times. I think you brought some good stuff. But, Sam, what do you think?

Dude, can you send me— send me the research thing? That was the most fascinating thing. That was really interesting.

I will. And I'll send you some redacted— I'll send you the structure., and you can fill it out.

Don't redact it. No, no one will. I won't share it with any of these losers. It'll just be for me.

Don't redact it. Okay. Let me think about it. I met, again, I have a boss. I'm on a board. I gotta be careful now. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, are you guys, I'll send you something.

And Paddle isn't public now, but it will be, right?

Uh, I mean, we're, we're not going next year, a number of years probably before anything like that happens, but, um, great.

You know, you know, there's no laws.

I'll hook you up. I'll hook you up with something. Don't worry.

Don't worry. This was awesome. I, I, I typically hate having— not hate, I say no to everyone. Sean brought you in.

Yeah, we kind of hate having guests, but then we have them anyways. We're not fully sure why we do it, but we do it. In the moment, it seems like a good idea. Halfway through the episode, it's like, I kind of wish I was just bullshitting with Sam instead of doing this conversation.

But I'm always happy when we do it because I don't have to prepare. But you are one of the few.

One out of every four is awesome. And I'll just hope that everybody thinks they're that one out of four. You actually were that one out of four.

So good for you. What makes a good guest for is not a good guess, just for the audience to hear.

If they come, they listen to the pod. If they already know the vibe, if they know the, the, what's cool, that tends to work really well, I think.

What do you think, Sam? I agree. And most people, most people aren't like Sean and I in that they don't do this for a living. And so they need to come prepared with the things. And even us, we come with some, we do research. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't, but there's at least bullet points. So it's like, all right, next. And you did a good job of saying next. A lot of people, um, if you, I don't know if you paid attention, but Sean very purposely in the beginning, he's like, I don't really care about the company and your background. Let's just move on to the other stuff. And, uh, we actually, we, we, we tend to do that a lot. And so that was cool.

Um, and so that makes me guess— it's also the least interesting except for Michael Saylor. That episode was like, that episode was money cuz he was just so weird. Like it was just like, what's gonna happen guys? Like what's gonna happen the next minute? That was, that was an interesting one.

Did you hear when he out alpha'd me? I was like, yeah, I like fast cars. He goes, I don't like fast cars, but I have a really fast jet.

That's, well, no, the quote, the quote I tell everyone from that episode is, yeah, I don't really like things that you can't in normal use go at their max speed. Like, and that's what he was referring with cars. Like it was like boats and jets. I'm allowed to go at max speed, you know, cars, not really.

So just a thought though, who even has that thought about like, am I utilizing this machine? To its fullest velocity.

A guy who puts most of his balance sheet into Bitcoin. That's, that's who has that thought, which is great. I love that those people exist.

Did Sean— I, did you see my Instagram or Twitter or something I did? I, uh, this weekend I was in the Hamptons. Uh, that's not a humble brag. It was my in-laws' house. So I had nothing to do with it, but, and that's a Midwest thing.

He just did a Midwest thing.

Just so you know, the very Midwest.

Oh no, I have a, yeah, I have an Equinox member, but like they're going to do my laundry.

So it's like worth it. It was on sale.

Like I'm not a big time guy. I'm not a big time guy. Yeah.

It was my in-law's house, and I went out there and I drove— we went to the beach for a bonfire on the 4th, and we drove by this area that was just packed. It was like a— it's like a small one-lane road, and it was packed full of cars, but they were fancy cars. And in front of me was a Bugatti, and it was a special Bugatti. I looked it up, it was like a $5 million Bugatti. And I was like, what the fuck is going on here? And so I get to the parking lot to park my car, and it was full of black limousines, but not limousines, like the Escalades, full of them. And then in the corner one of the limos had their trunk open and literally, I'm not exaggerating, I have video of it, 100 limousine drivers were just hanging out drinking Coke, eating chips, and I was like, what the fuck is going on here? And they go, it's Michael Rubin's party. Uh, Michael Rubin has a famous white party. And I made a joke, I was like, he only lets whites in? Which they didn't, they didn't like. They kill with the drivers? No. Yeah, yeah, I was like, you know, like, oh, whites only, really? That's weird, maybe I should go. Um, I don't know, it was a bad joke. And anyway, I go, Ruben? And they go, yeah, it's Ruben. He, um, he's having this party. It's famous. He goes, I drove this one guy. Was like, yeah, we drove Drake. And so that guy was like, yeah, Jay-Z's there. And I was like, wait, really? And I looked it up on Instagram and it was this crazy party. And I was like, uh, well, tell me everything. He goes, you know, I drove this guy and he's broke. One guy goes, uh, I drove Tyrese. Remember Tyrese from Fast and Furious? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, I drove that guy. And the driver goes, I'm richer than he is. That guy's broker than a joke. I got more money than that guy. And I was like, wait, what? Really? And he like kept dishing. He kept telling me all this. And he goes, the guys who are really rich, they typically drive themselves because they got that Bugatti and they want to show it off. But it was really fascinating. I was just hanging with these— I, we hung with them for like half an hour just asking them all rumors and gossip and they knew it all.

Dude, that's amazing. I— after you sent that, you sent me that video, and then I went on Instagram and I saw like 6 NBA players were posting stories from the party. So it was like James Harden's at the party, and then whoever, you know, like these other guys were, you know, Joel Embiid's at the party, and it's the all-white party where everybody's, uh, everybody's, um, like it was just rappers and athletes it seemed like, which is—

which is exactly— it was, it was so cool. And like, he's got like this private beach area, and then we were like like 100 yards down the beach and right next to the parking lot, and it was just packed. And we— there's Bugattis, there's all these crazy cars. It was pretty—

it was— I just imagined you in the, in the party with like, you know that meme where it's the guy at the party yelling into the girl's ear and you're just like, it's a newsletter, we send it daily, it's a marketing automation company. Technically I'm there, but like, you know, to force a snapshot of your customers. In one CRM. No, I said mansion Austin.

My first million. I said million. Yeah, no, no, no, with an M.

You use Spotify? We're on there. We got video access on there.

No, we mostly talk about 12-year-old stuff, but it's pretty cool.

Sean? No, he's not here. He doesn't leave his house.

Sometimes he has long hair, sometimes he has short hair. I don't know.

No, I'm not Dad, my in-laws live here. That's what my in-laws live over there.

No, my dad-in-law is jacked more than I am. It's kind of uncomfortable sometimes.

That's fucked up. That bit will not get old for a while. That's awesome. I guess we should— we got to end there, right? Yeah. Thanks for coming, dude.