Speaker 1 (04:53):

And that's kind of where it started, but no I've, uh, and that's what, that's what guy,

Speaker 2 (05:03):

No, I think the, the main thing is both Todd and Russell are, are absolutely amazing at getting things up and running. They're the genius and the brains behind what we have, but not every one of them, like the operations side of it. And so I've been, I've been doing this role now for the last year, year and a half, and we're not really big on titles. And it came up to where people like, you guys really got to start having titles here more often. And I'm like, all right. So at that point is where we finally made it official as far as CEO. And so I guess if you had to actually put a date on it, it was last year sometime, and that's how it's going.

Speaker 1 (05:37):

Well, I will I'll, I'll give you more credit than that, man. I know a ton of people. I know a ton of people that have been friends with founders and entrepreneurs for 10, 15 years, and they still don't end up as CEO. So kudos to you. Congrats on that. So that's super big deal and I'm excited to have you on the show. So you obviously have a massive, massive reach over at ClickFunnels. You know, what's working, what's not working, let's get into it, man. I want to, I want to hear about this rich ad. What, what are some of the, some of the themes that the audience can take away from really on the, on the funnel side? [inaudible], it's a one-two punch combo here. Uh, but what do you see in the ClickFunnels world? That's, uh, this making people rich today?

Speaker 2 (06:24):

You know, it's, it's really fascinating. I think some of the main things that as we start paying attention to, just to the, to the ads and things that your prior to, you know, four or five years ago, we really didn't have a lot of opportunity to run Facebook ads and do things. And most of the times back then it was more PPC, Google plays, SEL things. Um, I think the main thing we're seeing right now is the ability for people, again, Russell just released traffic secrets book. And in there talks a lot about understanding that you can't have just one platform that you're 100% relying on. And so I think the one thing I'm starting to see is, uh, everyone really just gravitated to Facebook because it was the place to go. It was easy. You can get in, you just drill down and get a ton of demographic information.

Speaker 2 (07:07):

You can be super targeted, super focused. And just like we used to have the Google snaps where literally wipe out a business overnight, we're starting to see some of that as far as the Facebook snaps. Uh, we actually referred to it as if you go back to the vendors idea as far as Janos or, uh, it's basically the Zuckerberg snaps that's really is the biggest thing is we're just afraid that if you've got a business that is 100% reliant, just on one traffic source, you literally can die overnight. And I think the main thing I'm starting to see as people are, are understanding that and are going okay, I've got to have, I have to be able to have ads and more than just one place.

Speaker 1 (07:46):

[inaudible] where do you see, where do you see the second place, you know, really, really popping up for a lot of people in your world right now,

Speaker 2 (07:53):

Uh, depending on the platform that they're on or depending on their audience, we actually are seeing a lot of people starting to gravitate back to Google. Google is becoming a little more, uh, easier to play with and they used to be, um, obviously Instagram and Facebook is the same. Uh, we're starting to see other people, uh, starting to explore ads on podcasts. Uh, we've dropped a couple of those and again, depends on your audience. And I think the key to, to ads is you really have to identify who has your audience and then go wherever they're at.

Speaker 1 (08:23):

Mm yeah. You know, I I'm, speaking of your guys', uh, traffic secrets book campaign, I actually, um, brought, I mentioned to you guys in a, in a narrative story from back in my lead pages days. And, uh, and really in this narrative of understanding payback period, right. ClickFunnels is really B2B SAS. Right. But like, you guys have totally flipped the script in that arena. And most B2B SAS companies, you know, they're doing free trials with payback periods of like six months, 12 months. Right. And, uh, and you guys have just absolutely done phenomenal with all these book funnels.

Speaker 2 (09:02):

And it's, it's amazing,

Speaker 1 (09:05):

Amazing to see, you know, the SAS company focus on profitability before people are even getting into before they're even selling their core offer. And this actually came up when a couple of VC related conversations when they asked us like why we had the rich dad, poor dad book and the agency growth book, which, you know, pale in comparison to the success you guys have had, but the principle remains the same. Do you

Speaker 2 (09:28):

See, do you see this,

Speaker 1 (09:30):

You know, really still playing out your guys' level of, of size and scale on the, on the, particularly on the paid traffic side, uh, because obviously it's, it's working on the affiliate side. Everybody's clicks.

Speaker 2 (09:43):

No, I appreciate that question. I, again, I have the opportunity to talking to growth equity, private equity people two or three times every single week, these days, it seems like lots of people knocking, but I think that the part that I, um, I guess a good reference actually is, I don't know if you know, Dan Martell, I think, you know, to, you know, Dan, so Dan Martell's got SAS Academy and, uh, we were talking to some of their other founders over there about how do you actually scale and grow a SAS company, uh, which is typically not something as you referenced most of the time. It's, uh, it's a payback time of anywhere from six to nine months for us, when you're bootstrapping, you don't have any money, you just don't have that option. And so you start figuring out what works and for us, for like John Parks, your roots, just an absolutely genius at ads and Facebook and traffic and everything else.

Speaker 2 (10:31):

We've really just given him the challenge of John. We need to, we really need a 30 day payback on those ads and that's pretty tough. So you actually get a free trial. What's a 14 day free trial with a credit card to get paid and make your money back in a month. And so, because of that, we've done, what's worked for us. And that is, uh, we're really big on a break. Even funnel is what we basically look at it is, are, and, you know, self-liquidating offers is what it comes down to. So for us, I can tell you right now it would cost us anywhere from 135 to $142 for a free trial. Well, I, and I get in we're converting those things that to pay to anywhere between 42 and 47%. And I'm just, I'm not going to, I mean, so really to get a person actually paid to make a $97, I then have to spend almost $300 and I've got a three month payback on it. I'm like, Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I can't afford to do that. And so

Speaker 1 (11:23):

Let's, let's explain why just to take that a little bit, a step further if you're spending, you know, 750 grand a month and you have a three month payback period, you're talking about $2.2 million, right. That, that VC money, right. That's why we continue to say 40% of venture capital is spent on paid advertising. Oh my God. Reason alone. Right. And if you want to have the growth record, right. If you want to grow by 300%, 400% next year, that 2.2 becomes 10 million your company in 12 months. Right. And so I don't think like everybody understands book funnels works, but I've been a part of pre click funnels days, you know, running marketing over at leap patients like having the same level of conversation and seeing 38 million in venture raised and, you know, a company that, you know, sold and like sold way early relative to the track record that that ClickFunnels has had. And I think that that full narrative doesn't often get highlighted enough of just a three-month payback period. And then how that ultimately comes back to like, yeah, rah, rah, like VCs are the enemy, but like, why, why, why is that the case? And so I, that's awesome to hear that, like, you guys still track that stuff and you're like, yeah, free trials sounds great from, from a funnel, you know, from a paid acquisition strategy. But, uh, you know, it always makes more sense with a book on the front end. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:54):

Well, it does for us, I remember one of the very first, uh, private equity guys I ever met with it was Russell. And I, we were literally having lunch with the guy here in Boise and this is like 2015. He was like, you know, we started going through our numbers. He's like, Oh my gosh, you know how I can give you this amount of money? And we started and we're like, well, wait a second. We actually don't do that. And he's like, what do you mean you don't do that? I said, no, no, we don't have that kind of money. He goes, Oh, well, I can provide that. And I'm like, I don't want your money because we actually like, we can grow a healers. And as we explained it to him, he's like, so what you're telling me is if that's actually true funnels, Lilly can change the game for any business.

Speaker 2 (13:34):

And they're like, yes, that's exactly right. And fortunately, we've been able to prove that. So to answer your question, um, yes, we definitely see a lot of the book funnels that they convert. I can tell you right now when we look at a book funnel, um, our most recent book funnels, traffic secrets. Yeah. We always look at trying to get our, our cash cost to acquire customer to equal or be equal or less than what our ever or average car value is. So cost to acquire customer on a book funnel right now it's about 17 to 20 bucks. Our average cart value on that is anywhere in the neighborhood of 52 to about 58, $60. And then you look at the book cost and the fulfillment, everything else toss another 20 bucks in there. We actually make money on, on actually on, on acquiring that customer. But the real key that we've noticed is yes, it takes a little bit longer to make that con that conversion from book to actual click funnels, right? But what we found is the indoctrination that takes place and the trust that exists because they've actually gone through and consume content makes the buyers so much better. And for us, anytime we're trying to sell something, I would much rather have a buyer lead than an often lead. Anytime this episode is

Speaker 1 (14:48):

You buy a funnel Dash's ad card, the charge card, exclusively

Speaker 4 (14:52):

For your digital ad spend. And if you're an advertiser spending tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands dollars a month on ads, and you're in e-commerce and you're looking for more capital or credit to scale, then you're probably familiar with solutions like Shopify capital, Brex, and clear bank. The problem with these solutions is the cost of capital is expensive. They take a percentage of your revenue, one of the beauties with ad card, when you combine it with one of our in network of our 5,000 in network agency partners, you have the opportunity to qualify for free ad capital funding where we'll load up your ad card with an additional $50,000 all the way up to a million dollars of additional capital to deploy on platforms like Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, and more. So if that's you, if you're an e-commerce spending a ton on ads and you're looking for

Speaker 1 (15:45):

Way to decrease the cost of capital checkout add card, we'll get back to the show. How do you guys track today? Like book buyer to click funnels, sign up? Is that just kind of a general metric across the board, or do you really track that all the way through, on the back end?

Speaker 2 (16:05):

Don't track it all. We're trying to, again, a huge shout out to Alex Becker and hieros, uh, we're using his platform right now and trying to tie a lot more of that in it's tough. It's a little difficult to do. We're trying to get a better job at doing that. Um, we're much better at just growing things than tracking things and it's, uh, it's one of the things we're really trying to learn a little bit better is how to actually track things. Fortunately for John, he does a ton of that. I know we've used wicked reports in the past. I know he's using ropes right now. And, uh, it's fortunately, maybe in three or four months, I'll have a better answer for you. I can't track, I would love to say that for every three books we sell, we get a click funnels user that pays us for four months. I,

Speaker 1 (16:45):

I don't have that yet. So that was all good. Get off the show, Dave, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I mean, that was pretty much where we set out. Like, so my journey at FunnelDash was really to be able to track that, right. Cause like I thought the answer was, if I knew my payback period, you know, then I would be confident in that number and then I would just go win more capital over on budget and then I would be able to scale. And it turns out the end of that analytics rainbow that everybody's still chasing, uh, in most times, um, I, it, that clarity didn't really end up changing the overall investment in the channel or the growth. I think it gave like some level of satisfaction or confidence, but most of the time that led to a financial conversation. Right. Of, okay, now that we know this were great, we have a payback period of 90 days, I'm still spending a hundred a month.

Speaker 1 (17:49):

I still have 300 grand of carry, you know, in B2B, SAS or subscription, where am I going to go get the, the 900,000 of operating capital. Right. And that is pretty much the journey of kind of starting from, you know, like a click funnels, trying to solve that problem through a better funnel. And I think that you guys are doing a phenomenal job of like helping people play that, that book and the journey of kind of where I've come to is like, wow, finance can actually be another lever here. And it doesn't venture capital. Like doesn't have to be the only alternative to like you either get a funnel, a break even, or you have to go VC.

Speaker 1 (18:35):

I think it would where we want to go with ad capital. That ad card is really being able to, to bridge that gap through, you know, financial products for advertisers. So, um, I appreciate the, the, the narrative of the conversation of seeing how you guys have really evolved that. And it's been such a, a part of, um, our story as well in terms of just like, how do you acquire customers at breakeven and it'll solve like so many, so many, so many problems it does, but that's cool. What's so, you know, uh, ever everybody, uh, has some failures though, Dave and I want to enter there. I want to hear about something that is just totally blanked. Cause everybody just thinks, you know, you guys are untouchable over at ClickFunnels and everything you do turns to gold, which is for the most part. True. I want to hear some things that you guys have done that have totally bobbed and break down this poor ad get paid for us.

Speaker 2 (19:37):

No, the only thing is we just go really fast. So, uh, it covers up a lot of mistakes. That's the main thing. We can make a lot of mistakes super fast and hopefully we learn from them. Um, I think one of the things, uh, you know, it's interesting, we I've cut my teeth in direct response marketing for so many years. That's again, Dan Kennedy back in the early two thousands and that's just really where it came from. And so for me, uh, when we were doing, we just recently did the traffic secrets book launch got rustled to the New York times bestseller list, super excited for all that success, but it was probably one of the most frustrating campaigns I've ever been involved in. And I feel so sorry for John Parks, who I'm like John, I'm sorry, I'm totally blown your ad budget and it's completely failing.

Speaker 2 (20:18):

And I can't, I just continue to apologize to him because I'm like, this is what we're told we need to do. And so we ended up, normally everything is tracked and it's just how we're, we're accustomed to tracking things. And I remember working with an outside agency, um, we've used decision and some others to try to try to get us a much more broad appeal and, you know, really to get more mainstream for the book. Uh, it was our biggest concern. Yeah. People inside of click funnels, community and others have heard about it, but how do we go more mainstream so that we could actually get recognized by the New York times and that, uh, people go, Oh yeah, everybody's talking about it. And so we ended up using a decision that some of their things, and I remember there, they were saying, Oh my gosh, you won't believe the type of conversions we get.

Speaker 2 (21:05):

We're going to be on all these TV shows. We've got these radio shows, we've got these huge, huge networks of where we're posting things. And they were like, I just, all I care is you can track this back to book sales and like, um, we can't, I'm like, I just, I need to be able to track this and I know we can track it back to maybe video views. I'm like, okay, great. So we went ahead and did that. And I wish I had the actual numbers here in front as far as how much we spent, but it was somewhere in the neighbor for this one, one week with somewhere in the neighborhood of know, 30 to $50,000 or some stupid thing. And in doing that, uh, so I just got there. I was trying to find the report a few months ago. So, uh, total audience views was 785,000,001 of our 60,031 views or potential audience views, I guess what they were calling that. And then it hit the 14,965 sites. And out of all that we got 23 video views

Speaker 1 (22:04):

Contract.

Speaker 2 (22:07):

Honestly, I think we would have been better lit up, just walk down the street and say, you know, what can I just pay you $8,000 to buy this book? It would have been a much better, better opportunity because from those video views, I don't have any of you in the converged if we haven't sold any books out of that. But, uh, so we spent nearly $50,000 and I could have literally thrown a party in,

Speaker 1 (22:29):

I know, seriously, what was the, was it just a PR play or like, what was the actual, was it ads trying to amplify things?

Speaker 2 (22:37):

It was like, Oh, it was PR it was a PR play with ads and all of their ads. We couldn't, we wanted to write the copy and they're like, and so we did again, more direct response Mark, and they're like, no, no, no, no, that'll never go, it won't fly in the magazines. We're putting this into it. There's no, no way. And by the time we saw it, it was so diluted. It's like, I wouldn't even have stopped. There was no re I, I mean, if I was looking at the actual ad, I would have just glanced over and gone to the next thing. Cause it, it was just, it was just a total brand new play that sucked and just burn a ton of money.

Speaker 1 (23:10):

Branding, branding plays are really tough. You know, when you come out of the stock of, you know, bootstrapped and breakeven and director, it just doesn't sit well with, you know, you know, I, uh, so we were talking recently, um, with the, uh, old co-founder of capital one and, uh, it was a phenomenal story, but the, basically they, they kind of came out with the whole, like what's in your wallet. And basically Samuel Jackson was like the complete opposite of what you're talking about. He's like, yeah. So like, you know, we, we went public and then we just realized that to have a household brand, it was going to cost 120 grand to, or sorry, 120 million, 20 grand. He's like 120 million a year for 10 years. And, uh, and then we should just kind of own the space and I'm like, Oh, that's how you guys think. Like at that level, like, um,

Speaker 2 (24:03):

I'm just not aware if I, if I thought $1.2 billion over the next 10 years, I would not have come up with that plan at all.

Speaker 1 (24:11):

Right. Like, it's just like, Oh my gosh, it blew my mind. And, uh, here I was trying to talk to him about book funnels and he was like, what?

Speaker 2 (24:24):

But you probably see that in the ads. I mean, sometimes when you have that kind of amount of money, you can't spend that all on Facebook. You're not going to spend that. I mean, you just can't spend that kind of stuff. So I guess you have to do different things. Well,

Speaker 1 (24:37):

So here's how I want to talk about, this is a side that I don't think it's talked about enough, and this is really the whole purpose of the rich dad. Poor ed podcast is to really help the industry move away from marketer, math, Stompernet math, as you would say, Dave, uh, wherever everyone's rounding up to the nearest million, 10 million and using bookings number and purchase. And I think really we've all been guilty of it, but really I want to help the on the market get educated on, you know, financial principles of how to think about investing into, um, campaigns. How do you think about it? Like cutting your losses, limiting your losses on some of those things versus like riding them out and now with your, with your big fancy title, like you're making like a ton, you're making like a ton of, you know, you're basically like a, high-level like chief investment officer of like Ricoh, CEO does allocation of capital and resources and initiatives. What are some of the principles that, you know, as you're thinking about where to invest, um, you know, that that's also applicable to, uh, you know, us, us, we ons down here, um, in the neural businesses that, that, that could be applied across, across the board.

Speaker 2 (25:55):

I, you know, I think some of the main things that we take a look at right now, um, for us, when we're looking at investing, there's an investment into tech, um, itself, uh, there's an investment obviously into the marketing and the growth side of it. And I think, I mean, they're totally different conversations. I'll try to focus more on just the marketing side of it. So for us right now, um, so beginning of the year we were spending just over a million, a million a month in ad spend, and I've never, I'm always, you'll never see me cutting ad dollars when times get tough. I think it's probably one of the biggest mistake that most companies do is they cut their marketing budgets or their ad budgets. And like that's the time when, when you want to double down. Uh, but one of things we did do, uh, right around early COVID days was, um, we looked at at really things we would classify as either, you know, break glass moments or full on emergency break moments.

Speaker 2 (26:57):

And I think in a business, those are some main things you've got to pay attention to is there are certain things that are kind of break glass type of things where we're like, ah, we better, you know, and again, break glass comes back to the, the idea here of you're in a fire. And basically you have to break the glass, pull the fire alarm and, and run out of the building. It's a huge fire drills type of deal versus the handbrake type of things where it's like, I'm just going to slow this down a little. And so for us, we started looking at it and one of the main things we challenged John with and he totally responded in that was which ones of our ads are really working versus those that they might work. And so for us, uh, we quickly went from just over a million dollar ad budget a month down to about 600,000 by finding the ads that actually they were more testing type of things.

Speaker 2 (27:44):

And hopefully, you know, longer term, they might, they might play out. But for us in that moment, it was a handbrake type of a situation where we're like, okay, uh, it's yeah, we'll say four in a grand, but more importantly, what we want to do is to reallocate that 400 grand, it wasn't just to save it. It was to actually reallocate it. And so we ended up breaking that down to 600,000 within about a two month window, but within a month, we're back up to seven 50. And the reason for that was John was able to say, okay, these are the ones that we're not, they're not generating the type of an ROI that we need right now. And again, every company's Roaz is different. And as far as how, how long of a time do you have we, you know, what your return on CAC is, is it a month? Is it two weeks? Is it three months? So for us, again, it was John we're looking at a, basically a 30 day return on CAC. And we wanted to make sure that, you know, there was, it wasn't just a return on cash, but that the customers were bringing in were actually converting. And that was one of the main metrics we started paying attention to is what's our, what's our conversion and our metric from, from those legions to actual ClickFunnels users.

Speaker 1 (28:51):

Uh, that's where I feel like a lot of people go into this space with kind of this like blindfolded rule of like, Oh yeah, everyone's cutting budget, but I'm not going to cut budget. But the secret killer of advertising, you know, like, I don't know if you guys saw this, like in March or April, but like the thing that is difficult for a lot of people that visibility is in their LTV dropping, right? Like the higher ticket stuff drops off. Your average order value starts shrinking. And next thing you know, like you're trying to hang on to that level of spend. Um, but I think you you're, you did the playbook perfectly. So I have just kudos to you, Dave, in the sense that like, let's, you know, let's pull back, cut the fat, but not cut, but reallocate. I think those are great differentiators there. And focusing on the right again, I'm like, you know, giving you a round of applause over here and the, if like what is actually driving LTV and what LTV is, is, uh, is, is

Speaker 2 (29:52):

I appreciate that. And thank you. I can tell you for us, one of the main things that it actually did was while we were looking at that metric, the other metric we really paid attention to was our churn and trying to reduce churn during the same period. So we were bringing in the right customers and we were fortunate enough to be able to get our churn down by almost 25%, uh, over the last four months. So it was a full court press.

Speaker 1 (30:20):

That's awesome, man. I love it. I love it. So tell everybody a little bit about, uh, you know, what, where are they going to hear about more about ClickFunnels? Is it, is it clickfunnels.com? Is that the,

Speaker 2 (30:31):

I think that's the best domain we have right now. So let's go with that one click funnels. Is it,

Speaker 1 (30:37):

Oh man. Dave, this is so exciting. I would love to hear just a little bit about what you're excited about next and what does this mean for you personally as, as like, you know, put it on the CEO hat, what are you excited about next, you know, over the next six to 12 months?

Speaker 2 (30:53):

Oh, for me, I think some of the real exciting things, uh, we're seeing right now is the impact of virtual. Uh, I, for us is we have our annual users conference funnel hacking live, we'll have 5,000 people at, uh, we ended up again during that whole handbrake scenario. One of the things we looked at was actually bringing on a virtual conference and in June we did one, uh, at, you know, 5,000 people registered for it. And, you know, we're seeing a lot of the summit challenges. We're seeing virtual conferences, um, that those are the types of things right now that are working and because they're going to people right where they're at and, and where they've got time. So for us, I think, um, I think you're gonna see a huge change in the way virtual is done. Uh, and meaning it'll be much more engaging.

Speaker 2 (31:39):

We've got a couple of things it's going to be, uh, potentially a hybrid of virtual that we're looking at doing. And I, I believe right now, um, you know, most people are becoming more accustomed to really how to use a webinar, how to use a zoom room, how to, how to actually engage it, where again, from a virtual standpoint. So we see a lot of opportunity in virtual. Uh, for us, we ended up selling our high-end coaching there. We're going to be doing the exact same thing at the end of September. Uh, and we'll probably end up doing one later in this year as well. So we'll end up having the normal impact that we would get to bring people into our high end coaching once a year. We're going to now have the opportunity to doing four times a year and seen a great opportunity there.

Speaker 2 (32:19):

I believe that, uh, the whole idea of either a summit or a challenge, again, a challenge funnels work extremely well these days because people are trying to get results. And so if there's something you can do in your business right now, that is a quick win for your customer, that you can get the net win within the next seven, 14, 21 or 28 30 days, whatever it is doing, a challenge is probably one of the best things, because you got a lot of skeptical buyers out there and what they want is they want to see a win. And that's the easiest and best way of building trust with someone is to take them through that kind of a challenge. And I've seen, I'm seeing challenges. In fact, I think, uh, I saw a summit recently. Uh, I think Teachable's copying some of the names things we did with mastermind, but on the summit side.

Speaker 2 (33:02):

But I think, again, back to the challenge thing, if there's a way that you can put a challenge into your business, great way of having your customers actually use your product, consume your product, use it, gain the trust. And then from there at the end of the challenge is the up-sale opportunity. We've been doing that for our one funnel away challenge over two years now. And our retention is almost 30% higher and those people go through one funnel away challenge versus those who don't. Um, this summit funnels again, uh, we did the summit funnel is how we launched mastermind.com last three weeks ago, with Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi. And the summons are fantastic because people get a ton of information from experts or people in that industry. And we're seeing that being done in so many different verticals these days that uh it's. So I think those are the three areas that we're super, super excited about right now.

Speaker 1 (33:53):

Yeah, no, that's cool, man. All right. So we've got a couple of quick rapid fire here, these, uh, so when it comes to your guys's card program, are you guys like it? And it's interesting because at the level you guys are at, like, do you care about points, cashback, credit, or just you guys don't even care at this level or credit cards. Yeah. Like, so we've talked about like, you got the points, that's like enthusiasts, and then you got other people that are just like, I don't even care. And then the other people's that are just like straight cashback and Honda curious.

Speaker 2 (34:28):

Yeah. So ours are all Amex points. Uh, and we have way too many. We used to use them for our travel expenses all the time. We'd fly most of our employees around on Amex points. And now we have so many points. Uh, we're probably gonna have to, since no one's traveling, I don't know what we're going to do with these millions of points. We've been accumulating.

Speaker 1 (34:48):

Well, it's a recovery pointless. Oh my gosh. Okay, cool. And then, uh, I think I know where you're going to land on this one, but bootstrapped debt, VC, where do you stand?

Speaker 2 (35:00):

Oh man, obviously on a startup bootstrapped all day long. No question about it. Um, and as I think the key right now, when I look at a company that's getting going is you need a proof of concept and there's no better proof of concept than a customer actually takes out their credit card and pays you something. And so for a company who's just, who thinks they're going to go out with an idea and have someone else invest in it. I'm totally against that. I think you need to go ahead and you need to bootstrap this year. I think part of the debt that comes into play is, I mean, I've, I've used credit cards many times on that. I think a debt actually, as you scale and grow a company starts to have a, especially a SAS company. It's one of the things we've looked at, uh, you actually, these days can typically get about three times your EBITDA on debt.

Speaker 2 (35:48):

And so it's something that I've definitely been looking at, uh, as far as away of if nothing else, I've just, I think it's important these days to have cash and have access to cash. I believe we're going into a time after the first of the year where you're gonna see a lot of businesses for sale and we definitely want to have cash on the sidelines to acquire those. And I would do that through get for sure. Um, and then as far as VC, I think, um, VC, I'm not a huge VC guy. I'm probably more the private equity, growth equity. Uh, you know, I see things that Kajabi has done recently, uh, with, after they had an investment, um, from spectrum. And I think that, uh, once you've got a proof of concept and you've scaled and you've grown and you built a company, there definitely comes a time where, um, it's probably worth taking a look at a PE growth equity and not necessarily from the investment, but more from the knowledge, the wisdom and things that, uh, companies of that size that they provide. So I think that's how to answer that.

Speaker 1 (36:49):

Yeah. That's a nice, like holistic this perspective, you know, it's just like, you're like Switzerland, you have the benefits and pros and cons of each. I love it, man.

Speaker 2 (37:00):

Well, I want to make sure I'm definitive on the whole bootstrap from a startup standpoint, I'll draw the line

Speaker 1 (37:05):

And I appreciate you so much and, uh, appreciate you. It kinda entertaining some of the, the, the less obvious and the less talked about parts of scaling a business and being so transparent. It's always a pleasure. Yeah, man. W w any, any last words, any last thoughts?

Speaker 2 (37:21):

Men? Absolutely just love seeing what you guys are doing and love seeing the growth you guys are having and, uh, congrats on all you're doing. I think it's awesome.

Speaker 1 (37:28):

Thanks, man. Thanks so much. Thanks so much for listening to another episode of the rich add more ed podcast. If you're like me and listen to podcasts on the go, go ahead and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and rich dad, poor dad.com/podcast. And if you absolutely love the show, go ahead and leave a review and a comment share with a friend. If you do take a copy screenshot of it, email me zach@funneldash.com. Show me you left a review. I'll give you a free copy of the rich add for ed book to learn more about the book, go to rich ed for a.com to leave a review that a rich ad for at.com/review. Thanks again.