The high schooler making $20M a year

0:00 By the way, w it's it's it's noon on a Monday. Where are you right now? I actually skipped class to do this podcast. Let's go. Sorry, Miss Bickerstaff. The boys are calling. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I'm putting my all in it like my day song on the road, less travel, never look at it. is making twenty million dollars as a high schooler. The high schooler that is making twenty million dollars a year in revenue. That is absurd.

0:34 Zach, welcome to the show, man. Uh Th I think this is actually the make everybody else feel bad. When you find out that like a seventeen to eight year old kids make a twenty million dollars in high school. I think a lot of people's initial reaction is wow, and another group is like, Oh man. Wha how much of that uh per year's profit, Zach? It's more than thirty percent.

0:54 All right. So very good. Falling. Um, we're gonna tell the story, fight figure out how it's going. Sam, do we need to address your uh your letterman jacket? Are you just in the high school mood? What's going on? Look, I found out that Zach was coming on. And I wanted to look the part, you know? Uh like what's it what's that movie, Sean? It's it like uh Never Been Kissed where they pretended that they're in high school. Or uh twenty one jump street. That's us. Look, this is actually the second group of high schoolers that we spoke with over the last two weeks. I'm Jonah Hill. All right. Zach, dude, uh welcome to the show. You've you've listened to the podcast before, I understand.

1:30 Yeah. Last two years. You would you say we maybe inspired you, slash were the sole cause of your success? Yeah, I'd say this is the sole reason for any of it. All right, so let's explain what uh start with what your app does, because it's like what app is making twenty million dollars for a high schooler. So let's explain what is your app?

1:49 Yes. And when did you start it? Let's start with that. So Cali Is the app. And It lets you take a picture of any meal.

1:58 and get back the calories, proteins, fats, and carbs. To track it. So think any other calorie tracking app, but then heavy AI. Fears involved. Does it work really well? That sounds like a really hard thing. Like, you know, uh y you were literally twelve years old or

2:14 maybe eight years old when Silicon Valley the T V show came out. And that was like the the joke was like Is this a hot dog or not? Now the app says a lot more. Uh you know Does that work really well, or is it like mostly right? So the scanning is about ninety percent accurate on average, which is really good when you look at the data for

2:36 FDA nutrition labels? They can be up to twenty percent inaccurate. So It's actually really good there. But we only recommend that you use it.

2:45 Well, if you're training for Mr. Olympia Let's say we don't recommend you use our AI calorie tracker. You could use the food database where you're on scale. Well, and the and the scale stuff, like I I you know, I'm I'm a weirdo. I've actually used my fitness pal for probably five years almost every day now. Yeah and Y what a lot of people don't realize is when they eyeball the calories, they're probably always off by like thirty or forty percent. Have you ever tried tracking your food, Sean?

3:09 Yeah, actually I think I came on this podcast a while back and I said this exact problem. I was like My Fitness Pal. It's so slow and annoying to type in every single thing and estimate the weight of it. So okay, I'm eating this. How many grams of it? I don't really know. I didn't weigh it out. And then You get this calorie thing, but also They have like five entries.

3:28 For whatever for for Chicken Breast even has one to pick. And I I remember even saying, I think on this podcast, like I wish Somebody just had it where you could just take a picture and computer vision would just know. And I can't wait for that to happen. And it sounds like it's kind of happened. So You

3:46 Started this how long ago? Ten months ago. Ten months. Okay, so ten months ago, you started this as a seventeen year old. And can you just give us a sense of the the growth? So in s in ten months, you started obviously with zero. First month roughly, where were you at?

4:03 So the first month It was a little bit slow to pick up. We probably ended up having done thirty thousand dollars in revenue. The second month. And that's when we were testing the waters.

4:14 Do people actually want a calorie tracking app? The hypothesis was that yeah, it would make people's lives easier. But we are Almost hitting this Interesting

4:24 Intersection. between people are very hardcore with tracking their calories, weighing their food on a scale. Needing the precision Decimal point accuracy. And then on the other end of people that don't track their calories at all.

4:37 So Our hypothesis was that there was a middle ground and That's where we threw the capital. To test. And it worked.

4:44 So then the next month Which was June. We did our first six figures. In a month. So Okay, amazing. Yeah, I mean Does he talk like every sixteen year old? You you that's you sounded like this, right, Sean?

5:03 He sounds more mature than us. So you you s you're saying we is there a uh is there a we who's the who is it a royal we like it's just kinda me and then Did you start this with somebody? Yes, I have three co founders. So to give you a breakdown, one is also in high school. He's our CTO.

5:21 Henry Langmack, a killer engineer. Child technology officer, yes. Go kick up. Blake Anderson. Who I think you guys actually did an episode about one of his apps, U Max. So he had found previously two other apps that had gotten a few million downloads. So we partnered up.

5:39 How'd you guys meet each other? In the same high school. How'd you find these other young builders? Yeah, so Henry and I met at a coding camp when we were both ten years old. He lived in Long Island initially, but then he moved to New Jersey.

5:52 So we stayed in touch. Blake. I actually found on Twitter. Gotcha. So you guys get together and who has the idea for the app? So it was a mix of Blake and myself.

6:05 I was tracking my calories. two years before starting Cali on my fitness bell. Or at least trying to. I was really skinny. Growing up.

6:14 And I wanted to put on weight, put on muscle. Honestly to impress girls in my high school. And It was super tedious, so I just gave up.

6:23 But I knew there had to be a better solution. The coder in me, the engineer in me knew that there must be an easier way. And the following two years All of these AI models started being released. And so after jumping into the app space And talking to Blake, who had a very similar path of these AI apps, we came to this idea.

6:42 And having a twenty million dollar a year business is a lot cooler, I bet, than having muscles when when when it comes to impressing girls. Which one works better? Honestly. I thought that Once the I always had this vision as a kid that I just need to be successful and all the girls will be on top of me all the time.

7:00 But nothing really changed. It's just dudes like us. Yeah, exactly. You don't honestly dude having big muscles, it's also just only dudes admiring you. So like we're actually still not sure what gets the women to like you. We're still trying to figure that out. Can we pull up You posted a video.

7:19 Back when you were How old was he in this video? That was three years ago, I think. Three years ago. So you're like what, fourteen, fifteen years old. The video is titled How I'm gonna make one million dollars in high school.

7:32 Pull this up because I want to get your reaction to this. It starts, by the way. It just starts with like great video. It's an amazing video. How many views does this video have? I can't see from it. Like eight thousand. Okay, seven thousand views. Three years ago you post this. You only have a thousand subscribers on YouTube. Uh I say only. I mean I just mean like This video.

7:50 is criminally underrated. At the time that's twenty subscribers when I posted this. So you could play you could play this, uh I don't know if the audio will come through. I'm going to make one million dollars before graduating high school and this YouTube channel is going to document the whole process. Here comes the best part. The mic.

8:09 the alignment of the text and then watch the microwave. What is one million dollars? It's enough cash to give you a luxury lifestyle. It makes life more enjoyable and stress free. It's every kid's dream.

8:23 Well Director's cut. Making one million dollars can be broken down. For example, if you're trying to make it in a here, It's just eighty thousand dollars a month.

8:34 Or twenty thousand dollars a week. Or Three thousand dollars a day. All I would need to do is sell thirty one hundred dollar items every single day. I'm really making it more simple than it's just a little bit more than I've been I love this video on so many levels it's insane.

8:50 I love that you're shooting your shot. You're calling your shot, I should say, right? This is Babe Bruce pointing at center field. Uh, so I love that you called your shot. I love that you were just having fun with it. Like you obviously weren't like super polished or like uh Yeah, going back and editing this to try to make it fancy. And I love that your your mindset. You were like, I wanna do this.

9:08 And then you sort of broke it down into smaller, more digestible chunks, right?'Cause you can't just make the million dollars in a second. You're like I need to make twenty thousand dollars a week, I need to make three thousand dollars a day. To do that I gotta sell thirty hundred dollar items. That seems achievable. What was uh

9:24 Can you just tell us wh wh why'd you decide to make that video? Well, from such a young age. And I'm not entirely sure. Where I could pinpoint this, but I've always wanted to Make massive impact on the world.

9:39 And usually That is parallel with having a lot of monetary success. And so my goal was always make a million dollars while in high school. Part of that was Because

9:50 I was really stressed out about school. My parents were super strict about my grades. And social studies was the one class I hated. I hated And I had to memorize flash cards.

10:02 And I vividly remember. One night. Where I was sitting there trying to memorize these flashcards about explorers that came to the Americas. And I was so frustrated. I broke down the problem and realized that

10:15 I'm studying to get a good grade, but why? Why do I want a good grade? It's get into a good college so that I could get a good job. And make money. And then Live a happy life.

10:26 So If I could skip all those steps, it would remove the stress that I'm feeling right now. If I can make money right now, so I wouldn't need to worry about a job, I wouldn't need to be stressed. And then I set out the goal to do so. You're you're you're not wrong. It's the intelligent man's procrastination. It's like ah, should I study these fifteen flashcards or make a million dollars. I think I'll make a million dollars instead. Are your parents entrepreneurs or are they just uh normal? The house was nice. That's a nice house.

10:52 So my parents have both been lawyers for their career, but then recently Two years ago, my dad Left his job. At a company. to start a financial consulting firm.

11:05 And I always worry people are going to think, Oh, because he started a business, that's where a all of this came from. But I was entrepreneurial and doing things long before he actually Left his company as start his Do you Do you like gem tips sometimes?

11:21 You should offer to Angel Invest in his coming. It'd be his mentor. All right, so you um Sam, uh any thoughts on that video before we move on from the video. It's it's the best. You know, w Sean, we brought this up. Um

11:36 maybe six months ago, uh on the on a podcast. I don't know if you remember that. And it was still like Is this kid like is this a joke? Like does he actually have it? And You know, how like real is this? And we brought that up saying this is amazing if it turns out to be true.

11:54 And it is true times twenty. Uh it's like absolutely amazing that you've been able to promote a lot. I think at that time it was like a like million dollar ARR app. Yeah. So I think you were probably at Something like eighty thousand dollars a month. Yeah. Now how much revenue are you doing?

12:11 Well, last month we just did Our first two million dollars. Soft. Wow. You're on a twenty four million dollar pace. And what will the tr the your first twelve months of full business, what will the revenue be? full business, the revenue would have exceeded ten million dollars from

12:30 Launching in May to coming this month. And uh is it entirely bootstrapped? Have you had any outside financing? All boots dropped. Wow, and how many employees? I'm just gonna like I I'm gonna I w I need to ask a bunch of questions so I understand all the info. Uh how many employees Totally.

12:46 Right now we have fifteen employees full time. Wow. Okay. That's amazing. Wow, that's a lot. So what um how did you get it to work? Okay, so you make an app. You're a coder. You started coding when you were seven years old or something like that. So I believe that you could make an app.

13:00 Yeah. Uh, let's just do a quick summary on making the app. So how did you actually build this like thing are you basically taking A bunch of AI tools and then sort of Uh uh

13:11 I'm not saying like you're just like a rapper, but like Customer Uh make custom building on for this use case of tracking calories in an app. Can you just quickly describe making the app and how long that took you? Totally. So a lot of people do look down on apps like Cal AI.

13:26 They'll summarize them as just an AI rapper. and think that we aren't providing any value. And it's true that we started as an AI rapper. And I think that

13:38 That's something all apps should do just like In ecom, it's very common to start as a drop shipper. And drop ship a product. And then once you find success. Actually

13:49 Manufacture yourself, store it yourself. create your own brand out of that. So it's just the proof of concept is the drop shipping. For us The proof of concept was Using

14:00 Chat GBT and other AI tools. Kind of as a rapper app. Frankly. But then after finding initial success. Which

14:08 So the first app The first version. Very, very bare bones. Very, very basic We you were able to take a picture of your food.

14:17 It would tell you the calories, it would have the daily breakdown. That was it. One feature. And then After we saw that people liked it.

14:25 We started adding more features. Yeah. using it to determine that they like it. We had So

14:34 This is important to note. We've grown all through influencer marketing. Which is how we've achieved our rapid growth. And so after working with Two influencers having them post on their stories talking about the app? That's when we had the initial feedback.

14:48 And saw that people actually like So let's go step by step. You make the app. App exists. Who are the first ten people that say it? Family and friends? Is that where you started with or Family and Friends. Although we just disregarded anything from them because I always think it's biased. Okay, smart. So you send it to them, they're kinda they say, Oh, it's great. You're like, All right, cool, but we don't really know.

15:07 N next. What'd you do what'd you do next? So next We started contacting influencers, fitness influencers on Instagram and TikTok. Did my DM get lost in the mail?

15:20 Why did I is this a d is this in my other it box? What's going on? Mm-hmm. And we'll need to get you on it. But we reached out and Most people just don't respond.

15:33 It took me Over two weeks to get my first response from an influence. Give us a sense of the pitch. What's the what's the DM say? So basically you always want to start At least from what we've tested, we've ran a lot of A B tests on this. Paid promo

15:48 Putting that first. The question mark? And then jumping into Our app lets you track calories just by taking a picture of your food. We think you would figure audience and would love to work for you with you.

16:00 If you're interested. Let us know and we get off on a quick call. And so this works really well because it optimizes for that preview message the influencer will see in their inbox. They only see the first line or two. The PID promo is what sticks out. And which influencer uh took what was your f wh who was it?

16:18 And where'd you where'd you get the money, right? So you're saying paid promo, but your kids you are you like Hey, Dad, can we get five grand of like seed money to to try this? Like where where'd the money come from to start? Sure. So Before building Cal AI, I actually built an unblocked gaming website, my freshman year of high school. This website lets students play games in class.

16:37 While their teacher was teaching. Bypassing the website blocking protocols. And I grew that to five million users through TikTok. It was generating money. Bye.

16:49 Putting ads on the site. And then I sold it. So that's where most of the money came in that we put into this. By the way, Sam that Th that's now the third or fourth person that's come on this podcast. Who has that same origin story of

17:00 I was in school. They blocked games on our school I'm guessing you guys had like Chromebooks or something like that. You know, very uh very oddly, Sean, it was Val, my friend Val, who came on and said his his his son was doing that now. Well they went to the same high school. Oh really? Yeah. Said Balke was said that that was his origin story too, was he he wanted to find a way to play games while at school and then Because of that learned. all these different parts of coding and technology in order to make that happen. And that was the first taste of money. Um But but Jess Ma same thing with gaming servers at school.

17:33 So you had this You you figured out, all right, we have these school laptops, people want to play games, they're blocked. How'd you get around the block and uh and what was this thing called? The website was called Totally Science. Dot C O

17:46 And that's how it got categorized as educational. That was the main thing. But we also had all these features on the website. For example If you press the tilde key.

17:56 On the keyboard, it would redirect to Google Classroom. So if the teacher was coming you could quickly hide it. Oh nice. Nice. That's that's crazy. Hey, well I can complain. This is science. Not only this is totally science. This is only science. All right. So you you do that, that that company, uh, you sell you were making how much and you sold that for how much? It made sixty thousand dollars.

18:19 For two years. And then I sold it for one hundred thousand dollars when I was sixteen. So this is like the first sign uh, you know, to have a kid to have your son from your parents' perspective do sixty grand in revenue and profit or you know, something like that, uh when they're fourteen, that's like Acing you know like Are you a drug dealer? What's going on? How are you doing this?

18:41 Did that take convincing on your end to let them know what you were doing was totally legal. Like at at any point your parents are lawyers, were they like, Are you breaking any laws, man? Are you are you sure you're uh on top of all this? I definitely got questioned about breaking laws by my dad a bunch of times. He actually made me put up terms of service that said in all caps, you cannot use this while in school. This is only for breaks or at home. And my mom was always shocked every time I actually got a payout from Google.

19:12 I think maybe it was that It didn't sound like a real business. Unblocked games website, how could that make money? But I actually had money coming into my bank account. That was under her name'cause I was too young to open one and she was shocked at the time. Did you do anything cool with it?

19:25 The money? Well Not really. Honestly, I put all of it into Cal AI when we launched it.

19:33 And pretty cool thing. The only thing actually that I've spent the money I've made on, and this was recent, was my eighteenth birthday party. I flew my friends out to Miami for a weekend trip. Right. That's awesome. All right, sweet. So you

19:49 Uh you put the money into Cali, you got the money, s you reach out to the influencers. As you said, two influencers start posting. And What are they posting? Is there some s science to it? We just had, you know, Rob the Bank on talking about TikTok. as a distribution strategy. about what makes great TikTok hooks and videos and how that game is being played. You know, Rob and and I guess how have you guys played that game of short form content.

20:10 To grow your apps. So totally science and cal AI were A little different. For totally science. I was the one making the videos myself.

20:20 I was recording my screen in class. Saying hey, if you want to play unblocked games Go to this website and then I would put a Little thing caption that says comment what game to add next.

20:31 That would Gather a ton of comments making the video go viral. For Cal AI. I'm not the one making videos. No one on the team is, it's all influencers.

20:41 So We still use The knowledge from Well, w what I learned from totally science to Help these influencers make videos.

20:50 And make them go viral to give ideas, but for the most part We just pay the influencer. that fits our niche and then they're the professionals. They know what goes viral. As long as we can Predict the ROI.

21:04 Which we have a ton of factors and variables we look at. Then we let them run with it. You pay him on CPM or how do you pay him? So CPM would be a blessing.

21:17 And that's the dream for everyone, if you could do that, because then you guarantee profitability. But these influencers They need to be paid usually in advance. Otherwise they won't do it. They'll have another brand that's willing to work with them. So you have to predict Before

21:31 They make any video, how many views they're going to get. You'll have to look at their previous videos. But then you also have to keep in mind not all of you are worth the same. You have to analyze the comment section and see how strong their community is. And based on that way how much you're actually going to pay them.

21:47 That's wild. So you um I is this thing pretty sticky and and where do you want to take this? So Great. You you you go viral, you get people to download. I'm s assuming they hit some paywall in the app that says Keep track of all your calories, blah blah blah. Is it kind of one of these churn and burn games where it's pretty profitable for the first couple months and then you you lose people, or is it a sticky product?

22:09 So it's sticky. For the power users, they definitely stay around and I mean apps like My Fitness Spell. They're doing over one hundred million dollars a year.

22:20 So I know we could get there. You uh look at the reviews, Sean. So he has sixty five thousand reviews. And it's a four point eight. out of five. So this isn't like an arbitrage like or like a get rich quick thing. Like people really love the product.

22:36 Yeah, what's the churn on these uh subscriptions? We actually don't know because it hasn't been a year and more than ninety five percent of our subscriptions are annual. Gotcha. Okay. But they're still using it, presumably. So that like if you know, if they're using it they'll they'll stick with it. Wow, this is amazing. And so you want to take this To be kind of my fitness pal or you're like hey

22:58 If somebody offered us, you know, a buttload of cash, like I guess what's your mindset? Cause I'm so curious, cause if I was eighteen years old. I don't know what the hell I'd be thinking. Like I have no I even now, if I'm thirty six years old, I still don't know really know what the hell I'd be thinking in this position. What what's the mindset of an eighteen year old'cause you got many hits in you. You know, this may not be the only one.

23:17 Yeah the the same way that you kind of did the s a similar thing in totally science versus this. But this just had a much bigger market, much more market potential. Um You know, you might be able to do even more things, or is this something you want to do for a decade? Yeah, and does it feel like You're still breaking the law. Like if you if anyone well like if a I don't mean that you're not breaking the law No, what I mean is like when you go zero to twenty million dollars in revenue in eight months, there's some type of like giddiness of like I can't believe

23:43 Like this is my life. I can't believe that. This is allowed. I don't know. There's something there's some type of like matrix breaking idea where you're like questioning, you're like, How is this possible? Do you still have that mentality or are you like, Of course this is possible and this is just step one? I definitely have the mentality of It feels surreal.

24:05 I mean it feels nuts. I mean eighteen years old and I'm making The company's gonna generate over twenty four million dollars this year. That's crazy. The fact that I'm on your podcast, my first million saying that. It's nuts, and a year ago I wouldn't believe it.

24:20 So I view this as a stepping stone. I want to build a company That touches the lives of billions of people. Something as ubiquitous as the iPhone.

24:31 And I think Cal AI If we shifted the idea where maybe it's Nutrition tracking in general. And we could link the photos of what you're eating.

24:41 To your health. That could be something that touches the lives of billions and that could be something I could spend a decade on. But I probably don't want to. Instead. I would want this to be something that

24:52 Sets me financially free. Where I don't need to think about money. Where I'm not incentivized. By generating revenue.

24:59 And so I can start another company. That is purely motivated by impact. And scale of impact. Something that I'm passionate about and can spend a couple decades on. Sam, I saw a a post today from his

25:11 Partner Blake, he posted something on t on on Twitter today and he said I guess he's working on something called Ten X and it sounds like it's an app for For learning, like oh you can learn anything, you can learn AI skills. You can learn the language, you can learn whatever. Sounds like it's a l a learning tool.

25:27 Which is more in the direction of Kind of. Good for the world, good for humanity, impact style uh thing that he's building. And so it sounds like he's kind of Look yeah, he started with l like U Max, which was literally like

25:39 probably the most superficial thing. It's like how does my face look and what what can I do to make my face look better? Then it's Cali and now he's going into like, you know, a learning tool. It sounds like you might want to do the same. Was there something that trigger that in you? Like did you watch like a movie or did you have like a conversation with a mentor when you were twelve years old? Like

25:57 What made you wanna even What made you think differently than the average high schooler who's hyper focused on just their grades and s and you know just Make it friends or whatever whatever's just in their little pond. It's funny you say movie, the social network totally had a big impact on me. However, I did also feel this way before that. So that amplified it. That showed me it's possible.

26:19 Through specifically software, which made me super Motivated to learn coding even faster. But I have I'm not sure the initial

26:27 Seed where it was planted. What do you think the app is worth right now? Right now, I think the app Calculating It's or taking its growth into account.

26:41 Is Close to one hundred million dollars. Invaluation. Which means you are presumably worth in the ballpark of thirty million dollars. I think liquid and on paper is really different.

26:55 Oh I know. But like But you're you're totally right. But like Seventeen, eighteen years old worth tens of millions of dollars, I think is like a fair ballpark. Would you agree? I would agree. Yeah, that's amazing, man. Congratulations. I I I'm really

27:11 I'm really inspired by You and I would say there's like a a handful of people I've discovered that are kinda like you. Who are super young that are Basically AI first. So you're the all the tools you're building you build with AI,'cause why would you not? You like

27:25 Code them with AI. The app uses AI, the users get an a AI type of experience. And um You figured out a growth channel that I think A bunch of old guys like us.

27:38 Kinda stuck at'cause You have what I call the bear on a bicycle. phenomenon. So my friend Chris Williamson said this to me. He goes. You basically want to stack two skills that usually don't go together and it might create something remarkable. So you know, you see a bear. Wow, that's a bear. Okay, but I've seen bears.

27:54 You see your you see a bicycle, okay, that's a bicycle, but you see a bear on a bicycle, holy shit. Never seen that before. That's amazing. And for you, that's basically like you know how to code, but a lot of kids know how to code. And it's this other piece that you also had, which was The knowledge of

28:09 And you even said it in your video, video editing and just making fun videos. um this kind of the TikTok knowledge, and you combined how to make TikToks that will get views with How to make apps that work. And that is your bear on a bicycle thing. And so I'm pretty inspired because there's actually like a group of people who are just like you And I would say right now is like

28:29 a a very golden window for that group of people to go build things. Like and that you know, hopefully people listening to this, hopefully there's You know, we trigger another twenty to a hundred people just like you who hear this story and are like You're their social network, right? They're gonna hear this and they're gonna start doing it and That set of skills, I think, is very, very valuable for this moment in time.

28:50 I totally agree. And that's honestly why I'm super motivated to go on podcasts like these. I was super motivated by others before me that I've watched on podcasts. And so this is almost a full circle moment. For me. Come on here. Yeah, that's interesting. S Sam, would you be going on podcast?'Cause like, you know

29:08 While you're here, I'm like, Oh, this is great content. I'm excited, but then there's like the fatherly part of me that's like shut up. Dude, just shut up. Why are you on the podcast? You shouldn't be saying any of this stuff. 'Cause you have such a good thing going and uh You can always tell the story a little later. You don't need to invite You know, the other Uh Zach Yadigaris of the world who are

29:28 You know, they can code, they can make tick tocks, they got cool haircuts like you, and they're just gonna do the same thing, right? So like Why go on and and and spill your secrets? Um you know, why why do that? So I've heard this before. That

29:44 Usually You know what it takes, or people usually know w what It takes to be successful. But then they are looking for an easier way. They're looking for Something.

29:56 That is not as burdensome, not as hard, doesn't require as much sacrifice. And I've been coding since I was seven. I mean, teen yeah, now that's eleven years.

30:07 Of coding. I've started Totally science and before that I was Tutoring kids and coding lessons. For almost a decade of my life.

30:16 I was In the entrepreneur game. And so I think that yes, I can share all of this information publicly. But It's only a select few who

30:26 Will actually work towards it. And put in The amount of hours required To achieve the result. Where

30:34 I want to help those people. I think Helping those people achieve the same success, especially if they were in a situation like mine where They maybe weren't entirely sure where to go, but they knew there was a world out there where they could have

30:47 Massive impact at such a young age. Even balancing school on the side. And So I completely support those people. You have um a trait that uh like Sean and I's good buddy Jack Smith is like the perfect embodiment of this trait.

31:02 Um But a lot of entrepreneurs are. Your logical Which like a lot of times will be awkward on like day to day level. Like, for example, my friend Jack is s like he's so He'll he does things so differently from everyone.

31:18 because his way is actually better, but we've all done it in such a way for a hundred plus years that we're like, Well, I don't know, we'll just do it this way. And so like for example, he didn't name his daughter uh the first year because he was like I got to I have to get to know her before I can name her. And I was like, Yeah, that makes total sense. It's just like strange to think about. You have that type of energy You know, you said, Well, I'm worrying about grade so I can get a good job Yeah, or getting to a good college to get a good job and make money. What if I just make money now? Like that's like very that that way of thinking is is amazing. And it's really fun to be around people like you. And so I want to hear your perspective on a few things, this fresh thinking on on a few things. The first is you have fifteen employees.

31:55 Do you have any employees who are in their thirties or forties And what's it like having to go from being just you and your buddies in a room messing around to at fifteen people, you're actually running a real company. So yes. We do have employees that are in their forties. And

32:13 It's difficult to be. Honest with you, it's hard at times. To to make them call you sir. Yeah, I do not make them call me, sir. But it is difficult, especially when I have to fire someone that has kids. And

32:31 It Ca I do have imposter syndrome at times. Which is something I try to not let hold me back ever. So even if I think a certain way, I don't I still act. How I know I should.

32:44 I'm reading this great book right now called The Great CEO Within. I also keep it on my desk as a reminder. And it helps me. lead I try to be an inspiring leader that That

32:56 helps people That doesn't lead by telling people what to do and Just do it now. I try to inspire them to want to do the work. Do your does your staff uh general are you guys a well organized company, you think, or is it a shit show?

33:13 I think that we are pretty well organized and that's mainly credited to our COO and the Third co founder I didn't mention, Jake Castillo. He's really good at organization. So One of the things we talked about was like

33:27 Yeah, why come and talk about this? And part of you was like, Well, I want to inspire other people But we don't want to inspire just a bunch of copycats. And so we asked you, we were like, Hey, what are some other ideas? That if you weren't doing this, you think somebody could go do right now. So how can the next

33:41 You. How can the next high schooler get to where you're at? Twenty million dollars year. in revenue as a seventeen, eighteen year old. So what ideas do you have for us? Sure. So obviously you know you could teach a man to fish or you could give a man a fish. Teaching is better. So I have a few frameworks which I think will help even more, but I also will give some ideas.

33:59 Okay, go for it. How I usually look at these AI problems Or not AI problems, but creating something new in general. Is that AI has enabled people to

34:10 Basically build on top of and innovate on any tool Or company. that exists right now. So

34:19 The calendar. was innovated on and now there are AI calendar tools. Like motion. Which help you organize and structure your day a lot easier. Your assistant. There are note taking tools.

34:31 Where people have always taken notes by hand. People have also recorded lectures. But now there are AI platforms like T. TurboLearn AI.

34:40 Where you can record your lecture. And then the AI will generate notes for you. Calorie tracking. There have always been calorie trackers. But now with AI, you can just take a picture of your food.

34:53 And it will tell you the calories. So I Try to look at everything. that doesn't already use AI and think Can AI make this more efficient, make this a better process?

35:06 And My perspective on coming up with new ideas. Is generally that I want to find something.

35:17 Looking at it. From marketing first principles. Is how I always think. So Almost going backwards. And I look for an aha moment that I could capture within some sort of experience.

35:32 And then Wrap a whole app. around that. So for Cal AI. Aha moment is take a picture of your food, get the calories.

35:40 And that's great for marketing material. They come on, they do that. But then there's a whole app around that that gets them to stay. There's Another app on the app store right now called

35:51 Fitness AI. And their ads recently have been around their AI body scanner. Where you just take a picture of your body. And then it will tell you your body fat percentage.

36:03 and a ton of other useful information on your composition. So that's what draws people in, it's that AI tool. Which is the aha moment. And then there's a whole fitness app around that you stay Two

36:14 track your workouts on that app. So that's the framework I generally like to use. And so what what do you think is uh so you're saying Work backwards from the the magic moment where AI does a magic trick and you're like, holy shit, that's cool. And then build a sticky, you know, for you guys is take a picture, get the calories. And then you have the tracking and the charts and the other stuff that's gonna keep them.

36:35 Maybe the coaching tips or whatever. That's gonna keep them around in the long term. Cool. Got it. And you're say the other thing you're saying is take any app that's popular. That we've already been doing. That's and to say, what's the AI version of this? Is that the is that the brainstorming session you would do is basically like all right.

36:51 Evernote. What's the AI version of Evernote? Or um Yeah. Our buddy and our buddy um in San Francisco, me and Sam's buddy Cieva, he's had this company called Study Suit. And study soup was literally for college kids. They would have paid note takers who would take great notes in a lecture.

37:07 And then you had yeah, basically have the slackers and you had the kids that were were on top of things. Kids on top of things were the supply side of the marketplace, they would give their notes. And the slackers would buy their notes and so Oh cool, I I don't have to take notes in this class'cause I'm getting them done for me.

37:21 And you're saying you but you're basically saying that Turbalone has become an AI version of Study Soup, right? Where it's like someone records it and now you have uh You have you have well well taken AI notes for your for that class. Yeah. Exactly. So what are some examples? Yeah, so here's an idea.

37:37 I've actually seen something like this. Or recently on Twitter I saw something blow up. Maybe it was a couple months ago, not so recent. Where someone put a bunch of their journal entries into chat GPT. And then asked what are some insights you could give me. To make my life better.

37:52 You got to both do that. Yeah, well that's great. So I think there is the possibility and I think this would be a great idea. To build a journal app.

38:02 And these journal apps already exist. So take an existing one. For your and this is the spin. So You could make it voice notes, you can make it typing. Whatever, doesn't matter. But the key feature, the aha moment AI feature you implement

38:17 Is that Periodically. You will have these insights generated. From the AI on how you can improve your life. Like hey, on Monday and Tuesday you hung out with Sally and you had a bad day. Maybe Sally is the cause of your bad days.

38:30 But Gotcha. Okay, I like that. Uh so AI journal Um, I feel like with uh the kind of younger generation, I feel like therapy is a lot more normalized. Therapy's cool, basically. Whereas in my g my generation and my parent my parents' generation was like

38:45 Therapy equals You're broken. You're you have a problem. And it was like, you know, more taboo. The whole sup the whole idea of Sopranos was a guy who goes to therapy and now his friends are gonna murder him because he's so soft. Exactly. And now I feel like with the younger generation, it's almost like uh a cool thing to do. I don't know. Maybe I'm speaking out my ass here. You tell me if I'm wrong. Uh, but it's way more normalized. It's not a taboo thing. And in fact probably being anti therapy would be a little bit

39:14 low status now at this point. Um and I feel like But the problem with therapy, of course, is that Um it's A a little bit of a loaded word and B, you know, who's paying a hundred dollars a session for this type of stuff. When you could have the AI therapist in your pocket. Whether they're using your journal entries as the starting point, the magic moment. Or or not. Uh what do you think of that space? Do you think there's something interesting there?

39:35 I think AI Therapists. Or something that a lot of people have spoken about. And I haven't seen anyone do it. Great.

39:45 There are definitely apps already. Or you could talk to people, chat bots. But I think they're all missing. the feeling that you are actually being heard. That

39:57 The feeling you would get talking to a real therapist. So Maybe it's The verbal aspect that's missing?

40:04 And something like J B T's voice mode. Integrating that can now actually make it a better session than just typing. But That is a good idea that uses the AI spin for sure. Gotcha.

40:16 And what uh what are some other ideas you have? You have two more, it looks like you wrote on here, yeah? So the first one Is some kind of system or pipeline to convert an Android app or an iOS app.

40:28 To the other. And this is something that would greatly help startups. When we started Cal AI. We built it on Swift. And that's because

40:38 Swift usually you can make a much smoother user experience on iPhones. Using something like React Native. Which can build to both iOS and Android. It's more difficult because it's not actually using the native components.

40:52 Feels. Super polished. On an iPhone. After building it. We had all of this demand for an Android app.

41:00 And It was problematic. We had to take away from development time on the iOS app. To build out the Android app. And we had to release it a few months after.

41:11 It was it cost us thousands of dollars. Tens of thousands of dollars. And every time you build a feature, you have to build it up twice. You have to build it on one and then on the other. Yes, every single time. So It's annoying. I think with all these AI tools.

41:26 There is definitely the possibility to build something. That lets you upload the code base to one native project. And then it will convert it. To the other.

41:38 Now right now I think AI can probably do ninety percent of the work. But there will need to be a tiny bit of human intervention. So maybe this would be best done as an agency that's very AI powered at the moment. But very soon it's going to be something where an AI agent

41:55 Can do it all for you. Yeah, that's a really good idea. We used to use something. Uh I I had an app like years ago, a roommate's app, uh roommate finding app, and we what was it called where we used something that turned a web app into an iPhone app. Mm. I mean there's been a lot of tools like that. And they were horrible. Like it was like it was really bad, but they're huge companies. Yeah.

42:16 Yeah. Yeah,'cause this is a problem, right? Like you you you have to maintain two different Two different every feature you have to build twice. Every every platform has its own bugs. And you basically have to hire double the number of people'cause the Android guy focused on Android and the iOS guy focuses on iOS, and so now you have more headcount. And so you always want this thing that's like But y but you need but still you're you're right, like having it be native

42:39 actually results in a better user experience, more stickiness, more revenue, et cetera. So You if you try to do the web app thing and you just put a web app and you r try to wrap it It doesn't work as well as doing a native app. And so You're right. That basically AI coding is getting so good. That you could do

42:55 Seventy, eighty, ninety percent of the code transfer. just through AI and then maybe you you you have you you do it as an agency or you have one person who's who's doing that last kind of the last mile to get it to work work well. Um, that's cool. What about this remotely configurable onboarding flows? This sounds like To use a framework, you know, it's a paper cut you have, right? So one some of the best places to find startup ideas is you're s you're trying to do a startup.

43:20 And in the process of trying to do it. You run into something that's like, God, I wish somebody had just built this. And maybe you build it in house or you just keep Dealing with the pain and that that's a very good source for startup ideas. Yes, I have heard that

43:34 a piece of advice to work at a startup to come up with new ideas and it's one hundred percent true. So while working on Cal AI and then a few other apps before Cal AI, while I was learning How the whole Consumer app space works. Every app.

43:50 You have to build out the onboarding flow. Every popular app on the app store has one. It generally will ask the questions that are either required to set up your account. Or Simply to prime you.

44:02 For what's coming. To explain Something that's going on in the app. Or to ask you questions. that set your mind in the right direction to maybe

44:12 Help you convert. when they actually hit you hit you with a paywall. And There is no good solution right now. To build these.

44:21 Everyone has to do it. Custom. In their own code base. But someone could really easily make a system.

44:29 Where Anyone can Swap out the questions. Remotely do A B tests on these. Which another problem here.

44:38 Is that any time you want to test out something new within your onboarding flow. Or within your app in general. You have to submit an update to the app store, which could take a few days. So building out a system where you can build out the whole onboarding survey questions. And then also change what the screens are.

44:56 See how that affects conversion rate, see how that affects Completion rate. Drop off rate. Remotely. Would be huge.

45:04 Are you uh the type of person that Even though you have a full time gig, you are experimenting on new ideas that are unrelated to Cal AI. So For the last few months. I kind of was.

45:17 We uh We're Orienting ourselves as an app studio very briefly. And the idea behind that was that our real sauce was in our marketing, not in our app development. And so we could build a bunch of these other AI apps.

45:34 Spin them up. Apply the same marketing. And blow them up. Really fast. But

45:39 At the scale Cal AI is and the rate it's growing. We realized pretty quickly that It made more sense to stay full time on Cali I because The same time it would take to build another app and scale it to six figures revenue. We could have added an additional seven figures in revenue to Cali I just because

45:59 Everything boosts each other. Increasing retention. Will increase L T V and As we increase retention we could increase A funnel. So one plus one can equal three.

46:09 Instead of two. I think that is totally the right move. Is there anything Zach you know, Sean and I are parents and there's a lot of people who listen to this are who are parents. Is there anything that You y you you seem traditionally s obviously you're traditionally successful, but you also seem like Uh

46:25 You you're very thoughtful. I think spoken. Yeah. Thoughtful. Like you seem like you'd be a good son regardless of Thank you. Uh uh regardless of if you Who cares about this app, you know? Like you you you're you're you're you have your shit together at a very young age. Emotionally. What do you think that your parents did that set you up?

46:43 To have this Success. Or do you think that And this sounds like a douchey thing to say. Were you just born You know. interested into this stuff at a young age, you know, like there's a lot of like self directed people.

46:56 I have four siblings. I am the second oldest. And From a young age, I was Very wired.

47:06 Two Want freedom. And I think it bec I think it comes from my siblings. If I wanted to buy something. My parents would have to buy something for all my siblings, so

47:17 They wouldn't do it. I would have to Find the way to pay for it myself. That's what made me start. Teaching coding lessons. At such a young age to earn money.

47:26 And Related to that. I actually have a story that when I was ten years old I wanted to

47:36 Cook scrambled eggs. By myself. I don't know what it was, but I really wanted independence and freedom. So the independence to just cook myself breakfast. Yeah. Ten.

47:47 Could have burned the house down. So my mom didn't let me. And I got so mad about this that she didn't trust me. to cook eggs on my own.

47:58 Because she was taking care of my other siblings, getting them ready for school. that I actually ran away. From my house. And I ran probably fifteen minutes.

48:08 From my house. Two A local soccer field. And the police were called. I actually got picked up. By them and brought back home.

48:17 I was going to come home eventually, but You know, I did run away. And It's really been the freedom that has been the driving force behind everything. the yearning for freedom.

48:31 Well, but you have that now. Somewhat. I still feel confined, honestly, by being in high school. I haven't dropped out and I want to

48:43 Go to College. Just for the social life. Not obviously to get a job. So

48:51 I feel I've I always feel almost trapped in situations where The outcome is determinant on what someone else decides for me, not something that I can control for myself. And someone has to accept me into the college. If I let my grades drop in high school then they could rescind me even if I get into the school.

49:11 And I hate that. But right now for the next year at least. I think I have to make that sacrifice. And then when I'm in college, I wanna make a good group of friends, then drop out there and be free. You're gonna go. What's your GPA right now?

49:24 My GPA is a four point oh. And do one together. And you got the SATs? Yeah. Yeah. Oh I took the A C T And I got a thirty four.

49:36 Okay. Yeah. It's like a that's two points away from per that's like a ninety it's a ninety nine percentile. Ninety eight percentile. Okay, so you're you're y you haven't like neglected school. You got a four point oh and you didn't do it. Doing this with school. I'm working hard in school. I'm not By the way, w it's it's it's noon on a Monday. Where where Where are you right now? I actually skipped class to do this podcast. Let's go.

50:02 Sorry, Miss Bickerstaff. The boys are calling. Are you at school right now or are you home? No, I left school. I'm home right now. And you told your parents it's because there's this podcast that I wanna go on and it's gonna be good for business. Yeah. How many other people do you know that are like you? Like is there a community of like a hundred of you guys who are like high schoolers who actually build shit and want to do cool things?

50:24 There's not that many high schoolers, but there are people who are slightly older, nineteen, twenty. I probably how he's already got the mastermind hand pose. He already has the visionary hand. Hand position naturally, dude. Straight out the box. I have a handful of people that I'm friends with, but not many. Definitely. You guys have a club? Can you have a name? Yeah, like the grubs? Yeah, yeah, it's the cool kids club. Uh.

50:49 Yeah it it's you guys are pretty cool. Uh so that's a good day. Yeah, I've always wanted to be one of the I've always wanted to be part of that. Uh if you are need another member Let me know. Um Have you considered Just like moving to Palo Alto and like hanging out, like, you know, in the movie uh The Social Network, Sean Parker gets to

51:10 act like a college kid without go to college. Or are you dead set on going to the uh going that route? Well over the summer When things started taking off in June. For Cali I Henry and I Decided let's go all in.

51:24 We moved to San Francisco for the whole month of July. We lived in a hacker house. We worked out of a co working office. With People.

51:33 Years older than us. So we live the San Francisco startup life. It was Very productive. But at the same time

51:46 Pretty lonely. Although we could Talk to some people. Yeah, we made friends. We would get lunch with people.

51:53 First of all, San Francisco's not the most fun city, but also Just the fact that people were years older than us. Always made it difficult to relate to them. Yeah, that makes sense. We had uh I have a friend that uh like he got accepted into some program

52:10 Where he went to college at the age of Fourteen or fifteen. And he was telling me, he was like man, like I wanted to like date girls and like, you know, do that normal shit and It was weird. I started fooling around with one girl and I eventually had to break it with her that I was fill her in that I'm like

52:29 I'm sixteen. Uh, and so like I imagine like it's weird being in these situations where you're like in these You're just as mature uh you're more mature than a lot of twenty one year olds or a lot of like grown adults, but you're in the situation where I do understand why you feel trapped. You're in these weird spots at such a young age that like you literally couldn't go and do some of the stuff in San Francisco that everyone else is doing because of your age. But it's Pretty amazing. Like I hope you enjoy Like the time.

52:57 Like I mean, I think being eighteen and experiencing what you're doing It's like this is like you know, one out of a billion. This is like a really special thing. How much are you paying yourself? So we haven't paid ourselves anything. We are reinvesting it all and That's not to say that We won't. We are we do have profit every month.

53:16 It is a difficult situation with the app store because We get paid out two months. After we earn the money. So our growth is so quick that the revenue we generated two months ago, we have to put it all in the marketing. to keep drawing faster and faster.

53:32 I think in a few months we may start having A surplus where We can't spend it on growth even if we wanted to. Yeah, that's great. Um

53:42 Dude, this is awesome, man. Congratulations and uh I'm excited to see what happens. Who who are like who do you admire? Who are you Who are you learning from and looking up to? Like who's who's inspiring you? Are you just like, oh, Elon and Jeff Bezos? That's what I that's what I care about, or are there Other people that you're more interested in, uh personally. Like you said you used to l listen to podcasts as inspiration. Who are some of those people that you like to listen to?

54:06 Totally. So I love your guys' podcast. It's I'm more inspired by people who are dead than people who are alive. And maybe that's because I feel like There's they're not my competition anymore, or they are but

54:20 They're not progressing anymore. So I see exactly where they ended up. Psycho. Love it. Yeah. I get it, you sick fuck. Makes sense. They're not my competition anymore. I've already finished them. Yeah Yeah.

54:38 People like Sam. Yeah. Okay, so you like learning from dead people. What does that mean? Books? What what do how you learn from dead people? I like audio books, but I don't actually like reading physical books. I also like learning about them from podcasts. Which dead people. Oh, so f like founders. You like the David Sendro's podcast founders. It's one of my favorites. I do listen to that. There's one I've listened to recently, How to Take Over the World.

55:05 Which our boy Ben, let's go. So let me ask you a question. What What's a thing that people your age are doing that seems weird to us? But it's totally normal. So like what's a phenomenon that you're like, Yeah. Kids love doing this. They spend

55:19 All this time doing this, or they spend their money on this, or this is a new trend that seems to be weird to others, but we get it. It's it's normal for us. Yeah. By the way, is wearing uh Ralph Lorin Ralph Lorn polo sweaters. Is that a new trend that young people are doing? I think you've influenced Sam. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead with uh what cool young people are doing.

55:41 So there's something really interesting. A really interesting phenomenon. I've seen recently. And It's not a new software.

55:51 It's not a new social media platform. What it is Is These little things you put on the back of your phone. It's called an Octobuddy. October.

56:02 And It has suction cups on it. So you could stick your phone to a wall. You could prop it up on your table. And

56:10 Watch her videos. Is the purpose. I don't think people actu I've never seen someone actually use the suction cups. how they're designed to, but it's a trend among all girls. in my high school I Over the last few months I've just seen

56:23 More and more people have it. Now everyone does. And it's It's fascinating. Something like that. It's like a TV mount. You mount your you can mount your phone to any any surface, basically. And what do you mean it's not used how it's supposed to be? Isn't that what it's supposed to be? Well, I think it's more of something where now girls look at it like the color of their nails or having long nails on where girls get different colors and

56:45 Oh, it's a stylistic accessory status thing than actually function. Keep going. Tell me what young people like. Like whenever I meet a young guy, I'm like, Tell me everything. Well that's the main thing that You wouldn't typically notice Are your friends drinking?

57:02 Yes. Definitely it's because the party. Do you guys like to smoke weed? I'm someone who doesn't do any drugs, I'm pretty against them and I don't drink either. But it's I mean, everyone around me is

57:14 So drinking's common. Very common, very very You also mentioned this uh this like turbo learn thing. That sounds pretty awesome. What else is like a What other uh who else is like you out there who's who's basically scaling up to millions in revenue? Just off of this kind of like AI tick tock.

57:31 Type of model. So there are a bunch of consumer apps that are coming out or have come out and Honestly I think a lot of it is attributed to Blake and I speaking publicly about this, showing that it's really possible in the app space.

57:48 So new apps like Quitter? Which is an app designed to help Men quit porn. With All of these.

57:57 Little social or Like by having streaks essentially to gamify the whole experience. So that's a new one that just Came out. You inspired these guys?

58:08 I'm friends with the founder and he was inspired to get into the app space by seeing Cal AI really take off. He was with me in the early days. That's cool. It's got five thousand five thousand reviews on on iPhone. That's pretty good. Yeah, so they're on track to make over a million dollars this year. I think Consumer app right now or like the new drop shipping?

58:27 You know, uh Sean ha said this once. Where he was like You know Sean was like, I'm a content creator, you know, he's got newsletters and Twitter and podcasts. But these TikTok guys, it's as if You know, I uh am really good at riding horses, but along comes Henry Ford and it's just it's just the cars are no comparison. You know, I can't there's no way my horse and I are gonna outrun uh even the the crappiest car.

58:51 This is one of those moments that I'm having right now talking to you. Uh so like for a long time Sean and I are friends will do drop shipping, you know, uh when we were twenty five, that was the thing, is like create like a drop shipping Site. And people still do things like that.

59:06 Seeing what you're doing with Tech and influencers is so much better. Then Like you even look, Mr. You even make Mr. Beast look old.

59:17 You know what I mean? Like chocolate. Like what? That's crazy. You know what I mean? But but dude People used to look at me and Sam when we were like so we met when we were I was probably twenty four, twenty five years. We were the prodigies. And it was like that's very generous. But I mean is like it'd be like If there was something on the on the fringe or the edge about either growth hacking or a clever way to make money, usually it was us who knew it and people would ask us about it.

59:41 Like I remember having like the Atlantic, the publisher come to my office and they're like newsletters and I'm like, Yeah, like it's a thing. That's old news now. These guys are so much better and we are that person now. I'm gonna go to his office and be like, just tell me everything. It's something that always happens. It's gonna happen to me too. I know that every year I age, I am becoming exponentially less impressive. And there's someone that's going to come and be the next Big thing. Growth hacker that Is

1:00:10 In the front of everything, I think it's just about Building momentum. And I'm pretty obsessed with this idea of Making sure that everything I work on Will ten X the previous thing?

1:00:24 So that I'm always moving forward. Towards a bigger goal. You actually mentioned Mr. Beast. He's actually someone who greatly inspires me. I love the podcast that you guys had with him. By the way, I've heard this now a couple of times from people who are like eighteen and they're like

1:00:37 fearful that when they're twenty two, suddenly their accomplishments are no longer cool. And I just want to say I get it. Makes total sense. It's also total nonsense. And uh what I mean by that is not only is it still super impressive.

1:00:52 But The real game is when you stop trying to impress people. And so what actually happens is You graduate out of the I need to impress people. Phase.

1:01:01 And the person who's seventeen, eighteen, they're still getting that high. Of of being the impressive person. Oh, everybody's kinda patting on the back. And actually the the the the only way to win the game is not to continuously be the youngest best looking, richest person,'cause you'll never win that game of comparison. The only real way to win the game is to realize like Oh, I just need to be doing the things that are fun for me and like s the the act of doing them is rewarding and not look for the rewards of impressing people, which is obviously easier said than done.

1:01:30 But that's the real thing to focus on and not like This feeling of I'm I'm running on quicksand, you know, because it's I'm getting older, oh no. Or like uh I have to 10x my growth even though I'm already at, you know, twenty four million ARR. It's like Sure, that's all fine. I d I'm not against growth. But um

1:01:50 Somebody said this to us. Actually they said this while we were hanging out with Mr. Beast. They go Be very careful. Because growth for growth's sake is the ideology of a cancer cell. And um so you know, growth for growth's sake is not not not where it's at. And there's there's more to the game than that. And he's like, I'll leave you with that to kinda figure out what what

1:02:08 What is the answer? I'm not gonna sort of try to tell you what I think is right, but I'll point that out because I think for me when I was young, and I know for a lot of ambitious people, It just seems like grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. It's the only thing and it comes from a little bit of a Um I don't know, like a little bit of a place of anxiety, I think.

1:02:26 Right. Yes. And I've had this A similar thought to this where I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing. I've thought okay, once I find my success and

1:02:36 Let's say I'm quote unquote financially free. Will I even want to start something new? Or will I not care anymore, just want to find happiness. Elsewhere maybe I have one of the tenants of happiness, which is

1:02:50 I'm financially taken care of. But then I want to prioritize. relationships And happiness in other aspects. So

1:02:58 You you're always gonna be making stuff. I'll I'll I'll predict the future. Maybe maybe you'll take the foot off the gas and uh one relationships and uh family and all that stuff. You are going to be creating stuff for a very, very long time. Well that is why I'm going to college. It's almost to take my foot off the gas a little bit, build relationships, and then I want to drop out after a semester or two. I mean, I think that's really smart because you you have your whole life to make money, but you really only have this four years to make

1:03:24 Lifelong friends uh from college. So actually the the scarce thing is the fr is the friendships and that college experience'cause there there's a window of time that expires. And so do that because you still have fifty years. To make money. Um after that.

1:03:39 What school do you want to go to? If I got in, then Stanford. Uh surely we have listeners this is gonna reach a lot of people. Surely there are sub sub people listening. I know you're listening. Yadigari.

1:03:54 Y A D Yeah. You can find him on Twitter, DM him. Uh actually that's what they should do. A real s if if I'm uh if I'm out of college right now, I'm DMing this kid an acceptance letter. That's how a college needs to hustle. I'm tired of these college. Someone's gonna be like Sup. You're just gonna get a DM from uh the the sub Who who's your favorite uh who are your most inspirational follows on Twitter? Uh I wanna I wanna Basically, I find you so fascinated. I want to be inspired by the people your inspired. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want your info diet. Who uh who do you inspire by and try to make it people who you think I won't know. Mm.

1:04:33 Okay. Who do I follow up? I actually don't usually use Twitter. For people on this fire five. That's interesting.

1:04:42 What what's your like main social network? What do you use when you're bored? What do you open up? It is Twitter. It is to it. That is my main social network.

1:04:51 When I'm looking to be inspired. There are definitely a few people. David Goggins, for example, he just pumps me up. So I've people like him. That's You know, inspired by his mindset completely.

1:05:04 I used to actually be in this phase Where I was addicted to motivational content. I curated my TikTok for you page. I only like motivational videos. And Anytime I lost motivation, I would just scroll for five minutes, then get back into it. So definitely those

1:05:19 Kinds of people. But it's mainly those like Mr Beast. Elon Musk. I follow both of those on Twitter.

1:05:27 My own co founder, Blake Anderson. Who's a few years ahead of me. In Life and knowledge too, so Definitely learn a lot from

1:05:35 Him. Cliff Whitesman? He's a recent friend of mine. I think one of you know him. Yeah, yeah. We know Cliff. Yeah, so he's super inspiring to myself as well.

1:05:48 That's dope. Uh okay, amazing. Sam, anything else? Is there uh that's don't ask me. I Zach, is there anything else that you want to inspire me by? Like you're you're you're amazing. Like Uh, anything else that you want to tell us? Yeah, did we miss anything?

1:06:04 I appreciate that. I mean It's always Hard going on these podcasts. I

1:06:12 It's it's a whole full circle moment and Also It feels almost bad. Speaking about all of this, I try to stay humble, but then at the same time I know

1:06:22 You have to Speak your way into the world. If I wasn't posting anything publicly. I've had a lot of debate over the personal brand. Then I wouldn't have so many opportunities that I have had. I uh Sean, my one of my best buddies, Val.

1:06:36 Uh I think Zach asked him out. Uh like the other day and like a was just asking him for advice on maybe coming on this podcast, but also business advice'cause Val's uh a great Guy and really successful. And uh

1:06:49 I thought it was funny because actually you remind me of Val a lot, Zach. But it was funny. Apparently Val's kids were like Were you hanging out with our friend Zach, uh like at lunch the other day and he was like Yeah, but it was like a Very you know, oddly, uh business context. Uh, but anyway, Val called me and was like this guy, Zach, is one of the most impressive people I've ever met.

1:07:12 And Val is a very hard person to impress. He's pretty low key. And so Well one of the funny things is like You have this paradox because You well, you wanna keep your asset. Your asset is You're young?

1:07:25 And ignorance is bliss. You don't know how hard some things are. You don't know what's possible. You don't have a ceiling on anything, because you don't know any better. Right. And that ignorance is a is a real tool, the naivety of the beginner's mind. And so you want to keep that. On the other side. You have this giant problem, which is that there's always kind of like this um I forgot what they call it, but there's this three three known thing, right? It's like

1:07:46 There's the things you know you know. There's the things you know you don't know. But then the The real one that matters is the things you don't know that you don't know. And and so talking to whatever smarter people, people who have played the game for fifteen, twenty years.

1:07:59 they will help you surface that last one. And that that last area of things you don't you don't currently even know that you don't know. That's the thing you should be worried about, but how do you worry about it? You don't even know you don't know where to look. Um, but it's by talking to other smart people that that gets revealed to you. And so you have this paradox where you want to keep What you got as your big asset.

1:08:17 Your naivete, your beginner's mind, your your your your useful ignorance. But at the same time, um Talk to some well meaning people who are a little bit wiser. To try to get figure out like You know, um little little

1:08:31 A little bit of a a a push in one direction or the other. They'll kinda nudge you. And that little nudge can totally change your trajectory, right?'Cause like I mean, just imagine Hitting a golf ball and even just changing by two millimeters, the angle that you hit that ball, it ends up in a totally different spot. And so you want to find those people who are your You're two millimeter people, the people that will just give you that slight angle adjustment in order to make it happen. I don't know how you do that exactly, uh the the keep both of those.

1:08:57 But that's what I would do if I was you. I'd try to find a way to keep both. I totally agree. I have heard that that it's much easier to learn from someone ten steps ahead of you. Then one hundred steps ahead of you. One hundred steps. So much is missing, but ten.

1:09:11 You can piece together. They can lift you up. This the extra steps and help you get from zero to ten. Yeah, and one other thing you're gonna figure out is that Um All successful people do not have equally valuable advice. So you will meet a lot of people who are successful or it sound interesting.

1:09:28 Um But their advice is not great. And y the hard part is p figuring out how to parse it. And dis like dissociate it slightly from the result because their result might be s totally dependent on the context, look, there's a whole bunch of different variables.

1:09:42 uh that will lead to that or maybe just their understanding of your situation. And so trying to figure out how to parse advice is like an underrated skill. And and make sure that the people you take advice from that they're actually happy. And they're people and they're they're people you admire or happy for themselves and they're happy for you, you know. Yeah, like you'd want their life. It's a very good point.

1:10:01 All right. Well on that point. Let's call it a let's call it a day. I think you gotta go back to school now. Yeah, lunch is over. Hey, thank you, Zach. Uh you're the man. Uh anytime you want to come on, please let us know. Congrats, dude. Thank you for having me. And I'm gonna I'm gonna use the app. So I'm gonna download your app right now. Start tracking. Thank you, and uh that's it. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world of no way be what I want to

1:10:27 I'm putting my all in it like my day's off On the roadless travel never looking back

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