Pieter Levels: Making $2.7M A Year With No Employees

are you intimidated why are you what he said he took a run this because he was nervous now because i've been on a lot of podcasts but like they're usually kinda small you know it's like i see you guys it's like joe rogan for business so it's like this one step wow above is like joe rogan and then it's you guys and then below is like yeah i don't wanna this all buck because i've been on there amazing but you know like this is like a level so but it's good you know i mean it's the failure levels so and you also don't know what sam might ask you because sam might just come out of left field and be alone but that's a thing i was thinking like sam is like there's not a regular interfering i know you he ass some crazy shit so wait first of all i i i don't know if that's true i don't know if we first of all it's not just me it's too sean the ass weird stuff but also i don't think we ask that weird to questions i think we asked the questions that everyone's thinking no that's true but i i mean you're not yes man like you know there's yes men podcast where like they just this kinda like a fan thing obviously does not you guys you have real shit real questions and this i think it's more interesting as well can we sam can we share the thing you were just telling us in slack can i share that on here on the pod yeah the same which one the the sam strategy for networking this is you know you can go to harvard you can go to stanford you're not gonna learn this one sam has has it where if like you know it's a very small little tweak but it's just so sam that it just is awesome so if you're if stan wants to hang out with you he'll text you just like a normal person would but and he doesn't need to even know you he's just like interested in you maybe maybe it's a cold dm maybe it's a text message maybe he got your number from somebody else be like hey it's sam you know i'm in san francisco but instead of saying wanna hang sam will just i'm in san francisco let's during you see he said me some shit that i won't say out loud but but if he get worse yeah so sam what what is this and why does it work so well it's like a phrase like you know like people will be like you know i fuck with that guy like i i fuck with drake i like drake it it it extends from that and i just say it in people they reply i don't know i just yeah this particular one i it was a ceo of a a multi billion dollar company who i'm friendly with i just said what's up i'm in your hood let's and he goes down when but like it worked out it's amazing and now so normally we try to play it cool but we've actually been chasing you peter we've been we've been talking about your projects we've been being like hey we gotta get this guy on of the pod sam is a fan of you for sure i would say i am less of a fan than sam but i am a i that doesn't mean i like you it's just i'm more in the closet about it whereas sam is very open sam's like this guy's amazing this guy's like an artists thanks man this guy got great hair and you do have great hair so it's all true now we finally got you here and it it was hard i think right because you like don't do you don't schedule or something like that like i mean it if like he's it looks like being an ass right on anything if you do that but i like like you guys i would get so many dms and they're all like i mean generally very low quality dms right like wanna collaborate but i don't wanna invest i don't wanna like people want something from you it i think it's like being a hot girl in the club like people want something for you but they don't wanna invest the time to actually get to know you or you know you feel like a object and i don't like to feel like that and i wanna spend more time with you know like with my friends in real life with my girlfriend or something i wanna spend time on in the gym you know on my health and cooking food and and that kind of stuff go for walks and i think because i because i've been doing this for ten years like startups i like eight years and now i get the money's is going well so i don't really need to do any calls anymore any dms so i'm just trying to create a more chill life and i'm not a asshole it just means like i don't have time to met to reply to everybody so i close my dms and and then people got really angry on twitter they're like why don't you why you close your dms are you arrogant gonna stuff so i wrote a blog post like kinda explaining my day and my routine and what i do in the day and that that don't really have time if i do all the things i do now to also dm everybody and reply everybody and do calls and stuff and that's pretty much the arguing argument and let's give the context so let's explain who you who the heck you are so your name is peter levels you're known on twitter as levels i owe right yeah that's the that's the right i say i saw you a while back i'm just gonna say some interesting things about you i believe now you can correct me if i have any of these wrong i believe you publish how much you make every year and in fact it's in your twitter bio in your location there's like a meter that's like your road to three million a year yeah and it says two point seven million a your meter is almost all the way filled up you build a bunch of random small projects usually around some things you like or believe or your lifestyle which is kind of a nomadic lifestyle so i believe i i think you you you hop around or you you don't have like a home base so you live you know you could be like in bali and then you could be in the netherlands you could be a different place all the time and you make these small websites or apps and it says in your bio that you have thirteen million monthly active users and i've i remember seeing you because you did a community a like a like a no mad community a slack community really early on like slack had just come out and i was like you guys guys like charging ten bucks of i think it was ten bucks a month or something to get into this i was like like a thousand people here wow this is actually sky making good money doing this like just by making a slack group and you just do a bunch of small experiments like that that's what i know sam what i give peter peter let me give like the outsider perspective that's a little more holistic so basically there's two things that are interesting to you the first one is your businesses which actually are the least the lesser of the two interesting things so you have roughly five or yeah you have seven different businesses ranging from no list which makes two point one million dollars in the last twelve months that's a that's a a a job board you have another job board called remote okay that's making a hundred fifteen thousand dollars a month you have read mate read make which looks like it's like an ebook something like that yeah yeah yeah sixty k month then you have got like a bunch of really you're seeing these numbers because he publishes and them where do you publish these he publishes all of them on like the the url go to his twitter profile and we'll let you talk sorry peter a second but go to not profile go to his twitter profile and then like click off and it's like open revenue at the very bottom but i'm reading off of our notes so and then you have like a qr menu creator then you have like an inflation chart which doesn't seem like it makes money but tracks inflation and then you have re base which is a platform to help people become a citizen of portugal help them re relocate the portugal so what's the first part is those businesses like i said you have those that are interesting i would narrow it down to say you have a series of job boards for nomadic or remote work that are pretty profitable but the second thing that's even more interesting is the way that you do these things so you do a few things that are interesting the first thing is i think you're the only full time employee right and use a team of contractors and second of all you have this weird personality that's very embedded in everything you do so that's kinda like my my big intro of of what you do it it does that i could see a website and i could know you built it without you having an about page which is kind of the ultimate right it looks a oh it's like nice way i guess yeah it's it's because i designer yeah no i think it's accurate description it's like like i'm not very nomadic anymore like i'm slowly selling down right but i started very nomadic i was like moving around every month i started like in two thousand thirteen i started no and i went to all these places and i started building these apps these little websites a little products to validate and i remember i mean i told the story many times but i was following patrick mckenzie bet eleven on hacker news famous hacker news a guy and now he works for stripe and he would do he would share his revenue on his blog about all his little products he made and it was like appointment reminder for barber shops so you got sms just before your appointment so you don't forget it at that kind of stuff and i was really inspired like okay this is not like some big vc funded guy this just like an indie guy was just honest his laptop kinda building stuff and i kinda mixed that with the no match thing where like building from your laptop from your backpack moving around i think also getting inspired from different places because if you move around you i mean i know sam moves around a little bit as well you your life becomes very unique because you meet different kinds of people you you're in different kinds of places you see different kinds of products like in shops like if you're in asia you see some futuristic shit you don't see in europe and america and all that stuff kinda it helps for inspiration for creating products in some indirect ways as well so that's pretty much what i've been doing and i think it's been trying to be like radically honest like i know this this american guy who pushes the radical honesty movement so i'm trying to do that in my personal life i'm trying to do that on the internet i'm not perfect but i'm trying to be as honest and open as possible i've because i don't like this fake corporate stuff and it's because i started business administration and i have a master's so i know all the management consultancy cb bullshit you know i've been there i done that i know this where my friends work i know investment bankers and i hate that that a lot of that world where it's like fake and are real and i wanna be very open and honest and i think it's also a little bit of a european thing not to flag of america i love america but like in europe people are very little with more direct and little bit more straightforward and i think that comes across in my in the stuff i do a little bit so what's the total size of all your of all your projects until of top line and bottom line revenue and isn't it true that you're the only full time person and how many contractors are you using yeah so i have one customer sport contractor part time isa isabel and she works for all my projects and i have a moderator for the select group because to select groups take there's some drama in there like i've had some crazy drama in these slack groups in communities so you need to have a moderator you need have rules and you need to have a you can just automate this moderation away like i tried that but you need a real person there to you know check on messages and stuff and then i have dev ops guy he's my best friend daniel and he works kinda like a s l l s sla like a service level agreement where if the server goes down he gets a message you know if i'm sleeping with something he brings it back up the problem is never was down anymore like it doesn't we haven't really had that for a years so he does security updates and stuff you know like because i have a vps i don't use amazon i use a vps on digital ocean and line and he kinda keeps that stuff safe you know so that's good and how big the business top line how makes the business so remote case is the job board it's the biggest business it makes the most money normally this is starting to grow though is it's like it's past i think hundred k this month a hundred k month so almost like a million dollar business remote case is one point six million a year i think and re basis new business is a immigration agency so i wanna help remote workers integrate to countries that wanna attract remote workers with like you know beneficial text stuff portugal is one of the first ones to do that so those are the three business that make money and the rest doesn't really make money a lot like the book makes like i think like four k a month so you but everything you do is part of one flywheel so i've looked at your kind of like system and i've looked at a bunch of people because i got into a little pickle where i was like god i'm doing so many things and i wanna do all these things i'm interested in all these things but shit you know am i gonna be able to juggle five different things i got a podcast i have a vc fund i have my e commerce business i have a newsletter business i have you know i don't even know what else course business i got know i got another other shit so it's like am i gonna be able to do this and what i saw that you did i i i have this kinda like mental model of a solo and a solo nobody's actually solo everybody's got like a little support team around them that's like helpful some some in a big way a small way but basically it's like somebody who builds a personal brand and then builds a bit builds a successful business and lifestyle around that and what i noticed was that you had this formula which is i don't know if it's intentional or unintentional but i'll say it out loud because here's my my read of your business it's basically you have you starts with the red pill so the a red pill is like you know that scene in the matrix where morph face is holding out a blue pill or red boys like you know do you want do you want the truth or do you wanna you take the blue pill you could just go back to your normal life as everything was you could forget this ever happen and he was like no i need to know the truth what's the truth he takes the red pill and basically it's like every great solar i think starts with one truth so like tim ferris truth was basically that like just the nine to five work in a cubicle goal for forty years model is like effing broken and you don't need to do it that way like you could work four hours a week and live like a millionaire and so i was like tim ferris is red pill and yours was basically like this is idea of being a no a digital no which is like hey yeah you don't have just you know subscribe to the subscribe to the the normal way of living you pick a a place that's where you are from that's where you live and you pay you know you just kinda stay where you grew up and like and you go to an office every day and like you have to wear shoes and whatever you're like no i wear flip flops i walk around on beaches i just kinda go wherever i feel like whenever i feel like and i carry a little like backpack and that's my life yeah so you start with the red pill then you be then you create content around that red pill so you talking about that lifestyle and sharing everything from like hey people always ask what i put keeping in my backpack for the day here's what it is it's like yeah just every bit of content you can come up with that's like poppy that's like fits that red pill so then you be that bit gives you authority on that subject so you become a like thor authority and so you know pom became an authority around bitcoin and tim ferris became a authority around life hacking and you've become an authority around no and then you take that and then you basically spin off one of many businesses that can come up with it but every one of those business either it's a big money maker or it's just another funnel and more content more new audience that's gonna like get sucked into that same red pill lifestyle that you are like talking about and so it even though you're doing six things they're all actually part of one flywheel and everyone that you do is you're gonna feed it either because it's gonna give you a bunch of cash lets you fund this lifestyle in a bigger and better way or it's gonna give you new content new stories new things to be known about that fit that lifestyle as well that's how i see it i'm curious is that a good is that traffic be accurate and and my thing started when i was i was blogging just like you said i was blogging about like no but i was blogging for my mom because back then you had like travel bloggers like two thousand thirteen and i was going to travel kinda and no and i wanted to you know every place i went and i wrote little i was this city to live in and stuff and what happened all the creation that happened to me and my mom was reading that but i wrote in english because my mom was obviously dodge i was like okay she can read english so it's maybe easier to get more traffic and stuff from audience but it wasn't like super like a big idea just kinda happened and then those blogs started showing up on hacker news and i started writing more about like mood bootstrapping startups ups as a no in in thailand or someone or in asia and those started going on hacker is really high and i think that was the time it was like two thousand thirteen two thousand fourteen there was the time when i noticed that the developers in san francisco working for all the startups ups they also were realizing okay maybe i can start doing this remotely because her remote work was not cool back then and no many was not cool back then because you had the tim ferris wave in two thousand eight it was like the first no wave but there was i loved tim ferris but there was something about the the followers there and the the the business that were created they were kinda like like shady there was a little shady shit i met i came across in asia in thailand like americans and european there was like a lot of brain supplements and shit like do it yes yes dude yeah drug dealers online directors and like spam dax and like they're still shady shape but less and i was like i really hate this shady i don't feel like part of the scene i think it would be cool to make it more like you know mainstream like reputable businesses reputable jobs to do it so i kept blogging about it and it kept taking off on hacker news and and you're right i and then i went on twitter and i think i kinda organically people started following me and then a lot of people went no man a lot of my friends went no because i was blogging and they became my friends now and yeah and then i started all those businesses and but i think it's it's not like some it sounds very like a constructed it's not a master plan no it's not a master plan it's very organic like i kinda try i'm like user zero i try to build stuff for myself and i always have like i like new ideas like there's just like you said red builder this like something that's a con in society and what i'm thinking and most people then things like okay must be wrong something it must be someone wrong with me but i think like arrogant i think they must sound wrong society maybe this is like a new thing so i'll try and make a little website about like inflation like three years ago or two years ago i was tweeting about inflation like this shit's gonna go crazy with all the fat printing money and everything nah inflation is fine stop stop whining about it i'm like no i'll just prove you that the real inflation numbers are higher so i made this inflation chart dot com website that shows us inflation was are really high turn not to be true kinda out so yeah it's all great what what a technology are you using to build those sites because they all do look alike can you seem like you can spend yeah spin them up like really quickly well that's really funny because i get a lot of criticism for for the technology i use i use ph because that's the language i knew because i was making a blog like right like wordpress so i knew ph a little bit so i was like okay i just need to write with the language i know because i don't know on their other languages and i did that and then i use a javascript and i use jquery so everybody starts laughing now because jquery is like way pas but i still use it because it's so easy to you know make a button buying an event to it to the server it to the ph script does something with a database sends it back and it works for me really well and i think it doesn't matter what you use but as long as you use something that's really fast feedback loop and iterate loop where you can really quickly develop like i can make a new button in like you know twenty seconds and deploy it to the server and it's really fast and i know other developer friends of mine use a very big stack all this you know kubernetes and all this stuff all these keywords i don't really know and for them it take sometimes like you know an hour or maybe even days to deploy a new feature and i think what we learned from startup and lean startup is that the customer feedback loop has to be very the feed feedback loop has be very fast iterative so you can really quickly change stuff and also makes your customers really happy because they see something they have a problem or a feature idea you can really quickly build it and then they see it and they're that's i mean if you want happy customers that's how you get you make something for them and they're like oh my i influence this product and yeah so that works for me so very very simple stack well what do think won't laugh at you because not because we're nice we we just we don't know anything about but i don't know what jquery is neither the sam i mean nobody these days we're not gonna hear you're safe here we're too dumb if to call you out on any of your technical size this is good podcast guys what do you what do you think what do you think this whole your whole thing's worth so because if you go okay so if you benefit you five x sorry sean go to his like sites and you could see like i it's like something slash open it's usually like the website slash open and then like it says like so many stats most of which honestly are kind of useless but it's just like it's cool it's like you know yeah how many seventy percent of them are like you know the equivalent of like a step counter it's like it's like oh how many dms did i get today how many no i don't have need it at all you do you have it's but it's collective it's like dms you know it's collect the right yeah but when like okay for example i'm on no list dot com which you said yeah i think your biggest one slash open and on it you see the revenue chart you see you know c o two removed from the atmosphere you see the full p l you see a bunch other things and one of them that you see is my part okay so seventy three percent profit margin your team says point seven eight so i guess that's like part type yeah like full time equivalent like f yeah and then plus four hundred ninety two bots what does that service for yeah yeah so did he also do like he has a valuation too is if says we sold for like act what was the multi x profit if it if it was thirty x extra profit this to be six seventeen million so i i tried to think the pe i mean it's not super accurate i did business but it's the pe ratio of public companies that are similar in the industry and i try like sync it to that sometimes but the the it dude it completely depends on the multiple someone's gonna pay for it right like some are extremely low no i've sold nothing but selling in i've been in selling process with previous guests on your you know so yeah but it i kinda bounced off i'm just a lot i think i'm just gonna guess it was andrew wilkinson because he loves andrew wilkinson yeah because he loves dog that that's just guess constant san but eighty percent i signed any eighty percent of the acquisitions they bounced off right so right now i'm like i don't really care i like that i have cash flow and my life is nice and but i until recently i was really like until like a few years ago i was like obsessed by the selling because you bill start up like in a movie like social well not the movie social network but in the big movies about startups there they're like oh my god grow big and sell in your millionaire but then if you become millionaire yourself with your cash flow you're like okay why does doesn't matter actually well let let's actually talk about that because the what's interesting about you is you have a few that you could sell so like remote okay and no med are both pretty cool have you calculated like how much money you want and how long it's gonna take you to get there via cash flow and if it's better to like well why don't i just sell one and i get like an eight or ten million dollar lump sum but then i still on this other one that's making like yeah three million dollars i mean you thought that i've done that math and and and what do you the phase most of my revenues profit like the margins are really high especially remote case is like it's like ninety four percent margin pre pretext so it's very high so i'd say ten x after ten x gets interesting i think the problems with boost your companies you usually get three four five x profit revenue north share which is too low for me it's like i can i might as well wait three years or four years and sit in this chair and the sites will probably keep running because they're fully automated and i barely need to work on them they kinda just keep going like heavily automated like really heavy heavy it's just that i won't build new features anymore then and the site will start looking a little bit old because you know design trends change but generally it will keep running so it doesn't make sense for me to sell for you know five x or four x if i might as well wait and also like no this is like my baby so if i sell it they're gonna fuck it up i already know because they always do like let's say a big a big remote startup buys it okay i know ph fundamental remote starters are cool but they're also gonna be bought by big boring companies later like corporate companies right and they're gonna shut this shit down they're like and this is my contribution this is my life's work it's like legacy so ramon i care less because a job or job board not very interesting but no is like this whole movement and culture and and there's like tens of thousands of people on there and my friends are on there and it's like this work of love you know and so yeah it's it's hard it would be hard to sell that because people gonna fuck it up are you the largest go ahead sean well one thing i gonna say you tweeted out something that said a ten year overnight success which i think is a common yeah idea that most would don't don't realize which is by the time you hear about something you don't know the ten years of kind of toil and tweaking and iterating that it took before the big kind of breakthroughs happen i my my life was the same way know i started my first startup up when i was twenty twenty one and i made my first million by the time i was thirty or thirty one right like it wasn't it it took ten years man yeah and and you know and then and then every year since then a bunch of great stuff has happened but like it took a long time to get that breakthrough and i was looking at your chart sam i don't know if you saw this tweet that he has but the chart basically shows i think you start thinking the sum of all my revenue together in one chart yeah yes it's all your revenue from all your projects altogether in one chart and it's looking like it's like i don't know twenty twelve or twenty thirteen start and basically if i go all the way up until let's call it twenty nineteen you're at maybe six hundred seven hundred k and per year in revenue and only in the last like like kind of the pandemic boom know let's say twenty twenty from twenty twenty you went from under a million dollars to two point five million a year right so you tune and you like it's because it sounds amazing wow this dude's making almost three million a years like yeah but he's also been building that momentum and stacking these assets and it just really took off and at which i'm guessing is like pandemic fueled a lot of people wanted to be nomads mad and like you were there to catch that wave you were the guy ready to catch no this was coming like right this was like i did this presentation in two thousand fifteen where i predicted there would be one billionaire remote workers in two thousand thirty and everybody laughed at me and i was like even in the commas like youtube comments were like this is ridiculous whereas your sources is bullshit and then covid happened and it suddenly seems very reasonable and but nobody could have seen this coming and i had no idea i was actually kinda like thinking like covid or what i exactly which probably but it kinda like it if you look at the chart it's kinda like you know it doesn't really go anywhere and i was like thinking okay this is bullshit like i i i try i i tried everything to make it grow and some those grew and some of those it did in but generally it wasn't very it wasn't like a vc start of relic like well it looks like there's these pete there's these run ups and then a plateau and run up in a plateau which is by the way that's how all progress actually looks if you zoom out part i remember that like during twenty fourteen and when i first moved to silicon valley there was a small group of people like you this i think when you created that first slack community that was like no being a no is the way to go and i'm i have these weeks you know they were they were hundred percent yes and and but there were some people who took the red pill at that time i think steph smith who were just also work of vessels she met you in i don't know indonesia yeah bali or something like that because she had i think probably during that more like that time period in twenty fourteen fifteen sixteen something like that she was one of those people that defected then whereas now there's like another wave and like if you look at kinda like any lifestyle movement it it happens this way it starts with like very i take crypto it starts with the the cypher punk like saying you're right yes they don't they hang on crypto forums and they took pill first yeah yeah it then came you know the next the developers then came the the finance bros and then the same with the next music like music genres like hip hop like early hip hop and i come from electronic music so drawing based music it was my previous career like music producer the same thing like ed taking off in in the us in two thousand nine two thousand ten with dub step that's what broke ed in the us that kind of stuff it's you like these these movements these scenes are almost dead and then suddenly something happens is like right and it's so unpredictable you have no clue what's going on you can only surf it so i think the metaphor of surfing is very accurate it's better to serve these waves in general think life just serve where self trying to control just serve it and and kinda like know pivoting like pivoting startups into this pretty much just serving exterior the surfboard over the ways because you cannot you cannot control the market at all you cannot control society at all you know one of the things that bothers me about the this indie hacker movement is well i i just understand i really i i really like it i like it but in general what i don't like about it is like people think pretty small so they're like you know like there's it's kinda related to like the fire movement is like oh i just wanna say yeah a little bit of money so i can make forty thousand dollars a year in passive income and and and i'm like oh that's cool like getting your first step is cool but like that can't be it with life like you have to like you know you're gonna want more you wanna do more things and contribute to society and with a lot of these indie hackers they kinda come up with silly stuff where it's like a small widget that they sell for four dollars a month and they hope that they can get to a thousand dollars month and i'm like man that's like neat if you're just starting out but i think that this could be bigger and you're actually one of the few people that i've seen go harder you know you're going harder on this are there any others like do you think hard on it like and we your numbers are bigger like it like like it's it's substantial like your numbers are nice already and could be clear at bias right well yeah definitely but i still think that there's a mindset of like like for example your twitter bio thing says your meter is going to three million i would say most people who are indie hackers and makers and kinda like the the the sort of tinker community they don't even have their meters to there their meter you know initially is gonna start much lower sixty thousand or seven thousand a year yeah and maybe yours did too but then you like oh cool i i filled up that meter i leveled it up so what was your like initial goal was it like make enough to not need a job or what how where did you start when did you get more ambitious so i and i mean back when i started i had a youtube check channel for this electronic music i was making a stuff and i was making like a few thousand dollars from youtube adsense so i had some runway some cash flow to live off of travel off and work on mini startups but it was very fast it was shrinking channel because of the competitive like the copyright claims on youtube in two thousand twelve and stuff so it was pretty much becoming like below a thousand dollars a month but so i had that cash flow but to go to your question i think it's a power law like you always have a few people in a scene who will make more money or get more successful stuff also there's a delay effect i started in two thousand fourteen thirteen or two thousand fourteen all these need does any scene didn't really it wasn't cool until maybe i think two thousand eighteen or something or two thousand seventeen so these people that are going into it now they're just starting kinda and i think the widgets thing is interesting because she said it's only a widget if you make one feature really well that solves like one problem you can get some customers you get some cash flow and then you can build a second feature and you can slowly scale up to a bigger two real business to real product tool right and then i think another thing is you don't see a lot of people with multi million revenue because they will quickly raise vc like once you pass a million dollars a year they will switch to okay let's go big let's go become build on a company and i think i'm the exception i'm like i don't wanna be billionaire our company i'm fine like like this kinda chill and that's why you don't see those people out because i do know them and they quickly disappear like this app we're using now riverside i think it's raised vc now start bootstrap and then i think oprah win winfrey use it and because he's my friend and dove he makes it he's like dude it oprah win you i'm like oh my god is crazy he's like yeah think i'm gonna raise busy i'm like okay yeah you should do that because they think this is like this could be bigger than just a few million right so so you tweeted something out there the day that's related to this you go not sure if people realize it but if your app does twenty thousand a month on revenue you're probably already a millionaire twenty thousand dollars per month times twelve months assume you could sell for let's call it four five multiple yeah that's a million dollar selling price right you you're sitting on a million dollar asset and when you put it that way i think that sounds and it is way more achievable then this idea of like i gotta build a a million dollar business like i don't i don't know i don't do i have the big idea whatever but getting something to twenty to thirty thousand a month in revenue right it's approachable and that's kind of awesome i think that's an amazing like just a like you didn't all you did is you said something that was true out loud and i think if more people heard that that's why i'm kinda of bringing it up here i think if more of you'll heard that but that is a pathway to a millionaire status that does not require like winning the startup lottery of like yeah infecting the next big thing yeah or working and saving and you know paying your crazy w two taxes for like you know fifteen twenty years to get the same same outcome yeah i'd exactly i agree yeah and and i think it's it's reachable especially if you think about high automation very high margins so software business you you're not gonna hire a big team of ten people immediately you work with parts time contracts like i do and you keep your margins very very high because then you can sell for five right then your revenue is almost your profit so it's the same yeah that it i think twenty k that's brainstorm or business together that could get to twenty k so what's an idea that you you you're not currently building what you thought of because i'm sure you're an idea guy and you think you can make a website that does x or you could make no mad for this other niche or you could make yeah you know the the the immigration one for this other thing so what's a business let's brainstorm a some our business together what's a business that you think could get somebody to this millionaire status dude i think what's man it's like again this is so personal so i've been living like i used to live in hostel right and like dorms in two thousand fourteen they didn't have money shared with six people like crazy then i started like private rooms in hotels than their rooms got a little bit more luxurious because i had more money and then i started discovering like apartment hotels and it sounds really like bullshit but it works so well with remote work so i mean i it's apartment the hotel right now in europe on the beach and there's a kitchen it's an a apartment what does that mean so apartment hotels essentially hotel so full service furnished nice interior hotel room but you also have a kitchen you have a bedroom you have a living room you have it you know it's very big it's pretty much like an airbnb but you pay per month or per night or what you paper per month well you can paper per night you can pay per month it's just like like sean it's like like side or whatever yeah it's like sander and it's like i'll i forget the other one the guy i was supposed to come in the pop canceled us you did one of these in nashville right or something where you're like this is like or it's working yeah it's like a it it's basically just an apartment that you can rent for five days like and they're pretty cool i do i do them all the time the problem that i've experienced is within in new york it's like ten grand a month and it's like six hundred square feet so that's why i tend to go airbnb but i'm in smaller less expensive cities you can get like a thousand square foot place for like six thousand a month and it's just it's basically an part apartment building that has one floor or all floors dedicated to airbnb yeah the problem of airbnb b is that i've noticed is the quality is very varies high there's a big range of quality and there's problems there's no daily cleaning it's it feels too much like unexpected like you don't know what's gonna happen the water stuff might break if things break here you just get a new apartment right and i've done this in europe and i've done this in asia two in thailand and i spend about you see two to three k three and half k so it's a lot of money it's more than normal rent but the cool thing is that it it solves a lot of problems you have in your daily life because it's surface and stuff and it's a it's a huge thing in asia it's a used thing in in in southeast asia even in korea taiwan and stuff so i think that's gonna be bigger because of remote work because you have remote workers even with families with kids and you don't wanna live in our hotel remote hotel room is very depressing like i go insane in hotel rooms it's just like a bed and you can barely walk around the bed there's no space i need to cook food i need to buy steak from the local butcher i need to cook it with broccoli in spinach and with my friends and stuff and you can do it in an apartment hotel and i think the if you targets it's a high end market i think of remote workers and make a lot of money like two hundred k or a hundred k something if you target you can make a lot of money because it's service furnished and what would you build you to build an apartment hotel or you'd build a digital product a big question because i i'm i'm a software guy i don't wanna i don't wanna own stuff i don't wanna have all this i don't even wanna buy land i don't even wanna buy a house i wanna be able to be consumer a customer of these kind of things right but i wanted long term i wanna like be able to rent for like six months you know twelve months even i wanna be guaranteed to stay so we my wife and i are are like we're at the point where we're gonna start having kids soon and i live not like you entirely but a little bit where we spend we spend half the year one place half a year at the other place and what we're gonna do next year is just rent do a twelve month month lease in new york and just not be there all the time but i'm looking to rent all of my furniture and i've been looking out of place where i was like alright i just wanna like book this one place and i wanna pay someone like three grand a month but they have to show up before i arrive they've got completely set it up yes for hundred percent furnished for me and i've been looking at these and there's a few startups in the space that are doing furniture rental and furniture rental is not popular right now and i tell people all at the i'm like i just wanna rent all my furniture i don't wanna own any of it and they they they think it's nonsense and i think it's crazy if you run the math it it's significantly like it it's about the same in terms of price but in terms of headache i think it's a thousand times better and a hundred yeah yes yeah so it's don't it's it's all about the headaches so if you can afford it you can reduce the headaches of ownership and ownership it sounds so privileged though but whatever it ownership is a is a big hassle shit breaks all the time and if you are like if i spend my time my laptop building on these apps it's probably better use of my time than managing all this this this stuff and if a company can specialize in you know managing this stuff and renting into you it's it's much better i think that's a real your point that's a real business and imagine you can go to a website and you can say like okay you can choose different sets of furniture different interior stuff paintings things on the wall or whatever and you can just click and arrive and it's already done for you like you said i think that would be really interesting yeah what what what else you think yeah things that you're interested in either kind of niche categories or things in your lifestyle that you're like oh i do this lifestyle thing differently than people this could be you could build a business around this i think the the the biggest problem with the digital know one thing is that there's a maybe it's a good big podcast is to say that there's a perception that people travel really fast and i after data that they don't travel fast they travel like every few months or even i think the average is seven months now is very slow so the the word digital moment is it's a horrible word of course we has so many connotation but it's mostly remote working people who want a little bit of a different life you wanna see different place a little bit you know they have boyfriends girlfriends wives husbands they have kids even this family is doing this as well moving around every week doesn't really work being very slow is big and if people are more aware of dads they can find a lot of products built for this long term slow math market which most of us are were mostly slow mats and low mad also slow mats yes think about education think about like homeschooling is taken off also because the remote work if i have kids i i don't know if i wanna put them in a regular school maybe you know elon musk built his own school that's kinda cool but you can do things in a different way and like now it's still very we're still niche like this remote work thing is still niche it's gonna get only bigger there's only gonna be more and more people doing this once physical jobs get automated so if you make products i don't no specific product but if you know if you build products for those people that's a high end market of like still tech workers that are remote so if you don't but you said that you don't own stuff or you you kinda like don't like owning stuff you said that you you said that you don't wanna own real estate so if you're making two and a half million dollars a year in profit this is a question that sean always asks that i'm stealing it which is what do you do with your money then yeah so i'm having in etfs i read a blog post by what's his name the guy from google that does seo and he's like i just put everything in etf in etfs so vanguard etfs s and p of hundred but also i'm heavily invested in asia because i believe in asia believe in the future i know the west there's a lot of things about asian and are good but it's very still things very futuristic and i also invest in crypto like i hold bitcoin and interior it's always scared say those things on the podcast right but it's all like very secure and stuff so not exactly the most shocking thing to to not do always every guy everything you're always crypto yeah exactly but i i'm mostly you're actually not allowed to have that haircut if you don't own like this yeah what do you get i have a hyphen faith like long hair yeah yeah if you don't on three i spend about like four five k a month or something that's it so most of it is just i do need to pay text but after that most of it goes to you know etfs and stuff it's scary to invest now because this is scary time but generally i'm like i wanna do this for twenty for years and in etf invested and stuff and some of their stocks but my i did a benchmark my s and people have honored etf outs outperformed all my stock decisions over the last two years so i'm stupid just like most people sean you wanna tell what you did recently what oh selling with your stocks yeah so i sold not everything but pretty much everything it's sold maybe seventy eighty percent of the stocks that i hope i get that i mean not yeah but that i'm i'm scared they always like don't try and time the market so i'm like okay i'll just sit and just crash with the you know show do that why don't you just like chill two reasons one i didn't wanna risk of margin coal because i borrowed a little bit against my stock portfolio but and you know to what i felt was extremely safe and it's still safe but i was like look if this drops another you know twenty percent then all of a sudden i'm having a headache that i don't wanna deal with i don't wanna have to deal with freeing up a bunch of cash just to buffer this so i was like i noticed that every morning i was waking up and i was checking it and i was like okay logically i know i'm in pretty good shape here but the stress of think having to think about this is taking it away from my like you know my day to day quality of life it's like that's the opposite of what what i want money to do i don't want money to give me stress my money is supposed to take away my stress so what you do is the money opposite what you do with it where is this just it's just cash right now like i might do some like whatever some short term you know fixed income type stuff but like for now it's like again i i don't care like i don't need the two percent i needed the peace of mind and so that was the first thing the second thing was i thought what will i regret more what do i believe more do i believe that this is the bottom or do i believe that this is kind of like actually thinking that this is the bottom you know six months in and that it's all gonna get better soon basically like there's three paths either it gets better now it stays this is about the bottom but we stay here for an extended period of time one two three four years or it has further down to go and i basically thought that it getting things going up soon seemed like the least likely thing like i would i would actually be betting against that heavily it's so i thought okay i don't i'm nothing to lose here in terms of upside because i just fundamentally don't think that stocks and everything just gonna go rip back up again and and we're all gonna pretend like you know that was it we just had a few months of pain and then it all went right back up and and remember things go things are all green again and so i thought either it's gonna be heat flats boring in sideways for a period of time or it's gonna go down more and i thought well in either case that i won't regret being in cash because a i don't have to sweat it every day i don't have to think about it day and b i'm not there's no i'm not losing anything during you know by doing this and so that was my thought process and i figured okay there's gonna be these little bear market rallies so just sell at the top of the next burger so that's what i did everything rallied five percent and i just sold and i kept like i don't know twenty percent still in the market and i just took put left the other eighty percent in and you know not thinking about it cash but i held my crypto and didn't i didn't sell my crypto that's good to are you guys mostly invested in the american stock market or worldwide yeah like you said i believe in asia i'm like yeah i believe in asia but i don't know what the fuck you're talking about how do i go to destination where would i invest i don't even know what what does that mean are you buying the equivalent of like an etf for like japan or something what are you doing dude to head of vanguard etf china and then suddenly disappeared for my broker and i'm like what the fuck happening too and i get this message they're like vanguard left china in march or something because they they were like this is too crazy so pulled the car i i don't know government get some space yeah don't prioritize or did some public check private companies public or something and yeah no they they fuck jack m for sure there's a lot of weird shit happening but i'm i still think i should be invested in in those markets and sam have i talked with the jack miles how it's crazy that the third richest man in the world that they were trainer it was like what hey dude shut up and he's like yes sir they just took jack off yeah my brother calls me like so we had one moment where like a month in when people started noticing jack m is missing hey my brother on the car when day was like where's jack m like asked if he was in the car but he's like bro why aren't we talking about this he's like where's jack and we just started laughing like how crazy is that that jack m is just not like what if you just couldn't find elon musk because he sets something and you know that that biden didn't like they that idea crazy they did it with a tennis player too yeah i saw that my brother still calls me he'll be like you'll just call me out of the blue it's been like a year now and he'll be like yeah where's jack and he'll hang up and like that's the whole all it's so good like is yelling where is jack but dude that's a thing of asia china like all this stuff is accurate there's some crazy shit but the other thing is also accurate that oh there's there's the loss of happening in in asia and i think in the west in europe and america we have a blind spot because we get so much information that's negative about asia especially about china and i'm i'm not a china spy or something my friends call me china's spy because of that but i think it's a blind spot a little bit in the west that were we're gonna miss out on you know i mean china is gonna be the biggest economy in two thousand and thirty i think by gdp it's already the biggest economy by purchasing power parity or something but ignoring that just you know because there's a lot of arguments why we shooting ignore china but it sounds like a blind spot in the west a little bit to me do you what well i'll do well do an easy one do you you like tweeted out your calendar and it was like free for a week or something like that and i know sean too and i i i kinda like that sometimes i don't like that because i'll do that for three days and i'm like oh my i'm so bored it are you is it real that you just don't play in anything yeah so this is the only plan thing and it gives me stress because i'm like oh shit to someone's coming up but i'm mostly like i spend my days like i in my friends so my friends are my neighbors now so i brought all these nomads friends to portugal you all europe and we kinda live together a lot of our lot of them are in the city near or whatever every kinda of near so we just have like dinners outside and we cook food and the sunset on the beach and just this nice chill life that i never had because i were those alone in hotel rooms i had friends but they were always around the world now they're all kinda hear so i mostly do that so i don't wanna do calls about like because what am gonna call about like i like having calls with you guys what am i gonna call with other people about like new business board like no because i can i because i work on my website right i i opened i make coffee i make open my laptop me made my friend i me coach little bit together and make a new feature you know then you go to the gym we go to sauna we go swim they're kinda like but this very reason right this kinda chill life and i don't get boards as long as i ship a little bit on my websites i don't really get bored you're like the only rich perk so basically it's almost always the truth that no matter how hard you try the more income that you make your life your lifestyle gets inflated yep maybe sometimes not as much but then other times a ton and like i was like oh i'm i'm gonna fight it like i can't imagine spending more of than ten thousand dollars out a car or whatever and then you make more come here you're like whatever who cares you said you spend four or five thousand dollars a month you're one of the few people that has acknowledged that your at lifestyle actually doesn't seem like it's been it's it's not no that purpose it's a hundred percent on purpose like it's very always do incidentally sometimes you spend more right like last month was the hotels were really booked so we had to pay a lot of money but now it's chill again i think it's on purpose because like i try to follow like last one was like ten k or something for know we're in liz you're making three million dollars a year yeah but paying ten k four hotels ridiculous it doesn't make any sense like it should be the max like two or three k for me personally but i've seen a lot of people do that life translation because i know from corporate from again from studying business i know the management management people and stuff they get paid more and they get golden handcuffs right and they can't leave a lot of my friends are like that and i don't want that to happen to me i mean can't happen it me but you get what i mean and i i know that material goods don't really make me happy so i buy a new shirt or something or i buy a new iphone within two weeks i'm used to it and there's are studies on this there's like research about this stuff like if you buy a new car if you get married after six months you're at the same happiness if you buy a house after have six months same happiness so if you know that stuff you know that okay you don't really need to spend money so much you don't need to buy stuff essentially and generally will probably make you happier do you what do you think you would wanna spend more on let's say that like you know food like good food like a organic you know free roaming i mean it's cliche like joe roman right but free roaming grass fat cow beef if you know that are happy animals organic vegetables you know that kind of stuff like not goods you know experiences right it's on purpose i do this what what are some my experiences that you think are worth the money what what sorry what are some experiences that are like worth the money that you know when most experience that do don't even cost money right like well do you like coach life coach what no do you do you coach sorry no so that's yeah you're right so man you got me like you're trying to find that stuff right yes i fly business guys because no exactly i'm done with i i can't sit i only do long haul and i only fly like i flew only once in the last sixteen months and flew business qatar qatar really nice and you can lie down and sleep and stuff but that's about it i think and you know there's a one thing i noticed is like i was in bangkok in this luxury kinda apartment hotel stuff but it was a little bit too locks luxury for me you know and i was there for a moment and you start noticing that you don't meet as much interesting people like i met one person who had this giant wheat farm the biggest wheat farm in thailand because i just it was kinda cool but generally it's a very different it's more like a social kinda paris hilton audience you know but in the hostel you would meet crazy people you would need backpack but also like researchers and entrepreneurs and fledgling entrepreneurs you know you met generally more interesting people because you were more in those areas and i problem yeah sorry did i show you about did i tell you guys listen to this sean did i tell you about sam cor from levels mh love other levels what's the yeah yeah levels health the yeah the levels health the thing think that goes in your arm this guy so he raised yeah that's right he raised so he has a startup up that makes eight figures in revenue it's worth i think it was four hundred million dollars so let's just say that he's worth a hundred fifty million dollars on paper so not real on paper he came over to my house and he was with his girlfriend and she made a comment like joking like oh you know he always gives me a hard time because it takes me forever to pack but that's ridiculous only had this one carry on and i was like well how long does it take you to pack sam he goes i don't pack i was like what you mean he's like well he had a draws bag you know what a draws bag it's like a bag like where you like conferences yes he that's all he had was that bag and he goes well you see i only own the clothes that i'm wearing right now which is a white t shirt a pair pants socks underwear and shoes i only own that plus another pair of underwear a jacket and this bag in my laptop which i have right here on me that's literally the only thing that i have i like wait what he goes yeah i've been do it i've been doing this for like eight years now or something like that and i only live and like i do what do he's like he does what do here he lives in like these airbnb bs and hotel style setups and he's been doing it for years and that's all he owned and i thought that was the craziest shift every day i don't understand how's he well i was like i was like so i was like what if you gotta go to a funeral what if you have to do this he goes well i just go to a thrift store when i need to go and i buy stuff and then i just bring it back and he does it partly out of i i think this is my guess he does it partly out of like convenience of not wanting to worry about stuff i also think that there's like a philosophy be like a very philosophical thing going on here because it's like extreme but have you ever heard of anyone peter be in that crazy dude yes exit actually like in two fourteen thirteen i in chia mai and there was an australian guy who would fly from australia to thailand to chang mai with only his macbook air and a clothes he wore and not even a bag and he would buy everything he needed on the spot and he would be there for like two or three months and he would donate the clothes he wore to charity and then he would fly back to a share with his macbook air in his hand that's i was so impressed this data is wrong every freaking time have you heard of hubspot hubspot is a crm platform where everything is fully integrate well i can see the client's whole history calls support tickets emails and here's a test from three days ago i totally missed hubspot grow ahead that see that's cool i would do that because i think that actually adds to the experience of traveling like yeah traveling fully light and then when you get there so yeah i want what you need and then giving it away when you leave like i'd actually get down with that but like i i rotate two underwear and i put my underwear in my bag and my back totally about that yeah yeah yeah no but i i think it comes down to philosophy and i do think it sounds tensions but i don't care it comes down to constrain your life in a certain way i think constraints are good in creativity and life and stuff and it makes you focus on the really important things in life for you personally it must be different right you know for me that's like you know girlfriend friends help food you know happiness all that stuff kinda and and creative work meaningful work very important like i need to be able to i need to have something to do in my day i need to feel like i'm contributing something like sam and so what do you own so i have a backpack i have a have a rolling suitcase though like a small one i've closed i have a iphone macbook pro what the i have toothbrush so minimal a stadium you if you can name all the things you own interrupt right i i have two stadium controllers like game pads you can use stadium here it's kinda cool yeah that's about it i think i mean i mean have like backup phones and stuff because you know two factor authentication stuff but that's not you think you're gonna do this you mentioned you you could talk about your family or not if you want but do you think you're gonna do this when you have kids so what is doing it mean because i'm i'm mostly settled down i'm mostly in one place i'm just like trying to not buy long as in not owning stuff i mean like i i think your life is cool but you have to acknowledge this alternative in the sense of like you know one percent of normal but yeah sure for sure i think it's interesting that like the stuff i do may or may not become a thing because a lot of things i did eight years ago now are normal right so it it might be the the things that you cares become i mean if you're happy who cares it be mean it's more like yeah it's more like it might become mission i think i think even if you have kids you can do it in an alternative way you can you know you can go to trip store get like secondhand hand toys or something secondhand hand clothes that kind of stuff but it all doesn't have to be list so consumer and and buying and you know what i mean it can we can do it in a different way and i'm just trying to figure out like how how i yeah i wanna do that and what we trying to get focus yeah a a no style red pill before briefly which was my i forgot what it's called sam do you remember the name of like the zero waste project or the zero the zero project or something like that so basically my wife told me about this was like yeah you know there's like like in the city in the little town we live in there's like this facebook group and what they do is it's just like it's like a barter it's like oh it's not even a barter economy it's like a giving economy so it's like if you have stuff you just give it into the giving circle and other people can take it out and then they can give stuff in and it's basically like oh your kid i think it's a lot around kids stuff like my kids grown out of this but doesn't it doesn't make sense to right like craigslist rand it's like yeah amongst this trusted group of people who buy nothing leave the same thing but to buy nothing project yeah and i think i might have butcher exactly how it works sam do you know a little bit how well like it's just the idea of like instead of like reduced reuse recycle like for like consumer or for like plastic and shit they're like no just like reuse we're gonna reuse everything so instead of buying a new toy we're gonna go get one for free and then we're gonna give away when we're done it's just a mindset and then there's there's a bunch of companies in the space but the the big one is like this buy nothing series of facebook groups so we're just like i'm gonna give i'm giving away these children's clothes come get them yeah i think i mean it's that's nice i like it doesn't make any sense you have a baby and it it grows out of its clothes every month or something or every two months so why would you buy every new if you can ask your family for clothes they already wore or whatever right it makes more sense to me personally yeah who do you wanna be like who who's who do you who do you admire and who you wanna be like because like the reason why people buy shit for their kids is because they wanna they want their kids to have jordan so they look cool for other people because they wanna impress other people who do you wanna impress and who do you wanna be like you think like who who do you look up to i i like derek sieve i don't know if you know derek si yeah he's tell by who is he he's he started the company called cd baby in the nineties i think or in early two thousands and it which was like one of the first in indie kinda music distributors where you could send your music as any musician and they would press the cds for you and they would send it to your customers and stuff and and they also now spotify and stuff and he photos for thirty million dollars i interviewed him for my best thesis is actually he's really nice guy like the most nice guy in startups ups i think and he's very he writes a lot he writes a lot of now he's very philosophical also kinda nomadic he's been in like living in singapore lived in new zealand live in us and stuff and he's very if you go to his website like derek silver dot or s dot org i think he writes very much kinda same concepts that i talk about like about simple life and and yeah it's it's hard to describe it but i think that's a very inspirational guide to me and i don't really need to i think wanna impress my parents just but they're already happy with me so it doesn't really matter i wanna i wanna try and stay have like a stable you know happiness because i've i've been depressed a lot of i've been anxious i had like especially when traveling you go crazy these you know we you know hotel rooms alone like traveling can can it brings you very deep into your own self and stuff and i think the most important for me is to impress myself by just you know being stable and and having a stable happy life with with people around me and yeah like kinda wholesome life you know and this might what what part of your life are you not impressed by for your either yourself or derek savers or if any if it any of those people right you just mentioned like like the lifestyle you mean yeah what what part of your life is not at that point where there you you feel like it's not impressive in that way that that like yeah like i wanna have a family too you guys and that's what i'm working on and yeah that's like a that's more of a of a focus now you know like pretty easy by way just gotta do one thing but i'll tell you if find the way right girlfriend you know and then you need to succeed they're not crazy you need like connect and all this stuff and i think yeah that's that's it done dude sean you have a go ahead go ahead go ahead i wanna hear with the san no i like a little like you you say like like i think about elon musk every time elon musk presents something you're like off fuck like that's so cool like why am i building shitty internet websites this is my only life i have i'm gonna die i should do something bigger but then i have to like bring myself back to like no it's cool as you're doing okay like it doesn't really needs to be bigger but i mean i everybody wants to make like space rockets i guess but it's just so hard to do that you know sean you you have a you have a dog right a little dog yep i've got a big dog how do oh i love dog yeah yeah so you like animals i love owning animals like big aggressive looking dogs that's what i'm that's my thing it's like a weirdo but how do you live this the the i wanna live a little bit more like you it's and i can do it a now because i have a little bit of money so i just like pay for fancier or airbnb that are pet friendly and b i can only do it basically in america doing this lifestyle with abroad with an animal even in america i drive you either have to fly private or you have to drive most places yeah i drive most places how do you how do live this life with an animal i don't have animals but i want them i had i had two cats with my ex girlfriend and i was actually interesting we went to in bangkok to this this luxury apartment hotel and they were cat friendly and it was like this you know high society of bangkok people with cute cats and cute dogs in asia all the dogs are small they like small dogs i like big dogs too like use them but and they walk around in the hotel and super cute and they have like cats and dog ice cream and stuff and food and and they have little like a little bets for them to sleep in and stuff and everything is service and that's another a big market i think you know technical with bats and stuff they wanna travel as well john have you looked to have you guys looked the flying in america with an animal so basically if you're why do you think i don't go places do i supposed your animals under twenty pounds right yeah she is but like that also means like she's not like tough enough to do all this stuff like we're like oh god how she gonna handle this experience you know of going on a seven hour flight or whatever yeah but she she's the dog's able to so like in inter i don't i don't know if she's physically able to but she's allowed to you could put it in a carrier and put it on your lap or like in the above whatever the case thing and if you have an animal that's above twenty pounds who's putting their dog in the above thing you could put your dog down it's that like i don't know dude it's like but it's like put a blanket over it's like putting a blanket over a bird cage it's a i don't know that's just what or you put it underneath you you put it underneath there whatever you fucking do i don't know don't even don't i don't have of these things but that's what they say on the directions when you look online but like if you have an animal above twenty pounds you cannot bay you basically cannot this whole emotional support animal thing that's kinda nonsense that's kinda getting phased out there you cannot bring an animal a a dog on a flight i i'm always amazed that for popular routes they don't have like a once a month or twice a month animal friendly route is gonna happen it's absolutely gonna happen it's a huge growing market i think because something rich people are not having kids sorry right i was just say i read something that one airline is like being like yeah will fly pets like i think they do a lot of pets in the cargo or whatever because most airlines have been phasing that out and what i think it's southwest i forgot which airlines some airline is making bank because they take all the pets and it was like a differentiator it's like you know bags fly free but it's like yeah we we let you fly your pet and everybody else is saying no nowadays man i think you can do it you can i think it's all about slow adding so if you do if you move like every let's say every six months it's not that bad for the dog or the cats and you you give them a stable life in where you arrive and not too much chaos and stuff i think it's okay i think it's not okay if you keep moving like every week every month this might be a little stressful for the dog and a cat right but six months like yeah it's okay and especially if you get tweet it was what you had a great tweet again it was if you don't have a dog in your profile picture on twitter are you even trying that's a g bag it's the biggest girlfriend bag right sam has one right you have a facebook picture i think yeah i used this on tinder right this was a dinner their dating trick like you you because they swiped right for the dog not for you but they're still sw right so yeah i've noticed there's like two hacks when i was single if like if i ever walk around with like a niece nephew or like a kid that's like an automatic door opener to meet women and then the other one was having a a a an aggressive but nice looking dog like oh doors i'm on they're they're disarmed we're good you know and why does that be aggressive but aggressive looking but nice is that one of those things where it's like dog owners look like their pets and so if you're dog in a certain way they'll think bad about you they wanna heal you you know what like women wanna heal you sometimes like it's like theater guy would like sleep tattoos who smoked cigarettes in it in a in a tattoo under his eye who like you know just wants to like spend time and cuddle you know like it's like so it's you know you're you're you're you're ec i don't know it just works don't ask me that just works yeah so dude i love some yet dogs by the way the the big white boulder bear dog right and i think it crazy it would like it's it's so fluffy it's like that's a very asian move of you that's a they're very popular in asia right yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah what i've seen him here to her yet but yeah what are some is there anything that people assume about your life and your lifestyle and your businesses that you like for example with the hustle as well as sean's milk road a lot of people are like oh that's it it's just a fucking newsletter you just write these these words and you just hit send that's so easy anyone can do it and it's like well no it's actually like a user acquisition play like you gotta to know how to do that and then it's also like you're just not good at writing like you have to be good and that's just talent you either have or you don't and so that that's like some misconceptions about our businesses what what about yours is there anything that people always assume and you're like no because like people can anyone can copy you yeah i think genuine people think that every website or app or company their their customer off that is more simple than actually is because you can't see behind the hoo and as actually way more complicated than you think because there's so many edge cases in every business that you need to quote like if statements for or build like little scripts for special features it's much more complicated and i think people realize that when they start because people always clone you right like they make a copy out of your website and somehow doesn't take off because they've been able to copy the outside of it aesthetic kinda but they don't know what's happening on the new so it's much more complicated like do a job board is much more complicated than you think like fuck how to explain is there's so many little parts that you know especially companies want they want you know invoices for every little thing they add the price is dynamic that kind of stuff i bay i changed jobless post pricing based on how many people post jobs on my side for example there's so much stuff happening behind the curtains that you don't see yes it's much more complicated i was thinking a all the misconception about yeah sorry and a lot of your stuff is automated to where like you don't have to be involved it kinda runs itself you said everything's automated i think nine and to post your job board or it ranges from a hundred to a thousand dollars i think i'm whatever the huge range for sure yeah yeah how would you for the like i'm i'm tinkering with something that costs many many thousands of dollars a year is there how would you figure out how to do that like and so in my head like fucking i got hire a bunch of salespeople people that's sucks do you think that you could automate most things even that are high ticket items oh for sure dude i sell job post bundles for like fifty k if via strive which is like amazing for me to me like i'm like how do you do that that works so you make a page called by bundle and you have the this you can go to remote k dot com slash by dash bundle and you'll see like a slider where you can make your own bundle and get a discount based on it and it's all automated and you add your credit card and then you pay you know fifty k or forty k whatever how many people do that oh yeah this it's like a lot of it's like thirty percent of the revenue i think bundle those no shit so someone do yeah using a debit card or whatever for fifty k yeah do these company cards this is what and this is lagging information people don't know the company cards have been upgraded i think because they're using it for much more these days really like it's a lot of money and i have no idea like i never fought like i don't i'm not hiring people i don't know how this works i just tried like okay maybe i think company asked me like can we buy a few job post for in the future i'm okay i'll make this thing and a lot of companies use this so you figure out the features that people want based on the talking to them of course dude i'm looking at the sales buy bundles buy twenty five twenty five job that's twenty two thousand dollars you do something interesting on your sales pages this you just pack it with information that's totally the right move but you pack it with packs like you use icons to kinda break it up the the emojis yeah i use the emojis a love yeah no it looks like a circus right but it kinda works it's not like well designed right it's not like minimalist design it's just like i just add stuff every day and it just keeps growing but it works kinda what's the biggest purchase someone has made i can scroll i gotta jump i got another call i gotta i gotta run to peter this has been amazing i gotta go sean see you what's what what's been the biggest per purchase that you've had this scrolls all the way up to a hundred and fifty thousand i think a fifty k or something around fifty k maybe forty nine but that happens that happens a lot drive yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah this is crazy yeah i'm working out this thing and like it's like ten k a year and i'm like man i'm gonna have like get on the phone all the time yeah yeah seeing you is quite an in inspiring but i get annoyed if i if i need to use like i wanna use these locations sir apis to figure out where our people traveling to for example and it's always like you need to do a sales call you need to like contact us and stuff and i get so annoyed with it and i know people on twitter get annoyed with it that they can't get a price directly and sign up you know whereas yeah i i think it's much easier to do like this like a sales flow i think it's easier i would argue maybe easier from now yeah it's easier for you but i would actually argue if there's there's a world where it's not affect as effective though because i would i'm in the same boat as you i don't wanna have to do all this crap and i'm not naturally a salesperson but when i hired a sales team and they they they shockingly they were shockingly good at drumming up demand and i remember a cool podcast with the founder of squarespace i think it was and he was like you he's an engineer he's like i wanna leave my room i don't like talking to people i like freedom this and that and he goes the and and he goes the biggest one of a huge mistake i made was i looked down and salespeople and i looked down on this like type of pricing where i think i got get on the phone but he was like i looked down on it and i was wrong it it was effective they they they created demand for a product and that surprised me most so like yeah i don't know i think i you're right i i think my problem is that it's it's it's been it's very hard to meet good salespeople or to find them and it's unclear for me how i how i can hire them and you know i how can i rate a person to hire them as a good sales i don't know what's a good salesperson and i i've never done outbound almost never on outreach stuff and i'm scared that if i hire salespeople people i need to manage them and then you know they might fuck up they might start spamming everything in linkedin and then it becomes like a screenshot thing on twitter like luke peter levels is spamming with his website and stuff that might turn bad and i think you're right if you get to your right salespeople people it can work i just i'd never been able to you know find those people it just matters what you're optimizing for if you're optimizing for happiness and a and a well if you're for happiness and like a good life do it your way your way is working really well if you wanna like grow at a certain rate per year and you wanna really push it i i do think a salesperson is is you do need a sales team but that's not what you're optimizing for you're optimizing for freedom so happiness yeah and i i also think there's there's this there's different types of companies for example these companies that ask for a lot of forms like they want like a w eight form like all the us irs forms and stuff they want you to sign everything and you want you to sign an nda and and there's are some companies that just and you know their credit on stripe and is done and it's different customers and the customers that ask for a lot of questions on email they generally convert less for me to pay less money and they are more of a asshole to you know do customer support for and stuff you so you also you you get different types of customers if you do it to automatic you get more kind of modern customers that are easier to deal with i think is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to talk about no i think i think we maybe transparency like the reason i'm so transparent is i think it's very like i said i think is very important to to to be honest and to to show other people that you can build a us a nice company like this by sharing every like ups and downs of it and instead of because everybody else is only sharing like the good things and the we're growing so fast and we're hiring and we're funded and blah blah and i think it will be cool if we did business in a maybe in a more wholesome way where we you know share everything and share to ups and downs and yeah maybe not grow super super super big but more in a you know wholesome manner i have a i i i'd like that but i have a few critiques the first is yeah i think that if you're high so you remember buffer so buffer yeah did they did the whole yeah they did it even more extra well equally as extreme as you would say but they revealed one of my instructions for sure yeah but they revealed everyone's salary and they did that yeah i think they did it as a marketing stick they did it because they're like well like you know like our product's okay it's good enough but like let's come up with a a cool shit so we stick out and it aligns with our philosophy is great and it worked really well for them but i actually think that it probably hurts them after a while it's really hard to do that after a hundred or a hundred and fifty i don't know what the number is some amount of pull employees because they're like dude i don't want my shit all out there and yeah when if i was you like there i don't like like when we sold their company i didn't exactly reveal how much i made them because i'm like man i don't wanna be a target i don't want people to take advantage of me i don't want to be judged in a particular way i don't want that type of attention so i'd rather just say like round whole numbers instead of like exactly there's a security risk for sure yeah like you don't wanna talk about where you are right now and part of it is because i for sure on hundred percent yeah yeah hundred percent yeah so like accurate part of the downside but at the at the same time it's a marketing it's maybe it's agree you agrees with you're with your life philosophy and also it's a pretty sick marketing stick like yeah thank you yeah i i think it's all it's hard to stop it because i i've been doing it for so long it's become part of my identity entity it will be hard to like hide all this stuff now they're like where does this open page go like why are you're not sharing i'm like oh i'm just done with it now you know yeah and i and i i do think it's it's this recurring marketing machine that i think it's a big part of why my businesses work became successful why i got a lot of audience on twitter because of this i kinda deny that so it's very hard to quit that right once you've been doing this for so long yeah that's why i'm nervous about even doing it in the first place yeah yeah yeah you know it's kinda like i haven't gone hard on youtube or any other social platform because i'm like oh i don't wanna a commitment like you gotta keep i to do youtube as well and i i have the same problem yeah i'm like this is gonna be a new recurring like activity i need to do every week i i need to upload a video make a video yeah i think there's a world where you could do seasons you know like a a tv show has a season i think there's a world where you could do seasons and do quite well but the majority of people do it like regularly and i'm like oh man i don't wanna get on that treadmill that's scary no i think it burns you out like look at all the youtube was burning out it's they all bail extreme yeah yeah yeah it's extreme schedule i think sis is my i think it might be interesting if i just sit around the laptop like this and i just tell the stuff i've i know and i think and instead of writing it down and just making like little videos derek xavier also did that he he makes little videos about small topics yeah you know five minutes explain something in the next video and so alex for mo was doing it the guy on our pot he came on our podcast alex for mo he's been doing it lately and he loves it and he and it seems it seems like a lot of kind of a lot of work but not that much work no more work in this podcast and i don't consider this podcast to be too much work but it works well but dude thanks for coming on this has been fun i i hope you you will come on more often and we'll do break something this time yeah do a super phone thanks for having me super yeah hopefully we didn't you you said you were nervous because we were gonna ask no i don't think we asked anything because we didn't ask anything crazy yeah cool there's not much to ask when you tell everyone on the internet about everything you do yeah this is always when the good part of the podcast starts right because you end it and then like the the real shit hopefully not the the real stuff i i hope was what's going on the whole time was great yeah dude thanks this is awesome you pin out your stuff so it's at levels yeah it's twitter dot com slash levels i owe so l e v e l s i o and there's all the links on from my website there so you can click from there thanks thanks for coming