Mike Lazerow
Appearances
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
We look at raising money and managing a board as managing any relationship that's important to you. When you show up to raise money, ideally you have provided some value beforehand. You have a relationship. They know who you are. They have a sense of your credentials, meaning who do you surround yourself? What have you done? Investors don't really care where you went to school.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
They care about what you've done and who you've worked with. Obviously, whether you've won or not and so if we look at our most transformative fundraisings and board members, these are people who we built relationships with in many cases over many years.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
People like Howard Linzen, early stage investor and Roger Ehrenberg, the SoftBank team who was based in New York at the time, Graycroft, these are firms and individuals who knew us and so by the time we showed up to pitch an investment, They were at least wanted to lean in, not necessarily do the deal.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
And way too many founders and really way too many business people look at everything as transactional. So what can they do for me? We always ask, what can we do for you? And that has gotten us so much more in return, I think, than we've ever given, even though we've given a lot. But if you have a give mentality, which you've talked about, the rest takes care of itself.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
Yes. So the whole idea behind the book Shoveling Shit, A Love Story is not that it's just miserable and suffering, which it is. Starting a company is lonely, a lot of work. If you just want an easy day, just get a job, sit down from nine to five, do something, go home, you could leave it at work. Entrepreneurs don't leave it at work. At the same time, there is purpose that is found in work.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
So hard work is a virtue. Those of us who are lucky enough to start companies really find the path they're supposed to be on and wake up fired up. And that's really what we tried to capture. And when we look at our experiences, it's in the trenches with our teams during the hardest times where we grew the most, we learned the most, and I think built the closest relationships.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
And I think where that was most apparent to me, the specific was when I walked on the stage in the day we announced the sale of Buddy Media for 745 million to Salesforce. I walked on this stage, I look out this ballroom, all of our employees are there. And I felt beat up. I was 40 pounds overweight.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
This company that went from zero to 50 million in annual recurring revenue in three years from launching the product to when we sold, it had just taken a toll. And at the same time, I felt like you feel at the end of a long run or something that is just physically drains you. There's a sense of purpose and accomplishment. And I had to hold this idea that I'm miserable.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
So my cardiologist had told me I'm going to die if I don't have an artificial heart valve. So I was not doing well personally. And it was awesome because we had done it. Right. And so that was one that captured the suffering and the epic accomplishment all in one day.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
So at the time I was on my Blackberry and Cass was in surgery, having, it was a C-section, not much for dad to do. So I'm sitting there and I read the story about Mark Zuckerberg.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
And he stands up at F8, which is developer platform, his developer conference, and he puts out a call for all developers to build the next generation of applications with deep integration into Facebook and the social graph. Zuck basically said, here is the virtual representation of real life relationships. You can use it to make your apps better. For example, if you are building games,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
Users can play games with their friends just by hooking it up to Facebook, right? You could invite friends and that's how Zynga was born. If you're a marketer, you could build apps that do fun things that enable friends to communicate. FedEx launched a gifting application with us. But at the time, I just thought it was a big idea. And I get very excited. Let's just say that.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
And I probably shouldn't have brought it up, but she gets wheeled into the waiting room and I say, Cass, I got it. I got our decks. And she's like, got what? She's groggy. I'll never forget this. Our next business idea. And she basically gave me a look. which was communicating four letter words.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
I'm not gonna say on such a great program, but three months later, she was sitting in an office at the corner of 60th and Columbus building desks and Buddy Media was off and running.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
exactly right and we're talking earlier about giving and we love entrepreneurs and we get a call from this guy who i knew because he had a wine show i don't drink wine but it was like one of the first youtube shows on wine And he basically said, I've been working for my dad since I was like 13. I've never made more than 100 grand. I'm 34 years old.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
I have a concept for a new type of ad agency that helps companies market the way I've marketed at my wine company, Wine Library. The problem is I don't have any money for an office. Can I use your only conference room as my office? Now we're in like a thousand square foot max. He's asking for 250 square feet and the only like private room.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
I say yes immediately, but I say, yeah, you got to talk to this lady over here. Who's my partner in all things. And I thought Cass was going to say no to Gary. Those of you who know Gary know that you can't say no to Gary. And he has a gift of gab unlike anyone else. He's great with people. And Cass said yes, and he has been one of our closest friends. And I would say mutual mentors.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
We come to each other whenever we need really help. So we own a pickleball team together. We are investors in V friends. We did want empathy, wine, his wine company together. I'm a very large collector of V friends. He was involved with buddy media. Obviously we worked on clients together and everything in life. The more you give, the more you get.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
And we had no idea that he would build a 3000 person, half a billion dollar empire. a half billion dollar revenue empire out of that little conference room. But there's no better entrepreneur that I know. And the main reason I say that is unlike Cass and myself, we raised money from venture capitalists to build software and then sell it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
Gary self funds all of his businesses and he uses revenue to grow the businesses, which is really the best way to fund businesses.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
So the vFriends concept came down to one thing for me, which is intellectual property is one of the most powerful businesses and forces in the world. We have an incredible system in the United States to protect IP, copyright trademark. And if you look at the last generation of what took off, a lot of it was based on IP that people traded, people played with.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
So I went back to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It's still a billion dollar franchise and there's no one better at building businesses than Gary. And so we bet on Gary, we bet on the market, which is a hundreds of billions of dollars in kind of IP based revenue. And the rest is history. And he's had three great events. He's gone incredibly deep into trading cards, which is the latest.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
And so the NFTs that launched this all was a way to build the community, but Gary has gone way beyond just digital collectibles. It's one of the communities that I love the most because it's so positive in a world in which we need positivity. He espouses empathy and listening and patience and the world is short on a lot of that stuff.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
And we've thought about this a lot. We have three kids and they're now entering, one's entering the workforce, two in college as of this fall. And there's a huge gap between what they're learning and what they need to be prepared for in this new world that we live. And so we just believe that all kids are born creative. They're born as entrepreneurs.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
Anyone who's had a baby knows that baby does whatever it can to get what it needs. Now, whatever it can in that case is crying, but talk about advocating for him or herself. They come out advocating, right? and weaponizing their voices to get what they want. And then they go through this industrial normalization complex, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
They go to school and they're told to sit down and shut up and memorize these things and be like every kid. And then you add social media where I'm not as good enough in my mind as everyone else. And no matter what age you are, and you have this toxic brew that creates kids that are both ill prepared for the world and lack confidence and don't think that they're enough in and of themselves.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
We spoke about ego earlier, and there's no doubt that entrepreneurs have ego and they need ego, right? That's the rocket fuel. for them to be able to have the unshakable confidence, the vision, the charisma to do what they do. But pregnant in that ego is the wrecking ball for the company and for your life, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
Inside that ego is also why we ignore feedback, refuse to pivot, hire the wrong people, build a toxic culture, micromanage people. Like, don't get me started, right? And so...
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
kids are now coming into the world with very little confidence they don't have that ego which is necessary to say i don't need external validation to do what i want to do i am enough i have everything i need inside me and that is creating issues across the board as we spend a lot of our time with young people we love it it keeps us young
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
She was a transformative hire, but looking back, I think the biggest lesson for us is something Cass says over and over again, know what you don't know. So we got it to 50 billion in sales. We'd never done this before. We called it Buddy Media because we thought it was going to be a media company. We then pivoted three times into software.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
You don't call a company Buddy Media if you're a software company, right? And so then we find ourselves like, how do we scale sales? We had 40 salespeople. Mark would later tell me at his house that we made a mistake. We should have had 400 because we were selling it so effectively. And The bringing Susan on board and a public company CFO just help bring to the company skill sets we didn't have.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
And that's really your job as a leader to bring people in who make you better.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
Yeah. Great. Okay.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
At the time, he lived in a neighborhood of San Francisco, very nice neighborhood, and he had two townhouses that backed up to each other. If you think of a block, a square block, he had two townhouses on two different streets that backed up to each other, and he had a courtyard in between.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
in one of the houses was his residence so his young kids at the time and lynn and where he lived the other housed his philanthropy and was his office his home office very large home office also had a gym when i walked in mark had just finished working out he was still sweating hat on backwards eating a power bar some sort of energy bar and it was a very casual meeting between two entrepreneurs he loves entrepreneurs
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
He wanted, his first question was, show me the product. I pulled up the product, just started demoing it. He gets very excited, like I do, and he just kept, and I had a... a demo that basically targeted ads based on circling a geographic area and showing how we publish content. And it was slick and he was just blown over. We negotiated the deal on the spot.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
He said, I'll pay this for the business, no more. Gotta go to the board, all that stuff. I said, I had talked to my investors and Cass, I can't agree to anything, but please just put your best foot forward. I'd love to work with you. We've modeled the business off of Salesforce. And what you've done and those one of the best meetings of my life.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
And to this day, I have huge admiration and, and love Mark. I mean, we will both admit he overpaid for the business. I love him, not just because he overpaid, even though I appreciate that mark, how he operates. is phenomenal. He has a saying, just do the right thing. So you ask him a question, hey, what should I do here? The right decision, do the right thing.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
And how he's integrated philanthropy into his day-to-day and the amount of impact he's had is incredible. I'm not seeing that level of impact from entrepreneurs who have 10 times the resources that Mark has. So it's really impressive. And he did it from day one.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
So this is not a let's make money and then sprinkle some, this was fully integrated one, one, one Salesforce foundation model from the first day that he launched the company.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
Sure.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
Yeah, so I've had one major failure without CAS. It was after Salesforce. I think I take responsibility for this in the book. primarily my ego got in the way. I started a company with a very close friend who was an artist.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
And let's just say we did not do what co-founders should do before starting a business, which is not only get on the same page about strengths, weaknesses, what is the vision, but really the softer things. How hard do we want to work? What are the goals for the business? How are we going to make decisions? And it was just a complete failure.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
And I'm not going to say Cass said don't do it, but she was very Negative on the idea. We're not, we have the type of relationship where it's not codependent in the sense that there's a very strong, we obviously we have three kids. We've had three dogs, had four dogs. Actually we have done eight companies together, but there's also a me and the me involves I go to a lot of music.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
I do stuff with friends. Like we have a life outside of each other. So she wasn't going to say, don't do this. But she gave me all the reasons why it wasn't going to work. And it was one of the few times in my life I didn't listen to her and it cost us a lot of money and time and it was painful. And I think the best part about Cass from my perspective is she's aggressive.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
And why I say that is she's not passive aggressive.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
For better or worse, I know where I stand every second of the day. The good news is I have not gotten a text during this podcast. So it means that I'm not talking too much. I'm not going off the rails. I'm trying to keep it together. But Cass is very good communicator. And there are people she fired that to this day, tell me that being fired by Cass was the single best day of my life.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
And the reason it woke them up. She told them like their strengths, their weaknesses, why they're not a fit for the organization, where she thought they would be a better fit. Oftentimes if we like them referring them to businesses. And so this person had not, that I'm thinking about in particular,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
had never been told their weaknesses and there's something powerful about hearing where your shortcomings in a way that is from a position of love and the intent is not to hurt you I'm not saying we haven't had knockout drag out fights over the years.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
I can't really think of one off top my head, but I know we have usually because of stuff that I've done, but it's a really good, if you have a co-founder or you're in a relationship that matters, a spouse communicate Don't let the boogeyman take over because there's usually not a intention that is bad unless there is, then you've got to get rid of the toxic relationship.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
The first one that I would ask is, is very simple. Like what's going to get in your way. So it's all sounds good. Like you you're fired up. There seems to be a market. You seem to know the market, but what are the obstacles we got to worry about? And the biggest red flag is there's no obstacles. There's no competition. This is a slam dunk because we've done a hundred investments.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
We've started eight companies. Not one of them is up into the right. It's not true. One of them was up into the right, but most of them take some time to figure it out. And it's in that figuring it out that you need to be self-aware, you need to understand what you don't know, what potentially, what are the blind spots?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
And so that's a question that really brings to light how well someone has understood the task ahead.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
Yeah.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
I love it.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
He's like the Zen master who makes you think about more than just golf.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
So how you recover is how you do everything as an entrepreneur. You show up to work and The proverbial, you know what, hits the fan and you just got to start shoveling. You never know what clients are going to churn and leave you, what employees are going to try to quit. Do you get sued? All of this stuff that we've all dealt with, that happens to be a big pile that you need to recover from.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
And I remember thinking first, wow, like I can't believe we thought that we're really rich on paper. And then now a company's going bankrupt. We have to buy it back. And then once we understood what was going on, we're out of the shock, right? You hear news like this and you're just in shock. It's basically, what do we have to do to win? So what do we have to do to buy it back?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
And in that case, we needed to raise money. So we hit the road with our third co-founder. We didn't even have a bank account. We had very little money personally. We went to the Bay Area. All three of us slept in the same hotel room. I don't know if our co-founder, Mike Casper, had that in mind when we decided to start the company together.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
And then we went to New York and did the same thing on aunt booze couch and her pull out Murphy bed that came out of the wall of this 800 square foot apartment with the two of us in one bed and Mike Casper on the couch. And what we had done is we were transparent with our employees the whole time. We didn't hide this, right? As soon as we got the news, we got everyone together.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
We said, listen, there's nothing about what we're about to say that is good. So this is news that we just heard. We are empowering you with it. We're going to be fully transparent. And they stuck with us for three months while we raised the money, they went without pay. We then did back pay.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kass and Mike Lazerow on Why Building Big Requires Feeling Deep | EP 620
We grew that business, sold it for $25 million in 2005 to Time Warner, which is how we got to New York, which then led to our next ventures and eight in total. And entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs. You get up, the sun rises, you shovel, sun goes down, you shovel a little more while it's dark, and then you get up and do it again.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
I don't even know who invested in us, but I know everyone who said no.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
Um,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
It's also a very different vision, I think, for leadership than maybe some younger entrepreneurs have. Too many of our companies that we work with, the founders treat them like democracies. And I don't know if everyone's noticing we're kind of pressure testing democracy as a model for government. Let me just tell you, it does not work at companies. Your job is to be the boss, not the buddy.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
You're a benevolent dictator. You make the decisions. People want to be led with compassion, with clarity, with transparency. Not by a dick. Just tone it down. Listen to your people. But make decisions. Communicate why. Align everyone's interests correctly with financial incentives. And the rest take care of itself. If you're working for a company that has a leader...
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
that isn't leading, that just makes decisions based on the last person she spoke to or he spoke to, those are not going to feel like very empowered employees. And so it's really kind of look at yourself as a very nice dictator. You have the most to gain, but you have the most to lose.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
If it goes out of business, it's on you if you run out of money and you're not going to be worrying about, oh, I listened to this person and tried to make a decision that kind of threaded the needle between what everyone wanted. And that gets so many companies turned around.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
I want y'all's perspective on that.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
Don't get me started on that one. Well, Cass, second place is okay. That's silver medal in the Olympics. Let's not go crazy about that. Second and third, I'm not saying you're happy with it, but let's still give bronze medals just after that.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
Cass is the most competitive person you'll ever meet. Oh, I like Cass.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
You couldn't attend every one of four kids' games and practices like you do without having a team that is epic. I know your businesses, and they're very... service and operations intensive. Yeah. So the ship don't shovel itself for your businesses. Absolutely. AI is just going to push a button and boop. I wish Mike, but no, you're right. You're right.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
And so knowing how there are entrepreneurs who can't leave their desk and that's not an entrepreneur, that's a job. Yes. You should be able to empower people, pay them well, communicate, Clearly, the focus of the organization, what we're trying to accomplish, where we're going, what's most important. Give them the resources they need to do their job.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
And if they do it, that goes on the promotion list when you need to hire someone who's above them, right? So we have people who started as babysitters for us who ended up as senior people. One who's a senior executive at LinkedIn, Abby Lauderback. And we believe that people do well. care about their future. Too many entrepreneurs think it's all about money.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
Employees want to know that you care about them. And that means that you're thinking about what's next for them. What's the next step in your organization or outside the organization? And if you do that, they feel like they're seen.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
Uh, I mean, when you think of, I mean, hopefully it's okay. I asked a question, but when you think of everything you've learned in the 10 years, like what are the cheat codes for you that you wish you'd done? All these cheat codes are just stuff we learned the hard way, right? Yeah. Like, especially this one, Caswell admit, uh, I'm not a born leader. I was an awful leader.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
I would wander the office. I would tell the engineers, hey, wouldn't it be cool? I would do everything you shouldn't do. But are there any cheat codes that you've picked up that you think that are gold for you now?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
Yeah. I mean, I think what saved our marriage and our companies was kind of my self-awareness journey. And I don't know if it's just guys.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
But like, I mean, I kind of not teared up when Ryan's talking about like what he's gone through. You know, you expect everyone's the same. You look at, we all look at our positives and I could sell anything. I can do some stuff, but I'm not always present. I don't always care enough. I'm not always empathetic in how I deliver news.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
And I think one of the things that Cass has done and great leaders do. is they just get better 1% every day. And like Cass now, when she lays someone off, it's the best day of their life. Like literally, I've seen this so many times.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
They're like, no, they're like, I now know my strengths, my weaknesses. You see me, you know me, you're right. This isn't the right fit. If we like them, we'll help you get on your feet because it's just a fit thing, right? Yeah. Whereas it took me a while to develop any sort of rapport that people would say positive things right after they came out of meetings with me.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
Speaking of bad habits.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
I listened. I mean, who's right? Who's right? The sale sucked.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
I mean, for me, it's like, I think it's simple. It's basically, I'm a capitalist, so I love business. I love the game. You somehow keep score with money. I'm not optimizing just for money, but we bought companies, cashflow businesses, we're investing. We just love it. And I think why we wrote this book is very simple.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
We want to get our experience and our ideas out there, and it's become a great platform. We're speaking to organizations. We've up-leveled kind of who we're talking to and who's bringing us in. And a lot of it is let's keep doing what we like to do, and if it feels good, let's keep doing it. And if we don't like it, we stop doing it while we take care of our health.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
Thank you. We appreciate it a lot. Where can everybody buy the book, learn more?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
Appreciate you.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
From NBC.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
Ah.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
Now it's all about apps and streams and the front page of a website doesn't matter. But when we started, there were people at Yahoo that created the index of the web, right? People who basically said, oh, you're interested in golf? Here are 10 sites you should check out. So it was important back then. Yeah, it was.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
We probably learned more from golf.com than we learned anywhere because it was both a colossal failure and an epic success. And so we started the company and within a year of doing the company, we got an offer from a Sequoia backed golf company in Silicon Valley called chip shot.com.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
october 99 eat toys go in public worth billions of dollars internet's here height of the frenzy i'm like 12 years old i forget how old i was because i was like cass is a little older or some people say a lot older um And we didn't know much. And these guys are like, we want to buy your business and then merge it with our golf club manufacturing business.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
And Sequoia had backed Google and all these big companies. And then April 2000 came around and the whole market crashed. And we got a call actually right before that saying, oh, by the way, we're out of business. We can't pay any of your people. And you can buy it back. you know, there's nothing we can do for you. And we just had to shovel shit.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
I remember that call really, I mean, that calls like in my, not only my mind, it's like in each cell. Like I was like, can this happen? Is this reality? Like we're pot, we're totally in. So when you work with your spouse, there's no like, Oh, my spouse has a great job. Like we'll be fine. It's like, Oh no, we're like having one kid. Health insurance. Zero income now and no money.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
We hadn't really made any money at the time.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
Cass is fucking the best. I'm like freaking out in the corner. She's like, we got this.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
She got all the employees. She was super transparent. You know, she runs the companies. I do like sales and biz dev and raise money. And we spent three months trying to raise money to kind of buy it back and relaunch it. And somehow Cass ensured that none of the employees left, which was miraculous.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
So I think that what you've done, Ryan, like our friend who we're talking about, Gary Vee and others, that's raising money, right? You don't go to investors. You go to customers. You win the business. You generate the revenue to then generate the profits to plow back in the business to grow. And so our heroes are the people not that have the safety of venture capital.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
But it is those entrepreneurs, like a lot of your listeners, who don't have the safety net, who are running restaurants, who are running service companies, who are running agencies.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
And that's how you fundraise. And if you do a good enough job on the customer side, then maybe you have the ability to... raise money to do an acquisition or to take some money off the table or to make some moves, right? We've always been in businesses up until now that requires building software and a lot of upfront costs.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
And frankly, it's just easier for us than I think what you and a lot of others have done, which is hard.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
And it's not that that's very rare and awesome. Investors are great. Some of our best friends. But you're bringing a partner on board. And so unless you're ready to communicate and report and listen, it's work. It's work. It's a relationship.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
It is great to be here. Love the energy and congrats all of your success.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
I mean, looking at our investments, we've done space, we've done liquid death, which is water in a can. We've done game companies. We've done music festivals. Um,
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
We actually spent a lot of time thinking about that because we did the first 75 deals off our own balance sheet, and then we started a firm, which just meant accepting some outside capital as well, and how you make decisions about investments. is how you make money. I mean, that's the make or break.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
And what we realize is how we make decisions as investors is how every entrepreneur should look at their business. And so we put together what we call the Go Gauge, but it's a very simple six questions, idiot proof. The six things are very simple and it's what's a product? Why is it different?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
And what's interesting for you, and I know a lot of your marketing background is not that different than how you come up with kind of great marketing ideas. right? What's a product? Why is it different? Who's going to buy it? Not what the market size is, but who specifically is going to buy it and how many of those people, right? We're in the golf business.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
We didn't own a golf course, so we're not getting tee time revenue. So really hone into like, who's going to buy it. And then it comes down to where we think we've outperformed, which is sales and marketing. How do you get people to find out about the product? distribution and operations. How are you going to get the product to people?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
Which, you know, for this company, Liquid Death, we had no idea how hard that was going to be. We're putting the water in the can in Austria, shipping it by boat to the U.S. just to get it to distributors, to wholesalers, to get it to distributors, to get it to retail, to hopefully get it to a customer. H2O, no! So have we done another deal? No. Have we done another liquid deal? No. No.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
Because they're very hard. And the last one is just, does the financial model make sense? Not from a Goldman Sachs analyst perspective, but from brass tacks, unit economics. You're selling it for why? Can you make it for less than why? What is the net profit that you're going to make off of the product, the margin? And then what do you need to support the company?
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
And especially early on, things pivot so much. You talk to customers, they punch you in the face, and you've got to change. So we just want to make sure we start with something that makes sense on the spreadsheet and then pivot from there.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
So what I just said is like the table stakes. And then if we get through that, they meet Cass.
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
and the entrepreneur boom boom boom and it's impressive in a great way you know every entrepreneur even when we say no let's just say gets a lot from their conversation with casp we hated when investors would take a meeting and then they ghost us they're like they don't even and i know every one of their names because those are the people i remember i don't even know who invested in us but i know everyone who said no like every round oh my god you and i are cut from the same cloth brother
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
to everyone who says no like i have a and i have all my rejection letters right here from college i have like i have a hundred jobs that i was rejected from but regardless for me it comes down to do i want to have dinner with this person once a week like is this someone i want to hang out with because you look at like scopely took 10 years to go from that initial money we gave to a five billion dollar exit right you look at mike cesario liquid death he's in it six years we've been working together
Right About Now with Ryan Alford
SHOVELING SH*T: The Entrepreneur's Messy Path to Success with Mike & Kass Lazerow
We love each other. We love hanging out, right? We love jamming on the business. We love working on problems. So for us, it's do we love the entrepreneur? And is it the right entrepreneur for this company? Just because it makes sense on paper, it could be the wrong entrepreneur. I'm not going to build a space product on the wrong guy.