How a $200 Doorbell Became a $4B Business

jb created ring doorbell you sold it like a billion dollars right one point one five the part after his decimal point it's worth more than our entire career so far yeah i wanna brainstorm business ideas with you i wanna see how you think is there a five or ten billion dollar company hiding in the bugs space probably they're it you said i just don't know how to stop and sometimes it's not smart and it cost me yeah you're gonna make me cry sam you're gonna do this i feel like i could rule the world i know i could be what i want to put my all in it like a day off on a goal less travel so sean listen if you're like me you woke up this morning you roll out a bed you checked your business insider dot com and you read this amazing article about jamie and it just says i'm jamie and i'm the ceo of ring and i have the world's worst morning routine and it's a whole article about how he rolls out of bed he scrolls its food for about four hours everything he shouldn't do like immediately like all the wrong shit like everything that was the whole article about oh jb has the world's worst routine good p strategy right like they sit down with you and they're like hey we need to get some cool like tech billionaire weirdo stuff what you got and you're like nope don't have anything so they're gonna use that i'm the average guy from missouri are you from missouri i'm from new jersey but i tell people i'm from missouri now because i have this farm in missouri and i've decided that there's no reason why you can't just be from missouri guess where i'm front jamie can just look at me and gus missouri i'm from missouri my saint louis so i my farm is in lab bell m missouri so i'm in i'm from missouri you're from missouri you're more like a city folk but we are two and a half hours north of s saint louis dude i love how he just out missouri you even though you were actually born and raised there and he just said he was like you're a city slick not a real true missouri we don't like people folks this is like you going to like tony sop and being like actually tony it's just get that so let me tee this up alright so i didn't call with jamie and and it was super fun jb created if you've ever seen a doorbell that has a camera on it this is the inventor this is the man who did it he created ring doorbell grew it sold it to amazon for tons of money and i was like hey i wanna kinda have you on the podcast in brain or business ideas with you i wanna see how you think how do you approach businesses and he's like i believe i don't know the exact quote but it was something like you know ideas are like my drug of choice and he's like i have this list on my phone of like thousands of it is which one do you want yeah exactly and so so i wanna do that sam you saw the doc that he sent over which is gives us kind of bullet point ideas we don't know what he's gonna say but bullet point is where do you wanna start wait can i ask a question before we get in how much you sold it like a billion dollars right one point one five but i mean if you wanna you can round down if you want to i mean okay okay so we're talking to a guy who you know you have a billion dollar company for his decimal point is worth more than our entire career so far i think you just point out i did sell it for a billion when a billion was a lot of money just just backward with was crack win a billion was actually like you could buy more than a cup of coffee with it well to can we actually go to story do you remember kinda where you i guess i've always curious about two things one was there a good negotiation story or like kinda throw out a number story of like how do you arrive at that one point one five billion and then like how did that go come about i mean what was cool with amazon is you know from the the we had been working with them on stuff for years so like i i actually went to amazon and showed this guy nick the ring before we launched ring because we had been talking to them they were with the lack sense that they were looking at so they were trying to reach out to all the small iot people at the time there's a lot of little hardware things bubbling up so i i even like literally like brought them the first one and it showed to him so we had been working together for a long time we were very like aligned on like mission what we're trying to do they started to look at video realizing like with the alexa so they had you know the kind of the call it the ears in the home and they started to see the eyes and and saw what we were doing we had this you know kind of like dating awkward because we we would talk all the time we'd meet and you know nick said let me come down and let's have lunch which was kinda not that abnormal and we're seeing there in next like you know we should kinda go to the next level here and it was this like very funny like dating conversation of like you know it's like where you don't wanna just like jump out and be like okay let's do it you know it's like and and it's like do what you know so so it's like we keep going back for like till you mean and he's like yeah and i'm like to and like we kept going and then he finally said yeah like we it's time we should combine and you know not not a merger of equals by the way but that amazon should buy you what was your revenue then do you know we were with so that was two thousand seventeen so we we got year we did four four hundred and eighty million okay so you guys were just huge was it a profitable business or were you burning money and you had to figure out it was so interesting is like it was the like the the of each like the individual customer economics were insanely good so the the the fund like the the fundamentals of the business like the actual like business was good it was growing so fast that like money was just being lit on fire everywhere and it's not that we like we we had crappy offices like it's just you have to hire so fast to get ahead just about like customer service when you're growing at like five hundred percent a year and if customer service takes three to six months like a person you hire to get up to speed that means you're hiring like two to three x what you need at that exact time yeah just so that you can like not blow up as people are buying and the growth so you're just you're just like putting out all this cash to do this stuff so i mean you start to think about it it's like it sounds cool but then like when you're doing a hundred and seventy million and you're ordering for four hundred and eighty million it means like if anything slows down i mean you are just like you're dead right it's like on one side yeah i'm sitting there with nick and i have this i have a four hundred and eighty million dollar year business that's growing you know triple digits still like literally triple digits at that at that scale which is insane and the other side is like and i'm going out of business every day like every day i'm facing basically like the wall like we're gonna hit the wall and the only way to stop that is you raise little money you get a little financing something else comes in like so it was getting to a point where i just couldn't handle it like i i was you i was sort of the stress was getting to me i mean it was you it years of just like that and then we we kinda got into you know started to get in a negotiation during the negotiation and so i i wrote this book and part of i wrote the book as like this story i mean it's a it's like a bit of a longer story which is why a book is good but during the negotiation i get sued by ad probably for something that was a little bit self induced to be fair they win an injunction and literally i mean and this is like holiday like i you can't make this up nick calls me is you know you i'm gonna send you a term sheet over you know tomorrow morning just fyi great an hour later the injunction hits us i have to call nick back and be like hey just fyi like not a big deal at all doesn't you shouldn't matter like shouldn't matter at all but like just like as an fyi we did get an injunction from ad t on this lawsuit and he's like did we're out wow and and what does that mean so ad t was suing you for for what so we had been building an alarm they had a like a company that they had some part of that they were sort of invested in that was building it they stopped funding it the company went out of basically shut down i hired all the people from there they told me i couldn't hire all the people from there i told them in a very respectful way you know i said like you know please and thank yous that i was like a total asshole and i was like so dumb and i just like yeah i i again i i you poked the bear i poked the bear and it's like looking back it's funny because it's this at same like insanity and passion that like gets a company to go from one seventy to four eighty is also the person that blows it up it's like you know it is like the demolition man of like you know it's the the the same person that can use the demolition to like clear the way for the road is also who can like blow everything up for everyone my favorite elon thing of all time when he goes on saturday live and he goes you know i took all my money and i spent it on trying to get rockets that will take us to mars and electric cars and he's like what did you think i'll just be a normal chill dude and it's like oh actually that explains so much of course we can't have one we can't have mad genius and then also you know a stable respectful peaceful reasonable man over here it can't be the unreasonable in one area and totally reasonable in the other i think that's the problem is like it it's just true like if you wanna do something i mean ring is one in a whatever generation company and like i i say that as someone who like looks at it and i can't believe i'm even part of it like it's i mean it's it's a verb like people just call it a ring like it's it's mean to build something like that is incredible and so yes like you you you probably have some traits that are very strong but those can cut both ways and so you know when the person from ad calls you and you're like think you know like you're like in this sort of vortex of doing stuff you know maybe you don't sort of take the time to say like why don't i just come to you why don't we sit down like we're two humans and work this out and by the way i'm it it'd be funny to like now go back like i'm sure if i had just flown there sat down for dinner with them i really actually feel like they apologize but like like fine whatever we're good like we just wanted to like talk you know can't honestly like we just wanna talk you instead i was like you know like luna you know doing stuff and they sort of said well well don't we teach you some business and so they they did and to be for hair like whatever and so that that was very you know turned out to be fairly painful alright so you guys are about to get to the best part of the podcast this is the part where we asked jamie how he comes up with new ideas for businesses how we came up with the idea of ring but also a lot of the other projects he's looking into starting and he's got this amazing name it's called the snowball method meaning he likes to find very small ideas that can eventually become big but like the problem is that these ideas are so small that people don't notice him or they forget about them and so here's what we we went and looked at what he's got talk about on this podcast which you're gonna hear because you're gonna get to it but then he's talk about the snowball method on a bunch of other podcast podcasts and we went and broke it down into a really easy to understand methodology and so if you're interested in solving these four questions this guide is for you so it's how do you spot billion dollar ideas hiding inside boring problems number two what early stage moves act actually validated ring before it took off number three how you keep momentum when your business feels stuck while you're on the brink and number four what critical decisions make or break a finder path from two hundred dollars to a billion dollars and so if this type of thing interests you which i think it does because you're listening to my million you can get the link in the description below so you call the guy you're like hey feel silly even bringing this up but there's a little loss that you should probably know about and then they he's like we're out out and you're thinking well look you drafted the term i think we just go ahead and send it over and he's like no no we're out how did it go back on so why don't we just keep the negotiation going and like you if i settle this thing out then like we're good he's like we're not like amazon's is like knock we're done like it's it's like basically like pencils down until you whatever on the flip side which was great as i had a safety net so like don't worry i'm totally fine like i'm going into this amazon deal with a safety net which is if we don't do the amazon deal i'm gonna raise two hundred million dollars so i also had to call them and say just fyi like i know this deal like we're about to close it for this money and and just fyi like we had this little injunction on that little thing that i kind of said that was not gonna be a big deal and they're like yeah we're out too it's like the two doors i was looking at is like selling to amazon or raising two hundred million dollars it was the first time i was gonna take secondary money off so i was gonna actually take some money off the table and meaningful money like it would have been like real for me and so those are like the two things i was like sort of looking at going into the holidays basically and all of a sudden both those doors evaporated and now we're negative like seventy million dollars in the bank because we didn't plan the cash flow because it was like one of these doors is gonna happen you're not gonna raise more money like i mean you're not gonna raise like a third set of money like you know so so all of a sudden we like go to like basically we are like technically like a bankrupt company almost immediately okay go on i'm hooked so what happens and for more importantly what's the conversation you have with yourself in that moment because i think you know there's what you did but there's also what you said to yourself before you figured out what what's the like my so again to traits that are good like the one thing i do have which is probably you know has kept us from completely blowing the the place up when things really happen like could things are really really bad i go into like a pilot checklist like i am just like dead pam calm we gotta do we had do so i'm like we have to we're going in the holidays we have to sell everything we have to like break every record we have to like it's like the only way to survive is just like we gotta like do this and we also have to stop paying our bills to anyone that can't like you know actually like tow us away right and so we did that too which was pretty that was and that's that's not fun because like you're calling people that have worked you know vendors and you're like hey listen like i i know but if you if you like stop shipping this we're dead if we're dead everything you've already sent is dead like you know it's just it's a bit of like it it it it's not a conversation you wanna have everyone's a problem at that point yeah it it's horrible like it's just a it's just like a bad it's a bad situation and then did the lawsuit go away so we like we're going through whatever we it it's crazy as we go through you know black back black friday so cyber monday like that whole sort of week we literally blow out like every like everything's like ring is just the it's the product of the holidays like it's a number seller it best buy like it's just literally like on fire so by the way on that if this wasn't happening how much less do you think in sales you would have had you know like percent wise how much do you think you've got extra just with the forcing function of necessity at least there's definitely like probably like low double like ten percent fifteen percent at least at least and was it just your intensity because it's like we have to or did you come up with a new idea would you do every we did everything like every social post every this like mean we just had people like we did yeah you just like you put it all in the field like you just like send in your best to everybody so we just went crazy but if for sure i think for sure that was a part of it but we like we needed it to like we needed to like literally break every number blow everything out and still with that like it wasn't clear that we would live it just felt like it was gonna be more likely you'd live if you were blowing it out than not and so we doing that and then all of a sudden ad calls and says hey would you like to talk in a settlement it's like it's like mad i imagine if he had like you know if someone's like literally like no oxygen you know they're like hey like little oxygen you're like i'd love some oxygen and so we went and they were actually like pretty like fair and once we settled like that like everything else was amazing it was this weird thing where like everything underneath was like the best ever and we had this just one cloud that that that moved everyone away and as soon as that dissipate and went away like it was you know i mean so basically it was like december ninth or something you know that we settle which on fast that's that's really fast right and was you go to this like it's this thing you gotta to like this this office where there's like two conference rooms in this this judge and like a a retired judge who walks back and forth between these like two conference like you're in one there and the other and you they just keep going back and forth all day and then it's the craziest thing like finally like okay and you're like okay and then you sign it and you're like are this is done and they're like it's done i'm like done done like i kept like i was like like like you know like a laurel and hardy like done done done done and then do you know i called i literally i called amazon and just said just fyi settled and they said okay like it was like you know like that's all like we love the business we just didn't you we didn't wanna get involved in that and so once it was settled they know that was like december ninth or whatever december thirty first we signed for one point one five billion to sell it wait till the deal closed thirty days later after so we signed the lo like the binding like literally like less than thirty days so did did you shop it around as well i i i didn't for a number of reasons that the biggest one was i did not know of another buyer that would back our mission so we were very missionary around making neighborhoods safer what were your interactions like with with jeff bezos so jeff loves entrepreneurs so much that they've learned not to have him you know involved in the in the purchasing because i think jeff would just be like i love you man like he's like jeff so great and so so i didn't actually i mean i met him like once before but i didn't really kinda know him and so really it was post deal that i got to you know really start to spend some time with him and he is just one of the greatest people ever for lots of reasons i i'd say the number one is he's just like a good human do you have any good base stories of like you know it's because rare that you you know get to actually interact with or in your case work with because there's always levels to the game right i meet people i think i'm great that i need somebody i'm like wow that person's got a different level of intensity or they're a different level of sharpness or they ask a different style of question and so you but you don't know until you meet it you don't even know what level twelve looks i can until you see level twelve yeah and so i'm just curious like did you have any moments like that with with with bezos definitely many many moments i say the biggest thing i took away from jeff is he's the most positive person i've ever met in like the weirdest way because he gets shit done so it's not like he's like just like hey good job guys you know it's like but he's able to just like be so patient on things and i and just like he he like sees the future and he's just very patient and and and very positive and so i've i've tried to is it's definitely different than my personality you know i'm i'm sort of more like you know punch a wall kinda like run around yell a little bit more like this it's just like kinda like more like that like it maybe like inventor passion but he has taught me to sort of try to like just be a little bit calmer and let things sort of work themselves out versus like forcing everything i think maybe that's the the the biggest learning and well and why have you state this i mean how the deal was what ten years ago five years ago two thousand eighteen so seven seven years ago why why are you still there i mean obviously i mean money it's probably a big part of it but is there mission he's gonna say mission i could bet anything he's gonna say the mission money yeah no you know i actually so in two thousand twenty three i ended up stepping down i was just you know i'd i'd taken the company almost ten it from when we got to amazon brought profitable like i felt like i delivered like the package i'm like here it is it's pretty amazing so you grew it to four billion in revenue if that around there you oh my gosh yeah that's wild so it it you know the thing just kept growing just kept like it's just insane and so i i finally was just like i am i'm feeling like super burnt out on just the like a whole thing i stepped back and i and i did realize i missed just i just missed like rank like i missed the the mission i missed what we're building i love like yeah i'm an inventor at heart and being able to be at amazon you can invent at scale so you yeah an inventor the best thing for an inventor is like see your invention out there but it's pretty amazing that like most inventor i mean i mean there's many inventors adventures that are successful dyson there's you know edison was a good businessman but you know maybe maybe musk would be an inventor i'm not sure who else but but typically the stereotype type of of an adventure someone who's got like to different matching socks and like they don't like not how to do anything other than like invent and they're a little bit messy and whatever but it sounds like you actually knew how to operate i i would say i've used invention around operation but i don't operate i certainly don't operate in a normal so like i've never had a staff meeting like everyone's always like you know what did you do your your staff meeting i'm like i'm none because i've never had one and we never had an all hands meeting at the company and like so we you do things when you need to so there's a lot of things like i don't have those like processes of how to like run a business did you are exactly like you know who he's like sean one hundred percent who allan elon the card game yeah elon oh my he had the exact same mentality where he was like yeah we don't do this at the company where whereas sean and i were like wait but i thought everyone had to do all hands he's like well i thought about the reason why and we just invented a different way to do it yeah i think if you can turn like again like it's still inventing like it's like just like just because it's not a like a physical product or just because internal it doesn't mean it's not an invention so i do love that like you can use invention across the board and especially like how you build the business i i would say like i mean this is where dyson i think i don't i don't know him but he's like he's like my mentor i just this is like the mentor i don't know but like look at what dyson has been able to do by having built a great business like if he hadn't built a great business he'd just be a guy in a a barn somewhere and like oxford shire or some shit and instead you know he's like able to like build all this crazy good stuff and have this company so i think i did feel like the business was something you needed in order to be able to like get your inventions out there bigger and that's that's kind of what ring has been and then being at amazon that like that's just like you know a thousand x that was there a moment in those early days for ring where it went from not working like it's not a thing to it's a thing like an inflection point where you know it or did it take off right away as soon as you had the product people started buying it it's certainly you know looking back it probably took off more than i thought because like being inside of it you're sort of dealing with the problems so you don't really see it as easily like again when i wrote the book i kinda like was able to like go back and like think about all of what was happening and look at it in a different light and so it was two thousand and sixteen my wife was out trick or treating i was away on something and that was like the year she called and she's like this this is you're it's like an every house is a arranged she's like this is insane and i think you really felt it because like they're literally trick or treating and like they're like hitting like the ring like every house so i i think there was like some moments like that because that's gonna be like one of the most proud moms ever where you're like my wife is seeing so i mean like we we would literally drive around i mean early like and yell like when we saw a ring on a house like it was like that was like a and then we kinda had to stop the ring game because it like like it was like you just kept yelling ring the whole time but but early on yeah i mean it's like as an adventure like that's that was you know i i i never felt like it was successful until we got the wire just because i felt like it could blow up but i did feel like i had created something meaningful and had that like satisfaction of that just by seeing like seeing these on everyone's front door and the stories that then they created like the you know stopping a crime doing whatever like those those were the things that were like that was amazing i'm curious the wire hits we've asked a bunch of people about this on the podcast because it's a you know it's a moment you look forward to as a founder like like crazy but you know it's hard to actually get there and we've had some guys say yeah with the wire hit you he's like i went to the atm in the next five days a print balance you know never pushed that button but so excited or you know some people feel lost know right after is i guess like wire hits what where were you and what was going through your mind i agree booked i don't know if you're this company task us but the the that's a great public company now the founders or friends that were you know kind of kids from santa monica that i had known that started and they asked me to speak at their customer conference like six months earlier and it was in new york just like on whatever some random day in april of two thousand eighteen because of how everything happens like you sell like you finally announced it and the government has to inspect it then even after that there's like they have like file stuff and whatever so like the actual wire date is not like any of those dates it's kind of a random time when it just comes and so it ended up being like i'm at this event and i'm speaking in new york and i'm sitting there and i'm like i'm sorry everyone like i'm i'm my like my phone's out i'm like i'm like i can barely even i'm like just like i'm i'm like i'm just gonna keep refreshing this because the wire supposed to come in and everyone know like they knew i'd sold so i'm like the wire i like come in yet but it's supposed to come in right now and i just like i'm sorry i keep you know wells fargo you know i was like and you're like on stage you're like look i know i was talking about customer service yeah they able to get i'm gonna give a talk on how to get rich yeah i'm like you know money doesn't matter to me all about mission but like but like you hold on over the next hour yeah it's like like it's all and and and literally like you know it comes in and there's like just commas and commas and commas and it's like like how many commas could this be like it like it's like like to run on sentence yeah like yeah exactly commas and commas and i just i yeah i it it was the best be i'd be especially i it just gone through the most traumatic thing ever and from a money side like i if if ring had it exploded at that point which you i mean it it got right on the edge of it would have been like really impactful to my family like an i yeah were like just not broke but like were you just like you know seven like a hundred and fifty two hundred and fifty thousand dollar year sal person like that yeah it was like a hundred and fifty i think at that point and i pride myself this was if looking back a real mistake i pride myself on being like the least paid executive yeah man that makes me you desperate i did the same thing on a much smaller scale but it made me desperate that and that's exactly right so to here's the other problem when you're making that kind of money and you're at a company to forty eight million people are like hey come to this charity event oh it's only ten thousand dollars a table do this and you kinda have to like you're it's like you have to sort of take part in some of this stuff but you don't actually have the money so you're you're you're spending even more than you would making that salary regardless so yeah i i was like i mean i was basically zero dollars and i mean you i wasn't like i wasn't like in debt debt but i wasn't i didn't have like a nest egg and so if ray sudden went away like that was all my like future money wasn't ring i love how honest you are most people the more successful they get and the more sort of you know these moments like they try to either downplay player they're just less less honest and i think i and by the way i think this is why what i call like that dude's tap i was like it's not like you're like you know some yogi or you know a monk who's just like know i peace so that's not that but i was like i you've you seem free and i think that that's something that we all hope success gives us but it's actually not the success that gives you that you have to decide how you're gonna be i think also like yeah when you're facing like when you see what the other side is that clearly i i do remember like it's like i remember how lucky i am sort of every day like i wouldn't call it like this i mean it is successful like money but like money i think i've have so many friends that have a lot of money that are not free which is a shame because like that's really what this gives you is the freedom to do what you want like i get to wake up and work on things that i wanna work on and impact things that i wanna impact and be with my son and take them among college tours this past weekend and like i get to do things because of that and that yes like i am like that oh overall i say that is very happy i wanna take the mindset that you used to build ring your approach as a as a founder and kinda break that down and then see what other ideas might fit that so one of them that you told me you said rule number one yeah know i like to start with the problem not the solution or the technology and so you know what did that mean for ring and then what's another example of an idea where you could where you could take that kind of problem first approach yeah i mean so ring was i was in my garage i couldn't hear the doorbell so like like what do what what do you need to do is you need to hear the doorbell now when when you find that problem it turns out a lot of times new technology can help impact it like oh there's smartphones coming out okay well those have screens like there's wi f now in homes there's like this so it is that technology can assist the problem i think the prop the the issue is most a lot of founders will say i found this new chip that's out there what can we do with this and so they don't find a real problem they they're just like you know it is a technology looking for a problem i like to start start with like actually something that is a true problem and then it doesn't matter what the tech is i mean that's part of what built ring into the where it is today is and again you you're gonna laugh a mission but by being a mission to make neighborhood safer we don't follow any technology we're not a camera company we're not a alarm company we're not a social network company like we are just a making neighborhood safer company means like regardless what comes out or what what we can think of it doesn't matter what is if it's a steam engine in the middle of the neighborhood and that's gonna make things sure i don't care and so you take that now with if i'm you and i'm like oh i was in the garage i couldn't hear the doorbell i think there's a part of me the inner critic that would have been like is too small like you know that doesn't sound like a big fancy idea i'm trying to do big fancy i'm trying to be a big success not a small success and you know you it is it that you did napkin math i'm like how many doorbell sell is it that you just don't care about market size and how do you think about there's a a a guy who's like somewhat successful and said to me is it was insulting thing like almost anyone could ever say and right when i'm doing this he said to that kinda put his arm on my shoulder and he was much much more successful than me at the time i am now much more successful than he has ever been and he put his arm shoulders say like i love you man because you just like to work on these like little things and it's like so cute and fun to see and i was like oh my like that was the most like it it was like when you're finding these things it's if they were obvious that they were huge problems someone won't be doing it so it's like you have to find these problems that are sort of not obviously huge but sort of have that have again i look at it as like what is that what could it be and so like with the doorbell it was a small thing because even people like two hundred dollar doorbell like there's doorbell are ten dollars and it's like that was the problem but if you really looked at it and zoomed like everyone has a doorbell in their house across the world like globally like literally doorbell on every home so was nest popular at this point so nest was popular as a thermostat and they had it sold they were just selling or sold to google and drop cam was actually the wifi camera that was out there that was doing well and that nest ended up you know that tony ended up buying at google to bring in to nest so maybe there was some inspiration where it's like okay not the same thing but like a house item for sure oh for sure like i i was actually like super in fact i actually have a email to matt rogers who is the cofounder of nest like when the nest came out was like one of the first customers and just in like it super inspires us this like what you're doing here so yeah no was there was stuff happening whole yeah i think it's it is hard though to see like at the time how big a market is again if it was obvious like everyone is just be like oh the doorbell it's just do a doorbell like look at this guy's doing a doorbell let's just it's gonna be huge and no one thought it was gonna be huge did you have like a dream where your laying in bed talking to your wife you're like you i think i think we can make a hundred million dollars one year one day i i didn't i kinda like built it my wife was the one who said like so this is and this is where she's like it makes me feel safer at home and that was like oh this is like again like this is more than just like scratching my itch in the garage just could and and that was what i realized that the security market like the overall security market had not yet started looking at how you could build and invent products around presence and sort of like true crime prevention like it was the alarm was built in the eighteen hundreds and kind of was pretty much like buried the same thing which is like trigger off of a trip and call you know of central station like it was like that was kinda like best in class though and we were like we could look at this problem differently which which is again that's that was the superpower was the not just the doorbell but then we did the flood leg camera then we did like we did all these things that were sort of unique because we were look even the neighbor's app which is a you know it's a huge social network for crime and safety and neighborhoods like all that stuff came out of looking at the problem and trying to solve it so what's an example of an idea today you see a problem out there you're like somebody could go try to solve that bugs like i just hate bugs like i've never found anyone that likes bugs and it's amazing that there's like no one has actually created all the technology like we can we launch rockets up in the air and land them on like a little barge we can like do all this stuff but we can't get rid of freaking flies at my house in missouri and so i just i just feel like there's gotta be simple ways to do this between like solar and you know there's just gotta be like ways to look at this problem differently than just either hitting it with some toxin that's gonna kill us all as well or these other products that just don't work is that your current obsession so i i i have realized over time you have to work on like one thing like you can't work on ten different products when i meet a founder that's like or you know in entrepreneurs i'm doing this and this and they're all different i i'd say you know ninety nine out of a hundred times like they're gonna fail because they're just splitting their energy alright well for the sake of entertainment but also just teaching our listeners and it's fun can we walk through this let's say that you're not at ring and let's say that this is like actually the idea which this idea potentially i don't know how it's i mean now it's obvious that rings is awesome but maybe in two thousand fourteen when you're offended and they're like what well that sounds so stupid and so maybe like a lot of people are gonna think bugs flies that's it that's all you got like let's walk us through like this idea like why this is a big problem and like how you would attack or how you would go about solving this yeah so i i would just like literally i would stick myself on the farm i would get the sold iron out and i would just start like figuring out i'd just be like and also i i'd i immersed myself in the problem like why are bugs going on the horses like why are they like what are they like what are they actually attracted to on this like are they doing and i i would get on chat and i would be like trying to figure that out and i'd be like looking at everything and and i just figure out like what like and again simplify like like how do i go from a first principles approach like what is the way to just get rid of these damn things at scale what would that be how could you do it inexpensive my feeling is it has something to a solar and either like some like kinda screw mechanism or suction just sort of like you because you gotta it's like a big problem right like it's like a it's like a mass volume problem and so it's like these like i keep they give these like little stations that you just put all over your property and are just continually sort of like collecting and and how to do that so that's that but i would and just literally i'd just be like building this stuff like i would start i wouldn't i wouldn't do research i wouldn't ask friends if it's gonna be a big business i wouldn't spend time on any of that stuff i would be out there like with solar panels and dyson vacuum cleaners hooked up to lights and you know tubes and like i just be like doing this stuff sam have you seen j friend julian obsession with bugs no so we have this friend named julian who's like out of this world and like he's he's only eaten steak for like two years and now he's moved to hawaii and he has a ranch he's doing crazy stuff so he he moves to hawaii he buys a ranch and he starts building like you know home and he's he's got this bug problem just like you and because you know the big project he was doing was the ranch the big problem with the big project was the mosquitoes and so he's like he specifically focused on mosquitoes and so he told me he didn't emailed me for like over a couple month period that like just different things he was trying to do to but what you're were saying like understand what the hell going on with the mosquito where's is the root problems kind first pencils and he's like oh the problem is we try to kill the mosquito no you need to kill the eggs if you don't kill the eggs you for every one mosquito you're killing there's like whatever a hundred mosquitoes that are coming out and then he tried bought all the fancy contraption and then he realized like oh they lay their eggs in the water and so what you need to do and so i guess i don't know all the signs behind this but he basically has this i i got on the screen it's like this just a bucket with water and then you spray this or you put this thing in the in the water that's gonna like kill the eggs when they try to lay them there and so it like stops the cycle yeah and he's like i did it i solved the problem with the mosquito the mosquito problem which is that they wanna lay their eggs on stale water so you put the dirt in there as you make old stale water as a trap for them and then you put this thing in it that's gonna it's a harmless to human bacteria but it's gonna kill the eggs and he's and he was like so pumped likely this thing this thing has eleven thousand bookmarks on a single tweet which is like you know that's pretty that's pretty unusual but it kinda shows a lot of people are like you know have the same itch the same problem and don't really have a good solution yeah so it's and it's like you know is is there a five or ten billion dollar company hiding in the bug space pro probably they're it like probably like i mean it's it's global like every like they're everywhere it's it's also like i mean it's it's an issue on health you mosquitoes cause health issues flies cause health issues so it's like it actually like there's like real impact so if you could figure something out like it actually it it it you know it is probably you know a five or ten billion dollar thing it also seems like there might be like a branding thing that you did well with ring that like could be applicable in the bug space like i don't know what all the big bug companies are but i know raid it's like they all literally like they look and sound like killing yeah with like toxin basically and like the you know it it's all branded and it look a monster energy looking can and you know the way that these new like celsius and and prime like a lot of the new drinks came out and they're literally like just energy drinks but with a like a a different vibe i think that's that's a good point like there's like it is the same thing where there's like there is a probably a new brand in this that stands for and it's like it's not environmentally safe because like i'm like some eco warriors it's because like you don't wanna spray shit all over your house like you live in that like it's like that's not good like we do these like bug bombs and stuff like there's no way those are good for you like it it can't be i thought the monster energy drink of mosquito spray it was a pretty good that was pretty good yeah right isn't that what the can kinda looks like it says it's like like i wish someone go do it i i wish shouldn't like it'd be amazing and measured in five years someone comes back to because i was listening to this thing i had the same thing i needed like a little push i got inspired and i built a five billion dollar business out of it like that would be the like that would be the coolest thing ever ray like we're at war we're gonna go to battle i'd like think about these this weapon is if you don't aim it the right direction there there might be there you know there might be a self inflicted wound here yeah ebay you know it's bad when you're using something when you're when you're when you say the name i can taste that like it's not like i can smell it like i can taste what that is like because it's like that spray goes through your it like bla through your skin my wife hates that stuff because we have a dog and we have a baby it's like she's just like look we can't just spray this stuff all over like yeah i don't know it's too risky right so i mean what were you like using it as hairspray like why spray it all over the place you know what it is when like there's a bug that it's like that one episode of breaking bad where there's a fly in the in the and it's like meth lab yeah has me with a bug the other day and and like my house and i was like okay fine mission i'm like suited up at a hospital just go into war but you know you get carried away one of the things you had said i really like was you called yourself a snowball yeah so there's a snowball would be like if you about the fly thing it would be i i hate these flies okay like that's the snowball starts going down the hill and then i'm just like taking stuff and sold it together doing it like it's now it's gathering sort of its and then it like hits something and like you lose a little bit off the snowball but it keeps going and just kinda roll down the hill by the way some snowball and they're rolling down the hill they hits like a they hit the tree and they just explode so like that could be the fly thing is you get to this point we just can't figure it out that totally happens if you can see the finish line when you start it's usually not a big good thing like it's it's like that's usually you're you're not like you're not inventing or you're not changing the world typically if it's like that clear how to get from start to finish and so yeah it's like i just kinda feel like i just kinda roll down the hill and gather and and you hope you don't hit a tree and as you get to the bottom of the hill you i hope you're like a bigger snowball that's you know i guess know hopefully good for the world like i guess snowball if if snowball are good for the world that you are helpful when when we got bought we got up by twitch and emmett the founder he's this you know great entrepreneur and i was like you know my value of being that i was there to earn out my deal and you know be helpful but i really wanted to learn from edit i was like this is the one guy i wanna learn from while so i asked him i said hey in the early days of twitch did you ever like send investor updates or anything i'm a little bit nosy i was like can i would you share any of that with me like i would love to see that dude just as an entrepreneur like what was it like ten years ago and he's like sure so he sent me this update and one of the things he wrote in there he goes it is one of his updates because it was hard at the time you know they were doing a pretty unproven thing video game streaming you know it wasn't clearly gonna be a big market but he felt a sense of momentum and he's it one of the investor updates the title was we were a steam roller going through a field full of flowers and he was like just saying and then they had got like a hundred and fifty dos streamers that week and he was like yes and so he was just taking a lot of pride in the small stage because if you just keep looking at the small stage and poo poo it you never build up the momentum yeah and the second thing he said was like same thing he goes you know i really wanna try to get into this like kind of adjacent space i was like why do you wanna do it seems like there's so much more room to run still with game and he goes yeah but he goes you never wanna see the the finish line he's like if he's because i know he's like i don't wanna be able to see the like the horizon yeah at the end he's like even if that's still five years away i need to do something that's gonna push the horizon out further so that we have more room to run and i'd really never thought of it like that but i guess you as you play at scale that's obviously like an important yeah but it's actually i i think i always have goal a lot of goals are actually ceilings like you think of a goal and you want it to be something like you you kind of hitting a goal perfectly is probably means the goal isn't set right like you you wanna have these directional goals like things that you could try to achieve that are sort of tangible but sort of in some ways una unbelievable that you're always like to your point like you're just trying harder to get like it's it's the carrot on the stick in front of you where like you can kinda never get the carrot but you keep going for it you have a life philosophy and a life outlook that's very different for mine but frankly i'm en of how you think about things both like where you like i start with the problem and i'm an inventor which sean's basic but the way that you do it is quite nice you have a really good attitude and then you just made this line about like goals and ceilings what people or what books do you think have influenced to you and if sean and i or one of our listeners wanted to like kinda develop this jamie mindset besides your book yeah by way show be shout out your book yeah yeah yeah i mean i of course read ding dong by jamie si off i i think that's the the how to guide of of business no title by the way thank you think in all seriousness no i would i think the book that stands out the most for me is the walt disney biography if you wanna read this like get ready like you better clear your calendar because this thing is like i think the audiobooks like twenty four hours i mean it's whoever did that audiobook died afterwards like it was like that was like like of all the people that i've talked to and all the biographies that i've listened to the walt disney biography might be the most cited version i've ever heard and like walt i've never read it but there's all these stories where like on the small things like apparently someone was building like a train in walt's backyard for his kids or grandkids his i don't know something like that and he wasn't there like a contractor that says like well we can't make the train curve and he's like what has the curve because when someone's on the train i don't want them to know what's coming up next that is the embodiment of it and it's also he was so man mechanical about every detail of every experience and i was what was gonna say is when you read this book you realized that he was tortured he could never achieve what he wanted to which was like absolute perfection of this and so when a movie would come out like my my the the thing that i took out the most from his book was every movie that would come out because you know he was pushing animation ahead like like the the technology and animation so like snow waiting in the seven doors come out he's sitting in the theater in the back everyone's watching it like literally mind blowing like seeing what's up there but because he's already working on the next movie and the next iteration of animation he knows that this is shit like he knows that like that movie is not as good as the next one's gonna be and he's like literally like crying in the back of this theater that he's showing such a bad product to people because it could be so much better and all he wants to show him is the next one and i thought that's like the struggle of a true inventor an entrepreneur and like product person is like you just like everything i put out on mad because i know i can be better and it's like that just that constant thing and that's like that's how you drive to be the best and there's definitely you know like i i think you look at some of the greatest inventors and entrepreneurs out there you see that constant just like that that that that drive like that engine that just they can't stop yeah you seem a lot happier than him which is a good attribute to also have it's not it's not terrible today's episode has brought you by health hubspot because using only twenty percent of your business data is like dating somebody who only text you in emojis first of all that's annoying and second you're missing a lot of the content but that's how most businesses are operators today they're only using twenty percent of their data unless you use hubspot that's when all your emails your call logs your chat messages just to turn into insights to help you grow your business because all that data makes all the difference learn more at hub dot com another one of your your philosophies as an entrepreneur that i really liked just you talked about this idea of tom brady i've used this i idea did we did this call before this pod like a week ago or so i've already used it twice in my thinking in between so that's when you know an idea stick so could you explain the tom brady hiring thing yes i mean every team like when you get to the whatever and i'm not that into sports but you know they trade like the first trade pick for this and like they're always trying to get like the first pick of the the the the of life that what is it called the yeah draft draft is how much i'm into sports so but like every team they they had a the chance to get tom brady multiple times like it's actually insane it's like they you didn't just have like one shot at him he was the hundred and ninety ninth draft pick like everybody had the chance to get tom brady and so while everyone's focused like whatever the the the number one draft pick of that year i don't know the number top ten i probably are unknown to us today but tom brady is one of the greatest athletes of all time and so to me as a as a business you have to find the tom brady they're actually out there for you like everybody has access to tom brady or the tom brady of your business of that area it's like how do you find them how do you incentivize them how do you let them become the tom brady that is just the amazing thing whereas i meet with founders we're like oh i'm trying to get the person from the company the the this and it's like that's the number one draft and you're gonna just pipe pay too much and honestly they're probably not gonna be known in ten years great sounds good how my so i there's lots of people have lots of different methods for finding great people my thing is hire fast fire faster the mission really helps so you sort of bring someone in like the interview is basically like i mean obviously like you have the skills to do the like the basic job so like it's like there's like a sort of a a light bar but oh above that it's just are you passionate do you want to work on this problem with us like do and do you really wanna work on this problem with us do wanna wake up in the morning excited about this problem if you're passionate you wanna work on the problem and you have the minimum skill set to do it will let you we'll let you try like it's just like let let like i don't know go out there and throw the ball say how you do and you give them massive autonomy in their area like give them the ability to succeed or fail i think another thing that a lot of companies do is they so like wrap you in soft like in they don't want you to fail so they stop you from succeeding it's like such a weird thing like they like they they're so worried that maybe you're gonna you know if you you're not able to do that level of the job so we gotta be careful like we don't want you to beat be over your head versus like let tom brady beat tom brady let him throw the ball and and and when you let those people do it it's like it's incredible and yes in the process of that you're gonna have people that are just gonna like not be able to you know succeed at those jobs and you you know you move on with them and you do it and that by the you can be compassionate in that it's not you don't have to be how fast do you fire like when people say higher fast fire fast that's that's a little bit vague so like let's say you meet someone how fast would you offer i was at that time like i mean yeah we're probably not in that sort of like with amazon now and stuff it's like obviously engineers as you get bigger like things are a bit different back in the start biz i'd say like three to six months because you certainly don't wanna like it's not like the first day someone comes in you say like okay you're bad like or or you're good i mean it takes someone a little bit of time to get their like their feet wet get sort of get their footing but you wanna be pretty quick it's it's i would say it's very rare if you talk to almost anyone that you know an entrepreneur or leader that they say like i wish pretty much any that you say like when they fired someone it's like i wish i done it sooner so three to six months what about hiring hiring is like on the spot i'm a i'm a i'm a on the like i mean again amazon is a little bit different now so i wanted just be like honest of like yes like we have a bigger company we have like some more like it and you have to do that it's like that's part of the that's par for the course but but yeah we were like like mimi who is my chief revenue officer today she cole emailed me and said i worked at dyson i now worked at sonos you know i see what you guys are doing i'm in the neighborhood i'd love to stop by so great stop by so she sits down with don and i don runs our sales she starts talking look at don looks at me i said we she's just hired higher right yeah i said okay you're hired and she's like she's kinda like like are you too joker serious like this is like i'm just coming to talk you and i'm like best done like i was i likes to you don't wanna work here and she's like no no i wanna work here i'm like then then just come into work here it's she's like what am doing i'm like i don't know you just said you seem to like know all these problems we have so like go fix them like i like you just told me that we're doing all this stuff wrong like why don't you just take whatever that is like make that job title and go do it and she's our chief revenue officer today so have you ever heard warren buffett described his his thing with us with people and the too hard pile no i actually haven't it so this guy came on the podcast mon per bra and he in the episode he described he he bought a charity lunch from buffett for six hundred and fifty thousand dollars he had learned so much from buffett he had been so super successful doing buffett method basically he's like this is my my tuition is overdue so he's like i'll i'll do i'll buy the charity lunch and and we'll go and i have no expectations so i said what did you ask him and he asked warren buffett buffet he goes warren you seem to be a really good judge of people like he hired some pretty great people inside of berkshire and you've avoided a lot of the kinda like doing the wrong acquisition so you seem to be a good judge of people what's what's the secret and warren buffett goes no i don't think i'm that good at people he goes i think what i do is i'm a very harsh grader so he said he goes basically the cost of me saying no to a good person to somebody who actually turned out to be good it's not that consequential if say if they turned out to be good and i happen to say no because i couldn't tell but if i say yes to too many people who happened to be really bad that becomes very costly and very hard for me to unwind so he goes if i was at a dinner party and there was a hundred guests and you let me spend five minutes with each person he goes i could without a doubt i could tell you these five no doubt are fantastic these five definitely stay away they're sort of toxic or there's something you know that i don't trust about them and then there's ninety people who i don't know i can't tell in five minutes then they all go in what i call the two hard pile it's just too hard to tell and he goes a lot of life just works by putting everything else in the two hard pile and just focusing on the five things that you were pretty clear and pretty sure about yeah in a very small amount small amount of time and everybody waste their time trying to get clarity on that ninety percent that's very hard to figure out it takes a lot of time in energy and you're gonna get it wrong a lot yeah i say i say and so kind of my method has been on the hiring is the two hard pile is i'm aware that i'm not that good at figuring out who's in that pile always and so if it if i'm wrong i'm just gonna be very quick to sort of pull the trigger and by the way like can also be wrong pulling the trigger like if you're pulling the trigger after three to six months like you could be wrong i'll also say like there's lots of people who didn't fit our culture who went on to do incredible things and are incredibly successful so it's not that like failing it ring was failing in life it was you just didn't fit what we were doing and we are a unique lock and you want a unique key to work in that lock and that's where i would say the empathy side like i didn't fire them being like you're terror get out of here like it was like it just doesn't like we're not working out together and i would feel bad for every single one of them that i think have to go back to their family or whatever like that what so that did weigh on me but i also wanted the business to have this clarity and to move fast into you and from the above they're like i will say the wrong people are really real could be like that's bad can i ask you about one thing here you said i just don't know how to stop and sometimes it's not smart and it cost me yeah it's like this this is like the this is like the jerry maguire like you're gonna make me cry you're gonna you do this yeah i mean i think i if i if i look at like part of you know and it's it's even like we talked about that at thing it's like i just keep going like i just don't stop and you know overall that's probably like you know i think so i keep telling you young people keep asking me like what should i do you know ai coming out like i don't know where i should go to college or what should i do and it's like just put yourself in a position where you can just grind like just go grind because you you just gotta get out like it's it's no one knows where the world's gonna go no one knows what's happening you can't control the world everyone like acts as if they can luck has to be your c copilot and so just go out there and just just keep grinding it and a lot of those times when you're grinding it's hard because when you can't actually see where it's getting you to you talk to entrepreneurs that have already made it so it's like people say that the average business takes seven years to be successful we'll say me so like it's kinda like you knew when you started that you had seven years it's like no you don't ever know that it's gonna be successful like it's the average it's just so i i do think the grinding thing is it's under estimated how hard that is to keep grinding because it's you don't see where it's going and you need sometimes to have these weird other factors happen that are out of outside of your control to make your success happen just like instagram coming out while we're building a camera at your front door you know that's super powered our message i i didn't build instagram i didn't like push it out there i didn't help it i didn't know it it's was coming and but i kept grinding on my side and got lucky on some of these other things this is for the folks out there who have a business that does at least three million dollars a year in revenue because around this point that's when you're able to look up after being heads down for years building your company and you realize two things one you've done something great but you're still a long way from your final destination and two you look around and you realize i am all alone i've out run my peers which means you're now making ten million dollar decisions alone by yourself and that is when mediocrity can creep in my company hampton we solve this problem by giving a room of vetted peers of other entrepreneurs who are gonna hold you accountable call you out on your nonsense and help show you the way because the fact is is that there's only a tiny number of people in your town who know what you're going through and who have been there and they're hard to find the biggest risk is not failing you have a company and it's working you're gonna be fine but the biggest risk is waking up ten years from now and saying shit i barely grew in business and in life and for people like you who ambitious wasted potential and regret is what we want to help you to avoid we have made so many of these groups and we have a thousand plus members and i know this stuff actually works it can change your life the change mind and i know it will change yours so check it out join hampton dot com one of the things i like that you told me was you look for products where ninety percent of the marketing is already done and i called it last mile marketing and you're were describing how this worked in your favorite ring and how sometimes an entrepreneur can go wrong if you if you really need to like educate the the market about something completely from scratch yeah so it's it's and so i i would call it pre awareness so if you can if you can try to like give a little bit of invention a little bit of differentiation to something that has pre awareness you it's incredible because if you look at there's a cost just look at like the cost like a new to world product you have the cost to tell someone about it is incredibly expensive like if i have to tell you about some product and everything i have to tell you about it is is new to world it's very hard for you to understand it and they like go to the film business like when it's a completely new film it costs more to market it than top gun too because top gun too like you know everything like you know top gun you know you know tom cruz like there's so much pre awareness in that the doorbell putting a camera on a doorbell and again i sort of got lucky to learn this thing is everyone knew where the doorbell was mounted they knew what the doorbell did they knew like the functionality of it i just added like a piece to that i did the same of the flood light camera you knew what a flood light looked like you know where it goes like you know what it does for you and now you add a camera it and so wherever you can use this pre awareness i like liquid death like it's water like you didn't have to tell someone like what this drink was or like it's like but they changed like a piece of it so i just think like changing a piece of it getting your edge on it in something where there's pre awareness great great way to start because you get billions or hundreds of billions of dollars like in my case like the doorbell think about how much like advertising sort of dollars or whatever like you wanna call it you know come from the doorbell just being known for the last hundred years alright so i told everyone that you know we give a less where we were like let's start with ideas let's start with strung opinions i cool stories you have one on here that actually was probably one of the most eye catching things i've ever read you bought a town in missouri is that right i well i i i went to a town in missouri that had and a lot of these small towns now if you go out into the midwest and some of these areas between like the opioid issues industrial farming like these towns have just been just p and this town missouri when i went there was really like i'd would say it was in it was in pretty tough shape you're actually you're actually the second guest that we've had that has bought a town of missouri the first is a he bought a small town he him and his mom own a knit company that is a multi totally know that town yeah that's amazing yeah so so basically alan his mom his mom started then out i guess it's like running it where it's like a knit company and he has bought a town in missouri and he calls it like disneyland but for knit yeah i think i think it is but it's become this this place has become like the mecca like people go there it's amazing jobs by the way a i'm so sorry it's called missouri quilt company it's i'm totally missed i actually i i i do wanna talk i gotta talk to it at some point because i he's done some amazing stuff what i tried to do though is just a little different so they they've made it like in his it is an incredible destination and they've done an incredible like from what i've seen like an incredible job my thing was i really just wanted to help bring this town and i again i i'm an inventor i look at things that i see that are sort of not where i believe they should be or a problem like again we had our problem right like what's the problem the problem is that this cute little town no longer has any business the sidewalks are broken peep and it also people's perspective had changed like how did you show up there though so i i invested in a business off of shark tank i went back on shark tank as a shark invested in a business called mo this woman luc lucinda cram from lab belle m missouri and and she has this direct to consumer meat company where we buy from small farmers and send it out very missionary really cool little business and i go there and visit with my family and i just like follow over the place my son's running around on hay bales he doesn't even know what his phone is at that point like it's just like you know we're coming from los angeles and like it's just amazing and i ended up buying a little farm there and fixing up the house and getting involved with the community the town was really in sort of a tough place and so we started fixing up the sidewalks and like kind of the broken windows theory of like if you kinda start fixing some stuff up you know with other people join in there was a lot of like kinda trash on some lots and like kind of that kind of stuff and so people started cleaning up their stuff we cleaned up the streets and the and the sidewalks we then took the building that was broken on the side of the thing and fixed it up and made it into a beautiful coffee shop there was no place if it's like crazy there was no place within an hour to sit with someone during the day and talk to them about anything except the bar and and i like going to a bar but a bar is not a great place to have like a civil discussion about things and so like the coffee shop is an important fabric of the community so we brought the coffee shop there and it's like that became cool and actually became successful and then we helped fix up the tavern in town and made this awesome it's like the coolest bar ever but it's like farm to table with organic grass fed beef from my ranch no one even cares because out there they just like they're like wow whatever but it's like literally the best food you'll ever have like anywhere it's like incredible it's like literally probably the best like beef in the world and then a doctor put an office there and a help clinic now and that's been helping and the town's gotten healthier and as that happens people so it's like this again this is the snowball factor like the the the is incredible flywheel of you get things go and then people sort of take it from there they also are like i don't want this you know jamie this city slick from la why is he making all the money like i wanna it i i know it's great like have the greed be there so sorry building apartments like little apartments there it's a town of seven hundred it's amazing that's badass so what what do you think makes like there's all those like levers that you talked about like you know the coffee shop so that people have this third place there's fixing the sidewalks and the broken windows i imagine like i don't know sports or church there's like other things that kinda like revitalize the community was there anything that surprised you that like how how much of a difference it made like it seems small but actually it's pretty big what surprise me or should i just say should didn't surprise me when i went it i'm like i'll just buy like you said like i bought a town like i i did not like i i took part with others in the town to change the perspective and so i was a catalyst but like it turned out you needed everyone so would you be comfortable revealing how much like you had to invest or it's how much money it's it's quite a bit but i'd say the the what really needed though was everyone to join in like it wasn't like you so this is actually what's interesting it wasn't the money like when i went there it's like i would like i saw the town like i'll write a check you know it's like sadly like i was like i'll write a check and i'll like just fix this whole place up and it'll be nice like i'll just do that like and then no one would even sell me any properties everyone was like a like it and then i just started to get involved in the town i drive my back into town you know like with a bud light and the cup holder and like you know talk to everyone and like they realized that i'm just wanna like i am one of them and like we're just all like a movie man and this is the scene where like total this guy you might be alright yeah and and i didn't because i but i am i love sitting out with them at the side of a pickup truck watching this sunset on the farm and have a beer like that's my happiest place to be so and then i started we started fixing up the sidewalks and i went out there and like i was part of it that was the other thing is truly being part of it it wasn't the money it was like showing that support and then another guy in town like i'm gonna help fix this up and i'm like great and we just it was it it's like also a created ring it's like a thousand things that we did it's not one thing and so it's like there was nothing that surprised me that was like one thing we did i am surprised at the coffee shop i thought would lose money just didn't want to lose too much money it actually makes money so that was surprising but i'd say what the the unsurprisingly thing is it's like it's just it's it's also a long thing like it's been seven years that i've been working on this now with you with the people there i'd say we're like now turning the corner but it's probably another seven years to get it really where you'd hope it to be because it just it's like every year you do another project every year you do another thing like you can't just do it all at once every four months in this podcast here's what happens you see sean and i sit on our hands like this if we just stare at you because we're in you got too funny if you guys are in let's do a podcast from lab about missouri sam i mean you can you know you can go visit home and then and then come up so well i've been for that that's i'm what i was saying was i'm in on jamie i think it's so cool i mean even the way we sent it was wrong that you bought a town you invested time and energy and money into a town you invested kind of piece of soul into it and the idea is kinda like some places just need a little bit of that like cpr just to bring them back to life yes and get that you know it it takes a little bit of pom cat a catalyst like the like like i was a catalyst but i was not the right it again it's like it it is a business right like it takes a team it takes everyone being on board everyone like it's all these things are the same thing like it's it's not just like getting venture capital money and you just make it like you don't just like you know do that it it it's like it's very it's hard to build something great the the tripadvisor page is pretty cool you guys named stuff really well that's called the top places the milk weed in the talk motel tip bar grill stanley diner i'm in i wanna say i wanna stay and e at all those places they're that'd awesome i think you know in the sort of like i i don't like the idea of legacy i think the legacy is just sort of like a ego thing but i do think we do get remembered for certain things by others and it's not always what we expected it's not always in our control and i think what you're doing here is is really cool this would be if you're on a ted talk i you i'd actually wanna hear this story more than the the ring story i think it's it's such a cool life resume you know win and i'm sure it's been very like satisfying and fulfilling in a way that just doing another company or hitting another like quarterly sales goal would never do for you at this stage and so i think it's pretty awesome to hear that because i think you know we all wanna we're in the game of entrepreneurship initially for the success and then satisfy some insecurity get some financial independence but then why do you stay in the game well it's because it's fun to play and too like these projects are just vehicles there's just like workout equipment it's you're you're there to hat to like to go for a ride there just to grow a little bit and so i think this is a really cool project that that you did the entrepreneurs should be making the world better and so like whether it's on a big scale small scale whatever like we should just be like working to do that is this gonna be like a second act for you i mean this is like first of all this is like you know i don't we have to figure out how the story ends and like hopefully there's like a good like very tall ending of it like the town arrives or whatever but like is there like a book here is there a movie here because it seems like a pretty like pretty funny and like interesting tale i i maybe i i don't know i i i kinda just would hope that i i just wish more people go do this like i just think like we need to like it's like i if we could use if all the people that have learned so much could use their brains and a little bit of their capital to do this like we would solve so many problems because it is going to the root of the problem like like we look we keep we always treat the output of the problems like we have hospitals to treat people that have had sugar all their lives but we don't stop people for eating sugar and then we try to tell them not eat sugar but we actually don't like do things to make sure that like they understand why and so it's like i think like part of this is like if you look at this this area now it's like healthier like it's like all these things and so how do like how do you figure out like the root of problems and fixing it so i i'd say like la bell is just like one of i don't even know five thousand towns in the us that have the same thing and if you grew up like that you know the there's gonna be like societal issues that come from if we leave areas behind and and so we we get like i'm in new york city right now i'm from missouri i'm in york city right now and there's the lang hospital nearby and it's just you know the guy start home depot probably donate a billion dollar to start this hospital but then like a four blocks away this other hospital this other hospital other hospital all rich guys yeah and that's wonderful you know great but what is not talked about is like middle america or like you know instead of like donating to different countries like it's it's not particularly accessible in terms of it's top of mind or it's even thought of as a thing of like investing into a small town but it seems like a really awesome way to give directly to the recipients but also the teach the teaching them how to fish kind of idea of like look i'm i'm helping it's our town it's your town and i'm just here as a part of it and it makes just a little bit better which snowball into something bigger and that and that's really fascinating because every rich person or a lot of brewers they wanna do dope shit they do want legacy and like it seemed like a really great option i i think it is it's where you can also use like your superpower of what you've learned like you can actually like impart your knowledge it's not it's not just money and like money obviously does help but you need a little bit of that like spark to help but it's not cash it's like actually more about using your brain and helping and by the way what you learn from it like what i've learned from being there is incredible like that's the other side like we but just just share more a lot of the tech guys it's like you know cool to be in politics right now and i've that is not my personal inspiration and i hear a story like this and like man that sounds so much more helpful and very fascinating yeah very jamie well i appreciate you coming on telling the story shout out the book it just came out two days ago so shout out the book you should read it to hear to get the full story what's it call where do where do people get it so it's ding dong how a shark tank reject went to everyone's front door it's available on amazon dot com man you're the best we you know sean and i have a bunch of favorite people i think jesse it's rob du we've had on about four or five other the guys you have just made a our mount rushmore thank you for doing this you the it thank i'll see you in missouri we'll be doing a a a follow up podcast from there there you go i'm in i don't know about sean i'm in i'm in i'm amazing it how how can you say no after after such a great story well thanks for doing alright that's the problem i feel like i could rule where to know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a goal less travel never looking back hey let's take a quick break i wanna tell you about a podcast that you could check out it is called the science of scaling by mark robe he was the founding ceo of hubspot and he's a guest lecturer at harvard business school the guy smart and he sits down every week with different sales leaders from cool companies like cla y and van and open ai and he's asking about their strategies their tactics and how they're growing their companies as you know head of sales or chief revenue officer if you're looking at to scale the company up if you're a cro or a head of sales just look at a level up in your career i think a podcast like this could be great for you listen to the science of scaling wherever you get your podcast