JustPearlyThings - May 15, 2023


CEO Breaks Down How He Became Filthy Rich


Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

232.20776

Word count

3,663

Sentence count

2

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

12

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of the podcast, I sit down with a good friend of mine and talk about how he got his start in sales and how he ended up selling lemonade stands and door-to-door in the streets of Toronto.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 tell me you mentioned you had a sales job yeah in in college yeah was that your first job yeah
00:00:06.100 i worked at a gas station for three weeks and got fired because i had all sorts of ideas i think
00:00:10.280 and whenever you're a creative type of person i didn't know what that meant it happened to me
00:00:13.720 right sort of they hated me in corporate because i was always trying to put bring in like new
00:00:18.260 technology and stuff yeah that was me yeah okay well i learned this later like because people
00:00:23.200 started referring to me as being creative i didn't think i was creative i don't know what that meant
00:00:26.400 right um and so and so i got into the you know the the whatever university and then i was working
00:00:34.300 a gas station for three weeks i get fired because i just i'm annoying my manager okay fine um then i'm
00:00:39.160 rollerblading to class somebody approaches me he's like hey you look like you're working you know
00:00:42.440 you're you're all brain to class you know you're really care about your fitness and motivation what
00:00:46.600 i didn't say is like no i can't afford the 75 cents a day parking and i'm parking on the highway taking
00:00:51.800 a bus from because we had a free bus pass and i lived about an hour and a half from campus
00:00:54.960 so i would drive uh to like where i can park on the highway get on the bus and then take the bus
00:01:00.680 and then get off the bus and rollerblade to the campus because the bus didn't go like totally to
00:01:05.060 campus so i'm so it's like that's you're rollerblading by the highway oh yeah yeah but i'm like i'm saving
00:01:09.540 75 cents yeah i'm like i either look more i don't know what i look like but i was just poor i wasn't
00:01:14.360 motivated like i rollerbladed in college too that's funny not just for fun no i just i was and i just
00:01:21.520 imagine imagining like this really busy highway yeah i was just you know with my bag and like i
00:01:28.140 just i needed to get a school you know i wasn't thinking about like whatever i mean obviously i
00:01:32.220 probably looked like a total loser because that's what it was but somebody's like hey you know i don't
00:01:36.340 think you looked like a loser oh no no no i look no no it's like okay there's something that people 0.97
00:01:43.000 respect about people that are just like crazy a small percentage of people will respect it okay it's 0.93
00:01:48.700 like when i um i was telling the story yesterday on the show how i was going door to door in
00:01:52.680 neighborhoods like asking for a job and it was just more of a social experiment but people respect 0.99
00:01:57.820 it to be wealthy people wealthy people yeah like people that just don't care if they look stupid 0.97
00:02:03.440 they're trying to get it done listen i buy from any salesperson that knocks on my door and they're 0.89
00:02:07.180 good i'll buy i don't care what they're selling i'll buy it because i respect the hustle and if they
00:02:11.040 look like they hate their job i won't buy you know my family does that but with kids lemonade stands
00:02:16.040 i'll always stop for a lemonade stand i'm like get that money sure and i always pay like i always give
00:02:21.520 them like 20 bucks even though it's 50 cents i had a funny story on sunday a door-to-door salesperson
00:02:26.100 came to our house in estonia and my wife bought whatever this person was selling and the person
00:02:30.240 asked it's like can you tell me about you know she's trying to get like approach on other families
00:02:33.960 to like to like you know have a little bit of a um preparation before she knocks on their door she's 1.00
00:02:38.560 like and who lives in this unit that unit i'm always like what do you mean she's like you know
00:02:41.620 this quartile this my wife's like this is one house like the salesperson thought that our house 0.85
00:02:45.880 was a quad which i'm like and i'm like baby we made it you know that's a nice that's like a really
00:02:49.580 nice compliment but she was like wait this is one house like yeah it's one house this guy's been to
00:02:53.900 my house so um yeah so so somebody identified me as as being ambitious uh which okay i guess i was
00:03:03.080 more like just whatever but yeah i got recruited to selling encyclopedias door-to-door yeah wow so yeah
00:03:08.040 that was crazy that was a tough sell that was it was crazy and i remember um you know knocking on
00:03:13.440 doors that we went to ontario auto in toronto because what happened was we relocated for the
00:03:17.800 entire summer like we literally got in a caravan last day of finals and we drove like 4 000 miles
00:03:22.960 away from home and we were just because that way we can't quit it was like true vagabond from a van
00:03:28.340 you know you live in a basement with like six other dudes you're working six days a week 14 15 hours a
00:03:34.760 day just knocking on doors that was the thing right i'm like well i got nothing better to
00:03:38.020 go back to so why not um and you know it's like it's like super hot i don't know about fahrenheit
00:03:42.700 it's like 35 degrees celsius 80 60 humidity you get nosebleeds just from the humidity outside because
00:03:47.700 there's smog and you're sometimes it rains and you're knocking on doors like hi i want to sell you
00:03:52.480 some some encyclopedias um but thankfully you know um the lessons that that we gain from that like
00:03:59.560 perseverance positive affirmation just making the best out of a shitty situation and actually now that
00:04:04.840 i think back even just voluntarily putting yourself through hardship because that's a safe environment
00:04:08.900 to fail and it's not like a war that if you fail you blow up it's like if you fail you get rejected
00:04:13.280 you might cry a little bit but you're gonna have to pick yourself back up and keep going and i love
00:04:17.460 that right especially for a man again i can speak to my own experience like that right of passage
00:04:21.860 experience that and we don't have in north america because there's no you know and there's no
00:04:25.460 um there's no army conscription you just as a guy there's no right of passage i believe in the right of
00:04:30.860 passage because i went through that in that and thankfully i discovered that um i'm okay at sales
00:04:36.300 and i have a certain passion for influencing people um and i like the thing that you know that summer i
00:04:43.640 came back i had an eight thousand dollar check it was not huge it was eight thousand dollars but i was
00:04:47.740 able to pay off my tuition because it was six thousand only tuition at the time you know so kind
00:04:51.540 of dating myself here the next summer i went back i took home a forty nine thousand dollar check
00:04:55.720 selling encyclopedias yeah so i bought it so i bought my i was 20 how much did the encyclopedias
00:05:01.240 go for about 600 bucks it wasn't that expensive but you just you know you you learn yeah and then so
00:05:06.360 so like i was like 8k i was like 50 49 like 50 then like 50 then i jumped like 130k in one summer
00:05:12.820 so at 23 this is how my life changed i was rollerblading to class at 20 at 23 i was 23 i was a full-time
00:05:20.440 university student i was paying my own tuition tuition and i was a homeowner wow yeah so that was a
00:05:25.640 really quick turnaround right and so you went from literally rollerblading to class yes some guy
00:05:30.400 i'm assuming he met as a lady as a lady some lady saw you um thought you were ambitious yeah 0.98
00:05:36.360 recruited you was it her company no so it was it's a huge company out of nashville tennessee and
00:05:41.020 they're like a big direct selling company okay and so this company's been around for like 160
00:05:44.980 170 years like they've been around forever because it was started by a pastor selling bibles door to
00:05:49.360 door like that was the kind of origin story um yeah and you know what's crazy is obviously my
00:05:53.740 friends all thought i was signing up for like to be human trafficked somewhere right because they're
00:05:58.380 like what and my mom thought i was not she's like wait you're gonna go 4 000 miles away from home and
00:06:02.740 knock on door selling books and and this is 2003 2004 my first summer 2003 it's like we have internet
00:06:09.080 and i'm like but mom i think this will be good for me you know i like i was just feeling this drive
00:06:14.620 for an adventure after college no this is in college oh this was the summer this was the summer yeah oh
00:06:19.300 three so every summer we would go for three months and you know sell and then of course you know by
00:06:24.040 my fourth i did five years at university because i had two degrees by my fourth and fifth year i would
00:06:28.240 usually miss the first couple weeks of school because i had sold so much that i have to stay
00:06:31.660 and like deliver everything so when did you start your company 2010 okay so was that i'm just trying
00:06:39.280 to figure out the timeline yeah so oh three so oh one i go to university okay oh three is my first
00:06:43.640 summer okay and then i sell in 03 04 05 06 and then i do my graduating year i sell in 07 and then i do
00:06:52.120 one more year because in 07 i sold that summer i made like 130 000 uh that summer so i'd saved up
00:06:58.640 like quite a lot of money for a university student coming out of school and then i travel for a year
00:07:03.020 and then in 2008 i go i sell books again and then uh i travel again for a year and a half and then i come
00:07:09.800 back and start a company so i got a lot of traveling done like before i kind of took on this this you
00:07:14.920 know undertaking and what inspired you to start your company um what like what was the was there
00:07:21.380 an aha moment like what okay one thing i didn't mention is in 2008 i left the book thing before i
00:07:28.380 went to travel i took a corporate consulting job in texas i live in dallas and uh that lasted three
00:07:34.340 months i got let go because same thing i was just super ambitious and like like just having all
00:07:40.380 these ideas i i relate to that so much yeah they hated me in corporate they hated me well the
00:07:47.260 corporate people are not like you know anybody with an mba just hates me because i i don't think like
00:07:51.340 them at all like i'm not linear i want to explore i want to take risks you know i read a statistic today
00:07:56.320 that an average millionaire files bankruptcy 3.5 times in their life that's insane really yeah that's
00:08:03.380 insane i i was shocked when i read that but i looked at the data like oh my god there's tasks
00:08:07.120 to back that up which means that millionaires are people that will take risks and fail and try again
00:08:12.080 until they succeed so that's a resiliency argument actually it's not a failure argument it's a
00:08:16.160 resiliency argument right and so um corporate people they're not into failure like they just want
00:08:22.160 the safest thing for everything and i'm going in there let's try this let's try that and they're like
00:08:25.840 you're insane and so three months in i'm like i can't do this so i left and i and i was just
00:08:31.860 thinking like i i probably should start a business because um i don't think i'm employable like i just
00:08:36.420 realized i don't think i'm employable oh my gosh i had that same thought like literally when i was
00:08:41.560 in corporate because i would always go to my management and just ask them like can we use
00:08:45.800 this software like why are we doing it this way this doesn't make any sense and like i'm 24 22 i don't
00:08:51.740 know 22 to 24 i think i was so like what is this chick talking about she doesn't know anything 1.00
00:08:56.140 yeah plus i hate stupid rules thank you rules that are there for no reason stupid rules yeah 0.99
00:09:02.020 yeah stupid rules it's okay so they let you go why why suits so i made a list of things uh again i 1.00
00:09:08.900 wanted to be strategic uh there was a an incident in my life that uh i refer a lot to new people we 0.99
00:09:13.380 hire in our company which is i had a mentor i talked about on the show yesterday he had sold
00:09:16.720 this company for about 50 million dollars at 39 years old and then he started at a non-profit he put
00:09:20.780 me on the board of that non-profit just so i can learn he said i just want you to learn it was a
00:09:24.800 wonderful thing he did so i'm it was a sunday i'm in his office on a sunday and we're raising money
00:09:30.540 to build a new facility at ubc to build a new building at ubc that was the fundraiser he undertook
00:09:34.480 for his organization non-profit and uh this guy walks in this little chubby uh white curly hair
00:09:41.780 with a hat guy looks about 60 walks in he's you know shakes hands and gives him an envelope well see
00:09:47.360 and walks away and so this mentor of mine um they all he opens the envelope and there's a half a
00:09:54.560 a check for half a million dollars from him to you from no not from him to you from this from to
00:09:59.440 me to from this old man to a all that was a donation he gave half a million dollars to help
00:10:04.880 fund this building that i was building wow half a million dollars okay so i'm i don't know i mean i
00:10:10.140 had money at the time but not like half a million dollars to donate money you know because i'm like
00:10:14.820 24 and i'm looking at like uh what i've never seen a half a million dollar check before it's an
00:10:21.300 incredible experience actually to be in that energy you know and i go that guy just gave you
00:10:25.720 half a million dollars he's like yeah he donates half a million dollars to us every year i go you
00:10:30.740 see the biggest donor he's like no there are people who do a million dollars a year for us keep in mind
00:10:34.880 we're building a you know transparently like uh growing up jewish in the soviet union rebel this this
00:10:39.500 was building a a campus uh you know building for the uh halal foundation so like the jewish student
00:10:45.500 community which i'm sure is going to get a lot of hate online because all these conspiracies no there's no 0.96
00:10:49.220 conspiracy i grew up poor shit um but that community does have a ton of money like it's a 0.94
00:10:54.140 very you know wealthy community and these are and these are very successful people but this is the 0.96
00:10:58.440 most unassuming little old man that walked in gave a check for half a million dollars you know
00:11:02.180 and i go hey all like what do you have to do with your life to be able to give away a half a million
00:11:10.240 dollars for just something you believe in and y'all like thought about he goes you know
00:11:14.920 all of these guys do something different like neil was the guy's name they gave the money happens to
00:11:20.140 be in construction his friend jonathan's an accountant he gives like a million dollars
00:11:23.600 he went through all these names he's like they all do different one guy's an orthopedic surgeon
00:11:28.860 everybody does something different he goes but there's one thing they all have in common
00:11:31.280 and this is profound to hear this at 24 he goes the one thing they all have in common is they've all
00:11:36.180 ever only done one thing what does that mean he goes they've all been married to the same woman
00:11:43.120 since i've known them for the last 30 plus years and they've all only had one job
00:11:46.600 mind blown you know that was that was prophetic because like you know you go now to 2023 and people
00:11:55.960 jump from relationship to relationship jump from job to job it's too hard and doesn't work doesn't
00:12:00.460 like this they don't people don't understand or value commitment and value resiliency people value oh
00:12:06.960 i'll get a 200 raise if i switch jobs it's like okay well good luck living life with that
00:12:11.440 logical fallacy as much as you might believe it to be true but here's a guy that sold this company
00:12:16.340 for like 50 million dollars getting a half a million dollar donation right in front of me telling me do
00:12:21.040 one thing so my thing was like if i start a business i want to only do one thing so i have to figure out
00:12:28.040 what that thing is does that make sense so um i'm talking to my best friend my best friend skipped
00:12:33.660 two grades of high school between his parents they have three phds so in like biochemistry like
00:12:39.760 crazy intelligent family sister's a doctor like like my friend is a brilliant guy and he got a
00:12:44.060 goldman sachs internship in new york as like a second year university student he's a brilliant
00:12:48.200 guy i'm not like him my other best friend i have four best men at my wedding one has a honors physics
00:12:53.900 degree one is the guy i just told you about one guy now works works at the world bank graduated
00:12:57.960 university with a master's in three years speaks fluent chinese he's from he's a white dude learned
00:13:03.960 chinese won a competition got sent to china for an internship got his master's degree now works at the
00:13:07.800 world bank so i have some pretty smart friends and i'm really intimidated by them like my friends
00:13:12.260 i just got lucky are like really really smart people and so i'm talking to my best friend i'm
00:13:16.340 like man i feel i feel very insecure because i want to build something i want to do something
00:13:20.880 but you're like skipping two grades of high school how do i compete with a guy like you
00:13:26.780 because you know when you're winning you have to be in competition you have to be winning against
00:13:30.060 somebody there's a competition right and peleg i'm sure he's listening to this later he's like
00:13:36.000 he told me something he's like you know he's he was a by-side analyst that was his internship that
00:13:40.200 he was doing somewhere and he was like meaning that he would evaluate companies based on how
00:13:43.940 much they're really worth and so he would go with these very like you know um very qualified
00:13:49.640 management teams and investment teams to go interview you know like leaders of companies
00:13:53.840 and he goes there's two kinds of rich guys that i've met that's what he told me he goes the
00:13:57.360 first kind is the one that goes to an ivy league school gets into an investment bank you know
00:14:01.380 goldman sachs jp morgan whatever and that guy goes becomes a managing director but then you're
00:14:05.880 competing against all the other guys that went to ivy league schools he goes but the most successful
00:14:10.020 people i've met evaluating companies is somebody who is dominating a non-sophisticated industry
00:14:15.220 what do you mean he's like well the richest guy i've interviewed recently owned a waste removal
00:14:19.560 company he collects garbage but his competitors are not harvard guys they're unsophisticated so he's
00:14:24.900 like if you go into an unsophisticated industry and learn to dominate it you can do really really
00:14:29.240 well and so i'm thinking like okay what's a non-sophisticated industry that has nothing to
00:14:34.160 do with garbage because i don't want to pick up garbage and i see suits i'm thinking okay well
00:14:38.820 that seems pretty simple who's my competition in suits like some guy in a store you know sure the
00:14:45.180 store might have a nice brand but it's just like some guy like hello sir i work in retail i can beat
00:14:48.820 that guy in sales so it's unsophisticated so that was my number one thing it had to be unsophisticated
00:14:53.460 and easy to learn the reason it had to be easy to learn is i coming out of the encyclopedia
00:14:57.260 business i had a lot of friends that i had recruited into that business that were selling
00:15:00.720 books with me so i can recruit them into suits i also wanted a product that required no further
00:15:05.260 schooling because i spent five years in school i knew that academia was not for me and i also
00:15:09.740 wanted a product that gave me uh because i had delusional aspirations of being international i don't
00:15:13.760 want to sell insurance or financial services or real estate because then i have to be married to my
00:15:17.720 city i want to be able to travel the world and build around the world which actually has come true
00:15:21.600 so that was my decision it was like unsophisticated how many cities are you in oh oh 30 something oh
00:15:27.820 wow yeah yeah so that was a decision as many of you know i was just banned on tiktok and we are
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