The Revenue Rule: Why 500 Views Beats Going Viral with Jake Hurwitz

Most founders are chasing the wrong metric and it’s killing their business.

I just sat down with Jake Hurwitz.

He is the secret weapon behind the loudest voices in venture capital and tech.

In this episode you’ll learn

• The “500 Views” rule: why niche engagement outperforms millions of viral impressions.

• The “Anthony Bourdain” strategy for interviewing experts without being one yourself.

• Why he fired a client for violating the “No Assholes” policy.

We dive into the details later in the conversation.

If you like the episode, please subscribe.

Timestamps
00:00 Intro
02:40 AI won’t replace you (but it will replace your research)
10:28 The “Viral” Myth: Niche markets vs. mass appeal
15:18 The “No Assholes” policy for clients
22:11 The $10k studio setup guide
36:38 Lessons from a failed $100k launch
45:18 The Anthony Bourdain content framework
51:17 How to host a non-awkward dinner party
1:06:05 60-second strategy game: Plumbers and Rolex dealers
1:10:02 Life is happening for you, not to you

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Here’s the full transcript:

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (00:00.11)

Entrepreneurship is the best path to your truest self. You have to operate at 110%, 110 % of the time. You won’t because you’re a human being. Some days will be 30%, some days will be 70, some days will be 110. Through that, the challenge, the adversity, the just natural ups and downs, you become the most raw, epic, enlightened, powerful version of yourself. You get one life, you get one tiny, tiny, tiny little fraction of

on this planet to experience being a human and you are probably born into one of the best moments in history and the best locations in the world ever. Don’t you dare in the slightest not try to get every single ounce out of that. Like squeeze every drop out of his life. And I think building a business is the best way to

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (00:59.042)

Welcome to that one time with Adam Metwally, the podcast bridging the gap between health, hustle and happiness. We’re at Thursday Labs in Venice, Los Angeles, and I’m with Jake Hurwitz. Jake is the secret weapon behind some of the loudest voices in business. He’s the founder of Thursday Labs, a strategic podcast studio that produces podcasts for hyper-growth founders and VCs. But he’s not also just a podcast producer. He hosts his own show called the Optimist Podcast about men’s mental health.

Today, we’re digging into the truth of producing successful shows, some nightmare client stories, the number one marketing strategy he uses to make millions for his clients. It’s my first time in my own studio being a guest on someone else’s show. Either it’s my show or I’m in the background recording client shows right here. So this is a treat. Yeah, let’s get after it then, shall we? So for the people who don’t know who you are, give us a 60 second pitch. Who is Jake Hurwitz?

And what actually is Thursday Labs? Okay. So I am a, I’m a goofy guy and I’m very adventurous. actually have a purpose statement that I wrote last year called, my, my purpose is to increase fulfillment by being adventurous, bold, and curious. So Jay Carwitz is adventurous, bold, and curious. I love playing outside, surfing, snowboarding, cycling, trail running.

And when I’m not outside, I’m in the studio and I’m producing podcasts. I’ve always been in the tech scene. I have a pretty, I love my network of founders and VCs. I like to think it’s a strong network and yeah, I’ve produced now in the last two years, over 50 shows for mostly founders and about a dozen VCs. Some big funds, some small funds, some big companies, some small companies, kind everything in between. And I’m starting to produce shows now for more like the creator.

influencer types, not just founders, but we definitely play in that lane. And then, I have my own show about men’s mental health and modern masculinity. Things like that’s a bit of more of the passion project, just a cause I care endlessly about. Plus, it’s an opportunity to test a lot of strategies and stuff and how to build a podcast on my own canvas before bringing it to all our other shows. That’s my that’s my quick synopsis. Yeah, nice. So I’d like to talk about the elephant in the room right away.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (03:25.23)

AI cool. AI and content. So it’s taking over the world and really impacting a lot of workflows. So do you see AI replacing you? No. What makes you say that? Well, I don’t think a robot could replace a human. You know, it could replace a lot of things that I do, but I don’t think it’s replacing me as a person. And I’m OK with that. OK, with that, like I am down with AI taking a lot of things off my plate.

and allowing me to focus on things I actually want to do more and more often. But I don’t think AI is replacing me. Yeah. How are you making AI make you 10 times more valuable? OK, so I’ve tried to use AI in everything you could possibly imagine when it comes to, at least we’re talking about when we’re talking about work, when it comes to podcast production.

A lot of areas I don’t feel comfortable using it, meaning the results are shitty. Yeah. Um, there are a lot of areas where we have to use it because the results are unbelievable. Let’s talk about those. The first is when I’m producing a new podcast, I’m trying to understand where’s the white space in an industry. can use chat, GBT deep research to put together the most incredible analysis of a space in 20 minutes. Um, combine that with them, like a team of really awesome producers and editors and

videographers and myself to be like, okay, we see the white space. How do we fill it with something unique and, um, and solid knowing what we know about how to build a good podcast. So just like, what’s the show about? We can recurrent with some really fascinating stuff that w look, would we have been able to figure it out without GPT deep research? Yeah. It would have been like a six week research project. Yeah. We do it in 20 minutes. Yeah. Such a grind. Those are the jobs that you just hate doing as well.

I mean, now in the past, it was like I would actually take a month to like come up with a thing. And now I do it in half a day. And because that, we could do many more shows. The next is in figuring out what guests should we interview on this show? Who are the best possible people in New York this week to interview on this show? What’s trending in the space? Who’s in town? How do you figure that out? Again, Chad, Gbt deep research.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (05:43.15)

How does it know who’s in or just like who’s based in New York and like could be in town? I was right, but I’ll build a list of a hundred people. I need to get four in two weeks. Yeah. And I’ll hit them all up and I’ll be like, here’s what we’re doing. And we’ll get four out of a hundred every day. Do you know Kevin Kelly? No, he’s like, he’s a co founder of wired magazine, like a big tech dude. I got him off like a chat, GPD deep research, got his email, emailed him. I found Instagram DMS.

especially for most of our shows work great. It helps having a few hundred. I’m sorry, a few thousand or more followers on your account. got like 25000 followers on Instagram. So it’s a lot easier now to DM anybody and be like, hey, I produce podcasts like we’ve got a show coming to New York in two weeks. It’s about the X, Y and Z. We’d to have you on. Like, you be interested in the reply rate on that is higher than anything I’ve seen anywhere else. So deep research is really like.

the name of game of the game for us. So that’s great. We’ll use AI as well for them. Okay. We have this guest coming on. Hey, Chad or Hey, Jim, whatever you want to use. Can you go scour the web for everything that this person has ever talked about? Plus everything that this industry needs to hear about and is not hearing much about and is demanding that this person could speak to put together an episode outline for me, come up with the theme or sub themes.

list of questions, like basically make an outline. And that that V1 is usually pretty solid. And then we humanize it and send it to a guest ahead of time. So the guest is prepared and the host is prepared. So coming up, it’s just like all the pre-production stuff we’re leaning very heavily into deep research on AI for editing. Not good. There’s very there are very few tools that I trust. I don’t like Opus clip.

I don’t like Descript. There are some AI tools in there. Riverside’s got a couple of interesting AI tools. Like I like the tool that you could like make your eyes look like you’re looking at the camera. That’s cool. Yeah. I like overlap newer on the streets. As of now, it’s December 20, 25. Like they’re still pretty new and I’m really pleased with what they’re putting out and give it another six months. I think they’re going to be they must take over Opus Clip. They just have to. But yeah, we we rely on humans for any

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (08:07.392)

editing post-production and distribution strategy. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. So running Thursday Labs, you produce podcasts for high-profile founders. What has been one of the toughest situations you’ve had to deal with when dealing with clients? There’s one I get a lot. And for what it’s worth, a lot of our founders here, are high profile. A of them are not, and they want to be high profile. That’s actually more our bread and butter, like building something, taking it from zero to one.

versus like one to 10. We could do both because it’s like once we get it from zero to one, then we take it from one to 10. But zero to one is I think it’s the most fun part, but it’s it’s the most challenging part because you’re dealing with somebody’s like very, very raw anxiety. a founder who’s never really put their face on the Internet before all of a sudden I’m putting them on in front of the most beautiful cinematic cameras in the market and saying, talk about something provocative and controversial. And then I got you. That’s scary for them.

And so they’re nervous. There’s a lot of human emotion involved in this. Hey, my spouse said I shouldn’t do that. And I’m like, I don’t give a about your spouse. They’re not our mark. Is your spouse our audience? Why are they chiming in on this? I get that stuff a lot. Usually it’s OK, but there have been a few times where it’s like, don’t don’t come to me with that. But I think the toughest is folks. People have a skewed definition of going viral, in my opinion.

Like we do tons of shows that are very niche B2B shows. I mean, in a space like cybersecurity or learning and development or, know, something very, very oddly specific. And sometimes they’re like sub niches like, you know, cybersecurity for Fortune 500, chief security officers or learning and development for. Yeah. Or like we have a show for college admissions counselors at the top universities. It’s just like.

So like a thousand people. Right. And so now I’m not going to say that, in particular, any of these specific clients of ours have asked this, but like I see these trends at large where typically those who are more niche. Harps more ongoing viral. So they’ll say like, Jake, make me go viral. Yeah. And I’m like, yeah, OK, I got you. And then after like they asked three or four times, like, OK, hold on. Let’s just back up for a sec. How many people are in your.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (10:28.704)

are in your total addressable market. Yeah. How many potential audience members are even in the world? 500 people. Yeah. Maybe a thousand people. And they’re like, I want to go viral. It’s like 500 views is not viral. Yeah. To the average eyeball. Like if I see 500 plays on one of your clips, I don’t think that that’s viral. Yeah. Nobody does. But if that means 100 percent of your team is watching your content every day. It’s great.

That’s pretty damn good. Yeah. There’s a lot of value in that. Yeah. So I think that there’s such a conversation that that needs to be had more. It will just make my life a little bit easier. But I have this conversation constantly, which is nothing more than just like we don’t need to care about the quantity of people watching your shit. We care about the quality of people watching your shit. Are they converting? Who are they? Like, well, I’ll play that game all day because that’s what really matters for niche B2B.

technical shows where there’s a lot of white space. There’s not a lot of competition. These are shows that are meant to bring business to the company. Now, if we’re talking like a lifestyle show or I want to quickly, what do mean by white space? White space. So there’s just gaps in the market. Like no one’s talking about this or no one’s doing it this way. know, everyone’s playing here. No one’s playing here. That’s the white space. And so I want to always play our own game. We want to always like create a new, a new trend, a new space.

That’s really important for podcasts. Yeah, makes sense. Anyway, you were saying and then back onto lifestyle podcast. look, if you’re building like a lifestyle show about fucking relationships or about health and fitness or about beauty or about whatever. there is there are millions and millions of people in the world that can tune into this stuff. It’s a different strategy. Like then we are going for viral for virality. Then we are going for follower count. The clips are different.

the guests that we get on, it’s different. Like everything from the core is just a different approach. We can do both. We’ve done tons of both. You just need to know that they’re different. If you apply the same strategies to each type of show, you’re going to fail. get nowhere. Yeah. Yeah. So you need to pick a lane, really. Pick a lane. Like it can evolve. Yeah. It can change. Yeah. It’s called a pivot. But like you got to be intentional about that. OK, now we’re literally going to change the type of guests we get, the types of questions we ask, like how we treat video clips, where we post them, how we write captions. Like it’s all very different.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (12:51.03)

Yeah. Have you ever had to fire a client? A couple. Yeah. How did that go? It’s never fun. When I have to fire a client, it’s never because I’m too bothered by them. Like, of course I get very bothered by some clients here and there, a human being, but I have enough experience and enough of a mindfulness practice and routines to like not let that mess up my day. Yeah.

I have to get rid of a client because they’re putting more strain on my team than I’m comfortable with. So I’m doing it on behalf of my people. If I have a I have and I have a very clear. And serious leadership style around to everyone on my team like, hey, if you’re ever finding yourself spending. 23X more time or energy on any one client than others, and that’s happening often, you need to tell me that because no one client is ever worth more than the whole portfolio at large.

I will always happily drop one client if it means that we’re hurting other clients. No client wants to hear that because they’re always my most important client, right? But at the end of the day, I have to run a portfolio business. And so I’m doing this to protect my team. Roughly, and like, look, it’s never always equal, but like when you zoom out over the course of a month or six months, I do really care that my team is roughly spending the same amount of energy and time and stress.

on each client. And it’s also a reason why we start with like 20 episode contract. I can get some six months. Yeah, we also just learn like it’s an easy out for them if they hate working with us, if they don’t see the results that they’re looking for. It’s also an easy out for us if they’re causing more problems for us than they are upside. We have great margins, but like no margin is better than them. Like being disrespectful to my team or making them like have unrealistic expectations on timelines or deliverables or things like that. So.

That’s that’s in the category of me taking a bullet for my team. Yeah, I understand. So what actually makes a nightmare client if you were to distill it? It’s no different than like. A nightmare human. Yeah, a little bit. First off, we have a no assholes policy. Yeah. Like I don’t need to. I think it’s a privilege to work with us like I’m building your dream life. Yeah. Are you guiding you in this shit? I’ll give some analogies. If you got on an airplane.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (15:18.13)

And there was some turbulence, like, would you go shit on the pilot? Would you go give them a hard time? It’s like, get off the fucking plane. They’ve been working their whole life, working their ass off to take you safely from point A to point B, doing the best they can, have some respect for the craft. And so, yeah, I try to just suss out early on because as someone who’s just essentially just grateful for all that we’re doing together, we do a lot for them. We get them pretty significant results. These are like, it’s not just ROI and form of money.

These are life changing results. So I care about that a lot. People are just disrespectful. I just have no tolerance for it. There’s enough great people out there that to work with them that I don’t want to work with assholes. But I think the bigger one is imagine you’ve never run a day in your life and you decide for whatever reason, I want to run a New York marathon in three months. And so you go hire a trainer. You don’t know anything about stretching, about running, about fueling, about sleep. You don’t know anything.

The trainer’s like, OK, great. Here’s the plan. You follow the plan. You’re going to win. You do great. going to be some ups and downs. It’s going to be hard. Your feet are going to hurt. But like, that’s part of the process. It’s just the way it goes. Are you up for it? Like, yeah, let’s do it. And then six weeks in, you’re like, hey, trainer, we’re going to do it this way now. Like, I don’t want to follow your diet. We’re going to follow this diet that my other friend gave me because like he ran a 5k at Turkey Trot last year. It’s like eventually that trainer is going to find like, why’d you hire me? Yeah.

Don’t hire me to build you a house and then try to get in my way and build it. You’re just going to fuck it up. Yeah. And you’re to blame me when you get bad results. Come on. So I’ve had a don’t know, handful of clients over the years that just basically try to do the work for us or where they’re asking questions that are they’re not the kindest and how they’re asking them. And clearly what’s under it is that there’s some dissatisfaction in like how we do things. They butcher the work and then the results suck and then they blame me for it and we part ways and like it’s just a business. Yeah, fair.

Have you ever made anything for a client that you even thought was a bit too risky or a little crazy and it surprised you? I love risking crazy. Give it to me. You know, I, I, I have to really motivate and push all my clients and guests to fucking go there. know, and I say to them, you got to go there. You gotta be willing to say the thing that people aren’t willing to say. Otherwise you’re just another voice that people are drowning out. Um,

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (17:44.054)

I get it. It’s really scary. And the fear of being canceled or whoever you want to phrase it. but I’ll never post something that for a client that I think could get them canceled. If it’s maybe a little bit risky, I might say to them like, we’ll always say it like, Hey, we might just want to think twice about this before putting on LinkedIn. It’s about your sex life with your husband. do you want to do that? I’d recommend no. call. And usually they’re like, I trust you.

great. Or sometimes I’m like, hey, this is a little bit risky for LinkedIn, but I think that it’s we should do it. Here’s why. Sometimes they’ve been like, I’d rather not. OK, like there’s enough content to post. don’t have to post the one that that could cause a problem, especially if you’re going to lose sleep over it or it could tarnish your relationship with anybody in your life. But have we ever put anything out that like I thought would. I mean, there’s been so many posts.

thousands and thousands of posts we’ve put out that I thought would crush and didn’t. Of course, timing algorithm, bad luck, you name it. A lot of our clips that have crushed. I wouldn’t have expected it. It’s funny how that works. Funny how that works. I think a lot has to do with timing. Zeitgeist, you name it. One of my episodes that I thought was one of the worst interviews I ever led.

And I wasn’t a fan of the lighting setup that we had. was trying out a new studio. I almost didn’t post it. The whole episode, I was to impose any of it. And then we had a down week or we missed a week. And I was like, you know what? Whatever. Just post it like and I kind of didn’t even think about it. And turns out that was like our second highest viewed clip ever extraordinarily viral. So millions and and millions of views like immediately.

Which was eye opening. That was the first time that level of like that happened at that level. So I at this point, I’ve just feel like I’ve seen so much in either direction that I’m a little almost like jaded to it. Yeah. I can’t tell you that’s going to go viral. That’s not I can tell you what the formula is. But even if we follow it to a T, which we always try to like, it still doesn’t play like that. You just got to like take as many.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (20:05.582)

perfect swings as you can get knowing that like only a few are going to hit. You don’t know which ones are going to hit. Yeah. I think the shots on goal approach is definitely the best approach when it comes to content from what I’ve understood. cause you hit that you hit two different things you get to test and then you get to improve because you’re just constantly working on it. but yeah, and we say to clients a lot, I’m like, we’re going to post a lot of stuff. I, again, we can’t tell you what’s going to work, but some of them will work. No one, none of us can guess it, but like if we don’t post enough,

If we don’t post enough variety, if we don’t post enough frequency, we’re not getting enough shots on goal. We’re talking like 20, 30 clips a day on some channels over the course of many months. We need you need so much volume to get there. People really underestimate that. And they have so much fear around that. I’m spamming people. People are going to start unfollowing me. It’s it’s such a myth, dude. It’s such a myth. That’s another one that doesn’t bother me that much. I can’t really lose sleep over it, but.

Almost every client at some point, it be two or three and they’re like, hey, think we’re posting like too much. think I’m bothering my friends on LinkedIn. I’m like, OK, the way the algorithm works is it’s only showing about 20 percent of your content to your followers. So right out of the gates, if you want people to see you once a week, you got to post once a day, five times a week. You want people to see you every day. You got to post five times a day. You have to post five times more than you want people to see you. Rulophone. So and I’m in a camp of like I want people seeing me like two to three times a day.

I want to be fucking everywhere. want to be on. I want to be bothering them all the time. If they unfollow me. Great. But the rate on every show on every account, the rate of losing followers is so small compared to the rate of gaining followers. So I just don’t care about that. And if someone has such a problem with my face showing up all the time and unfollowing me isn’t enough for them. Text me, email me, DM me, please. I would love to chat with you.

That’s how I look at it. And I try to instill that mindset with my clients because that’s the mindset that you need to win in this game. You just have to. Yeah. What do you think about polished versus volume? It’s an important conversation. I think polished is very important in general, but polished can be done in low hanging fruit ways. Good cameras, good lighting, good, good audio quality, like the hardware in the room.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (22:30.798)

I think you should invest in. do believe in that. You know, so what’s your podcast set up right now? I mean, we’ve got I mean, just like a loft space at a three story building. It’s up top. Fully blacked out the room. So we’ve got these acoustic sound panel walls. I bought these at like a paint store in Los Angeles. I mean, to fill two walls worth was like a thousand dollars. A couple hours to hang these up.

There’s windows behind these and we just literally deleted the windows, cover them up with these panels. Um, I like the aesthetic of dark and moody and ambient for a lot of my shows in this studio. We’ve studios downstairs as well that are light different. okay, decide on like your aesthetic. Um, I like the road mics, the pod mic USB, uh, definitely use an XLR cable versus the USB-C cable. Just better, more crispy. lot of people prefer the share mics, um, a little bit more expensive.

I’ve just always used my whole system as audio has always been road. So loyal to them. I know how to work their interface. A couple of Sony FX 30s. If you want to upgrade even more FX threes or slightly better. I think it is absolutely worth good cameras. The very least, at the very least, like a thousand dollars for your DSLRs. got to get three of them. And then our wide angle lens, this one here, it’s a Fuji. I also do a lot of photography. So I like to use that camera for myself for fun.

And I found it’s pretty easy to match the Sony and Fuji system. And then, you know, good lights. Yeah. Amaran verge max pro led panels. I like these cause they’re like flat, almost like a flat screen TV versus these big fucking boxes. Much easier to move up and down to different rooms in the, in the building. and easy to travel with. You can just put them into like this round case and a nice table, a lot of carpet and stuff to dampen the audio. I mean, you could build a room like this for.

All in like 10 grand or less. You could do it at an office in your coworking space. You do it in a spare bedroom in your home. Do your basement. And then also if you do it in your home, then your home becomes tax deductible. Yeah, 100 percent. We’ve got a curtain behind you. It’s just like a black curtain. I love the current look. It’s not not the best. I might replace that with like a false wall soon, but it gets the job done. So, you know, when it comes to polish first off, like Zoom recordings, Riverside, if you have guests coming on your pod,

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (24:55.866)

It’s just do it in person. I just got to be in person, travel for it, bring them to your city, whoever it is, figure out a way to make it in person. Um, because the quality of your content is only as strong as the worst camera in the room. So if you have the beautiful at home. Setup for your virtual show and you’re recording on Riverside and then your guest tunes in with like piece of shit, MacBook pro from 2013. that that is now the high end standard of your show is their MacBook.

Yeah. It actually looks worse when you look great and they look terrible. Now you’re like clearly. So, I mean, look, is it better than doing no content at all? It depends on the company and the guests. It depends on the strategy of the show and the space they’re in, like TBD, but, that’s, that’s an important one. and so, okay, if you record a two hour, even a one hour conversation with good content, a good, I’m sorry, good quality equipment, then it’s no difference in how you.

get to 20, 30 clips a day in terms of volume. but if the quality of the raw content was so much better, you’re going to get volume and polish. Yeah. if the quality of the content to start with shitty, you’re going to get volume and shitty quality, no polish. And then that’s just like, just wasting. Usually you’re just kind of shooting in the dark. And at that point, don’t, don’t really do it at all. In my opinion. I have an eye for quality. I care a lot about it. it’s a highly competitive space now.

Yeah. People only have so many hours in the day to consume content. Why should they watch yours? A big reason is because you fucking put some polish into it. Yeah. you put some money and some juice behind that. You, you, got some good, but maybe you built a nice set. even nowadays, like the kind of cheesy, like pop-up podcast studio sets with like Amazon furniture and like the little purple light in the background. It just looks generic now and it looks like an Amazon studio, if you will. so.

Yeah, I think all that’s that’s pretty crucial. Yeah, makes sense. So I want to move on to the origin story because I like this quite a lot. You’re a real entrepreneur now. You you’ve made you’ve built a number of businesses and number of successful businesses supporting a number of successful businesses. But you began very young. So tell us a story about the skateboard repair business that you started at eight. Yeah, I was living in a neighborhood in just outside of New York City.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (27:14.975)

It was like a gated community, like a little townhouse community. There were probably like 200 something homes are all connected to each other. And love skateboarding. So I fucking loved it. And I don’t know. think I just got the idea that like it would be really valuable for me to repair everybody’s skateboards in the neighborhood. Didn’t really do any market research around how many people skateboarded there, let alone how many needed their boards repaired.

But what was more important was I after school one day went on Microsoft Word, opened up clip art, made like a little flyer with like an icon of like a skateboard. And it was like Jake’s repair service and had all those like little like pull off, you little piece of paper at bottom with my home phone number on it. It like, if you need your skateboard repaired, call me. But what I did wrong, which I didn’t realize, you how like you pulled a little tap with the phone number, you put those up on a light post or a telephone pole and as people walk by, they pull it off.

I put them in everyone’s Everyone got a flyer with like 25 little pull tabs in their mailbox. I just didn’t like think about the use of that. I just thought like, that’s what you did when you were advertising a business was you like make those little pull tabs. So I skateboarded around the neighborhood and put a printed like 200 of them and my mom’s printer, like color printer in her office, put them in every person’s mailbox in the neighborhood. We got two phone calls the next day.

Two out of 200 is a bad start. One of the phone calls was from a nice old guy who lived down the street who felt so, I guess, endeared by what I did that he went out and bought a skateboard. He drove over with his car to break it and then hired me to repair it. Now, I was like, can can like tighten your trucks or like grease your wheels or like replace the bearings. Like, that’s what I could repair. He just broke the board in half. I couldn’t like put that back together. So was really nice of him to be like my first real customer.

Did you figure it out? I couldn’t figure that. I couldn’t repair that. That duct tape. It doesn’t work. The second call we got was from the like leader of the HOA system who was basically like, you know, call my mom, call my stepdad and was like, Hey, your son has violated various rules. are not allowed to solicit or advertise business by putting flyers in mailboxes. if he does it again, you’re going to face like enormous fines and potentially even be like kicked out of the neighborhood.

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It was like super aggressive. Fuck you as an eight year old kid who’s trying to like be entrepreneurial and like a little bit creative and industrious. like that’s really bro like Jake’s skateboard repair is what you’re losing sleep over. So so anyway, I got a little bit of trouble. I had to like stop doing that. And but that taught me a lot about know your customer, know your market, know the limitations, break some rules. And that was where it all started for me. That’s such a piece. I love it. Well, we’re actually good at fixing them or was it just a little

Child. I don’t think so. was a child hustle. Like I don’t, I had a couple of tools in my little like little kid toolbox. It was more just like I had a passion for skateboarding and wanted to make some money off of it. I wanted to like see what it was like to make a dollar. You know, it was my version of a lemonade stand. Yeah. I love it. Um, a statement that I really agree with is a winner is just a loser who tries one more time. Yeah, I like that. Um, so have you ever actually launched businesses that have failed and what are the stories behind them?

Most. My first real company was a marketing agency that I launched when I was a freshman in college, was 18 at the University of Colorado Boulder. That was not a failure. That one was great. I pivoted it, though, like my senior year to build out an online learning platform to teach creatives business skills. So we built like all these courses, recorded like really high quality content. We had all the video gear.

being my co-founder, did this whole coordinated launch. got some earned media. We were being interviewed in Colorado magazines and all kinds of stuff. That one totally failed. Really? Completely flopped. So what happened? It was a really hard situation, actually. I would say it was first time founder shit. I I was 21.

Well, what was the difference between the first business when you were younger and the second business? Had you just gotten more of an ego about what you could achieve or something? Yeah. Okay. The first one was, I was 18, was a marketing agency. It was a service business. I was like, you want a logo done, web design, video, photos of your event, you need fucking brochure printed, like we’ll do it all. You weren’t reinventing the wheel at that time? Wasn’t reinventing the wheel. Wasn’t changing the world. trying to change the world. Um, had a team of about 25 other college students working for me.

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And the idea was in Boulder, you had all these startups that couldn’t afford the big agency rates, but, you know, a hundred thousand dollars to do a website too much, but for a startup to hire like a team of college kids who are good designers, like these are great designers, great videographers, just like kids who grew up with Photoshop and final cut pro. We all were right. I found those kids on campus, a huge school, brought them in, gave them a contract.

And we did these projects and clients would pay us like seven grand to do a website, steal for them, fucking payday for a bunch of college kids for us to make like five hundred bucks each, you know, to do like a project for a month. It’s fucking awesome. So I was the model and I learned a lot about that. But I didn’t feel like I was. And this was in the era of like Zuckerberg was, you know, a couple of years older than me, essentially.

billionaires in college building these insane tech platforms, Zuckerberg, Spiegel, like fucking Instagram guys, you name it. And I was really inspired by that. We were in Boulder and I was getting close with the guys at Foundry Group, which was the fund behind Fitbit and a couple of their huge companies. And they they co-founded Techstars. It like the second biggest accelerator in the world next to Y Combinator. And they were just really getting started at the same time I was coming up. And so I was spending all my time with

those VCs, Brad Feld and Seth Levine and then and all the founders that they were backing and all these tech stars people all my time when I was working, hanging out at their offices, same co-working spaces. They were all building products, software that they could eventually go sell off. And a lot of them were. Boulder and Denver was number one place to build a company outside of Silicon Valley at the time. Now it’s not at all. This was a decade ago. And so

I felt like I wasn’t going to change the world. couldn’t become a billionaire by making websites for people. that the is that still the goal? So no. At the time, I mean, I was 20 year old kid. Like, of course, I wanted to become a billionaire and change. I know what the fuck that meant. The world I had seen, I backpacked South America for a couple of months and like been around the country. But like I didn’t know shit about the world. And I thought I knew everything.

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I realize now I don’t know shit about the world at all, less than I thought I knew then. So. Was like, OK, we could build an actual product and make IP, like build these online courses, sell them to hundreds, hundreds of thousands, millions of people just off like one build. So we took like six months to build these courses, interviewed top names in the Colorado ecosystem, like VCs talking about stuff, founders talking about stuff.

know, restaurant owners, photographers, you name it, big, names. And it was really cool content. It was well done. I actually like watched it recently, because it’s just like somewhere buried on YouTube. it’s like pretty decent shit for like a bunch of 20 year olds 10 years ago with the equipment that we had that we just like rented from campus. So like master class, was exactly like master class. Our idea was master class was the only one making like cinematic level online courses. Everyone else sucks. And so because of that,

There’s like a 99 % failure rate with online courses. People start a course, they never finish. And you think it’s because the quality of the content isn’t there, like the video quality? Yeah, there’s a couple of things. was quality, like it wasn’t engaging, both visually, but also just like how it’s designed. And community, like there’s no accountability. You’re like in your own silos working on online course. So school’s interesting. Yeah.

And so we were like, if we make really high quality content and have a whole community layer where like you can link up with other people taking the same course and then have like specific things you need to do with them, keep people engaged. And so that was our whole premise, our whole pitch. Anyway, had like everything projected out that on launch day we were going to basically cash like a hundred grand, we’re going to bank like a hundred grand before the end of the night based off of our pricing models and all this stuff. And it was just like, I just went into it thinking like I’m going to get

interviewed by all these publications and there’s going to be a fucking standing ovation for me at our launch party and my co-founder and I were going to make a hundred grand overnight. I’m going to hear my student loan debt before I even graduate. Like, it’s going to be sick. And we had this launch party and there were a few magazines that showed up to interview us because we asked them to and nothing else happened. We had zero sales, zero sales. So was it a marketing failure or was it?

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It was a complete misunderstanding of what it actually means to build a product and how to actually do it. I had no knowledge of it. I was first time founder. I went and built a thing that I thought so many people would need. And I built it in a way that I thought this is how they need it. I didn’t talk to any of them. I didn’t ask anybody.

to review it. I was scared people would tell me it’s not what they wanted and then I would I would be wrong. And I didn’t want to face that potential reality. And so what I learned from that is don’t build a fucking thing until someone has literally paid me money as a deposit on an idea. Then you take that money and then you go with that money, build the thing. Bootstrapping. That’s one of the reasons why I and when I was in venture capital for

most of my 20s investing in founders, never invested in first time founders for that reason, because they don’t understand the importance of validation, validating and talking to your customer. The only way to learn it is to have done it and failed and I realized I’m never doing that again. Cause it was very painful. I, know, then how much money did you lose all in? I don’t know. Probably not a lot looking back because it was just whatever beer money I had at 20 years old. How much of your net worth did you lose?

There was no net worth. That’s the, that’s the point. Fucking awesome. There was nothing to lose. There was nothing to lose. And so no better time in my life to go and like give it a shot and learn that stuff. It’s why I love mentoring like college age and recent grad founders. Cause like the world is there always do. They’re so idealistic. They don’t understand yet the realities of the universe. That’s such a superpower, dude. To like be that naive to the realities of how hard this shit is and what you can lose.

you know, once you start, get a little bit older, you have some savings, you know, you have a dog or you have a spouse or your kids have a house like, dude, it’s way, the stakes are way higher. Get that shit out of the way. Get your first startup out of the way before you have those stakes that when you do go do it, then it’s like, you know how to do this. Yeah. Yeah. I, my first company was a, and it’s still active, but it’s active at like 5 % of what its previous capacity was. It was a festival and events business in.

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regional Australia. And we did great for about seven years. And then COVID hit and then it dropped. And then I tried to really force my way back in. And I tried to scale on the back of coming out of COVID, ended up losing all in after selling stuff. And those investments would have gone up probably half a million dollars Australian. That was my first one. And now I’m in the reset and let’s see what’s next. Of course.

So we’ll see where that goes. But I want to move into what you’re up to now with Thursday Labs. So you scale companies like Rove by over 500 % in a year. You’ve got a lot of experience. So what’s the number one marketing strategy that you can share with the audience that is going to move the needle significantly right now? I wish there was a like, here’s what you got to do.

The reason there isn’t just like here’s the number one thing. I do have some good answers here, though, is because each company it is every business is a bit different. That’s so much to do with like the audience in each space. What’s out there, like what almost like competition of content, what’s saturated and what’s not. And also, like where you’re at in that quarter based off just what’s trending and what’s becoming like over over done. And that’s always evolving. So but then there are things things that are tried and true.

Yeah, like they just kind of always have worked and always will work. And I call those fundamentals, the core principles, the. That’s where I’ll answer this question. Yeah. So things that always work are. Authentic. Provocative. Stories. With. Quote unquote influential people in your space, your interviews, right on podcasts.

that stands for something. Takes a stance, has an edge, like has a belief system, has an opinion. I just it just baffles me how so many brands and founders, they don’t they just play the fence like they just ride a line because they’re afraid to bother people or they’re afraid to take a stance. mean, like just pick an angle like we believe in this and we believe against this. could be political, it could be social, it could be economic, it could be something in your industry.

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You have to take a stance against something. You know, we’re taking a stance against plastic in the ocean. We’re taking a stance against child pornography. We’re taking a stance against marriage before you’re 30. Like we’re taking a step. I don’t know. Like, take a stance on anything. Easy to be. You should be so easy to say we’re against blank. And that just always crushes it because it’s it stands out. It’s meaningful. Now, how you then go treat that.

The world’s Royster. Yeah. Write a newsletter, put up little TikTok videos, make a podcast, just like fucking put up inspirational quotes on Instagram. Doesn’t really matter what it is. It’s not as that you do it and you do a lot of it for a long time. But it has to be it has to mean something. It’s a stand for something. It has to have some emotional appeal. That’s the one thing. So one thing. So your slogan is also content that makes money. It was at one point. It was. We really have a slogan anymore. No. OK.

If you were to distill a slogan, what do you think it would sound like? talk about the content that makes money because I do still believe in it. Businesses need to treat content like a product. Yeah. Products need to make money for product line of theirs. Otherwise, it’s just like you’re just screaming out loud for what? Why are you doing this for your ego? Like just to check the box that you’re putting shit on LinkedIn. Eventually, you’re just going to burn out if it’s not having a return.

So content should address needs from your customers or your audience. It should address viewpoints that you have on the market. It should share your story. should inform something in some way. Content should make you money. Now, might not directly be like, I put out this clip and then I got a customer that brought me in 3X more revenue than it cost me to make the clip. Sometimes that happens. We can’t always look at that as such a direct ROI though.

The ROI tracking on this shit is complex, unfortunately. But count to that makes money. Otherwise, this is for a business.

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You have to think of it from, from that standpoint and work backwards. Yeah. So what are the biggest mistakes that founders are doing when it comes to making content then? Talking about themselves too much. We see this a lot with VCs and then like big time founders, they, they, I get it. It’s a little bit of an ego thing and we’re humans. have egos, but like, I’m the host of the show. So I’m going to put myself on the camera and the mic and I’m going to talk about all the things that I know to show how smart I am because people need to buy from me.

and people need to invest in me and people are gonna come work for me. So it’s me, me, me, me, me, me, me.

It just is not a good idea. What makes you say that?

It really just comes back down to ego. And it’s no different than the guy or gal on LinkedIn or Twitter who’s always like, I just got engaged. Here’s what I can teach you about that. Just like what I learned about B2B sales. My auntie just died and this is what I learned about B2B sales. And it’s no different than going on a first date and talking about yourself the whole time. Or showing up at a dinner party and talking about how great you are. Nobody cares about you. They care about themselves.

Make it about them. Yeah. People just don’t seem to get that. So how do folks do it? Do it. Anthony Bourdain did. He was the best in the world at this, I think. Anthony Bourdain didn’t. He wasn’t the best chef. He wasn’t the best restaurateur, arguably. He was the best in the world at finding the best chefs, finding the best restaurateurs. Going out, getting in the room with them.

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And then asking them the questions that everyone else was either afraid to ask, unable to ask, or didn’t even think to ask. And then capturing it in really compelling content formats and distilling it in entertaining ways. So you, you scour the globe as the, the, the curator, as the guide, as the leader, I’m to go out and on your behalf, I’m going to go find all the people that you need to hear from, that you need to learn from. cause I’m not the expert.

I just know how to reach the experts. know what questions to ask the experts because you’re not doing it. You don’t need to do it. I got it. I got you. I’m your guide. I’m your leader here. That’s how you want to position this. And so for VCs, like take all your portfolio founders who are the actual experts in what they’re building. You’re just the one who is the expert in financing them. Awesome. But if you’re going to talk about AI as a VC, why don’t you have the main draw of your show be all the actual AI experts? Now I actually want to learn from your platform. I don’t care to learn from you.

I want to learn from your platform. I’m going to credit you for it. So thank you for that. Actually, they respect you more now. So I think that’s the biggest mistake is people just make it about themselves. Yeah. If you were to look at focusing on one channel, because I like the idea that Alex Hamozi says where he says up to one million dollars in revenue, one target audience and one channel. So if you were to focus on just one thing for twenty twenty six, one channel, one target audience, where would you put your energy? Instagram. You think so?

Yeah, I believe Instagram has the best algorithm right now. You can put out the most volume without it having negative effects. If you put up more than like four or five videos a day on TikTok on one account, it starts to have problems. Instagram, you put up 40 clips a day, a hundred clips a day, and like it doesn’t have an issue currently. And Instagram is a really terrific place to then direct people elsewhere.

So easy to move someone from Instagram to YouTube or Instagram to Spotify. Their linking algorithm is great. LinkedIn has it. I’m sorry. Instagram has a ton of in-app tools to edit. Trending audio works really well if you put it over your videos. Instagram on stories, if you put like polls or Q &A or like little links, mentions, other things does great to build loyalty, build awareness, reach new people right now.

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Instagram all day. It’s very robust, very robust. You really can share an incredible perspective and you can really build a real story through Instagram right now. More than any other platform. Just quickly, though, I love doing this podcast. If it’s positively impacted you in some way and you would like to support us, please subscribe. By subscribing, it allows us to build a much bigger base of listeners, which results in better guests, better production.

and a better show overall. Alternatively, please take a look at the affiliate links of the products that I use and love in the comments below and consider purchasing using those links. They’ll give you a discount and they’ll also provide the podcast a small kickback. These are two very easy ways for you to support us as we continue to grow the podcast that we absolutely love doing. Thank you for your support and I’m back to the episode.

So I want to switch gears to your dinner party experience. Okay. So I’ve had this idea for a little while where I, I’ve started to notice naturally the power of bringing people together through food and it’s something that has been used for thousands of years. Uh, and you’ve hosted over 200 dinner parties. So what was one of the funniest or weirdest stories that came from one of those dinner parties? Well, I mean, the first that comes to mind, I how funny or weird it is, is like, there’s been quite a few romantic connections that are, that have come out of it.

I just think that’s really special. Yeah. Maybe one that comes to mind is I was terrified nervous going into this dinner because the format I would do would be like their first come first serve to buy a ticket. Anybody who’s on the text only invite list would receive the invitation, but and I would vet the invite list, of course, like you have to apply to get on the list and then I would look at the applications and admit people. I was very, very serious and cognizant about diversity.

in terms of gender and age and thought and and all kinds of other things. Skin color, culture, religious background, sexual orientation. Like I was just very cognizant of that. I just always cared a lot about it. And one time it worked out where we had a table of like nine and eight of them were all white dudes and one was a younger white woman. I think all these dudes are probably in their late 20s and I was.

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Do I cancel the meal? This is like not appropriate. Do I cancel the meal? Do I reach out to a few of the guys and ask, hey, would you be willing to like forfeit your ticket? I’ll give you like a credit for a free dinner next week or something instead. Try to fill it out with with non white dudes. But first, what I decided to do is actually I’d known this. I knew this woman. I had met her a few times. I text her. I can’t give you a heads up. Transparently, like unfortunately, this is how the chips fell this week. How do you feel about it? And she was like, I don’t mind. OK.

All right, so let’s run it. So we ran the dinner and the entire meal was her asking all the guys around the group, like so many questions about dating advice. She’s single. She’s looking to find a partner, looking to find a boyfriend. so she was asking all these questions, trying to get into the mind of the man. And I remember just sitting back, like crossing my arms, listening to this whole meal this whole time, being like, this is actually one of the most powerful

conversations that have ever taken place at this meal because one guys have never been asked questions like this before. Two, they’re learning a lot about the female mind based off of what question she was asking. And she’s learning a ton about the male mind based off the answer she’s getting. And everyone texting me afterwards, like that was the best dinner ever. I love it. just found that to be a little bit, a little bit bizarre. And after that, I was like, maybe we need like some sort of interesting guard rails on how we, how we end up how the genders play out in the room. But I that was a fascinating one.

Yeah. Has anyone ruined a dinner before? And how did you handle it? I’ve had people get too wasted for sure. I do care a lot about there being enough wine to go around. And I used to have a little formula of like every person. There should be one bottle for every person. Yeah. And if there’s any leftover grain, it taken home. Yeah, that’s about right. Yeah. One bottle per person. And it’s very obvious how throughout the night, like.

After zero glasses, there’s some awkwardness after everyone has one glass. It’s like a little bit less awkward. After everyone has two glasses, people are best friends. After three glasses, everyone kills their bottle. Basically like it’s fucking it’s a cookery. Yeah. And you know, you’re in some like cool fucking soho or East Village, like underground brick room dinner party. It’s sick. but yeah, there have definitely been some people who are a little bit too sloppy, a little bit too loud. Like, some it’s the other day, like this is still a

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a little bit networky, like the whole idea was ambitious people who were interesting people, ambitious people who were in their like early to mid twenties, typically who were sick and tired of just drinking on the weekends. And that was their entire social life. And they were looking to meet other ambitious people. New York was hard then it still is of like, just hang out with your friends from fucking college or your coworkers and your life is brunch, drinking and Broadway or museums.

So getting a bit older now. Now there’s like a whole running culture, which I do love. But at the time that wasn’t the thing. was like, I, I feel like we all moved to New York post college with this vision of what it meant to live in New York city after college. And it was derived from like the Andy Warhol era of like really avant-garde weird underground shit. it’s like, it was like this promise we all thought we had, and then we moved to New York we didn’t have it. Everyone was just pre-gaming in their friends, Mary Hill apartments, unless you went out to Bushwick.

Which like was just a different scene. I was like, how do we bring this like secret underground? Like follow the glow sticks into the back room type vibe to this this demographic of like startup founders and like people in finance and and then start expanding it to like I want yoga teachers to show up and like kids in med school and like fucking poets and Someone who just like studies the harp at NYU music school, whatever. I just really wanted that type of diversity so every now and then you’d get some like

bro-y finance guy who would just get too wasted and would just start running his mouth about some shit. And, know, you’d have to just like, I’d be like, and that also taught me how to like handle a situation like that. was pretty scared to do it when I was 23 years old and didn’t know how to like talk man to man to somebody who’s running their mouth and a couple drinks deep, who’s twice my size and a few years older than me and flexing their Goldman card. Like it was just an interesting exercise. And now it’s I learned how to handle that shit.

So how do you handle that shit? Look, studying martial arts for many years after that, or like around that time and beyond was definitely helpful. Non combative, soft, cool, calm, collected, friendly. Usually just like take the high road around like and guide the conversation elsewhere and then always do it privately. Never like call someone out about something negatively in front of others.

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always pulled them aside. Yeah. And so we’re just like, instead of being like, Hey dude, you’re causing an issue. It’d be more like, yo, I have an even better idea. Let’s go in this direction. Like and inspire them in this direction versus get them off of that direction. That’s kind of my high level framework. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So what do you think were the secrets to making the dinners not awkward and transactional because networking generally sucks? Yeah. A lot of it.

It’s like we’re saying before of like it all comes down to like the core ingredients and the foundation of these things. Like I just cared so much about the entire brand, the entire thing being fucking cool and different and like not for everybody, not so accessible, not so frequent, not so easy a spot. So the website was just like our logo. Nothing else was on it. The only way to get into a dinner was to

somehow find the phone number to text and you had to text it TGIT. Thank God it’s Thursday. And then you would get a just response automatically, which is a link to apply. And then the application was like something that would take you 20 minutes to fill out. It was free. It’s always free. And then once a week I’d sit down, I’d review applicants and sometimes I’d have to text people and ask them a few questions or people like even the slightest bit like spammed it or wrote some disrespectful or shit. Or they like just typed in a bunch of letters.

Like you’re not even getting a reply. So just the curation of the group right out of the gates was super important. I never really talked about it on social media. I never put up a tweet or an Instagram story that was like this week we have like a head of finance at here and like the VP of engineering here and like the CEO of this. I never wanted to flex titles. You see that a lot in New York. Like come to this dinner. We’re going to have like the director of marketing at Coinbase there.

or like, you know, a partner at Goldman’s going to be there. And it’s like, cool. If it’s that type of a networking event and like I do care about people’s titles, I guess at my dinners, no titles. Humans like I care about this person is fucking hilarious. This person has traveled the world and seen everything. This person like started a massive philanthropic organization and has helped like a billion people find clean water. Did you share?

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the some bios about everybody before the dinners or you just kind of got it. I experimented with that a bit and I stopped doing it. I thought that what was more important was like, you know, ahead of time that when you show up to this dinner, you’re going to meet the coolest people you’ve ever met, but you don’t know who they are or how they’re the coolest people. You just know that they are going to be the cool thing. Curated enough that you have to just trust the process. And like I felt as soon as that trust wasn’t there that like people would be like, I’m not sure if I like, I’m going to meet really cool people.

This whole thing’s dead. And I took so much inspiration from so far sounds. Just like, you know, the venue is going to be sick. You know, it’s going to be this like sick rock climbing gym or the sick restaurant or this like really cool barber shop. You know, the artists are going to be awesome. It might not be like exactly your favorite style of music, but you know, you’re going to get three artists and they’re going to be great. You don’t know who they are or what the genres are going to be, but you know, it’s going to be cool. And then you know, there’s going to be drinks and there’s going to be snacks there and like.

There’s some things you can rely on. There’s some element of surprise that is always, there’s always the same element of surprise, but the surprise itself is always different. That’s what made it special. And that’s, that was the whole allure. So, you know, interviews with like the New Yorker and like different big magazines to publish all this stuff and talk about like, you know, Thursday clubs, bring in like 70 style dinner parlors, like private dinner clubs into New York in the two thousands and then COVID hit nothing up.

Nothing continued after that. got published after that. So that basically killed it. We tried a little bit post COVID to like keep it alive, but nothing really ripped after that. Yeah, it was an interesting time. And then I just, quite frankly, moved on. Tired, man. Daddy’s getting old. I’m getting older and I just like stop wanting to go out every Thursday night. Yeah. And also it just became a moment in history where like everyone and their mother was hosting dinners. Sure.

Everyone’s hosting dinners and I’m kind of like, all right. And no one’s hosting dinners in New York right now. Not right now. No, there’s nothing going on. You might’ve inspired me. Yeah, take the model, dude. I’m thinking about it. But I would want to do it if I’m going to do it. I want to do it like the same spot, but like different people. I don’t know. Anyway, honestly, the secret to this is don’t overthink it. Just host a dinner and like see what you liked doing. See what you thought was weird and didn’t like doing, and then do it again and then do it again. Just keep going. like,

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (59:40.642)

I didn’t over, I didn’t design this shit from the start. Literally first time I just got six people in a room was like, let’s have dinner and see what happens. And then next time I did like a little bit different over the course of a year or two, it became even started to sort of become a thing. Like I didn’t introduce the text only invite list till like maybe, maybe 15 months in or 18 months. Yeah. Yeah. Didn’t even have, didn’t even think about it until I just got the idea one day and saw this new platform called super phone where you could just like tech strangers in mass.

And I was like, let’s try that out. So yeah, there was like just an iteration to it. Yeah, definitely. So you’ve been in the startup world and the venture studio world for quite a while. You launched and sold global startup network, global startup studio network. Yeah, GSSN. Yeah. And were there any startups you saw that were just really crazy and stupid that you knew would completely fail? of course. What’s an example? So many. The funniest one I ever heard.

I love the story is someone pitched me once. He was like, I’m going to start this clothing line, hats, t-shirts, hoodies, et cetera, that would say like gluten free or vegan or dairy free on it. I was like, OK. That’s interesting, like, you know, because like gluten free is trending right now or like, you know, where is the like fashion appeal in that? He was like, no, no, no. So that when you go to a restaurant, if you’re gluten free, you could like wear the gluten free hat. And then the waiter waitress would know.

don’t feed them gluten. Or if you go, you know, you go to a dinner party and you’re vegan, you wear the vegan shirt and people would know like, they’re vegan. Uh, don’t feed them any meat or plant based foods only. And I remember looking at me like, is fucking like, you fucking serious with this? It was dead, dead serious. He had mockups and everything. was like a whole thing. He’s like raising a bunch of money, raising a bunch of money, raising a bunch of money. do you need to raise a bunch of money for a fucking clothing label? don’t know. Um, so

The funny thing is, and it’s one of those stories that’s just like so outrageous that one day, cause you’re like, why are we just going to like change all of culture to then abide by like, expect that, like, unless someone’s wearing a vegan shirt or a gluten free shirt, they’re not vegan or they’re not gluten free. Like you need to completely shift the entire dynamic of social constructs in order for this to actually make the impact you want. The funny thing is like, imagine one day that that actually does become a thing. Like, Oh, you look around like, Oh, feel like everyone in this restaurant’s got like.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (01:02:04.664)

gluten-free or dairy-free hat on. Fuck. I probably should have funded that company a few years back. It was that ridiculous of a story. The total addressable market is everybody. Dude, everyone needs this, Food allergies are on the rise. Yeah, I God, there were so many examples of stupid ass startups and any variety you can imagine. That’s one example.

So if there’s any new entrepreneurs that are struggling to get traction, what would you say to them? What’s the one thing that one lever that they should try and pull to begin with? Hmm. OK, so what everyone’s seeking is product market fit. First off, I people need to like correctly define product market fit. Market fit is when the market is demanding so much out of your product, they need it, they’re begging for it, literally begging you for your product. And it’s not ready yet. You cannot.

keep up with the demand. That’s product market fit. People are paying you money for putting a deposit down for like the thing that’s not even done being created yet. If you don’t have that, you’re not there yet. Everyone wants PMF. They want to feel like they’re there. They want to talk about it. They want to like just tell themselves that because it means they’re onto something. And every idea they had is now validated and they were right. Nine point nine out of ten times someone says like we got product market fit and those

criteria just mentioned were not actually met yet. They haven’t actually gotten it. So the first thing is like understand the definition and abide by it, because when you get it, you know, you will know and you will be exhausted and you you will have to make this tough decision, which is like, fuck, am I actually about to go like do nothing else in my life for the next six, 12, maybe more months just to like fulfill to follow this, to fill the orders, basically follow the thing. I got to go build this out. And that’s not

Easy. It’s super stressful and super hard and will be a lot of sleepless nights in the meantime. So, OK, make sure you’re ready for that.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (01:04:07.788)

Then I’d say be shameless and unabashed in your desire and your ability to just fucking try stuff. Mostly on the content side of things. Just put things out there. Say what’s on your heart and your mind and say everything you can imagine and every way you can imagine and every format you can imagine. Put it out on the Internet in every destination you can imagine. You just need to shotgun approach it. Give it a real shot.

Ten posts a day. Promise anybody listening. I promise you if you post even one thing a day every day for 365 days straight, your life will change drastically. Yeah. Drastically. Yeah. In so many ways. Sure. One of those may go viral and then you have a ton of orders to fulfill. You’ll make a bunch of money. That’s only one way that your life is going to change. There are a hundred other ways your life is going to change for the better that I can’t even begin to describe.

Yeah, your confidence skyrockets, your communication skills change. Your discipline to stick with a thing evolves. Think about how that then changes like your diet and your ability to like stay disciplined with how you put you put in your body or your fitness routine. And then and then how does that impact your sex life and your your relationship at home? How does that impact your ability to focus and sleep better? Like everything gets better when you’re posting more content. It’s like the weirdest thing and just such an absurd statement.

But I’ve just found for me and some other people, when you just start putting yourself out in this fucking world that we’re all like so afraid to be a member of, we just want to consume it all. If you actually start being a creator in it, so many awesome things happen in your life. Yeah. So many awesome things. Yeah. So before we finish up, I want to play a little game with you. So I’m going to I’m going to show you a photo of a random business. You’ve got 60 seconds to tell me exactly what platform they should use and what their social media strategy should be. OK, cool. OK.

That’s hard.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (01:06:05.55)

Plumber. A plumber. OK. Plumbers. 60 seconds. 60 seconds. Go on chat. GPT deep research and ask it what are the top 150 questions that people have about at home plumbing, like things they try to do themselves, and then go make 150 short videos one a day for 150 days doing those things.

90 second videos being like, okay, I’m to show you how to like replace this valve on bottom of your sink or whatever. Put them up on, if you’re to do anything, YouTube shorts, one platform, only YouTube shorts. and then I would take the videos that do, know, the top 10 % of views and I would then run those through. We’re going to go to another platform, Facebook, local ads to target people in your area, showing them all the stuff that you do. Okay. 60 seconds.

A Rolex dealership. A Rolex dealership. So yeah, somebody selling Rolexes. OK, I’d go to man on the street style content for this one, probably. And I would I would, you know, either like they’re always scripted man on the street style stuff’s always scripted. So I find people with really dope watches go up to them on the street. Hey, nice watch. What do you do for a career? And just like put the mic in their face and see what they oh.

Whoa, sorry, yeah, I sell real estate or whatever. And I would do one of those a day for six months. Nice. So the most boring software on Earth, how do you make it cool? A B2B SaaS tool for accountants.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (01:07:47.886)

The tool is for accountants. OK, go on again, chat, BtD research and find an app, do a bunch of research, find out what are the top 100 ish issues that accountants have in their life. Not necessarily with being boring and their work, but like in their life outside of that, like, they afraid that is going to take their job? Are they like struggling with a divorce? Are they struggling with their fashion? Whatever. Now you’re going to make a podcast that’s highly produced for accountants.

but it’s not about accounting. Maybe you talk about accounting here and there like life or five or whatever. I hate accounting personally so I don’t know the terms but you know this is the show for accountants to learn how to date better. This is a show for a nation. This is a show for accountants who spouses told them they need to step up their fashion wardrobe like it’s a show about fashion or blank whatever. would I would make like a niche human show.

humanizing the industry. Humidized, just like, yeah, accounting doesn’t have to be about accounting, who’s going to work as an accountant and listening to a show about accounting on their way to work? Like, no, make it fun, make it entertaining, make it real and human. Through that, the trust that gets built is unbelievable. Nice. And my last one is a local coffee shop that wants to get lines out the door.

Hmm. Well, there was that like awesome comedy series, like was like Brooklyn coffee shop or something that is pretty good. I don’t want to just copy that one. I mean, could copy that one. the office style or parks and rec style, like sitcom reality show of how does this look? don’t know this owning and building a coffee shop.

Yeah, I would. I would go and chat too deep research. I’d say I want to I want to make a new show that is the same style and tone and format as The Office and Parks and Rec, but about being a barista at a coffee shop. Can you script out a one pager for me and my first pilot episode and then, you know, like like a 30 minute pilot episode script as well as 25 or 50 short 90 second clips?

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (01:10:02.574)

that we can go film that are that are hilarious. I’d go humor. So look, wrapping up, if you go back to a year old Jake, he’s fixing skateboards. What would be the one piece of advice you’d tell him? I’m to tell him the advice that I got just about two years ago. So I was what? Twenty seven, twenty eight. I’m 30 now. It’s like two or three years ago. I got this and changed my life. And I wish I had heard it many, many years prior.

I don’t regret that I didn’t hear this many years prior because I heard it when I did, but I always wonder how my life would be today had I had this mindset since I was a little kid. The advice is life is not happening to you. Life is happening for you. What does that mean? It means that every single thing that happens in your life, bad and good and everything in between is in service of you. It’s it’s.

And if you’re religious, it’s God. you’re spiritual, it’s the universe. you’re whatever, whatever you want to call it. I’m rather spiritual. So I like this stuff. Every single thing that happens that falls in your lap, a car accident, getting sued, a breakup, a death in the family, those are the bad things. Coming into a bunch of money, winning a race, getting a promotion, those are the good things. All of it is all in service of your growth.

your journey for you to learn, for you to experience being a human, for you to feel more deeply, for you to connect with other humans. It’s all in service of you. So everything that takes place, you just have to ask yourself like, okay, how is this for me? Because otherwise you’re just living in this victim mindset of like, how dare that happen to me? It was so horrible. That thing that happened to me. Just reframe it to, this thing that happened for me. What can I learn from this? How can I grow from this? What was the good in this?

This is one of the reasons my show is called The Optimist. I believe in living an optimistic life. I just do. And I didn’t always do that most of my life prior to my late 20s. I struggled to do that. I did a podcast with a guy called Struthless. He does a lot of content and something he said that I really liked was when something really difficult was happening to him, he would try and free frame it as how could this be the best thing that ever happened to me?

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (01:12:26.338)

Yeah. I really liked that because it just forced you to go, you know what? Yeah. This in this moment is really tough, but like what are the second and third order consequences that I am not maybe not seeing right this second that can come from this and how do I flip a really tough situation into a potentially positive situation? Cause it is a reframe. Yeah. There’s a, another phrase it’s like you, there’s two types of people. Those who see everything as a miracle and those who see nothing as a miracle. Take your pick.

And I like to choose, just choose to see everything as a miracle. Yeah. And if you had only 60 seconds to leave a message for every founder or aspiring founder listening, and this was the last video you ever recorded and everything else in your content got deleted, what would you say? Entrepreneurship is the best path to your truest self.

You have to operate at 110 percent. 110 percent of the time. Just have to. You won’t because you’re a human being. Some days will be 30 percent. Some days will be 70. Some days will be 110. But overall, you have to at least sign up for. going for. I’m going for greatness. I’m going to try to be great. You just have to do it through that.

the challenge, the adversity, the just natural ups and downs of just all that naturally that entails. You become the most raw, epic, enlightened, powerful version of yourself. Personally, and it’s so 360 full-bodied, like there’s nothing else, I think, in this world that compares to like how...

full body building a business is takes every all of you, not just your brain, also your your heart and your soul and your sleep and your your energy, like your diet, like it’s everything. You get one life and get one tiny, tiny, tiny little fraction of time on this planet and the time that this planet is a thing to experience being a human. And you are probably born into one of the best moments in history and the best locations in the world ever. Don’t you dare.

Metwally — That One Time Podcast (01:14:39.48)

Don’t you dare in the slightest, not try to get every single ounce out of that. Like squeeze every drop out of this life. I think building a business is the best way to do it. Jake Howard, thank you. Thank you, man. Cool. This was fun. And if you enjoyed this episode, please go to YouTube, search that one time without a Met Wally and we’ll see you next week. It good to be a guest for

A little while. Yeah, I like it.