May 14, 2025 • 42 mins
Eli Cohen shares his journey from fintech to agency success, highlighting early challenges, strategic pivots, and rapid revenue growth through partnerships. He explores value propositions, deal structuring, and building a thriving agency with effective systems and sales automation. Eli introduces the Hawk Method for scaling, emphasizing learning from mistakes and persistence. The episode covers mastering follow-up, knowing when to stop pursuing clients, and growing through white labeling. Eli discusses financial success, bootstrapping, leveraging AI in marketing, and reflects on investments and failures, offering advice to his younger self and relating to non-entrepreneurs.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Eli, you're 27 years old, started at 19, andnow are making close to $300,000 a month.
What the heck do you do?
It's a great question.
It's a question I get a lot.
I'm the founder and CEO of Osmos.
We're a venture studio and digital agency thatservices early stage startups, getting them
from ideation to sometimes, you know, goingpublic.
(00:20):
And we also help large corporations, Fortune500 companies, do digital transformation to
compete with those startups.
What does that typically mean, and how do youget involved with some of these startups and
help them out early on?
Sure.
So as a marketing agency, you'd expect somesecret marketing sauce, but it's really all
handshakes.
Everything we do is somebody I meet at anetworking event, speaking engagement, or
(00:42):
somebody who's heard about us, you know,impress and stuff like that.
Yeah.
There we don't do any outbound marketing.
We actually just started a a clutch listing,but that's about it.
Now you're making hundreds of thousands ofdollars a month, but your journey started far
from this.
It actually started about when you were 19years old.
You had a fintech company.
Tell me more about that.
(01:02):
What was that?
What were you building?
And what were some of the fundamental lessonsyou learned from that business that you took
with you to kick start this one?
So at 19 years old, I was in school abroad, andthere were some coins falling out of my pocket
while sitting in the chair.
And I was like, why are we still dealing withcoins and currency?
At the time, back in 2015, change in cashtransactions made up 85% of the global
(01:27):
transactions and close to 60 of United Statesdriven transactions.
And I was in Tel Aviv at the time, which is avery coin centric economy.
So I decided we have to solve this problem, asmany entrepreneurs do, alright, you know,
solving problems.
I came up with a concept where, essentially,you give your phone number, and whatever
digital loose whatever loose change you havejust go straight to
(01:49):
your phone, essentially creating a digitalpiggy bank and also your first debit card.
That ended up becoming worth about $15,000,000.
What what were the steps that you took to getto that valuation?
So my first step, I was a nontechnical person.
I didn't have a college degree at the time.
I didn't believe in college at the time, butwe'll unpack that.
And I started by just asking around.
(02:11):
Hey.
I have this great idea.
What do I do next?
Right?
Just asking people for advice.
That was really the first step I took.
I came across somebody who was willing to well,I was like, well, I'll give you some money.
Let's let's build this out.
Again, starting from nowhere, I went to theprettiest and best app development agency I
could find with the most enterprise logos.
And was like, I want to build something.
(02:33):
So I spent a few of those, the seed round onbuilding out a design for the product, obsessed
over the design as a design centric person, andwent out and raised more money.
Got it up to a $2,000,000 valuation.
Once we were at a $2,000,000 valuation, it wastime to explore banking partnerships.
Cold calling.
(02:53):
We got in touch with a publicly traded bankjust from a cold email.
Be surprised how many people answer a kid.
And I was in contract with them, was able toraise get to that $15,000,000 valuation with a
$3,000,000 commitment.
The first monies came in, and we paid thedevelopment agency for the integration.
(03:14):
And one day, I get a call, and the bank isgoing in another direction.
Yeah.
And
at that point, I go back to the agency.
I was like, it's time to pivot.
And they're like, well, there's no more money.
We spent it all.
I'm like, okay.
At the time, I was like, okay.
I guess they spent it on, you know, planningfor the integration.
But, you know, that How much did you spend
(03:35):
or pay that development agency?
We paid them about close to the $750,000 forthe $7.50 ks.
7 50 ks.
Yeah.
Thankfully, we only gave them a quarter milliondollars of that tranche, but for what?
What were they able to do with the quartermillion?
They were supposed to do the integration withthis large bank that we were partnering with,
(03:56):
but that
And then once that fell
apart happened.
Yeah.
So then when that fell apart, you're like, whatwhat were you thinking in your head?
I got a bill from the agency.
Yeah.
What I was thinking, was like, I gotta findanother banking partner.
Right?
Unfortunately, six months later, that bankended up doing the concept themselves.
And, yeah, I wasn't able I was 21 coming off a'25 you know, it was gearing up for a
(04:23):
$25,000,000 valuation, and I went frommultimillionaire on paper to absolutely
nothing.
You know?
So that was a crazy moment.
Did that company ended up shutting down then?
Or
Well, yeah.
It ended up shutting down, but I ended up, youknow, making the most out of it.
I was you know, turned it into an API to try tointegrate into other apps for loyalty, so tried
(04:46):
to pivot.
And the venture group that was advising me atthe time ended up bringing me on as their chief
marketing officer.
That venture group, I do wanna touch on thatbecause you worked with them as their CMO, and
you actually helped generate $800,000 in just afew months.
Complete opposite of what you were doing forthe previous company.
How did you do that?
Through and through, I'm an entrepreneur, andI, you know, needed a job.
(05:09):
Right?
So when I was coming off my first venture, Iasked them.
I was like, hey.
Are you looking for any help?
I noticed you don't have a chief marketingofficer, and they're like, yeah.
Sure.
I was like, okay.
Pay me a hundred thousand.
Right?
I'll take I'll take your, you know, CMO,probably gets a half a million dollars, 7
hundred 50 thousand dollar a year salary at aglobal venture group.
I was like, pay me a hundred thousand dollars.
I actually also brokered a loan for them to,you know, like, try to, like, show, you know, I
(05:35):
could make moves.
And I was like, give me a job.
That's all I want.
I don't want commission.
I don't want anything.
And I came on as the CMO, and I was workingthere.
I was like, okay.
I'm gonna make an honest living.
And then I was like, you know, eff that.
Like, I'm I'm an employee.
And I was like, let me start an agency toservice their portfolio.
I was burned as a founder.
(05:56):
I'm sure there's a whole bunch of otherstartups that are spending tons of money on
things they shouldn't necessarily be spendingmoney on.
Let's build an agency that works for startupsby entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, and I found
to dominate under that venture group to servicetheir portfolio.
Immediately, we were able to scale to close,yeah, to $800,000 in revenue in just a matter
of
(06:17):
How did it scale that quickly?
Because I know plenty of agency founders oreven with all the marketing tips and tricks
that they'll employ, they still might be like,the quickest I've seen someone scale is maybe
to, like, a hundred or $200,000 within, like,maybe six months, but 803 is really fast.
What what were you doing behind the scenes?
It's partnerships.
So being in my case, I had a little bit of acheat code being that I was in the venture
(06:40):
group.
Right?
So they're portfolio companies.
I had a built in pipeline, but it's the fastestway to scale any agency.
Partner with venture groups.
Partner with other agencies who have built inclient bases that are already qualified that
you can service right away.
Yeah.
It's one of the similar things I noticed.
We interviewed woman named Alexa Von Toble.
(07:00):
She so she's built a company out calledLearnvest, and what she noticed is, hey, Wall
Street is hoarding financial advice.
They don't wanna tell anybody like the secretson how to get rich, so she just built a
platform that would enable anyone to get worldclass expert financial advice.
One of the ways they grew so fast till Ibelieve like a few million users in like a
couple of years is they partnered with a lot ofother organizations or other brands that were
(07:25):
connected to their target audience.
So for example, like Lululemon, etcetera.
When you're thinking about organizing thesepartnerships, how do you create it so that it's
like a win win scenario for both sides of thedeal?
Yeah.
That's a great question.
Because as you can imagine, you reach out.
I'm sure you get 100 LinkedIns saying thatthey'll generate LinkedIn leads for you or do a
(07:45):
service that you don't even need.
It's about almost like a quid pro quo.
You have to come to the table with something.
Whether it's Well, we have a client.
Let's say you run a PR firm.
Right?
I have a client that needs PR services.
Right?
Bring come come bearing gifts.
That's the best way to separate yourself from asea of, you know, LinkedIn DMs and, you know,
(08:06):
cold email outreach.
Come bearing gifts.
And you have the ability to do it.
And if you could find vendors and relationshipsthat are two sided and, you know, give back and
mutually advantageous, you'll both growtogether.
One of the things I've also noticed is if youcan provide value up front and also provide
value on the follow-up, you can also not onlydeepen the relationship but find a lot better
(08:31):
relationships with other folks.
So when we first started the agency that we runtoday, I would constantly I'd send like a bunch
of DMs, emails, be like, hey, if nobodyresponded, I would circle back and be like,
hey, just following up to see if you got this.
Pretty much nobody responded to those, and thennow I get a bunch of those Oh, how and, yeah,
and they drive me nuts.
And then I realized like, hey, instead of doingthe just following up thing, because everyone
(08:53):
does that, let me just find a way to stand out.
What are some of the ways that you're able toprovide value to to startups earlier on in the
process that enable them to trust you from theget go?
I was a founder.
I had the founder experience.
The founder experience is not we have unlimitedresources.
Let's build something for you that's absolutelyperfect and looks great.
The founder experience is, I don't know when mynext check is coming in.
(09:15):
And you could be at pre seed or series a.
Most people don't know where their next checkis.
They're worrying about runway.
I spoke with a company that had $2,200,000 inthe bank, and they're already worried about
their next raise.
And they just closed it a couple months back.
The value we provide is simple.
Most companies come to us in the situation Iwas in.
(09:36):
Right?
I have a great idea.
I was able to raise some funding.
Where do I go now?
I immediately turn them down.
I don't give them any of my services.
I don't offer them any services.
I have a partner firm I work with calledJetpack.
Matamogrel, I told you a little bit about him.
He's raised over 900,000,000 for startups.
So what he does is he builds the businessbehind the startup, which is very anti Silicon
(09:58):
Valley and, you know, just fake it till youmake it.
Profits don't matter.
We take a bit of a reverse approach.
Build the business first.
Understand who your ICP, your ideal customerprofiles are.
Figure out how you're going to make money, andthen build the product as a solution.
So we send them there.
They build out a business plan, and then theycome back to me.
And with this business plan, nine out of 10 goout and raise funding.
(10:20):
Right?
I've seen it.
My own clients, most of them come from thatpipeline with Matan, and we then just execute.
Right?
We're we're an app development and marketingagency.
We don't know about what features you shouldhave.
We just know how to build those features reallywell and market them.
The problem is when agencies pretend they knowwhat they should be building.
(10:41):
So we listen to that directive, and we justfollow the strategy.
For the startups you typically work with, howdo you structure those deals?
Because you have a unique way that you get paidthat a lot of agencies typically won't do.
How does that work?
So it's something I wanted.
Right?
When I was a founder, I I and it's constantlysomething I think back to as an agency owner.
(11:02):
What would Eli at 19 what would he what wouldhave he wanted?
And you'd want somebody with skin in the game.
So what we do is we put together let's say it'sa brand package or it's an initial MVP, and we
immediately cut out a significant, if not allof our margin, and we vest out shares, equity
in the company.
So we're we have skin in the game, and it's inour vested interest to make sure that this is a
(11:24):
successful MVP.
It's a successful product launch.
We do this with our early stage ideationclients, and we take equity.
We give them office space, and we help guide
them through the entire entrepreneurialexperience.
How do you structure that equity?
Invest it.
So it depends on the client.
Some projects I'm more involved in.
As almost like a minority co founder, some ofthem are entrepreneur in residence.
(11:48):
But for strictly the clients just coming in,it's usually between 28% or sometimes 5%, this
median, vested out over a period of time.
You mentioned partnerships.
Now if somebody was here listening to this andthey might not have had a little bit of the
background that you had and they wanna start acompany and help serve others, how should they
(12:11):
get in front of their potential customers andand grow quickly without potentially using
partnerships?
Are there other ways to do that?
Are you building an agency?
Are you building an app?
Like, that that's the big question.
Like, if you're building an agency.
Yeah.
So if you're building an agency, there's provenmethods like clutch lists, like speaking
engagements like these, podcasts I have worked,earned media, we've done some earned media
(12:35):
around me and my agency, accolades.
They all generate buzz.
I haven't personally had success with paidefforts like Google Ads.
Agencies have, usually productized agencies.
So agencies offering, like, very, very focusedservices.
Like, we offer SEO packages or we offer ASOpackages tend to work well on Google Ads, but
(12:57):
bespoke, more studio type of agencies tend towork best by building brand thought leadership
and those type of efforts.
What are clutch lists?
A clutch list is essentially a paid list whereit's a verified review.
So each instead of, like I'm sure everyrestaurant you've ever eaten at has 4.8 stars
on Google.
Right?
(13:17):
So clutch's idea was to solve that problem.
Each review has to be verified.
It has to be done through an interview.
It takes about ten minutes.
I love it because, you know, it helps clienteleavoid the issues of working with an unvetted
agency.
So they make sure that you're vetted and couldactually get sponsored spots on that list.
(13:38):
So but you can't change the review just becauseyou're, you know, sponsoring, you know,
TopSpot.
Gotcha.
So you go to this website as an agency.
They would vet you, put you on, and thenanybody who's worked with you could then rate
you through the website.
Yeah.
And there's others like it that are even alittle bit more boutique and grassroots.
Like, you should look into those referralnetworks.
(13:58):
So they'll take 10%, fifteen % of the grosscontract in perpetuity or over five years.
It sounds like a lot, but it's vetted business.
And, yeah, you could scale pretty quickly likethat as well.
Especially up front when you have no business.
Oh, yeah.
Percent is, like, definitely it's like adiamond in the bucket.
Right?
Yeah.
So what what do you think is something that youwish you knew before you started your agency?
(14:20):
Don't try to do everything.
Right?
Like, that's that's something I see a lot ofnew agency founders do.
Right?
They're like, we offer everything, and they endup doing everything poorly.
Niche out.
Right?
Don't niche too hard where things are changingrapidly.
So don't say I'm only working doing one type ofservice for one type of client.
(14:40):
You're setting yourself up for risk.
Picking a specific industry, picking a specificset of services let's say, in apps, you can do
ASO, App Store ads, App Store marketing, AppStore optimization, screenshots, and designer,
PR, like public relations.
I don't know much about public relations, butI'm sure there's a bunch of different services
that are surrounding that.
You've
(15:01):
mentioned when we were having coffee a fewweeks ago, you mentioned that most agency
owners will typically screw up by hiringfreelancers instead of using vendor partners.
What do you mean?
So freelancers are great.
You know, I I wanna I wanna backtrack on that alittle bit.
Freelancers are great.
I work with freelancers.
They're great for, like, specialist projects.
(15:22):
Say, you have a client that's in, I don't know,financial services in Latin America.
So you're gonna need somebody who hasexperience in LatAm markets.
Right?
So you could go Upwork, other sir other otherfreelance listing services, and bring on a
freelancer.
There's nothing wrong with that.
The problem is over relying on freelancers.
(15:43):
There's two problems that agency foundersshould look for.
Part one is, a, you're managing a team.
You've never had experience managing a team.
You don't have the processes in place to managethat team.
And even if you were to have all of thoseprocesses and agent and the freelancers were to
follow those processes, follow those training,you risk actually misclassification.
So those technically are employees at thatpoint, and you have to be careful.
(16:06):
And I recommend this for all agency owners andnew agency owners to look into the governing
laws for your state with regards tomisclassification, making sure you have proper
insurances and unemployment insurance, workers'compensation, all that stuff, because you don't
want to be tied up in that stuff.
Especially the margins are tight.
Right?
You want to make sure you're making money.
You don't want to spend money on fines.
What are some of the most useful processes andsystems that you've built out internally when
(16:30):
building out your team?
Sales process.
So having a good sales process because sales isa lifeblood of any agency.
Right?
Clients, they come and go.
You know, the best way to solve bad clients isnew business.
So sales processes are everything.
We make sure that you have a CRM set up,HubSpot, Zoho, whichever you prefer.
(16:51):
Make sure that you have somebody dedicated tosales, whether that's you, whether it's a
manager or freelancer.
Make sure that there's somebody dedicated tofollowing up with clientele.
Over automation, I'm kind of against.
Right?
Automating sales feels inauthentic, and agencyservices is very, very, very high touch.
There's a lot of trust that's being given overto you by the founder, the entrepreneur,
(17:12):
especially if you're working with newcompanies.
So I recommend having a real person shakinghands, saying hi, grabbing the coffees, or even
doing the Zoom meetings.
It doesn't need to be over coffee you know, tomaximize conversion.
Yeah.
Automation is definitely one that I'd wannatouch on.
I think you can very easily over automate yourprocesses, especially in sales.
(17:33):
Like, when we first started, we would send outvery templated emails to, like, a mass amount
of folks.
And, you can get one or two bites, but then Irealized, like, hey.
We're reaching out to all these founders.
Maybe there's one or two more that we couldhave gotten if we just personalized them a
little bit more.
So instead of playing the volume game, westarted playing the personalization game, and
it completely changed the outlook.
And I think, like, there's certain tools thatcan help you do that, like AI SDRs, etcetera.
(17:58):
I think my my take on those is I think earlyon, they will do very well.
They will significantly increase your, I guess,conversion rates on your sales emails.
Over time, though, as they get used more, theywill generally become the new norm, and people
will be able to detect patterns.
We're pretty good at detecting patterns andwill notice, okay, that's an AI SDR.
(18:19):
And I think over time, that will fade as well,and then it'll come back to, like, having an
actual person personalize it.
But, yeah, that's just my take.
That I I a % agree.
And, I mean, put yourself in the potentialclient's shoes, especially we're talking about
tech founders here.
Right?
They know they they're they're not your greatgrandmother.
They know what a automated email looks like,and getting an email without a profile photo
(18:43):
that's very generic is immediately to spam.
Right?
So you wanna have that warm touch, hey.
I was introduced by x, y, and z.
Are you open to a chat?
Here's who we are, you know, as opposed tojust,
hi.
You've done marketing for many tech companiesand helped generate hundreds of thousands, if
not millions of dollars in pipeline for them.
(19:04):
One of the things that you use or methods thatyou leverage is called the Hawk Method.
What is it, and how does it work?
So it's a book I'm actually currently reading,part of curriculum I'm doing at Columbia
University for graduate school part time.
And he breaks down a lot of these differentideas of how to kind of avoid the hurdles that
(19:29):
most new agency owners have to deal with,right?
Like dealing with clients, how to generaterevenue.
He touches on partnerships.
Was very validating as somebody who's been inthis for about nine years now.
Yeah.
It's a while.
It's been a while.
I feel old saying that.
Yeah.
So You're still in your twenties here.
And I'm still in my twenties for another threeyears.
(19:49):
I'm good.
Still under 30.
But, yeah, he breaks that down, and I highlyrecommend any new agency owner to read The Hawk
Method.
There's so many books out there on scalingagencies, but I've read them, and they're all
how to scale RGA or WPP.
Right?
They're not how to scale a new agent or if theyare about scaling a new agency, it's usually a
sales tool for that agency.
(20:09):
What I can say about the HAWK method by EricHuberman is it's very, very centered and
grounded into bringing an agency to where mostagency founders want it, like that hundred mil
mark or working with startups and scaling andactually driving meaningful results.
I guess when you have been scaling your agency,what are some of the mistakes that you might
(20:30):
have made earlier on throughout that scalingprocess?
So I touched on one of them, which is trying todo everything.
Having no identity, which ties directly totrying to do everything, is a big thing.
And it ties into what I preach to my clienteleas well.
A brand is the utmost important thing for anagency.
What does your agency do?
(20:50):
Why are they doing it, and who are they doingit for?
I had a professor who actually gave a fantasticexample.
He said, imagine a hotel by Nike.
Right?
And you can imagine, you know, gyms and andsports fitness themed, stuff like that.
He's like, then imagine sneakers by Hilton.
Right?
It's difficult to do.
It's because Hilton's a real estate company,and Nike's a lifestyle brand.
Right?
So you really have to I I say this to mystartup founders because everybody's trying to
(21:13):
build first, market first, grow first, butthey're they're not selling anything.
People need to buy into who you are.
At Osmos, it's we're a startup ally.
Right?
We're an experiential agency.
We do top shelf creative at a lower cost, and,you know, we're here to work with you.
You've done millions of dollars in sales.
What have you learned about sales that 99% ofpeople don't know?
(21:35):
A lot of people give up very quickly.
They, again, they don't really process thequeues.
Most of my deals that close, surprisingly, arenot on the first interaction.
Right?
We'll go through a sales process.
We'll send them the deck, and then it's notnecessarily a fit.
And you have to be okay with that.
Don't drive them crazy.
(21:56):
Don't be the automated email.
Right?
Be a human being when it comes to sales.
Let them go.
Refer them to somebody else.
Don't try to, you know, take it all on day one,and I guarantee you they'll come back.
And they'll come back, and they'll be I've seen$500,000 accounts come from accounts that were
unqualified that I've either sent them in adifferent direction because you're doing good
by them.
(22:16):
You send them to somebody you trust.
Right?
I know somebody.
They're coming in.
Okay?
You know, they don't really need my servicesright now, but maybe they need your services,
Seamus.
Let me send them to you.
You're gonna do a fantastic job because you'regood at what you do.
They're gonna come back to me even happier.
And with those results that they've, you know,garnered from your work, they're gonna come
with more money.
Yeah.
The other thing I've noticed is that for thosethat are a good fit but they might be ignoring
(22:39):
you for a little bit, if you can follow-up andthen do this with value, like, there's an
extreme exam I know we mentioned this a littlebit earlier, but there's extreme example of
somebody who did this named Ryan Serhant.
Mhmm.
So he is a massive real estate broker here inManhattan.
Yeah.
Does like billions of dollars
Billion dollar listings.
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
And he did, I think, $5,000,000,000 in volumelast year.
Wow.
(22:59):
And one of the stories that he was sharing onone of his first deals is early on when he
first started in real estate, he would go up topeople, or pregnant woman on the Upper East
Side Of Manhattan and go into a Starbucks wherewhere they were, And he'd be like, hey, I think
you might need a a bigger apartment.
We should talk.
One of his first clients was was this woman andshe saw an apartment, and Ryan rushed home,
(23:24):
sent her the listings, and she was like, Idon't think any of these are a good fit.
So he kept sending listings for a decadestraight every Monday.
Never missed.
And then one day, she replies and says, hey,sorry for the delay.
Thanks for all the emails.
We're looking our budget expanded from, I thinkit was like 800 k, to now we're looking to buy
(23:46):
like a $10,000,000 townhouse.
And closed the deal for a $10,000,000townhouse, got his massive commission off of
that, which was like 200 k, and it it justreally shows that the art of following up, but
also being consistent, and then just generallytrying to help people matters a ton.
For sure.
Yeah.
I wouldn't recommend following up every weekwith tech founders, you know, they'll def
(24:08):
you'll definitely get reported spam.
But I do agree.
Persistency is important.
Right?
My whole career has been built aroundpersistency and resiliency, not really giving
up, and we could get into that a little bit.
But to just touch on what you're saying, I'dalso argue that it's extremely important to
know when to give up on a lead.
(24:29):
Because if you are not clearing out yourpipeline, you're not generating new business.
You're not you don't feel that I always say youneed to feel hungry in order to go out and eat.
Right?
So if you're not clearing your pipeline, ifyour stomach's not growling, you're not hunting
for more business.
You have what I call a phantom pipeline.
You have a a pipeline of leads that are justgonna drag you along.
A lot of clients I don't know why they do this.
(24:50):
I still, after nine years, have no idea whypeople do this.
They'll they'll pretend to be interested.
They have no intent on buying.
I kinda know how a lot of people like, lot of,I don't know, you know, Rolex dealers probably
deal with.
Like, the the stores, like, I'll try it on.
I'll take four, and then, like, you know, I'lltake a business card.
Right?
It's kind of like the I'll take a business cardin our industry.
They just you gotta cut those people out.
(25:11):
You have to have very again, follow-upfollow-up later, like, two, three months down
the line a quarter.
Hey.
Are you still interested in this?
Try to get answers from people.
Try to get an understanding.
The more you know, the better profile you canbuild on that person.
Right?
Find out why.
That that that's what I'd say.
Hey.
Are you still interested, should we close thebook on this?
(25:31):
And, you know, and then you can revisit it, youknow, six months down the line.
What are the signals that you look for whendetermining whether to stop following up or
letting potential clients go?
I'd say multiple proposals.
That's usually a big red flag for me.
So we'll send a proposal, and then they'll askfor a proposal for a different set of services.
And then we'll send it, and then a few monthslater, they'll ask for another.
(25:55):
You know, there's only I have a rule.
Like, if we've issued you three proposals, youknow, three strikes and out.
That that's really it.
Right?
Somebody with intent to buy is ready to buyusually.
And if they don't have intent to buy at themoment, you know, find out when they may have
intent to buy.
The other thing that's really important,especially in b to b businesses, is
relationships.
(26:16):
How do you approach not only getting the sale,but also maintaining those relationships and
keeping them strong over long periods of time?
It's hard.
It's hard.
Right?
Because as a business owner, you're focused onprofit and loss.
Right?
You have responsibility to your staff, to yourfamily, to yourself to scale and grow your
business.
But at the same time, so do your clientele.
And it's not always rosy when running anagency.
(26:37):
In fact, most of the time, it's not.
Every day, there's gonna be a problem.
Every day, there's gonna be unhappy client.
And they're most of the time not unhappy withthe work you're doing.
They're just unhappy with their runningbusinesses too, and they had their unhappy
thing that happened that day, their theirhurdle that they're dealing with.
Try to understand them.
Right?
You guys are both in the same space.
You're both growing businesses.
(26:57):
Bond on that.
Grow on that.
Ask them what's going on.
Is it a cash flow issue?
Is it a runway issue?
It usually has something to do with that.
Or and you at that point, you could decide,okay.
Let's pivot.
Let's pivot.
You you know, you need to raise more money.
Let's pivot to hitting specific goals that cango allow you to go out and raise another round
versus continuing on the same course.
(27:19):
Right?
Startups need to pivot.
You need to pivot too with your founder asopposed to staying in the course.
The client will begrudgingly pay you, and thensix months down the line, they end up with the
money they need.
And you may have delivered results on papers,the impressions on paper, their follower
account grew, whatever it is, whatever thisspecific KPI is, but they're now out of money,
Right?
And because you never asked the rightquestions.
(27:41):
Another way that outside of partnerships thatyou've talked about on how to grow and scale
agencies is through white labeling, which youjust told me
about recently.
How does that work?
So I always say agencies should be profitablefrom day one, and it's very easy to do that.
So it's kind of goes by the the freelancer, youknow, why I was a little bit I pushed back a
(28:04):
little bit on you on freelancers is finding avendor is always a good move.
So let's say you wanna start a developmentagency or a PPC agency.
Right?
You you, in the case of development agency, arereally good at design.
You're really good at managing projects.
You have a lot of great ideas and vision.
That's your IP.
Right?
But at the end of the day, you can't justdesign an app.
(28:25):
You need to develop it too.
So my recommendation to most entrepreneurs iswhatever your strength is, great.
You can do that.
Right?
And then you'll scale, and you'll bring onother designers or freelancers along with that.
But whatever is not your strength, whatever ismore complementary or supplementary, bring on
vendors to do that.
They have the processes in place.
(28:45):
Right?
There's so so many vendors out there in thecase of development.
And again, finding them is not easy, but alwayswork on referrals.
Never reach out to a vendor offhand because,again, you could get burned that realm as well.
The agencies can get burned too.
So find you know, ask another agency, hey.
Who do you use for your iOS development?
(29:07):
Who do you use for your content production?
And rely on them.
They have the processes in place.
You're still doing the, you know, You're stilldictating.
You're still doing the project management, butthis allows you to scale because you have the
resources.
You could take on larger project loads, andthen you could hire more people to manage that
vendor.
In a form of vertical integration, you bring onmore and more individuals to manage a vendor
(29:28):
and then eventually start to replace thevendor.
As we zoom out a little bit, how does it feelto be making hundreds of thousands of dollars
per month in your twenties?
I was just telling a founder, he was like, am Idoing good?
Am I doing okay?
I'm like, you're doing fantastic.
A year and a half ago, you didn't haveanything.
Right?
He had an idea.
(29:49):
Right?
And a few months later, he had a pitch deck anda business plan.
A few months after that, he raised $750,000 andhad an MVP.
And then a few months after that, he launchedthat MVP and had 8,000 users within a few
months.
And now he's just about to go out and generaterevenue.
And at every single juncture, he felt like hewas behind.
(30:11):
It never feels real no matter what you're doingbecause you're always looking forward.
Right?
You kind of get used to, get comfortable inwhere you are now, and it becomes the previous
step, you know, and you have and that's whatdrives us.
That's what allows us to build big corporationsand, you know, big grand ideas.
That's actually very true because about, like,six to twelve months ago, was like, oh, if we
(30:32):
could just get to 10 k a month, that that wouldbe great.
That would be great.
So we get to 10.
I was like, well, actually, you know what?
20 would probably be a more comfortable number.
We get to 20, and and then I'm like, you knowwhat?
Maybe 50 to a hundred would be a morecomfortable number.
And then I think every single time, I thinkit's just gonna keep going up considering this
pattern.
I think it's a good thing because it alwayspushes you to do more.
(30:53):
But I think if somebody were to ask me thatquestion, I'd be like, I don't know.
I feel like I'm in the weeds.
You're killing it, Seamus.
But I and listen, it's important to go it'slisten.
Self self critique is great.
It helps you grow as an individual, and it alsohelps you grow your business, but sometimes
it's good to celebrate your success.
And, yes, usually after you celebrate success,something goes wrong.
Every time.
But, again, that's part of the it's part ofthe, you know, part of the journey.
(31:16):
I you know, I'll I'll sometimes be in myoffice, and I'll sit, and I'll close my eyes,
and I'll be like, what would I think five yearsago?
Like, I'm in my office.
Have an office.
There's people working here.
I have clientele.
I'm working with large brands.
I'm working with cool startups.
It's awesome.
You know?
And, like, yeah, it's it's it's it's like whenyou're sitting in, you know, premium economy,
like, you know, you wish you're sitting inbusiness, and you're in business.
(31:36):
You wish you're sitting in first.
It's just the way our brains work.
You know?
Yeah.
A %.
Keeps us competitive.
Yes.
For somebody who might wanna start a businesstoday, and let's say all they have is a laptop
and an Internet connection, what should they goout
and do?
Find the client.
That's the first step.
Find the client.
Well, decide how you're going to service them.
(31:58):
Let's say you want to start a business thatdoes, I don't know, AI implementation.
Right?
Find a business.
Like, hey, Your business can benefit from AIautomation or AI agent or a new tool, new
vertical, and close a contract.
And the best thing about running an agency isyou get that money up front.
(32:18):
Right?
So you can structure your contracts 25%, fifty%, seventy five % up I wouldn't recommend to
then go and start looking for the team.
Doesn't cost anything to line up a team.
Line up the resources, line up the ability toexecute, and then go out, seek out the client,
make sure you have a proper landing page, whichcan be built on no code development tools,
(32:41):
which is really easy to do, templatize, there'sAI tools that can do it for you.
And start building.
Start building.
Build case studies.
And one thing that can really help you withleveraging vendors is you can also utilize
studies, their casework.
Since they're going to be doing thefulfillment, you can now go to a larger company
or a startup and be like, hey, what's your pastwork?
Well, here's what my team has done.
(33:02):
Gives you that sense of credibility, andcredibility is extremely important.
Speaking of AI, what are the how shouldfounders leverage AI in marketing, and what are
the wrong ways to implement it, and what wouldbe the the right ways to implement it?
Well, I've kind of seen two type of agencyowners.
I I've sat I've with some larger agencies, andtheir head's completely in the sand.
(33:26):
They're like, AI can't do what I can do.
It can.
It can do what you can do, and it can do itbetter.
But it's important to know that AI is not goingto replace the agency.
It's going to be replaced by people using AI.
It's like kind of QuickBooks.
QuickBooks didn't replace bookkeepers.
Now bookkeepers are using QuickBooks, and theones that aren't are not going to have
business.
I'm sure there's other QuickBooks, so I mean,not using any tools.
(33:49):
Utilize tools.
Right?
Keep experimenting tools.
Every agency today should figure out how theycan move quicker with AI tools, whether it's
faster output on SEO, faster output oncreative, menial tasks, you know, generating
emails and templates.
You can build proposals faster now.
It doesn't necessarily have to be I'm doing mywebsite design in AI.
(34:10):
It could just mean that we're generatinglanding page copy or ideating on brand names
with AI.
We at Osmos are building an internal AI toolthat we're gonna I love services, but my dream
is to go back into product.
But, yeah, building internal tools that you canthen automate certain parts of your business.
Yeah.
(34:30):
One of the things that I've learned about theright way to implement AI is a lot of people
will be like, okay, we're gonna use AI in ourbusiness.
And they immediately take, like, the generalpurpose model and immediately try to apply it
to what they're doing.
Like, that's the complete wrong way to do it.
Like, if really wanna do it and you want it towork and actually develop that moat, the way I
(34:51):
think about it is like, okay, let's take a stepback.
Let's pretend this AI was actually a human.
How would you train the person on your team todo this task?
Now just use that same training process and tryto train the AI.
Like, we use it a lot with copywriting becauseit can be really good.
Not all the way there, but it probably getslike 90% of the way there.
So iterating.
Yeah.
And it's it also tells you it gives you a lotof feedback indirectly on your training process
(35:17):
too.
Because if an AI is missing something andyou're like, okay, you wrote this post, but I
really wanted it to look more like this, thenyou actually can clarify a lot of your training
in SOPs.
And it's one of the things that I've noticed islike, okay.
If you're gonna train a person, try to usesimilar training processes and procedures to
train the AI, and then you're also able to todetermine where your weak points are in that
(35:41):
training.
Yeah.
That's great advice.
Be AI enabled.
Don't be AI.
Right?
Exactly.
Like, you know, use it to get to where you weregoing anyway faster.
Don't, like, send them the PowerPoint template.
Right?
Like, lot of people tend to do that.
Like, I could look at something and be like andit looks it looks lazy.
Right?
They're you know, just generated it with theDolly or, you know, ChatGPT.
(36:03):
And to wrap it up, a couple of closingquestions.
What's the best investment you've ever made?
The best investment I ever made is in pickingthe right partner.
So a lot of founders, and I see this all thetime, will want to bring their friends along
for the ride, kind of like in an entouragesituation.
Like, oh, we're going to bring our friends in.
(36:24):
It usually ends badly.
I've mediated a lot of divorces, I like to say.
Don't bring your friends into business.
Find your friends in business.
Right?
Like, my Devin, my business partner Devin,Matan, some of the people I work with are some
of my best friends now.
And finding the right partners that are out foryour best interests, shared interests to grow
(36:47):
together is the single best investment you canmake.
What's your greatest failure and what did youlearn from it?
My greatest failure.
My greatest failure thus far was my, obviously,my my first company.
I focused too much on product.
(37:07):
Right?
Like, building a perfect product seems great.
And I see this with clientele.
They'll come to me and be like, we wanna looklike Uber.
We wanna look like TikTok.
We want to look like Perplexity.
We want to look like every hot start up,Gemini, you you can imagine.
And I'll say, great, but you have to get therefirst.
(37:27):
Right?
So I always challenge everybody.
Go to the Wayback Machine and look at the firstversion of Waze.
Look at the first version of Snapchat.
Wasn't even called Snapchat.
It was called peekaboo.
And see what they looked like.
They were true MVPs.
They looked very, very scrappy.
My big mistake was focusing on trying to buildas much as I can, obsessing over product.
(37:47):
And people launch products with thousands offeatures, and it's like starting a show with a
thousand main characters.
People need to fall in love with your productfirst, and then you learn so much from your
audience.
Don't limit your audience to the four people inthe room.
And what do you think is the worst piece ofadvice you've ever received?
(38:09):
Oh, don't worry about the business model.
Don't worry about how you're going to makemoney.
And I'm sure a lot of founders listening tothis have heard that piece of advice.
You need to worry about that.
That's what's gonna separate you.
That's gonna that's what's gonna protect you asa legitimate business.
Right?
Focusing on how to make money, you know, tosolve the problem that you're looking or, you
know, making money from solving the problemthat you're looking to solve.
(38:31):
And what's one rule you live by that mostpeople don't?
One rule I live by that most people don't.
What what what would be an example of that?
I'll give you a good one.
(38:51):
So I was meeting with this guy who's 17.
He runs this app called Kaliai.
Mhmm.
They do 20,000,000 a year in revenue, and Iasked him the same question.
And he's from Long Island.
We're doing the interview in Soho.
He's like, okay.
So I get onto this get on I get on the trainfrom Long Island.
Mhmm.
And as I'm entering, I think, Grand Central,there's a few different doors that I could go
(39:15):
through.
And I purposely picked everyone's going to theright hand door, quickest way to get out of
station.
I purposely picked the farthest door just toreinforce into myself that I have complete
control over my life and I'm not living in,like, a matrix I love that.
And I have free will.
And he says he does these, like, microdecisions all the time.
Like, maybe if there was a route to get towhere he wanted to go, instead of taking the
(39:37):
straight route or the most efficient route,sometimes he'll just randomly change his
direction just to reinstill in his brain thathe has complete control and free will over his
life.
So, yeah, so the one rule I live by, and it'ssomething that a good mentor of mine, he exited
a company for over a hundred million dollars,and he told me I was like, how did you do that?
How did you pull that off?
He's like, become a master.
(39:59):
Enjoy.
Become the best at uncomfortable situations.
A lot of people try to avoid uncomfortablesituations.
They don't go in head first.
They figure out a way to plan for it.
Become the best at uncomfortable situations.
In a situation where you feel like you have tohave a tough conversation or you want somebody
else, you want to delegate that, jump into it.
Do it.
And if you can master being uncomfortable,nothing could faze you and you can break every
(40:26):
barrier.
How do you master that?
Do it a lot.
Do it a lot.
Go into it.
Be prepared for backlash.
Just, yeah, people also, another thing, peopleeverybody keeps on asking permission.
I have so many founders that like, should I dothis?
Should I do that?
What if this happens?
Or, you know, there's a ticketing app, and he'slike, there's so many regulatory things around
(40:46):
ticketing.
And if you look at companies like Airbnb andUber, those are pretty crazy concepts.
Right?
You're allowing somebody into your car.
You're allowing somebody into your house.
You have to just ask forgiveness as a founder.
You have to just keep on going.
As long as you're not breaking the law, don'task other And it goes down to just also don't
ask other people what they think, especiallynon entrepreneurs, what they think about what
(41:07):
you're doing because you're going to get ananswer that you don't want to hear, right?
You're going to get an answer from people who,if they tell you that what you're doing is
right, they're kind of questioning their wholeidentity.
So, you know?
I get that a lot with people who aren'tentrepreneurs, and I think early on I would be
more cognizant of other people or try tounderstand like what other people thought about
(41:29):
what I do.
And realize entrepreneurs always superrelatable, like always able to relate very
easy.
And then people who were not entrepreneurs ornever really went down that path, it's like
nothing made sense.
And as much as I tried to make it make sense,just never could connect the dots.
And then I think at that point I was like,there's no point in trying to convince them,
try to convince the unconvincible.
(41:50):
So last question.
If I switch you over a phone and you could callyour 20 year old self, would you call?
And if so, what would you say?
I wouldn't call.
I wouldn't call.
The reason why is because I needed toexperience all my failures to get to where I
am.
Failure is IP.
(42:10):
It's your intellectual property.
What you know and other people don't is whatsets you apart.
That's a great way to end it.
Well, first off, thanks, Eli, for taking
this you so much for having me.
This has been a lot of fun.
Greatly appreciate it.
We'll have a link to Osmos in the episodedescription down below.
So if any founders are looking for any of theareas that they have expertise in, go check it
out, and thanks for joining.
Awesome.
Eli, you're 27 years old, started at 19, andnow are making close to $300,000 a month.
What the heck do you do?
It's a great question.
It's a question I get a lot.
I'm the founder and CEO of Osmos.
We're a venture studio and digital agency thatservices early stage startups, getting them
from ideation to sometimes, you know, goingpublic.
(00:20):
And we also help large corporations, Fortune500 companies, do digital transformation to
compete with those startups.
What does that typically mean, and how do youget involved with some of these startups and
help them out early on?
Sure.
So as a marketing agency, you'd expect somesecret marketing sauce, but it's really all
handshakes.
Everything we do is somebody I meet at anetworking event, speaking engagement, or
(00:42):
somebody who's heard about us, you know,impress and stuff like that.
Yeah.
There we don't do any outbound marketing.
We actually just started a a clutch listing,but that's about it.
Now you're making hundreds of thousands ofdollars a month, but your journey started far
from this.
It actually started about when you were 19years old.
You had a fintech company.
Tell me more about that.
(01:02):
What was that?
What were you building?
And what were some of the fundamental lessonsyou learned from that business that you took
with you to kick start this one?
So at 19 years old, I was in school abroad, andthere were some coins falling out of my pocket
while sitting in the chair.
And I was like, why are we still dealing withcoins and currency?
At the time, back in 2015, change in cashtransactions made up 85% of the global
(01:27):
transactions and close to 60 of United Statesdriven transactions.
And I was in Tel Aviv at the time, which is avery coin centric economy.
So I decided we have to solve this problem, asmany entrepreneurs do, alright, you know,
solving problems.
I came up with a concept where, essentially,you give your phone number, and whatever
digital loose whatever loose change you havejust go straight to
(01:49):
your phone, essentially creating a digitalpiggy bank and also your first debit card.
That ended up becoming worth about $15,000,000.
What what were the steps that you took to getto that valuation?
So my first step, I was a nontechnical person.
I didn't have a college degree at the time.
I didn't believe in college at the time, butwe'll unpack that.
And I started by just asking around.
(02:11):
Hey.
I have this great idea.
What do I do next?
Right?
Just asking people for advice.
That was really the first step I took.
I came across somebody who was willing to well,I was like, well, I'll give you some money.
Let's let's build this out.
Again, starting from nowhere, I went to theprettiest and best app development agency I
could find with the most enterprise logos.
And was like, I want to build something.
(02:33):
So I spent a few of those, the seed round onbuilding out a design for the product, obsessed
over the design as a design centric person, andwent out and raised more money.
Got it up to a $2,000,000 valuation.
Once we were at a $2,000,000 valuation, it wastime to explore banking partnerships.
Cold calling.
(02:53):
We got in touch with a publicly traded bankjust from a cold email.
Be surprised how many people answer a kid.
And I was in contract with them, was able toraise get to that $15,000,000 valuation with a
$3,000,000 commitment.
The first monies came in, and we paid thedevelopment agency for the integration.
(03:14):
And one day, I get a call, and the bank isgoing in another direction.
Yeah.
And
at that point, I go back to the agency.
I was like, it's time to pivot.
And they're like, well, there's no more money.
We spent it all.
I'm like, okay.
At the time, I was like, okay.
I guess they spent it on, you know, planningfor the integration.
But, you know, that How much did you spend
(03:35):
or pay that development agency?
We paid them about close to the $750,000 forthe $7.50 ks.
7 50 ks.
Yeah.
Thankfully, we only gave them a quarter milliondollars of that tranche, but for what?
What were they able to do with the quartermillion?
They were supposed to do the integration withthis large bank that we were partnering with,
(03:56):
but that
And then once that fell
apart happened.
Yeah.
So then when that fell apart, you're like, whatwhat were you thinking in your head?
I got a bill from the agency.
Yeah.
What I was thinking, was like, I gotta findanother banking partner.
Right?
Unfortunately, six months later, that bankended up doing the concept themselves.
And, yeah, I wasn't able I was 21 coming off a'25 you know, it was gearing up for a
(04:23):
$25,000,000 valuation, and I went frommultimillionaire on paper to absolutely
nothing.
You know?
So that was a crazy moment.
Did that company ended up shutting down then?
Or
Well, yeah.
It ended up shutting down, but I ended up, youknow, making the most out of it.
I was you know, turned it into an API to try tointegrate into other apps for loyalty, so tried
(04:46):
to pivot.
And the venture group that was advising me atthe time ended up bringing me on as their chief
marketing officer.
That venture group, I do wanna touch on thatbecause you worked with them as their CMO, and
you actually helped generate $800,000 in just afew months.
Complete opposite of what you were doing forthe previous company.
How did you do that?
Through and through, I'm an entrepreneur, andI, you know, needed a job.
(05:09):
Right?
So when I was coming off my first venture, Iasked them.
I was like, hey.
Are you looking for any help?
I noticed you don't have a chief marketingofficer, and they're like, yeah.
Sure.
I was like, okay.
Pay me a hundred thousand.
Right?
I'll take I'll take your, you know, CMO,probably gets a half a million dollars, 7
hundred 50 thousand dollar a year salary at aglobal venture group.
I was like, pay me a hundred thousand dollars.
I actually also brokered a loan for them to,you know, like, try to, like, show, you know, I
(05:35):
could make moves.
And I was like, give me a job.
That's all I want.
I don't want commission.
I don't want anything.
And I came on as the CMO, and I was workingthere.
I was like, okay.
I'm gonna make an honest living.
And then I was like, you know, eff that.
Like, I'm I'm an employee.
And I was like, let me start an agency toservice their portfolio.
I was burned as a founder.
(05:56):
I'm sure there's a whole bunch of otherstartups that are spending tons of money on
things they shouldn't necessarily be spendingmoney on.
Let's build an agency that works for startupsby entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, and I found
to dominate under that venture group to servicetheir portfolio.
Immediately, we were able to scale to close,yeah, to $800,000 in revenue in just a matter
of
(06:17):
How did it scale that quickly?
Because I know plenty of agency founders oreven with all the marketing tips and tricks
that they'll employ, they still might be like,the quickest I've seen someone scale is maybe
to, like, a hundred or $200,000 within, like,maybe six months, but 803 is really fast.
What what were you doing behind the scenes?
It's partnerships.
So being in my case, I had a little bit of acheat code being that I was in the venture
(06:40):
group.
Right?
So they're portfolio companies.
I had a built in pipeline, but it's the fastestway to scale any agency.
Partner with venture groups.
Partner with other agencies who have built inclient bases that are already qualified that
you can service right away.
Yeah.
It's one of the similar things I noticed.
We interviewed woman named Alexa Von Toble.
(07:00):
She so she's built a company out calledLearnvest, and what she noticed is, hey, Wall
Street is hoarding financial advice.
They don't wanna tell anybody like the secretson how to get rich, so she just built a
platform that would enable anyone to get worldclass expert financial advice.
One of the ways they grew so fast till Ibelieve like a few million users in like a
couple of years is they partnered with a lot ofother organizations or other brands that were
(07:25):
connected to their target audience.
So for example, like Lululemon, etcetera.
When you're thinking about organizing thesepartnerships, how do you create it so that it's
like a win win scenario for both sides of thedeal?
Yeah.
That's a great question.
Because as you can imagine, you reach out.
I'm sure you get 100 LinkedIns saying thatthey'll generate LinkedIn leads for you or do a
(07:45):
service that you don't even need.
It's about almost like a quid pro quo.
You have to come to the table with something.
Whether it's Well, we have a client.
Let's say you run a PR firm.
Right?
I have a client that needs PR services.
Right?
Bring come come bearing gifts.
That's the best way to separate yourself from asea of, you know, LinkedIn DMs and, you know,
(08:06):
cold email outreach.
Come bearing gifts.
And you have the ability to do it.
And if you could find vendors and relationshipsthat are two sided and, you know, give back and
mutually advantageous, you'll both growtogether.
One of the things I've also noticed is if youcan provide value up front and also provide
value on the follow-up, you can also not onlydeepen the relationship but find a lot better
(08:31):
relationships with other folks.
So when we first started the agency that we runtoday, I would constantly I'd send like a bunch
of DMs, emails, be like, hey, if nobodyresponded, I would circle back and be like,
hey, just following up to see if you got this.
Pretty much nobody responded to those, and thennow I get a bunch of those Oh, how and, yeah,
and they drive me nuts.
And then I realized like, hey, instead of doingthe just following up thing, because everyone
(08:53):
does that, let me just find a way to stand out.
What are some of the ways that you're able toprovide value to to startups earlier on in the
process that enable them to trust you from theget go?
I was a founder.
I had the founder experience.
The founder experience is not we have unlimitedresources.
Let's build something for you that's absolutelyperfect and looks great.
The founder experience is, I don't know when mynext check is coming in.
(09:15):
And you could be at pre seed or series a.
Most people don't know where their next checkis.
They're worrying about runway.
I spoke with a company that had $2,200,000 inthe bank, and they're already worried about
their next raise.
And they just closed it a couple months back.
The value we provide is simple.
Most companies come to us in the situation Iwas in.
(09:36):
Right?
I have a great idea.
I was able to raise some funding.
Where do I go now?
I immediately turn them down.
I don't give them any of my services.
I don't offer them any services.
I have a partner firm I work with calledJetpack.
Matamogrel, I told you a little bit about him.
He's raised over 900,000,000 for startups.
So what he does is he builds the businessbehind the startup, which is very anti Silicon
(09:58):
Valley and, you know, just fake it till youmake it.
Profits don't matter.
We take a bit of a reverse approach.
Build the business first.
Understand who your ICP, your ideal customerprofiles are.
Figure out how you're going to make money, andthen build the product as a solution.
So we send them there.
They build out a business plan, and then theycome back to me.
And with this business plan, nine out of 10 goout and raise funding.
(10:20):
Right?
I've seen it.
My own clients, most of them come from thatpipeline with Matan, and we then just execute.
Right?
We're we're an app development and marketingagency.
We don't know about what features you shouldhave.
We just know how to build those features reallywell and market them.
The problem is when agencies pretend they knowwhat they should be building.
(10:41):
So we listen to that directive, and we justfollow the strategy.
For the startups you typically work with, howdo you structure those deals?
Because you have a unique way that you get paidthat a lot of agencies typically won't do.
How does that work?
So it's something I wanted.
Right?
When I was a founder, I I and it's constantlysomething I think back to as an agency owner.
(11:02):
What would Eli at 19 what would he what wouldhave he wanted?
And you'd want somebody with skin in the game.
So what we do is we put together let's say it'sa brand package or it's an initial MVP, and we
immediately cut out a significant, if not allof our margin, and we vest out shares, equity
in the company.
So we're we have skin in the game, and it's inour vested interest to make sure that this is a
(11:24):
successful MVP.
It's a successful product launch.
We do this with our early stage ideationclients, and we take equity.
We give them office space, and we help guide
them through the entire entrepreneurialexperience.
How do you structure that equity?
Invest it.
So it depends on the client.
Some projects I'm more involved in.
As almost like a minority co founder, some ofthem are entrepreneur in residence.
(11:48):
But for strictly the clients just coming in,it's usually between 28% or sometimes 5%, this
median, vested out over a period of time.
You mentioned partnerships.
Now if somebody was here listening to this andthey might not have had a little bit of the
background that you had and they wanna start acompany and help serve others, how should they
(12:11):
get in front of their potential customers andand grow quickly without potentially using
partnerships?
Are there other ways to do that?
Are you building an agency?
Are you building an app?
Like, that that's the big question.
Like, if you're building an agency.
Yeah.
So if you're building an agency, there's provenmethods like clutch lists, like speaking
engagements like these, podcasts I have worked,earned media, we've done some earned media
(12:35):
around me and my agency, accolades.
They all generate buzz.
I haven't personally had success with paidefforts like Google Ads.
Agencies have, usually productized agencies.
So agencies offering, like, very, very focusedservices.
Like, we offer SEO packages or we offer ASOpackages tend to work well on Google Ads, but
(12:57):
bespoke, more studio type of agencies tend towork best by building brand thought leadership
and those type of efforts.
What are clutch lists?
A clutch list is essentially a paid list whereit's a verified review.
So each instead of, like I'm sure everyrestaurant you've ever eaten at has 4.8 stars
on Google.
Right?
(13:17):
So clutch's idea was to solve that problem.
Each review has to be verified.
It has to be done through an interview.
It takes about ten minutes.
I love it because, you know, it helps clienteleavoid the issues of working with an unvetted
agency.
So they make sure that you're vetted and couldactually get sponsored spots on that list.
(13:38):
So but you can't change the review just becauseyou're, you know, sponsoring, you know,
TopSpot.
Gotcha.
So you go to this website as an agency.
They would vet you, put you on, and thenanybody who's worked with you could then rate
you through the website.
Yeah.
And there's others like it that are even alittle bit more boutique and grassroots.
Like, you should look into those referralnetworks.
(13:58):
So they'll take 10%, fifteen % of the grosscontract in perpetuity or over five years.
It sounds like a lot, but it's vetted business.
And, yeah, you could scale pretty quickly likethat as well.
Especially up front when you have no business.
Oh, yeah.
Percent is, like, definitely it's like adiamond in the bucket.
Right?
Yeah.
So what what do you think is something that youwish you knew before you started your agency?
(14:20):
Don't try to do everything.
Right?
Like, that's that's something I see a lot ofnew agency founders do.
Right?
They're like, we offer everything, and they endup doing everything poorly.
Niche out.
Right?
Don't niche too hard where things are changingrapidly.
So don't say I'm only working doing one type ofservice for one type of client.
(14:40):
You're setting yourself up for risk.
Picking a specific industry, picking a specificset of services let's say, in apps, you can do
ASO, App Store ads, App Store marketing, AppStore optimization, screenshots, and designer,
PR, like public relations.
I don't know much about public relations, butI'm sure there's a bunch of different services
that are surrounding that.
You've
(15:01):
mentioned when we were having coffee a fewweeks ago, you mentioned that most agency
owners will typically screw up by hiringfreelancers instead of using vendor partners.
What do you mean?
So freelancers are great.
You know, I I wanna I wanna backtrack on that alittle bit.
Freelancers are great.
I work with freelancers.
They're great for, like, specialist projects.
(15:22):
Say, you have a client that's in, I don't know,financial services in Latin America.
So you're gonna need somebody who hasexperience in LatAm markets.
Right?
So you could go Upwork, other sir other otherfreelance listing services, and bring on a
freelancer.
There's nothing wrong with that.
The problem is over relying on freelancers.
(15:43):
There's two problems that agency foundersshould look for.
Part one is, a, you're managing a team.
You've never had experience managing a team.
You don't have the processes in place to managethat team.
And even if you were to have all of thoseprocesses and agent and the freelancers were to
follow those processes, follow those training,you risk actually misclassification.
So those technically are employees at thatpoint, and you have to be careful.
(16:06):
And I recommend this for all agency owners andnew agency owners to look into the governing
laws for your state with regards tomisclassification, making sure you have proper
insurances and unemployment insurance, workers'compensation, all that stuff, because you don't
want to be tied up in that stuff.
Especially the margins are tight.
Right?
You want to make sure you're making money.
You don't want to spend money on fines.
What are some of the most useful processes andsystems that you've built out internally when
(16:30):
building out your team?
Sales process.
So having a good sales process because sales isa lifeblood of any agency.
Right?
Clients, they come and go.
You know, the best way to solve bad clients isnew business.
So sales processes are everything.
We make sure that you have a CRM set up,HubSpot, Zoho, whichever you prefer.
(16:51):
Make sure that you have somebody dedicated tosales, whether that's you, whether it's a
manager or freelancer.
Make sure that there's somebody dedicated tofollowing up with clientele.
Over automation, I'm kind of against.
Right?
Automating sales feels inauthentic, and agencyservices is very, very, very high touch.
There's a lot of trust that's being given overto you by the founder, the entrepreneur,
(17:12):
especially if you're working with newcompanies.
So I recommend having a real person shakinghands, saying hi, grabbing the coffees, or even
doing the Zoom meetings.
It doesn't need to be over coffee you know, tomaximize conversion.
Yeah.
Automation is definitely one that I'd wannatouch on.
I think you can very easily over automate yourprocesses, especially in sales.
(17:33):
Like, when we first started, we would send outvery templated emails to, like, a mass amount
of folks.
And, you can get one or two bites, but then Irealized, like, hey.
We're reaching out to all these founders.
Maybe there's one or two more that we couldhave gotten if we just personalized them a
little bit more.
So instead of playing the volume game, westarted playing the personalization game, and
it completely changed the outlook.
And I think, like, there's certain tools thatcan help you do that, like AI SDRs, etcetera.
(17:58):
I think my my take on those is I think earlyon, they will do very well.
They will significantly increase your, I guess,conversion rates on your sales emails.
Over time, though, as they get used more, theywill generally become the new norm, and people
will be able to detect patterns.
We're pretty good at detecting patterns andwill notice, okay, that's an AI SDR.
(18:19):
And I think over time, that will fade as well,and then it'll come back to, like, having an
actual person personalize it.
But, yeah, that's just my take.
That I I a % agree.
And, I mean, put yourself in the potentialclient's shoes, especially we're talking about
tech founders here.
Right?
They know they they're they're not your greatgrandmother.
They know what a automated email looks like,and getting an email without a profile photo
(18:43):
that's very generic is immediately to spam.
Right?
So you wanna have that warm touch, hey.
I was introduced by x, y, and z.
Are you open to a chat?
Here's who we are, you know, as opposed tojust,
hi.
You've done marketing for many tech companiesand helped generate hundreds of thousands, if
not millions of dollars in pipeline for them.
(19:04):
One of the things that you use or methods thatyou leverage is called the Hawk Method.
What is it, and how does it work?
So it's a book I'm actually currently reading,part of curriculum I'm doing at Columbia
University for graduate school part time.
And he breaks down a lot of these differentideas of how to kind of avoid the hurdles that
(19:29):
most new agency owners have to deal with,right?
Like dealing with clients, how to generaterevenue.
He touches on partnerships.
Was very validating as somebody who's been inthis for about nine years now.
Yeah.
It's a while.
It's been a while.
I feel old saying that.
Yeah.
So You're still in your twenties here.
And I'm still in my twenties for another threeyears.
(19:49):
I'm good.
Still under 30.
But, yeah, he breaks that down, and I highlyrecommend any new agency owner to read The Hawk
Method.
There's so many books out there on scalingagencies, but I've read them, and they're all
how to scale RGA or WPP.
Right?
They're not how to scale a new agent or if theyare about scaling a new agency, it's usually a
sales tool for that agency.
(20:09):
What I can say about the HAWK method by EricHuberman is it's very, very centered and
grounded into bringing an agency to where mostagency founders want it, like that hundred mil
mark or working with startups and scaling andactually driving meaningful results.
I guess when you have been scaling your agency,what are some of the mistakes that you might
(20:30):
have made earlier on throughout that scalingprocess?
So I touched on one of them, which is trying todo everything.
Having no identity, which ties directly totrying to do everything, is a big thing.
And it ties into what I preach to my clienteleas well.
A brand is the utmost important thing for anagency.
What does your agency do?
(20:50):
Why are they doing it, and who are they doingit for?
I had a professor who actually gave a fantasticexample.
He said, imagine a hotel by Nike.
Right?
And you can imagine, you know, gyms and andsports fitness themed, stuff like that.
He's like, then imagine sneakers by Hilton.
Right?
It's difficult to do.
It's because Hilton's a real estate company,and Nike's a lifestyle brand.
Right?
So you really have to I I say this to mystartup founders because everybody's trying to
(21:13):
build first, market first, grow first, butthey're they're not selling anything.
People need to buy into who you are.
At Osmos, it's we're a startup ally.
Right?
We're an experiential agency.
We do top shelf creative at a lower cost, and,you know, we're here to work with you.
You've done millions of dollars in sales.
What have you learned about sales that 99% ofpeople don't know?
(21:35):
A lot of people give up very quickly.
They, again, they don't really process thequeues.
Most of my deals that close, surprisingly, arenot on the first interaction.
Right?
We'll go through a sales process.
We'll send them the deck, and then it's notnecessarily a fit.
And you have to be okay with that.
Don't drive them crazy.
(21:56):
Don't be the automated email.
Right?
Be a human being when it comes to sales.
Let them go.
Refer them to somebody else.
Don't try to, you know, take it all on day one,and I guarantee you they'll come back.
And they'll come back, and they'll be I've seen$500,000 accounts come from accounts that were
unqualified that I've either sent them in adifferent direction because you're doing good
by them.
(22:16):
You send them to somebody you trust.
Right?
I know somebody.
They're coming in.
Okay?
You know, they don't really need my servicesright now, but maybe they need your services,
Seamus.
Let me send them to you.
You're gonna do a fantastic job because you'regood at what you do.
They're gonna come back to me even happier.
And with those results that they've, you know,garnered from your work, they're gonna come
with more money.
Yeah.
The other thing I've noticed is that for thosethat are a good fit but they might be ignoring
(22:39):
you for a little bit, if you can follow-up andthen do this with value, like, there's an
extreme exam I know we mentioned this a littlebit earlier, but there's extreme example of
somebody who did this named Ryan Serhant.
Mhmm.
So he is a massive real estate broker here inManhattan.
Yeah.
Does like billions of dollars
Billion dollar listings.
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly.
And he did, I think, $5,000,000,000 in volumelast year.
Wow.
(22:59):
And one of the stories that he was sharing onone of his first deals is early on when he
first started in real estate, he would go up topeople, or pregnant woman on the Upper East
Side Of Manhattan and go into a Starbucks wherewhere they were, And he'd be like, hey, I think
you might need a a bigger apartment.
We should talk.
One of his first clients was was this woman andshe saw an apartment, and Ryan rushed home,
(23:24):
sent her the listings, and she was like, Idon't think any of these are a good fit.
So he kept sending listings for a decadestraight every Monday.
Never missed.
And then one day, she replies and says, hey,sorry for the delay.
Thanks for all the emails.
We're looking our budget expanded from, I thinkit was like 800 k, to now we're looking to buy
(23:46):
like a $10,000,000 townhouse.
And closed the deal for a $10,000,000townhouse, got his massive commission off of
that, which was like 200 k, and it it justreally shows that the art of following up, but
also being consistent, and then just generallytrying to help people matters a ton.
For sure.
Yeah.
I wouldn't recommend following up every weekwith tech founders, you know, they'll def
(24:08):
you'll definitely get reported spam.
But I do agree.
Persistency is important.
Right?
My whole career has been built aroundpersistency and resiliency, not really giving
up, and we could get into that a little bit.
But to just touch on what you're saying, I'dalso argue that it's extremely important to
know when to give up on a lead.
(24:29):
Because if you are not clearing out yourpipeline, you're not generating new business.
You're not you don't feel that I always say youneed to feel hungry in order to go out and eat.
Right?
So if you're not clearing your pipeline, ifyour stomach's not growling, you're not hunting
for more business.
You have what I call a phantom pipeline.
You have a a pipeline of leads that are justgonna drag you along.
A lot of clients I don't know why they do this.
(24:50):
I still, after nine years, have no idea whypeople do this.
They'll they'll pretend to be interested.
They have no intent on buying.
I kinda know how a lot of people like, lot of,I don't know, you know, Rolex dealers probably
deal with.
Like, the the stores, like, I'll try it on.
I'll take four, and then, like, you know, I'lltake a business card.
Right?
It's kind of like the I'll take a business cardin our industry.
They just you gotta cut those people out.
(25:11):
You have to have very again, follow-upfollow-up later, like, two, three months down
the line a quarter.
Hey.
Are you still interested in this?
Try to get answers from people.
Try to get an understanding.
The more you know, the better profile you canbuild on that person.
Right?
Find out why.
That that that's what I'd say.
Hey.
Are you still interested, should we close thebook on this?
(25:31):
And, you know, and then you can revisit it, youknow, six months down the line.
What are the signals that you look for whendetermining whether to stop following up or
letting potential clients go?
I'd say multiple proposals.
That's usually a big red flag for me.
So we'll send a proposal, and then they'll askfor a proposal for a different set of services.
And then we'll send it, and then a few monthslater, they'll ask for another.
(25:55):
You know, there's only I have a rule.
Like, if we've issued you three proposals, youknow, three strikes and out.
That that's really it.
Right?
Somebody with intent to buy is ready to buyusually.
And if they don't have intent to buy at themoment, you know, find out when they may have
intent to buy.
The other thing that's really important,especially in b to b businesses, is
relationships.
(26:16):
How do you approach not only getting the sale,but also maintaining those relationships and
keeping them strong over long periods of time?
It's hard.
It's hard.
Right?
Because as a business owner, you're focused onprofit and loss.
Right?
You have responsibility to your staff, to yourfamily, to yourself to scale and grow your
business.
But at the same time, so do your clientele.
And it's not always rosy when running anagency.
(26:37):
In fact, most of the time, it's not.
Every day, there's gonna be a problem.
Every day, there's gonna be unhappy client.
And they're most of the time not unhappy withthe work you're doing.
They're just unhappy with their runningbusinesses too, and they had their unhappy
thing that happened that day, their theirhurdle that they're dealing with.
Try to understand them.
Right?
You guys are both in the same space.
You're both growing businesses.
(26:57):
Bond on that.
Grow on that.
Ask them what's going on.
Is it a cash flow issue?
Is it a runway issue?
It usually has something to do with that.
Or and you at that point, you could decide,okay.
Let's pivot.
Let's pivot.
You you know, you need to raise more money.
Let's pivot to hitting specific goals that cango allow you to go out and raise another round
versus continuing on the same course.
(27:19):
Right?
Startups need to pivot.
You need to pivot too with your founder asopposed to staying in the course.
The client will begrudgingly pay you, and thensix months down the line, they end up with the
money they need.
And you may have delivered results on papers,the impressions on paper, their follower
account grew, whatever it is, whatever thisspecific KPI is, but they're now out of money,
Right?
And because you never asked the rightquestions.
(27:41):
Another way that outside of partnerships thatyou've talked about on how to grow and scale
agencies is through white labeling, which youjust told me
about recently.
How does that work?
So I always say agencies should be profitablefrom day one, and it's very easy to do that.
So it's kind of goes by the the freelancer, youknow, why I was a little bit I pushed back a
(28:04):
little bit on you on freelancers is finding avendor is always a good move.
So let's say you wanna start a developmentagency or a PPC agency.
Right?
You you, in the case of development agency, arereally good at design.
You're really good at managing projects.
You have a lot of great ideas and vision.
That's your IP.
Right?
But at the end of the day, you can't justdesign an app.
(28:25):
You need to develop it too.
So my recommendation to most entrepreneurs iswhatever your strength is, great.
You can do that.
Right?
And then you'll scale, and you'll bring onother designers or freelancers along with that.
But whatever is not your strength, whatever ismore complementary or supplementary, bring on
vendors to do that.
They have the processes in place.
(28:45):
Right?
There's so so many vendors out there in thecase of development.
And again, finding them is not easy, but alwayswork on referrals.
Never reach out to a vendor offhand because,again, you could get burned that realm as well.
The agencies can get burned too.
So find you know, ask another agency, hey.
Who do you use for your iOS development?
(29:07):
Who do you use for your content production?
And rely on them.
They have the processes in place.
You're still doing the, you know, You're stilldictating.
You're still doing the project management, butthis allows you to scale because you have the
resources.
You could take on larger project loads, andthen you could hire more people to manage that
vendor.
In a form of vertical integration, you bring onmore and more individuals to manage a vendor
(29:28):
and then eventually start to replace thevendor.
As we zoom out a little bit, how does it feelto be making hundreds of thousands of dollars
per month in your twenties?
I was just telling a founder, he was like, am Idoing good?
Am I doing okay?
I'm like, you're doing fantastic.
A year and a half ago, you didn't haveanything.
Right?
He had an idea.
(29:49):
Right?
And a few months later, he had a pitch deck anda business plan.
A few months after that, he raised $750,000 andhad an MVP.
And then a few months after that, he launchedthat MVP and had 8,000 users within a few
months.
And now he's just about to go out and generaterevenue.
And at every single juncture, he felt like hewas behind.
(30:11):
It never feels real no matter what you're doingbecause you're always looking forward.
Right?
You kind of get used to, get comfortable inwhere you are now, and it becomes the previous
step, you know, and you have and that's whatdrives us.
That's what allows us to build big corporationsand, you know, big grand ideas.
That's actually very true because about, like,six to twelve months ago, was like, oh, if we
(30:32):
could just get to 10 k a month, that that wouldbe great.
That would be great.
So we get to 10.
I was like, well, actually, you know what?
20 would probably be a more comfortable number.
We get to 20, and and then I'm like, you knowwhat?
Maybe 50 to a hundred would be a morecomfortable number.
And then I think every single time, I thinkit's just gonna keep going up considering this
pattern.
I think it's a good thing because it alwayspushes you to do more.
(30:53):
But I think if somebody were to ask me thatquestion, I'd be like, I don't know.
I feel like I'm in the weeds.
You're killing it, Seamus.
But I and listen, it's important to go it'slisten.
Self self critique is great.
It helps you grow as an individual, and it alsohelps you grow your business, but sometimes
it's good to celebrate your success.
And, yes, usually after you celebrate success,something goes wrong.
Every time.
But, again, that's part of the it's part ofthe, you know, part of the journey.
(31:16):
I you know, I'll I'll sometimes be in myoffice, and I'll sit, and I'll close my eyes,
and I'll be like, what would I think five yearsago?
Like, I'm in my office.
Have an office.
There's people working here.
I have clientele.
I'm working with large brands.
I'm working with cool startups.
It's awesome.
You know?
And, like, yeah, it's it's it's it's like whenyou're sitting in, you know, premium economy,
like, you know, you wish you're sitting inbusiness, and you're in business.
(31:36):
You wish you're sitting in first.
It's just the way our brains work.
You know?
Yeah.
A %.
Keeps us competitive.
Yes.
For somebody who might wanna start a businesstoday, and let's say all they have is a laptop
and an Internet connection, what should they goout
and do?
Find the client.
That's the first step.
Find the client.
Well, decide how you're going to service them.
(31:58):
Let's say you want to start a business thatdoes, I don't know, AI implementation.
Right?
Find a business.
Like, hey, Your business can benefit from AIautomation or AI agent or a new tool, new
vertical, and close a contract.
And the best thing about running an agency isyou get that money up front.
(32:18):
Right?
So you can structure your contracts 25%, fifty%, seventy five % up I wouldn't recommend to
then go and start looking for the team.
Doesn't cost anything to line up a team.
Line up the resources, line up the ability toexecute, and then go out, seek out the client,
make sure you have a proper landing page, whichcan be built on no code development tools,
(32:41):
which is really easy to do, templatize, there'sAI tools that can do it for you.
And start building.
Start building.
Build case studies.
And one thing that can really help you withleveraging vendors is you can also utilize
studies, their casework.
Since they're going to be doing thefulfillment, you can now go to a larger company
or a startup and be like, hey, what's your pastwork?
Well, here's what my team has done.
(33:02):
Gives you that sense of credibility, andcredibility is extremely important.
Speaking of AI, what are the how shouldfounders leverage AI in marketing, and what are
the wrong ways to implement it, and what wouldbe the the right ways to implement it?
Well, I've kind of seen two type of agencyowners.
I I've sat I've with some larger agencies, andtheir head's completely in the sand.
(33:26):
They're like, AI can't do what I can do.
It can.
It can do what you can do, and it can do itbetter.
But it's important to know that AI is not goingto replace the agency.
It's going to be replaced by people using AI.
It's like kind of QuickBooks.
QuickBooks didn't replace bookkeepers.
Now bookkeepers are using QuickBooks, and theones that aren't are not going to have
business.
I'm sure there's other QuickBooks, so I mean,not using any tools.
(33:49):
Utilize tools.
Right?
Keep experimenting tools.
Every agency today should figure out how theycan move quicker with AI tools, whether it's
faster output on SEO, faster output oncreative, menial tasks, you know, generating
emails and templates.
You can build proposals faster now.
It doesn't necessarily have to be I'm doing mywebsite design in AI.
(34:10):
It could just mean that we're generatinglanding page copy or ideating on brand names
with AI.
We at Osmos are building an internal AI toolthat we're gonna I love services, but my dream
is to go back into product.
But, yeah, building internal tools that you canthen automate certain parts of your business.
Yeah.
(34:30):
One of the things that I've learned about theright way to implement AI is a lot of people
will be like, okay, we're gonna use AI in ourbusiness.
And they immediately take, like, the generalpurpose model and immediately try to apply it
to what they're doing.
Like, that's the complete wrong way to do it.
Like, if really wanna do it and you want it towork and actually develop that moat, the way I
(34:51):
think about it is like, okay, let's take a stepback.
Let's pretend this AI was actually a human.
How would you train the person on your team todo this task?
Now just use that same training process and tryto train the AI.
Like, we use it a lot with copywriting becauseit can be really good.
Not all the way there, but it probably getslike 90% of the way there.
So iterating.
Yeah.
And it's it also tells you it gives you a lotof feedback indirectly on your training process
(35:17):
too.
Because if an AI is missing something andyou're like, okay, you wrote this post, but I
really wanted it to look more like this, thenyou actually can clarify a lot of your training
in SOPs.
And it's one of the things that I've noticed islike, okay.
If you're gonna train a person, try to usesimilar training processes and procedures to
train the AI, and then you're also able to todetermine where your weak points are in that
(35:41):
training.
Yeah.
That's great advice.
Be AI enabled.
Don't be AI.
Right?
Exactly.
Like, you know, use it to get to where you weregoing anyway faster.
Don't, like, send them the PowerPoint template.
Right?
Like, lot of people tend to do that.
Like, I could look at something and be like andit looks it looks lazy.
Right?
They're you know, just generated it with theDolly or, you know, ChatGPT.
(36:03):
And to wrap it up, a couple of closingquestions.
What's the best investment you've ever made?
The best investment I ever made is in pickingthe right partner.
So a lot of founders, and I see this all thetime, will want to bring their friends along
for the ride, kind of like in an entouragesituation.
Like, oh, we're going to bring our friends in.
(36:24):
It usually ends badly.
I've mediated a lot of divorces, I like to say.
Don't bring your friends into business.
Find your friends in business.
Right?
Like, my Devin, my business partner Devin,Matan, some of the people I work with are some
of my best friends now.
And finding the right partners that are out foryour best interests, shared interests to grow
(36:47):
together is the single best investment you canmake.
What's your greatest failure and what did youlearn from it?
My greatest failure.
My greatest failure thus far was my, obviously,my my first company.
I focused too much on product.
(37:07):
Right?
Like, building a perfect product seems great.
And I see this with clientele.
They'll come to me and be like, we wanna looklike Uber.
We wanna look like TikTok.
We want to look like Perplexity.
We want to look like every hot start up,Gemini, you you can imagine.
And I'll say, great, but you have to get therefirst.
(37:27):
Right?
So I always challenge everybody.
Go to the Wayback Machine and look at the firstversion of Waze.
Look at the first version of Snapchat.
Wasn't even called Snapchat.
It was called peekaboo.
And see what they looked like.
They were true MVPs.
They looked very, very scrappy.
My big mistake was focusing on trying to buildas much as I can, obsessing over product.
(37:47):
And people launch products with thousands offeatures, and it's like starting a show with a
thousand main characters.
People need to fall in love with your productfirst, and then you learn so much from your
audience.
Don't limit your audience to the four people inthe room.
And what do you think is the worst piece ofadvice you've ever received?
(38:09):
Oh, don't worry about the business model.
Don't worry about how you're going to makemoney.
And I'm sure a lot of founders listening tothis have heard that piece of advice.
You need to worry about that.
That's what's gonna separate you.
That's gonna that's what's gonna protect you asa legitimate business.
Right?
Focusing on how to make money, you know, tosolve the problem that you're looking or, you
know, making money from solving the problemthat you're looking to solve.
(38:31):
And what's one rule you live by that mostpeople don't?
One rule I live by that most people don't.
What what what would be an example of that?
I'll give you a good one.
(38:51):
So I was meeting with this guy who's 17.
He runs this app called Kaliai.
Mhmm.
They do 20,000,000 a year in revenue, and Iasked him the same question.
And he's from Long Island.
We're doing the interview in Soho.
He's like, okay.
So I get onto this get on I get on the trainfrom Long Island.
Mhmm.
And as I'm entering, I think, Grand Central,there's a few different doors that I could go
(39:15):
through.
And I purposely picked everyone's going to theright hand door, quickest way to get out of
station.
I purposely picked the farthest door just toreinforce into myself that I have complete
control over my life and I'm not living in,like, a matrix I love that.
And I have free will.
And he says he does these, like, microdecisions all the time.
Like, maybe if there was a route to get towhere he wanted to go, instead of taking the
(39:37):
straight route or the most efficient route,sometimes he'll just randomly change his
direction just to reinstill in his brain thathe has complete control and free will over his
life.
So, yeah, so the one rule I live by, and it'ssomething that a good mentor of mine, he exited
a company for over a hundred million dollars,and he told me I was like, how did you do that?
How did you pull that off?
He's like, become a master.
(39:59):
Enjoy.
Become the best at uncomfortable situations.
A lot of people try to avoid uncomfortablesituations.
They don't go in head first.
They figure out a way to plan for it.
Become the best at uncomfortable situations.
In a situation where you feel like you have tohave a tough conversation or you want somebody
else, you want to delegate that, jump into it.
Do it.
And if you can master being uncomfortable,nothing could faze you and you can break every
(40:26):
barrier.
How do you master that?
Do it a lot.
Do it a lot.
Go into it.
Be prepared for backlash.
Just, yeah, people also, another thing, peopleeverybody keeps on asking permission.
I have so many founders that like, should I dothis?
Should I do that?
What if this happens?
Or, you know, there's a ticketing app, and he'slike, there's so many regulatory things around
(40:46):
ticketing.
And if you look at companies like Airbnb andUber, those are pretty crazy concepts.
Right?
You're allowing somebody into your car.
You're allowing somebody into your house.
You have to just ask forgiveness as a founder.
You have to just keep on going.
As long as you're not breaking the law, don'task other And it goes down to just also don't
ask other people what they think, especiallynon entrepreneurs, what they think about what
(41:07):
you're doing because you're going to get ananswer that you don't want to hear, right?
You're going to get an answer from people who,if they tell you that what you're doing is
right, they're kind of questioning their wholeidentity.
So, you know?
I get that a lot with people who aren'tentrepreneurs, and I think early on I would be
more cognizant of other people or try tounderstand like what other people thought about
(41:29):
what I do.
And realize entrepreneurs always superrelatable, like always able to relate very
easy.
And then people who were not entrepreneurs ornever really went down that path, it's like
nothing made sense.
And as much as I tried to make it make sense,just never could connect the dots.
And then I think at that point I was like,there's no point in trying to convince them,
try to convince the unconvincible.
(41:50):
So last question.
If I switch you over a phone and you could callyour 20 year old self, would you call?
And if so, what would you say?
I wouldn't call.
I wouldn't call.
The reason why is because I needed toexperience all my failures to get to where I
am.
Failure is IP.
(42:10):
It's your intellectual property.
What you know and other people don't is whatsets you apart.
That's a great way to end it.
Well, first off, thanks, Eli, for taking
this you so much for having me.
This has been a lot of fun.
Greatly appreciate it.
We'll have a link to Osmos in the episodedescription down below.
So if any founders are looking for any of theareas that they have expertise in, go check it
out, and thanks for joining.
Awesome.
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