Andrew: Hey, they’re freedom fighter. You know, usually Kenny, I got to tell you, usually when I say freedom fighters to my audience, it’s because I do believe that the entrepreneurs that I’m talking to are creating a sense of freedom for their customers, for the people who work for them. And I know it because I lived in, in south America when I started doing.
Well, when I really got serious about it, and I saw how many entrepreneurs there were looking towards the tech industry to save them, save them from a country that wouldn’t allow them to exchange money with other countries, save them from places without enough opportunity. Any anyway, I feel like this story.
Yes. It’s about freedom for other people, but it’s like, well, we’re going to tell is the story of freedom for the man, for the entrepreneur, for the man in the ring for you. And the reason I bring that up is I feel like you downplay it a little bit of your success at the end of your conversation with our producer.
Let, let me read what she wrote about your conversation. You said to her, I do things that are safe. I may not be creating anything. That’s earth shattering. It’s small, but I’m still creating value, dude. You definitely are creating that. And the fact that you’ve created something for yourself, that’s giving you the sense of freedom to put this smile that I see on your face and let you wear that, that friends, hat that I see all the time.
That’s exciting. All right. Let me introduce people to you, Kenny Schumacher. Quite a couple of businesses that we’re going to talk about here. One of them that we’ll probably spend the most time is called Della sign. It’s uh, frankly, it’s like a lot of other businesses. I don’t think he invented this model, but the way the model works is you pay him a monthly fee and then you start demanding whatever design you need and his team would design this stuff for you.
Right? You need a new cover for your blog posts. You go to them, they created animated. Even for you, you put it on your site, then you ask for the next thing and you asked for the next thing, and there’s a nice little monthly service that he built for himself. And then he sold the business and now he’s investing and he’s got another business that he’s going to do a similar thing to.
I like it. I want to find out how he got here. I want to find out what other businesses he thinks his method could be applied to. And I know that you’re taking it to a new business, um, and we can do it all. Thanks to two phenomenal sponsors that are backing me. And I love that they’re backing me. The first is HostGator for hosting websites.
I’ll tell you later why you should go use them. And the second is a company that I should have followed up with them after they bought ads with me earlier in the year, because they finally looked at their numbers and they said, Andrew you’re people are signing up to use email marketing with us. We should have bought more ads.
And so they bought a bunch of ads from me and you’ll hear from them. Um, but I’ll tell you, now it’s send in blue for sending out email and we’ll talk about why that’s a good email marketing company in a bit, but first Kenny, good to have your man.
Kenny: Yeah, thanks So much, Andrew. It’s a pleasure to be.
Andrew: So TeleSign like delegate, delegate your design work. How much money did you, did you sell the company for.
Kenny: Yeah, I sold it for, uh, close to seven figures. I’ll say. Yeah. My goal with this was kind of to have a safety net that I could then use to do further investments, uh, kind of expand my reach, expand my business reach. So, uh, that definitely achieved that for me.
Andrew: I wonder why he even sold it at all. It, it was cranking, right? It made sense.
Kenny: Yeah. A lot of people ask me that, like, why would you sell the business? It was growing. It was doing pretty well. It was very passive. So all those things are true. But for me, I had, I guess I had several goals that I wanted to achieve. Uh, one of those goals was to kind of have a safety net, um, you know, have passive income to rely on in the future so that I could focus on other businesses.
And even if those businesses didn’t work out super well, I’d still have that safety net that I could rely on for, you know, for my longevity. Um, the other thing that is maybe more relevant to lots of, I guess you’d say small business owners is that, um, I was always thinking about the business. Uh,
even if I wasn’t actually actively worked on the business, I was always thinking about the business.
I was only spending maybe about two hours per day, probably less than that, uh, on average day on the business, but I was always mentally thinking about the business, you know, before I went to sleep for hours, you know, hanging out with friends, even when hanging out with friends, I think about the business things that could go.
Andrew: even though it was, it was two hours of work a day, but you would spend time thinking about it for what, what was on your mind with
Kenny: Yeah, I guess I’m the kind of person that always tries to think of how I can improve things. Uh, I’m always the kind of person that may be worries too much to, uh, thinking what if something went wrong. So, uh, all those things kinda kinda kept me up at night and, uh, that was one thing that really added stress to my life.
And I figured if I could then release this business and focus on other things, I would have so much more mental clarity, so much more mental energy to focus on, you know, my life, first of all, as well as other businesses.
Andrew: Did you also have this fear or did you have this fear of not having enough money? And now that you’ve got some money in the bank that, that went away?
Kenny: Yeah.
So that was a great reason why to sell because just having that clarity, having that confidence that, okay, you know, worst case, everything fails in the future, but I still have this a pretty big nest egg. And, you know, I’m getting like interest income, dividend income, you know, my investments growing over time.
So I felt pretty
Andrew: I want to find out what you invested in you. Can I just say that you got roughly a million dollars that you got to invest? Am I right?
Kenny: that’s right?
I’ve been fortunate enough to have like a lot of other assets to you from other pretty good investments, but yeah, from this sale is about yeah. 72.
Andrew: Okay. So it’s about that. And we’ll talk about the other businesses that you, that you had and where else you’ve saved your money, but what are you investing it in?
Kenny: Yeah. So a lot of things really, uh, of course, you know, the, the typical standard ones like stocks and, You know, all that kind of stuff and, and crypto too. But one of the big things I’m pretty excited about is real estate. I have, uh, three rental properties actually out of state investment properties, as well as an apartment complex.
I’m invest into a so real estate is pretty huge.
Andrew: You got three houses and an apartment complex with less than a million dollars to put down payment.
Kenny: So apartment complex, I’m one of a few investors, but for the homes, yes, I’m a single owner. Uh, so I live in California, San Jose, California, pretty expensive place. So I’m not investing here, but I am investing in Alabama actually, which is interesting enough has lots of connotations, but, uh, from a rental perspective, it’s a pretty huge.
Andrew: Uh, you from Alabama.
Kenny: No, I’ve never been to Alabama.
Andrew: So we know what we can’t find a place to. We have this ideal place that Olivia and I are looking for here in Austin, Texas, it would be a ranch. We can have some animals, but I also need to be close to the city so I can go and hang out with friends and it needs to look good because my wife is into the design of the place.
And it’s a pain in the ass. Let’s thinking though, why don’t we just get a. Then the inexpensive place in the city and then rent it out. We’ll live in it for six months while we look for a place. So we don’t have to bounce from Airbnb to Airbnb and then we’ll rent it out. But then I thought, do I need the headache of dealing with tenants?
And if we decide tomorrow that we want to go live back in California, am I going to be able to do this remotely? How are you doing all that? Is it a lot of headache with tenants? Is it, uh, is it tough remote?
Kenny: Yeah. So I’m all about passive income and that’s kinda how I view real estate. I don’t want to like actively spend time on it. I don’t want to have to worry about tenants. Don’t have to worry about all that kind of stuff. So I have a property manager, they handle all that. For me, it’s a very, very simple for me.
I’ve I’ve maybe spent not even exaggerating. I’ve maybe spent like three hours, four hours in total, like over the entire year on the three properties that I have. So it’s very passive.
Andrew: And you haven’t had, I guess, an issue where something. Does the damage to the building or where in the middle of the night they, they break their trash compactor and then you’ve got to pay for it.
Kenny: So I’ve had some, uh, some fixes that had to be done. Uh, nothing too significant, nothing too substantial, but you know, fortunately having the property manager in place, they handle all that for me. They of course screen the tenants to make sure there’s. You know, maybe more sketchy or tenants that are getting into our property.
So all that, you know, having an expert in place really makes things a passive and, you know, it’s free of mind for me.
Andrew: Right. That makes sense. So are you, how much of a down payment are you putting down on this stuff? I know we should get into the tech stuff. That’s where the that’s where you make your money. This is where you’re investing it, but I’d like to see what people are up to. How much, uh, how much of a down payment are
Kenny: Yeah, happy to share. So the first property I got was $140,000 in Huntsville, Alabama down payment was 20%.
Andrew: that’s what it costs to buy a place.
Kenny: So pretty insane. If you’re used to, you know, west coast, east coast home prices, it’s a very, very lower, very, very much lower than like, you know, any typical property in the U S.
Andrew: Did. So I was talking with Sam Parr from the hustle last night, um, over dinner because we’re both from San Francisco and now we’re here in Austin and he says, things are really cheap. And I say, I know I found a place for seven 50. It looks really beautiful, all kinds of stuff going for it. And you’re showing me that seven 50 is even expensive.
So one 50 you’re putting 20% down. Okay. And then what do you get? What type of people do you get? Who, who rent a place that costs you one 50? Is it
Kenny: Yeah. Uh,
Andrew: like blue collar workers?
Kenny: so it’s, it’s surprising, but Huntsville where I’m investing is actually seen as like one of the fastest growing tech towns in the U S uh, not just in Alabama, but, uh, lots of like tech companies are moving there. You know, it’s kind of known as like the, the space town, rocket town, you know, like NASA in there.
Uh, you know, Amazon space companies, their Facebook’s data centers moving there. So lots of tech companies and investment is moving into there. So the tenants are, you know, largely tech people. Uh, of course you’ve got lots of blue collar people there as well, but you know, pretty, relatively high income earners compared to what you’d expect for a, a one 50 K.
Andrew: All right, so you’re putting up $38,000, right? It, I have $28,000. Excuse me, then is a cashflow positive after that, after paying the mortgage.
Kenny: Yeah, that’s right. So I’m getting about, so I follow the 1% role, which is pretty much like the monthly rent you receive should be about 1% of the home purchase price. So for that property, it’s around like 1400 per month in rent on collecting the mortgage interest tax, all that kind of stuff. Is it. Uh, you know, maybe out half of that, to be honest.
So it’s about like 400, 500 or so per month that I’m netting cashflow. It doesn’t include like, you know, repairs And things like that as they come, but you can average around like 400 to $500 of positive cashflow per month from that one investment. So pretty good from a percentage
Andrew: finding the places
Kenny: Yeah. So I’m just a, I have a realtor there.
I have a team that are actually that I work with. So realtor, property manager, all those kinds of people that helped me find properties. I do kind of the heavy lifting of finding the properties, but I’m not doing anything too special. I’m not like, you know, cold calling people to, to see if they want to sell me their home.
It’s just the kind of traditional looking at listings, looking with the realtor, that kind of stuff, to find the properties, all of them.
Andrew: And he’s doing it all on Zillow, and then they take the phone around and they show you the, what the place looks
Kenny: Yup. Yeah. FaceTime sometimes, although recently I’ve, haven’t really had the need to do that. I just kind of like.
trust my realtor and property manager because I’ve worked with them for several years now. But when I was first starting out, yeah, I did a lot of FaceTiming, a lot of, a lot of that stuff to kind of be there.
Andrew: What’s the crypto stuff that you’re investing
Kenny: Pretty heavily involved in.
a Bitcoin Ethereum. Uh, nothing too crazy. I know there’s lots of like better returns out there in terms of like maybe your risk allocation, but yeah, I’m pretty heavy on like Bitcoin and Ethereum primarily.
Andrew: I’m assuming you’re, you’re buying them, huddling them and then lending them out. So you get a little bit extra. Is that
Kenny: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right?
Andrew: That seems like the, the play. Anything else for stocks? What are you doing? SNP or you’re buying
Kenny: Yeah, actually, a lot of tech stocks, uh, you know, a lot of S and P as well, but, uh, you know, there’s a couple of tech stocks that kind of just feel a little more confident long-term uh, Google was one of them. Uh, Amazon hasn’t doing super well recently, but Amazon is one of them too, but yeah, nothing too risky in terms of like, I don’t really go for like the main stocks or all those, although you can make lots of money off that, but I guess, uh, you know, not that I’ve like made like many, many millions, but I am kind of like, I guess more.
Risk prone. I don’t want to lose it all. So I’m doing like relatively more conservative, safer investments. Although that’s in the context of still, you know, pretty good growth at least, you know, 10%, 20% per year. So, uh, Yeah,
That’s, that’s.
Andrew: the company I think is just under appreciated is Spotify. And the only reason I think that is because it’s so highly represented in my life. I know as a podcaster and as a podcast fan, they have the best podcast experience in. Like in the universal sense that they will work with every app that you have.
I have a TV in the Airbnb. We never had TVs before. Um, because I’m against having that distraction, but the fricking TV takes Spotify. Our speakers play Spotify. My watch plays Spotify. It’s like everything plays Spotify. And then they’re hitting me with all these ads with their podcasts. And of course you listen to the ads in the podcast because that’s part of the experience.
And I feel like they’re, they’re underappreciated. All right. Um, so it’s good to have worked this hard. I know you consider yourself. I don’t know why you consider yourself lazy. Why do you, why don’t you tell me before we got started? I’m just the lazy guy.
Kenny: Well, uh, maybe I’m not lazy now, but at least, uh, early on in my career, well, not in my career, but early on in my, in my life, I was definitely, uh, my parents thought I was pretty lazy. Uh, I mean, I was like pretty decent at the things I did, but I kind of give up pretty, pretty early, like soccer. I was pretty competitive, pretty good at, But I kind of got overwhelmed by that.
I kind of quit. Uh, you know, I like a lot of my teammates. Uh, well, a lot of my teammates from then, or now, like, you know, college soccer people, some of them played professionally too. So that was potentially some I could have done in the past, but I didn’t really look into too much, but I was playing lots of video games.
I spent lots of time doing that, uh, stereotypical.
Andrew: But when you’re playing video games, hang on a second. When you were playing video games, though, you weren’t trying to get more points. You were trying to get rich in the video game.
Kenny: Yeah, that was always fun for me. I, yeah, the game that I love playing as a kid was called maple story, some online multiplayer type game. And, you know, the, the main point or the purpose of the game for most people was to, you know, beat monsters and level up your character and get stronger. And, and that was All fun too.
But one aspect that was kind of a side aspect was, you know, collecting the in game currency. And, uh, you know, becoming rich on the game. So that was always the most fun for me. I, I just love like, you know, trying to kind of hustle that way, get items. So items, you know, work with people to get, to get more money.
That was always so much fun for me.
Andrew: All right. What was PA crunch and what the hell is.
Kenny: Yeah. So PA crunched a good question on the name. It was a personal assistant crunch. Uh, so obviously I was never very good at making names. Uh, PA crunch wasn’t maybe.
Andrew: I dunno. I like Della
Kenny: Yeah, but my girlfriend actually came up with that name. So I can’t take too much credit for that.
Andrew: Okay. So PA sign was, was what? Personal assistant? A PA crunch was personal assistant crunch. So the idea was senior year of college, you were going to create a personal assistance or.
Kenny: That’s how it kind of started out as a kind of a way for people to offload, you know, maybe their, Uh, design tasks, the marketing tasks, all kinds of things. That’s kind of how it started out. I realized that I wasn’t super good at doing all those kinds of things. So I focused on what I was best at which at the time was Instagram marketing and that’s kind of what the service
Andrew: well, let’s pause for a second. So it wasn’t going to be every kind of personal assistant service. It was just going to be around this design field. Right. But within design and tell me if I’m
Kenny: Yeah. So that’s mostly, that’s how I started out, but I realized I didn’t really, I wasn’t at the time super great at making graphics and delegating that aspect. So I focused on what I was really good at at the time, which was Instagram marketing. I’m not the content creation, But,
more so like the outreach and the engagement.
Andrew: um, wait, Kenny, I’m intentionally I’m intentionally slowing you down because that realization was a big one. It seems to me, you said we’re going to do. Consulting work. It was the same kind of stuff that everyone does will not know subscription. Or was it a subscription in the
Kenny: Uh,
Andrew: No subscriptions.
It was just like the same kind of thing that any kid would start out doing. I’ll build your website for you. I’ll do design work for you, right. Except you had bigger aspirations. And then the reason that I want to pause is you had five clients and then you had almost like a breaking point. You couldn’t handle it.
Y, and, and then I want to know how you got to the realization of you’re shifting away from this, everything to the focus on Instagram, but what was going on in your life that gave you this breaking point?
Kenny: Yeah. So like you mentioned, when I was starting, I was doing everything and that was, that was fine enough to kind of get me by in college. And I was making a little bit of money, uh, nothing too crazy, but enough, but I was also spending, you know, all of my free time on this business, I was doing everything from responding to emails, to managing.
Customers managing our designers, managing our team, all that was super stressful and it was very unfocused. So, um, I had the realization when I became. Uh, well, it’s kind of a long story, but I eventually was able to get to a point?
where I was managing lots of different Instagram accounts. And I became very good at that one process of kind of interacting with client accounts and doing all that.
And I realized that, Hey, if I could just focus on this, I could then delegate this to people that I hire. And instead of training them to do every single thing, I could just train them, do this one task, which I was already very good. Um, and that would make it so much, so much easier for me. So much more manageable for me to just train people to that one specific task and then scale it operation.
I couldn’t really scale the business that did everything because I mean, how would I even do that? That’d be too overwhelming for me, especially as like, as a college student. So by focusing on this one aspect that I was already good at, I could then make people that I hired the best at that task and make our company the best at that task.
Andrew: What were you doing on Instagram
Kenny: Yeah. So.
Andrew: when you were doing it yourself?
Kenny: When I was doing it myself, I was using our clients or my clients accounts to find their target audience interact with their target audience, by commenting on their photos, liking their photos, falling. Uh, direct messaging them, uh, doing things that would bring them traffic back to our client’s page.
So for example, you can maybe have a restaurant in Los Angeles and your target audience would be, you know, foodies in Los Angeles, people posting food photos, uh, and the such in Los Angeles. So you can find these people based on the hashtags they use based on the people that are following the locations are tapping into and then interacting with these people, Uh,
that would then bring targeted traffic back to that page.
Because if you know, if I was in Los Angeles and I saw that some Los Angeles. Followed me and liked my photos. I would probably check them out and then I’d see, Hey, this is a restaurant that’s close by me. It looks pretty good food. I’m going to check it out. Um, so that’s pretty much what we did in nutshell for our clients.
Andrew: and then what was your process for getting.
Kenny: Yeah. A lot of ads, initially, a lot of referrals as well, too. I think by the end we had around. Yeah, I think around like 600 clients or so for that business, uh, it was a relatively, pretty low monthly rate for client, but, uh, yeah, I think we had at least 600 clients for that, about four outsource people in the team handling all the operations too.
I was spending maybe about a couple of hours per month on that business towards the end.
Andrew: Would you tell me a little bit more about the process for getting clients? Like once you had your PR your business? And the model you had to get more, say restaurants, getting restaurants to even pay attention to you as really challenging. What did you do? Or was it easier because they were on Instagram already.
And you could say, look, this is what I did for another restaurant. I could do it for you.
Kenny: Yeah, that was pretty much it. I mean, restaurants, weren’t a huge, a percentage of our customer base, but they were one aspect of them. A lot of them were like small business owners, people that are already on Instagram And knew the power of Instagram. so actually just using our own service for ourselves was pretty significant because they could see that, you know, obviously if they found us through Instagram, through our methods, they could realize that that would work for their clients as well.
So it was a pretty easy sell for.
Andrew: And so it was just messaging them on Instagram, talking to them, closing. And then do you, are you the type of person, just for people who are listening you’re nodding, this is basically the, the model. Are you the type of person who is very quick to create playbooks? So you start to document what you did and start you did.
Kenny: Exactly. Yes.
Andrew: What was that documentation process like back
Kenny: Yeah.
Andrew: when you were doing the Instagram
Kenny: Yeah. I mean, like, it was all about trying to separate myself from the business?
That’s the reason why I would create these documentations because I didn’t want to spend, you know, eight plus hours per day, doing everything, repeating myself, training these people to do these things. So the documentation process was really just kind of thinking about what I would be doing and what I would be repeating.
And then putting that into texts, pretty dense instructions or video that can then be repeated by someone else besides me.
Andrew: okay. And then how’d you hire?
Kenny: Yeah. So I hired,
Andrew: that was a
Kenny: yeah. I mean, it’s definitely a challenge.
for people that are inexperienced to hiring, but I hired all, uh, people, online, people in the Philippines. I use, you know, various job platforms for that. Um, but I’ve worked with people in the Philippines for, um, at least like seven years now. So I have some experience to me.
Andrew: Okay, now you did, but back then you were making mistakes. Tell me about some of the mistakes you made in the early hires.
Kenny: Yeah.
Uh, I remember one of the first hires that I had, uh, I, I thought that she was really great and she’s a great person, definitely, but she wasn’t a great fit for a company. And because I was an experienced, um, I kind of put up with those, uh, those mismatches. So. It was kind of a nightmare, to be honest, she would sometimes not show up for work.
I would have to cover her shifts. Uh, she would have some excuses and maybe some of them are true. Maybe some of them weren’t true, but because I was so new to my entrepreneurial journey, I kind of put up with that, thinking that if I got rid of her, I wouldn’t have to do all that work. And that would be so stressful for me.
So I think it was probably the. A year or so that I put up with that, which sounds crazy, like looking back at it, but, you know, I was always so stressed out. What if she didn’t show up for a shift and what if she like logs off early and like, no, one’s covering the, all the work that needs to be done. And that was always on my mind.
Um, but I was thinking, you know, I can’t get rid of her because she’s, you know, she’s doing pretty good work when she’s there. And like, you know, if I got rid of her, I would now have an extra, like six hours of work per day, at least to handle. So to me, that was like the biggest mistake was like, Removing people that were a hindrance to my success early on.
Andrew: And you didn’t have enough money. I’m assuming to hire an extra person to double up while you were transitioning her
Kenny: Not so much. I definitely could have like managed I’m sure. But like, I was always had that mindset of, okay. I gotta maximize my profits. I got to maximize my efficiency and I didn’t see that happening by moving her. Of course that was the correct play. But you know, inexperienced me back then. I just couldn’t see.
Andrew: All right, Kenny, I’m gonna talk to you about my first sponsor. It’s a company called send in blue for email marketing. And when I say send in blue, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind.
Kenny: Uh, I guess good sounding rates would be one thing.
Andrew: Uh, if you were open with me, my guess is that you’d have the same thought that I had, which is who send him what I thought there’s like MailChimp and there’s convert kit, and I’ll send them blue. I’ll tell you why it’s worked so well for my audience and why people have signed up. I used to give the whole list of features and it’s great.
They’ve got marketing automation. They’ve got everything that you need to track the people that are coming through, but here’s the thing that, that people loved. All the marketing automation tools without the ratcheting up of the price. It turns out, especially for people who manage lots of customers, email lists, when they sign up, they end up with a low price.
When they get really big, that price shoots up and they feel that there’s a lock-in and they can’t get away from this company. And now the company’s ratcheting up and ratcheting up the price. And meanwhile, the features are great, but they’re not. With send in blue. And this is what a lot of people have told me that they love about it.
The price starts out low and it continues to be low. It’s no ratcheting up. It’s the kind of thing that, especially if you’ve got lots of clients or if you’ve got a big email list yourself, you’re going to appreciate, so I’m going to let everyone who signs up right now. Try it out right now and give you a discount of what is it?
50% for three months on the premium. And frankly it’s already super low. I think that the reason that they’re even giving us a 50% offer only three months is because how do you reduce an already low price? Right. But they need it because otherwise, no one’s going to use my URL or my discount code, which means they can’t track it.
So they’re giving us a discount on their already discounted price, but what’s that noise in the background. Kenny,
Kenny: Yeah, that would be my bird, my parrot mango. She’s pretty excited about something.
Andrew: you’ve got a parrot in
Kenny: the other parent in the house. Yeah,
Andrew: It doesn’t drive you nuts.
Kenny: it can sometimes. Yeah.
Andrew: Did they give you any love or any affection or
Kenny: a sun conure and she’s actually very affectionate, very jealous to have other people, especially. So if she sees someone walking around and see someone outside moving, she’ll get a little threatened, like a guard dog, actually, as, as you would not expect a small little parrot to be.
Andrew: All right. I’ll close out the ad for send in blue by saying, if you want to get started with them right now, you can use the discount code Mixergy, or you can go to this URL, which is send in blue.com/mixergy checkout. They’ve got all the features that all the competitors have and then some, but they don’t have the bulky price that ratchets up after their, you know, like their initial discount look at how low it is.
And then boom, how do, how are we now paying tens of thousands of dollars on an email? Which is a thing. Kenny people have been doing it. All right. Let’s continue on with your story. So you built it up, you started hiring, you had a system. How much revenue did you get the business up
Kenny: Yeah, it was doing around 20 K monthly revenue. Uh, you had four full-time people on the team and then myself, uh, I think my net profit was per month around 8,000 ish, 10,000, this or so towards.
Andrew: Okay. Why did you sell that business?
Kenny: Yeah. So kind of like the design, a few reasons, one reasons that I was spending lots of time thinking about the business?
mental energy was kind of my, my big spending with this business. Uh,
the other thing was that I wasn’t sure the future of this business, the future viability of this business, um, there were lots of other businesses that did kind of similar things.
It wasn’t too unique in that sense. And there were lots of competitors. Um, so I, I was kind of concerned the long-term longevity of a business like this. Uh, plus towards the end, I was having trouble growing the business beyond what I was already doing. Um, it was doing around like 20 K per revenue. And that was, that was great.
Uh, but I was having trouble kind of reaching past that point. Other methods I would doing, wasn’t really working to get beyond that. And, uh, you know, like, like with Della zine, I figured that if I sold the business, I would get a decent chunk, especially at the time of. That I could then use to focus on other businesses.
And Velodyne actually was one that I was spending some time on, even before I sold PA crunch. So having that money would really provide that, uh, that comfortability to pursue design full time and focus my efforts on that,
Andrew: PA crunch sold for how much?
Kenny: uh, that was around 300,000
Andrew: 300,000 you invested it also,
Kenny: Yeah. I invested that into crypto and to stocks and to Dell design, partially as well too. And real estate is.
Andrew: apart from the Delta sign, what would you say now? The 300 K is worth today.
Kenny: Uh, So I put yeah, about like 70 K of that into Bitcoin at the time. And I think that was when Bitcoin was, I mean, so my average Bitcoin price is around like 10,000. And I think at the time that was maybe around
Andrew: you find that
Kenny: maybe around like 8,000 ish or so per Bitcoin. So yeah, that one did about, I don’t know, like a times seven or so times they had, I
Andrew: Actually six X it’s more. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Wow. So for a guy who doesn’t like risk Bitcoin seemed like a risky investment.
Kenny: Yeah, I guess you could say that, uh, I was always pretty confident in Bitcoin, you know, one of my best friends in college and still best friend now, he was always like all in on crypto. He was always telling me about it, you know, even when it was like, you know, a thousand dollars or so and well, he’s actually now the co-founder of quick swap, which is, uh, the biggest decentralized exchange on polygon for those that kind of know crypto.
Uh, he’s always been super non crypto, always been telling me the benefits of crypto. And, uh, you know, when I, when I had some money, I figured why not? Like put some of that into crypto. It was a bet on crypto, of course, but also kind of just like I had confidence in my friend and it was kind of a bet on him as well.
So all those things considered, I felt pretty.
Andrew: Okay. Um, so then the idea for Dell design came from where
Kenny: yeah.
So Dell design is not a completely unique idea. Um, there were other services that provided, uh, services, just like the design, you know, design pickle is probably one of the biggest ones that most people are aware of. So, um, I actually, you know, I, I saw an ad for other services, like design pick one, a few others, and I was thinking about, Hey, this is pretty cool.
You know, there’s lots of like, obviously benefits of a service like this. People love the service already. Um, I think I could do it better. So why not try doing a service like this? That was my initial thoughts. And, uh, you know, fortunately that kind of panned out pretty well.
Andrew: What’d you think you could do better than design, pickle, and all the other people who were doing.
Kenny: Yeah.
so those services were great. Uh, but at the time they only focused on graphic design. They wouldn’t do website design, they wouldn’t do, uh, video editing, motion graphics, things like that. Now they do actually, uh, but at the time they didn’t do that. So that was one benefit I could provide. Uh, the other thing is that those services at the time, uh, they wouldn’t provide any, uh, Any designer in like the local us time zone.
So if you want to submit a project, you submit it and then like they will work on it during like your nighttime and get back to you the next day with it. But you couldn’t work with them directly and in real time. Um, so that’s what I wanted to provide with our service to our time designer that could actually work with you in real time.
Andrew: Meaning, if I’m asking for a GIF, right. And you were doing gifts, I think right from the beginning. So it would be an animated, uh, image for the top of a blog post. I could send the off, send the request to the designer. The designer might come back and say, are you looking for it to move a lot or a little bit?
I respond. And then the designer gets the work done in, in the day, instead of waiting for me overnight for their.
That was a big thing. And meanwhile, though, your expertise was in hiring in the Philippines, where did you decide that you’d get people for Dell
Kenny: Yeah. Also in the Philippines too.
Andrew: and they were willing to work overnight?
Kenny: Yeah. So we had about half the team working overnight and about half the team working during their local, uh, Philippine daytime hours.
Andrew: Have you ever gone to the Philippines to visit the people who work for
Kenny: I have actually, yeah, I I’ve gone there. I’ve met. It was it. was pretty awesome. Uh, I met a few people that I’ve worked with there. Not everyone, of course, but, uh, Yeah.
it actually happened because of a layover in Guam that I ended up staying, spending at least about a day or so in the Philippines. And that was pretty.
Andrew: You had a layover in Guam.
Kenny: Uh, layover to Guam.
Yeah. So I was going to Guam with a friend for his sister’s wedding and it just so happened that Philippines is often one of the spots that you have to kind of stop that. So it kind of worked out perfectly then.
Andrew: Why were they doing any Guam?
Kenny: So my friend is originally from Guam. Uh, one of my best friends actually, and I had never even really heard of Guam?
before this, to be honest, but it’s a nice, uh, islands, uh, area. It’s actually a us territory. Um, so kind of like Hawaii, lots of
Andrew: From what I understand? It’s even more Americans like then America, like it’s the streets are America and the post office, like the whole thing. It’s you think that you’re in? I don’t know, in the Pacific, but you’re not, you’re think you’re closer to Asia, but spiritually there’s so much more like America, from what I understand,
Kenny: Yeah. That’s, that’s
Andrew: which they are
Kenny: Yeah, of course. Yeah. It’s a wonderful place.
Andrew: Um, so when you built it up, where’d you get your first customers for
Kenny: Yeah. So very, very first customers were people that I had connections with already, uh, friends, people in my network, and it was more so to get kind of an idea of how well the service was working. I would give out the service for free to some people and exchange for their feedback, the testimonials, anything I could do to kind of get the feedback loop going on.
So that was our initial first customer. Some of those people convert into paid customers Um, but I would say the biggest thing for us for our initial early traction was our product hunt line. Uh, so we launched it on product times, uh, around Christmas time. Actually. I think it was exactly on Christmas, on 2019, I believe.
And, uh, we got number two product of the day, um, which resulted in us being on their email lists on product, on email list that got us lots of traction that got us a decent amount of early customers. Uh, some of those customers were actually still customers when I left Dell design. Um, so that was like our first, our first win.
Andrew: And this was when not when you were listing the design service, when I think you were offering free images or something.
Kenny: So I also did that too. We launched on product on twice. Uh, the first one was of course our normal service, but the second one was like a free offering of digital illustrations, digital images that people could use for their businesses.
Andrew: And they both did while you’re
Kenny: Yeah. Actually both of them got number two product of the day on product hunt.
Andrew: Uh, okay. And then you decided, you know, what, if it’s working well, I can actually pay to keep bumping this up. How did that work for you?
Kenny: Yeah. So we got, we got very fortunate that early on, we found a very viable method of customer acquisition for Dell design. Uh, you know, like I mentioned, Della zine is not a unique service. There were several other services out there. Um, so that told me that there was a demand for a service like this. Um, I didn’t have to worry about like, explaining this idea to customers because a lot of people that were interested in a service like this already of course, knew that a service like this existed.
So I wouldn’t have to worry about educating the customer about how our service works. It was just about, you know, how can I compare my service with the existing competition and show that I’m, you know, our services better fitted for. Then the other services. So, uh, our method acquisition was primarily through Google ads.
We would target keywords of other competitors. And I would say that was about $200 cost per acquisition for our customers. Um, and you know, our, our LTV was like at least 3000, if not like 4,000, I didn’t know that at the time, but I knew that our LTV was much higher than $200. Of course. So, uh, you know, I, I pretty much focused pretty heavily on the ads once I realized.
Andrew: Were you the one buying the ads,
Kenny: That’s right. Yeah. I kind of learned from scratch on doing a head still.
Andrew: because I, I think you were charging $500 even back then a month, right? Minimum.
Kenny: was, it was a little bit lower back then, but yeah, now it’s around like $500.
Andrew: Yeah. Now it’s 500 and 600. And so. You probably were breaking even on a customer within a month or
Kenny: Yeah, it was a, it was pretty awesome actually.
Andrew: That is amazing. And this was you figuring it out. I have to tell you, I don’t know you super well, you don’t seem like you’re super connected in the tech space. Who was it? That was in, I feel like you’ve got your social circle. Who was it? That was in your circle that you could go in and say, I’ve got this new design service and basically launch it off the back of your friends, where you in the e-commerce world, were you doing something.
Kenny: No, not so much. I mean, I just had some friends who were entrepreneurs themselves, uh, not crazy amount of like entrepreneurial friends, but enough to kind of get this, uh, test it out with people. So, you know, I definitely wasn’t very well connected back then. I’m still working on that actually. Uh, you know, enough people to at least help me leverage that into some success.
Andrew: I feel like you should have done it before, but now you’re doing it. Why, why are you here doing this podcast with me? Where I get to ask you how much money you made and where you’re putting it. I’m asking you basically everything except who you’re sleeping with. What’s what gives why you decided to come out and talk to
Kenny: Yeah. So, I mean, for one, I do enjoy talking about this. It is fun for me to talk about, you know, what I’ve done, the lessons I’ve learned, the mistakes I’ve made. So all that’s fun for me. So that’s, that’s the first thing I would say. But you know, the second thing is that I do want to share my message and connect with other people.
as well.
Um, you know, I realized especially early on in my career without connections, it was very difficult for me to really 60 does an entrepreneur. It was kind of like playing on hard mode. Um, so being able to kind of improve that, but making more connections is, is a huge one for me, for my future endeavors.
And, uh, you know, I want to improve upon being able to do that. So that’s a big reason why I want to do this podcast and podcasts in general has, because I want to share my story, see if it resonates with people and if so, have them connect with me and, you know, possibly even work together and.
Andrew: What is your future endeavors because w w close this story out in a moment, but you’re now working with appraisers. It’s not like you’re going to find it. An audience of appraisers here on Mixergy. What do.
Kenny: Yeah. So, So, that business is pretty interesting. Uh, I have one of my good friends. He used to be a lawyer, a corporate lawyer making like lots of good money, but, you know, spending like pretty much all his day working. And that was pretty stressful, but I, he decided to stop doing that and to instead become a home appraiser, which sounds crazy for most people, uh, you know, because.
It’s a job that doesn’t require a high school degree, even. I mean, it’s a job that’s people probably don’t think about when they think about earning, you know, seven figures per year. But, uh, actually he has a home appraiser he’s making over a million dollars per year. Uh, which it sounds ridiculous, especially cause he’s spending like 40 hours per week, but, um, there’s, there’s lots of money that could be.
Uh, by being a Homer praiser. So, uh, we figured, you know, why not provide a service to allow these people to become more efficient with their time to delegate the things that they don’t have to really be doing and, you know, in turn, allow them to have more time to then make more money. Uh, so that was kind of our idea.
And, uh, that’s what, that’s what we’ve been focusing on now, a service to allow these, I’m gonna phrase this to tell a kid.
Andrew: So, what they do is the way that you’ve built up the service, what’s it
Kenny: It’s called? Appraisal saver. or appraisal saver.com.
Andrew: Appraisal saver. And so with Prevost appraisal service.com and appraiser would go into a house, take pictures. They get uploaded to you, your team bases their appraisal on the photos and then sends it back to the appraiser and says, here’s the, here’s the
Kenny: That’s right.
Andrew: So the appraiser is just going and taking photos
Kenny: That’s pretty much it.
Andrew: and the reason that they could do it instead of just some random person that you hire is that the appraiser needs to have what that you can’t just hire the same type of people that Uber
Kenny: Yeah, they have to be certified. There’s a regulation in place, some laws in place that kind of like govern this, But you have to be a certified appraiser to do this. And that takes about, uh, you know, it takes some training, take some time to actually do that. So not just anyone can do that. Although perhaps in the future, maybe things will be.
Andrew: But the hard part is actually doing the appraisal. It’s not getting out to the spot and looking for things that need to be.
Kenny: Yeah. The, the time consuming part is definitely actually making the reports. So pretty much as an appraiser, you’re making like a reports on the home value and that’s kind of like a PDF file that is then produced. But, uh, that process takes maybe about three hours, whereas actually going to the home and taking the pictures and taking notes.
And that takes maybe about one hour. By using a service by delegating, you’re pretty much saving, you know, three to four hours. And then you’re only spending about one hour of work. So, you know, one report in the bay area, at least that can net you up to like $2,000, maybe more like 1500 on average, but you know, pretty much now your, your alley array becomes, you know, $1,000 for one hour.
So that’s pretty good for most.
Andrew: Okay, that’s great. Let me talk, let me talk about my sponsor with you and then we’ll come back. What happened to TeleSign what, uh, and then what’s going on future wise for you. Second sponsor is HostGator. Kenny. If someone’s listening to us and going, whoa, this guy, Kenny took a business, it was already basically productized service that was productized and sold that on a subscription basis, which was designed.
Now he’s doing the same thing for appraisers. I want to do the same thing. Maybe I’ll go to host. Like Andrew’s telling me get a website, but I need an idea of what’s a service Kenny that you would look at and say that could be turned into a product high service, the way that the Kenny businesses.
Kenny: Yeah, I think there’s lots of things. You know, one thing is development as a service, uh, you know, lots of people in need design, of course. And that’s why I made Della zine, but lots of people also need website design. Um, so if you can provide that kind of as a subscription based model, I think that could be, you know, very well.
Andrew: I feel like that’s been done. Let me think a little bit outside the box with you. Okay. And if you disagree with me, disagree with me, let’s enjoy this. I wonder if there’s room to do like spreadsheets as a service, I send you the data, you put it in spreadsheets. There are people who are just amazing with spreadsheets.
Is there like a notion as a service? Is there, what do you think of that?
Kenny: Yeah.
Andrew: How would we, how would you test it to see if creating a spreadsheet as a service business would make sense? What’s the Kenney approach to
Kenny: Yeah. So my approach is always getting as much feedback as I can. I think trying to sell early, even before it’s not actually built out is very valuable. Uh, you know, lots of people, lots of the entrepreneurs, they have this like amazing idea in their head. Uh, and they kind of hide it because they think, oh, someone’s going to steal it from me.
Someone’s going to beat me to market. I don’t want to risk that. So I’m going to hide it, but that’s only a hindrance because then you’re not actually getting real feedback. You don’t know if your business actually has that. And you’re not, you know, making iterations based on that. So my thing, my approach is always to get feedback as soon as possible, you know, make a wait-list page, try to sell it to people, cold email, cold, cold approaches like that.
But whenever you can get people to view the product, to test the product and get their feedback from there.
Andrew: All right. I feel like the challenge with the spreadsheet, uh, businesses, it’s hard to find the people who need spreadsheets support like that. It might be easier to pick. And I’ve said this in the past to pick software, that’s going hot and then create a service that does that. Like notion now is just really.
Getting exciting for some people. And you can imagine somebody saying I’m going to create a notion help site, but really what it will be is we’ll do your notion design for you. Um, I saw the Zapier has gotten really good at, at catering to people who need service providers. They’re like people who, all they do is do Zapier work.
And now Zapier, I think on their site introduces, uh, their users to people who are Zapier consultants, but it seems like it’s, what do you think of that picking software? That’s hot creating a service that does the software for people. So all they have to do is say, here’s what I want in notion. And then someone will do it for them and then catering to a bunch of different software like
Kenny: Yeah, I think that’s a cool idea that it’s kind of like a builds off of my experience with Della zine and the sense that.
uh, with Della Zion, we focused on people that are using these other services, like design pickle, for example, and we marketed towards them. So with a service that was. Often existing, you know, software, you can then target people that use that software through Facebook
Andrew: Oh, yeah.
Kenny: that could be a pretty easy way to get these potential custom.
Andrew: And if you could find some software that’s on a site, then you can start going to build with and tools like that. Seeing who’s got the software on their side and then targeting them and saying, do you need help with it? All right. Listen up people, whether it’s this idea or. Don’t get into the appraisal business.
That’s Kenny’s business, whatever your idea is when you need a website, go to hostgator.com/mixergy. Because when you go to HostGator, they’ll give you a great low price service that just works, and then you’ll be able to concentrate on your business. And of course, I’m giving you the cheapest least, I shouldn’t say cheapest, least expensive, uh, offering.
They will scale up with you. We’ve moved on to, uh, they’re better. More robust services that are still way cheaper than the competition. And they just work well and allow us to focus on our business. And I recommend you sign up for them too. If you go to their site, you’ll get a low price. If you use my URL, you’ll get an even lower price.
Here’s a URL, hostgator.com/mixergy, hostgator.com/mixergy. All right, you kept growing the business and at some point you figured it’s time for me to sell this one too. And then you went to Effie international. Why do you use Effie international? And this is the second time.
Kenny: Yeah, second time I used them, uh, for me, at least, uh, when I sold my first business, I had no idea how to sell a business. Uh, you know, my biggest fear was that I would try to sell it on my own. I maybe get a few offers And then I would maybe get scammed. So I didn’t want to avoid, I didn’t want to have a situation in which I could, you know, one gets scanned of course, and then to maybe not get the best offer and then three, maybe not even find buyers, cause I didn’t really have buyers in my connection and my network.
So, uh, I needed someone that could provide me that service and, you know, Effie international is I would say the number one provider of that service. So it was only natural to at least inquire with them. And then once I did, they were very helpful. Uh, you know, I love, you know, just talking with them.
They’re very knowledge. And it was clear that they provide me with a good service and I felt very confident from the.
Andrew: And what did they do that keeps you from getting scammed?
Kenny: Yeah, well, I mean, thankfully it wasn’t really me that would have to actually do the operations of some of the business. Uh, they handled all that for me. They of course vetted the buyers to make sure they actually have the funds available. So that’s of course a given, but beyond that, they provided all of the contracts that we would sign.
Uh, they made sure the onboarding went smoothly and all of that. So I really didn’t have to do too much besides just kind of hand over.
Andrew: Okay. What’s the percentage that they take at
Kenny: Yeah, so it ranges, but it’s a ma it’s between like five to 15%, you know, 5% on the higher selling businesses. And then, you know, 15% on the lower one. So for, for PA crunch, there was about 15%.
Andrew: Okay. I feel like one of the things that they do is they’ve got this group of buyers that they go back to because they’re rabid buyers.
Kenny: That’s true.
Andrew: They’ve worked with for years. Yeah. It feels like there, there handful of people who are not exactly rolling up tech businesses, but they’re just buying a bunch of them and they’re doing what you do, what you’re doing with real estate.
Right.
Kenny: Yeah, that’s a fair.
Andrew: All right. So how’s the new business.
Kenny: Yeah. So it’s still pretty new. We have a few paying clients and, uh, we have about five, uh, appraisal assistance on our team. So it’s still growing. Uh, you know, it’s, it’s different than Delaware in the sense that our target audience is now very focused. Uh, whereas Della Zonda was pretty much for anyone that needed design services.
Whereas for this one it’s only appraisers. So, uh, the good thing about that is that, you know, once we get a customer and once we show them the value. Pretty difficult to lose them because especially for our service, we directly provide them with revenue. Uh, so if, if they cut us, they’d lose that revenue and they then have, so there’s that benefit.
But then the downside of course, is that it’s a, it’s a much more specific audience. So kind of target the audience initially can be more difficult to reach because it’s so much.
Andrew: what, what do you do to find them? It feels like, yes, it is smaller, but they’ve gotta be ways to get their contact information and
Kenny: Yeah, so that’s exactly yet. So one way is through LinkedIn, uh, that’s one approach, you know, cause of course people list their, their career in there. There’s opposition on LinkedIn. So targeting appraisers is pretty simple that way. Uh, same thing.
Andrew: So you mean by you buying
Kenny: Uh, no, just actually off like outreach to these people.
Although we actually did buy ads for LinkedIn too, but the main approach is just to, you know, search for people on LinkedIn?
connect with them. Send them a message and do that.
Andrew: Uh, what do you use to automate
Kenny: Yeah. So, I mean, there are platforms for that? and I’ve tried a few of them, but, uh, I kinda got kinda weirded out when I got somebody notices from LinkedIn about potential, like, you know, automation that’s against the rules.
So I don’t use any software for that. Although I do use one of my assistants to do the messaging for me.
Andrew: So the assistant sends out the initial messages. And then when a person’s interested, you jump in or a sales person jumps in, or is it still the assistant? It is. So it’s like the assistants, like an
Kenny: Yeah, pretty much.
Andrew: Yeah. And from what I’ve seen on LinkedIn, and I can’t believe that people respond, it’s like you send a response.
If your SDR sends a response, you need to be there in real time to come back in and follow up.
Kenny: Yeah. I mean, that’s definitely the.
Andrew: And it’s still you doing that part of the sales
Kenny: Actually, my partner is the one in charge of that. I’m kind of like sending the messages out, right. I make the instructions to send out, but my partner, one of the, an actual appraiser, he’s the one that kind of handles that sales stuff.
Andrew: Okay. All right. And so you were saying same thing for what else? What, what other approaches are you taking
Kenny: Yeah. So just like a with Della zine, you know, I spend a lot of focus on actually like targeting Google ads based on keywords that would show intent to purchase. Uh, so one intent to purchases, you know, keywords play to being an appraiser, uh, people that are looking for data entry services as an appraiser, uh, targeting those keywords has been pretty effective.
Andrew: All right. And so long, by the way, before I go, long-term I’m wondering why so many people are sending messages using LinkedIn’s E InMail system. Why don’t you just use the service to grab the email addresses and message them off of the
Kenny: Yeah, that’s, that’s pretty smart too.
Andrew: You haven’t
Kenny: I have not done that yet.
I’ve done that for Della zine actually, but have not done that yet for this.
Andrew: I want to know like an evil thing that I think could work. Alright, you get their email address, you get another Mac with another iCloud account and you just put the email address in there and you text message them until you get kicked off the text messaging platform. And then you come in with another email address, right?
Like, Hey. I used to, I don’t know exactly what the messaging would be, but it just seems like this whole message thing is just way too open for, for, for manipulation
Kenny: is pretty open. I mean, maybe a less evil version of that is to then get all their email addresses and then put that into Facebook and do a retargeting campaign off of those. Uh, you’re not like directly, you know, approaching them and knowing them, but you’re still showing your yourself to them at least.
Andrew: All right. I don’t like the evil way. It makes me feel uncomfortable, but, but I want to talk
Kenny: no, that’s.
Andrew: Um, All right. Longterm, Kenny, what are you doing? What’s what’s the vision like? You’re I, I talked about how I have a vision that you’re going to do something beyond the appraisal business that you’re queuing up connections for.
What’s the thing. What are you looking to do?
Kenny: Yeah. So, I mean, like I mentioned, long-term, I want to be able to of course have that passive income to support myself so that no matter what I do, I have that safety net. So that’s what I’m working on. Uh, by doing that, I’m getting, you know, more real estate or cashflow producing investments to allow me to have that significant amount of income that that can be passive, that can support myself.
So that regardless of what I do in the future, always have that. Uh, but of course my ambitions are higher than that too. Um, I do want to work on a project that potentially can be a, you know, a very, very big company, a very successful company. So, uh, You know, one of those things I’m working on now is a business called closing.
It’s just a C L O S I n.com. It’s a, a platform for startup founders to, uh, manage their investors. So people that already have series a series B, even a seed funding, people that want. Uh, manage their investors better their board members, or they can do that through our platform. It’s still early stage, but it’s, you know, it’s one of my first SAS type businesses.
I’ve always focused on the SAS type model, but for actual existing non software businesses. So I want to kind of transition my experience and now push an actual SAS product. And this is one that I hope to do that with.
Andrew: And so is this a way to, to update investors or to keep track of, of your investors
Kenny: Yeah, it’s a way to, uh, kind of communicate with your investors in a more streamlined process. You know, a lot of people that have investors, they communicate through, you know, a phone call, a slack to sauna, email, whatever, and it, it can be kind of overwhelming, especially when there’s lots of moving pieces and lots of different investors.
So having one platform to manage all of that, uh, to kind of negotiate with them, to manage their contracts, their documents, how that all in one place can be a, you know a lot more.
Andrew: know what I’d like to see someone else create, and I could see why this white clothes in fits in with being here and getting out more and talking to more entrepren. I wished that somebody would create a platform to keep track of all the startup investments that an, an angel investor makes. And that would mean that some people are on angel.
I made a few angel angel investments. Some are on angel list. I forget what Sahil is using. He’s using Republic. And then, um, mercury, I love mercury bank. It’s great company. I asked if I could invest, uh, So I got to invest a little bit in that just a few days ago, using we funder. I think then there’s some that are completely off the platform that are direct relationships.
So it’s like I got to create a spreadsheet to keep track of where it is. And then there’s no, I dunno. Maybe, maybe the truth is that is what’s. I forget that app that we’re, that some of them are using. Shoot. I forget what that is. Maybe one of these apps will just suck in data from all the other apps, but it sucks that this stuff is out there.
And I have a feeling that I’m not going to go to republic.com again. And then at some point, they’re going to say this, that this account is deactivated and then I’ll lose the little bit of ownership. It’s like a thousand dollars inside Hills gum road. Uh, I think that was his limit, but there’s no way to keep track of it.
Do you make angel investments? What do you use.
Kenny: Yeah, so I don’t make angel investments yet. Although that’s one thing I want to kind of look more into. I have some friends that are angel investors and, uh, you know, thankfully closing is one platform that kind of allows you as an angel investor as well, to manage your investments, to, uh, having one place, to kind of have all of that, uh, to interact with the founders, the board members and all of that.
So it’s not just for the founders themselves, but also for anyone that’s involved in divestment.
Andrew: so I can go in to close in and then somehow list all the other investments that are.
Kenny: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, we’re still in beta right now. We’re still kind of like developing a whole new features. But one feature we want to have is to allow these angel investors to manage all of their investors, manage all their companies that they’re investors in.
Andrew: And then, so that’s really helpful. I feel like also knowing the other investors in the inner round is helpful to be able to communicate with them and say, is Scott going a little nuts here? Rain the person in, or is, is this person in need of help? Um, so I guess you’re putting all that in. How much would you charge investor to, to keep track of their
Kenny: that’s a great question where it, we still haven’t actually determined the price point yet. We do want to have a monthly rate of course, to do all that. Uh, but yeah. What do you think that would be.
Andrew: If it’s just keeping track of the investments, you’re basically replacing a spreadsheet and there’s not enough value to make it worthwhile, but. If there’s more to it, if you’re solving more of the problems, then there’s, there’s more value there. Um, and by more of the problems, I guess I would mean keep track of how many updates you’re getting.
The problem is that a lot of people are now going through angel list. Through some of the angel list systems where there is no obligation to give any feedback to investors, any updates, there’s kind of plenty that their whole thing is you go to make an investment and they go, um, you have to agree that you will get no information that you have no say in the company.
Um, it’s like the special, uh, what is it called? Those, those investment vehicles. So I, you can’t even say that the, that the entrepreneur has to come and use clothes and to send information back, which is. Disappointing.
Kenny: Yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s lots of cases in which like, of course everyone wants to know this information, but there’s no way to really. Collaborate effectively with that information. So our goal is kind of like, I guess you could think of it like a very high level as kind of being in Google forms, but a Google forms in which you can actually collaborate and make real time communication and back and forth changes and edits on.
Um, so for example, you want to maybe make some changes to the contract that can then be a, an edit that’s done through closing, and then that gets updated and populated all within the closing platform. And you can make comments back and forth to say, Hey, let’s change this. Let’s change that. And not have to worry about having like 10 platforms to manage all that.
Andrew: I think the communication back to investors is helpful. If it encourages the, the entrepreneur to make requests of the angels, especially now that there are more and more angels, you need a way to be able to say, I need you to do this or who in my angel group can do that. Or we now have this new product.
Can you help us get more customers? As investors you want to feel like you’re doing more than just sitting back and waiting 10 years for the, for the payoff. Right? Um, all right. I like where you’re going with this. I’m hoping the two of us will get to talk again. I’d like to see where, where you end up with your investments and frankly, these two fricking businesses are, I liked, I liked the way you’re thinking
Kenny: Yeah. Thanks so much.
Andrew: I wish you were taking investments, Kenny.
Kenny: I might have to.
Andrew: All right. We’ll keep on talking. Um, thanks so much for being on
Kenny: thanks so much. Andrew is a lot of fun for me.
Andrew: Oh, wait, I didn’t ask you about the hat. What’s the deal with the hat? Why do you wearing the friend’s hat? It looks like it’s a friend’s logo, but what does it say on
Kenny: Yeah. It says, it says real friends?
on it. I just thought it was a kind of quirky kind of fun hat. So, you know, when.
Andrew: All right. There’s no like big
Kenny: No, I wish I had some philosophical, you know, like amazing realization behind this, but no, just a kind of cool hat for me.
Andrew: right on. Thank you, Kenny. Thank you everyone for listening. And I especially want to thank the sponsors who made this interview happen. The first, if you need an email provider that will be reasonable with you and give you all the features of, I mean, we’re talking about marketing automation, understanding when somebody bought and tagging them differently.
When somebody clicked on something, tagging them differently. All those features@areasonablepricegotosendinblue.com slash Mixergy. And of course we needed a website go to HostGator, hostgator.com/. Kenny. Good to meet you, man.
Kenny: thanks so much.
Andrew: I say just as you’re reaching out for a drink, bud. Bye. Bye. Everyone.