Love at First Startup: Kass and Mike Lazerow on Navigating Entrepreneurship

[00:00:01] [SPEAKER_00]: And realizing that struggle, like there's quote by J Cole, there's beauty in the struggle.

[00:00:07] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what entrepreneurs and I think all of us at this table share.

[00:00:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's miserable and there's nothing I'd rather do.

[00:00:15] [SPEAKER_02]: To thrive in a rapidly evolving landscape, brands must move in an ever-increasing pace.

[00:00:20] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm Matt Britton, founder and CEO of Suzy.

[00:00:23] [SPEAKER_02]: Join me and key industry leaders as we dive deep into the shifting consumer trends within

[00:00:27] [SPEAKER_02]: their industry.

[00:00:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Why it matters now and how you can keep up.

[00:00:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to The Speed of Culture.

[00:00:37] [SPEAKER_02]: Today on The Speed of Culture, we have a very special episode with two great friends of mine,

[00:00:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Kass and Mike Lazerow, two legends in the New York tech industry, entrepreneurs, thought

[00:00:47] [SPEAKER_02]: leaders and authors of the upcoming book, Shovelling Shit, A Love Story, which comes

[00:00:52] [SPEAKER_02]: out in March of 2025.

[00:00:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Kass, Mike, so great to see you guys.

[00:00:55] [SPEAKER_02]: It's great to see you.

[00:00:57] [SPEAKER_02]: So much to talk about and let's start with you, Kass.

[00:00:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Obviously you juggle a lot in everything that you do in your career and personally

[00:01:03] [SPEAKER_02]: etc.

[00:01:04] [SPEAKER_02]: What made you decide to have the conviction actually write a book at this stage in your

[00:01:08] [SPEAKER_02]: career?

[00:01:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Great question.

[00:01:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having us, first of all.

[00:01:11] [SPEAKER_00]: I would say that the reason is I've tracked most of the concepts over the last 10 years.

[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_00]: So when Mike and I started several different companies, I started tracking what actually

[00:01:23] [SPEAKER_00]: worked.

[00:01:23] [SPEAKER_00]: And you'll see in the book when it comes out that there's certain phrases,

[00:01:28] [SPEAKER_00]: catchphrases, topics that are just hot button topics that I think every entrepreneur

[00:01:32] [SPEAKER_00]: would like to know about.

[00:01:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And these are kind of lessons that we wish we had known.

[00:01:37] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, we have three kids and now that our oldest is almost getting ready to go to

[00:01:41] [SPEAKER_00]: college, we thought it was time to get this information out in more of a mass way.

[00:01:47] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, because being an entrepreneur is a sexy thing still, despite the fact that

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_02]: it's been harder over the last couple of years.

[00:01:54] [SPEAKER_02]: But when we were growing up, being an entrepreneur wasn't cool.

[00:01:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Like the prototypical entrepreneurs, Bill Gates, who looked anything but cool.

[00:01:59] [SPEAKER_02]: And now being an entrepreneur seems awesome.

[00:02:02] [SPEAKER_02]: So people are definitely more interested in it.

[00:02:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Yet you don't really get the information or knowledge you need by looking at Instagram

[00:02:08] [SPEAKER_02]: when it looks like everyone is killing it, right?

[00:02:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, I mean, it looks like it's so easy, but we both know it's anything.

[00:02:14] [SPEAKER_01]: But well, that's the whole reason we wrote this book, which is the most honest

[00:02:18] [SPEAKER_01]: look at entrepreneurship that we've ever read.

[00:02:21] [SPEAKER_01]: You hear about a hustle culture and what people have to do to create these

[00:02:25] [SPEAKER_01]: businesses they become your identity.

[00:02:27] [SPEAKER_01]: But what people don't realize is you start a business, you raise money,

[00:02:31] [SPEAKER_01]: which isn't an end.

[00:02:32] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like a means to an end.

[00:02:33] [SPEAKER_01]: People think it's in and of itself.

[00:02:35] [SPEAKER_01]: These are shoveling shit.

[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_01]: But things go wrong.

[00:02:37] [SPEAKER_01]: You got to hire people, got to fire people, got to get customers,

[00:02:40] [SPEAKER_01]: customers leave you, people sue you.

[00:02:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Just shit goes bad.

[00:02:44] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:02:45] [SPEAKER_02]: It's when people get congratulated for raising money, it's almost the

[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_02]: equivalent of congratulating somebody right when the marathon starts.

[00:02:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Congrats.

[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_02]: You've got to work hard.

[00:02:53] [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.

[00:02:53] [SPEAKER_02]: Now good luck for the next 26 months versus when you're running

[00:02:56] [SPEAKER_02]: through the tape.

[00:02:56] [SPEAKER_01]: It's anything but that.

[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_01]: As you know, I mean, you've been an inspiration to us.

[00:03:00] [SPEAKER_01]: One of the great New York entrepreneurs who really built multiple

[00:03:03] [SPEAKER_01]: businesses we met at Mr. Youth and I saw MRY as you rebranded it.

[00:03:08] [SPEAKER_01]: I saw you hustling the world and how you built that.

[00:03:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And it was so fun.

[00:03:12] [SPEAKER_01]: You decided to do it again, which takes kind of a crazy mind.

[00:03:15] [SPEAKER_01]: It really does.

[00:03:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Jump into the shit again.

[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_01]: I know.

[00:03:18] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what I was thinking.

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_02]: So for those who don't know Cass and Mike, they have the same

[00:03:22] [SPEAKER_02]: last name, Lazaro, and it's not because their brother and sisters,

[00:03:25] [SPEAKER_02]: because they're married and you guys are, you guys are husband and wife

[00:03:28] [SPEAKER_02]: and you were behind an incredibly successful company, Buddy Media,

[00:03:32] [SPEAKER_02]: which really I think set the New York tech scene on a certain path

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_02]: and was an inspiration to me to start Susie and to so many others

[00:03:40] [SPEAKER_02]: to dive into technology, being from New York, not going to

[00:03:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Stanford and starting something in a garage, which is prototypical.

[00:03:46] [SPEAKER_02]: But let's talk a little bit about that journey for Buddy Media.

[00:03:48] [SPEAKER_02]: Cass, let's start with you.

[00:03:49] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, tell me what you remember from when you guys

[00:03:52] [SPEAKER_02]: decided to start Buddy Media, where you guys were both in your

[00:03:55] [SPEAKER_02]: relationship and your career journey and talking about maybe

[00:03:58] [SPEAKER_02]: some of the most pivotal things that you took away from that experience.

[00:04:02] [SPEAKER_00]: So I was pregnant with our last child Vivian.

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember Mike, we had started and run and then sold Goff.com

[00:04:11] [SPEAKER_00]: and that brought us to New York.

[00:04:13] [SPEAKER_00]: So we were a little bit fidgety.

[00:04:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Mike was not working out in the corporate world.

[00:04:18] [SPEAKER_00]: That was just not his thing.

[00:04:20] [SPEAKER_00]: And we were nudgy.

[00:04:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Mike was really nudgy.

[00:04:24] [SPEAKER_00]: We wanted, we were consulting.

[00:04:26] [SPEAKER_00]: We had three small kids under the age of five.

[00:04:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Wow.

[00:04:30] [SPEAKER_00]: And we literally just rolled into New York City.

[00:04:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think I gave birth on May 24th, 2007.

[00:04:38] [SPEAKER_00]: And as I was being wheeled in, I just had a C-section.

[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Mike was on his phone, Blackberry, and he said,

[00:04:45] [SPEAKER_00]: I know what we're going to do next.

[00:04:47] [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, oh, shit.

[00:04:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Are you kidding me?

[00:04:49] [SPEAKER_00]: He goes, no, we're going to start a company.

[00:04:51] [SPEAKER_00]: That was May.

[00:04:53] [SPEAKER_00]: By August, I was building desks with my daughter in a pram

[00:04:57] [SPEAKER_00]: on the weekends while he had the boys going to do something.

[00:05:00] [SPEAKER_00]: And we just jumped.

[00:05:02] [SPEAKER_02]: And it was swag bucks at first, right?

[00:05:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Ace bucks.

[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Ace bucks, right.

[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, which would have been a better name, but it was an awful idea.

[00:05:09] [SPEAKER_01]: One of Mike's.

[00:05:10] [SPEAKER_01]: But one of the things that we're good at is I come up with ideas.

[00:05:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Most of them are bad.

[00:05:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Cass let some of those bad ideas go and then we pivot.

[00:05:18] [SPEAKER_01]: So a big part of the book is when do you pivot?

[00:05:20] [SPEAKER_01]: How do you know when something isn't working out?

[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_01]: How did you know in the case of body to pivot to body?

[00:05:26] [SPEAKER_01]: So everyone knows when things aren't working out.

[00:05:28] [SPEAKER_01]: They may not verbalize it.

[00:05:30] [SPEAKER_01]: So entrepreneurs or executives, you know when things aren't working,

[00:05:34] [SPEAKER_01]: but then you convince yourself in the next two weeks after you know that,

[00:05:37] [SPEAKER_01]: oh, well, maybe it is working.

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe this is like I should listen to my pride about your ideas.

[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_01]: So letting down other people.

[00:05:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:05:46] [SPEAKER_01]: So our gut was that ace bucks wasn't working, but more importantly,

[00:05:49] [SPEAKER_01]: no one was using it.

[00:05:50] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's how we knew.

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[00:05:52] [SPEAKER_01]: And so we continued to pivot.

[00:05:54] [SPEAKER_01]: We did custom apps.

[00:05:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And finally, after many conversations with brand marketers,

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_01]: we'd show up and we'd say, hey, we can help you on Facebook.

[00:06:03] [SPEAKER_01]: And they said, what's Facebook?

[00:06:04] [SPEAKER_01]: We need to launch a page and do this.

[00:06:06] [SPEAKER_01]: So we launched technology to help them launch pages

[00:06:08] [SPEAKER_01]: and then launch their ads and listen.

[00:06:10] [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's.

[00:06:11] [SPEAKER_02]: So but neither of you guys are coders as far as I know.

[00:06:14] [SPEAKER_02]: No, we're not.

[00:06:14] [SPEAKER_02]: So this was not the AI generation, right?

[00:06:17] [SPEAKER_02]: When we're talking about timestamp here is what?

[00:06:19] [SPEAKER_02]: 2000 and seven.

[00:06:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:06:20] [SPEAKER_02]: So the iPhone had just came out, right?

[00:06:23] [SPEAKER_02]: It was in the dawn of the social media era.

[00:06:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:06:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Finding a coder was very hard to do.

[00:06:27] [SPEAKER_02]: The cloud itself was just a burgeoning technology.

[00:06:30] [SPEAKER_02]: So how did you go from I need to create software

[00:06:32] [SPEAKER_02]: to help brands with social media actually building that software?

[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it was very hard back then, by the way, to find engineers.

[00:06:39] [SPEAKER_00]: It was 2007.

[00:06:40] [SPEAKER_00]: So they were very expensive.

[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Especially in New York, right?

[00:06:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Correct.

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Mike bought the company of one of the engineers.

[00:06:47] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's how we started it.

[00:06:49] [SPEAKER_00]: So we actually bought a bunch of his apps, if I'm right.

[00:06:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Wasn't one.

[00:06:53] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we bought.

[00:06:54] [SPEAKER_01]: So it wasn't just me.

[00:06:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_01]: But we do everything together.

[00:06:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you had funds.

[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_00]: You had raised money at this point.

[00:07:00] [SPEAKER_00]: That's very cute, by the way, Mike.

[00:07:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for putting me back in there.

[00:07:03] [SPEAKER_01]: The idea was to get going.

[00:07:06] [SPEAKER_01]: There are all these people building apps.

[00:07:08] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I just reached out to all the top app developers.

[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_01]: So on Facebook, on the platform.

[00:07:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Facebook apps we're talking about.

[00:07:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, yes.

[00:07:14] [SPEAKER_01]: And it said on the app like who developed it.

[00:07:16] [SPEAKER_01]: And because it was Facebook, it was like real identity.

[00:07:19] [SPEAKER_01]: So I just started reaching out and one happened to reply.

[00:07:22] [SPEAKER_01]: He'd built a bunch of the early dating apps right on Facebook.

[00:07:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And I said, listen, you could build these apps or partner with us.

[00:07:30] [SPEAKER_01]: We'll be the business people.

[00:07:31] [SPEAKER_01]: You be the developer.

[00:07:33] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's how we got started.

[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_01]: And then we ended up buying another, you know, another company.

[00:07:38] [SPEAKER_02]: Being buddy media.

[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_02]: Those apps, you basically turned.

[00:07:41] [SPEAKER_02]: And for our younger listeners here at the podcast, what you might not know is

[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_02]: when Facebook first started, one of their monetization strategies was having

[00:07:48] [SPEAKER_02]: brands build apps much like the iPhone did.

[00:07:50] [SPEAKER_02]: And that was something that kind of got phased out over time.

[00:07:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:07:54] [SPEAKER_02]: No one needed their own Facebook apps.

[00:07:56] [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.

[00:07:56] [SPEAKER_02]: But it was an opportunity and it was a way for you to basically have

[00:07:59] [SPEAKER_02]: it, I guess, a technological base in which to build buddy media.

[00:08:02] [SPEAKER_00]: And fast.

[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_00]: We launched fast.

[00:08:05] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:08:05] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm telling you.

[00:08:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Which matters.

[00:08:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Which does matter.

[00:08:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And Mike was able to raise money very quickly as well.

[00:08:11] [SPEAKER_00]: So we had an office at 60th and Broadway in a matter of a month.

[00:08:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Granted, we had to guarantee it ourselves personally.

[00:08:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:08:19] [SPEAKER_02]: Is what you put skin in the game, which isn't easy when you have three

[00:08:22] [SPEAKER_02]: young kids and to take that on.

[00:08:23] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

[00:08:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Who does that?

[00:08:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Like what couple that has three young kids and starts to start a business?

[00:08:27] [SPEAKER_02]: Obviously, you guys are a little crazy.

[00:08:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, we just like me.

[00:08:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, but what gave you the conviction to even do it?

[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, first you have to understand us.

[00:08:34] [SPEAKER_01]: I met Cass in 1996.

[00:08:36] [SPEAKER_01]: I just graduated college.

[00:08:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I'll agree.

[00:08:39] [SPEAKER_01]: I was 22, first kind of woman.

[00:08:42] [SPEAKER_01]: I'd really ever met.

[00:08:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Like she's still is older.

[00:08:44] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to spill the beans.

[00:08:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

[00:08:45] [SPEAKER_00]: You hear that?

[00:08:46] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm much better looking.

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, that for sure.

[00:08:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you very much.

[00:08:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Why do you think we're on a podcast?

[00:08:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Love podcast.

[00:08:53] [SPEAKER_01]: And we did what all couples who were dating at the time do.

[00:08:57] [SPEAKER_01]: We started a company together while we were dating.

[00:08:59] [SPEAKER_01]: And so answering questions, why did you do that?

[00:09:02] [SPEAKER_01]: It's not our strength.

[00:09:03] [SPEAKER_01]: We do things that just feel right.

[00:09:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right?

[00:09:06] [SPEAKER_00]: I would answer it also and add that I think there's a real big bond between us

[00:09:13] [SPEAKER_00]: in our work ethic, our passion for doing things the right way.

[00:09:17] [SPEAKER_00]: The moral conviction kind of part of us like we can do this together.

[00:09:22] [SPEAKER_00]: We can build teams that actually like coming to work more than they don't.

[00:09:26] [SPEAKER_00]: We can be great at pivoting when it's really hard.

[00:09:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that was the love.

[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And if you think about why we called it shoveling shit, a love story,

[00:09:38] [SPEAKER_00]: because we think all entrepreneurs who love shoveling are unstoppable.

[00:09:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_00]: If you can learn to love shoveling, you will be unstoppable because that's all you do.

[00:09:49] [SPEAKER_00]: And so what we realize is part of our love language, if you will, as cheesy as that is,

[00:09:54] [SPEAKER_00]: is our respect for each other when we work and how we don't overlap.

[00:09:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Because that's one big thing everyone's got to know.

[00:09:59] [SPEAKER_00]: We do not overlap whatsoever.

[00:10:01] [SPEAKER_00]: They're days and weeks in our companies that we didn't see each other.

[00:10:05] [SPEAKER_00]: We saw each other when we went to work, maybe when I said hi at lunch and then we went home

[00:10:10] [SPEAKER_00]: because we had implicit trust.

[00:10:13] [SPEAKER_00]: And so he's more of the visionary salesperson and I took on all the operations and marketing.

[00:10:18] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:10:18] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you can tell us, I mean, I've brought several investment opportunities

[00:10:21] [SPEAKER_02]: to Michael over the years and more than one occasion, he's like, let me run a bike

[00:10:25] [SPEAKER_02]: cast and then he comes back and you're like, I think it's too expensive or doesn't make sense.

[00:10:29] [SPEAKER_02]: And you could just tell the respect is there.

[00:10:31] [SPEAKER_02]: Mike has been incredibly successful in his own right as of you.

[00:10:34] [SPEAKER_02]: But you could tell that you have that mutual respect where you, Michael,

[00:10:38] [SPEAKER_02]: respect cast his opinion and you very much partner in everything.

[00:10:41] [SPEAKER_02]: This was post buddy media.

[00:10:42] [SPEAKER_02]: And we'll talk about that later.

[00:10:43] [SPEAKER_02]: But I personally experienced that.

[00:10:45] [SPEAKER_02]: But going back to buddy media, so you mentioned Michael raised the money.

[00:10:48] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:10:49] [SPEAKER_02]: He went out there, talked to us about what it was like fundraising way back then

[00:10:52] [SPEAKER_02]: when dollars were much harder to buy.

[00:10:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:10:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Mike, tell him about the Howard Linsen story because that's really...

[00:10:58] [SPEAKER_01]: So we talk about a lot of these stories in the book because they're characters

[00:11:02] [SPEAKER_01]: who we all were younger, didn't know anything about anything.

[00:11:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Some of them have gone on to do great things.

[00:11:08] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we had as early investors, like our first investors, Mark Pincus,

[00:11:12] [SPEAKER_01]: who starred Zynga and Peter Thiel, who was on the board of Facebook

[00:11:16] [SPEAKER_01]: and Ron Conway who backed Google.

[00:11:18] [SPEAKER_01]: And it all started with the conversation with Howard Linsen,

[00:11:21] [SPEAKER_01]: who owns...

[00:11:23] [SPEAKER_01]: He owns...

[00:11:23] [SPEAKER_01]: He's not Twits.

[00:11:23] [SPEAKER_01]: ...not Twits and he's just a great kind of content creator and personality.

[00:11:28] [SPEAKER_01]: And we bonded over the golf industry.

[00:11:31] [SPEAKER_01]: He knew IsoldGolf.com.

[00:11:32] [SPEAKER_01]: He called, called me and I ignored him because he had a company called Golf Now

[00:11:36] [SPEAKER_01]: in a tea time business.

[00:11:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I eventually got back to him.

[00:11:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I helped him with that.

[00:11:42] [SPEAKER_01]: He was the first call I made at Buddy Media.

[00:11:45] [SPEAKER_01]: He committed on the spot at the Stone Rose Lounge in the Time Warner Center.

[00:11:50] [SPEAKER_01]: And he made a few introductions that we went from not having around

[00:11:53] [SPEAKER_01]: until like a week later, we had people like Roger Ehrenberg

[00:11:57] [SPEAKER_01]: and Mark and Peter and Karen Klein and all these people on board.

[00:12:03] [SPEAKER_01]: And entrepreneurs, you never know where you're going to get that break.

[00:12:07] [SPEAKER_01]: We'd have like 50 breaks meeting Howard,

[00:12:09] [SPEAKER_01]: meeting people early on at Golf.com who helped us find money.

[00:12:14] [SPEAKER_01]: And you kind of make your own luck, but a lot of the luck is luck.

[00:12:17] [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of the luck is like, oh, wow, that happened.

[00:12:20] [SPEAKER_01]: And getting yourself out there, being able to make your own luck

[00:12:23] [SPEAKER_01]: is kind of a big part of our career.

[00:12:25] [SPEAKER_00]: I think one of the big lessons there was that we realize why

[00:12:28] [SPEAKER_00]: and we deal with this of a lot of our companies that we invest in.

[00:12:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And we learned it too from the Golf.com days

[00:12:34] [SPEAKER_00]: because we actually had a time where we were bought by a company

[00:12:38] [SPEAKER_00]: that then went out of business and they didn't go public.

[00:12:40] [SPEAKER_00]: So we were like forced into bankruptcy and bought ourselves back out

[00:12:43] [SPEAKER_00]: and had to start it again.

[00:12:45] [SPEAKER_00]: So the lesson of never run out of money and always thinking that in our head,

[00:12:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Mike was so great at fundraising because he never stopped fundraising.

[00:12:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:12:55] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure you do this too.

[00:12:56] [SPEAKER_00]: You close around.

[00:12:57] [SPEAKER_02]: I'll get you closer, yes.

[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_00]: But there's never a stopping point, even if you're round, you just had a round.

[00:13:02] [SPEAKER_00]: And so one of the things we did very well is he would continue to network.

[00:13:05] [SPEAKER_00]: And you talked about this before we started this podcast.

[00:13:08] [SPEAKER_00]: I would look at an opportunity of raising money and closing around as a way to reset.

[00:13:12] [SPEAKER_00]: So I would usually lay off people or fire them and clean up.

[00:13:17] [SPEAKER_02]: Because you're fundraising on a set of forecasts,

[00:13:19] [SPEAKER_02]: correct expectations that you have to deliver for.

[00:13:22] [SPEAKER_00]: And so I would like to actually shrink the team

[00:13:24] [SPEAKER_00]: and see who we needed, what was working, what was not working.

[00:13:28] [SPEAKER_00]: And while we celebrated the fact that we actually have money and we're moving forward.

[00:13:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we always thought about everything we did in kind of headlines and marketing.

[00:13:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Right. So when we've raised money, it's like a great headline.

[00:13:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Right. It was like, oh, Buddy Media raised a hundred million.

[00:13:43] [SPEAKER_01]: That's the time to lay people off and to get all of to flush all the beds.

[00:13:47] [SPEAKER_01]: That's when all other talent wants to come into you.

[00:13:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly. Redirection.

[00:13:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. So we're constantly thinking about how do we use this to build a brand,

[00:13:55] [SPEAKER_02]: which is really what we did.

[00:13:56] [SPEAKER_02]: And one thing that was clear from Buddy Media from the beginning is you wanted to go big.

[00:14:00] [SPEAKER_02]: You had huge aspirations.

[00:14:01] [SPEAKER_02]: I remember being at LaGuardia and seeing your billboard.

[00:14:04] [SPEAKER_02]: I remember coming down the escalator at CES in Las Vegas and you owned the biggest

[00:14:10] [SPEAKER_02]: out of home cast.

[00:14:12] [SPEAKER_02]: You obviously behind a lot of like decisions in terms like, well, this payback is how

[00:14:16] [SPEAKER_02]: do you act pragmatic, be numbers driven, but at the same time, have the conviction to go big?

[00:14:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Because those sometimes do two things conflict with each other.

[00:14:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Right. So when you are a startup, I think hiring a marketing guru is kind of very important.

[00:14:32] [SPEAKER_00]: I would say a lot of startups overlook that or they actually hire the wrong kind of marketing person.

[00:14:38] [SPEAKER_00]: The key is to box people out when you're small, to make yourself appear that you're bigger.

[00:14:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And so I knew Mike was going to get all of the deals that we needed.

[00:14:47] [SPEAKER_00]: And we also hired the best salesperson we've ever had in our life, Jeff Ragavan.

[00:14:52] [SPEAKER_00]: So I knew sales was there, but we were competing in a huge space.

[00:14:55] [SPEAKER_00]: How many competitors did we have?

[00:14:57] [SPEAKER_02]: We had 100 funded competitors.

[00:14:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Most of which ended up at a zero talking about like timing being right,

[00:15:02] [SPEAKER_02]: which we can get into in a second.

[00:15:04] [SPEAKER_00]: Right. And if they could actually get the right model.

[00:15:07] [SPEAKER_00]: So we had this idea with our team and our marketing person who worked with us for a

[00:15:13] [SPEAKER_00]: long time, Katherine Bateman. And I said, there's got to be a way that we can look bigger.

[00:15:17] [SPEAKER_00]: And she goes, I know no one's doing this, but there's a lot of space in airports.

[00:15:22] [SPEAKER_00]: And I said, wait a second, if we could actually reach these customers between Thanksgiving

[00:15:28] [SPEAKER_00]: and right after New Year's when they're traveling.

[00:15:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And if we could own things, it would be incredible because they would say, oh my God,

[00:15:36] [SPEAKER_00]: they're big. If they have enough money to do this.

[00:15:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Now listen, I pitched the board, it was a million dollars back then.

[00:15:42] [SPEAKER_00]: They thought I was crazy. We had a huge fight over it.

[00:15:45] [SPEAKER_00]: And I would not walk out of that meeting until they said yes.

[00:15:48] [SPEAKER_00]: Now, do I have exact numbers on whether that paid off?

[00:15:53] [SPEAKER_00]: No, but I think at the end of the day, we had eight out of 10 of the top brands.

[00:15:57] [SPEAKER_02]: That's what I was about to say. In order for you to have the General Motors and Fords of the

[00:16:01] [SPEAKER_02]: World of Marketing and Gamble, I know you worked with all those companies.

[00:16:04] [SPEAKER_02]: They're not going to hire you, especially as a technology company when you talk about data and

[00:16:08] [SPEAKER_02]: all those things unless they trust you and trust is in brand and brand is built by doing things

[00:16:13] [SPEAKER_00]: like that. Right. And it worked. And we also, even though we played a million over,

[00:16:17] [SPEAKER_00]: I think six big markets, most of the people, especially our competitors couldn't afford it,

[00:16:23] [SPEAKER_00]: there was nobody else in any other industry replacing those billboards.

[00:16:26] [SPEAKER_00]: So we actually got up there in some of the markets. We were there for eight months,

[00:16:30] [SPEAKER_00]: nine months before anyone else came and ripped ourselves down.

[00:16:33] [SPEAKER_02]: Before they were digitized. Exactly.

[00:16:35] [SPEAKER_02]: So you actually had to put up printed ads. You have to put up printed ads.

[00:16:37] [SPEAKER_02]: So another thing you guys have mentioned is talent. You mentioned Jeff Miles-Cleger went on

[00:16:41] [SPEAKER_02]: to become Chief Revenue Officer of Braze, an incredibly successful multi-billion dollar

[00:16:45] [SPEAKER_02]: SaaS business. So many people I know that are buddy media alumni that have gone and do

[00:16:50] [SPEAKER_02]: incredible things. And I know as an entrepreneur, there are a few things as rewarding as

[00:16:54] [SPEAKER_02]: seeing people go on and do great things. What was your strategy and what is your strategy now

[00:16:58] [SPEAKER_02]: for the companies you invest in terms of attracting diverse, talented people,

[00:17:03] [SPEAKER_02]: getting them to stay with you and go along the bumpy journey of being an entrepreneur?

[00:17:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, this is Cass's specialty. Okay.

[00:17:09] [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to pass it to Cass. What makes it your stuff for me, Cass?

[00:17:11] [SPEAKER_00]: I would say my background growing up, we call it a dysfunctional, functional family.

[00:17:16] [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't the team. I was a very team-oriented person. I'm the last of four.

[00:17:20] [SPEAKER_00]: And I just felt like there was no cohesive team. There's a lot of

[00:17:24] [SPEAKER_00]: alliances and it just wasn't right. My dad is who is one of my best friends,

[00:17:29] [SPEAKER_00]: was always my coach in everything we did. I kind of learned from him and I thought, okay,

[00:17:34] [SPEAKER_00]: there's some great levers here with working. Part of the lever that I love is that

[00:17:39] [SPEAKER_00]: if you can figure out someone's baggage, personal baggage, and you can help them move

[00:17:44] [SPEAKER_00]: it just a little bit in their work life, they will excel. That's one. So that helps

[00:17:49] [SPEAKER_00]: having someone who cares that they're not doing or getting to the place where they want to.

[00:17:54] [SPEAKER_00]: And then the second part is have they put themselves in the right position and have

[00:17:58] [SPEAKER_00]: I put them in the right position? So we call it money balling. There was a time when Mike

[00:18:03] [SPEAKER_00]: and I would go on date nights, right? You probably do this with your eyes.

[00:18:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Of course. We had a time. We still do.

[00:18:08] [SPEAKER_00]: But a time where we had to schedule it. Sometimes Mike and I go on date nights too.

[00:18:13] [SPEAKER_00]: So we would go on a date night and we were running and you know what it's like

[00:18:17] [SPEAKER_00]: to be running at that pace. He said, let's go see a movie. And I said,

[00:18:20] [SPEAKER_00]: dude, I don't have time. Opportunity cost of time. That's three hours in and out.

[00:18:24] [SPEAKER_00]: You want to go to dinner? He said, no, no, you're going to love it. It's like field of dreams.

[00:18:27] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, okay. He's like, it's like Hoosiers. I'm like, okay, what's it called? He's like money ball.

[00:18:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, oh, okay. So we go in. It's nothing like them. It's a great story.

[00:18:37] [SPEAKER_00]: But the end of the day, the message is you have to field people in the right position.

[00:18:41] [SPEAKER_00]: And if you do so, you don't need one just big hitter. You just get runs and they get over

[00:18:45] [SPEAKER_00]: the plate. I come out of that. He's like, wasn't that great? I am crying, which I don't do

[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_00]: often. I am crying. He's like, what's wrong? I'm like, I have fires like seven people.

[00:18:53] [SPEAKER_00]: I could have moved these departments. Oh my God, this is the worst. But I took that message and

[00:18:58] [SPEAKER_00]: I realized my dad had been teaching me that my whole life with teams, how to structure them,

[00:19:03] [SPEAKER_00]: how to place different people in different positions. So when you do that, there's some

[00:19:07] [SPEAKER_00]: magic there. Then if you can get people invested in camaraderie, sure you do this,

[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_00]: you probably have lots of different games and activities. It gets harder now when

[00:19:17] [SPEAKER_00]: companies decide to work from home. And then giving, we're very big into making,

[00:19:22] [SPEAKER_00]: giving a big part of our daily lives at our companies even now. It's a big part. So we

[00:19:28] [SPEAKER_00]: started, we were the first corporate team of Cycle for Survival and that started their huge journey.

[00:19:34] [SPEAKER_00]: What did they raise to date? About 400 million. 400 million.

[00:19:37] [SPEAKER_01]: That's for as long as I can remember. Half of the dollars are now from corporate teams.

[00:19:41] [SPEAKER_00]: So we kind of lit the fire under all the corporate teams, started challenging them,

[00:19:45] [SPEAKER_00]: doing games, competitions. Having a tech ride.

[00:19:49] [SPEAKER_01]: We got like Google, Facebook.

[00:19:50] [SPEAKER_00]: And we really work with that. But when you get those kind of four pillars,

[00:19:54] [SPEAKER_00]: there's a magic of like, again, I'm not trying to say you're gonna love work every day,

[00:19:57] [SPEAKER_00]: but if you can get people to show up and realize that they'll like it more than they don't,

[00:20:03] [SPEAKER_00]: that they're acknowledged, that we care about their life, their balance,

[00:20:07] [SPEAKER_00]: something good happens. And if you put them in the right position, they will soar.

[00:20:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely. I mean, it's easier said than done, but I think that strategy will

[00:20:14] [SPEAKER_02]: show up in your favor more often than not. Yeah, and the reverse is true too.

[00:20:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Like when people aren't working out, you got to get them out fast.

[00:20:20] [SPEAKER_00]: So you got to hire them, but fire them faster, right?

[00:20:22] [SPEAKER_02]: 100% couldn't agree more. So in 2011, I believe it was,

[00:20:26] [SPEAKER_02]: buddy media was acquired. 2012.

[00:20:28] [SPEAKER_02]: 2012. Okay, 2012. You were acquired by Salesforce at that time.

[00:20:32] [SPEAKER_02]: It was one of the biggest exits in New York tech history.

[00:20:35] [SPEAKER_02]: I remember Mayor Bloomberg spoke about it.

[00:20:37] [SPEAKER_02]: I remember where I was when I found out that, and we were nowhere near as close

[00:20:40] [SPEAKER_02]: Michael, you and I as we are today back then, but I remember just being so happy for you guys.

[00:20:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Walk me through what that was like to sell your company. What was behind that decision?

[00:20:49] [SPEAKER_02]: What was the journey like to get Mark Banyoff, one of the most influential entrepreneurs of our

[00:20:53] [SPEAKER_02]: era, to believe in both of you to have Salesforce acquire buddy media?

[00:20:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so you really never sell a company. The company's bought.

[00:21:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. And so we were heads down. We had just raised $50 million.

[00:21:07] [SPEAKER_01]: We had most of it in the bank. We had recruited a woman named Susan St. Ledger to be our president

[00:21:13] [SPEAKER_01]: because we realized that for us to go public, away from sales, of course, she was epic executive.

[00:21:20] [SPEAKER_01]: For us to go public, which we were hoping to go public, we needed to up level ourselves,

[00:21:25] [SPEAKER_01]: not just like our team, but like people have that.

[00:21:28] [SPEAKER_01]: We just hired a CFO from Yahoo and I started to feel that there was something in the air,

[00:21:34] [SPEAKER_01]: inbound interest from Yahoo, inbound interest from Google. These corporate development teams call

[00:21:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Ryan Ate at Salesforce is like, oh, when are you out here?

[00:21:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Did you have relationships with them or did they just call that out?

[00:21:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. So a good lesson for entrepreneurs is you're never selling, but identify who's going

[00:21:52] [SPEAKER_01]: to potentially buy and just get to know them because by the time they're looking at your

[00:21:56] [SPEAKER_01]: space, you want them to be up to speed. Yeah. And trust you.

[00:21:59] [SPEAKER_00]: And you updated them a lot. Right?

[00:22:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. I kept them updated.

[00:22:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Mike was great about that.

[00:22:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Always just weeping out.

[00:22:04] [SPEAKER_01]: And I would tweak them. I wrote some stuff in the Wall Street Journal, criticizing Mark Benioff,

[00:22:08] [SPEAKER_01]: which I knew would get right to his desk. He launched the social enterprise and I wrote something

[00:22:13] [SPEAKER_01]: about welcoming him to the social party like six years late. And it just became apparent that

[00:22:19] [SPEAKER_01]: we're going to sell because we had very large companies offering a lot of money

[00:22:23] [SPEAKER_01]: for our business. And I love Salesforce. Still love Salesforce. Had a great time at

[00:22:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Salesforce. Spent four years there and Mark had written a book about how to build a company,

[00:22:35] [SPEAKER_01]: which was the blueprint for how he built Salesforce, which I was using at Buddy Media.

[00:22:41] [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's still that book still rings true today. So many of the

[00:22:44] [SPEAKER_01]: things that you get from that. Yeah. And he invited me over to his townhouse

[00:22:47] [SPEAKER_01]: and or his two townhouses at the time, one for his office and one where he lived. And

[00:22:51] [SPEAKER_01]: he was in workout gear, hat backwards just worked out eating an energy bar.

[00:22:57] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm just showing him the software and Mark is like me that's hard to not show our emotions,

[00:23:04] [SPEAKER_01]: right? So he got really into it. He loved our ad product. And just right there, we negotiated

[00:23:10] [SPEAKER_01]: the deal and he had to talk to the board, all that stuff. And it just felt like home, even

[00:23:16] [SPEAKER_01]: though one of the companies I mentioned had an offer on the table for $100 million more.

[00:23:21] [SPEAKER_01]: We just thought that for our team and for us being a part of the Salesforce

[00:23:26] [SPEAKER_01]: story and their evolution, because they had the sales cloud and the service cloud,

[00:23:30] [SPEAKER_01]: what do you do next? Marketing, right? You got to find customers. And then you do that through sales

[00:23:37] [SPEAKER_01]: and you got to service them. So marketing was one of the pillars. Don't forget too that Mark has

[00:23:42] [SPEAKER_01]: this huge philosophy of giving back to 100% like his 111. So philosophically there's a line

[00:23:48] [SPEAKER_01]: in there. We had modeled a lot of our giving stuff off of his 111 model, which is 1%

[00:23:53] [SPEAKER_01]: of time, people's time, 1% of equity, 1% of capital goes to nonprofit. And so he was a first

[00:24:01] [SPEAKER_01]: executive who I love really respected, who was basically saying make giving part of your day-to-day.

[00:24:08] [SPEAKER_01]: You can do well and do good at the same time. And not only that, but by doing good, by helping

[00:24:16] [SPEAKER_01]: others more than just your shareholders, that's going to be good for business. So

[00:24:20] [SPEAKER_01]: we were just aligned and he went on to treat us great. And a lot of our people are still there,

[00:24:26] [SPEAKER_00]: which we're excited about. I mean, our CTO, Patrick Stokes is now an SEVP,

[00:24:32] [SPEAKER_00]: going around with Mark on stages. So that's like pretty big. We'll be right back with the speed

[00:24:38] [SPEAKER_02]: of culture after a few words from our sponsors. So I want to get the post-exit life in the

[00:24:42] [SPEAKER_02]: second, but before we move past the exit, I don't know if this is in the book or not,

[00:24:46] [SPEAKER_02]: but it definitely impacted me emotionally as it did hundreds of thousands of other people.

[00:24:50] [SPEAKER_02]: You posted a video the day the company was sold and it was about overcoming fear.

[00:24:55] [SPEAKER_02]: And I just think when I tell other people about you, it's one of the stories that always comes

[00:25:00] [SPEAKER_02]: to mind. I'm looking at Harrison Silverstein, our executive producer in the room, and I

[00:25:04] [SPEAKER_02]: showed it to him the first time the night before he was going to meet you for the first time

[00:25:07] [SPEAKER_02]: at CS. One of my closest friends somebody looked up to so much, look at this video he made

[00:25:10] [SPEAKER_02]: because I just thought it was so real and it really shows who you are. Tell us a little

[00:25:14] [SPEAKER_02]: bit about that video, what the personal story is behind it and why you decided to make it.

[00:25:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. So the story is I was in our office on a Sunday. Now we had a very vibrant office,

[00:25:25] [SPEAKER_01]: a lot of young people, always activity. You go in a Sunday, you're the only person and it's

[00:25:30] [SPEAKER_01]: like you're in a silent chamber. So I just went very into my head and I was there to sign

[00:25:37] [SPEAKER_01]: the paperwork for the deal. And so I signed the deal and like as an entrepreneur, a lot of

[00:25:42] [SPEAKER_01]: people look at overnight success stories, but at this time, this is like a 20 year overnight

[00:25:47] [SPEAKER_01]: thing. That is yet to matter of fact. Yeah. And so and this was like life changing money,

[00:25:52] [SPEAKER_01]: right? We're talking about, I mean, to me $800 million is a lot. I think it's a lot to most

[00:25:58] [SPEAKER_02]: people. And back then it was like 10 times more than it would be like an eight billion

[00:26:00] [SPEAKER_01]: dollar deal today. Yeah. And so you're looking at like generations of your family and

[00:26:04] [SPEAKER_01]: more importantly all these employees who were making money. And we had like a great,

[00:26:09] [SPEAKER_01]: we had purpose after the deal. It wasn't just like, oh, we're selling, we got to work for it.

[00:26:13] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, no, we're working for a startup. Salesforce was valued at 16 billion at the time.

[00:26:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Right. Now it's 300 billion, right? So there's a feeling that this could really grow. We want

[00:26:23] [SPEAKER_01]: to be a part of that. And I just felt very grateful and I really went to two people, one,

[00:26:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Jen Goodman-Lynne who is no longer with us, but Start Cycle for Survival, who was a very

[00:26:33] [SPEAKER_01]: good friend who had passed. And I thought about someone else who had gone through,

[00:26:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Ben Breedlove, who people may not have heard of who had the same heart condition that I had.

[00:26:45] [SPEAKER_01]: I had this heart condition survive. They didn't. Ben had put together a video in the same format.

[00:26:51] [SPEAKER_01]: So in the same no card format with music. Mine was the Kerry Brothers Ride, Kerry Brothers

[00:26:57] [SPEAKER_01]: great musician. We went to Northwestern together. So he let me steal his song,

[00:27:02] [SPEAKER_01]: which is a very emotional song. And so I just put together a message and recorded it,

[00:27:07] [SPEAKER_01]: put it out there. Didn't really think about it. Looking back, it seems to be like a high douchebag

[00:27:12] [SPEAKER_01]: factor of not at all. Not at all. Not at all. Looking back, it could have-

[00:27:15] [SPEAKER_01]: It humanized you. Yes.

[00:27:17] [SPEAKER_01]: I agree. But it could have, like the fact, I didn't really think about it.

[00:27:20] [SPEAKER_02]: But ultimately it was about getting past your fear. So talk to me about how,

[00:27:24] [SPEAKER_01]: why that's important. So fear paralyzes people and it gets us to make the wrong decision

[00:27:31] [SPEAKER_01]: all the time. And I'm not talking about just fear of running away from tigers and sharks.

[00:27:35] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm talking about fear of what our parents think, fear of what other things.

[00:27:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Investor.

[00:27:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Fear of being a failure. Right.

[00:27:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Fear like imposter syndrome. Right?

[00:27:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. People not liking your social media posts.

[00:27:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Right. Yeah. And so you make decisions because of that that are not great for you.

[00:27:49] [SPEAKER_01]: I'd look back at like after 9-11 there were like 5,000 people who drove instead of

[00:27:54] [SPEAKER_01]: flying in a plane who actually died and car crashes. The fear caused all this stuff.

[00:27:59] [SPEAKER_01]: And Jen, who was fearless, Jen didn't say don't be scared. Don't live without fear.

[00:28:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Just don't let it really-

[00:28:09] [SPEAKER_01]: Stop you.

[00:28:09] [SPEAKER_01]: Kind of stop you from doing what you want and more importantly make an awful decision.

[00:28:13] [SPEAKER_01]: So I think when my basically heart stopped working, right? I have an artificial heart

[00:28:17] [SPEAKER_01]: valve and aortic valve. That was the first time I started living fearlessly,

[00:28:21] [SPEAKER_01]: just getting out there. And basically it comes down to what's the worst thing that could

[00:28:25] [SPEAKER_01]: happen. What's the worst thing that could happen if I asked Cass to dance?

[00:28:27] [SPEAKER_01]: What's the worst thing that could happen if I start a company?

[00:28:30] [SPEAKER_01]: What's the worst thing that could happen if I write a book? It just doesn't sell.

[00:28:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Or what's the worst thing that could happen if you ask for money and someone says no?

[00:28:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Or help or anything. Right.

[00:28:39] [SPEAKER_01]: You're still live, right? Yeah.

[00:28:40] [SPEAKER_01]: You all have like, no matter who you are there's something that like-

[00:28:43] [SPEAKER_01]: It's perspective.

[00:28:43] [SPEAKER_01]: You could be appreciative of.

[00:28:45] [SPEAKER_00]: And Mike, I would add that before your heart surgery that saved you,

[00:28:48] [SPEAKER_00]: you were a pretty anxious individual.

[00:28:50] [SPEAKER_01]: No, 100%. I had it at 19. I had ulcers because I was like that.

[00:28:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:28:54] [SPEAKER_01]: That anxious. Ulcer multiples.

[00:28:56] [SPEAKER_01]: And I was anxious about getting into the world, doing stuff.

[00:29:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Not knowing.

[00:29:00] [SPEAKER_01]: I just overthought things and afterward it's like, oh, I'm good.

[00:29:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Like this is like extra ending.

[00:29:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, there's that old adage like a wealthy man wants 1,000 things and a sick man wants one.

[00:29:10] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:29:10] [SPEAKER_02]: And once I think you're brought down to that level.

[00:29:13] [SPEAKER_00]: And yep.

[00:29:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:29:14] [SPEAKER_00]: His mom will say that he got out of that surgery and was totally different.

[00:29:19] [SPEAKER_00]: It was like the entire anxiety that had been sitting on his chest was gone.

[00:29:23] [SPEAKER_02]: Being married to Michael and seeing him go through that, I guess from an outside perspective,

[00:29:29] [SPEAKER_02]: how do you think getting past fear helped him and helped you and other people as entrepreneurs

[00:29:34] [SPEAKER_02]: achieve what they want to achieve?

[00:29:36] [SPEAKER_00]: I think as Mike said, you do not get stuck.

[00:29:39] [SPEAKER_00]: So having to make new decisions, having to pivot, having to change your mind,

[00:29:44] [SPEAKER_00]: having to do something over or redo something, that to me is just different software versions.

[00:29:50] [SPEAKER_00]: I look at no perfection.

[00:29:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Let's just ship imperfect products and improve them a long way.

[00:29:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Guy Kawasaki said that.

[00:29:56] [SPEAKER_00]: So when you have fear, you don't do that.

[00:29:59] [SPEAKER_00]: You get paralyzed, you stop.

[00:30:01] [SPEAKER_00]: You don't make the right decision.

[00:30:02] [SPEAKER_00]: You don't make any decision.

[00:30:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think being with him, that is always something that keeps me going.

[00:30:09] [SPEAKER_00]: I should have a lot more fear.

[00:30:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I did not have knock on wood any kind of health scare when I was younger.

[00:30:15] [SPEAKER_02]: But you started the business with three young kids.

[00:30:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[00:30:18] [SPEAKER_02]: So you don't do that if you're scared.

[00:30:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Like, will I be able to be there for them?

[00:30:22] [SPEAKER_02]: Financing all that stuff.

[00:30:23] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't like companies where people are not seen.

[00:30:27] [SPEAKER_00]: And so I'd rather build companies and build teams where people can be seen and acknowledged

[00:30:33] [SPEAKER_00]: and appreciated.

[00:30:34] [SPEAKER_00]: And if I do my job and I get them in the right role, they will do their work.

[00:30:38] [SPEAKER_00]: I empower them to do it.

[00:30:40] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't need a micromanager or anything.

[00:30:41] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'd rather do that and take that risk than be like, okay, which corporation should I go to?

[00:30:49] [SPEAKER_02]: So one thing that I really admire about both of you guys is that you haven't really changed post-exit.

[00:30:54] [SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of people do.

[00:30:55] [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of people let money impact them.

[00:30:58] [SPEAKER_02]: They try to find new friends.

[00:31:00] [SPEAKER_02]: They up level in ways.

[00:31:01] [SPEAKER_02]: They set the wrong value system for their family.

[00:31:04] [SPEAKER_02]: And I honestly, I call us to people all the time.

[00:31:05] [SPEAKER_02]: You guys haven't.

[00:31:06] [SPEAKER_02]: And it makes you guys truly unique.

[00:31:07] [SPEAKER_02]: And not only that, but you still work hard and you start an venture firm and you're writing a book

[00:31:14] [SPEAKER_02]: and you're doing all these things.

[00:31:15] [SPEAKER_02]: I guess, Cass, from your perspective, what is the magic to doing that?

[00:31:20] [SPEAKER_02]: And what gave you the motivation to want to keep going after you have such a big financial

[00:31:24] [SPEAKER_02]: event in your life to keep going to build stuff and actually be here doing this podcast interview today?

[00:31:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Something that motivates me is helping others.

[00:31:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's a form of also gratitude.

[00:31:34] [SPEAKER_00]: So, yes, after Buddy Media, Mike stayed for four years.

[00:31:38] [SPEAKER_00]: I got out of there after six months and it was very nice of Mark to let me do so to kind of reset.

[00:31:44] [SPEAKER_00]: I had a lot on my plate with 350 employees as you can probably imagine us and the kids.

[00:31:49] [SPEAKER_00]: And they needed me.

[00:31:50] [SPEAKER_00]: It was time.

[00:31:51] [SPEAKER_00]: And you do need a little bit of a break, but I think I suffer when I'm not around people

[00:31:57] [SPEAKER_00]: who are teaching me something and then something I can teach them.

[00:32:00] [SPEAKER_00]: I want to do that.

[00:32:01] [SPEAKER_00]: So that motivates us.

[00:32:02] [SPEAKER_00]: On a daily basis, on a weekly basis, Mike and I still get calls from lots of people,

[00:32:07] [SPEAKER_00]: friends of friends, where you talk to about an idea, where you walk them through how you should

[00:32:11] [SPEAKER_00]: start something.

[00:32:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Can you help them with fundraising?

[00:32:14] [SPEAKER_00]: And at a certain point, I said, you know, Mike, I think it's time.

[00:32:18] [SPEAKER_00]: We have hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of people who've asked us the same questions.

[00:32:22] [SPEAKER_00]: So that was the motivation for the book.

[00:32:25] [SPEAKER_00]: And the motivation, I think, for being investors is I think we can really help.

[00:32:30] [SPEAKER_00]: And we know what it's like to shovel shit.

[00:32:31] [SPEAKER_00]: You know what it's like.

[00:32:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:32:33] [SPEAKER_00]: And what can we tell them so they avoid the pitfalls?

[00:32:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And can we help them choose the right founder, the co-founder, level up a team?

[00:32:41] [SPEAKER_00]: How do they communicate across and down?

[00:32:43] [SPEAKER_00]: How do they retain employees?

[00:32:45] [SPEAKER_00]: What about hiring?

[00:32:46] [SPEAKER_00]: So I think that is potentially the strength maybe that we have that we're willing to give away.

[00:32:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:32:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Which I think is fantastic.

[00:32:56] [SPEAKER_02]: So we hadn't gotten into this, but you have a venture fund and you guys have made some

[00:33:00] [SPEAKER_02]: awesome investments.

[00:33:01] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure you've had your fair share of misses just like every other investor.

[00:33:04] [SPEAKER_02]: Liquid Death being one of them, which is a great success story.

[00:33:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Talk to me, Michael, about just the journey of going from an entrepreneur to starting a fund.

[00:33:12] [SPEAKER_02]: What have you learned from investing in entrepreneurs and kind of being on the outside in?

[00:33:16] [SPEAKER_02]: And where are some of the areas that both of you guys are looking at today

[00:33:19] [SPEAKER_02]: for areas to invest in?

[00:33:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. So we started making investments in 2009, 2010 and we just never stopped.

[00:33:28] [SPEAKER_01]: So we've done like a hundred of these both within a fund environment and our own personal.

[00:33:32] [SPEAKER_01]: And I love entrepreneurs and CAS does as well, but I love every deal.

[00:33:37] [SPEAKER_01]: And so like I sit down and talk to an entrepreneur and I immediately like,

[00:33:41] [SPEAKER_01]: yeah, it's great. This is how it's going to work.

[00:33:44] [SPEAKER_01]: And then I talked to CAS and she's like, oh no, that's right.

[00:33:47] [SPEAKER_01]: And so that is really good. Having that balance of I get the deal flow.

[00:33:53] [SPEAKER_01]: We're friends with so many entrepreneurs, people come to us like we were public

[00:33:56] [SPEAKER_01]: with throughout buddy media. Having someone who's so grounded to basically really be able to think

[00:34:01] [SPEAKER_01]: about how do we operationalize this? Is it going to work? What's truly the size of the market

[00:34:06] [SPEAKER_01]: when they scale? And we really look at companies through like who's the founder?

[00:34:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Is it the right founder for the right industry or the right company?

[00:34:14] [SPEAKER_01]: How big is the market? It's hard to build a really big business in a tiny market.

[00:34:19] [SPEAKER_01]: And so that's what we've gotten right and we got it right. And it's what we've gotten wrong

[00:34:23] [SPEAKER_01]: like a bunch of times, like the market you want to be early, but it's got to be a big market

[00:34:28] [SPEAKER_01]: in the next like one, two, three years. And then the last is who else is around the table?

[00:34:33] [SPEAKER_01]: We found that if entrepreneurs can get can convince people to be advisors and investors,

[00:34:39] [SPEAKER_01]: they're good at kind of telling the story, communicating.

[00:34:43] [SPEAKER_01]: In the meantime, customers are on the table too.

[00:34:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[00:34:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Great employees and everything else.

[00:34:48] [SPEAKER_01]: We don't invest in people who we don't want to have dinner with,

[00:34:51] [SPEAKER_01]: who we don't want to hang out with. And we get it wrong sometimes.

[00:34:54] [SPEAKER_01]: But at the end of the day, the entrepreneur with the shovel is just so powerful.

[00:35:00] [SPEAKER_01]: We've seen people transform their lives. There's no reason that we should have

[00:35:03] [SPEAKER_01]: made all this money. We just put our heads down. We want to be independent.

[00:35:08] [SPEAKER_01]: And we were driven by not having a real job. And 20-some years later, it's like we made it,

[00:35:14] [SPEAKER_01]: but it was never about the money. And we look at kind of the investing as

[00:35:19] [SPEAKER_01]: our way to help entrepreneurs and align interests. We win together, we lose together.

[00:35:24] [SPEAKER_01]: One of our companies that we had provided seed capital to is called Scopely.

[00:35:29] [SPEAKER_01]: And Scopely sold last year for $5 billion in cash.

[00:35:33] [SPEAKER_01]: And there's just nothing better than seeing an entrepreneur, if you know really well,

[00:35:38] [SPEAKER_01]: you've seen grow.

[00:35:39] [SPEAKER_01]: You've seen the ups and downs. You've seen them shovel shit.

[00:35:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you've seen this shit.

[00:35:43] [SPEAKER_00]: And when they win...

[00:35:44] [SPEAKER_01]: We've seen them show up at our house at Thanksgiving.

[00:35:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Walter literally was running out of money and he just nowhere to go because he was raising

[00:35:51] [SPEAKER_01]: money. So when they have an exit like that, I would say it's almost the same as when

[00:35:57] [SPEAKER_01]: we sold Buddy Media. The irony of when we sold Buddy Media is we announced it to

[00:36:02] [SPEAKER_01]: a company and it was like a happy moment. We were relatively miserable and burned out personally.

[00:36:08] [SPEAKER_01]: We were at each other's throats. We were fighting like crazy. I was like...

[00:36:11] [SPEAKER_02]: It's not easy to get down with the lawyers, the back and forth,

[00:36:14] [SPEAKER_02]: the ups and downs, this deal is gonna happen.

[00:36:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And the travel. How about the travel?

[00:36:16] [SPEAKER_01]: We've been in Singapore, we've been in London.

[00:36:19] [SPEAKER_00]: How about three months before the deal, Mike decides to surprise me.

[00:36:24] [SPEAKER_00]: It turned out to be great, but with a puppy.

[00:36:27] [SPEAKER_01]: As if three kids were not awesome.

[00:36:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Three kids. He traveled 24-7 and he got me a puppy.

[00:36:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Bernie's Mountain Dog puppy, which is 40 pounds.

[00:36:36] [SPEAKER_01]: And there's often like... I've talked to a lot of entrepreneurs who like...

[00:36:39] [SPEAKER_02]: I've seen that dog on Facebook throughout the years and it turns out well.

[00:36:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we love her.

[00:36:44] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we love dogs, cats loves dogs, all animals.

[00:36:47] [SPEAKER_01]: But the entrepreneurial journey is both beautiful and miserable.

[00:36:53] [SPEAKER_01]: And when you do have an exit or accomplish something great,

[00:36:56] [SPEAKER_01]: it's often hard to enjoy it because you have this...

[00:36:59] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not gonna compare it to like PTSD, that's like totally different.

[00:37:03] [SPEAKER_01]: But you're in this mentality that you can't get out of.

[00:37:06] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's always on your mind.

[00:37:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[00:37:07] [SPEAKER_01]: In the shower.

[00:37:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Always.

[00:37:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Working out whatever it is.

[00:37:10] [SPEAKER_00]: That's the irony, right?

[00:37:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Like everyone said, we wanted to do this because we like our independence.

[00:37:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, we work more for this, for our companies than you would

[00:37:17] [SPEAKER_00]: if you just had a regular day job, right?

[00:37:20] [SPEAKER_00]: A desk job.

[00:37:20] [SPEAKER_00]: So it never ends.

[00:37:22] [SPEAKER_00]: You won't miss...

[00:37:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Like here's the other thing that people should know who want to start businesses.

[00:37:25] [SPEAKER_00]: You won't miss the big milestones with your kids and family or yourself or your

[00:37:30] [SPEAKER_00]: family of origin, but you will miss all the other stuff.

[00:37:34] [SPEAKER_00]: You will miss the in between.

[00:37:35] [SPEAKER_02]: There's a trade-off.

[00:37:36] [SPEAKER_02]: There's a trade-off.

[00:37:36] [SPEAKER_02]: People don't want to trade off.

[00:37:37] [SPEAKER_02]: No.

[00:37:37] [SPEAKER_02]: They want their cake and eat it too.

[00:37:39] [SPEAKER_00]: But you're gonna miss like...

[00:37:40] [SPEAKER_00]: I missed Viv's first crawl and first walk.

[00:37:43] [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't miss any of her recitals when she was older.

[00:37:46] [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't miss the day that they were celebrating her birthday at school

[00:37:49] [SPEAKER_00]: or Kohl's soccer games or Myles's, whatever.

[00:37:52] [SPEAKER_00]: But you do miss it.

[00:37:54] [SPEAKER_00]: You miss a lot in between and there is.

[00:37:56] [SPEAKER_00]: And I have a belief that you can only do one thing well at a time.

[00:37:59] [SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people think you can do a lot.

[00:38:01] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't buy it.

[00:38:02] [SPEAKER_02]: And the thing about being an entrepreneur is there's no guarantee

[00:38:04] [SPEAKER_02]: it's gonna be a success like Buddy Media.

[00:38:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Right, but the ones who know that and really grasp the concept of,

[00:38:11] [SPEAKER_00]: okay, I'm gonna shovel.

[00:38:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna learn.

[00:38:13] [SPEAKER_00]: There's gonna be chaos.

[00:38:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Those are the ones, the ones who learn to love that.

[00:38:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Those are the ones who are successful.

[00:38:18] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:38:19] [SPEAKER_02]: Not chasing it, just being in it or whatever it is that

[00:38:22] [SPEAKER_02]: you're business does.

[00:38:22] [SPEAKER_00]: And realizing that struggle, like there's quote by J. Kohl,

[00:38:26] [SPEAKER_00]: there's beauty in the struggle.

[00:38:27] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:38:27] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's what entrepreneurs and I think all of us at this table share.

[00:38:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.

[00:38:32] [SPEAKER_01]: It's miserable and there's nothing I'd rather do.

[00:38:35] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:38:35] [SPEAKER_02]: So to wrap up here and it's been an amazing interview

[00:38:38] [SPEAKER_02]: and I can't wait for our audience to hear it,

[00:38:40] [SPEAKER_02]: I'll start with you, Michael.

[00:38:41] [SPEAKER_02]: Like if you look back on your career from the golf.com days

[00:38:44] [SPEAKER_02]: all the way through today and the success you've been

[00:38:46] [SPEAKER_02]: in your life both personally and professionally,

[00:38:48] [SPEAKER_02]: and you had to point to a couple things

[00:38:50] [SPEAKER_02]: in terms of what drove your success.

[00:38:52] [SPEAKER_02]: We talked about getting on the other side of the fears,

[00:38:53] [SPEAKER_02]: maybe we could skip that but anything else comes to mind.

[00:38:57] [SPEAKER_01]: I always look at a few key relationships that without those,

[00:39:02] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I don't think we would have succeeded like we've succeeded.

[00:39:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[00:39:04] [SPEAKER_01]: So we had to buy golf.com back.

[00:39:07] [SPEAKER_01]: I happened to like network to meet a Chicago golfer who was

[00:39:12] [SPEAKER_01]: also had one of the few venture funds, Keith Bank

[00:39:16] [SPEAKER_01]: who agreed to put in money and made introductions to someone who then

[00:39:20] [SPEAKER_01]: made introductions to the other money.

[00:39:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Howard Linsen committing on the spot and making the introductions

[00:39:26] [SPEAKER_01]: and so being open always treating people with respect

[00:39:32] [SPEAKER_01]: because you just never know.

[00:39:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Things do what comes around goes around.

[00:39:36] [SPEAKER_01]: I helped Howard sell that business and figure out that business

[00:39:41] [SPEAKER_01]: just because I liked Howard.

[00:39:43] [SPEAKER_01]: He then turned around and helped me.

[00:39:44] [SPEAKER_00]: What was his email to you?

[00:39:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, listen, after we raised the first round and I thanked him for it,

[00:39:51] [SPEAKER_01]: he sent me an email in 2007 which I still have which says

[00:39:54] [SPEAKER_01]: he should get back to emails.

[00:39:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Like always.

[00:39:56] [SPEAKER_02]: Because I ignored his email like first.

[00:39:59] [SPEAKER_02]: And also Gary Vaynerchuk,

[00:40:00] [SPEAKER_02]: you gave him his first office space right now.

[00:40:02] [SPEAKER_02]: He's writing the forward to your book.

[00:40:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes.

[00:40:04] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, Gary's Gary, you are you.

[00:40:06] [SPEAKER_01]: We met really early on.

[00:40:08] [SPEAKER_01]: It's not a surprise that you'd gone on to do great things.

[00:40:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Hopefully, I've helped in a little way for you and for sure.

[00:40:13] [SPEAKER_01]: I know you guys have helped me.

[00:40:15] [SPEAKER_01]: You have it.

[00:40:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Entrepreneurs have it,

[00:40:18] [SPEAKER_01]: but everyone can point to a few key introductions of people

[00:40:22] [SPEAKER_01]: who really made just an oversized contribution.

[00:40:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Almost like the supporting actors in the movie of your life.

[00:40:27] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:40:27] [SPEAKER_02]: The reboot coming at the right moment and help you get through.

[00:40:31] [SPEAKER_01]: They unlock hidden doors that open up a whole brand new world.

[00:40:35] [SPEAKER_01]: And when we moved to New York,

[00:40:37] [SPEAKER_01]: which we always wanted to do,

[00:40:38] [SPEAKER_01]: we sold golf.com for $25 million.

[00:40:41] [SPEAKER_01]: But we didn't own that much.

[00:40:42] [SPEAKER_01]: We made $3 million, which is a lot of money.

[00:40:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Total over eight years.

[00:40:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Right.

[00:40:46] [SPEAKER_00]: But we were psyched.

[00:40:47] [SPEAKER_02]: That's a lot of money.

[00:40:48] [SPEAKER_02]: We divided that by eight and divided by two.

[00:40:50] [SPEAKER_00]: And we also made zero.

[00:40:53] [SPEAKER_00]: We made zero income.

[00:40:55] [SPEAKER_00]: We had no salaries for the first two years.

[00:40:56] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:40:57] [SPEAKER_02]: So there you go.

[00:40:58] [SPEAKER_02]: So when we moved here with.

[00:40:59] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's most journeys in entrepreneurship

[00:41:01] [SPEAKER_02]: versus the buddy story.

[00:41:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Correct.

[00:41:03] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:41:03] [SPEAKER_02]: That's kind of the reality is you had to go through

[00:41:05] [SPEAKER_02]: something like that to get to something like buddy.

[00:41:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:41:08] [SPEAKER_01]: And we raised money, sold it, had to buy it back,

[00:41:11] [SPEAKER_01]: like all this stuff.

[00:41:13] [SPEAKER_01]: And so doing this type of work,

[00:41:15] [SPEAKER_01]: I can't imagine doing anything else.

[00:41:17] [SPEAKER_01]: And we feel like we're the luckiest people in the world.

[00:41:20] [SPEAKER_01]: And it fucking sucks.

[00:41:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:41:22] [SPEAKER_01]: There's so much to do.

[00:41:23] [SPEAKER_01]: But that's life.

[00:41:23] [SPEAKER_01]: And so holding those two things is often difficult,

[00:41:26] [SPEAKER_01]: but that's life.

[00:41:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Yep.

[00:41:28] [SPEAKER_02]: So, Cass, onto you.

[00:41:29] [SPEAKER_02]: What do you think some of the things you'd point to

[00:41:30] [SPEAKER_02]: in terms of your success personally and professionally?

[00:41:33] [SPEAKER_00]: I think I point a lot to my dad

[00:41:36] [SPEAKER_00]: and watching how he did things,

[00:41:39] [SPEAKER_00]: both as a coach to me and small example,

[00:41:43] [SPEAKER_00]: he was our basketball coach.

[00:41:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Can you imagine like girls' basketball at like eight?

[00:41:46] [SPEAKER_00]: The score is like two to zero.

[00:41:48] [SPEAKER_00]: But he had this way of figuring out what talent everyone had

[00:41:52] [SPEAKER_00]: and the talent was really slim picking.

[00:41:54] [SPEAKER_00]: So maybe running with their right hand out.

[00:41:57] [SPEAKER_00]: So knew to put that person up at the top right guard

[00:42:00] [SPEAKER_00]: for guarding.

[00:42:01] [SPEAKER_00]: And then watching him,

[00:42:02] [SPEAKER_00]: I had the opportunity to work for a marketing firm

[00:42:07] [SPEAKER_00]: for law firms.

[00:42:09] [SPEAKER_00]: And my dad's firm, Howard and Simon,

[00:42:11] [SPEAKER_00]: he was the managing part,

[00:42:12] [SPEAKER_00]: was the first client or one of the biggest clients.

[00:42:14] [SPEAKER_00]: So I actually got to see my dad a lot

[00:42:17] [SPEAKER_00]: when I would walk by certain offices

[00:42:19] [SPEAKER_00]: in the fishbowl conference rooms.

[00:42:21] [SPEAKER_00]: And I would see how he interacted.

[00:42:23] [SPEAKER_00]: He had humor,

[00:42:24] [SPEAKER_00]: even though there were intense miserable conversations.

[00:42:27] [SPEAKER_00]: This is law and antitrust law and lots of litigation.

[00:42:31] [SPEAKER_00]: There was this humanity of smiling,

[00:42:33] [SPEAKER_00]: of high-fiving people.

[00:42:35] [SPEAKER_00]: And I always think back to those things.

[00:42:38] [SPEAKER_00]: And I realized that laughter is like a big tool,

[00:42:42] [SPEAKER_00]: a big tool that breaks down barriers.

[00:42:45] [SPEAKER_00]: And so I just think about those moments of time,

[00:42:48] [SPEAKER_00]: of struggling in my family of origin and friendships

[00:42:52] [SPEAKER_00]: and just kind of lean back on laughter.

[00:42:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Like just being able to do the right thing,

[00:42:58] [SPEAKER_00]: say the right thing, mean well.

[00:42:59] [SPEAKER_00]: There's intentions here.

[00:43:01] [SPEAKER_00]: We never root for our success by stepping on others.

[00:43:05] [SPEAKER_00]: You want other people to succeed.

[00:43:07] [SPEAKER_00]: And you have to believe that.

[00:43:09] [SPEAKER_00]: So there's just some things I've learned from other people.

[00:43:12] [SPEAKER_00]: My mentor, Diane Hartley,

[00:43:14] [SPEAKER_00]: actually one of her daughters called us

[00:43:16] [SPEAKER_00]: because she just started a company.

[00:43:17] [SPEAKER_00]: She used to work at Buddy Media too,

[00:43:19] [SPEAKER_00]: which is just kind of mind-blowing.

[00:43:21] [SPEAKER_00]: But my mentor, she just taught me how to interact,

[00:43:25] [SPEAKER_00]: taught me not to be afraid of talking

[00:43:27] [SPEAKER_00]: to customers and clients and to be myself.

[00:43:31] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's super important.

[00:43:32] [SPEAKER_02]: So we end our podcast by asking if there's a phrase or mantra

[00:43:37] [SPEAKER_02]: that drives your life and Cass will start with you.

[00:43:40] [SPEAKER_02]: What's the first thing that comes to mind

[00:43:41] [SPEAKER_02]: in terms of a mantra for you?

[00:43:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Because I work with people a lot,

[00:43:45] [SPEAKER_00]: I would say do the job you have and do the job you want.

[00:43:48] [SPEAKER_02]: Elaborate on that.

[00:43:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Don't come to me saying that you think

[00:43:51] [SPEAKER_00]: you should be doing other jobs

[00:43:52] [SPEAKER_00]: or that you're good for this

[00:43:53] [SPEAKER_00]: or that you think you can help out over here.

[00:43:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Do the one that I've put you in

[00:43:57] [SPEAKER_00]: and do the other jobs too.

[00:44:00] [SPEAKER_00]: And then I'll see you.

[00:44:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Love that, Michael.

[00:44:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Mine, we mentioned part of this,

[00:44:04] [SPEAKER_01]: mine is trust your gut.

[00:44:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Very rarely does your gut drive you

[00:44:09] [SPEAKER_01]: into a ditch in the wrong direction.

[00:44:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Like your gut is usually right,

[00:44:13] [SPEAKER_01]: everything else surrounding the decision is wrong.

[00:44:17] [SPEAKER_01]: And so really hone into what do you truly feel

[00:44:20] [SPEAKER_01]: at the beginning?

[00:44:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Like what's your gut until your gut

[00:44:24] [SPEAKER_01]: proves to yourself that it's bad.

[00:44:26] [SPEAKER_01]: I have some friends who maybe like don't trust your gut.

[00:44:29] [SPEAKER_01]: But I hear over and over again, I knew it.

[00:44:32] [SPEAKER_01]: You hear that?

[00:44:32] [SPEAKER_01]: I knew it.

[00:44:33] [SPEAKER_01]: We should have done that,

[00:44:34] [SPEAKER_01]: should have trusted my gut.

[00:44:36] [SPEAKER_01]: And that has been just a huge part of our life

[00:44:38] [SPEAKER_01]: which is why it's hard to explain why we did stuff.

[00:44:42] [SPEAKER_01]: It just felt right.

[00:44:43] [SPEAKER_01]: It was just a gut decision.

[00:44:44] [SPEAKER_02]: That's so much of life.

[00:44:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:44:46] [SPEAKER_01]: And so this book doing the social media content

[00:44:48] [SPEAKER_01]: we're doing which feels a little uncomfortable.

[00:44:50] [SPEAKER_01]: We were in social media now,

[00:44:51] [SPEAKER_01]: we're getting out there again.

[00:44:53] [SPEAKER_01]: But seems like the right thing to do,

[00:44:54] [SPEAKER_01]: the right way to get this out.

[00:44:56] [SPEAKER_01]: We'll see if it pans out.

[00:44:57] [SPEAKER_01]: It's already been out.

[00:44:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Our gut is that it's worthwhile.

[00:45:01] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's going to be worthwhile

[00:45:02] [SPEAKER_02]: for everyone here at this podcast who reads the book.

[00:45:03] [SPEAKER_02]: You guys have so much wisdom to share.

[00:45:05] [SPEAKER_02]: I just want to thank both of you guys

[00:45:06] [SPEAKER_02]: for sharing all that with me here today.

[00:45:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for having us.

[00:45:09] [SPEAKER_02]: And so grateful for you guys.

[00:45:11] [SPEAKER_02]: So shoveling a love story is coming out March 2025

[00:45:15] [SPEAKER_02]: by a copy.

[00:45:16] [SPEAKER_02]: I know we are going to be buying copies

[00:45:17] [SPEAKER_02]: for every employee at Susie

[00:45:19] [SPEAKER_02]: because I want our team to learn

[00:45:20] [SPEAKER_02]: about the great learnings from Cass and Mike.

[00:45:22] [SPEAKER_02]: So on behalf of the Susie and the Adiwee team,

[00:45:24] [SPEAKER_02]: thanks again to Cass and Mike Lazarow for joining us today.

[00:45:26] [SPEAKER_02]: Be sure to subscribe,

[00:45:26] [SPEAKER_02]: rate, review the Speed of Culture podcast

[00:45:28] [SPEAKER_02]: on your favorite podcast platform.

[00:45:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Till next time, see you soon, everyone, later.

[00:46:01] [SPEAKER_02]: On behalf of the team here at Susie, thanks for listening.