And 85 is when it gets kind of cold here.
Are you, are you way south Texas?
Yeah.
So right in between San Antonio and Austin, it's an area and welcoming everybody.
I've got Sean Tepper here from a stock trading platform for beginners called ticker.
And we're going to be talking about building software companies in addition to what ticker
is and how he's growing his channel.
It's got 10,000 subscribers on the platform.
He's got 2000 on YouTube.
You know, most of you, whether you call the people you work with users, subscribers,
members, human beings, I know a lot of people love to throw that and an entrepreneur's
face is like, no, we call our people humans.
Like, okay, I get it.
They're all people, of course, but patients, all of that is really about service.
Right.
And that's what software as a service is all about is taking care of people.
That's what it should be about.
Um, so it's interesting to me that you created a, uh, a stock trading platform for
people who are a novices, you know, they got a lot to learn and figure out, um, you
know, what, what led you, what's, what's, what's, you know, I could go through LinkedIn
and look at your resume, but what are the components of your life that have really
led you to this place resume included, but outside of that, that people may not recognize.
Sure.
Well, Jackson, thanks for inviting me to the show.
Really appreciate your time.
Um, yeah, I'll give you the backstory here.
I'll try to keep it to about two minutes or less.
It's kind of a fun story.
There's some entertainment, entertaining little bits within.
So I've been in tech actually about 18 years.
I started my first company in the 2000s.
It was just an agency building software and websites or small and midsize
businesses and, and built that from 2006 to 2010.
I made like no money over those years.
That was the recession.
Um, but learned a lot about business.
I got to work with about, I pitched about 400 companies closed about a hundred.
Um, but the wind was the pitching because I got to understand everything from like
SaaS businesses to e-commerce to hair salons, to restaurants, to car dealerships.
So this goes on.
So I knew after the four years, like what's a scalable business and what's not
2010, a larger agency approached me and said, Hey, would you like to merge with us?
And I was like, yes, I'm looking for a change.
Um, and there wasn't like a check was written like, Hey, here's a million dollars.
It was not that it was all debts and liabilities white clean in the business.
And that was a lesson learned with a service business.
There's typically not a big multiple on exit.
Um, so I, at that point, I knew I wanted to create a SaaS business.
I was looking at like Salesforce and MailChimp and even Netflix.
And I'm like, that is something I need to do, but I didn't have any good ideas,
like an idea that had low competition.
Um, so path of least resistance.
I went to work for large corporates.
Some of the larger companies I worked for include GE and Kohler.
Um, there are a few others as well, primarily public companies.
So stocks not, uh, there are some private companies, for example, Kohler is private,
but here in Wisconsin, they were a big company.
Um, in the, in parallel to that, I got into investing.
So this is where things got interesting.
And I started the hard way.
I don't recommend this, which is angel investing, which essentially
means going to private businesses, like private tech startups or new tech
startups, either, uh, investing my own capital or, uh, sweat equity for part,
uh, ownership in the business over five years, I made some money and lost money,
but it was pretty much breakeven.
And I'm like, Sean, this isn't working.
Like you could be swinging for the fences for the next 30 years and not get anywhere.
So I turned to Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger and started studying what they do.
Now, Warren Buffett has said if he were managing $10 million or less,
he could make 50% per year.
And for context, the SMP 500, which is like the big benchmark, most people
around the world will compare to that's typically about eight to 10% a year.
I'm like, wow, this guy's blowing the market out of the water.
And I knew he's not a gambling man.
He doesn't use emotions or feelings, which means he's using some kind of logic.
So I decided to, um, create an Excel sheet on, on big on Excel.
I'd say I'm pretty technically on the pretty technical in the math side.
So math fortunately comes pretty easy.
Um, I created an Excel sheet, really inspiration from Phil town, uh, Charlie
Munger and of course, Warren Buffett.
And I started making returns in the market between 15 and 50%.
And I used that Excel sheet for about four years.
Now that brings us to 2019.
I start sharing this Excel sheet with a few regular guys, like you and I,
retail investors and ask them, Hey, what do you think of this?
And everybody's like, you should turn this into a software to share with others.
And it was like, that was the aha moment.
10 years later, I've got a SaaS idea finally, and I decided let's go forward.
So it took about a year to build the first version.
We went live in 2020 and yeah, for a fast forward four years later, we have a little
over 10,000 customers, but it was a long journey getting here to that.
So not that's an awesome story.
And I'm going to break down a lot of that.
I might take a lot of notes really, really on what you just said.
And this is, this is there's so much to this recipe and essence for all you
visionaries out there that is critical to understand and piece together.
We're playing detective with Sean's life right now.
So I'm going to go in order of what I got.
So the merger opportunity that exists there, I love that you highlighted the
reality that you saw the victory and win in having the debts and the liabilities
wiped out, right?
You didn't take that for granted.
You didn't say I have to exit strong.
You know, I was, you're not upset.
You know, a lot of people could be like, I didn't even make a dollar on that.
Whatever you, you learned so much through the process of launching that.
And then you had the opportunity to start with a fresh, clean slate,
you know, at a young age and you got to move in with a, as you mentioned, a larger.
Agency recognize the power of what you offered, what you had, and then you got
to learn from those people as well on their path.
Like there's so much value to what you said there.
Now the, I will, I will counter, which again, I know, I know you know this as well.
The SAS models, you know, and really any business model, most people
aren't exiting strong.
You know, that's a, it's a hard reality to come by, you know, unless your cash
flow is strong, you know, unless your systems and processes are duplicatable
and somebody can come in and use that procedures, resources, and templates.
Exiting will be a challenge for most businesses that are trying to exit
because you're usually not in the business of trying to figure out how to
leave your company, you're in the business of trying to figure out how to
get your company to work.
So that's, that's not really industry dependent.
You went to general electric and Kohler curious if you know, Adam tank.
Which company?
GE.
Oh gosh.
100,000.
I think there's a hundred thousand people at boys.
Yep.
Exactly.
I do not put it out there.
You're both doing exceptional enough things to see if you guys cross
path during those years.
Sure.
We'll shelve that for now.
And then Kohler.
So you, you got the experience in the corporate environments and one of the
values I had a guest the other day say that he couldn't survive in corporate
because of lack of diplomacy, but he said, I know, no, he said, look,
no, he said lack of politics.
He doesn't like politics and he's not willing to backstab people to climb the
ladder.
And I was like,
um, that's not the only, I didn't say it on the show, but I was like, that's
not the only thing people do to climb ladders, incorporate you, you know, you
also have to learn, uh, diplomacy, not just politics, but how to deal with
different types of people and how to work with people that you can't
necessarily just get out of your way.
Um, so you learn some serious leadership skills during that.
And then you got into angel investing.
You said that I wouldn't recommend or something similar to that word, you
know, that there's certain risks that exist with angel investing.
I would counter with that.
Anybody out there who's not building your own vision.
I highly recommend looking at angel investing.
Not everybody knows how to use spreadsheets like Sean.
All right.
Not everybody knows how to work the market.
And even if this, you know, unless this platform is the best platform in the
world and helping you with investing in stocks, um, there are some serious
challenges and dangers of doing that.
And on the flip side, if you have emotional intelligence and you can
recognize great founders, great visionaries who you can trust to win the race and
learn the tricks of recognizing what startups to invest in, that might be
your best opportunity.
Um, and so I don't think Sean was saying, never do it as much as there are
certain risks associated with going the angel investor route.
Um, but again, we all have different thresholds in terms of capabilities and
in terms of recognizing what our opportunities are.
You might prove me wrong with ticker.
And today we might cover that, um, in more depth than I think so, but I have
a feeling today is going to be depth of leadership and vision, and we might
want to dive into even further depth on what ticker is, cause it, it sounds
like it's something people need to understand and tell about, um, anything
you want to count on before I continue to warm buff it.
No, you you're spot on real quick point here on angel investing.
Uh, I like that comment you made.
Don't exclude it's right.
You, you should do it.
It's it's fun because it's more entrepreneurial, but do keep in mind
with public companies, there's transparency to financial statements
and you can use those statements.
That's what ticker uses.
So, you know, what's a good stock and what's not with private companies.
You just usually don't have access to that information.
A lot of private companies may not even have revenue.
It might be free revenue, but anyway, that's why stocks are easier.
You have to be able to ask that why my challenge on the stock side though,
is if Elon Musk tomorrow, uh, gets in trouble with sexual assault or one of
his executives does your stock investment is absolutely screwed.
Um, there are public factors and there's how many employees GE, you know, a
hundred thousand, it only takes one executive to royally screw up.
In addition to that, whatever's happening in China, whatever's happening in Russia.
Um, you're not going to find out about what just happened with that until all
the portfolio geniuses and with kids out there have already made their moves.
Um, and so you're going to catch the tail end of the ride.
Um, in most cases now again, maybe ticker combats that, but the social
challenges that exist factor in when it comes to publicly traded companies.
And you've got zero control, um, over, over those realities and what the
repercussions of those realities can look like if people were to, um, what
is that called, not rebel against, um, but start to boycott a stock for
some type of social injustice.
Um, that's something you don't have to deal with when you're dealing
in, in private equity exchanges or private investment opportunities, like with angels.
But Warren Buffett, I agree.
Like that's the man, that's the type of man we want to follow when it comes
to finances and decisions, somebody that has left a tremendous model for us.
I love that you keep it on his model.
And yeah, if you can get, you know, more than 15% returns, um, and 50%
returns consistently, that's like, that's pretty unheard of.
Not many people can do that.
Right.
Warren Buffett also recommended my mouse pad.
I mean, my book here, um, Dr.
Peter Drucker's, the effective executive.
It's one of his top five favorite books.
It's also one of Bill Gates' top five favorite books.
And LeBron James also mentioned it as a super powerful book.
There's lots of principles, frameworks, models that we want to gather from
people who are doing things that we deem are successful that we also want.
If we want the same virtues and outcomes that those people want, we need to
study what it is they're doing.
So I'm very eager to see this spreadsheet.
I'm very eager to dive in and see what, what you're giving away in
terms of that type of knowledge.
Um, again, one of those other superpowers, if you don't know Excel's
like the back of your hand, then it's also important to bring somebody in
when you're evaluating, whether it's the software that Sean's using, um, you
know, or working with somebody like him directly, maybe, maybe Mark Cuban's
listening right now.
He's like, I'm just going to grab Sean Tipper off the market right now.
I want to work with him directly.
Um, well, he's going to have a series of Excel gurus himself that are going
to scrutinize what Sean's up to.
I'm going to put Sean and Zach Ullman in touch in case they aren't in touch
already to see what Zach says.
Cause Zach is one of those extreme financial auditors that loves finding
things like Tigger.
Have you met Zach?
I have not, no.
Learn and grow rich.
Okay.
That is Zach Tipper.
In fact, he was just on the show this week as well.
We've been in touch for about six months now, learn and grow rich.net.
Um, another financial wizard.
Um, and, and those are important people to gather visionaries.
Most of us as visionaries, we are not doing what we do for the sake of
growing our finances.
That's the byproduct.
Most of us are doing what we do because we love what we do.
We care tremendously about serving people or helping people.
And sometimes I see a lot of visionaries say, I don't care about the money or
they don't have a healthy relationship with money.
And if you're not a wise steward, you're not going to do wise things with
the resources that you're given.
That's going to hurt you.
So again, Sean Tipper, Zach Ullman, important people to have in your life.
Um, John, you also said regular guys like you and I, you know, how to speak
street talk.
I hear that there's nothing regular about either one of us though.
I would, I would say I'm more, I'm closer to regular.
Like I'm, I'm not the suit and tie finance guy.
Sure.
I'll keep this short and I'll give it back to you, but a lot of my community
does like kind of my demeanor.
Cause like I am that regular, like I love, I love the, the, the, the, the
ability to, you're the chameleon man.
You have that ability to seem regular, but your IQs through the roof.
Um, you can't hide that.
You can try.
I mean, it's, it's a stage tactic too.
Um, you know, to, to be that relatable guy to, to be Obama walking into the
dive bar and making sure you loosen your tie before you get in there.
Smart move, Obama, um, you know, allow people, but he's still an alien when it
comes to his capabilities, um, you know, and show her you, you're not two
different from Victor Wimbayama, the seven six, um, but you're right.
He's still a good guy.
People can relate to him, but there's superpowers.
And I think it's important that as visionaries, you realize what
superpowers you do and don't have.
Not to beat yourself up.
And I'm not talking to Sean right now.
I'm talking to the rest of you to recognize that you may not have the
same type of gifts as somebody else.
And if you don't, you really got to find somebody who has those types of
gifts and creates the balance or realize that you're not going to get the
same types of results, right?
If I don't play the guitar like Ed Sheeran, my song ain't coming out like Ed Sheeran.
It's just not, um, you know, it's not going to happen.
Um, and then 10 years right later, after having the spreadsheet, you put in all
this work and all this effort, and because of that, you launch a SaaS company.
Um, you know, with, with tons of wisdom that if a, you know, a junior level
developer or a founder who doesn't have that experience is trying to launch
their business today and they don't have that, it's going to be a much different
reality and a much different battle, um, than what you're capable of doing with
the years of strategy, the years of resources, the years of teamwork that
you've been able to gather.
So this is going to be a treasure of an episode.
Now, before we cut to break, what are three resources that you recommend
for visionary leaders out there?
You had the name three, given all that you've done.
Uh, three people or three books.
It can be people, books, universities, institutes, courses, whatever you feel
is most helpful for visionaries out there.
Um, well, number one would be Warren Buffett, you know, how he looks at
businesses he likes, uh, in a lot of cases, boring businesses, but that's a
good thing because it can be financially safe.
Um, another guy on the list is of course, Phil Town.
Um, he was a big inspiration for ticker.
Um, gosh, a third one, there's so many different books I read.
I recently read and it, this third person could shuffle in and out at any time, but
I was very impressed with a recent book called the membership economy, which
is written by, um, it's, it's all about creating a membership component to
a SaaS business.
Yeah.
You're seeing this with video games.
Like I was listening to a guy with EA sports yesterday, they're like FIFA.
They do that, but her name who wrote that book is Robbie Kellman Baxter wrote
the membership economy, one of the best business books I read in like the last
year or two.
Um, so I think, yeah, those are three good resources to lean into.
I am super excited to, of course, lean into all three.
Um, the membership one really peaks my curiosity because I have a feeling it
dives into the concepts of gamification.
Oh, you got it.
Yeah, that's, that's big.
I'm a big fan of Stu McLaren as well in that space.
Yeah.
You're familiar, Stu.
I've heard of him.
Does he have a book I would recognize?
On a smaller level tribe.
Um, and he, he was okay.
Jay of, um, Tracy Childs who built wishlist member, wishlist member, how
hosts over a hundred thousand courses.
Um, and so they have a lot of data about what drives courses to success
and what drives them to failure.
One of the roots of courses is of course memberships and memberships.
Um, you know, is, is really the strength is in the attrition rate, lowering your
attrition rate and making sure people are actually benefiting from the course.
The easy answer on it for all you listening in is the big numbers.
Number one reason people fail with courses and quit your
course is content overwhelm.
You tried too hard to give too much and people ate the cake and got sick.
Um, and said, no, for me.
Um, but the bigger component than that even is a sense of belonging.
If you look at memberships and courses and what's out there and what stood the
test of time, look no further than the university models, um, right?
These universities have existed for hundreds of years.
And one of the core factors they have over online courses is an Alma mater.
People love to belong to something.
And so when you create a sense of belonging as part of that reality, you
can create something that again, stands the test of time.
I don't think any, many people care about who started Harvard or who started
Stanford, um, you know, but they seem to be going strong long after the founder.
Some secret weapons for all of you building out there.
And, uh, those resources again, I can't wait to dive into that one.
Cause there's so much more I need to learn.
We'll be right back and we'll dive into Sean Teppers vision at large.
All right.
Welcome in to vision pros live with Jackson Calame.
I'm your show host.
We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are
building fantastic visions out there.
Hey, what's up vision pros.
My name is Jackson Calame, founder and CEO of first-class business.
And I am a little bit blown away by our guests right now.
Um, there's a lot of depth that we get to dive into with Sean.
Uh, he's launched a number of companies, been angel investor.
He's worked in business for a long time.
He's been an angel investor, he's worked and all these accolades.
I'm going to pull that away real quick.
That's not what impresses me about Sean.
What impresses me is his centeredness and is willing to dive deep.
Into any of the subjects that he brought up as he did his intro with us.
Uh, that type of leadership is very rare.
Um, you want to test a leader's resolve.
You want to find out if a leader is a great leader, ask them hard questions
and see if they kind of waffle or if they get upset or they start to get antsy about things.
Um, it's a really easy way to see the strength of character with a leader.
And I saw some serious strength, um, as we just talked through some of what he's,
he's been through and done.
Um, plus I know how hard it is to build a SaaS company cause I've done it as well.
So, um, you're going to learn so much from this opportunity as we dive in.
And if you think of questions that I don't ask that are hard,
drop them in the comments, let us know.
Um, and also we can bring it back to Sean, um, and you know, get into the
depths of the juice that helps us all win before I bring Sean back on.
There's another couple of concepts that are really valuable and helpful.
We're going to start with brain glue from James Bond.
Uh, James has decades of wisdom beyond Sean and myself even, and Jack Canfield,
the man who launched a book series that has over 130 million copies sold.
Said you would be an idiot as an entrepreneur, not to buy this book.
Um, James depth of wisdom means he's accumulated a whole lot of
methodologies out there.
But what I love about this particular book is it's about helping you learn
how to sell or rather influence and inspire by tapping into emotion.
And if you go to the Amazon, you listen to the sample, the, the sample
example that he gives literally made me laugh out loud by myself and all this.
Like, Oh my gosh, this is going to be awesome.
So definitely brain glue.
I see so many entrepreneurs that do not know how to tap into the skill.
As James pointed out, my worry was, man, I don't really want this in
the hands of the wrong people.
And he's like, Jackson, the problem is the right people don't have access to that.
And they're trying to justify what they do with logic versus understanding
how to tap into the heart.
So definitely check out brain glue.
And there's Dave Morrow with hardtokill.org and Dave's on a mission to help
a hundred thousand veterans lose two million pounds collectively.
He's an award winning podcaster.
If you know any military veterans, definitely send them his way.
What's really cool about the hard to kill community is they now have a free
membership program and he's opened it up to civilians as well.
So I've joined the program.
And when I started, I, I hadn't worked out in like eight years, guys.
I'm serious.
I'm like king of avoiding personal trainers and, and staying out of shape.
And over the last, I think it's been two months now, I'm losing track of time,
but I'm now doing 125 pushups per day.
I haven't missed the day.
I have no idea how he meagued me into actually moving my butt and getting into
shape, but I'm super grateful for what Dave has been able to help me accomplish
in my personal life.
And I know that he can help you do the same thing.
So go check out hardtokill.org.
Then there's the water project.
We don't have any affiliation with the water project other than that.
We have also contributed to it.
And as I did, I, it just hit me.
I was like, I've never been thirsty in my life.
I've never had to deal with this.
And so as I learned about the communities and what they're capable of doing,
there's millions of people who don't even have access to clean drinking water.
And I just chose not to forget about it.
I said, you know what?
I'm going to keep this front of mind for myself and continue to help in it.
Because it's one of those, it's one of those realities that if we could eradicate
it would, it just makes sense.
It seems essential to eradicate that problem.
So what the water project does is it lets you pick a community.
And when you pick the community and you give your five or 20 bucks, they actually
send you the update of that borehole well or the sand dam coming to fruition.
It's absolutely amazing what they're able to do with this.
And these kids celebrate water like my kids celebrate Christmas day.
If you don't have the financial capacity to help with that, they're
going to be the ones who are going to be able to do it.
So if you don't have the financial capacity to help with that, my prayer
and request is that you just share this with somebody who might be able to
specifically instead of spamming your social media, thinking your heart and
your mind of one person that you think may just be touched by it or inspired by
it, you never know what the ripple effect of that will do, but let's not just spray
and blindly pray, let's choose people to get involved and maybe bring it up in a
way that's small act of goodness will go.
And thank you so much for participating.
We've got 8 billion people to help in this world.
And right now, Sean Tepper and I are going to dive in and start helping you.
Sean, welcome to Vision Pros Lab.
Happy to have you today.
Good to be back.
Two quick comments here.
I've met James Bond, not to be confused with the fictional character, but James
I Bond, yes.
And to the water project, I do donate to similar organizations.
I don't think a lot of people in the U S are paying attention to the lack of
water, drinking water around the world.
So thank you for promoting that.
That's something that's near and dear to my heart.
I love that.
What are the organizations?
Cause so two of them, one is compassion.com where you can sponsor children and they
really focus on food, water, education for underserved children around the world.
And number two is save the children.
Really there's a common theme here is really helping kids get access to drinking
water and food.
It's crazy here in the States.
We have faucets, faucets.
They don't have that a lot of places around the world.
And here in the state, I could, you'll get me going here, but we argue about
minutia here in the States that does not matter.
Like there's real problems outside the States and we, we need to wake up as a
country and start being the, the powerhouse that can make a difference for
people around the globe.
Now I have to introduce you to Adam tank.
So there was a reason I brought.
So Adam is one of the world leaders on water.
Awesome.
Yeah.
He's doing amazing things in that space and continuing to draw attention to it.
Um, when Adam was at GE, he won a startup bid, um, and their incubator to create
his company and he had designed a robot, a little bitty robot that could go into
the water pipelines, assess where the leaks were, and actually from inside
there with that little robot, weld the pipe shut because America's losing
a third of its water source.
So, and he, you know, so Adam and I were best friends in kindergarten, right?
He moves away in second grade.
Um, so we hadn't seen each other since we were like eight years old.
Um, one day Facebook comes out with a feature to call somebody.
All right.
And so I had been searching for him, searching for him.
I got back from two years in Uruguay where I got to see some of these problems
firsthand and where my eyes were open.
Like, like you're talking about, right?
Oh my gosh, problems in the world are huge.
Let's get after it and help.
And I decided, you know what?
I'm going to call him and just see how this goes.
So I hit the little button and cold called Adam after like 20 years.
And he jumps and he's like, Hey, how are you?
Oh, you know, it's like, Oh, I'm great.
It's good to get to hear your voice.
What are you up to?
He's like, Oh, I'm on your campus.
What?
Um, he's like, you went to BYU, right?
I was like, yeah.
And he's like, I'm visiting a professor here right now.
Um, and I was like, what?
This is weird.
So fast forward another couple of years and we ended up meeting up in San Francisco.
Um, right.
And we hadn't seen each other in over 20 years.
Like brothers, man, that's crazy.
That's cool.
You know, that's still aligned.
It's yeah.
So he's, I'll get you guys introduced.
Anybody else who's listening in right now, this is about connecting people
who can help solve problems.
You know, that's really what the show is about.
Um, it's really what the process is about is how do we maximize life for everybody?
So Sean, thanks for, thanks for talking about that.
We'll definitely share those links for compassion and save the children as well.
And again, if anybody else has another cause that you want to bring up, don't hesitate
because imagine if you put 10 causes in front of Bill Gates and he liked all 10.
You know, what's stopping him from putting $10 million into each one.
You might completely change the face of what's possible this year.
Just by talking about it and nothing stopping you as well, listening in
from doing something about it.
Oh, I mean, I'll get into the game with us.
Um, so amazing, Sean, um, switching gears.
What's the vision for those that you serve?
So there are about 400 million retail investors in about 17 countries.
So it's just a fraction of the world.
And we, we do have about 50,000 or we're, we're 10,000 customers in 50 countries.
Right now we have a long way to go.
And the reason is get this about 25% of people in developed countries.
So U S Canada, a lot of countries around Europe, 25% are really in a tough spot.
This does not include people who are in like developing countries or underdeveloped.
Right.
Most people around the world are struggling or in financial stress.
And the vision for ticker is I, you'll appreciate this.
I believe it's good to provide value to others by either selling a product or service.
In other words, you're working for money, but I actually believe it's more important
to get money working for you and how you do that is compound interest.
And the easiest way to do that is, and I will argue this until I hit my grave.
The easiest way to do it is the stock market.
I have a lot of friends that are real estate investors.
That's a great place to make money work for you, but the effort to get there.
It's a lot higher stock market.
There's a lot of bull crap in that market too, right now.
So I'm just going to throw it out there.
Everybody says they're an R E I specialist these days.
No, no.
So with stock investing, a lot of brokers around the globe are now free or low fee.
Like in the States here, we've got Robinhood and Fidelity and Schwab.
They're all, they're all great.
And the problem is a lot of people are joining these programs.
Like in Europe, eToro is big or DeGiro is big around the globe.
You've got interactive brokers is really big.
That's great.
People can buy and sell stocks with an internet connection and a cell phone, but
they don't have a tool that determines the difference between a good stock and a bad stock.
For example, you mentioned Elon earlier is Tesla a good stock or is Apple a good stock
or is Nvidia a good stock?
My platform answers those questions in seconds.
So we're trying to get in the hands of more people so they can make money work for them
and really reduce that financial stress.
Instead of like getting a second or third job, it's like, Hey, let's be smart, work
smart, not hard and get that money working for us.
So that's the big vision.
I love it.
And I'm not, one of the things I love that you said is that you will go to your grave
helping people recognize the value of this.
I don't think that's, you don't strike me as a type of guy who would turn to blind eye
to realities as much as you're talking about the passion and reality that you study this
a long time.
Now you come to understand at your core what's there and we're building on our end and
we've got a long ways to go as well.
I love that you left with that.
We're building the light switch for entrepreneurship.
I'm not even close to cracking that code yet to where you can just turn it on and the
entrepreneur is successful.
I say, I'm not even close, but now I'm imagining, okay, if you've got the light switch for
investments and you know, the, the opportunity is, is that profoundly accurate, which I'm
just, I'm going to put this in front of a couple of rich friends who like the stock
market.
Right. So you guys, you guys test this for me.
I don't, I want every, every dollar put right back into my organization, you know, so that
I can invest in our infrastructure, but I know a lot of people who love the stock market.
And so putting this in their hands and then seeing over the next three to six months,
what happened?
You know, did you get the type of return?
It's not, it's not hard for me to take a look at that and then say, well, wait a second,
could this actually be a vehicle to help entrepreneurs fund their companies faster
because they're being more educated in how to, how to play the market, how to understand
what they're, what the market looks like.
And granted, again, I don't hear you saying you're turning penny stocks, you know, penny
stocks, right.
And the $10,000 stocks overnight or anything like that.
I don't think this is going to be a good thing.
I don't think this is a get rich quick vehicle, but it is something that is again, is it something
that over the next 10, 15, 20 years can create even more security for those that I'm working
with?
I'm also not willing to turn a blind eye, you know, as much as I believe there's other
means of which investing makes sense from my perspective.
So those of you listening in, the easiest thing you can do is do is download ticker,
go look at it, go see for yourself.
What, what Sean's been able to build out now we're going to abandon that subject for
just a little bit.
What's your vision, Sean?
What do you see for yourself on the horizon?
Well, to be honest with you, I'm, I'm living it this, I thank God every day I get to do
this for a living because I've worked a lot of jobs in the past and there were many I
didn't like and some I wasn't even good at.
So I get to live the dream every day.
So it is literally helping people, you know, make money, work from them, work smarter,
get money working for you.
Cause the power of the stock market is incredible.
So I finally, it took a long time, finally arrived at something I can help people at
and I really enjoy it.
It's like the perfect recipe.
It's beautiful place to be.
It is.
And I I'm very, I'm going to marinate in that reality with you.
That it's not a bad thing that your vision is in the present.
In fact, it's probably one of the biggest things that we, as life moves on, we start
to learn to appreciate is enjoying the journey, you know, not, not looking at the destination.
People always that we have probably 20 to 30% of people who I asked that question to,
or that we ask in our first interviews and they go, well, what do you mean vision?
I'm like, which way do you, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm
like, which way do you, I'm like, well, I I'm looking at the cows out my window right
now.
I was like, that's a vision.
You know, it's your vision.
You came onto the program called vision pros life, like go ahead, guide us.
So again, I love that you're, you're recognizing the appreciation for where life is that now
you've got to tackle two realities that so many people struggle to find doing what you
love and you named another factor.
I wanted to get it written down because I was like, those are two very powerful ones
that hit deep in my heart.
Doing something I love that at the same time, it actually helps people.
Cause you can, for example, like if I love basketball, am I actually going to get paid
at doing that?
I'm six one and I was never going to basketball.
So I'm going to NBA.
No JT Reddick lifestyle for you.
You know, so that's a tough equation.
Like what, what do you love to do?
And, and does it actually solve problems for others where you make money at it?
That's the secret equation.
You can get those two things like you had to the third, you said helping others in a
way that, that you can make money at and that's a healthy reality.
Cause we've got families and we've got, or if we don't have families, you've got to
sustain yourself too in this equation.
So just because you get something in return from having helped people, visionaries does
not make you a bad person that doesn't make that transaction any less valuable.
The more you give typically, the more you end up getting is what I've experienced in
life.
So I, again, I love, I love the combination of those principles, doing something you
love that also helps others while you're able to sustain that.
So helping others also interesting that you chose something like playing a sport and
you didn't demonize the sport as much as you just realize that's not your talent or
that's not what you're capable of.
Who's to say basketball doesn't help others.
You know, a lot of people can inspire kids, right?
Yeah.
It motivated me for half my life.
You know, like I wouldn't have done anything with my life if it hadn't been for a
ball.
That's all I ever wanted to do.
So a team mentality.
I basketball was one example.
I should have the sport I played or participated in growing almost actually competitive
swimming.
I love racing type sports like track swimming, even CrossFit has that element.
Yeah.
And it has a team element, but also racing component.
So I love that.
And then I played some baseball, but sports train you to think differently.
Like for example, at ticker, I'm going to stop talking here, but ticker, we try to bring
on sports minded people, people who have experienced playing sports or watch sports
because they have what I call field awareness or court awareness.
They don't need to be looking directly at the problem, but they know something needs
to happen and they can make a heads up play.
Like I like people that think like that.
And I'll use this analogy.
Like let's say I'm on the soccer fields and I kick a ball to the field and I'm like,
and I kick a ball to one of my teammates.
I'm counting on my teammate to make a play.
I don't care how you score a goal.
You, however you want to make the play happen, you make it happen.
But if I ever have to walk over to the ball next to you and kick it for you, that's,
that's not a team player, right?
Correct.
It's huge.
Have you, okay.
Now I got to bring up two references that I want you to meet.
Tom Montelli.
Have you met him?
I have not.
No.
Do you have your own podcast?
I used to, it was, don't worry about it then.
I'll get you guys introduced.
I'm just a random intro.
Tom, Tom's dad holds one of the like all time coaching records for high school basketball
and passed away.
And Tom carries the legacy helps sports people move into their, their career opportunities.
Wonderful, wonderful individual.
And the other one is Scott Ritzheimer.
Have you been on his show?
No.
Okay.
I'd love, I'll get you introduced as well.
Let's get you on that show.
He wrote a book where he talks about the coach running onto the football field at the last
play, trying to catch the ball.
And everybody in the stands and the team going like, what did you just do?
You know, cause the entrepreneur doesn't often know how to activate their, their team
members.
And man, he's got, he's got some serious steps of value of wisdom as well.
You're right. There's something to the sports.
Now, every time we look at sports, there's angles too, that I learned from, like I hadn't
thought about the field awareness aspect, but I can see how that relates to executives
trying to define the OKRs.
Right.
For entrepreneurs who are new to that talking about what is your objective, right?
The primary objective you're trying to accomplish right now and your key results are the aspects
of how are you going to make sure that that actually gets accomplished and defining those.
So oftentimes the, you know, the, the objective is completely blocked by a goalie and defenders.
And you have to figure out all the things that you need to do to get them to move out
of the way.
And those are the key results that have to come into play, even though they're not again,
you don't just kill the person in front of you to move past that it doesn't work that
way, especially in sports.
So those are that that's gives me something to think about.
And yes, entrepreneurs, athletes have that, that team capacity as well.
And a lot of team experience that people who aren't athletes often don't know how to
appreciate.
Right.
Let's, let's dive into, man, we're running out of time, but I really want to hit these
subjects.
So we'll be, we'll be as clear and brief as possible while still exploring the depths
of it.
What's the worst leadership experience that you've ever had, Sean?
Oh my gosh.
I've, I've got a whole list.
Here's a story for you.
I'm not going to list the company name, but I get in, I get, I get into the new company
and a lot of corporate roles I served in our project management, which is kind of like
a, like if you're an entrepreneur, you want to go back to corporate world to get a paycheck.
Project management is pretty good because you get a lot of freedom and you got to drive,
you got to be a driver.
You got to get things done, bring things across the finish line, which is a lot of
things, which believe it or not, most people cannot do that, but you got to do that.
So anyway, day one at a new company, I'm sitting in a boardroom and apparently a ball was
dropped and there was a manager in the call that he pointed the finger at me right away.
Well, Sean dropped the ball on that was day one.
And one of the software engineers spoke up and said, Sean doesn't even have an email
or computer yet.
So that's not him.
So I was like, okay.
Flag on the play, I'm going to keep my eye on that guy.
And within that same week, there was somebody that came to me and said, the organization
you just got hired by, you have to keep this in mind.
There's a lot of managers, but very few leaders and one should be wise to know the difference.
And I was like, ah, okay.
I see what we're dealing with here.
And in the second week, it was like three events here.
Then I'll stop talking.
So it was right away, first week, these two events were like, oh, we got a bad situation.
The third week, one of my software engineers, I was working on a $2 million project, massive.
I had four engineers and one of them was out for one day.
And I find out that his wife had a seizure.
So the next day he comes in and I just approached him and said, hey, I'm really,
really sorry to hear about your wife.
And he was working at this company for five years.
And I was just like, you know, really sorry to hear about this.
Is there anything I can do?
And he turns around in his chair with a tear coming down his cheek.
He's like, thank you.
You're the only one here that asked.
And I was like, oh my gosh, this is the culture I'm dealing with.
I made it one year at that company, barely, barely, but it was every week.
Something similar to this.
I'm like, this is the worst leadership I've ever seen in my life.
That that's impressive.
How old were you?
That was in 2016.
So I was like an ageless face, so I can
diet and exercise.
No, uh, jeans from jeans from mom and dad.
I'll give them a credit, but I was 34 at the time.
Okay.
I think I could see myself surviving for at least a quarter of these days.
Uh, man, I, I couldn't make it when I was in my 20s longer than 10 days
in environments like that.
That's that's that's brutal.
Um, and way to be the person who was there, you know, you, all you did was
exercise your humanity a little bit.
Oh, like that's human beings.
And I, I won't go off on a tangent here, but what I found in corporate America,
if I want to get projects across a finish line, I need to place the
customer first.
And then my engineers, I got to play some, if not first, their second.
And I got to place them before leadership and leadership hates that.
But I'm like, if you guys want to make money, I need you to get out of their
way and you come to me.
So I got to be like the full back in that situation and take the hits.
So my engineers can go heads down and do what they're best at, which is
writing code.
And they hated that.
They loved beating up my engineers and giving them trouble.
You're not delivering fast enough.
I'm like, no, no, no, you come to me.
And I had to be, yeah, come beat me up.
You can yell at me, call me anything you want.
I'm the worst person on the earth, but do not bother my engineers.
So, and I usually, I try to build rapport with engineers right away.
So it just made sense going to that guy who wears wife at a seizure.
And it was just too bad that he was there five years and nobody in the
organization cared.
We love to, we love to villainize corporate.
I mean, all of us do.
I mean, there's, there's plenty of, there's a lot of people out there
that are like, oh, there's plenty of, of opportunity because there's so much.
There's so much data available, especially these public companies, right?
And they have far more managers to be bad leaders.
However, I see the same trend with most of the visionary leaders I work with.
They have one manager, right?
Or one office assistant or one person that has not really learned how to lead.
They've learned how to manage, right?
They know how to tackle certain things and they're, they're loyal to
them, you know, or they're, they're getting by because they're getting
their, their minimum necessary paycheck.
But entrepreneurs, we got to take a step back, right?
Business leaders, visionaries, we got to take a step back and be willing to
look at that reality more objectively, because if we lack somebody with true
leadership disciplines on our team, you're going to create a vicious cycle
of challenges constantly for yourself.
You're not going to be able to overcome the challenges you face and move your,
your company forward, regardless of whether it's SaaS, you know, or traditional
leadership is one of those most important realities.
Again, we're running out of time.
We're going to go fast on this one too.
What's your best leadership experience ever?
What's that look like?
I, I have to give credit to actually Kohler on this is one of the leaders there.
There's a lot of, a lot of good people that work there.
It's really a good organization, private company, make great products.
And I was in a meeting, this was a leader of IT division, and he made a great
company, he's like, we will treat our customer or we treat our customers, not
will we do, we treat our customers with a, we give them a gracious experience from A to Z.
And I love that because I always was big on customer service and treating customer
respect, but now I really enforce that with my team as we create a gracious
experience from A to Z because they're not just coming to you for the product,
but they want the overall experience to be good.
So that means your customer service, like for example, we get a lot of support
tickets and email, we talk to people like we're having a beer or a coffee with them.
Like there's no corporate speak.
There's no $20 words.
It's how are you doing?
Welcome back.
Good to hear from you.
Way to go.
Keep up the great work.
It's that kind of language.
You're talking to a friend and they love that.
And we lean into that all day, we're going to give them a gracious experience.
So that was a great comment.
I appreciated that from Kohler.
Huge.
The, and I say huge, I think a lot of people are going to make the mistake of saying, well,
obviously, you know, and when you do that, again, it's leaders, it's entrepreneurs and
visionaries that don't realize that you've got to focus on that.
You've got to talk about those basic principles if you want to create and cultivate that
within the workplace at large.
If that's easy for you to understand, then you may have the curse of knowledge that's
holding you back from understanding how to help other people get that.
That is not common sense.
That is something we have to learn as children, as adolescents, as adults to dive into and
fully appreciate.
So the, again, I wrote that down, retreat everybody with, you know, with a gracious
experience, A to Z.
We will treat everybody with a gracious experience from A to Z.
I'm going to burn that into my mind because it's very, it's very similar to me of, you
know, what we talk to our team members about and our clients about is that we want everybody
to feel like they're at the JW Marriott.
That's our way of putting it.
And then for those who don't know what the JW Marriott is and what that experience is
like, then we talk through it and we say, you know, think of the best resort you've
ever been to or you can imagine.
And, you know, everywhere you go, you're just inspired and you're kind of excited.
And you talk to some random employee who this job, it is not to talk to you and tell you
all about the place, but they come up to you and they're excited about it too.
And you're almost like, man, is this person related to the owner?
Because they just know why they're there.
They're there.
They appreciate the environment that they're in.
It doesn't matter if you're in the presidential suite, right?
It doesn't matter if you're a friend of one of the guests.
It doesn't matter if you're sneaking into the pool, right?
The JW Marriott is going to take care of you as though you are in the presidential suite,
which is what creates that feeling of like, oh my gosh, I can't wait to come back here.
And man, maybe one day I want to host my daughter's wedding here.
It's such a great feeling.
It makes people want to buy because you're never being sold something.
You're just being taken care of at max capacity.
Totally.
Huge.
Thanks for sharing that.
Do you have to run at the top of the hour?
I wanted to-
No, I could go another half hour if you wanted.
Oh my goodness.
I would love to, but I'm going to respect my team on that part and not go a full half hour.
But it does mean I get to dive into my absolute favorite question.
So Sean, this is the last opportunity that you had to share wisdom with the world.
What powerful lesson can other visionaries learn from your experience?
I think a lot of people out there that are trying to build the business,
and I learned this project management, product ownership is don't put all the weight on your
shoulders, get really good about talking to the customer.
Like for example, and I didn't give this in the backstory, but when I launched Ticker,
it took six months to get the first paying customer.
But I knew that because building software is not about making money first,
it's about making a product that other people will use.
So what that means is what I did, my goal was to get it in the hands of a hundred people for free.
You get free access to the tool, but in return, I want feedback really fast.
And what that does is allow me to collect the feedback.
And I tell people, don't hold back.
Tell me what you don't like.
Tell me what you would do better.
You would do better. Tell me what other tools you use and why you use them.
Why ticker should be doing maybe not this, but this that's product ownership one-on-one.
And it takes some humility because you're going to get beat up nine out of 10 times.
Like this sucks, that sucks.
All right. But that's good.
You want that.
If you're a visionary and you don't want that, you're still, you're got a pipe dream.
You're not even there yet.
You got to want this.
People will not give it freely.
They don't want to hurt you.
They're tired of people running around and getting upset because they gave feedback.
Like people are very guarded with their feedback these days.
We have got to truly want it.
Go ahead.
Yeah. Yeah.
So I tell entrepreneurs, get feedback, get it fast and just be as humble as you possibly can,
because it's not about creating a tool for you.
It's about creating a tool for others.
And when that journey starts, so many people are aiming for perfection.
Don't like what is, what does they say?
Perfect.
Is that any of good?
Is that the old saying?
But I don't know that one.
Right.
You want to just get something out there that's okay.
And then let your customers steer the direction from there.
So put it on their shoulders.
Sure.
You're, you're paying for the software engineers or if you got a service business,
you're putting your offering together, you know, so you're going to do the work,
but you need to get feedback from them because they're going to shape it into something that
people actually will use and pay for.
Like if you want to do this for a living, you know, you got to listen.
So too many people out there, they go heads down, create a product they think is the best in the
world.
And in most cases, 99% of the time it fails.
You've got to put it on the customer.
Huge.
I love that.
And you're talking about putting it on the customer in the best of ways and the ways that
most entrepreneurs don't want to, you know, and some of that's ego driven because they
feel like they know what's best.
Right.
For others, some of it is driven by, you know, not wanting to burden the customer, right.
And the opposite side of that.
So there's lots of ways that we end up accidentally getting in our own ways versus doing what
you're talking about, which has a lot to do with, you know, the, I think lean startup,
I think that book talks about this process and that's making sure to include people early
and getting their feedback.
So you built a YouTube channel, you've got 2000 subscribers on it.
What are some of the tricks that you use to do this?
I'm never a know it all, but you have close to 4000 now, if you look.
Oh, yes, you do.
You're getting closer.
Yes.
Don't mean the break.
No, I'm no, it's a good thing.
I mean, I think people need to understand that because you submitted that form.
Was it in June?
Yeah, we, we really, so in two months you've grown more than 2000 users further.
That's really, that's a really big deal because our audience is trying to figure out how to
do the same.
Most of them are trying to double from two subscribers to four subscribers.
So by all means, 2000 to 4000, that's a big deal.
So I'm, I'm big on what you could call Omni channel.
You don't want to try to do a thousand things, but you got to think about where is your
audience hanging out?
And I knew right away, like YouTube is packed full of a lot of people trying to learn how
to invest.
For example, the common search terms are like stock investing for beginners or how to learn
to invest.
And so I'm like, okay, so YouTube is definitely one lead gen channel and I got to lean into it.
So that's one, I can talk about YouTube tips and tricks all day because we've learned a
lot of formula there.
But SEO is big.
You know, we, so about 17% of our leads come from YouTube, 16 from SEO.
There's also a percentage from referrals from friends and then others from affiliates.
So those are the big channels and YouTube is cool because it's, it's evergreen.
You put out some great content that can be relevant today, tomorrow, next week, next month,
next year.
That's what you want because it's generating leads and autopilot.
So we try to.
Did you interview Rameet Sethi?
I would love to talk to Rameet.
I see him in this list of shorts.
So, oh, a trick is if you guys, this is for everybody out there is create a video of,
like take an influencer and show a quick five second clip and then comment against it.
Cause then you can include their name in the title.
So here's what Rameet or Elon or Robert Kiyosaki said about this.
And I'll usually come on and say, here's why I agree or here's why I disagree.
And those videos do actually get quite a few clicks, but what's, what gets the most
traction on our end is like top cert stocks.
Like right now it's Nvidia.
So if I do a video and I can't do them every day, but like every quarter, I try to do one
of those pop nicely.
So, yeah.
Okay.
Well, we just saw a master class, by the way, most masterclass will deliver what Sean
just delivered over 90 minutes and sell it for $500.
You know, mark down to 297 today, by the way.
And it's not a bad thing, right?
Everybody's trying to teach things.
You know, you pay for a massive, you know, you pay for the same math class at Harvard
that you do when you go to San Antonio college.
They might even use the same book.
But there's again, do you know how to leverage the network effect of that?
Do you know how to work with those individuals to maximize the opportunities?
That is not on the teacher.
It's on the student.
It's on us as students to pick up what we want out of it.
But definitely, I hope you made some great notes there.
I did.
I realized that, okay, yes, we, we work on our SEO a little bit and we've actually got
a spreadsheet of videos that once the team has capacity, we'll start releasing those
videos on YouTube.
And it's kind of as the entrepreneur side of me, like the, the Mr. Hyde side of
entrepreneurs, like we haven't fixed this yet.
Why?
Um, you know, and the, the leadership side of me says we're doing a zillion things and
a lot of things are going well.
We will eventually get that spreadsheet.
Um, but that SEO factor, if I choose to ignore that, if I don't optimize and refine the
SEO factor, then we're likely to miss out on around 16%.
Of the traffic too, that is, you know, why, why would we miss out on that when it
doesn't take us any more effort now that we know the ingredient, make sure the
ingredient ingredient gets utilized as we launch the same as true for all of
your visionaries, Sean, any final thoughts you want to go over before I close today?
Just want to say thanks for, you know, inviting me on.
I love conversations like this.
And for those of you building a business, you know, it's find something you love
and stick to it.
It's it.
I remember hearing a quote and I've heard this from a few people.
Businesses don't fail.
People quit.
So you find something you love, stick to it for the long haul, cause you'll keep
pivoting, keep listening to the customer.
And finally you'll figure out how does that, which you enjoy doing, how does it
actually help people and make money?
That's the perfect place to be.
I'm going to double down on that.
One of the challenges of entrepreneurship that I see one, you got to get a team
you're confident in that's huge.
You got to get a team that you can actually be confident in the sign of an
entrepreneur who is confident is one who is investing.
Imagine a gardener trying to give his plants the least amount of water possible
to make that plant live.
That is not how gardening works.
You have to give it more than what you think you need to give it in order for
the garden to truly thrive.
We've got to stop penny pinching as entrepreneurs.
You can't invest the bare minimum and anticipate that your team's going to be
excited about that, that the market is going to reward you according to that.
We've got to be able to invest fully in what we're doing and not play small.
This is not a gambling hall or a casino.
This is supposed to be the vision that we believe in and love the most.
So make sure that you are willing to go all in on that vision and whatever all
in means to you, not what it means to me, not what it means to Sean, but you know
in your heart and your mind, you know, what you need to consider doing there
and follow that in our voice.
There was one other thing I was going to, oh, that's right.
Sean, is there any way I can Miyagi you into giving some type of discount to our
listeners if they go check out the program?
Yes, bear with me here.
I have a coupon code for you guys.
Take care if you guys don't know.
I had no idea by the way, guys, I don't script these things out.
I literally put Sean on the spot to see what you did.
You did.
This is good though.
I love, I love when singers come at me.
So tickers of 14 day free trial, no credit card.
So we want people to like test drive the car, see if it's for you and then full
transparency in the States, because we're a global platform and prices vary
around the world.
We're like 15 bucks a month or 99 a year.
So it's very similar to like Netflix pricing, but you know, it's a lot of
money, but you will know what to invest in, what to avoid.
But if you want to save 30% on every month or year, not just one month or year,
use the coupon code save 30, save 30.
That'll get you guys in, give you 30% reoccurring.
I love that.
I'm happy.
I was, I was expecting one of two things.
I was expecting he had one of those in his back pocket or I was expecting on
the other side, he could have been a great entrepreneur in the alternative route
and he could always have a free businessHave you asked?
So this is, the questions that go into, I can't think
of it as a question of Purdue or University, which was one
of those questions...
you're doing something that is financially sound for your venture to be able to grow
and thrive as well. Look no further than Saks Fifth Avenue that doesn't really discount
anything and Kia. Both companies are doing very well. I wouldn't mind being the owner
of either one. Yeah, right. For sure. So Sean, this is an absolute pleasure. Those of you
listening in below the video, you'll see underneath it, the action steps and the landing page
that you can take to get involved with Kicker Ticker, we will put the promo code on there
as well. And then down below that the resources that came out of today's discussion, we'll
make sure to add those to that way you guys can be off to the races with building out
your own visions. And thanks for joining us today on Vision Pros Live. We'll see you on
the next episode. Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned into
Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue
to move forward. This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement
as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show. And thank you for giving us your
time and attention. Have an excellent time building out your vision and become a part
of it.