3 strangers showed us how they made $8M, $10M, & $40M/year

Key Takeaway

Create a small, high-touch test before you try to scale. Midday Squares sold 50-cent bars locally and delivered every order by hand for five months, using each delivery to learn, create shareable content, and build trust. Pick one city or customer segment today, make a low-friction offer, and personally speak with your first 10 customers. Document what they value, the language they use, and what makes them tell others.

Episode Overview

In this live “Shoot Your Shot” format, three founders present fast-growing businesses: Pasha, a robotic home chef; Midday Squares, a refrigerated chocolate snack brand; and Daydream, an AI-powered dental revenue-cycle service. The hosts examine their traction, bottlenecks, customer acquisition strategies, and ways to use community, founder-led selling, and direct-response marketing to grow.

Full Transcript

Transcript of 3 strangers showed us how they made $8M, $10M, & $40M/year from My First Million. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Alright, today we're playing Shoot Your Shot , where we let the founders sit in the dock and present their businesses to us. We have founders who have businesses worth millions of dollars up to businesses worth one hundred million dollars. They have 15 minutes and they start by telling us an important number. They give us an introduction and present their business. You can ask us any questions you want. We did it in New York City. This time it's in San Francisco. Whether you're listening to us on Spotify or YouTube , whether you're working out right now , whatever you're doing right now , you need to stop and go on Spotify or YouTube, search for us on My First Million and tell us in the comments which city you want us to go to next.

Okay , let's do it. Okay, Sam, what's up? We're making a new episode, with a new format. We call it Shoot Your Shot and we basically go from city to city. We invite founders from those cities to come and try their luck and present their ideas to us. We have entrepreneurs ranging from those with annual revenues of one dollar to those with $100 million in businesses who will see what we can expect from this group of founders. Well, the best thing about this podcast, the reason why people listen to us, the reason why we do it, is that we talk to unique people.

They tell us things we don't normally see. And the range goes from people who are very established and successful in their field to those who are just starting to take their first steps. And we really don't know who's coming. We do n't know who's coming. This blinds us. These are all people who listen to the podcast, right? The people who listen to this podcast are founders, entrepreneurs, and business owners . It's like an audition. It's like American Idol, but for business, I guess. Okay , let's do it.

So, make your presentation. Let's put the first founder here. Who do we have? What's up, buddy? Here it comes. What's wrong? What's wrong, dogs? Very well, please take a seat. You have 15 minutes, but take your time. I'm excited to be here. What is your name? Raghav. Raghav, okay? And your company is Pasha? That's how it is. Pasha, okay? Where are you from? I live in San Francisco, in the Bay Area to be exact. I grew up in India and I've been here for 5 years.

How old are you? I'm 32. Is this your first company? This is my first company. I led a project before this one where we were trying to build micro wind turbines, but everything I learned about Pasha was at Pasha. Everything I learned about how to create a business was primarily at Pasha. We have one rule: we are shameless numbers people. OK. That's why we're asking everyone to give us a big, juicy, impressive, or interesting figure. It doesn't have to be such a large number, but it does have to be interesting, something that hooks us.

Forward. We are among the 1% of robotics companies you've ever met that are shipping a real product to real homes, to real kitchens, with 1000 real-world implementations. Okay, you're among the 1% of robotics companies that don't talk nonsense. You have sent 1000 robots. What do your robots do? We're putting a private chef in every home, and we're doing it by building kitchen robots for homes. We figured if Waymo, Tesla, and Zoox can use computer vision and AI to get you from point A to point B, why can't we use the same technology to cook you a fresh meal?

Takeaway food is expensive. Eating at home, well, cooking at home takes forever. There's no way you can eat fresh, delicious food that doesn't take 60 minutes of your time in the kitchen and doesn't cost $25 per serving, so where's the alternative? Dude, my current diet is men's croquettes. Do you know what a croquette for men is? Don't know. It's 1.4 kg of minced meat with rice that lasts me 3 or 4 days and soy sauce . So I agree. Did you get funding? We are backed by Excel.

How much did you raise? 8 million. $8 million. And how long ago did you start? We started the company 8 years ago. This was straight from my parents' ground floor. This was in India. It was still just a project. We formalized the company about 5 years ago. By the way, is this what's going on? Is this the robot? Yes, that's the robot. And she's cooking . What about a demonstration? Can you do something? Can you cook something for us? Well, what we did was cook spaghetti Alfredo with mushrooms.

The food is ready. I have n't eaten it. It's perfect. And, by the way, you have to be okay. Can this be? I don't know about the camera. The camera should have already seen it. This looks amazing. Okay, wait, wait. Did it turn out like this for you? Well, we cooked with fresh ingredients: fresh olives, fresh garlic, fresh milk, fresh butter, fresh pasta. And if we put some fresh Parmesan cheese on top, and cook it all in a Puzl. That machine did all of this. He did all that.

Yes. How much does that cost? $1500, which is less than a month's worth of takeout food. For whom? For a family of four. Okay. Okay, so what? Okay, that's it, give it a score here. I mean, nine or ten. Yes, this is very good. Yes. As I said, 1000 customers already use us three times a week, which is more than the oven. Because you are numbers people, our M6 retention surpasses DoorDash, HelloFresh, and any other food service out there . Last month alone, we recorded $2 million in bookings.

We did it again this month. I finished it. That was great. This was supposed to be a taste test. Yes. Okay, then explain it to me. So, the viewer, the listener won't know it, but the viewer will see what you did . But tell us, why does it look like a bowl of... Can you grab a couple of things from the back? It seems that there are basically containers for ingredients. So, here's a frying pan. It's a frying pan that can be washed in the dishwasher.

There is a detachable stirrer and a detachable spatula. There are containers where you can put the ingredients. There's a drawer, which is great, that has spices. There is room for oil and water. And what's most impressive is that there's a camera that observes the changes in color, texture, and consistency, and ensures that it mimics the intelligence of a human chef so that the food is cooked to perfection. Have you trained him? At first, only the chefs trained Posh. Now, our customers do it . We may have the world's largest culinary vision dataset for cooking.

And we're adopting Tesla's approach. Waymo invested 500,000 hours of supervised driving and $20 million in venture capital to achieve autonomy. Tesla did it differently. Tesla said, "We'll launch something that's useful for consumers, we'll also use it to collect tons of data, and then we'll launch robot taxis. Wait. Wait, how does that work? Hey, I want to tell you something really cool. We have a database of all the business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast. So , the HubSpot team went through hundreds of episodes, extracted all the simple, identifiable, interesting, and profitable ideas that we've put forward, and they're all available to download for free.

Just click the link in the description below. Thanks to our friends at HubSpot for sponsoring this podcast and creating this free resource for you. Back to the show. If a customer is such a good cook, why do they buy this? And how do they do it ? How do you train your team? Well, customers buy this because they want a freshly cooked meal. This can only cook meals in one pot for now. Oh, yeah. Meals in one pot? No, in a pot. Have you seen this one-pot meal trend?

No, I don't know what That's it. If you go on Reddit or TikTok, there's a cooking category called one-pot meals, where you're just going to put a bunch of stuff in one pot. So you're not going to make cheeseburgers. You're not going to make a steak. You're not going to flip burgers. You're not going to bake a cake. Anything that requires spreading, like pancakes, is something it won't do. What are the two or three most popular things people cook with this? Well, the data changes as our customer base changes, but our Indian users cook a lot of paneer.

Our Italian users would cook a lot of risotto and spaghetti because it's so hard to cook risotto at home, because you have to keep stirring. Our Thai and Vietnamese users would use it to cook red and green curries. Well, I don't want to be a hater, but basically the robot just takes care of the easiest part of cooking, which is just stirring. The robot eliminates the need to stir. It eliminates heat regulation. It prevents you from having to be there to add ingredients at the last minute.

Appropriate. Okay. It prevents you from having to monitor the food because, you know, an 8-year-old needs to know what charred onions look like, what golden onions look like. So it takes away all your intelligence and all your child-care. This doesn't reduce the time you spend in the kitchen from 60 minutes to zero. It reduces your time in the kitchen from 60 minutes to 10 minutes. So, what does it give us? It gives us the big idea. I mean, you said something like it's already used more than the oven.

So, you have this kind of vision like, "Hey, look, all our kitchens come with these appliances, these three, and now comes number four." It's going to be in everyone's house. "That means it's a very big thing, and I'm excited about the big idea. So, in 10 years, nobody will cook because they have to. They'll only cook because they want to. In the same way, nobody will drive because they have to . They'll only drive because they want to. Cooking is going to follow the exact same path.

DoorDash is something you'll only order when your robot at home can't cook the food you want to eat or when you order business lunches. Cooking will become a leisure activity, something you only do for pleasure, but not a weekday chore. And we're the company building the future where every home will have a robot chef that will cook for you so you don't have to. That's great. What? Okay, how much revenue do you have? What's your execution rate right now? Well, we did $2 million in pre-orders last month.

That's $1,500. Why are you saying pre-orders? Just because you do n't have the devices yet, so it's pre-orders? We have about 1,000 units shipped to market and a long We have a pre-order waiting list that we're trying to fulfill as quickly as possible. So, we're making sure our manufacturers can adapt to demand. We're making sure our recipe library scales with demand. We're making sure reliability, the supply chain, logistics—all of that—is adapted to demand. This is fantastic. What's the current bottleneck? Is the bottleneck manufacturing these things?

It's manufacturing, and it's also operations. So, whenever you ship a hardware product in the early days, you need to hold people's hands. Something can go wrong, and you need a service infrastructure so people have support if something goes wrong. Right. It's the same bottleneck Waymo has. Where did you get the $2 million in pre-orders? Are they just viral demos on social media, basically? Did you do anything to get customers, or is it just people— like, novelty—wanting to try it? Have you gotten the money yet? Yes, we've already gotten the money.

There are three ways to drive demand. The first is word of mouth. Organic word-of-mouth. Every paying customer brings us at least one more paying customer without us spending a single dollar on marketing. Second, Porsha is camera-ready. So any complete stranger could take Porsha home, record content, post it online, and overnight be famous. We had a creator who had 11,000 followers. In six weeks, she gained X number of followers. Guess what X is. I do n't know. She went from 11,000 to 450,000 followers. And all that changed was that she stopped recording Porsha content and started recording Porsha content.

Have you seen the Madic one? Yes. Have you seen the Madic one? Yes . I've seen it for this very reason. I have it. Elegant Roomba. It's amazing. And it's like there's one viral moment, but there are probably several, actually. One, it sucks up a sock, then opens its latch and suddenly shoots it out. And it's huge. I live in New York City This sounds incredible. My wife complains about how long it takes to cook, and I tell her, "Dude, make some real croquettes." Alright "." And I would definitely prefer to eat that, but it's huge.

I still can't use it in New York. You ca n't use it because you don't have space on the countertop, you mean ? Or whatever. Okay. Yes. So you're absolutely right. And the good thing is that the market is so big that there are enough people with space to put this in their kitchen. We are working on the next version of Pota which will be miniaturized. That will fit in Manhattan apartments. But the later version will replace your home kitchen. Ah, that's interesting. And it cooks four dishes at once.

A question. You can't cook meat, can you ? It cannot cook steaks, but it can cook meat as long as the meat is cut into cubes and the size is 1 cubic inch or less. Okay, you can put in diced chicken and then cook it. Yes. Hey, what do your parents think? They are very proud that I was able to leave the family business, which had nothing to do with technology, and make good use of my education to have a great impact on the world. They are very proud and happy.

Proud of...They like it. Yes. That's great. What was the family business? My father owns a cereal business. They grind wheat. And you may have heard of this, it's called atta chakki. Okay. They grind it. Yes, they mill wheat and then sell fresh flour. Fresh food has always been something that has interested me a lot from the beginning. What do you need help with? You have created great communities. You with MFM and you with Hampton. We believe that community will be a major growth driver for Poosh-it.

How do you think we should leverage the community to help Poosh-it continue to grow? Let me say something very quickly. I think people use the words community and audience differently. Okay. For example, MFM is an audience. In other words, if we stop doing this, the audience will eventually disappear. Yes. Sean owns a brand that has a community. It has an online community where many of its customers talk and interact, and that's a community. And I think you'd have to determine which of those two you're actually talking about.

Yes, the best thing I've heard about this is that if they were all together, which way would the chairs be facing? So , an audience is all the chairs facing the stage. A community is like chairs pointing towards each other. So, for example, to answer your question, which brand of air fryer went crazy? Like Ninja? Yes, maybe it's Ninja, but basically the air fryer has had a major revival in the last 5 years . And in fact, a community did too. Yes, Creami Ninja also did Creami, where there is a community of people who share recipes.

And it works because I think that, a little more than yours, the user can discover how to create new things so that, instead of the app only letting you do 14 things, you choose one of the 14. And then, if you have some element of UGC, user-generated cooking in this case, user-generated recipes that they could share and could get support from others, I think that's the key. And you have to find a, you know, a center for them. Is it on Reddit? Is it on Discord?

Is it on Facebook? Is it on Instagram? How are you going to get people to share this stuff? But I would study what the air fryer community did. I would study what Ninja Creami did. And I would try to replicate the factors of that success as much as possible. Yes, for example, I loved this app called Aaptiv. It was a fitness app. And they had a Facebook group. And I was very active in the Facebook group. And the same goes for Peloton; I'm sure they have a Facebook group where you like to talk about your favorite instructors or whether anyone has tried this type of training.

Another one is Ladders, which is another fitness app. But they have this kind of community. So those are their customers talking to each other. It is very valuable. And then what I would do is, every time you send the package, I would put something inside it, like, well, I couldn't tell you. If they are mainly mothers, I would choose Facebook and their age . If they were nerds, I'd choose Reddit, whatever . Facebook groups are still the best. I think the other question is, what's the biggest benefit you're associating yourself with?

Are people buying this primarily to save time? Then you'd say: well, this is for people who really value their time. Perhaps she is a busy professional, a working mother, etc., etc. And you need to create metrics and success stories and attract those kinds of people, go to those influencers who are going to talk about that kind of religion. Or is religion just for food lovers? People who love food, but are limited by their ability. Okay. I would love to cook risotto. I would love to eat risotto, but I don't know how to cook it.

And that skills gap is closing with this thing, which allows me to enjoy my taste for food and isn't about saving time. Mhm. It's not about brutal efficiency, it's about utility. It's about enjoying yourself. So I would try to find out, and the easy answer would be, "Oh, it's both . That's all." But for a community to really work, you want to have a beachhead. You want to have an initial person you're targeting, and it's really like, what's the happy ending, the dream outcome for that person?

The kind of internal itch they've been waiting to scratch, and that your product is helping them achieve. Your product is not the hero. It is the tool that the average person uses to become a hero. So, what is it? That 's something I would ask myself because that will change a lot of your marketing and a lot of your strategy. But my gut tells me you're not going to have a customer acquisition problem . Clear. I do n't think that's going to be the problem here.

The marketing team is like a whole person. I do n't think that's going to be the problem. Your limitation won't be getting people to buy it. It's going to be a matter of whether this actually works and if they can get it working at home. Yes, but it will change your product strategy. For example, if your product strategy is based on utility, Mancable, as if it wanted health and convenience. Yes. So he's willing to sacrifice presentation, flavor, and other things along the way. But you would create a different product.

You would literally have different parts of the robot, different limitations in the manufacturing aspect compared to if you were trying to make this beautiful, awesome, parmesan-covered thing when friends come over, yes, I cooked this for the family. I had never been able to do that before. Perhaps by making it easier or harder to manufacture. Clear. I think community is important mainly because it's not necessarily growth that drives it, but over time I think your CAC goes down because, you know, your K-factor just keeps increasing. People start talking about you.

Second, it increases participation and, therefore, retention. And if retention increases, then let's pause. Of the world's best community builders , how many of them use phrases like K-factor, engagement, affiliation, and CAC? At least not at first. First you get magic. Soul communities, do you know what I mean? Therefore, you need to have two different parts of your brain. There's the metrics guy, founder of a startup that raises money using Excel. And then there's the type of feelings. And there's the sentimental type, there's the spiritual type.

We're going to do this because it's amazing. We're going to do this because it's the right thing to do. We're going to do this because it's great. Maybe, but right now it's like cool stuff is becoming mainstream and they're not talking about the K-factor. It's nonsense. Talk about emotions, you know, that kind of thing, not the K factor. Don't worry about it. Simply get the 1500 people who use this to connect to Facebook groups every week to talk, whether to complain, to celebrate, or to nerd.

And then you also need tradition. For us, tradition would be like nothing for little kids. Like when we say those silly phrases where no nerd in a room is going to say: "How do I make people like us more?" Do you know what I mean? We just make up nonsense. It's like calling this episode of the series the cowboys' dungeon just because I was wearing jeans. Do those silly things. No need to tell, who cares? But simply do these things where you create tradition. You can create slogans.

Shared stories. A common bond, us against the world. And that sounds silly when it comes to cooking, but you could still do it, right? So you create this, you create a tradition and you repeat it constantly, consistently, and you have a face, whether it's you or someone else in your company, you could come across as very charismatic? I think you could do it. But like all sects, you need a shared language, rituals, and a leader. Okay, we need to finish up. Yes. Uh, Raghav, thanks for coming.

Yes. Pasha? Yes. pasha.com. You have the URL. Good job. Incredible. Thank you very much for your time. Very well, thank you. God bless you. Alright, see you later, friend. Thank you. Great, we have another one. Who do we have? Bring him here. Hey. What's up? Guys? Yes, I brought you. What's up, guys? You sound like a hockey player. Okay , we've been in the locker room for too long. That 's the problem. Well, I know you. Well, this is Nick. What's happening? I know your product because I'm addicted to this kind of thing .

In fact, I had to give them up. I thought I needed a lunch break to eat my lunch squares, but do you really know Nick or not? I would never do that. I haven't known him for a second. Lurk in X. Yeah, well, I have these in my office in Hampton because my co-founder is obsessed with them and I started eating them. They're incredible. That. I apreciate it. Is Midday your company? Of course . Do you and your wife do that? Two other partners. Yes, I have to send a very special greeting to my wife and my brother-in-law.

Well, we didn't do this, we need to talk about his wife. It's incredible. It's the best. Okay, before we begin, we want you to start with an important number. We sold $40 million worth of chocolate bars at $2.49 each. That's equivalent to, let's say, approximately 60 bars per minute that must be consumed every minute for 365 days a year to reach that number. Oh. 40 million this year. This has been the case in the last 12 months. Yes. Yes . 60 of these boys every minute, every minute of the entire year.

Every minute of the year. 365 days a year . If I'm not mistaken, wasn't Kim Kardashian seen with these in her bag? Is that true? Yes. They don't pay him, do they? They do n't pay him. He has connected with us twice on his social media and I think that's the beauty of it when you're in a pinch and I make an effort to be with all the chefs. That's why we don't seek direct connections with celebrities. That's what everyone does. So, over the last decade, we've set out to become friends with chefs.

And that's it...Chef K, a shout-out to Chef K, who cooks for the Kardashians. I mean , we've been sending you your product for years and years and years. No, in the influencer strategy. So, who influences the influencers? And then, influencing them is much easier. But do you find out who the celebrity chefs are ? Yes, there are many chefs on Instagram and TikTok for whom you can see who they cook for. Athletes and others, yes. And you send them a direct message: "Hey, can I send you some?" Yes.

Yes. What's so special about the product? Okay, so what's the product ? Okay. Okay, let's start with chocolate tablets. And something crazy happened, you know, since we started this business in 2018, the price of chocolate skyrocketed, the cost of cocoa. That means we lost 27% of our gross margin instantly. We were killing it. And chocolate...we were paying $4,000 per kilo for cocoa butter. It went up to 32,000 just to give... There's like a cocoa crisis, a cocoa crisis. Why is there a cocoa crisis? Well, it's a cycle that happens all the time, which is very interesting.

It begins with a real imbalance in terms of climate, diseases spread. Then, not enough cocoa arrives at the ports, and then corruption appears. And corruption usually takes about 2 years. I have stories. I went to the Ecuadorian jungle. So, if you ever want to go there, we could go. But basically, you know, when you're between a rock and a hard place, I remember we started this with no unit economics. I'm not comparing this to Tesla in any way, but we built the product with no gross margin.

Nobody wants to manufacture this. Then we went to a large kitchen and built a floor. And finally we had all reached profitability, and then this whole cocoa thing crushes us , you know? Have you raised money or has all this been done with your own resources? No, no, we raise money through quasi-capital and our government. So, a salute to the Canadian government. Super professionals in agricultural manufacturing. So, they were able to give us, do you have 22 million in total? Did they raise 22 million dollars?

And they built their own plant. Yes. They are very good followers on social media. In fact, I've stolen a lot of things from your social strategy. Well, you guys, his wife in particular , make this content amazing. So they were sued by Hershey, who I don't remember who he was. Hershey neither confirms nor denies it. I can say these things. They received a cease and desist order from someone who told them they couldn't use the color orange or anything similar. Orange. It was ridiculous, we could all add two and two.

Yes. Reese's said, "Hey, leave the orange alone." So, instead of simply accepting the disadvantage, they said, "How can we turn this into an advantage?" And then they launched this campaign in which they made videos to talk about how they are simply an independent company. In fact, we made a song of insults. They made a rap song. They made a music video. He and his wife, and it's kind of ridiculous, but somehow it works, and they tell the story. They tell the story about their plant, and they tell the story of all the good things and also the bad things, something that I think everyone only tells the good things about.

There is much to learn from your strategy, but you also have a lot of natural charisma and storytelling ability. Midday Squares? Because it's perfect. Thanks, man. I think it was my wife and I brainstorming, improvising. Greetings to 5-hour Energy . I listened to the 5-hour Energy podcast and he was very methodical about how he wanted my product to be what it is. And we were...Well, the big difference we saw was that the afternoon market is just as big as the morning breakfast market, except that it hardly gets any attention.

So everyone is crammed into breakfast and nobody really focuses on the afternoon part. For adults. For adults. Yes, specifically. So, was this a form factor that already existed, that people were already making these things in a square shape? I don't even know what this is . Is this half square? Layered square, yes. Which is the bottom? A peanut butter base. Okay, peanut butter base, you have jam on top. This one is peanut butter and jam. Uh, or it's...it's a PB&J sandwich. This is also peanut butter and jam, strawberry.

But you also have chocolate, right? And so chocolate is where it all began. Where did the initial idea come from? You're just sitting there, and why is that? Well, my cousins, my cousin had a very high position at Smucker's and he was always pressuring me to get into this game, you know? And we always talked about it and eventually, through some of his friends and others, I started to get data and the data that really caught my attention was that chocolate was growing at a ridiculous rate.

The chocolate that did not use palm kernel oil at that time. And refrigerated products were growing. The refrigerated products category is the fastest growing section in grocery stores. That's why you keep seeing refrigerated products everywhere . Like Freshpet, in the pet section, they are starting to put refrigerators there. Oh, so every category started having a refrigerated product. And we were talking about this in relation to vitamins , right? Like those liquid vitamins. Correct. What you put in the refrigerator. Bingo. Instead of in the closet. Oh, wait, go back.

Is your cousin at Smuckers? By the way, Smuckers? Special mention for Aurelio. That's my cousin. And he says, "You have to get into this jelly game." Yes. And so you're studying the data, you notice this cooling trend across different categories. Then you realize that chocolate is on the rise, there is no refrigerated chocolate. Yes. You see a gap. You see an opportunity. In a big way. Tell us how much of your own money you invested to do it. And then, if you could recall the income for each year, leaving out 100%.

Yes, 100%. Basically, it took about 60,000. My partners and I basically raised it ourselves. We invested 60,000. So we created a constraint. We couldn't use Facebook ads. We had to reach one million dollars in revenue and we couldn't use Facebook ads. That was restriction number one. And number two, everything had to be in our city. So we couldn't just throw and pray. We had to... We chose Montreal as our place of origin. We thought we had to reach a million dollars here. And if we succeed, then we can move on to the next level where we can start taking this seriously.

Was the first one on Facebook ads simply because, well, we don't have a lot of capital, so we're not going to be able to set aside that much money to spend there? Or was it when I got the Montreal one, which is like, look, let's try to make sure the people we can see, feel, and touch here love it because if they don't really love it, we won't be right before we earn the right to go to other cities? I contradict myself; I believe that Facebook creates many false positives for startups.

Yes. What did you do to get Montreal to join? The content, man. That's how it was, in this way, and this is where the brilliance of my wife and brother-in-law lies . So it was very simple. None of us had followers on social media. That's a very important part, isn't it? Because a lot of people feel intimidated when they get into this, like you have to have a prep, but we didn't have any followers. So throughout the summer, we started publishing. When you make food products, you usually end up in really cool environments.

You know, we were in labs with food scientists and in different manufacturing plants where we were testing things, so we would tell each other: when we do something, turn on the cameras and tell people what you do, but don't reveal it. It only shows the surroundings. And people started to get interested, saying, "What , what is this? What on earth are you doing?" You know, especially all of us who didn't come from this industry. Well, it was like the good-looking young guys were saying, "We don't know what the hell we're doing," but you're saying, "Your friends, your own natural social network." My mind was wondering, "What's going on?" Why is Nick suddenly in this lab wearing a hairnet, testing different PFIs?

Yes, because everyone...My wife was into fashion. My brother-in-law was a gym enthusiast who went to universities . And I had worked in software throughout my entire career before that. Well, seeing us wearing hairnets and doing things was like... You use content, you use stories to get it going. Yes. Yes. Tell us about the ramp. You started your first year, what did you do? This is where the magic happened, okay? When we launched the jets in September, in September 2018, we sold our product on our website for 50 cents.

And there were two reasons, okay? You could buy a square for 50 cents, and the idea was that it would all be a content-driven game. We did n't want to make money, but we also didn't want people working for free. So we had to take out your credit card, make a transaction, and we delivered everything by hand for 5 months . Everything in Montreal. It's an animal. By the way, Nick is the only one not in San Francisco doing this today. He also flew for this.

This guy is a total con artist. Yes, Ben sent me a message. It says something like, "Are you by any chance going to be in San Francisco on Monday?" And I say to him, "Yes, of course." And he says, " Here it is." And I tell him, "Okay, perfect. I'm going to fly to San Francisco." I 'm still far away, man. You have to seize the opportunity. Well, yes. So we got in the car. We make deliveries for about 5 months. This is where the magic of the content happened.

We would get up in the morning, every morning, and I think I took "Do things that don't fit your budget," and we went overboard. In the morning, all our orders were ready and we were literally uploading them to people's Instagram accounts . For example, if you had a dog named Chuck, we would say, "Scream Chuck." And we would put on those crazy outfits and take Polaroids. OK? Just idiot [ __ ]. Yes, completely, as if we just took a Polaroid photo and showed up at her house.

And this always happened. OK? So, we'd show up at the house and say, "Wait, why are you making the delivery?" And then we did it. That way, you could spend time with the client. We got more content out of it. So we recorded the whole experience. God. Then we would show them the photo. Then they would publish it. We reached one million dollars in 4 months. It was like boom. Dude, that's awesome. That's incredible. That's a great story. The number. Tell us the numbers. Okay, fine.

Well, year one, I mean one million four. Then in year two, let's say 3 million. Then we made a big leap to seven. 14. 22. 30. 40. And now this year we're heading towards 60. And you all came into Costco. Just like when we launched Costco Canada nationwide, Costco U.S. will launch on September 1st. Go into Costco? It 's not easy. Everyone wants to get into retail . It's also a crazy story. This is a crazy story. Okay . We're going to have to extend the time limit for Nick, just so you know.

You know, because this is a crazy story. The next person should go for a one- minute walk. Costco had seen that content generates action, okay? Generate action. So we have this meeting with Costco. Content generates action, baby. Come on. We need to take advantage of that action. So basically we're going to the first Costco meeting and all I'm going to say is Costco, hello Costco, very respectfully, as if we didn't agree. We knew that our second most searched term online was Mid-Day Squares at Costco .

We knew we were going to be a big success. They weren't so sure about that, and we knew the right price was $19.99 for our 12-pack. There was a disagreement that lasted about two and a half years, okay? Round. Correct. A disagreement between gentlemen. Yes, we just couldn't agree on the price. And for the record, what was it? I'm not going to say that price. Yes, because they are a great partner. And they wanted it to be lower. And we just stood firm, you know, because this is...

two and a half years? 2 and a half years. So, during that, why didn't they say something like, " Let's go to Costco. Let's give them a... Okay, this happened at the third meeting . Here's where things... It was at the third meeting. We went to the head office for the third time. There are two ways to go to Costco. You can either stand in line or do a roving presentation. And the roving presentation is like everything is on consignment. You have to show up. You only get paid for what you sell at Costco.

And you have to be at Costco for 14 days. You mean, you're pulling samples? Physically? Samples? Yeah, you're testing, you're juggling. It's like... Oh, that's what's going on. When you walk into Costco, there's a great product, there's someone there. They're making a consignment bet on their product to prove to Costco that they deserve it. And there's no guarantee that you're going to get Costco. Well, I was really nervous. Again, we weren't in agreement. This is the third time, and we're talking about almost Three years at this point.

So I looked at the buyer with whom we had begun to develop a good relationship. I said, "If we do the tour and break the tour record , like the highest sales in 14 days, would you give us 1999?" "And we shook hands that day. What made you want to make that bold statement? Our Google search was so high that I knew you knew it was high, but you didn't know how it compared to when the Swiffer came out. I honestly don't know. You're right. I don't know.

There are moments in life when you just... Was it impulsive or did you plan to say it from the start? It was impulsive. We were... Yeah. Your wife looked at you during the meeting and it was like my wife was looking at me and us, but she was... She, I, I don't know. I guess you have nothing to lose at some point. Baby married a wild stallion. That's how it goes. Sometimes I get away with it. So, how many did you sell? Uh, 140, 100. We can't put 160,000 in 14 days.

And how many of the 160 were your colleagues? Did you beat or smash the record? I think the closest record before that was... with other people. And they made a story out of it. Man. We bounced back. We bounced back . Like, we bounced back. Well, for starters, most of the founders don't spend 14 days like we're doing full days. Don't give me that finger. Dude, when he says we bounced back, it fits right in with what we were talking about backstage regarding nicotine, when he blurted out, "I used to put them between my toes before ice hockey." I'd never heard of this.

Okay, okay, it seems we have some degeneration to explore together. Yes, I noticed because of your tattoos. You put it between your toes and tried it for 14 days. It was like the craziest rally of my life, and it wasn't 14 days long. We spent 36 days straight in a Costco. We had to go to several Costcos, so...what's the trick when you're at Costco? How do you stop people? What did you do? What was the talent for the show that worked? Two things that I think are really important.

Most founders don't do the roadshow themselves. They leave it to a third party. That's how it is. Error number one. Yes, because everyone hates rejection and you are being rejected. Time. You have to be in those for 12 hours a day. They open at 8:00 and close at 9:00, you know? So most founders ignore it. And they just pay for the service and don't go every day to... You do n't understand. It was madness. Okay, so you were just working hard. You're living in Costco. Your wife, our whole team was there .

Our thing is that the founders do it themselves. What is the second thing? The second thing is that, basically, while you're there, you want to be very methodical. So, I would stand in front and shout keywords. Gluten-free, suitable for diabetics, and...No, I swear on my life. So, you're putting in keywords while people are shouting. You bought something like a dictionary for white girls. Yes, yes. And so, you're launching your keywords and it actually works. Hispanic. Yes. No, I mean like...So we would have ...we would have this.

There came a time when we were so focused. As if we were so out of our element... Sometimes you start to hallucinate that you're there so long that we just said, "It's a dog and pony show." "Go in like you're just starting out. But keywords are really key. So, keywords... Why are keywords key? First, we changed our box to the keywords that work. So, when you go to Costco, it's not this box. It's a specific box that went to Costco while you were there. They changed the packaging afterward.

What did you discover? Gluten-free products were really popular, real chocolate was really popular at Costco. So, I think the second thing, Shawn, is don't just stand there mindlessly while you're doing the roadshow. Be intentional with what you do. Okay. Dude, this is awesome. Congratulations. What? So, okay . So, in 10 years, what do you think is going to happen? Are you going to sell the company? Are you going to keep going forever? What are you going to do ? All I know is that my dream was to make it to the NHL, and I didn't make it.

So, no, it didn't happen. So, now you're going to buy a team? No, no, no. Just the 0.5% of companies surpass $100 million in revenue. I think that's been my goal from the beginning, and I don't know what will happen after that, but that's the goal. You're awesome, man. How can we help you? First, having me here today. I can't tell you how much this means to me. You've heard me out for a while. Come on, man. We met 5 years ago at the LTV Club.

Yeah, I used to organize this for e-commerce owners. He was there. You were probably only making 5 or 10 million. That was $5 million back then . $ 5 million back then, but he had incredible energy. I've been supporting you ever since. So it doesn't surprise me that you're now at $40, $50, or $60 million. It's man. What flavor would you like to see? I mean, you guys consume the product. I would love it. Even if it was in a completely different direction. Let's not even say bread, peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

What flavor would you like us to make? Good question. I think I would love it. Look, you told me three things today, and I've known your brand for four years, that I didn't know. I think you have to... This sounds weird because you're creating content. It sounds weird because you work on your packaging. I think there's still a long way to go in terms of being able to tell if my point of contact is just seeing the box, if my point of contact is seeing something from you or a celebrity on social media.

How do you make the story really stand out? Because, you know, I just hadn't realized that the reason your products taste better and are better for you is because it's real, refrigerated chocolate. That's why it doesn't have preservatives. So, it's one thing to say, "No preservatives." It's like, when I've heard that kind of thing so many times, I just assume they're still putting something else in there that I'm completely unaware of. Oh, backdoor. No palm oil. Oh , so they're using something else . Who knows?

And so, I think just saying something like, "Hey, this is chocolate you keep in your refrigerator." "Because it's in the fridge. But this isn't even chocolate. This isn't bread, peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Is your chocolate still your favorite? These are... I mean, this is number one by far. By God, I would stick with this. Looks like , man, you know who's making a strong comeback, Uncrustables? But yours is fresher and healthier than, man, an Uncrustable. If I buy that for my kids, I know I'm making a bad decision.

A bad decision. To me, I'm making an embarrassing decision. I'm not ashamed of this. So, congratulations. Well, thank you. Okay, we appreciate you doing this. Glad to have you all here. I appreciate it. Man, it's been great seeing you. Thanks, man. I appreciate you coming, too. Okay, guest number three. Here we go. What's up, man? Everybody, everyone, introduce yourselves. What's your name? What are you doing here?" What do you do? What's the company called? Okay, that sounds good. My name is Shreyas, and I'm the CEO of Daydream .

We're adding one million dollars a month by helping dentists automate administrative tasks. Okay. Dude, I've been directing you . Directing. We've been directing each other . Yeah, we've been directing each other . I love the company name, and then I saw you were doing something for dentists, and I thought, "This is really smart." I think I tried to invest or something. I thought, "This is, you know, I do these kinds of cold calls to invest with no information, just a Twitter bio or two tweets." And that's what I think I did with you.

That's great. That means my Twitter works. Yeah, it works. There you go. I've got you. Okay. Well, you've already started with a big number. You say, "Let's say it again more slowly." Then you said, " We're adding one million dollars a month in ARR, month after month." At several dentists. Yes, at several. Tell us what you do. Yes, basically what we do is... I do n't know if you've ever gone to the dentist or the doctor and received a bill from the insurance company and wondered, "Hey, what is this actually?" "And that's because insurance companies try to scam not only patients, but doctors too.

The reality is that, in order for the insurance company to reimburse them, the doctor has to do a ton of paperwork, and doctors hate it and do it poorly. They lose money. My mother is a dentist, and she's losing 10 to 15 percent of her income to these insurance companies. So I thought, 'What if I could automate this process of dealing with the insurance company?'" "Check the insurance to say, 'Hey, this is what Shawn's insurance will cover.'" We filed the complaint. We appeal the denial. Because, guess what?

They love denying these claims. And then we do all the accounting when the money comes in, and in return, the doctors pay us a small percentage of every dollar they collect. It's like the AI ​​negotiates with the company. The insurance companies, yeah, exactly. We have an AI that calls the insurance company to find out the status of these claims, an AI that submits the claim. An AI voice that says, "Hey, you didn't approve this." Why not? This is why you should do it ." Well, the funny thing is, they also have AI, so it's usually a war of attrition.

It's like they have to wait to hear the menu, then you have to say the number, then they don't understand, but it's like, "Let my robot talk to your robot all day." Exactly. And you know what I always tell the insurance companies that come in? I say, "Hey, you're spending a lot of money , we're spending a lot of money." What if you simply gave us the data through an API? "But this healthcare industry is so backward that they don't want to do it. The incentive is nonexistent.

Yes, the incentive is nonexistent. That's why we have to find all these creative ways to beat the system and make sure our doctors and our patients get paid. Can you tell us some facts? Well, how old is the company? How much funding do you have? And this year's revenue? Yes, we're about 926 days old, two and a half years. About... Do you know who started it? Was it the CEO? Do you know who their...? Yes, yes, yes. Their stick is like how many hours old. Today we're 2,243 days old.

Sorry. 926 days. What was the second part ? Yes, we've raised $11.5 million to date. By the end of this year, we'll have passed $ 10 million in revenue. Wow. And another underrated thing is that, well , the way our business started was that we went out and acquired an existing services business. Before, you know, People were doing this work manually. So we bought this company and have been improving its margins ever since. What was the size of its business portfolio when you bought it ?

Less than a million. And, really, the point was that when you run a service business, one day you run out of resources, you have to hire more people, you become more unstable, and the quality drops. So we got them at just the right time, when they were saying, "Hey, I think we could grow, but we don't have enough talent." Who came up with this name? Me. My mom's practice is called Dream Smile. And so I grew up working in this practice my whole life, and I don't know if you've ever been an unpaid child laborer, but the first thing you do is daydream and think, "Oh, a shout-out to all the unpaid child laborers out there ." I see you.

I'll see you there. "Making shoes in the mines, wherever you are." Or sending benefit explanations for a dental clinic in Philadelphia. I 'm 25. Wow. So you were working in your mom's dental practice. You were forced to do some of this work, or you saw Debbie doing this work, and that was it. Yeah. Now that you're getting older, you start thinking, ' What can AI do?' What was the real reason you came up with the idea? Take us back to the epiphany of the idea. Yeah, and it's all going to get dark, but then things are going to get better, I promise you, I give you my word.

Okay, well, I'm warning you. My mom's fine now, but she got sick. So I graduated from Stanford. I was working at an AI startup . I was over the moon. I thought, ' I'm going to take over the world.' And then she gets sick. So I go home and start running our practice. And, you know, I went from being 100 years old to suddenly being The most qualified dental office manager in the United States. And that's when I realized how much money we were losing. I think growing up, I knew it was a problem, but I was just going through with it.

I was ready to quit and go home. But then I saw it and had the opportunity to see and feel what my mother had felt for 15 years of her life. And I thought this was just unacceptable, it does n't have to be this way. It does n't have to be this way. And, you know , I've spent a lot of time, you know, I'm kind of a bit of an NLP geek. I've always loved natural language processing. And I've seen how the field has developed.

So I was probably one of the first 100 people to have access to GPT-3 because I was really interested in words, so when I started in computer science I had access to GPT-3. I'm interested in words. It's like a Venn diagram where personality type meets opportunity, the circumstances you grew up in, and the resources you had. Yeah, it's like, okay, perfect. So, Do you know who else worked in his parents' dental practice and then went on to do great things? Zuck? Mark Zuckerberg. Yes. Really? Yes, the story, yes, his first project was like he set up the computer system in his dad's office, improved it, and made it like new , and then he thought, "Well, I think I've outgrown it ." "I should do something else." Oh, that's great.

And Michael Dell, underrated, I think his father was an orthodontist. Yes, Dr. Dell. Dentist sons. Yes, it's a mafia. There are dozens of us. Well, how big? I think we're going to service every dental practice in America. You want to be the CEO of a publicly traded company? Yes, why not? I think the opportunity we have today is to help dentists make money for their businesses, but soon we'll be able to store their money, we'll be able to help them spend it, we'll be able to lend them money.

I do n't know if you guys have, you know, these venture capital firms that buy all kinds of Taco Bells, dental practices, and the truth is, 70% of the market is still independent people like my mother. And they feel like they have no choice but to sell to the big guys. I want to give them the third door, which is something like, "Hey, if I take care of this administrative nonsense for you, would you still be a dentist?" And the owner of your practice? "And they say, 'Of course.' That's the multi-million dollar business.

So, let's go over the business model. You said you save dentists, you bring them additional cash flow that they would otherwise lose or be delayed. You take a percentage of that. So, you said it's basically, we take $1,000 for every $100. For every $100 that comes in, how much do you take? From 2.5 to 3.5%. Oh, that's it. Okay. Yes. But how does that math work? So, you mentioned $10 million in ARR, but you're saving by bringing in a million a month with that. That's $12 million a year.

How does that work? No, we're adding Daydream as a business; we're adding $1 million in new net ARR. And so, what are we processing? ARR? Yes, ARR. So, when we file claims and record the payments, which is like entering them, we charge a fee. So, it's not just money." What we recover. It's every dollar that comes into the business that we help them process. So, you're like Stripe in the back end. Exactly. We're like all their billing. And then, the better the part you guys are even better at, you add that kind of 10%-15% to your overall practice.

How big is your team? Well, we have about 60 people, but we have people on the billing team, on the service delivery team. That's about 50 people. I think we only have about 10 people in the office. So you're close to profitability. Yeah. And I think it's like, you know, we raised venture capital, and I think it's good to have something like, we could aim for profitability, or we could keep growing. I think we just want to do more. I know there are like 150,000 dentists.

The work isn't done. The work—we can't even talk about the work. We haven't even ... You know what I mean? The work isn't done. Is Job in the room with us right now? No, nor I can't even see it. So things are going really well. You seem happy. What's wrong? This is a safe space. You can tell us and the millions of people who are going to listen to this what's going wrong. Everything that feels like. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. Like, where are the bottlenecks right now ?

I think, again, like hiring engineers. Again, it's like our job is to take this services business and turn it into software, you know, software expertise. There are so few talented people to do this strange work. And you know we're competing against OpenAI and Anthropic. Yeah. And I'm like, "Well, that part is tricky." No, I think we really get people to commit to the mission. You can get a job, you can have a career, you can have a mission. When I get people on board with the mission, job done.

You know what I mean? Like everything else, no, I don't know what you mean. When you're drawn to their mission of AGI or curing cancer, but you end up doing dental work in the office. How does your mission supersede the mission of these labs? No way. I think it's like, yeah, very fair, a very fair rejection. I think for me, dentists are the underdogs, the small businesses, the people who are like , you know, we're dealing with people in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Yeah , great. You can create AI sales development reps, you can sell more AI products to people in SF, or you can help the guy you grew up with for 15 years.

Great. And that's the mission. And yeah, we sell to dentists, right? But for me, this story is so much more powerful. It's like, my mom knows who each of her patients is going to prom with. She knows when her kids are sick. She knows, she knows what...she knows so much more about them than she knows about me, right? And that's the healthcare experience . And that's how I think the mission that excites people is like, hey, I miss being able to Go to my guy, the person I've gone to for 15 years.

Great speech. He's got a... He's got a ... He's got a really good skill set. Yeah, you're great. Let's ask you a different question. What's still unresolved in the business? Well, you know, there's a business where you just have to work out the six things in front of you as you go. And there might be some things you don't know yet, but they're a little further away. You can keep looking for them until you get them. What's still unresolved? You know, I think we're growing fast, but we could be growing faster.

We do creative things to get to market, but we could always do more. So, how do I get more of those 150,000 dentists? Exactly. Yeah. We go after, you know, these guys aren't on LinkedIn. You never met a dentist on LinkedIn. Do they find you now? Honestly, word of mouth. We're in these Facebook groups where there are like tens of thousands of dentists. And I just I comment for 10 hours a week, I just follow these Facebook groups. How do you make it absolutely obvious for a dentist to hire you?

So, nowadays, how do you eliminate all the friction? The same way you eliminate billing friction, how do you eliminate onboarding friction? For example, could you go to those dentists and say, "Hey, Daydream, we'll take over this cost center for your business," but basically, if you told them, "We won't charge you a penny until we've made $100,000. The first $100,000 we make doesn't cost us anything, and then we take 2.5% or something like that," it's like, " These guys are saying they'll make me another $100,000." And if you onboard that person, your actual expenses aren't $100,000.

Your expenses to onboard a dentist are probably very, very small. So you would use that to create an offer so good it would be stupid to do otherwise. Reject it. Yes. Yes, it's very difficult because most people are afraid of managing change. That's how dentists are, like, "Yeah, maybe I'm losing a little money, but like, uh, sure." But yes, I mean that often that's the most important thing that comes to mind. It's like, how? Well, my father is in this, not this space, but he owns a small old-school business.

And if you were to tell him, like I did in this post about him, that my dad makes, you know, so much money selling onions and his CRM is this notebook and binder. And all these people were saying, "Use a CRM." And he was saying, "What the hell is that?" No. No, I'm finished. "And I understand that pitch can be difficult. Why not create a Facebook group that teaches dentist owners how to make more money? We've tried making offers to those other Facebook groups. And then we created our own.

It only has about 250 members, but right now we have someone overseas adding them. Yes, yes, yes. And then we add them as friends from my account. But yes, we need to give it a push. Buy one of those groups? We 've tried. Although sometimes they block you if you do that. So you have to be careful because you could get blocked just for making the offer. What about private equity investors? The private equity mergers that are happening. They already own huge amounts of... In theory, you sell one and you get many.

But maybe they built it internally or they're very margin-sensitive and don't want to do it. What have you found out so far ? I thought they would be much more straightforward, very logical, but many of them... Like, they bought a bunch of practices in 2021 and are just trying to stay afloat." afloat, and to be honest, they can't pay their debts these days. And I think, yeah, we've tried one or two groups of 50 locations, but those have been the hardest implementations, the most demanding things.

And again, maybe this is a bad thing. We just thought, what if we just stick to what we 're best at for now and be done with it? And well, I hope we can work there, but do you have a community manager ? You 're looking at it. Yeah, it's smart of you to do that. I would put a lot of effort into having and managing a Facebook group and creating, you know, we're friends with this guy named Tommy Mello, who has a garage door business.

Garage. Yeah, and I think he has close to a billion in revenue. And now his job is to try to buy more service businesses to implement his manual. And so he created something like a service experts conference . And he said, "The ticket prices will pay my team, but the truth is, if I find a few that I can buy, I'd love to." And if I were you, I would definitely have a community manager. community, probably a former dentist or something like that , and I would create a community in Facebook groups where best practices are collected, where people share their tips and tricks on how they make their lives easier and improve their businesses.

How many dentists do you bring on each month? About 50, like 30 to 50. And then the question is, how do you get that number to 150? Yes. So you start by saying, well, what works today? Where do you get the 50 right now? Yes, then we do direct mail campaigns like this one, where we send a picture—what's a direct mailer you're not going to throw away? It's like one with your face on it, right? Them. Yes, it's them. And we have all these different options.

Yes, me. This is a great idea. Who did this? Which provider? Like you're looking at, " Who did that?" Me and the team, again, we have the smartest go-to-market experts with the that I've worked on. This is really good. And then we did this. Like old-school direct marketers ? Not really, no. We do it mostly by vibes. You're doing... Yeah, you're doing direct response marketing. You should study the guys who basically cracked a single sales letter sent through the mail. What are you talking about? That would make millions of dollars.

No, sorry. Okay, listen, before the internet was the internet, it was copywriters, direct marketers. Basically, let's say I make vacuum cleaners and I go to Joe Joe Sugarman or David Ogilvy and say, "Hey guys, I need a bunch of people to buy this vacuum cleaner." Then they pay a database of us to give them the addresses of a million housewives, and they come up with a copywriter who proposes an amazing approach to getting the housewives' attention . And they write a letter, type it up, put it in an envelope, and mail it out saying, "Here are all the reasons why you should buy this." Here's a little coupon.

Tear it up, write your checking account information in it, and put a check or whatever in there. Mail it to me . That is a very arduous process. So they became so good at copywriting that every word had a purpose and was beautiful and incredibly effective. Then came the internet, and the best copywriters used to be people who were a bit on the fringes, like they sold things such as how to pick up girls or how to make those shows that were a bit marginal, but they were the best.

And these guys still exist, and you could get someone to help you with that cover letter, and they could sell to these people big time, all through long-form direct response copywriting. You convinced me. Yes, it's like a 12th grade English class. Yes, what I love is that you just do the business side of things, right? You're just stumbling around trying to figure things out as you go, but you'll see that there are people who are masters at this, whether they 're old school or people who have studied it and do it today.

Find them and tell them, "Hey, I need you to get, you know, here's a budget and I need you to get dentists at this cost and see what they can do." The way this is like one of the frameworks for copywriting is that one of the simplest is AIDA: attention, interest, desire, action. This is A. That's the best headline you could possibly have to grab attention . So you're doing it without realizing it , but you can improve it 100%. Get the free book, a demo, and a free pair of AirPods.

So that's another thing they would do , Cracker Jack, you know, gifts and prizes, yeah. They would do something where, you know, they would staple or clip a dollar bill to the mail, to a letter. And just clicking "like" when you see a dollar sign, what is this? And it simply had a higher response rate. They discovered all the different things you can do to make each step of this work. So this is one of the tactics. Is this meant to attract everyone right now or not?

No no. I mean, there isn't a single dentistry podcast in the United States that I haven't been to. Um, just every dental podcast, every dental conference. Sometimes sponsored , sometimes as a guest. Again, the story is something I think many dentists can support. And then , uh, the conferences, like I think in any given month, I'll probably be at about three or four. Sometimes they think you're a weirdo. They say, "Who's this charismatic young man at the dentist?" Like we've never seen this before. Like, you know, you'll probably stand out, right?

Yeah, for better or for worse. In a good way. Okay, listen. Joe Sugarman is the author . It's called the Adweek Copywriting Guide . Read it, and then read David Ogilvy's Ad Writing Guide. Read it this week, and you'll change your mind. Okay. And I also like the idea of ​​the user conference. Does the A1 guy do this where he gathers people together? Yeah, it's like, "Let's teach everyone." Everyone is going to... We're going to be the meeting place for people to get together and share ideas on how to improve their business.

"And luckily , and just so you know, we have this, but whether you use our software or not, this is a great thing. Another question. Who influences influencers? Well, who do a lot of dentists listen to and trust these days? Obviously, you've been on a couple of podcasts. I don't know if podcasts are the main thing. Are there people on Instagram? For example, I found out that for each space, we invested in this company that did things with auto body shops. And it turns out there was this guy who was the body shop guy and basically had a chain of 50 stores, so everyone who had one wanted to have 50, so they listened to him and respected him, and he could generate an incredible sales volume .

I think this guy was making like 20 million a year as an auto mechanic influencer, which shows there's always influence in every niche. You have to find it and figure out how to get them to add to what you do. Yes, we have. I've done like one or two, but there are a lot of dental influencers because now my whole feed is full of influencers." Dental. Yes, I'm friends with one of them. One of my...you know, his wife is a dentist. Really? Yes, I know a few.

Okay. Yes, I guess we just had our first influencers and our first guests at DreamCon, the user conference. You've got the copywriting bug . What's your best marketing weapon? I mean, the average practice leaves X dollars on the table, and Daydream manages to capture 90% of that amount, or any similar figure. What's your version of that? Like a clever line that makes me immediately realize how much money I 'm losing if I don't use them. We can improve your collections by 5% and reduce the average payment time to 10 days.

It sounds cheesy when I say that. Yes, what does that mean in terms of me being a dentist and not thinking about my average collection time? Yes. I think about how much money I made, like if the average practice made, say, a million dollars a year. Yes. And you say you increase their claims by 5%. So You'd add $50,000 to their consultation, directly to the bottom line. Yes. $50,000 more in your pocket, and all your money back in 10 days. We fight insurance companies, and on average, we add $50,000 of net pay for every dentist who hires us.

Right? Or on average, or however the claim is. You want to dress that up? Try to reduce it to a clever phrase that's like a marketing knockout. It's like, if this is true, okay, I'm interested. Right? And it has to be so juicy for them that if this is true, we used to have one I liked, like, "Your Ferrari is waiting," or something like that, because that's what you can buy, like, for some of these consultations, we recoup enough money to pay for a car. Okay.

We have to... excuse me, this is really helpful, I think I should start writing all this down right now. Well, it'll be recorded, and you can look back on it . Dude, thanks a lot, you're the man. Thanks for coming. Nice to meet you. Okay, that's the end of part one of Shoot Your Shot. We have three more founders in the next episode . Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube and Spotify. We've looked at the data. I think 80 or 90% of the people who watch the episodes aren't subscribed.

What are you going to do? Subscribe so you can watch episode two. And do me a favor: if you're a listener, go to Spotify, or if you prefer to watch the show, then go to YouTube. Put in the comments the city you want us to go to next. Right now we're doing it in San Francisco. We've already been to New York. We'll go somewhere else to do it. So let us know in the comments right now . Hello.

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