 Hey everybody and welcome to the Bruce Wagner show. Today I have a very special guest. His name is Matt Wilson and he is the co-founder of Under 30 CEO. Welcome Matt. Thanks for having me Bruce. So tell us what is Under 30 CEO about? Sure. Under 30 CEO is a website for young entrepreneurs. It is a place for news, advice, interviews, events, anything that has to do with people of our generation that want to go out and start a business. We want to be the go-to place. Cool. So and of course I'm not, well I'm not really 29 even though my Facebook says I'm 29. I just say I have 29 years of experience. Yeah that's it. There you go. So I don't know what, what is the under 30 generation called now? X, Y, Z. Gen Y. Gen Y, okay. Yes. It was one of those. Millennials. Millennials, okay cool. Like Windows Millennium, no. But not a failure like Windows Millennium. I hope not. That's yet to be seen. So it's for young entrepreneurs. Now this is really timely because in this country we have this economic crisis going on and so many people are looking or unemployed, they're looking for jobs. We actually placed an ad for unpaid interns and in the first, like in 48 hours we got 98 resumes. Wow. Yeah, I mean that tells you something about the current situation of that. It was very clearly this is unpaid internships and everybody's just looking for work. But this is, being an entrepreneur is a thing that a lot of people are not considering. If you don't have a job, make your own job, right? Start your own business. That's exactly right. That's where we want to be at the edge of that paradigm shift where people aren't, you know, we realize that people aren't just handed their high paying job when they're handed their diploma these days. Not anymore. So exactly, exactly. So, you know, if you're at home and you can't find your own job, well, you can create, you know, you can create your own job. And so that's, we're trying to give people the tools and resources to be able to go out and do that. Okay. So let me first back up a little bit and say how long has Under30CEO.com been around? So we've been around for three years. Three years. Okay. And what inspired you to start this whole organization around it? Sure. When I was in college, I was president of the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization at Bryant University. And so I don't know how much you know about Bryant, but it's a small private business school, about 3,500 students. And it's really heavily focused on corporate finance and accounting. And I mean, literally, you see people walking around campus in suits and today I don't normally, I don't normally wear a suit, but you caught me in one today. But it just wasn't, I wanted, I got there and I said, well, wait a second, where are all the resources for entrepreneurs? This is a great business school. What if I want to go out and do my own thing and everybody said, oh, well, you know, you can't do that here. And so we said, well, actually you can. That's the whole point is you can just go out and make things happen for yourself. So we got together about five students, grew the organization into 150 entrepreneurs. We had Ted Turner and kind of Cole come and speak on campus. We had the world's largest elevator pitch competition and we were just surrounded by this amazing environment of smart, young, innovative people. And then, of course, I graduated and moved home to the suburbs and I said, well, wait a second, where did it all go? And I said, well, if I was able to do this on a campus-wide level, why can't we do this online on a global level? So that's what we set out to do. And you have an organization on meetup.com, which is a great tool for organizing in-person meetings and meetups. And of course, then you created this website and that's the center, I guess, called. Yes. Right. We want people to come and get their news, their advice, see interviews with veteran entrepreneurs who have done it before and then the young people who are making millions of dollars out of their dorm room. Right. People come there for the content and then also come to our events. I know you just interviewed Sharon Lecter and so we just had Sharon come and speak at one of our events in the Empire State Building and she sold 27 million books. Yeah. For those who don't know who she is offhand, Sharon is a co-author of Rich Dad Poor Dad and I don't know, something like 17 books, like 15 books in the Rich Dad Poor Dad series and then two more since then that she's just published this year, along with Napoleon Hill. Napoleon Hill, yeah. So tell me, okay, now if I'm a young person, I just graduated, I've got a fantastic degree and no job and I want to become an entrepreneur and start my own business, what's the best way to figure out what type of business should I get in that's going to actually be lucrative now? Sure. So we always try to tell people, okay, look, figure out something that you can do every single day just like you're doing with your business, it's something that you absolutely love. I could just tell when I walked into the studio, I mean it's a vibrant place and you guys wake up every day and you say this is what we want to do here but finding that passion is very difficult for a lot of students and that's what your time as a student is for, is to go and figure out, get a broad range of experiences and figure out what you are passionate about, meet lots of people from different backgrounds, go out and travel, have interesting discussions with people who are doing it and go and study what that is that they're doing, how they're making money, but most importantly it should be something that you love. That's, we really, really drive that point home. Yeah. I think my opinion is that it's not hard to find what you're passionate about. That's easy. Just take a vacation and do what you love. Or think, imagine if you won the lottery and you're independently wealthy, suddenly what would you be doing with your day all day? Sure. I mean after you got over the fun of it, what would you really want to do every day because you just love it? That's easy, but having the courage to actually figure out how to make a business out of it and then actually take the action and make a business out of that. The execution. That's the tough part. Right, right. So I just came from the New York Stock Exchange and saw Mark Cuban speak. He was a billionaire. He's a billionaire. They're owns the Dallas Mavericks and he said, it's not, everybody has ideas. It's not the idea that's the hard part. Everybody thinks they're a genius because they have a good idea. Well, that's certainly not the case. It's the people who execute and that's what we say go out and do what you're passionate about, but you're absolutely right. It comes down to is this a business model that's going to make you money and can you pull it off? Right. You can look at, I mean, it's obviously easier if you pick something that someone else has done before. If nobody's ever done it before, it's not to say it's impossible, but it's uncharted territory and it's a real kind of a crapshoot to determine whether it's going to be profitable. What I did though, like when we started OnlyOneTV is I looked at other people and I mean from every spectrum, I look at Oprah Winfrey on one end and I look at like Leo Laporta on Twitter on the other end and I study and study and study. I watch every intricate detail about how they do it technically and all that, not to say that I'm comparing myself to them, but these are people that are my mentors whether they know it or not. Right. Who are some other people like Leo that you look at who are independent media people? So many. Well, Revision 3, Kevin Rose, exactly, and there's so many. I was at Nunex now that I think Google bought them and there's a lot of them now. But I mean really I looked a lot at Leo Laporta for how he did it technically because obviously we don't have millions of dollars of, we don't have Harpo Studios here and 200 people on staff to produce shows. So it's like on a shoestring. We literally, we started out with a webcam on a dining room table, but it gets a little bit more sophisticated. And that's the beauty of it. I have friends who started their business with $50 in a Twitter account and people say all the time, is that a business? Well, it is if they're making money. That's right. So. That's what matters. Yeah, no, I like what you guys are doing. So I want to talk more about that. So speaking of making money, we're going to thank our sponsors. This episode of The Bruce Wagner Show is brought to you by Mt. Gox and we are very grateful to have them as our sponsor. Mt. Gox, if you, I was just giving you an article from Forbes about Bitcoin introducing you to that. Bitcoin, if you haven't heard of it, is the money of the future, we call it. It's like the most exciting new technology since the invention of the internet itself. It's a completely distributed, decentralized electronic currency. It's like electronic cash, but it's not issued by any bank or government or organization or company or anything. So it's like the internet itself. Remember the dot com boom where everybody wanted to buy some internet? That's going to be the next big thing. Well, this is kind of like the internet. It's not controlled by anybody. It's peer to peer network created on open source software. It's a fascinating thing. So to learn more about Bitcoin, you can go to bitcoinme.com. It's B-I-T-C-O-I-N, by the way, me.com. But Mt. Gox, so Mt. Gox, where do they come in? There are dozens now of online exchanges where you can buy Bitcoin for cash or sell Bitcoin for cash. Are they doing it on Facebook yet? Well, not on Facebook, but there are pages, like there's a page on Facebook called I Buy and Sell Bitcoin for Cash. So you can just search Facebook for Bitcoin and you can find them. But you can do it with local people. You can find somebody in your neighborhood who wants to exchange. But from the comfort of your home, you can literally go online 24-7 and use an automated exchange site. And that's what Mt. Gox is. Mt. Gox is number one. They've got more than 90% market share, and they've been around the longest, very very trustworthy, reliable site and company. So they charge a fee, but it's a very, very minuscule little fee, like about just less than 1%, 0.65 or something like that percent for the exchanges. But it matches up buyers and sellers all over the world 24 hours a day, completely automated, and up in 16 currencies. So it doesn't matter if it's US dollars or whatever in Japanese yen, it doesn't matter what it is. So you can buy and sell Bitcoin for cash, and that's what Mt. Gox does. Now they also have, you can use it as a Bitcoin wallet. It's extremely secure. They have this thing, two-factor authentication, they call it. It's a little USB key. It's tiny, like a little dongle thing that you put on your key chain, literally. It's tiny. And you stick that into the USB port, and you can't log in without it. So even if you're using a public computer that's full of viruses, it doesn't matter. Nobody can get in without that USB key, because it gives it a password that's only good for two seconds. Interesting. Really cool. So it's super, super secure online. And they also have apps for your Android phone too, so that you can send and receive Bitcoin and barcode scanning, all kinds of stuff. It's called Mt. Gox Mobile. So check it out. It's really cool. It's mtgox.com. And we thank Mt. Gox very much for sponsoring the show. And the Thank You Economy, which is a new book by Gary Vaynerchuk. He is a New York Times bestselling author. His new book, The Thank You Economy, which you can find out about it, ThankYouEconomyBook.com, is fascinating, because it's actually you will be totally into it. I've heard it. You know about it. I was going to say, if you haven't, you really need to. But it's all about right up what we're talking about. And that is social media. You could probably tell me more about it. But it's about using the latest technology, the internet, social media, social networking and all that, to make your business, your 21st century business, into more like the old days where customers get a real personalized hand-holding experience. And that's what I was going to tell you when we had Sharon Lecter on the last episode. One of the things that she talked about was the difference between a business that's set out to make money versus a business that's set out to create relationships, long-term relationships. Interesting. And to create relationships with customers. And that's the difference. You can make money just by selling anything and have it be garbage and have no customer service and no support. But to create relationships means you've got to sell quality and give them a personalized experience. I saw Gary Givikino at Big Omaha and he actually went up there and said, look, I'm not sitting here trying to sell you my book. I'm sitting here trying to create a relationship with you for the next 60 years. And they pretty much just walked off stage. There you go. That's really all you have to say. That's really what it's about. So it's a fantastic book. And I've been a huge fan of Gary's anyway for way back before this. But I think this is his best work yet. So yeah. So we thank Gary and you've got to check it out. If you haven't already read it, go to thankyoueconomybook.com and check it out. It's just called The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk. Thanks, Gary. Yeah, thanks, Gary. All right. Where were we? What was it? I completely lost track. We got into the thank you economy and you were talking. Oh, I guess what I was going to say, which I already did, I guess, is that Sharon was talking about the difference between selling things, just selling things, which there are a lot of businesses that have that model. We know who they are because those are the ones that you drop as soon as you have an opportunity to switch and creating a relationship. There are so few businesses that actually do that that go out of their way to cater to the customer to really have a good experience. And even Gary's book explains, in my experience, you can get on Twitter and tweet something about some random product or company and you'll get a reply a lot of times because they have people monitoring their own brand, but then most of the time they drop the ball. They'll say, what about this? Did you see our website or whatever? They'll try to direct you somewhere. But then I'll say, well, this is the problem I'm having and then they just drop the ball. They don't go anywhere from there. So it's about an actual relationship. I saw in your lobby you had the Zappos book of company culture. Tony Zappos is awesome too. They don't drop the ball. That's right. That's right. Exactly. That's a perfect example. And Tony is very active on Twitter and very approachable. And so is Gary. Obviously, you can literally tweet him and you will get a reply from him, maybe not right away, but sooner or later you probably will. I actually had, was it last summer, last June or July or something like that, Tony actually sent me a tweet asking for my opinion about something, which is just like, wow, that blew me away. That's really cool. Yeah, really cool. So it's not only for addressing complaints or problems or whatever, but the really, really smart shrewd CEOs actually use it to directly communicate and ask questions. No, that's exactly right. We surf everything that's said. If someone says something or links to under 30 CEO, I mean, we're on it. We know exactly what's been said and we reach out all the time. I mean, that's literally how we grew our site from scratch is we had no idea how to drive traffic or anything about search engine optimization or we just said, hey, let's help as many young entrepreneurs as possible and then if we do that successfully, they'll tell all their friends. It's worked so far. Now, like I was saying, a lot of companies have that part. I mean, not everybody, most don't, but a lot of them do where they're monitoring what's said about them and then they respond. But then the next level is, like I was saying, is actually responding and then keeping a dialogue going. So the person says, I have a problem with this service and the product was never shipped or it was damaged or whatever and I can't get through to anybody, whatever. It's continuing the dialogue until the situation's resolved and keeping that, it's really an internal dialogue. It has to go on pretty much forever. And actually caring and not just being a drone behind a social media account. I mean, I've literally met some of my best friends through the under 30 CEO Twitter stream and then I say, hey, I'm going here to this event, would love to talk to you more. I really like what you're doing. Maybe we'll profile you, et cetera. And then you build those relationships and I mean, that's what we're really trying to do with under 30 CEO is we want to own that young entrepreneur space so that we know everybody that is building a business who is from our generation. Great. Yeah. And yeah, I think it takes, like you were saying, really sincerely caring. And also it has to be somebody who has the knowledge and the authority to actually go somewhere, make a decision or give somebody some direct advice and not just bypass it. That's why I outsourcing it to some third-party human robot. I call them software. When you call some kind of a support line and you get somebody in some other country and they don't even understand what they're selling or what they're doing and they have no authority to do anything except direct you to the website and the website directs you back to the phone thing and it just doesn't go anywhere. I mean, there are a lot of companies like that. People and everybody wants to say, oh, I'll just hire some college kid to do my social media. Right. Well, you're putting this person as a forward-facing representative of your company, so just know that. You don't have to pay them any money, but you're walking a fine line. Exactly. Yeah, I think that should be one of the highest-paid positions, really, because yeah, that's a, I mean, at least the skills, regardless of what they're paid, the skills and the knowledge and the authority that that person has, that has to be somebody who really is empowered to give the customer what they need, and a case-by-case basis, and they have to have the company philosophy just oozing from them. Absolutely. Yeah, they can't ever have a bad day and chew out a customer or whatever it is, because yeah, that is the face of your company, for sure. Yeah, I mean, Rachel, who's the chief of digital for all of New York City, I mean, she makes six figures, and she is literally paid to tweet for, I mean, she does a lot more than just be on Twitter, but that's a big organization and a big responsibility, and she gets compensated for it. Yeah. And smart companies know that. Some of the biggest companies, they'll advertise that you can contact us through Twitter and whatever, and you can, you can actually tweet them, and they'll reply, but then they drop the ball. They just don't go anywhere, and I mean, I know that if you're an enormous big box retailer or something like that, it's hard, it's really, really hard for them to take care of every single transaction that way, but they really, they really need to try, and they, sadly, vary, vary if you do. They think they're too big to fail. Yeah, exactly, exactly, but well, maybe they are to a certain extent, but not really, because wherever there is, there's one large, there's another, usually you have more than one choice for anything you buy. Well, and that's what Gary's book is all about, is seeing the shakedown, if the big companies aren't seriously performing when it comes to taking care of their customers, little guys will pop up and steal away market share. And if you're a productive person, and you have, whether you're an entrepreneur or whatever you do, time is valuable, time is money, and if you just say, well, I just want to buy a laptop, and I want it to work, and I want to get this resolved, I don't have time to monkey around with this thing. So I'll pay a little bit more to deal with a company that I know is going to follow through and fix this and make it right. They'll take a return of their exchange, whatever, they just make it right, versus having to go and fight with a low-level clerk that just says no, no, no, no. You sound like you're speaking from experience. Oh yes, yeah, I mean, who hasn't had that experience? You save a dollar or two with these mass retailers, but it definitely costs you if you ever have any problem. You may just have to eat the loss and buy another one or whatever it is. I agree. Okay, so we talked about if you're a young person and you're thinking of becoming an entrepreneur and starting a business, how to figure out what to do is to find out what you're passionate about. What do you do when, what you're passionate about, you can't imagine how you could possibly get paid to do it? Well, like me, thinking in my example, I love to talk. So like, okay, how am I going to get paid to talk? It's hard, you have to be creative and think and look for other people that are doing something similar. But say it's, I love to paint or I love to, some sort of an artistic thing. I'm a musician or a dancer or whatever. I like to do flower arrangements. How do you figure out, I mean, of course, if you love to do flower arrangements, you could get a job at a florist. But how do you figure out how to, the most profitable business to get into that will use your talent? And whether or not entrepreneurialism is for you because it's not for everybody. Absolutely, so it's not for everybody. The first thing I would say is go out and read Michael Gerber's e-myth because he says, hey, there's a huge difference between the artist or the inventor and yeah, exactly. And then the person who's actually a business owner who can build that into a scalable entity. But if you're a dancer or you're an artist or whatever you are, I mean, just like you said, you love to talk. So you look at the people who are going out and doing it. And I'm just, I don't know your full background, but I'm guessing that you've done something in this industry before. Maybe you've worked on set. You've never, you've never done this, has anybody on your team? No. Wow, that's- I mean, well, I mean, people on our team have, but I haven't. My background is all computers and IT. And I've worked in computers forever and I worked in corporate and IT. And then I started my own IT consulting firm, which means computer consulting. Sure. And I've just been a geek in computers my whole life. And then all of a sudden somebody said, you should, this is really weird story, but somebody said you should host a talk show, my little brother actually, who has never told me I should anything. And out of the blue, and I thought he was a joking, I don't get it. And what's really weird, this little weird story is that like three other people in the same week that absolutely have no way of knowing each other, they do not know each other, told me the same thing in one week. And I was like, whoa. And that's how it happens. And then you went and you studied everything that you get your hands on. And you said, well, what are the relevant business models that I can make work? And then you had to say, all right, where are we going to get the equipment? And, you know, and I'm sure you started literally shaking everyone's hand that, you know, going out and saying, hey, I really like what you're doing. You're in this industry. Let's sit down and have coffee and figure out how this this business model could possibly work. And for me, the way it happened is I said, I had no idea how to what to do with that information. So I told my brother, I said, OK, I'll be sure and call Oprah first thing in the morning. You know, let's see if she can call. But actually, then what happened is I was like, what am I going to do with this? I had no idea. And it took me a few months and I started I started trying to reach out to people that knew about the television business. And I asked and I googled it. Of course, I researched it because I'm into IT. And how do you how do you get your own talk show? The more I learned, I met a guy when we lived in Florida who was like owns the largest television production company in Canada. And he taught me all about how to create a presentation and pitch an idea to networks. And the more I learned about it, the more I was absolutely positive. I did not want to do that. I don't want to be in that business. If I have to pitch some idea to a room full of suits who are going to make a life and death decision about my about me and my career, and then maybe just throw me out and take my idea and have somebody else do it. I was like, no, I don't want to do that. You want it to own it. I want to do it. Yeah, I don't want to pitch it. I want to do it. Just do it. And if it survives, it survives. If not, it doesn't. But that's the way I have that entrepreneurial spirit, I guess. That's good. That's the beauty of it. Yeah, but how do you do that? And so but then I finally woke up one day and went, wait a minute, there's a reason for all this. There's a reason my background is all technical and computers and IT. And I've been saying for years, all television will be delivered through the internet within five years. I've been saying that for years. And all of a sudden I realized, wait a minute, TV is delivered through the internet. I could do this myself. Sure. And then who were, so your brother said, hey, yeah, that's a great idea. You have a great personality. You should definitely go on the air. But then who were the people? I bet you called your mom. And she said, maybe you should stick to computers. Or somebody said, this business model is never going to work. It's going to take a ton of sponsorship. Here we are in Midtown Manhattan. You're going to pay rent on a television studio. How are you going to pull that off? Who asked you the tough questions? Yeah, my parents have both had their transition. They passed away, so they weren't there. And my brother didn't say I had a great personality, but other than that. And I hadn't even considered, I mean, this was actually about a three year period that it took. Because it took for about a year or two, I was still thinking probably at least a year, year and a half, I was still trying to figure out, strategize how to pitch this to a traditional network. It took a long time to figure out that to wake up and have that aha moment, that wait a minute, we could do this on the internet. And then when I started doing that, then I was researching the idea of doing it on the internet. And I think most of my friends by now that know me, my closest friends and family, they know that I'm crazy enough to do anything. And I don't think anybody actually said, I don't think you're gonna do it. I mean, I know most people, every, you know, they're family, especially family. Like, you know, how are you gonna, I always take this as the biggest insult, I shouldn't, but I always say, one of the biggest insults you can ever say to someone is, these two words, be realistic. When your parents or your friends or your loved ones or whatever, you're spouse even, you know, you have this dream and you wanna, you know, whatever I wanna have a, you know, whatever, an ice cream truck or something, and whatever kind of business you wanna do, I wanna sell, you know, silk plants, door to door, whatever, yeah, and they say, look, be realistic, you know, just get a job and all that. It's really, to cut you down, it's to say, I mean, they don't intend it that way, but it really has that effect. It's just saying, look, you're not good enough, do what everybody else does. And it's really not about you, it's about themselves and their own fear. It's true, and so you're the one who's going out and doing it and everybody else is just saying, oh, be realistic, but what we always tell our entrepreneurs is we say, hey, look, you know, believe in yourself and all that and surround yourself with positive people, et cetera, but have those people in your life that you can go to who know business and can ask you the tough questions and can poke holes in your business model and, you know, throw yourself in your business to the sharks once in a while and hand over that business plan and let someone go crazy on it and point out all the potential flaws so that you can come up with answers to them and if you can answer all those tough questions, then you've got yourself a good business. Exactly. I'd say, you know, like if someone has the right to say, be realistic to me, only if they're in the exact same business and they're already super successful, then I'll hear that, you know, then I'll hear whatever they have to say about being realistic. But even, I mean, hardly anybody, even if you're in the same business, you can be in a completely different twist, a different take on it and, you know, old media, new media, completely different thing. So the rules don't even apply necessarily, you know, for an old media talk show, for example, in a new media talk show, it's very different business, very different business model, everything's changed. That's exactly right. I mean, we've thought about it a whole lot with under 30 CEO and said, hey, look, we're not Forbes or Fortune or, you know, CNBC, but we still want a piece of the pie. Sure. So speaking of that, speaking of business models, what is the business model of under 30 CEO? So our business model is based on sponsorship. So we have people that come to the site and see not only just your traditional banner ads, but we want to have integrated campaigns. So someone wants to promote an email marketing software. And so we want to say, hey, this is, we're going to give you something that's going to be easily found on a search engine. Sure, you're going to have banner ads, maybe, you know, 0.7% of people who come to the site will click them, maybe, maybe not. But you're going to read, you know, maybe this email marketing company wants to write an article on our site that's clearly sponsored and is transparent that this is written by the email marketing company, but 10 tips to create a great email campaign. And that kind of content is the stuff that actually is going to sell, just like we, you know, just like you did before for the thank you economy. And then we got a whole conversation about it. It's good relevant content and it's sponsorship, you know, it's sponsorship. And so then we have in-person events, which like I mentioned, we had one on the 60th floor of the Empire State Building. We're having another one in December. And so we bring in young entrepreneurs and we say, hey, let's get together and network and listen to speakers and have discussions with other like-minded people. We're planning a conference, et cetera. And then eventually, I mean, we literally want to own this entrepreneurial ecosystem. We want to say, hey, we know everybody who's building businesses right now, how about we help them get to the next level? And so we want to start investing in startups for sure. Why under 30? Why are they under 30? You know, if I had a dollar for every time someone asked me that and what happens when I turn 30. I think I know the answer, but I want to ask you. Honestly, honestly, it was just a catchy brand name at the time, we sometimes joke and say it's like 17 magazine, that everyone is 17 who reads it. Everyone is. Exactly. So there, we actually have lots of follow, you know, we have lots of followers and readers who are well over 30. We even have a guy who now goes on Twitter by over 60 CEO. He has a talk show in Brazil that we've been on and he liked us so much that he started branding himself like that. So, but really it's all about the mindset. And if you want to go out and do something that you really love and you're passionate about it and you are willing to make a lot of sacrifices in the beginning, we want that to be the place. Do you find that there is a clear generational difference? Because I'll say, from my experience, I've noticed and I point out this, that it's become, to me, it's becoming more and more distinct that every decade and now it's like maybe every five years and age is a huge difference because when it comes to, not only worldview, but especially when it comes to technology, when people over 60, you know, some barely can work a mouse, people over 70 don't know what a mouse is. If you're under a certain age, you grew up with Twitter. I mean, everybody, they grew up with Twitter. Twitter and Facebook are passe, you know? And they just really understand that these tools and how they could be used and their mind is completely born open to these new technologies and new ways of living. Whereas the older generations are really fixed in the way things are and the way things were and you know what I mean? I think it's human nature actually, that it's always been this way. You have a brick-and-mortar store and that's how we look at things. Well, and most of our under 30 CEOs, I mean, we've published our top 30 list and I mean, a huge, huge percentage of them were tech startups because people, you know what I'm saying? I don't know what the exact percent is but I would be willing to guess and say 80% were tech startups. But it's because these people are multimillionaires or billionaires in Mark Zuckerberg's case and they, you know, but they were able to build businesses that could scale that rapidly, you know? So when you're 18, like Zuckerberg and you have this amazing business idea and you execute over the next eight years well then all of a sudden, you know, you find yourself at like 25 years old and you have a multimillion, billion dollar business in his case, it's that scalability that's so attractive in the tech world and that's why so many young people are taking advantage of that. When you say tech startup, are you referring to like anything that's online as a tech startup? So like if I started a pettoys.com that might be a real company, I don't know. But anyway, if I start something, anything that's online, do you consider that a tech startup? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I use the term very vaguely. Pettoys.com didn't turn out so well in the 90s but the good news is this time around everybody keeps asking, hey, is there a bubble? Well, there is a bubble for sure because many of these companies are going to fail but at least they're all based on solid business models where in other times in history like the dot-com bubble, people said, hey, we can just come up with a flashy domain name and it's gonna work. But these are real businesses and people are starting them in their dorm rooms. Yeah, that's what I say about that the, that's why I'm actually speaking of bubbles and the internet and people, at that time people didn't understand the difference between the internet and just anything.com so they're like, that internet, that's gonna be big. I think that internet's gonna be the next big thing and everybody knew it's obviously there. Sure, and then they raise an IPO and then a bunch of people just lose all their money on it. I take your money.com, you know, let's invest. Anything.com and they invest and so, you know, but yeah, I mean, obviously it has to be now based on solid accounting principles. And that's the thing about Bitcoin I was gonna say is if you haven't checked into Bitcoin, check it out, it's really cool because it's an actual electronic currency that's as distributed and peer-to-peer as the internet itself. So nobody controls it. There's no bank or government or corporation or anything. That's amazing. Yeah, it's really, really cool. And, but it is something that if people believe in it, they can actually buy a piece of it because you can actually buy Bitcoins with currency and it's like an investment. People are actually buying it as an investment because actually, like, this is kind of a sidebar topic but last year's silver went up, no wait, gold went up 25%. Silver went up 50% and Bitcoin went up 4900% to say. And so it's an interesting thing. Some people are buying it as an investment and it's almost like, you know, if you believe it really is the money of the future, you can buy into it and really own a piece of it. So where is it traded? Is there a current, I mean, where is it exchanged? Well, you can, I mean, if you have the app and I have the app on my phone or your laptop, whatever, we can exchange it, you know, right here, anywhere. But there are these online exchanges. There's dozens of them. The number one with the 90% market share, MtGox, that's the one I was telling you about. Yeah, so you can actually go online to mtgox.com. It's like we're doing another sponsorship, but that's okay. We love MtGox. You just go to mtgox.com and create a free account and you can literally just deposit dollars or yen or whatever currency you want and you have two balances on your account, like dollars and Bitcoin. And you can buy it at whatever the coin rate is. It's just like a matching, it's almost like a dating service for matching up people who wanna buy Bitcoins for dollars and sell dollars, I mean, sell Bitcoins for dollars. So right? Just like any currency exchange market place. Exactly, just like any other, almost like a stock market, but it's not a stock. But like, for example, if you own a diner in Brooklyn and you accept Bitcoin, which there are several restaurants in Manhattan that do end Brooklyn, but you need to do your produce order for the week. So you need dollars, right? So you've got Bitcoin in and you need dollars. So you need to sell the Bitcoins for dollars right away. And say he wants to buy Bitcoins as an investment. So he's got dollars, he wants to buy Bitcoin. So it matches you up. Basically asks and bids and it's all automated. So the price is determined by the going price, whatever the last, you know, the highest bid matches the lowest ask and all that. So it's completely automated. It's really, really cool. What are the problems with Bitcoin? Like, I mean, I'm not entirely familiar with it, but I mean, it sounds like something that if it takes hold and reaches that critical mass. I mean, it's somebody's literally creating a whole nother currency. What are some of the things that people are saying about it? I mean, the benefits are that it's completely distributed, completely decentralized. Nobody can, you know, control it, which is really a good thing. The transaction, there's zero transaction fees. The transactions are irreversible, just like cash. So like if I send you $1,000 worth of Bitcoin, there's only one way I'm getting it back. And that's if you send it back to me as a new transaction. So it literally is like cash. It's like giving you cash. I'm not gonna get it back unless you give it back. Things like that, so there's, you know, cause with credit cards and PayPal and all that, six months later they can reverse the, you know, do a charge back and reverse it and things like that. It's also not completely anonymous. It's pseudo anonymous, but it's as anonymous as you want it to be. So it can be useful for, you know, donating to political causes that are illegal in that country. It's a global currency. So it can be used for anywhere, for anything. So people know the value globally, no matter where they're traveling to. It's electronic, so it's super, super easy and convenient. You can do it with your smartphone. Right, I know PayPal is restricted in a lot of other countries. Yeah, and that's the thing. You don't have to have, I mean, you can literally be, you know, 16 years old and you can sort of an account. I mean, it's absolutely not regulated or you don't have to be approved by anybody. There's no banks or governments involved. You're asking about the drawbacks right now. Yeah, obviously it's completely deregulated. People can, you know, buy drugs with it. What in arms? They could. What else? I don't know anybody who is, but it's possible to do anything with it. Sure. Just like cash. Of course, most people use cash for that. Absolutely. But anyway, as far as drawbacks right now, the biggest drawback has been how to store it safely because anybody can use it, anybody can set up a bank. Anybody can set up a website and say, I'm a Bitcoin bank. Deposit your Bitcoin with me and you're trusting a stranger and there've been bank heists. There've been shady people who steal your Bitcoin. So it's about where you store it. And also there are even viruses on the loose for Windows and probably there will be for Mac, if not yet. But for sure, I know that there are for Windows that will actually, you get a virus on your computer and it'll steal your wallet file from your computer and things like that. So security is a big concern. That's why I promote Mt. Gox because you can actually store it on there with the UB key and it's very, very safe because it's on their machine. As long as you trust Mt. Gox, you're still trusting them. But security has been a big, big concern. There are new versions of the application that actually encrypt the thing and then store the encrypted backup in the cloud that nobody can access without your password, things like that. So the second generation of all the software is just now coming out. So that's probably the biggest thing. Also, the volatility of the value of it. It goes up and down and there's been speculation in it. So it's kind of like way up and down. I don't even look at those big spikes. I only look at the bottom. So it goes up and down, up and down, up and down. And I only look at, I connect the dots with the lows. So like a year ago it was six cents and today it's something like $3. So I ignore those huge spikes. It actually went up to $30 at one point. Oh, wow. Yeah, so it's very volatile. So it's not great for short-term investment. Like buy now and then sell it a month later. It's not necessarily great for that. For long-term investment, it seems to be very good. But so far, you know, the past. Crazy, it's like the new form of, I mean, imagine the new form of, obviously it's the new form of currency. But imagine inside your training, when inside your trading, when you're speculating on Bitcoin, it's totally deregulated. I mean, just imagine, you find out, hey, that Walmart is gonna start accepting Bitcoin and you find out a month beforehand and you buy up a bunch of Bitcoin and flip it. I mean, that's really amazing. Anything's regulated like that. And also, there's no, yeah, I mean, it's so new. It's not even considered, I mean, we use it as a currency. You can use it as a currency. We refer to it as a currency, but legally, it's not a currency because legal term, terminology-wise, it's not issued by any government or bank, so it's not a legal currency. So yeah, so there's that. The other thing is that you don't have to worry about people hoarding it either. Like with gold or silver, like especially in the olden days, if the village, you know, somebody hoarded all the silver coins, there wouldn't be any coins for anybody to do any commerce. But this is not an issue now with Bitcoin because there will never be more than 21 million Bitcoin. It's a finite supply by definition. I forgot to mention, that's a huge benefit. It's huge because that implies that as long as people continue to use it, the value will probably keep going up as more and more people need it, the value will go up. Now, but it's divisible, virtually infinitely divisible. So you can have, like right now, it's up to eight decimal places, 0.0000001 Bitcoin. So in the future, if the value keeps going up and up and up, we might be buying a Starbucks coffee for five millionths of a Bitcoin. We'll call it MBCs or something like that. I really hope there's some smart economists behind this thing. Yeah, there are a lot of economists and computer geeks and cryptography experts because it's a combination of the technologies for peer-to-peer file sharing and the state-of-the-art in cryptography and then the ancient idea of a limited quantity of something that we all agree has value. So those things go together. So now we're off on a Bitcoin, and we can't stop talking about, we have a show, one of our shows, our flagship show really probably, is between this one and the Bitcoin show. So that's another show on only one TV called The Bitcoin Show. So if you're interested in that, you can check it out. But you get me started on that topic and I'll never stop. So, and you can, as a business, back to this, as an entrepreneur, you can accept Bitcoin. If you have a website, it's literally like two clicks. You go to, I created a little informational brochure that doesn't sell anything. It just tells about Bitcoin. It's kind of like a Bitcoin for Dummies site. It's called bitcoinme.com. So you can check that out and click on accept. There's an accept tab and it'll teach you how to, your brick and mortar restaurant or shop or whatever, or on a website. You literally just, a couple clicks, you get a Bitcoin address. It's like your own email address and you can put it on your website and you can say we accept Bitcoin and that's it. It's super, super simple. And then you can get really complicated. If you wanna have an online shopping cart system, they have those developed already and stuff. It's really, really sophisticated now. And it's like literally in five minutes you can be set up to accept Bitcoin as well as your credit cards and PayPal and all that stuff. It's crazy that someone can, in today's day and age, you can just invent a new currency. I know, right? It was invented in 2009 and people just started finding out about it. Well, I learned about it in November 2010. But yeah, people are still learning about it. Actually, the December Wired magazine is gonna have a big, big, I don't know if the whole issue is dedicated to it, but I think it's a cover story about Bitcoin that's gonna be real interesting coming up. Cool, I'll have to check it out. So check that out. So, all right, so back to this, entrepreneurialism. So let's say I am a young, by the way, back to the age thing. If you're under 29 or 30, whatever, you're pretty tech savvy. Would you have found that? That most people under 30 are tech savvy? Or is that? So I see all levels of tech savviness. I mean, there's the people, I mean, I've met people as smart enough to be able to develop something like Bitcoin and then college students who say, yeah, I know how to use Facebook and Twitter. That makes me a social media expert. Yeah. So there's a broad range, but all in all, our generation is pretty good because we've grown up with that. That's definitely true. But not only that, it's that we all have friends who are working in the space or we have just the intuitive nature to go and Google something and learn more about it. You know, if back in the day, if you didn't know about something, you went to the library, but now, I mean, I think our generation has just become a sponge for information because it's all at our fingertips, I mean, right on your phone. True, true. I know, I think that, I mean, there are always exceptions. I'm always shocked when I meet somebody who's 22 years old and says, I don't like computers. I don't like social networking. I don't even do email. And the only thing they'll do is text messaging and pretty much that's it. They only make phone calls, just text messaging, right? That's it. I mean, when I hear, and I know a few people like that, that are 22 and just absolutely don't like computers or social networking at all. And I always find that as like a shocking exception. And then the opposite is true too when there's somebody who's 60 years old and is real tech savvy that's like, wow, that's also equally shocking. But for the most part, like my friends who are 60 in that age range, I would say when they want some information, they'll think of who would know that and they'll get on the phone and call them. Right, absolutely. But if you're, you know, my friends who are 22 or whatever, 25, the first instinct is always to Google it and research and read it and tweet about it or something on Facebook. Yeah, figure out who, that's our version of picking up the phone and calling somebody who knows well, tap into your 800 Facebook friends and see which one of them knows. Yeah, or you tweet about it and you get a response from Cairo and Uzbekistan. Exactly. Philippines everywhere. So you have to tap right into the global consciousness of humankind. It's an amazing thing. So the young people have grown up with this and they just, it's just like second nature to them. It's just like their left hand, the internet being right there. So if you say about, maybe you're guessing about 80% of the new entrepreneurial businesses are tech startups? The ones that are on our top list. But we're seeing, you know, young entrepreneurs getting into real estate and getting into their family business that they've studied forever or getting into, you know, other things that they're passionate about that don't have anything to do with technology. Lots of those businesses are somehow looped back into the tech industry. But no, I mean, it can be anything as long as there is opportunity there. Okay, so like if, I'm gonna use myself as an example again because I remember when I was told that I should host a talk show and I didn't know anything about it other than watching talk shows. And I knew a lot of most, I didn't wanna do that, most of them. But I don't know anything about the business really. And so your first instinct, if you're savvy enough is to Google it, Google it, research it, talk to everybody you know in your social circles. Does anybody know about this business? And pick everybody's brain and both publicly on Twitter, Facebook and among your friends. But let's say it's something kind of unique like starting an internet television network. There's not that many. And so basically nobody knew. I mean, even Google didn't know. I mean, that was really weird because I mean, you'd find all these articles about, again, old media, all kinds of things that really didn't relate to me. So what I found was that I really felt like I needed a mentor. I needed somebody who was successful in this to be my mentor. Okay. And in my case, I found my mentors, but without actually having any relationship, one way relationship with them. Like they're my mentors, but they don't even know it. So I just picked them and I studied them and I didn't become a stalker, but I just absorbed everything I could from studying their life, their career and stuff like that. But it would have been better to have an actual mentor relationship. Do you promote the idea of finding a mentor? Oh, absolutely. I mean, so, yeah, you could go and look at someone like Kevin Rose who has, you know, a million plus followers and has a tremendous web show, et cetera, and a whole network. So, you know, but you could probably call Kevin. He may or may not pick up the phone, but developing those two-way relationships is really important. So we talk about peer mentorship all the time and that's getting together in a mastermind group or a shark tank and saying, hey, look, ask me the tough questions. I mean, don't hold back because I need to know how to dodge these punches. So that's very important. The one-way mentors are great. And then we very much promote just emailing someone like Kevin Rose and he may or may not get back to you, you don't know, but you'll never know until you try. We just interviewed a guy named Samir from a company called Jungle Sense and he just landed $1.5 million in investment from Mark Cuban and he, you know, he has a mentor and guy Kawasaki now because simply because you just emailed them and said, hey, here's my idea. He approached them the right way and now they go back and forth all the time and that's a real mentorship relationship with someone who, you know, people who have made lots and lots of money before and seen lots of ideas and they can really poke some holes into your business. You said that he approached them the right way. So expand on that. How do you approach them the right way? Okay. Like for example, if you have a business that you're gonna start that's, you know, okay, a flower shop and there's 100 million flower shops in town or whatever, that's one side. And then if you're gonna, there's the other thing is that if you're gonna, if you have a business idea that's brand new and unique and it's really, really unique, it's very hard to find a mentor specific to that business, especially if it's completely unique. Maybe you're the first one to ever do it. But let's say you find somebody who you think is a brilliant business person and potentially even investor and all that. How do you approach them the right way? Yes. Okay. So, and I like how you used an offline example with the flower shop because we feel that they're, I really like to stress that there's really no difference in the manners between how you would talk, speak with someone offline and how you would speak with them online. So don't walk into the flower shop during the busiest time right before closing and sit there and you know, read off a whole presentation this thick and you know, you're gonna fail. You would go in there and say, hey, you know, I'd love a minute of your time. I'm a young entrepreneur in the local area. I'm studying different business models. I'd love to ask you a couple of questions. When can I take you out for coffee or when can I take you out for lunch or don't even go that far into getting into commitment. You know, coffee is a commitment with a busy flower shop owner. Say, hey look, would you mind if I emailed you a quick couple of questions that you could answer on your leisure or if you're gonna email this person it doesn't matter how famous they are, email them and keep a brief and get to the point. Flattery goes a long way, don't overdo it but you know, people like to know that they're a respected person and that they're looking, you know, someone is looking for help from them because they're gonna bring, try to throw something in there that's gonna spark their mindset to when they were back, you know, living out of their car or selling their product out of their trunk, et cetera because everyone says, sure I'll do an under 30 CEO interview with you because when I was your age, you know, I was doing X, Y and Z and everybody has a story. So getting these mentors is really not that difficult if you approach them the right way. So keep a brief, you know, be polite, definitely compliment them but do your research and don't ask ridiculous questions. Make sure you go and give them quick little questions that they can answer to very quickly and grow that relationship. Don't bombard people because then, you know, if I open up my inbox and I see a huge email from somebody, it's overwhelming but if it's two, three lines, hey Matt, love under 30 CEO was just wondering how you grew it to this size. I'm doing X, Y and Z. This is in the position I'm in. I'm gonna think back to three years ago and say, all right, cool. Let me send this guy a paragraph back. It'll take me five minutes and maybe we'll grow that relationship. Yes, I like all those ideas. One of the things I've learned about communicating like through email, you're talking about the length of it, is I have this theory that the shorter the message, the higher the probability I'm gonna get a reply. So like a tweet, I always think tweet. Make it a tweet. If I ask, just if I could put it in a one sentence or one question or two, even two sentences, the chances of getting a reply are a thousand times higher than if I do three paragraphs. The brevity that Twitter teaches is really amazing. You get to be very good at sending short, concise messages. And I love what you said about, you do the research. The quickest way to blow anything like that is to not know who you're talking about, not know anything about them. At least Google them, read their Wikipedia page, know something about who they are, what they're about. And don't insult them by saying something stupid and asking them something that you should have known before you talked to them. And respecting their time, obviously it's just basic consideration. If you were them, how would you wanna be approached? Not when you're out with your family or doing something social, not when you're really busy at business, but actually literally going, maybe talking to their staff and saying when is his downtime? When is he most relaxed? Somebody who works for him will know that and they might tell you that. The other thing is I've actually heard this from super successful people privately, not off the record, but saying everybody, like they would say maybe, everybody asks me for either money or a job. So don't ever ask them for money or a job. Or not up front, don't email the person and say, hey, I'm looking for capital here. If the relationship grows, that'll come out of it maybe, whatever. But don't ask them for money or a job. But what nobody ever asked me for is advice. So I love what you said about flattery if it's sincere, of course. It has to be sincere flattery. And I think the word flattery actually denotes that you're putting in too much fluff. I think there's a better word to use. I can't put my finger on it. Complimenting them, letting them know you're a fan. Yeah, but being sincere. I appreciate your work. I love you, I appreciate your work. I've been a fan, whatever, whatever. And it has to be sincere, it has to be true or don't even bother. Right. But yeah, and then... And people can read that if you get enough of those emails, you know, who is, you know. And then asking them for it sincerely, asking them for advice. Because I think that they respect that. They don't respect people who ask them for money and jobs, but they do respect people asking them for advice because they know there's no reason why you can't be as successful as I am. All you need to do is follow what I did, follow my advice. Sure, and they know you're smart. And you're opening yourself up, you're putting yourself at a vulnerable position and saying, hey, I don't know anything. I'm 20-something years old and I don't know what's going on here. I just need a little bit of help. Can you lend me in the right direction? Yes, exactly. Well, Matt, it has been great. We have to have you come back. Absolutely, I'd love to. And talk more about all this. Sounds good. Yes, all right. Thank you so much. Hey, absolutely. All right. Take care and we'll see you guys tomorrow. Thanks for joining us.