Simplero Revenue & Funding (2024)

[00:00] Good morning everybody. How are you doing? Thanks to everybody showing up. I see some familiar faces. This is awesome. Alright. My name is Calvin Correli. I'm the Founder of simplero. We're an awesome simple platform for coaches, course creators, to run their entire business, make their lives simpler through that. And that's not what I'm here to talk about today, I'm here to talk about feelings. So emotion is a superpower, how I leverage mine to drive 20,000,000 in [00:32] revenue. Let's go. Actually, before we do that, I'm gonna stay on the screen. So let me tell you guys a story. This happened to me in the late nineteen nineties, so in the last century. I was I was young, I had just met this incredible woman, fallen in love, and we decided that we're gonna go to Mexico and spend a month just traveling around in Mexico. It was amazing. And, at one moment, we were lying in [01:01] a hammock as one does in Mexico, and I for the first time in my life, I felt safe and loved enough that I dared kinda look inside to some of that darkness that I felt was inside. So I grew up, like, living from my neck up completely mental. I was good at program programming. I was terrified of human beings. Was terrified of my feelings. I had no relationship with any feelings at all. So this was a [01:30] big deal for me. I was like, god, I feel so loved and safe. Let me just smidge it, open up a little bit. I felt like it was so dark and dirty that if I'd let anybody see, they would immediately reject me. But I opened up, felt amazing. Now, for whatever reason, my my girlfriend, the the woman at the time, she wanted to spend a month working as a waitress at a fancy seafood restaurant in in [01:54] Denmark and where we both are from and lived. And I wanted to go scuba diving with a friend all over Central America, so we did that. So a month apart, came back home. She had prepared this incredible meal for me, which, of course, she had all these, you know, amazing recipes from the seafood restaurant, and I just remember how remarkable it was. It was incredible. And then at the end of the lunch, she said, listen up. [02:23] This thing that happened in that hammock in Mexico can never happen again. [02:29] My father died when I was 18. If I had let myself feel any other feelings, I wouldn't be alive today. You gotta shut that shit down right now. And I was shocked. I was like, oh, this is weird. So I went to my best friend and I said, hey, like, this woman, she said this and what should I do? And he's like, dude, this is the biggest declaration of love that anybody could ever give you. You [02:54] those feelings are dangerous. You gotta shut it down. [02:58] That's the way. I'm like, okay. The girl I love, my best friend, my entire upbringing, all agree. It felt amazing, but they must be right. So I shut it down for another seven, eight years until I couldn't anymore. And that's when I started to get, you know, start therapy and coaching and spiritual teacher, and it was what led me to by far the biggest breakthrough in my life. And I'm gonna talk to you today about how [03:26] you can do something similar, I'm gonna share something that happened actually quite recently. So I'm gonna talk about feelings, how they work, how to turn them into your biggest fucking breakthrough, and then what the opportunity is in that. And let me say this, so my talk obviously is very different from what Ray just talked about up here, and from most of the talks at this event. Because what I have found is that you can have all [03:48] the best strategies and tactics and metrics in the world, but if you don't do this, you're still gonna be limiting yourself and a lot of these things are not gonna mean anything to you. You're not gonna be able to use them because your unconscious mind, where all of this emotional stuff lives, is literally a million times more powerful than your conscious mind. And this is not like, this is like your conscious mind can process 40 inputs [04:14] per per second, whereas your unconscious mind processes 40,000,000 per second. It wins. Right? So we gotta get the unconscious mind on board or none of this other stuff really matters. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. So just very recently, actually this new year, so it's December 30, and my my accountant, he calls me and he says, look, we gotta run this, my CPA, he he's we gotta run this tax, pay this tax bill of [04:46] a $100,000. And I was like, dude, that I would have loved if you had told me that like a month ago, maybe like two months ago. Because at that point, it the end of the year and I had intentionally run my cash flow very tightly, made some some big investments right there. So I was like, fuck. The people who are doing my payroll and and accounting and that kind of stuff, they're over in The Philippines. They [05:09] were I couldn't reach them. So I was like, alright. Screw it. Just run the damn thing and we'll figure it out. [05:15] Come early January, Philippines come back online, I'm like, okay, extend this cash flow, I wanna see how bad the situation is. Take it out three months, four months. So they come back to me and they're like, great. By late March, we're gonna be negative a $125,000. How about that? I'm like, fuck. Like a 125 k, that's more than just me not taking my salary for a couple months and fixing it. Like I don't pay myself that [05:40] much. So I was like, shit. And then two days later they come back and they're like, actually it's not a 125, it's looking more like a 165 right now. I was like, fuck. This is going the wrong way really fucking fast. So I felt like, shit. I'm out of control here. And so I had five mornings in a row where I woke up at 04:30 just in a panic. I was like, four, what's going on? And [06:05] I know enough now, like a, I don't normally wake up 04:30. B, I know enough not to try to solve the problem there. In the in the olden days, I would crawl up into my head and be like, we're gonna try to solve the problem right there. 04:30 in bed is not the time to solve this. It's the time to feel. So the thing is that I've learned is that feelings buried alive never die. Feelings buried [06:32] alive never die. What does that mean? It means those feelings that we felt at any point in our lives growing up or whatever, that we weren't able to feel in the moment, we we kinda shut them off, suppress, we contract, we try not to feel them, they're still inside of us. They're still in there. They're buried alive, And they're still they will stored be stored in your body as tension, as like different personas, limiting beliefs, and [06:58] they will hinder you in being who you could be, who you're here to become. And what happens is that some situation will trigger something. We all have this feeling sometimes we get triggered, right, by a spouse or a child or if someone has a boss, the boss or an employee, some employee or a cash scare or whatever, like that thing triggers us. Well, that feeling is not really when it's if it's just a transitory feeling, we [07:27] feel it's gone, we're we're fine, then that's cool. But if it's one of those like more persistent, it's not about the thing right now. It's because it triggered an old feeling that's still sitting inside of us. And so the invitation when that happens is that you go inside and you feel it. So you let go of the resistance to the feeling because that's what we normally do. We we we contract and we hold our breath and [07:51] we try not to feel it. One of one of my favorite sayings is from the father of cognitive psychology is, fear is excitement with the breath held. Fear is excitement with the breath held. Fear and excitement is the same damn feeling. It's just a matter of do we breathe into it or do we try to contract and hold it away. Like, people pay money to go on a roller coaster and they scream. Why? Because they feel [08:17] excitement, but it's really fear. It's just that they're not actually scared for their lives. But the moment that that roller coaster like goes off the rails, like, you can see that excitement turn into fear really fast. So what we wanna do is we wanna let go of that resistance to it and just open up and breathe and invite the feeling in and allow it to expand. And that could be hella scary because if you're not used [08:40] to this, you might think, oh, This is never gonna go away. It's gonna just go on forever, and where's this gonna lead? And it might feel like you're free falling and out of control, and that's just another feeling. So you just keep riding it. You just keep going. And for me, what happened was and sometimes it takes a while. So for me, it was like five mornings in a row where I woke up like this at [09:02] 04:30, and I was like, alright. I'm just gonna breathe into it and feel as best as I can. And then finally, on the fourth fifth morning, was I able to go under to feel it and then go underneath the feeling. And so underneath that layer of panic and fear, I discovered, like, this this grief and rage, like, intense grief and rage feeling. I was like and I could feel it. I was like, oh god, this is [09:28] amazing. Like, now it's moving. I I feel it shifting. And I kept digging. I was like, fuck. This is great. Kept digging. And then under that, I found this victim persona. So have you we've all I bet you all have given advice to someone where they're like, ah, can't solve this, and you're like, well, why don't you do this? And then they're like, no, I can't because, no. And then you're like, okay. Then what about this? [09:55] And then they're like, no, I really can't. Can't. It's hard. Right? They won't hear because they're stuck in their victim mindset. And I'm sure none of you have ever done that, but I'm sure you know someone who has. And when you're stuck in victim, what you're committed to is having unsolvable problems, so fuck anybody try to fucking solve that problem for because you're you're hooked into this idea that this problem's intractable. It's really hard. And so [10:20] I realized, fuck, that's what I'm doing. And and Ben will realize, we've worked together. So I've been stuck in in my in in growth and trying to acquire customers for a long time, and what I realized this morning was, shit, I got really good at computers because I were terrified of human beings. Right? Humans would say shit and would make me feel terrible, and I wouldn't know what to do with and suppress it. And I was [10:46] like, oh, they're awful. And so I got really good at programming because because computers wouldn't talk back. And if they didn't do, if it didn't do what I wanted it to do, I could debug it and figure out why and fix it. Humans were scary. And marketing and customer acquisition is all about people and getting them to do what you want them to do. Right? So I realized here, I was playing victim when it comes to [11:11] that. And I was like, this is amazing. I now see what the fuck I'm doing, and I can choose to change it. And really, not just the mental realization, but that, like, I could feel my victim. I was like, great. This is it. So the next thing I did was we were actually Bryson and I were together in Vegas for a mastermind group. So I went downstairs to the group because I I got there a little [11:35] bit late. Every Thursday, I do a live show where we talk about these kinds of things. Thursday at 1PM, it's called Unfiltered Live, you can check it out, unfiltered.show. And so we were doing that, and then went downstairs after the group, and they were doing this round table sharing thing where it was, you know, your biggest challenge. And I'll be honest, in that moment I was like, I'm too embarrassed that I can't fucking manage my cash [11:58] flow to to talk about that. So I'm just gonna come up with some other challenge and share that. And then I was like, dude, have courage. You know, be real. Right? So I was like, okay. Listen up guys, I have this cash flow situation, I don't know what the fuck to do, and then they're like, oh shit, this happens to me all the time, and like you can go to this site and borrow some money, and [12:19] this other site, and have you tried credit stacking, and maybe you can get a line of credit, and all these things, and I was like, that's amazing. And that's what happens when you actually feel your feelings and then you share it with others, it takes that shame out of it. I later shared this story with someone who was a financial advisor and she had bad credit and she lived in shame of that for months, for years. [12:38] And because I shared my story with her, she had got the courage to then share her challenge with others, and there was, like, major relief. So that's the gift that you give others and yourself when you then share what you're going through. And so they not only gave me insights on how to I could borrow money, but also how I could make a bunch of cash. And in the end, we actually ended up never going negative. [13:01] We're we're actually positive by pretty much as much as we were gonna be negative. And and I remember, my friend Nathan, wasn't there something about this guy Nathan Latka doing something about like debt financing for And so I reached out to Nathan, was like, is that right? Because I I I had heard about it, but I had all this pride about like not owing anybody any money and like having like that I didn't wasn't interested. So [13:27] he's young, he's like, yeah, totally. Plug in your stuff and then, you know, pipe.com and Stripe Capital and some of these others, they were willing to lend me maybe $200,000. Plugged my shit into Nathan's site and it came back like 2,200,000. I was like, that's amazing. I had no idea this was available to me, and it all became because of this thing that seemed really scary and and and difficult in the first place. And so and [13:56] then I was I was I was on the phone with Nathan, I was like, hey, I'm like, I'll see you at SAS Open. He's like, you know, I bought my ticket. I was excited about this. And he's like, oh, that's great. You're coming. Yeah. We should we should have you speak. And so I landed the speaking gig from this. So not bad. And and in the end, we actually so I took money, just 400 k for [14:20] now, because but then I like, because of this, I realized, holy crap, like, I can have growth capital available to me that I can then invest in team and marketing and other things, rather than I was in this kind of scarcity mindset of, you know, operating everything from just the the free cash flow cash flow of the business. So if our turnout really really remarkable and I'm trying to look here to fig figure out what my [14:47] time is, but I'm not seeing it. [14:51] Okay. Great. Cool. So really the point here is that the opportunity is if you keep doing this, as you keep doing it, not only is this gonna be the source of your biggest breakthroughs, but also, we all know like every I've all the leadership books that I've ever written, they all talk about that the core to being a great leader is to really know yourself and being being authentic, being real with people. And the more that [15:23] you do this, the more that you dig into those feelings, feel him, let him go. Honestly, that's all you need to do. You do you don't need to understand the story behind the feelings or the meaning or any of that stuff. You just need to freaking feel him and breathe and let them go. Let them leave leave your body. Doing this is gonna get you it's kinda peeling off the layers of the onion for you to [15:45] become who you really are and who you're really here to be. To me, the the purpose of life is to, like, liberalize and then meet our maker at the end and and see in the mirror the person that we could have become, and hopefully, there's sort of a match. And that's what this helps you do. The other thing that all the great leaders talk about is the importance of intuition. How does intuition work though? How does [16:13] your intuition speak to you? It speaks through your feelings. And so if you have all these old feelings that you've never felt, you're always running around feeling old feelings. You're not actually in touch with your feelings in the moment. So the more that you do this, the more you get access to your intuition as well. And it it makes you more attractive to other people, to the right people, because you're you're just more clear. People can [16:45] see you and feel you more. And so that's what I I call it, like, you are product that people you become radically authentic, attract the right people and you find lasting meaning. This is the process to do that. And I actually let me see here. I have a book coming out titled, you are the product. Make people buy from you because of who you are. So look out for that in the late spring summer. What's it [17:12] called? Late yeah. In the summer ish. We don't have a fixed set date yet. But that's the point. You get to attract customers, talent, and partners, and really, what I have done with this method, yes, I have never. I bootstrapped to we're 4,000,000 ARR, we're 5,000,000 in revenue. We've done like 20,000,000 of of lifetime revenue. Never built a freaking marketing team, never built a marketing customer acquisition funnel, a, because I was a victim, but b, because [17:39] I was doing this other stuff right. So, you know, we work with with we it's enabling me to build an incredible business without having to worry about CAC pay gap periods because we don't have any freaking CAC. Right? So which is pretty amazing, and now I get to play at the next level because I did this work and uncovered where I was being victim. And like I said, working with Founderpath, the money literally cleared yesterday. So [18:09] so it's fun. We have like new hires starting on Monday. It's really I'm really enjoying that piece. And it's it's crazy too how I realized, like, because of that scarcity mindset that I was in, I kept, like, hiring or trying to hire, and we've been struggling to hire good people because I was, like, so scarcity minded about it. And once I was like, oh shit, I actually can have money available to me if I do this. [18:37] I hired the best recruiter on the market to find me incredible talent, and like literally the day after he was like, what about this guy? I'm like, amazing. And so he's been sending me a stream of just incredible talent that really wanna work with me. And they all tell me, dude, I have three other offers, but I want I'm gonna hold off on all of them till I hear back from you because you're my number one [18:57] because you're I just really wanna fucking work with you. I have a of content out there that Bryson here helps me put out, and so I'm showing myself there out there with my personal brand, and it's really attractive to the right candidate for me. That is the power of that. So like I said, over the past twenty minutes, we talked about the feeling, the trigger, and what feelings really are. We talked about how to turn them [19:20] into your biggest breakthrough and the opportunity that's available to you if you choose to do so. So with that, I'm gonna leave you with just three things. If you forget everything else, number one is feelings buried alive never die. Number two is your triggers become your biggest breakthroughs. And number three, if this nerdy, like, totally fee feeling phobic programmer dude can do it, you have no excuse. Have at it. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot, [19:52] Calvin.

Intro this is the top where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of Revenue or customer base you'll learn how much revenue they're making what their marketing funnel looks like and how many customers they have I'm now at $20,000 per talk 5 and6 million he is help on global domination we just broke our 100,000 unit soul Mark and I'm your host Nathan lka okay top tribe this week's winner of the $100 is Rich Jones Okay Rich Jones he is stuck in corporate he wants to break free he's binging on the show for your chance to win 100 bucks every Monday morning simply subscribe to the podcast right now on iTunes and then text the word Nathan to 33444 to prove that you did it all right guys I talked about this earlier but I schedule like so many meetings it would blow your mind I mean all my podcast interviews right hundreds of buchs I talk to monthly I schedule and you know what I do it so efficiently I get them all to agree to my calendar so all the calls are back to back to back that means I'm not switching in between tasks all day long I get them to batch so I can be very efficient it's so critical and I use a tool called acity scheduling to do this at Nathan la.com schedu it eliminates back and forth between me and people I'm trying to meet with it makes it very simple and most importantly they help me keep my noow rate very low because they send out reminders helps you look very professional so go to na.com schedu to sign up and you get a great deal you know you guys know this I hit people hard I make great deals and Gavin the CEO has given us a great deal if you sign up like normal people okay on their website you only get a 14-day free trial to use my link na.com schedu to get 45 days free okay it's the best it's free go to na.com schedu right now to sign up and I'll see you there Nathan lacky here this is episode 582 coming up tomorrow morning you'll learn from the CEO of Soo his name is aim they did 1.5 million in 2016 Revenue now they're up to 200 Grand in monthly recurring Revenue helping 200 customers close more leads using social data Nathan ladka here good morning What is Simplero folks Our Guest today is Calvin Kelli he's the CEO of a holistically focused multi-million dollar all-in-one solution driven software company called simpo that exists to raise a level of Consciousness on the planet he's passionate about helping online business owners do exactly what brings them most alive while he himself enjoys the same Calvin are you ready to take us to the top yeah absolutely I'm here good so tell us what simplero does and what's your business model how do you make money right simpo is is a tool for people who sell courses online or coaching programs or any kind of information stuff that doesn't need to be shipped so e-commerce for things that don't need to go through the mail and it does everything that you need for that kind of business so it does the email marketing marketing automation it does all everything related to money and getting paid delivering the content to the people that need it at the right time whether it's drip or whatever and um landing pages and all all of those things all in one package so it's got everything you need and and none of what you don't and we make money by selling a subscription so it's a it's a software as a as a service product and what your what year your launch the business in what did I launch it in I launched it in 2009 I built it for my own use because I was teaching spirituality to entrepreneurs and then in 2010 I started actually charging other people's to use it people had been using it for a while at that point um but just for free and then it just grew from there and and what you at now in terms of January 2017 in terms of customers paying for the platform customers is a little under 700 um yeah and what is the so can you tell us a story about one of them that are using you specifically how they use you yeah um the robin green for example she's an acupuncturist um out in California and she had her own private practice doing acupuncture and um her husband got laid off from his job and so she had been looking at online courses for for a bit but not taking the plunge and so she decided to to take the opportunity so she basically told her husband look you don't need to go find another job I will I will figure out how to how to teaches stuff online and her specialty was doing acupuncture with kids and so she like created a course for other acupuncturist in how to how to do acupuncture with kids and launched it and she made 60k within the first couple months of starting and so that was enough for her to tell her husband you don't to go back you handle kind of transaction and money and you know funnel stuff as well yeah yes we haven't handled everything so um by the time this interview goes live we might even actually do your website but that's kind of the only part that we haven't done so far so you still need like WordPress for your website but everything else is we handle and is all we automated everything that can possibly be automated and um yeah so just take care of everything so that people can focus on you know teaching and relating to Their audience and what is the so you have a bunch of different pricing plans 100 per month up to 400 per month U instead of going into each one what's kind of the average that a customer is paying you um I'd say it's probably about 150 we we we charge both a monthly fee and and a percentage of Revenue and what that does is basically skews it so that that you know the more money you make the more money we make so that our interests are aligned like our interest is to make sure that you are as successful as you can be because that makes us more successful Which business uh which kind of Revenue model makes you more money the transaction percentage approach or the SAS approach you can't really break it down like that because what it does is like once people reach a certain Revenue number they're going to up their their monthly so so that it lowers the the U the the percentage so so it's not you know we get if you break it down by like how much of our Revenue actually comes from each that would not Monthly recurring revenue give you an accurate accurate picture um I don't know that I follow you there so if you just take your total revenue and you say 80% comes from the monthly fee and 20% comes from transaction fees right it's more like 10% comes from trans transaction fees and 90% from monthly fees but what I'm saying is what I'm saying is that if you are if you are on the the the like plan with the lowest monthly fee as as you pay more monthly fee you pay less uh um transaction fee down to zero so so we max out at 400 a month or 333 if you're in the annual plan and that at that plan there is zero transaction fees so oh got it so that's the reason that you if you making enough money you would go there and then you're not paying any transaction fees got it okay that's actually really helpful to understand got it so if you're paying 300 well 400 bucks per month if you're paying monthly 333 if you're paying annually there's no transaction fees there exactly which people would do if they're doing a huge amount of volume right exactly okay got it that makes sense and then is the math simple before we learn more about your story can I just take 700 customers times about 150 bucks per customer per month to assume you're doing somewhere around 100 Grand per month in Revenue um yeah we're we're north of that but yeah so I guess I don't know I I always like to say I'm really great at math but I suck at numbers I'm so bad at memorizing numbers and and actual thing I think our annual average per customer is about 2100 2,200 um so so you're it's fair to say you're monthly you're doing somewhere between call it 100 Grand and 150 Grand right yes abely okay and then what about economics wise so has anyone signed up for you and then stopped what's your gross customer monthly turn so I actually don't know that number what I do know is our retention average retention is over 15 months between 15 and 16 months so um I don't know how many we lose per month in percentage H honestly and just to be clear that the uh the uh well sorry so if the lifetime value is 17 month or sorry 15 months you could just do one divided by 7% monthly churn which is what would give you 15 months of kind of duration of each customer um uh what is the what is the uh well how did you get to the 15 number you're just looking at your your user base and saying that's an average yeah exactly so so the the thing there though is that we have a lot of people who who will be with us for just you know one two 3 months because they then they realize you know this is not a business I want to be in or for whatever reason they don't stay with us and then then we have people who've been with us from the very start so it's it's more like averaging that number it doesn't tell you a whole lot in that sense but um it really varies what is the uh you launched back in 2009 uh talk to me about your your team today where are you guys based and how many of you are there yeah so I'm based in New York and we've got two people in Denmark um and then we've got three people on the west coast part-time but we're a tiny team so so the only actually um yeah me and and one guy in Copenhagen full-time and one another person in Denmark part-time I'm I'm Danish and I started in Denmark um so um that's why we we have a significant custom customer base there as well and then three people on the west coast that are all part-time so if you add up while you're full on parttime what is that like six or seven Employee count um yes something like and then two full-time yeah hey that's good that's like you know I'm making this I'm kind of doing the math on my head that's like almost 500 Grand per full-time employee per year if if people just focused on profitability and revenue per employee you'd be at the top of the Heap yeah yeah I mean I'm all about making things really simple and systematic for for the most part everybody on my current team started less than six months ago and and for the most of the of the time that this product has been there I pretty much been doing the whole thing myself development and keeping it up and customer service and so I'm all about systematizing everything so that I can handle it and basically you know even when I've been on vacation or whatever I've I've been taking care of things and generally been able to do everything in like less than an hour a day including customer service yeah what is the uh have you raised capital or self-funded self-funded self-funded yeah this is this is this is great this is these are like the stories Calvin I like hunt for that I just love because too many people get stuck in and the let's go raise a bunch of capital and build a huge team and lose a lot of money and hope for a billion dollar exit but you've built a beautiful little machine that's creating buy of cash for yourself every year exactly so let me ask you an interesting question um what do you do with the money I mean this is hugely profitable you only have two full-time people doing over a million bucks per year in Revenue you have plenty left over at the bottom what do you do with that do you go on vacations you treat your wife or you know what do you do I invest heavily in myself um actually something that I do so either either learning courses workshops um um I have a Healer that I work with on a monthly retainer um all all that kind of stuff what do you pay your healer I pay her about four grand a month okay got it got it so you're a lot of this money you're you're again you're paying yourself kind of out of the business as the distribution then using it to invest in yourself that's why you're so happy and calm right now yes exactly no seriously I mean so so this business is great and and I have great plans for it and we're we're investing heavily in in both features and and and where we going to go with it but um this is just the beginning for me I you know I have other things that I want to do like what what's next I I really want to be the person that that kind of shows the world a different way to live um it's like integrating the spiritual side and and the the entrepreneurial practical side like money and and heaven and and masculine and feminine and left brain and right brain and like my big dream is to be a special adviser to the president of the United States maybe not the coming one but the next one or whoever um on conscious nation building I look at the world and I'm like why did we design things to be this way that does not make any sense at all what what's one thing you would change if you Rising the president right now whether it's Obama or Trump or whoever I mean the big question that is like how do we how do we maximize um the contribution and and happiness of each individual person right it's all about like who are you specifically and how do we help you develop the things that are uniquely you into what makes you most happy and generates the most value for society so Calvin how would you how would you so I I'm going to play president here for a second I'm going to not do it justice but we're we're in the we're we're in the oal office right now I'm president you're advising me and I'm going say Calvin I would love for the world to be happy currently the world and the economy is kind of hinge on kind of two things job growth and GDP so how do we measure happiness because we can't communicate growth in happiness if we Measuring happiness can measure it went from point A to point B how do we measure it I think so so as you will probably have noticed already I'm not a big metrics guy that is totally not my game um so I'm not I'm not the person to ask that question but what I've noticed is that there is that sweet spot for every single person where they are supremely happy where work doesn't feel like work and where they they they happen to be contributing the most that they have to contribute so so it's all about design figuring out like from from schools to to um to work life to institutions how do we how do we support people in in finding that spot and staying there I guess Calvin my question like the idea you just presented to me um feels lazy because and I'll tell you why we don't we how do we know if it's working or not how do we know if people are more happy than they were six months ago like in other words it's great I and I would the reason I'm curious about this is I can tell You' thought a lot about it and you might actually have a fantastic answer here we're not going to get more people happy unless we can point and say yeah we're making progress more people are happy today how do we measure that I happiness is entirely subjective right there's the only way to measure it is to ask people but that's I mean and that's fra with a bunch of of of problems because you know people have bad memories and they they might not know I I don't have a good answer for you yeah you understand though I mean uh this is something wants to do but how are you going to convince anyone to give you resources to make the world Happy uh if we can't point to happiness growth right if there's not a a way to get a CO if there's not an unbiased test to ask everyone in the US or a portion of the us yes or no are you happy or not and by the way we have to trust people are going to answer that accurately uh how do you convince people to give you resources to fight it in the first place and maybe we'll leave that as an open question I think we will but the thing is but the point is too that it's it's not just going to be the happier place it's also going to be the more productive place right getting people to do the thing that that is their unique thing to do is going to add more value to the economy and well no that's something that's definitely I was going to say that's actually something that's very measurable productivity but I think you could argue that productivity gains are not a direct correlation to happiness gains machines paired with a person can make that person way more productive than if the person spent that same hour doing something that makes them extremely happy do you agree right and what I'm going for is the place makes them extremely happy and contributes a lot of Al and like productive what if something that makes you happy I love eating Cheetos that makes me happy that's not productive at all except maybe for the Cheetos brand who I'm paying money to buy the Cheetos for how do you make sure those two things are directly correlated that's the classic argument but that again again I mean you could it's a fair argument though right would you agree I mean how would you counter right but the I think there is there is the the surface happiness of like you know you know whatever I'm drinking a glass of wine and now I feel all mellow and happy and side versus the the thing that you're doing for someone else or with someone else and you're contributing to someone I think like deep inside we all want to be part of something and we all want to contribute to to the world in some way and that's the kind of happiness that we're looking at guys I get asked all the time Nathan you host all these interviews hundreds of them per month how do you do them efficiently and guys the answer is simple people always agree to my calendar backtack meetings I batch my interviews to stay very efficient and the way that I do it is I use a tool called Acuity scheduling at Nathan lat.com schedu and the reason I use them is very simple they keep my noshow rate very low because they send out reminders about when the interview or the meeting is coming up and also they make it very easy to schedule time right I don't have to go back and forth the email 10,000 times with people I'm trying to meet with okay at Nathan lat.com SL schedu helps me so much and by the way look I like have so many meetings the best at meetings okay I do them back toback very very efficient you guys know me many people say I'm the most efficient they've ever seen okay so I use the tool it's so efficient and by the way I got Gavin I said Gavin he's the CEO I said I want a great deal for my people he said Nathan well most people get a 14-day trial isn't that great I said no he's giving us a 45-day free trial at Nathan ler.com schedu that's not going to stay up forever so go get it now Nathan lat.com all right well guys with that calv we're wrap up with the final five questions Final 5 questions number one what is your favorite Business book or any book any book yeah yeah yeah no favorite book is there's nothing wrong with you number two two there's excuse me is there a CEO you're following or studying right now there's not I I was always a fan of Steve Jobs but hey number three is there a favorite online tool you have like acity scheduling m fast mail fast mail what do you use that for I for my email I switch from from from Gmail and I'm so much happier with fast mail why it's um their interface is just like super fast and clean and they they've integrated like it's super easy to set up forwards and Gmail was amazing when it came out but all of the new stuff in the the social inbox and all that crap I'm like I don't get it I don't need it I have my system for email and works really well number four yes or no do you get eight hours of sleep every night not every night but I really strive to I think sleep is super important and what's your situation married single do you have kids I am married I have two kids with my ex-wife they live in Copenhagen I live here in New York oh very cool and how old are you I'm 42 all right last question Calvin take us back 22 years what do you wish your 20-year-old self knew just really invest in getting to know yourself and who you are and how you're different and yeah and be that top drive there you have it invest in yourself get to know yourself and then go all in at being that from Calvin the founder of simpo back in 2009 metrics wise again bootstrapped which I love now serving 700 content creators who are selling courses each of the 700 customers paying on average 150 bucks per month doing somewhere around 100 Grand in monthly recurring Revenue about 7% gross customer churn each month which means each customer stays with him for about 15 months for a lifetime value of somewhere around 2100 bucks with a team of two full-time folks four part-time folks again building something special and focused on true happiness Calvin thank you for taking us to the top all right thank you so much Nathan if you enjoyed today's episode go back and listen to Russ yesterday he's the CEO of Doc send which raised $1 million and now has over 2800 companies paying them with well over 10,000 seats top tribe I love giving away free money I feel like Oprah giving away cars and I have something special for you today how many of you have heard our super sharp guests talk about success they've had with Facebook and Google ads well all of you listening right now yes if you're listening you get a $100 in free AdWords here's how you get it okay again thanks for listening get the free $100 from Google right when you sign up with my website host provider HostGator go sign up now to get your free money hostgator.com Nathan again that's hostgator.com Nathan okay top dbe I'll see you right and early tomorrow morning and don't forget before you listen to any other episodes subscribe on iTunes right now for your chance to win 100 bucks every Monday