How Simplero Reached $5M Revenue and $4M ARR Bootstrapped with Zero Marketing Spend (Interview with Founder & CEO Calvin Correli)

Calvin Correli Introduces Simplero and the Talk's Theme

Calvin Correli

00:00Good 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

A Personal Story: Mexico, Vulnerability, and Shutting Down Feelings

Calvin Correli

00:32revenue. 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

01:01a 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

01:30big 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

01:54Denmark 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.

02:23This thing that happened in that hammock in Mexico can never happen again.

02:29My 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

02:54those feelings are dangerous. You gotta shut it down.

02:58That'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

03:26you 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

03:48the 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

The Cash Flow Crisis: A $100K Tax Bill and a Projected $165K Shortfall

Calvin Correli

04:14per 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

04:46a $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

05:09were I couldn't reach them. So I was like, alright. Screw it. Just run the damn thing and we'll figure it out.

05:15Come 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

05:40much. 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

06:05I 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

Feelings Buried Alive Never Die: The Core Framework

Calvin Correli

06:32alive 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

06:58they 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

07:27feel 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

07:51we 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

08:17excitement, 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

08:40to 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

09:0204:30, 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

09:28amazing. 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?

09:55And 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

Discovering the Victim Mindset Around Customer Acquisition

Calvin Correli

10:20I 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

10:46like, 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

11:11that. 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

11:35bit 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

11:58flow 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

Sharing the Challenge Openly at the Mastermind

Calvin Correli

12:19this 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.

12:38And 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.

13:01We'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

Founderpath Surfaces $2.2M in Available Financing

Calvin Correli

13:27he'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

13:56then 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

Taking $400K and Shifting Out of Scarcity

Calvin Correli

14:20now, 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

14:47time is, but I'm not seeing it.

14:51Okay. 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

15:23you 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

15:45become 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

16:13your 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

16:45see 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

17:12called? 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

Simplero's Numbers: $5M Revenue, $4M ARR, $20M Lifetime, Zero Marketing Team

Calvin Correli

17:39I 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

18:09so 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.

Hiring with a Recruiter and Founder Brand Attracting Top Talent

Calvin Correli

18:37I 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

18:57because 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

19:20into 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,

19:52Calvin.