High School Dropout to 19 Year Old Multimillion Dollar Business Owner with Chris Kelsey Founder of Appsitude

From Silicon Valley to all around the world, I meet with startup founders to hear their powerful stories of failure, obstacles and success. I am your host Luke Baird and this is the Cult of Startup podcast. Waiting for perfect is never as smart as making progress. That's a quote from multiple time best selling author Seth Godin.

And this episode is all about moving the needle forward on your business and how in some ways our internal beliefs can limit where we end up in both business and life. Today's guest, Chris Kelsey dropped out of high school with six months left to go in his senior year. And now, almost two years later, his company Absented is set to gross over $4.8 million in revenue for 2016. His business has built over 100 plus mobile applications amounting to over 50 million total downloads.

They have grown from a small team to now nearly 50 employees located all around the world. We go over some topics that a lot of young entrepreneurs question themselves about, such as the value of a modern education, how do I network when I'm young, and what resources are available to entrepreneurs who are willing to do a simple Google search. We talk a lot about how the world and our inner ego will set limits on what we can achieve and ways to dismiss those thoughts and roll forward with where we wish to be in life. I hope you all enjoy this journey.

I went with Chris. It's one hell of a ride. How's it going today, Chris? Great.

It's 6am in Hong Kong. How are you? I'm doing pretty good, man. It's about 3 o' clock here.

Thank you for getting up early to do this interview. Usually I should be one makes these accommodations. I try to wake up as early as I can. So no worries, no worries.

We'll definitely get into those details about your morning routine. So first and foremost I want to give an outline of how this discussion is going to go. I really want to focus on your story because you are a recent success. You dropped out of high school and how old are you right now?

I turned 19 in May. Wow, so you're not even 19 yet? No, sorry, I turned. There you go.

But either way, you are still super young and super successful and a high school dropout. So let's hear a quick summary about what your business does. So right now we have three sectors. We have Absolute Accelerator, which we partner with people that want to start companies that involve tech.

So let's say it's an app. We help refine ideas, help them with marketing strategies, you know, design the app, code it, launch it, and even connect them to investors. And then we have Absolute Productions, which essentially is more like just like a marketing branding kind of thing, where we help larger companies. We help with the marketing branding, essentially.

But that could be building some kind of crazy app that has never been in their industry before to revolutionize what they're doing and make them stand out. And then we also have Absolute Solutions, where we create tech solutions for companies that, let's say they have issues with this or that. Then we come in and our creative architect will figure out ways to solve their issues. And then we build some kind of software, whether it's an app or website, that will solve the problems.

Interesting, interesting. So you got three facets to your business, and how long ago did you found this business? So I started in essentially the end of December of 2014. Okay, so it's super recent.

All right, now let's hop into that story element. You are a high school dropout. Give me that element of what happened during your senior year of high school. So my senior year, we'll give a little bit more background.

Just so. So in the summer of 2014, I just finished my junior year of high school, and I was speaking to someone I knew that had been one of the things I really wanted to be a dentist or a pharmacist. And I spoke to one of my. One of the people I knew in the pharmacy profession, and they weren't very happy with what they were doing.

And that's what I've been looking forward to doing for the previous three years. And, you know, they just decided the same thing every day and that kind of stuff. They just sound kind of sad, even though they're making, you know, six figures right out of college. And I figured, you know, I didn't want to do that.

So that summer I just read as many books as I could about business. So, like, you know, become classics. Thinking of Rich how to win friends and influence people. I started reading different kind of blogs, kind of ones that were just kind of keeping up and like, learning about success stories of people like Mark Cuban and stuff like that.

And then in my senior year, spending that summer, I started two businesses that failed. And then at the beginning of my senior year, I just, you know, every day in class essentially was like, just reading books. I had a 4.0 when I dropped out, but I was not focused at all at school at the time. Like, I was just trying to read and learn because I realized I didn't want to go college.

I just wanted to be entrepreneur. That's a very interesting thought to have at such a young age, Most of the time you hear entrepreneurs are people who drop out of college because that's more of a mature thought process to have at that point, rather than, hey, I'm in high school. I can do this too. Yeah.

I mean, I feel that what was in my mind was that I was looking at people like Steve Jobs or Richard Ransom in high school, but, you know, Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or dropping out of college. And I thought, what's the difference between dropping out of high school versus dropping out of college from a perspective of starting a business? And I realized it's just, you know, one year sooner that I get to start what I want to, what I know I'm going to do anyway, anyway. So I figured, sorry, that's just an interesting thought process because most of these entrepreneurs go, why didn't I start earlier?

You know, you had that exact thought like, ah, I can start earlier. Why not? Yeah. And I also felt, you know, I put a time constraint myself in the sense that, you know, I always look at it from the perspective that you die any day and you might as well live your life now instead of waiting for whenever, you know.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. All right, so you read all these books this summer. During that summer, then you went into your senior year, high school.

To my knowledge, you were 4.0 student, correct? Yep. So you had everything going for. You had possibly college recruiting for you.

You could have gone to whatever school you desired. And you eventually dropped out about six months before graduating. What were the stages of that during that time? So from the perspective of that summer, I had read Think Grow Rich.

I actually didn't even finish the book. I read the first, like, I think it was 50 or 100 pages. And I read the part about Cortez. I don't know his first name, but he was a.

Like, Spanish people, they're invading island or something. And the. The Captain Cortez, he said, you know, they burned the ships behind them so they couldn't retreat. So, you know, when they're in the island, they can only go forward.

There's no way to go back. And to me, dropping out of high school was that equivalent. I even remember too, when I was in, because I recommended things when my friends went back when I was in high school and when I told him that I was planning to drop out, you know, he said, oh, you're doing the. Because I didn't think about it, like, he brought the core testing.

I was like, wait, that's why it was influencing me. You're doing the protest thing, man. Exactly. That'd be a great saying.

I do the protest thing. You're dropping out. All right, so you left school six months before you graduated. What were you doing then?

Because you said you had two previous businesses that failed during that summer. Sort of like maybe a trial by fire, but you still weren't. You weren't sidelined by doing that. What'd you do next?

So I. So the last business, the first one I started, I think, was in the end of July or August. And that was a flyer distribution business that had, you know, essentially what it was was that companies wanted nationwide flyer campaigns, and I would subcontract to different flyer companies across the US So that they could have, you know, star campaigns all over the same time. And then I had an online reputation management business, which also.

That I stopped doing, you know, in like, early to mid December. You know, both of them. I never even got any clients. I was doing 50, 100 cold calls a day, which was actually one of the reasons why I wanted to get out of school, is because I wanted to keep, you know, calling and figuring out.

But during the time that I was in school, I wouldn't have been able to do it. So I, like, during break or lunch, I would just, like, do a few calls and then go from there. The main reason I did cold calls specifically was because I want to validate the concept. And I knew that if I was able to get a client just by doing a cold call, then I knew that if I had a website and everything all ready to go, then it would be even easier.

So that business I, like, stopped doing that in early December, early mid December. And then that's when I got into, you know, the whole app development area. It's a great way to get a pulse on the market. I really like that concept.

Just call everybody, and you can sell it over the phone. You can probably sell it by having a quality website. Yeah, exactly. And I got that from a.

It wasn't exactly this concept of this type of idea for Noah Kagan, because he talked about how. And this is actually how I started the app company, which we were just for reference last year. We originally were just doing app development and web development and then like, a little marketing, but it wasn't a partnership or anything like what we do now. Um, so what happened was we, you know, Noah Kagan recommended, or he suggested about going on Craigslist and just, like, posting an ad on there to see if people would be interested in, you know, whatever it is that you're trying to offer them, you know.

And so that's what I did. I posted an ad on Craigslist offering app development, essentially. And then I had a few programmers I knew beforehand. I said, hey, get this project and like, let's work on it together.

So then. So then what happened was I got a call the next day from someone was interested. I was like, what? Like, I was like, surprised.

I didn't even call because what originally happened was. So, you know, I dropped out December 6, 2014. And then mid December, my barber told me that she had an app idea. So I gave her the contract and everything.

And then she said that she didn't have the budget for it. And I had a feeling beforehand, but I was like, you know what? I'll just go through the steps, see how it goes. And then after that, I was like, all right, whatever.

I'll just go on Craigslist and see what happens. So then I posted that I got a call. Nothing happened with that call, but that gave me the hope that people were actually interested. And I was surprised, you know.

So then what happened was after. After that, I started replying to people's posts on Craigslist saying that they didn't have ideas. And then within the first day or the first 10 days, I had my first contract for 16,500. And then that's when I knew that's why my parents stopped worrying.

And that's when I knew that, you know, my prediction of being entrepreneur and everything that would work out would be okay. All right, this is a very interesting situation to have occur. What was the dialogue between you and your parents when you were removing yourself from school? Because it sounds like they saw some success and maybe that lowered their thought process on, hey, you know, I don't know what this guy's doing.

Is he going to really go back to school or something like that. In the line, what was the conversation between you guys? So they. What happened was.

I think it was. So just the day before, two days before I dropped out, I was just leaving a meeting with someone, reputation business, which this is before lapse up. And the. I remember just calling my dad and I told him that I was gonna drop out of school this week.

And he just started like, flipping out over the phone. Understandably, of course. And then when I dropped out, they. My parents were just very understandably upset.

So then in terms of conversation, it was mostly just them, you know, being very angry with me. Yeah. You know, so. Okay, so they were.

They were kind of pissed that you decided to leave school. And I think any parent would be because they've been supporting you your entire life. And to kind of say, well, I'm out of what you've pushed me towards my entire 17 years. I mean, talk about being sort of like the bird back to your parents were the support they offered.

But you got some success. All right, so you got that 16, 560,000 contract, right? What happened after that? What were the stages that got you to where York is?

I mean, $16,000 contract, that's relatively small for an app agency. What happened next? So what happened was I kept going on Craigslist. I did it like I would say the majority of 2015 until around September, October.

I was literally just going through Craigslist. And what happened was like within the first three months, I had over $100,000 of the contracts, which then those contracts have turned out even bigger since then. But I just really kept going on Craigslist. And I didn't realize, you know, I hadn't really done any, like, meeting people in person for any business before then.

Like, obviously if I knew if they calling if they wanted to meet personally with them. But I never went to events and that kind of thing to go talk to people. And I was just not used to, you know, I wasn't used to it. I wasn't.

So then I said, so this is October, and you know, we've done really well so far within that year. But, you know, I said to myself that I wanted this company to be massive by the end of the year. And I didn't feel that it was at that point. And I looked at myself and where did I not go the extra mile?

And it was because I was just doing everything online. I wasn't doing anything in person. So at that time I was living in Santa Rosa, California, which is an hour north of San Francisco. So I think it was the first or second week I said myself, I'm gonna go drive to San Francisco every single day and go to some random event on Eventbrite, or meet up every day and just.

Just meet as many people as I can, see what happens. So the first event I went to, I think it was on a Monday, was this Chilean Californian energy conference meeting. That's what it was called. And it was the most random thing I could go on to.

They just were talking about climate change and how they can. We can use like American technology in Chile and things like that. And then I just started talking to random people there. And, you know, it just helped me get used to, like talking to strangers and then I.

The next day, I don't remember what it was next day with. And I kept, I just kept going to different events and then I ended up getting, you know, a client within the first three days of going to events. And I was like, wow. Like this really just validated, validated in my mind that I shouldn't just be doing things online and made me start thinking bigger.

So at that point we just, I started doing that towards end of the year and then at the end of the year, you know, I was definitely happy with where we had gotten. But I realized like for the next year, like we're going to, I want to just take this to the next level. I really enjoy the concept of you going to these events. I don't think many people would think about doing that.

It's really thinking outside the box. And you're like, well, I can only do so much online, but if I go to these events and have sort of a heart with these people, it's going to change their reflection of me and I'm more likely to get a client. Do you have any stories you can tell us, interaction with a client that you gained from going to one of these meetings? Yeah.

So the one that I met on the third day, he ended up joining our company. Really? Yeah. Cool.

So that was a very cool one. But yeah, I mean we've had. Yeah, I mean it was really, it was interesting. I mean it's just meeting people at events and then people would say, oh, you know, I have an app idea and then they talk to us.

But what happened was in the beginning, or not in the very beginning, but later in, you know, this year, 2016, I started realizing, you know, after like for example, our team did premium wallpapers HD which got over 40 million downloads. And I realized that, you know, I didn't have any equity in it because it was just contract based when we did it. And I realized that I was, I wasn't thinking the big picture because, you know, here we are getting marketing advice and all these different types of things and yeah, it's, you know, financially good to do it, but I realized I wasn't looking big picture. So that's where more the partnership model came in the sense of, you know, because we're helping in so many different ways, I wanted to figure out how we could help people and more than just building app for them and being an actual partner with them as opposed to just, you know, just building the app.

Not that we did just build app and after like we still maintain everything but, you know, Helping with executive investors, really refining the concepts and really helping them out in as many ways as we can. I think that's a brilliant way to approach something like this because if something is a big success, why not have a little bit equity in it? Have you calculated that risk by any chance? The risk, I'm apart, let's say you onboard X client, it's going to cost you this, it'll cost them this amount to build it.

But you take 10% equity. What is your ROI? If you do that with maybe three companies, like, have you statistically proven that that's a model that could work for you guys? So what we do is that they will still cover most of the baseline.

So there's, the risk is still there for us, but it's not as, it's not as big of a risk as being completely angel investor and not having any control. Because the thing is we are responsible for building the tech and helping the marketing. I feel a lot more comfortable, like completely comfortable with what we're doing because, you know, I know, you know, I know our strengths with marketing and I know our strengths with tax. I know that if we're building something then it's gonna be high quality.

And I think that one of the biggest issues in the development world today is that there's a lot of companies that quote, unquote, develop your app, but eight months later when it's supposed to be three months, you still have a bug filled app and it's broken and no one's using it, then it's, you know, it kills a lot of dreams. And I realized that despite us, I realized that just by us building like products properly, not even talking about marketing or anything, doing that in itself is already like, makes you stand out completely because so many people unfortunately just aren't able to, you know, if they develop it then, you know, halfway through then they take out this feature, that thing or you know, people are paying for their salaries and they keep paying way more money because the developers are purposely not fixing certain bugs. So the salary keeps falling. And then what happens is people will spend literally tens to hundreds of thousands more dollars than they should have because of that.

Which is where we came in and said, okay, it's going to cost X amount and that's it. Like if we go over, then it's our fault, then it's our problem, you know, so the risk is more on our end. Okay, so how has that been in dealing with agency client relations? Um, my personal company does that.

We, we develop websites and apps, work and I've had struggles in dealing with clients before. It's very difficult. What can you maybe advise my audience on in doing that in terms of how to deal with clients? Yeah.

Um, I would say one of the biggest things is communication, um, because everyone has heard different things about development from different people. You know, people, you know, some people, like, they hear the word outsource or this or that, and then they automatically think very bad things. Other people are like, oh, that's the smart way to do it. It's so varied.

It's kind of funny to see because you'll see people say completely different things about the same thing. Um, and that's why communication is really important because there's some people that, you know, they'll tell us, hey, I have an app idea, just get back to me, like when it's done. Which we still update them during the process, but other people are like, they want to talk every three days and, you know, make sure everything's going on time. And that's because of their personal experiences or what they heard before, which is obviously understandable.

So I think that communicating what is going on and making sure they are, they feel in the know about every, you know, all the processes involved in what's going on is huge. Besides that, obviously, you know, over delivering as much as possible. If you can finish things faster, do it, you know, or give some kind of extra features, something that wasn't mentioned that they would really like, then those are the kind of things that we do to make sure that they're really, really happy. I like that.

I like that. Could you walk me through your guys, maybe client cycle? So how do you onboard them? What is the communication at that point?

And I want to hear like, do you have like a pre production phase where you vet out all the designs? What do you offer up at the very beginning to get the client? So the thing is, right now we don't really, because we're doing this more partnership model. These are more.

The people I work with now, mostly more partners as opposed to clients. If I were to talk, you know, about how we did it last year, which is more client. Well, Absolute Productions is more, I would say client, but I'll just say specifically more for absolute options or absolute solutions. What we would do is, so for example, let's say that they have an idea, we'll come in and we'll say, you know, we'll give our feedback in terms of how to improve it.

What's the most viable way to do it? Maybe have a certain budget that is Limited. So we'll say these are the most things. These are the things we can do to make it look as cost effective as possible.

So the first week. So the whole process varies to finish the entire UI and have it set up on the process. So the first week is refining the concepts and, you know, coming up with any potential marketing ideas, that kind of thing. I'm also.

The thing is with planning, though, is that I don't. We don't depend on the concept and how validated it is, but if it isn't updated yet, then I don't. We don't go very big into marketing plans because that can completely change. And I don't think it's going to have time initially when then all of a sudden the plans have taken away after two weeks.

That makes it run even more quality then because they've done the customer research on whether or not this could have some sort of success. Exactly. And so what happens is during that first week, yeah, we're finding it. And then the second week is doing the, you know, creating user stories, the user experience, wireframing everything.

The third and fourth week is designing all the ui and then the fifth week is revisions, and then sending it up on this software called Envision, where essentially, like, it lets you use app as if it's real app, except it's just the UI photos. So, which is like perfect tool for investors. So for the accelerator program, that's what we do is we build a prototype at that five weeks and then help get investors to get funding to build a full app, or if they have the. If they have the funds themselves to build the full app, and we'll just go and build the full app.

And then obviously after designs and go to coding phase, then bug testing and then launching it. Interesting, interesting. I really like that you have them involved along each stage of the process. We've actually used InVision before.

That's InVision app.com I believe. Super useful and easy to walk through. People, you can take notes on it, sign up for it. It's an awesome program to work with.

All right, so let's maybe get back to a little bit about your story. So you've had this success. You were visiting all these potential clients and going to these events, and I actually recently went to an event. I met a handful people within the podcasting space that I had no idea we're gonna be there.

It was great. So I can attest to that as well. It's a good thing to be just present at these things at the very beginning. To get your name out there.

So you're still leaving at home? Still. Maybe. Walk me through, like, six months out and a year out of leaving school.

So six months out. I remember when I turned 18, I graduated by that time, right? They. They graduated.

I think it was May. So, yeah, they would have just graduated at that time. I was still. Just before I was 18.

I didn't move out because, like, I wasn't 18 yet. As soon as I turned 18, I booked a flight to Costa Rica, and then I went there for a little over two weeks and just traveled. And I was working while I was there. And then when I came back, you know, I just moved out and then.

But I was still living in the San Jose area at the time. And then finally, like, around October, I started living in Berkeley, and then January, San Francisco. But my life story in the time or the business side or your life story. Okay, so in terms of life story.

Yeah, I mean, mostly I was just focusing on my business during that period, during that time, and it's not now, of course, but doing that. And then also I was figuring out what my big goal was, you know, because obviously, you know, at the end of the day, it's not like, of course money's important, but I wanted to see where. What my big vision was in terms of how I could take the company to become something that is actually, you know, solving worldwide problems and, you know, becoming something bigger than just, you know, building apps, just being a development company, which is really what kind of happened this year. The accelerator program is.

That's what we're writing now. But, yeah, it was kind of just figuring out what I wanted to do with my life overall, not just from a business perspective, but, you know, what I wanted to stand for, what I want to be. When I say I want to be, I mean, businesses mean like, you know, hobbies, those kind of things. So I just kind of.

I read a lot during that time. And, yeah, I don't know, I mean, now it's interesting because I feel like my life just so revolves around my business, which it doesn't sound in a bad way, though. It's not like, you know, if I have to work eight hours a week, it's not because I'm, you know, I'm enjoying all of it. And that's the thing that is great, because people say, what do you do for fun?

Yeah. You know, hang out with friends or that kind of thing. But at the same time, a lot of just. Just being in the work.

My work environment is what I love. Doing the most. So if I say so, it'll be like my hobbies would be reading and that kind of thing. And then, you know, going out to meet people and stuff occasionally, but mostly just working.

And I love that I amend you and say that's a noteworthy thing. And I wish more people would enjoy what they do. I had a great conversation Yesterday with somebody, Mr. Eco.

I interviewed him for the podcast, and he is an environmental rap superhero. And he basically makes money by going to assemblies and teaches kids about being environmentally friendly. That's not like he's got a college degree. That's not typical at all.

But he's doing what he's most passionate about. Yeah, I think that it's one of the biggest things is, like, it's interesting because I feel there's a threshold. For example, you know, I've always been. I think that there's certain people that if they are.

I can't think of specific expression because it varies on the person. But some people are okay with not doing what they like with doing what they don't, like if they're, you know, paid well enough for it. But, you know, I think that at least for me, like, if I can't, if I don't like what I'm doing, it's. Even if it's like, you know, even if you can make a lot from it, it's not.

It doesn't really make sense for me. Like, I realize that, you know, there's a million ways to make a million dollars, and there's ways that are harder, they're not to become successful. Um, and there's some ways that much harder than others. And for me, if I'm enjoying what I'm doing, um, but it's gonna take me a little longer to get where I want to be financially, then that's fine.

Because when I say enjoy, I don't mean that in the sense of like slacking or something, but if I enjoy the work, the actual work that I'm doing, then it doesn't feel like I'm working. So, you know, it's. That's what I like about it is that you get to choose what you want to do. And yeah, I love that.

And I wish more people were cognizant of doing what you are passionate about. And it sounds like. I mean, your work is kind of sound like a traditional work that somebody might have it. It is an agency, but a lot.

Yes. I mean, it's. It's. The thing is though, too, we're not really, you know, the agency Is just now one part of it.

Three facets now. My bad. But yeah, yeah. My main focus really is absolute accelerator.

The other two sectors are really more automated. Like, I have other people running. I have other people running those areas. So my personal focus is on accelerator.

And that's what I just like seeing because, you know, you have people come to you with an idea and you help. It's just like cool seeing it, but beyond, like, it's different from what we did last year because, yeah, like, you know, it's awesome to like come up with how all these different ideas and be working on these completely unique projects, but to now like actually be a part of like helping them throughout the whole process. Especially if it's like, you know, university students, that kind of thing they're working with, then it's really like you see a change in how they act and in their mindset. And when you see that click, because at that time that you just know that it clicks with them and then they're like, oh.

And seeing that come out of people is like, that's one of the greatest feelings, really is just like, I don't know. I love seeing that. Yeah. I will say this.

One thing that I really like about you is, and I think this is a major maturity concept, is that when you've reached success, you give back. Yes, I agree. And I think that's one of the biggest things, is to go to help people once you've actually gotten there. For example, one of my biggest goals is becoming a billionaire.

The, the, the easier, not easier, but by 25, to become a billionaire. In reality, it's more to become a billionaire within the next three years. But with that being said, it's not really because I care about having a billion dollars per se. It's one besides doing it mostly just to say that I did it.

It's to be able to have the money to help people in other ways. Because I know there's no way that I would be able to, like, there's no point I would want to actually have that money. It would be more to just give it, put in places that actually help lots of people at once, as opposed to just, you know, straining my bank account and doing nothing with it. Yeah, right.

I know it's a big social question as to what would you contribute to, And I want to ask that to you. If you had a billion dollars, where would you give that money? I like that question. I think there's a lot of different areas.

I mean, one of the biggest ones for me is education. You know, I see that there's a lot of people that are stuck in student debt and, you know, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. And I feel bad because I feel like, you know, I feel a lot of people are pressured into doing it and they don't know what to do because they're confused and because it's really, you know, getting into debt is a. School is a very big, you know, life decision.

And to just rush into it can be very hard for people. So I think that one of my biggest things is putting money into reforming education in a way that, you know, really like, one of my goals is to have our own school that teaches about life in a way that it hasn't been done before from the perspective of, you know, learning by doing, as opposed to less theoretical. One of the things that, you know, in high school, I think, you know, anything wrong with school. But in high school, I felt like a lot of the subjects I was learning weren't relevant to what I wanted to do, which I understand it can be helpful to understand geometry or trigonometry and things like that.

But I'd also spoken with different architects and engineers, this is even before I dropped out, who told me that a lot of what they learned in high school geometry was even really helpful to what they learned and that a lot of what they learned was on the job. So I felt. I felt that if we were to. I would really like to use that money to help, really, I would say to create our own schools.

I would say online at first and then physical schools in the future to really help people learn in the way that I think was most valuable for me and the people that are around me that have also become successful. I agree with that concept wholeheartedly. I am in support of the education system theoretically, because I think people should be educated. There's stuff you gotta know, maybe you should know about the presidential history of the United States.

But there's also a certain practicality element that isn't always addressed in going to school. What are your thoughts on possibly revolutionizing the education industry? What would you go to first? Well, right now, for example, we're partnering with different universities across the world.

So, like, for example, Holt University is one of the first that came to us. And, you know, all these are still in talks. It's not like, oh, it's completely official as yet, but helping one is bringing our accelerator program to these schools. So, because I feel like one of the biggest things, like, I'm able to talk to the students directly and give my feedback on business, it'd be very valuable.

As well as Dpanche, who also is part of our team, Dpanche just sold his company in January for 8 million. It was an app called Chifu and it was acquired by paytm. So, you know, from his experience, my experience, and Fernando's experience, Fernando is our chief product officer and so we all like the feedback that I feel we give is very, very valuable. And it's not theoretical like we're speaking from our personal experience, which I think is one of the biggest things.

But yeah, so in terms of that, I would say partnering up with school, existing schools and having their students come onto our, you know, whether it's accelerated program, we're also creating apps to Academy, which will, I would say is going to become an add on for these existing schools. But from a, from a different perspective, the schools are teaching it. So instead of, you know, going against schools or something, I think it makes a lot more sense to work with them and show how we can help their schools, their students, learn even more by partnering up with our, what we're doing. I really like that proactive approach that you guys are taking to working with schools because I think there's a lot of hate out there for schools.

Oh, they're useless. They're not willing to change or something like that. You guys are possibly going to disprove that. Maybe they are more cognizant of what's actually going on in what are the thought processes of people who graduated and those that are currently in school.

And let's talk a little about what advice would you give to somebody who is debating dropping out of high school or college? So for one, you know, one of the things that I say is just because I dropped out isn't that you should, I mean, you can definitely start a company while you're in school. And the other thing too, about starting companies, it doesn't be a company. It's just buying something, you know, having something for less and then selling it for more or whatever, you know what I mean?

And so it doesn't have to be an official company. The spread of could be just like, you know, buying candy and selling it for more, whatever it is. But yeah, I don't, I don't suggest dropping out of school. That's completely up to your decision.

The only occasion where you know that's it's different is if you're about to get in a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand dollars in debt or less than that even, and you're not sure what you want to do then I would highly suggest that you take a little, you know, take a gap year, take some time to figure it out because you don't rush into that decision. So you know, I would say, you know, just I dropped out because I knew 100 that's what I wanted to do. And I don't want to be responsible by saying yes, everyone should drop out if they don't even know what they want to do. Because maybe, maybe they want to become a doctor, maybe they want to become a dentist or something and they would need college for that.

Which yeah, I know if you drop out you can always go back. But yeah, so yeah, I agree with that. I've heard it a handful of times from a bunch of entrepreneurs that if you are going to, whether or not you go to school, if you're going to do the exact same thing being afterwards, it doesn't matter if you're in school. Yes, exactly.

That system doesn't actually benefit you that much. It's better just to get out of it and work on your business and roll with that, not not be stuck in getting in huge debt and having all these other commitments. I know my personal experience being in school, it's difficult to do homework and meet with groups for projects and also try run a business. You're dealing with one too many agendas at one time so it doesn't make the process easier.

I completely agree. And I mean if you really, really, really, really really know you want to be entrepreneur. Like one thing I found is that a lot of people that go to business school still wanna have a job after get out of college. They don't actually run business yet.

So if that's the case they're doing because they don't have a job, then yeah, the same college. But I would say even another thing too is that a lot of jobs, I would say the best jobs out there aren't necessarily because of college degree. For example, if you were to start three businesses and finished by high spend of high school and let's say all those businesses failed, but you made 20k over that period of four years. Right.

You know, if you were to go to certain companies, like if someone did that and came to me saying that if we needed someone like that has the right, you know, if we needed, if we're looking to hire someone that was like, you know, to manage this, if they came to me and told me that, you know, dare by the tour and everything, I would probably, you know, I'll be very likely to hire them. I don't want to say. I don't want to say that. You know, I have to be careful how I say that because I know people think that if they did that, then that means.

I mean, I'm saying if we're in the market of hiring more people that have an entrepreneur in mind and they come to me and say something like that, even if they failed a lot, then that's what I want to hear, is they failed because they learned from that. Assuming that they learned from it now, that, to me, is a lot more valuable than, you know, I would say college degree. Me personally, I'm very big on bringing on risk takers and people that want to do big things. But.

And I know there's a lot of other companies, nothing like that. But, you know, it's not. It's not. It's the kind of thing that you need more to meet people and have connections with, as opposed to, you know, just.

You can't just, like, apply on a random job site and get like. Has to be something from people that you meet. Yeah, yeah. I've always had a personal goal that I never have to apply for a job, that my resume doesn't define me.

So it's like, oh, yeah, Luke Berry does great work. You should hire him for this. And I think that's gonna be the next stage of how people are gonna approach their jobs. I agree.

I think that the whole processing system is going to change for a lot very soon. Definitely. All right. I'm really curious about this, and we haven't touched on it.

Who helped you navigate this entire process? Because in my head, I think things like, how the hell did you figure out payroll? How the hell did you figure out incorporation? What?

Who? Did you have an advisor, a mentor along the way to actually do this with you? No, a lot of it was just like reading online, like, figuring out myself. My dad helped somewhat with figuring out with taxes and then like registering an llc.

And then that's pretty much to the extent that he gave me feedback. Just as, you know, as a person that he had a company before. He was just saying, like, this is how you order services. This is how taxes are, that kind of thing.

But right now, we have people that, you know, take care of all our finances and payroll, everything. So I learned a bit from myself. But then when I hired people to do it, I learned a lot from them. And then hearing it from other people as well, make sure that what they're telling you was valid.

Yeah, I would agree that the resource of online is consistently underutilized by some entrepreneurs that a Google search can answer a lot of questions for you a lot quicker than finding somebody else. Exactly. And I realize that one of the biggest things is when you're learning something that you want to learn, it's going to be a lot more. It's going to be a lot easier to learn.

What I mean is like, if you want to learn about taxes as boring as they are, like if you really want to learn, then you're going to have full understanding. But if you look at it like, oh, this is a pain in the neck, I don't want to learn this, blah, blah, and then you try reading it, it's going to be difficult for you because you're not. Your brain has to be open beforehand to being receptive to learning about this or that. And I think that's one of the things about school, so is that I think that's almost turns, you know, not college per se, but more like lower screen high school and stuff.

It often turns people away from wanting to learn because I think that learning itself is a boring process. And I think it's all based on how you want to learn. If you want to learn by reading cool books and stuff, then when I read, you know, how friends and influence people, I love that book. It was, even though it wasn't talking about action or, you know, crazy stories, it was like, I thought it was super interesting.

And that came from me being a person that had always hated reading my whole life. And then that summer completely changed my life about how I look at reading. I. I love that perspective and I can relate to that.

In my college classes, I always ask the professor, I know you just saw it suspenseful, but could you give us a time where you did this in your actual job or was this actually applies in research or something like that? And I was so dumbfounded by their answers because they didn't always have an answer as to the practicality of that moment. I agree. And that's actually, I remember that happening numerous times in school, like a lot.

And I thought that there was something. I thought that there was something wrong about that. You know, if. If these are the people teaching it, they're not even applying for themselves, then, then really what was the purpose of learning it?

Yeah, you're a little superstitious during class. Yeah, I know there was. At one point I had a professor who was teaching marketing and she was talking about this startup or entrepreneurial cycle thing. And I had been involved in the startup culture for a while and I was like, that's freaking wrong.

I just called her out. I'm like, that's really old philosophy and mindset that you're teaching on how to do entrepreneurship. This Colorado. Yeah.

Where'd you get that? Where did this come from? You know, lo and behold, it came from some old textbook that she had in her office and it's like she didn't like that. Of course, her and I since become somewhat enemies.

I would say that closer I went sour really bad at the end of a quarter or end of a semester, but nice lady. But yeah. I was always sort of taken aback by professors not having any practical experience to apply to us as students or not even taking. And you might relate this with what you're doing for your accelerator is making it real and making it human to the principles you're teaching to somebody.

Because you don't do that, you're missing the mark. Especially with teaching millennials. Yeah, I completely agree. And that's why I feel that really, I strongly feel we're gonna be changing the world with, with these partnerships that we have.

And also just the program itself and the accelerator for the academy when that comes out. Because it's going to, it's going to, you know, it's all things that we've learned from ourselves as opposed to, you know, theoretical. And I know what it's like to be sitting in class, think, thinking, this is not what I'm supposed to be learning right now. And I really feel that this is going to bring a new perspective to education.

I often find myself or myself in class reading either entrepreneur related or start related articles or actually just responding to emails for my business. I just didn't care what's going on. I was like, I can do it for me. I might as well do work for myself because I get paid for that.

I'm not getting paid to sit in the seat. You know, I'm paying to be there, so I might as well be making up what I'm paying to be there for. All right. Exactly.

Yeah, Right. And I wanted to actually do this at one point, but come up with a specific number that relates to how much am I paying per, let's say hour to be in school and my ROI from each class making that up in work. So if I'm in a marketing class, what am I applying for that class? The ROI associated with that class and evaluating all academics on some sort of number related to, to that.

But that's in the future and I'll probably blog post about or something. I will talk a little bit about your lifestyle. Design. So the topics I have here is a question because I know that you, you travel a lot, you're very well traveled.

I mean, right now you're currently in China. It sounds like slightly raining behind you very soon. Yeah, if it's too loud, I can go to another room. No, you're trying to.

It doesn't sound too loud. It's just kind of like it's nice and soothing. I want to talk about your lifestyle design because you currently have. About the number I have here is about eight to 10 virtual assistants at any given time.

Okay. First, how did you discover using virtual assistants? Maybe an experience you could possibly share with that. And why is that so important to what you do?

So I actually think it was the four hour work week that actually I heard about before then. But then when I read four Hour Workweek, it gave specific examples of how virtual assistants were used. I thought it was very interesting when I read it at the time though. This is before I started aptitude.

So I didn't have money to have a virtual assistant. I didn't also know how I'd use them, but on a day to day basis. The thing is, the reason I have, I think it's because they help with not just me, but everyone on the team. So for Fernando, they're managing his schedule.

For dpanche, they're managing our schedules, figuring out, doing data research, figuring out ways to. They do a lot of things that help us scale up on a much faster level. The things that I would do myself normally, I realized, like I would say that, you know, the way that I put it is anything I could do that someone else could do that doesn't require like my specific thinking or brain power. You know, maybe it's researching new markets or this or that.

Then I have them do that because I want to make sure that all the time that I focus my personal self on is based around, you know, what can I only do myself? Which I know that most things someone else can do, but the things I feel most comfortable doing myself. So can you give me an example? I know like scheduling is a typical one, but outside of that, for example, I had them create an entire database of all the universities and private schools across pretty much the world.

We just finished South America this week. We already have the US and like United Kingdom and most of Europe. We're making a list of all the schools that we can reach out to and then we'll have them also reach out for us to all the schools across the world. So, you know, normally if it was Just, you know, deep on Fernando and I doing that, that would take us a very long time.

But because we'd have, you know, half of the virtual assistants, like five people doing that all at once, and it can be done in as little as a few days. And then they can also out manage with incoming requests. Like, we're getting a lot of calls one day. You know, they can take care of a lot of that for us.

So it really helps us with scaling up in a much faster level. Or, you know, if it was with agency stuff that we did in the past, you know, like crafty reductions, creating a list of potential contacts, you know, organizing all that data that normally would take me forever to do. And what source do you find your people outsource through? It really varies.

A lot of our virtual assistants originally came from Upwork, which was previously seen on Odesk. I like. I like. I don't like Upwork as much anymore, but I used to because of the quality of the people, they were very high compared to a lot of other freelance sites.

So now what we do, though, is we have. When we hire them, like, I have a manager that manages virtual assistants. Well, I have two managers because they manage different. Because some of the virtual assistants do different things.

So they will then take care of, like, doing all that. So essentially for me, all I have to do is, let's say I have an idea. The way I look at it is like, if I have an idea, I just post it on basecamp and then the manager will look at it and assign the person to it, and that's it. So, okay, tell me a time where you possibly the outcome was not so good with a virtual assistant.

Maybe at the very beginning, I never had any horror stories, thankfully. I mean, I had times where they were just extremely slow or not doing things on time. So then I just wouldn't, you know, I had not worked with them anymore. Yeah, I just had it in the contract, but I never had anything that.

I can't think of. Anything that happened that was really like, yeah, that was it. Pretty much just being too slow or something. Oh, yeah.

What about vetting a personal assistant? Like, what do you look for? Like, punctuality, communication. What are the things that.

Communication. Communication is the biggest thing I want to be up to date in terms of what's going on. So, like, you know, the ones that have stayed with us longest are the ones that always kept us up to date in terms of what's going on. And I mean, that's the thing is it depends on what Kind because if they're doing scheduling or like looking at more by personal information, then they need to be someone who's obviously a lot more trustworthy than building some random database of like, you know, conferences or this lab.

Communication. Really? Yeah, I would agree with that wholeheartedly. What about like sensitive information?

And I want to relate that to hiring either like a team because I hear that there you can outsource like teams that are from a specific company or you can outsource to an individual. Which one would you recommend? I've always done with individuals. I, I don't know, I feel at least me personally, I like working directly with individuals and having our team take care of it as opposed to completely giving it to the company.

Either way, I'm sure it would work. But I feel that we have, you know, I feel like there could be potentially more constraints if we did it with completely just another company. Because the thing is, I want us to have, I always want us to have a completely in house team as much as possible. And so, you know, we make our own rules and that kind of thing.

Yeah, I mean that's part of the beauty of being in your own company is you go, well, we don't want to do this, we don't do that way and nobody can tell us. No. Yeah, exactly. So it's a big benefit of doing that.

All right, let's talk a little bit more about lifestyle design. So you travel the world and we talked about apps on the app, virtual assistants. But what else do you do? Lifestyle design, being able to travel, working functionally from a different spot.

What else is in that element? I mean, like, you know, it's harder to do when I'm traveling, but when I'm in, you know, when I'm in the U.S. i'm not traveling. I go to the gym as much as possible, generally four or five times a week.

And my goal, you know, I wake up usually around 6am and you know, I'll already be clearly showered and ready for the day by 7:30am so, you know, because I feel that one of the big like for working out is for me, like that's kind of my coffee is just working out and then just being ready for the day and also just relieves any stress and that kind of stuff that I'm not like, you know, stressed out constantly or anything like that. But if I was, then it's almost like doing meditation, which I also, you know, I definitely will take time to just sit and think. I do that a lot actually. It's just I don't call meditating, but, you know, just sitting close my eyes and figuring out solutions, different things.

And the way that our system works, which is really helpful, is that because we have all these different team members, you know, that take care of all these different areas. When I just po. You know, I'll just spend. I might just stay in my room for 15, 20 minutes and just think about the solution to this batch and then I'll post it on daycamp and someone will take care of it.

And that system for me is like one of the biggest things that saves me a ton of time because something that would take me, you know, 10 hours to do myself, I just post the request and it's. It's gotten in, you know, for a much shorter period of time. Is that something that you came across to do it that way or is that something that somebody advised you to do it that way? I mean, the concept of virtual assistance was from, you know, Tim Ferriss, people like that, and random blogs I've read.

But the concept of like having this whole system where I can just. If I have an idea, then I have it posted. I mean, I don't wanna say I came up with that concept, of course, but it's just something that I looked at. What is taking me the most time and what.

What are the things that I'm doing that I shouldn't be doing because it can be delegated to someone else. Anything that can be delegated to someone else, I do that as much as possible. So. But for me, my biggest thing is that I'm very big, very, very big on trust.

And anyone that I bring into the company has to be someone I trust a lot. Even if it's. Even if it's a virtual assistant that doesn't have to do a lot of things that are very, you know, valuable, not valuable like, you know, they have to do very top secret things. Even if they're not doing that, I still need to have a good feeling about them beforehand.

And so that's why for a while, it took me a while to be able to start delegating on tasks to other people because I felt that I was scared to give it to someone and they mess up and then it doesn't work right or whatever. So. But over time, I began to. As I began to learn more about feeling out how people are, now we're able to do it.

It's becoming like really like a life changing thing for me in terms of time. So is it like an immediate assessment that you're like, this Is somebody that I can get good vibes from them or is it you have a conversation with them and then you're like a little bit closer to that conclusion? It completely depends. Like if it's a developer, the developer, like, you know, besides having my existing developers about the person, it's also about that process takes longer than if it's, you know, virtual assistant.

Because developers are very important for our company because we have it's, you know, it's, it's entirely what was going to say. It's if we're, you know, if it's something that is like a virtual system that is doing data streaming tasks, obviously we talk about them, but it's not as a big of a deal as a developer because if it's a developer, they have to be completely honest. You know, this is one of the reasons, for example, we give them the test project before we even give them a real project and we assess how they are throughout the whole time. You know, do they say things that this is.

What I did in the beginning was like, you know, I had a different developer who didn't know existing developers like over the code. And you know, if the developers would say to me, hey, this is really hard to do, I'd ask other developers and say, hey, is this actually hard to do? And then I'd always be getting like the real feedback in terms of what the truth was. And so because one of the biggest things is like I don't want the developers are like extrepating myself.

But yeah, they're very important. So that's why I make sure that like we got them a lot more than just, you know, virtual system. Yeah, I didn't ask you at the very beginning, but are you a developer yourself? So When I was 13, I did a lot of web development, but specifically apps.

I've never coded that myself personally. So I've come into this problem partially in my business at times, but judging people's quality of code and knowing if it's appropriately priced or not. Any recommendations on strategizing that? Because a lot of my audience are people who just own businesses or would like to develop something but don't know where to start on how to gauge other people's quality and their actual price.

I mean, I think the biggest thing is looking for not just one, but even two separate developers that are smart. And some of you have to kind of just feel it out yourself, but have them look it over and make sure that they're actually doing a great job. That's really the easiest way Besides, learning how to code yourself is. Which.

Learning. It would take a lot longer. So I think the easiest way is to just have, you know, pay someone else to look it over really quickly and go, hey, make sure this is good. Yeah.

Reminds me of a story. I don't know if you know who AJ Forstride is, but he's the founder of iCracked, and he's up there in the Bay Area. And when he first started doing iCrack, he actually went to China at one point. They repair cell phones.

And when he was there, he brought along a friend and paid his friend, who speaks Chinese, more to assess whether or not people were lying to him because he didn't speak in Chinese. So he had this conversation, and he had this other guy sort of judge whether or not what was going on was truthful. You know, you gotta do that sometimes. You gotta mitigate your risk.

Did he find out what they were? Yeah, it allowed him to. It prevented him from making hiccups along the way. And I think that was from some investor in his company.

Today, just hire another person, go along with you. Pay them a lot more. Just tell the truth. Bring somebody from the US with you.

Yep. I like that. That's the way to do it. Yeah.

And it. I bet in the long run, if you have successful company, it's worth it to pay somebody a couple grand to save you hundreds of thousands of dollars down the line, not make a bad deal out of it. Totally, Totally. Yeah, definitely.

Definitely. All right. I really like what you talked about for your morning routine. Is there anything else that you do in your daily practices?

I mean, I use Google Calendar, and I don't say I live by that, but, you know, I use that a lot because I just plan everything, and I. You know, I have a certain list of things I need to do each day, which I plan in advance each week before. And then from there, I just think my Google Calendar schedule based around that. And then I also save time for unexpected things because I feel one of the biggest things, like, I would say my life completely changes every two, three, four weeks.

And so, you know, like, you know, I'm in Hong Kong right now. If you'd asked me, like, a month ago if I'd be in China or. Well, because it's in Shanghai, too, which, if anyone asked me that a month ago, I would have, like, not thought I would be in China for any reason. And then here I am, you know, and so I always save.

I always save time to expect unexpected. I like that. I think more people should take note of that for their agendas. I also live by my Google calendar.

If I, when I get too busy, I have to have my calendar, but I'm not too busy. I don't need my calendar. But it's definitely something I need to have as a backbone. Always.

I do like what you said about having a weekly planning session. Do you sit down on any specific day of the week or anything like that? Okay, here's what the next seven days should look like. Generally Sunday, I will look at, you know, what was completed this week when you sit down the next week and then you know, everything I'm very big on, like setting a small amount of goals and figuring out, okay, like whatever I'm doing has to be related to achieving that goal and if it's not related to that, then I should be doing it.

And obviously you want to save time to, you know, enjoy yourself with life. Especially if you're traveling. I don't want to be sitting on computer. Not like exploring Hong Kong or Shanghai when I was like, I don't check out the area, but it's, it's.