Sold for Nearly $1B and Spent 3 Years Lost in a Painting Studio

Sean Weisbrot: Which is harder being a founder or being an investor.

Mike Lazerow: Being a founder is so much harder. Investors have their own worries. We've done both. You gotta raise money. You gotta create a product that invest that entrepreneurs like. But the existential dread of being an entrepreneur, of waking up and not knowing where your next client is, who's gonna quit? How you're gonna fill this hole in your team. That is just such a different experience and having lived both. There's no doubt that entrepreneurs have a much harder job than investors.

Sean Weisbrot: Hey, business leaders and marketers. What if your brand could be featured right here? This ad spot could be yours. This channel is watched by a dedicated audience of ambitious founders, executives, and professionals who are actively looking for tools and services to help their business grow. If you wanna put your brand in front of this highly dedicated audience, that's difficult to reach. I'm currently looking for a few strategic partners for the channel. To learn more about sponsorship opportunities, click the link in the description. Let's go together. So I actually interviewed a guy a long time ago who was a vc, quit to become an entrepreneur and then quit to go back to being a VC because he said the same thing.

Mike Lazerow: So I'd love both. However, you're not an investor unless you have money, and so once you have the money, it's about making the right decisions and supporting the entrepreneurs, and the rest is really out of your hands. When you're the entrepreneur, you are responsible for, whether it's five people at your company or 5,000, you're responsible for those people. You're responsible for kind of getting to the future faster, and there's pressure. Is different. Having said that, I'd love to get an entrepreneur more. I love suffering more than sitting around and just deploying capital. And the suffering of an entrepreneur is where you find your purpose and your passion in life if you're an entrepreneur.

Sean Weisbrot: But aren't you currently focused as a vc?

Mike Lazerow: We do both. We have a VC business, which you have about 400 million assets under management, velvet Sea Ventures. We also have our own private equity business where we're buying cashflow businesses, so we own businesses, and so we're running those businesses. And you know the book process, which we kind of wrote a book, and then it became a New York Times bestseller that felt like a company. And so we're basically scratching both itches. I will tell you that our suffering and our concerns come more from owning the businesses than just the investment side.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah, I've spoken recently to several PE firms and they are thinking about buying companies and having to raise money from other people 'cause they're not independently wealthy, so they've gotta raise money from people to go buy those businesses and to prove that they can run those businesses. And so they, their concerns were similar where they're like, yeah. You know, they, they didn't have bo both of the, the founders hadn't previously opened a business. And I, I said, you know, how do you, you know, justify buying a business when you don't really have experience running a business? He's like, but my, my PE firm is a business. I'm running a business.

Mike Lazerow: It is a business, so our venture capital firm is a business. You know, we had to go out and raise capital. We then had to like deploy it into entrepreneurs who we really believed in. It's just a different type of business. If you are fortunate enough to be a venture capitalist, it's the best business model ever. You get paid a to manage the money, and you get a piece of the upside, typically 20% after you return your capital. Our buying businesses, that's all our capital. It is. We're responsible for the teams. We feel like we're part of the team. So it's just a different type of business. But if you look at people who've built great venture businesses or PE businesses, they're entrepreneurs. So you can't say that, whether it's Devon Perak at I at Insight, or you know, Josh Kushner at Thrive. Built businesses as an entrepreneur, but they're very unique in their space.

Sean Weisbrot: Are you taking the profit from the VC firm to fund the PE firm?

Mike Lazerow: I mean, it's all in one bucket. So Cass and I have worked together for 30 years. We have, you know, done eight businesses and so, you know, I wouldn't say we're taking one to fund the other. I would say that our success as an entrepreneur, where we made, you know, boatloads of cash, that has powered our ability to then go find deals and buy companies. Whereas the venture capital business even know a big. Big portion of the money is our money. We also have outside investors. So you know, success breeds success. But what we like about is on one side it's all about innovation and the future and deep tech and software and AI and you know, and Liquid Death and some other brands that we love. And then on the other side we're talking about. Boring businesses. So an executive search business that's been around for 25 years with 2200, you know, clients and 6,500 successful placements, you know, that's a business that generates cash, that if you just serve the customer well do what you say. And in that case, higher a-list talent, you'll continue to grow it, which is why we love it. So it's this barbell approach that as investors and entrepreneurs we love.

Sean Weisbrot: What's been the thing that you've enjoyed the most? Working on which brand?

Mike Lazerow: Man? Oh man. I mean, we have a hundred deals on the venture side, both personally and through the fund, and I think the most enjoyable part of that is working with entrepreneurs and seeing them succeed. There's nothing better than seeing an entrepreneur grind it out, suffer, get to the other side and reach their dreams. Whether it's being a public company, which we've, you know, done or, you know, big exit, like the $5 billion exit. Um, that's scopely one of our seed investments had to. Savvy games. You know, liquid Death is a really great example of, here's a creative director, Mike Cesario, who comes up with an idea to market a wellness product water in a very novel, innovative way across social media. Did we think it was gonna be a billion dollar plus company? We thought it could be a big company, but seeing him succeed. Has given us a lot of just personal enjoyment since we were there from pre-launch in the beginning. And then on the owning business side, it's really seeing people reach their full potential. So it's all about people. It's all about, you know, where are you today, where do you wanna be? And we've just worked with great people like Dina Berg, who's a COO of that business who came from tech and wanted to run her own business. And you know, she's just done a phenomenal job. So it's. You know, it's just seeing people succeed and we love that.

Sean Weisbrot: What are you most excited about for the future?

Mike Lazerow: The number one thing I'm excited about is boring businesses that use AI to streamline processes, to find new customers, to communicate in a better way. And we just think that although all of this. Discussion about AI has been focused on open AI and these multi-billion dollar platforms. It's the plumbers, it's the painters, it's executive search firms, it's the accountants, it's the small law firms that are gonna use the this technology. And if you are owning a business today, even if you have three employees, how do you use this technology to automate a lot of the stuff that frankly you hate doing? Like stuff that you don't love doing, whether it's cold outreach, whether it's kind of. Inventory. Right. So I was just talking to a small business owner who, you know, has a retail store in New York City and they're automating all of their rebuying of inventory. So it used to be you'd spend hours like walking through the store and this company has like thousands of SKUs. So I'm not gonna talk about what it is, but it, you know, it's in kind of like the crafting space and has a lot of stuff. And so now he gets four hours a week back because he's able to say, oh, we're low on this. We should order this. And then using the technology to understand like. What's selling fast? What should they ramp up? What areas in the store should they re, you know, repurpose for other things? And so this technology, like we both were probably on AI right before this interview. Right? I know I was. And whether you're building apps, whether I was just building a dashboard on lovable, um, use the technology. If you aren't doing it today, your competition will, they'll get to the future faster and they'll just have a better business.

Sean Weisbrot: I've been saying this for at least a year, maybe a year and a half. I've been screaming at everyone I can. He runs SEO Agency. I think it's an eight figure agency, and he's using AI in everything that he possibly can for that agency, serving customers, processes, et cetera. He has another business that buys boring businesses that AI is not gonna disrupt. And I think you two have a very similar philosophy. He, he goes straight out there and says, I use ai. You need to use ai, but I'm only going to buy businesses that AI's not going to destroy. And he says, plumber businesses, uh, you know, h HVAC businesses. You know, you can use AI to make those businesses more efficient. And so he's probably looking to buy from guys that are in their sixties and seventies, and the kids don't want anything to do with it. And so someone younger can come in and make things automated, make them more efficient, make them more profitable, possibly, you know, add revenue to, even if you don't, it's still cashflow. If it's a, you know, 2 million, 5 million a year, it's still gonna be profit.

Mike Lazerow: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: I think you have a very similar philosophy as him,

Mike Lazerow: and it's not, other technology was not accessible to people who weren't technologists, right? Like, you're not gonna build an iPhone app. This is the best technology for whoever you are. If you're an 80-year-old running a business, whether it's a law firm, accounting firm. If you have a beginner's mind, which I know a lot of you have, you can use this technology like Alan Patov, who you know was one of the buddy media investors He invented, you know, venture capital, you know, or helped invent venture venture capital with Apex Partners. He has a new fund focused on the Aging of America primetime partners, and they're using AI across everything because you don't need to be it. A programmer, you need to be able to talk to the system. And how you do that is you just do it. You start communicating with these machines, Hey. I'm looking for a way to store investment pitches that are coming my way. What's the best way to do it? Well, here's some ideas. If I were to use that, what's the scale from one to five I should be focused on, right? It's like this co-pilot thing that you're just talking, and don't be scared. There's no reason to be scared to start using it, and the more you use it, the more excited you get. I've seen it hundreds of times now.

Sean Weisbrot: I'm gonna throw you a curve ball. You may have been asked this question before, maybe not. It's something that I have felt and struggled with and I, I think you might have experienced it as well, which is why I wanna ask. When I had a consulting business that did eight figures, I obviously walked away with a lot of money from that, enough that I felt like I was lost. Like I, and I lost my sense of purpose in a way like. I don't need to work anymore. Should I, uh, what should I do? How should I feel? Like, what should I do about this? And you know, I, I know that you had really large exits, so I was wondering if after one of those exits you kind of felt lost, you felt disconnected, or you felt numb, or, you know.

Mike Lazerow: So yes, I mean all the above. And I've spent a lot of time with founders and their organizations like Chapter X that actually are focused on like Founders post exit. I was at one of their events in LA earlier this year, and a very big founder sold the business for, you know, over a billion dollars and made hundreds of millions. You, he said flat out, I'd give the money back in a second just to. Get my company back and find my purpose again. I said, would you really? Let's be serious about this. And what happens is, you know, and you hear about this, but when you experience it, it really hits hard. The money doesn't change you. For the most part. You realize that life is not about the money. It's about. The passion, the purpose, the waking up in the morning and having a place to go. And we all feel lost. I did, so I haven't talked about this, but after I left Salesforce, we sold to Salesforce close to a billion dollars. I spent close to four years there. Loved it, still loved the company. And then I'm, I was burned out and I went to Mark Benioff. I said, you know, I'm gonna take some time off. And I got a painting studio. In New York City, Cass, my wife actually got it and I was just miserable 'cause I was bad at painting. I wasn't doing what I was put on this earth to do. I didn't have any sort of purpose, even though I was working on a series of paintings based on my entrepreneurial experience. And it was a good like three years that I was looking for my way, which is why I jumped back into being a founder. Started a company that ended up not working out and launching the venture fund and getting to the point where I was like, I work for a living. It's what I do. It's who I am, it's why I'm here. And the other thing that happens when you make money is other people start treating you very differently. I don't know if this was your experience. They think you're smarter. They think you somehow have changed their expectations, good or bad. You know, we always pick up the bill and we always, even when we didn't have money, we just think it's a, like, we love taking people out to dinner and like treating when we can. I mean, now it's like for some friends they like fight over the bill, whatever. But there are expectations from some about how you spend your money. Um. A lot of inbound asks a lot of inbound investment opportunities. Saying no is hard. We made a lot of bad investments 'cause we weren't strong enough to say no to certain people who maybe have supported us in the past. And so it just took a little kind of getting back on our feet. However, it's like these are first world problems, right? Like these are, you have all the issues in the world. They're awesome issues. We're talking about like identity. We're not talking about how do I feed a family. We're talking about what do I do with my day verse, how do I get outta bed because you know, I'm paralyzed, I have health issues, right? So we're constantly reminding ourselves that we're the luckiest people in the world. We have our health, we have great relationships, including, you know, our marriage. Cass and I worked together. And no matter how down we get, and we got down just yesterday, we're like, man, we're doing so much shit that we hate, like literally like stuff that we're doing with our businesses that we're like, how are we in this position that we're spending our time doing stuff that we really don't love? And then we come back and we just say, 'cause we're entrepreneurs. We show up, we shovel ship. Like there is no, like, just do the thing you love. You also have to tend to the store and tend to people and be present. And a lot of rich people when they retire, they say they, you have one friend who just sold a, you know, a bunch of medical practices and he sold it thb. Below the market price to his partners incidentally, and said, listen, I'm gonna sell this to you for a steal. It was a lot of money, but still like not top dollar, our deals. You never call me, don't call me for anything. I don't want to be involved. And what he realized is that his day was just like you had 40 of these medical practices. It was just doing. The shoveling of shit, the grunt work, which is had got him down after 60 years. He's an older gentleman. Um, you know, and having said that, like if your, if your biggest issues are like finding your purpose game on, because there are plenty of ways you can find your purpose, whether it's through philanthropy, new businesses, investing, giving back teaching, um, you know, we've looked at all of those.

Sean Weisbrot: So I didn't have the same kind of experience you did in terms of, uh, people changing how they treat me, because I didn't have, I didn't like when, when you sold your company, I'm sure there was press coverage, right? Because it was a large enough amount of money that people hear about

Mike Lazerow: it. Yeah. The largest exit in New York City in 10 years when we sold.

Sean Weisbrot: Right. I made money very quietly. There was no press about it. And so nobody knew that anything had changed unless I told them. And the few people that I told were like my parents, my brother, my, my wife, we were dating at the time. So she, she was with me when that business started to blow up. And I was like, oh, she's a good luck charm. I should keep her around.

Mike Lazerow: Smart man.

Sean Weisbrot: And that's how we're married now. Of the few people, like there's some friends that like, they know that I've made money, but they have no idea what the details are. But these are people I've known for like 20, 30 years. You know? And the people that know me that, that are, I've only known for a few years, like from Vietnam or from Portugal, they don't know anything. They know I run a podcast. If any of them listen to the podcast, they'll hear me talk about it. But if they don't listen, which a lot of them didn't even know I had a podcast, which is fine. But basically I just don't tell people and I dress like I, I, I live in a, you know, I don't live in a fancy place. I don't have a car. I don't. Buy fancy things. So I, I dress like a middle class and I act like a middle class. I mean, you know, they see, like, I go and I spend a few months in the us. I spend a few months in Portugal. I go to Japan, like they can see that I am able to spend money, but nobody treats me any different. And I, I like it because I have a lot of friends that work for other people and I like them and I like spending time with them. But I also have friends that run their own businesses. Some of them make millions of dollars a year. And, and others, you know, they make less. But, uh, my goal has been I wanna keep my anonymity to the best that I can. Again, you know, being on YouTube, how anonymous are you? But I can travel around and nobody knows who I am. I can make friends and nobody knows who I am. No. So I can kind of keep those things for myself.

Mike Lazerow: Yeah. You're only 300 episodes in. Let's give it two years. And people will recognize you everywhere on this globe. I've seen it before. You have it, whatever it is.

Sean Weisbrot: Hmm. And in terms of purpose, so like, what was really funny was I was on the Nile River cruise from, you know, from, uh, Southern Egypt up to Northern Egypt. It was like a four, four day cruise, and I woke up one day on the cruise. I was getting dressed to go outside of my room. I'm, I'm looking at myself in the mirror and I go, you're making so much money you don't know how to spend it all. You're traveling the world. You're literally living the life that you want. Why do you feel empty? And I realized it was because the business that I had didn't make me feel good. I did it because I could. I did it because the money was there and I did it because there was a demand, and people kept coming to me and asking me for me to do it, but I didn't care about it. And that's when I lost my sense of purpose. And, and then like two months later, the industry changed. It was in the blockchain space. The industry changed, and I lost all my revenue. I, I lost my ability to generate revenue with that business because everybody like lost their ability to spend just cash. Right. And then I had to change into something else. And so now I was relieved of this fear of doing something that I didn't really care about, but then the ability to keep making that money stopped where I had been making that kind of money for two years, and I was like, oh, so I don't have to have this problem of, I don't like what I do, but now I have this problem of I'm not making any money anymore. Now my expenses didn't really change. I, I wasn't suddenly spending, you know, $20,000 a month or 5,000 thousand a you know, like even today, you know, this, this happened eight, nine years ago. I'm still only spending like three or $4,000 a month. Like my life hasn't changed. Now, I, I did do like a zero gravity flight, which is like 15 grand. Like I've, you know, I've done a few things that are nice. I did laser eye surgery for six grand. Um. But like, my life hasn't changed except I can continue to have the freedom to be where I wanna be and do what I wanna be. And I don't have to work if I don't want to, but, but I do. And so I'm, I've kind of gotten past it where I had this sense of like, I don't really wanna work, but now being married and we wanna have a kid, I'm like, okay, I need to make money because my wife won't be happy if I don't. And my kid won't have the life that I want them to have if, you know, because inflation is going crazy and all, you know, money is like, you know, money is, uh, losing purchasing power very quickly. So you, in order to protect your, your net worth, like you have to keep working. You just have to create, keep creating value and, and earning money, which sucks. It's like a hamster wheel, but, um, it's a different kind of hamster wheel.

Mike Lazerow: Well, there are two, I mean, there are two ways to be rich. You make a boatload of money more than you could ever spend, or you don't spend a lot of money and I think you've lived both. Yeah, right. Like you are rich because you're able to not spend a lot of money and you made some money, so you have some freedom there. I think money at the end of the day is great. It buys security, it buys health. At least in the us, healthcare is now a luxury product and it buys freedom. It buys you the freedom to do what you want. It buys you the ability to get your time back. You literally could buy back your time, right? Like by hiring people instead of doing your own booking, you can have an assistant, you can. You know, we have very small family office, but you know, we don't do everything. We have a great team, and at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is what type of life. Do you want? What's on your plate? What's not on your plate? We always wanted kids, so we had kids early when we had no money, we always wanted to give back. We started doing Cycle for Survival with raising money for cancer research. Close to 20 years ago, before we had any money. Now we've helped raise 400 million and have donated millions ourselves, right? And so you have to have a purpose no matter what. That purpose has to be greater than yourself. If the purpose is I just wanna make money to spend more or to go on more expensive trips, you will be empty. We've seen it, we've felt it in many ways where we didn't. We felt like we didn't have like our full purpose. We've never been without complete purpose, but. We didn't feel like we were maximizing our potential. And so now people are who know us are like, why are you working so hard? You're this VC company of P firm. You wrote a book, you're doing podcasts, you're creating content. You're, you know, you own a pickleball team, you own a golf team. You are doing more deals, right? You're announcing stuff and we're doing it because we've made a decision to do it. We don't do anything without saying, does this push us forward? And B, it's just what we do. It's our purpose. Like, why did I get up at eight o'clock in the morning in Chicago to do this? Because I love it, right? Like we, this is what we do. I feel like I'm now communicating to people who I don't know and who hopefully will at some point meet. And I think what you felt was that lack of like, you know, purpose bigger than me. Because me gets old no matter who you are. Like, it just gets old thinking about yourself. And for me at least, the more I think about myself, the darker the thoughts get. Hmm. Right? Like if I'm not working, I'm like, oh, I've gained weight, I got dues, or I've, you know, should I really be spending money on this? Or, um, you know, why didn't this friend call me back? Right. It's like, but when I'm like working hard and I'm at my best. I'm looking at the best in others and I'm really not worried about myself. It's really worried about like these projects and other people and our brains have a way of going at least a lot of us dark when it sits idle, right? When your brain is just sitting there thinking it doesn't think of like great things, a lot of time it thinks about, man, I want a cheeseburger like. It's like, I wanna do shit that's not good for me. And like the harder we work, the less money we spend. Which is kind of the, the great thing when we weren't working, we were like, like, it was like, I don't know, let's go to like expensive lunches. Let's, like, we just, were spending more money and uh, you know, so it all starts with like, find your purpose and your passion. That's really what that book was about. Shoveling shit. A love story. It's like it's miserable being an entrepreneur. And it's where you find the most rewarding things in your life, that purpose, passion, social connections.

Sean Weisbrot: What was funny was I haven't taken, like I've traveled, like last year I went to five different countries, right? I spent like almost a month in east country, so I, I travel a lot, but I bring my laptop and. I do. I work as I go through these countries, so I'm traveling, I'm seeing things, I'm meeting people, but I'm still working. And my trip to Japan with my brother was the first time in probably five or six years that I legitimately took a holiday because the time zone difference was so great that I just couldn't take calls. It's like 16 hours with to Ellie. 14, 15, 16 hours to the US just couldn't take calls and I was walking six to seven hours a day. No joke. I like 25, 30,000 steps on average in Japan and through all of it, I found that after like four or five days of like not working, I had so much time to think in Japan. That I started working from my phone because I, I, I brought my laptop, but I didn't work from the laptop. I brought it because we had to do some planning for like the next steps of the trip and things like that. And doing it from a phone is really difficult to do. Um, plus, like, I would feel super naked and lost if I didn't have my laptop near me, even if it wasn't on. I was using my phone like I was using Gemini, I was using voice mode and I was having conversations with Gemini because I got an idea for like several different businesses that I saw were, were thriving in Japan, but didn't exist in the US And so I was having Gemini interview me and talk about I plans, and my brother was like, can you just be in the, like, we're in this beautiful ass forest in the middle of Japan. The trees are like, you know, 500 feet tall. Can you just. Be in the moment. And I'm like, I'm trying, but like this, I, he's like, will it kill you to put the phone down for five minutes? I go, yes, it, I have to get this out my head. And like, I was struggling with it.

Mike Lazerow: But that's how you're hardwired like Yeah, I'm laughing 'cause that's like me, like that's all entrepreneurs. You know? I think back to, there's this guy who was a. Junior marketing manager at a company that sold coffee beans and he says there's a conference in Venice or Italy that I want to go to. I think it was Florence or Rome. And he goes over and he sees this like espresso culture and he comes back and he goes, yeah, we should just sell beans. We should like open up like cafes and actually make coffee and create a place for people to,

Sean Weisbrot: yeah, Starbucks convene.

Mike Lazerow: And the company's like, you're crazy. And it was Howard Schultz and he said, fine, I'm going to do it myself. And he like, literally, he, he pitched Starbucks to his company that he was like a junior marketing person and it was, I mean, the company was named Starbucks and he launched it, did a few cafes, ended up buying this bean company, buying Starbucks and building it. The power of getting out of your own routine and seeing how other people live, spend money spend their time, has led to trillions of dollars of value creation and more importantly, passion. Howard didn't just wanna sell coffee. He wanted to launch this kind of really exciting cafe business, right? My friend Mark Glassman, who's, you know, spent a lot of time in Hill Country, Texas, brought Hill Country barbecue to New York. You know the name of it of his concept is Hill Country Barbecue. Incredible barbecue, Texas Barbecue in the middle of New York City and DC and some other places, right? And so what you're experiencing is if you're an entrepreneur, there's no other way. Like it goes back to that movie, the Crying Game of why did the Scorpion. Sting the frog on the way across the river, right? Because if he stings the frog, they both die. It's in his nature. He can't stop himself the scorpion, so they both die. It's in your nature to think like that, which really resonates to me, and I know to hundreds of entrepreneur friends of ours.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. So the, the funny thing is what, what happened was, I, so I'm vegetarian. And it's really hard in Japan as a vegetarian to eat because they make everything with fish or meat inside of it. And so I found myself eating at a lot of the convenience stores, and seven 11 in particular had this Lotus Root snack. It's a, a plant from Asia, generally it's a Chinese plant, but they're, it's all over Southeast Asia, and they had these dried. Uh, you know, salted, you know, the seasoned lotus in, in a, a cup that was vacuum sealed. And I found myself eating one or two of them a day because they're so delicious. And like, you know, having lived in Asia for half my life, I've eaten lotus root before. So I knew what it was and I was like, yeah, this is healthy, this is good, et cetera. And so after a few days of this, I'm like, you know, this doesn't exist in the us. It's such a healthy, nutritious, and delicious plant, or it's like a tuber, I guess this is something that could be a healthy snack in the us.

Mike Lazerow: It's high fiber. It tastes good. Yeah,

Sean Weisbrot: right. So what I did was I asked Gemini, I said, tell me about the difference between the nutrition facts between potatoes. And Lotus Roots. I wanna see if this, there's something marketable here, and it said high fiber and I didn't think about it in the moment. But then also in Japan, I, so I, I pay for YouTube premium so I can download, uh, I can download videos locally to my phone. So I would like watch videos on the train or stuff like that when we didn't have access to internet. And there was an interview from the, my first Million podcast, I don't know if you've heard of it. My, I listen to them sometimes and they were doing an interview with this guy who has launched several hundred million dollar plus brands or billion dollar brands and or has invested in, in these when they were really early and helped them to scale. And he had this playbook. And at the same time, they had a challenge where the hosts and him, uh, off air before they recorded, decided to come up with a few random ideas for things that could be disruptive in the e-commerce space. And they mentioned high fiber. As being like Metamucil could be disrupted because it's meant for old people. And like, you know, the, the guy was talking about how his mom was visiting and she needed her Metamucil and he went to go buy it and he saw how horrible the packaging is and how it's geared towards older people, but younger people like, like us, you know, like I'm 39, you know, my parents think Metamucil, were thinking about our health now. Right. I'm getting ready, you know, hopefully we'll have a kid next year, so we'll be thinking about our health much more. And, and that clicked with me because the other guys agreed with him that fiber was something that could be disruptive. And I went back to my Gemini chat and I realized that the same weight of a lotus root compared to a potato has like four times more fiber. And so I realized if I were to create a chip form of the lotus route like I had from seven 11, put it in a bag, sold in the us. A hundred grams of this would give you like six grams of fiber, which is considered, you could call it high fiber and it could be this, you know, specific classification. And so I've been thinking about this for the last few days. The biggest problem is like co-packing, manufacturing, tariffs. You know, like if I did it, I'd wanna do it completely in the us. I don't wanna deal with tariffs. 'cause there's uncertainty of that. It could destroy your business if you have to deal with it. And so I'm like, okay, can I find a manufacturer that has it all? Or do I have to find a manufacturer that deals with other vegetables and I have to find the supply chain and plug it into them and have them, you know, create the different flavorings and seasoning. So like this has been in my head and I've left it alone for the last few days because I've been really busy with other things. But it's like in my head, and that's what I was thinking about in Japan.

Mike Lazerow: I love it. And when you said Lotus Root, I immediately went to Fiber. We had an office in Singapore and I used to eat a lot of it. And so, and it's not here. I mean, you get it kind of in like Chinese food restaurants. It, it'll be like in a preserved, you know, way. Nothing that's kind of like, probably as fresh as you'd have it. I mean, the convenience stores in Japan, Singapore, throughout Asia. Are great. They're so much, I mean, there's so much bad They're not seven elevens like we, they don't have hot dogs and Slurpees. It's like, you know, people actually eat there. And so listen, I think all everyone has to eat. I don't invest in the food space often. You know, liquid death is the only CPG company, but I love this space. I just don't specialize in and so do it, you know, like. If you're pa what, how I handle businesses. I let them sit as Kas would tell you, I have a hundred business ideas a day and I get very excited. We gotta do this. I've launched some of them, um, not to like create success. I let them sit, let them marinate. If you're excited about it in two weeks after you've really thought about it and done a little research, then. Sit with it for another two weeks, talk to some people, and then if you come outta that process that you're still really fired up, do it.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. Luckily for me, I've got a few weeks where I've got a bunch of things going on for my, my wedding ceremony and all that, so I have to let it sit, unfortunately.

Mike Lazerow: Yeah. So

Sean Weisbrot: what's the most important thing that you've learned in your life so far? And we'll, we'll, we'll use that to end the conversation.

Mike Lazerow: I mean the most important thing across everything, so I'm not talking about like business cheat codes and just life, is that your network is your net worth. Treat people how you wanna be treated. Sounds very biblical, but like it's true. Give, give, give. The more you give, trust me, the more you will get back. As I have kids starting out in the world, I just keep saying, you know, my son Miles, who has an AI company in New York City, you know, go to events. Go to two a night, see how you can help. Go with a mentality of how can I help you in every conversation. That will build a network which will translate into your net worth. It's what I did when I, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk showed up at my office. He just left his father's company and his dad didn't give him equity. I know his dad very well and his first generation, you know, Russian immigrant and I have an idea to like. Sell social media services like I've done with Wine Library tv. I have no money. I've never made over a hundred grand. I can't even afford an office. Can I use your only conference room as my office? We had 900 square feet in New York City spending 12 grand a month. Think about that. 12 grand a month. And Gary's asking for our only conference room. And somehow Cass and I said yes. Right, because we wanted to help this entrepreneur who we kind of got a kick out of. We thought he was funny. We thought he was just like he had it. Whatever it is right now, it made no sense. We should have never given it to him. But he has been such an important friend, confidant, you know, I mentor him, he mentors me. We're kind of constantly bouncing off each other, treat every schmuck who shows up. With that same respect, and you will have a really fruitful life because you may have businesses that come and go, but those people who are connected to you will always be connected to you if you treat them well. And that's been a consistent, not only in business, but personally I the same friends from high school. I have the same friends from college or 12 of us who play fantasy football, get together once a year. Seth Myers, who has his own TV shows up, he's a commissioner. I think he spends more time on the league than he does on his TV Show

Sean Weisbrot: you you went to college with him?

Mike Lazerow: Yeah. We're friends from freshman year and like we just were two dorks at Northwestern University and just treat people well. And that's life. Like literally, that's all life is.

Sean Weisbrot: Thanks for watching. If you liked this insight, I've handpicked another video for you right here on the screen. For more actionable strategies that get you real results, hit subscribe.