SaaS Dads S2/E13: FBI Raided His House, $10M NFL Lawsuit… He Built a Two-Time Gold SaaS Business Anyway

Speaker A: I got my girlfriend pregnant on our first date.

Speaker B: I made probably, I don't know, two to three million dollars over the course of ten years doing that. And it was all money I didn't pay taxes on. It was all money. That was completely illegal. The NFL sued me for $10 million. I contemplated killing myself for about a week. If you don't quit, you're eventually going to win.

Speaker C: Welcome to SAS Dads, where we scale SaaS without sacrificing family. Hold on here. Awesome. All right, so back for another episode of SAS Dash today with Russ Ward, the AI Lead King. How are you, man?

Speaker A: I am, um, wonderful. And it is great to finally be on your podcast. We had known each other for a while, finally got to meet up at the High Level Summit, and it's an honor to be on your show.

Speaker C: We did, mate. And you were super sparkly at the High Level Summit. You were probably one of the best dressed in your gold sparkly jacket to go up and get another, another gold SASS award. So you are two times two gold entrepreneur.

Speaker A: Two times, yeah. This year was my second one in a row. You can see the Mac there behind my head. Very proud of those. I've been with High Levels since almost the beginning. I was there since 2018 and it took me six years to get my first one. So anybody out there who's struggling and working hard and pressing hard, man, just don't give up. Because it took me six years to get one and then I got two in a row.

Speaker C: That's amazing. That's. That's what this is about. I want people to understand the journey to get there. It might not be. Be easy. It's easy for some, but might not be so easy for others. But there's a journey and, uh, everybody's been through one. So I want to talk about your journey. Today. You are known as the AI Lead King. Like using AI and automation to follow up and nurture and build leads for people. Father, 2, 3, 20, uh, 2 year old, 22 year old girl, 14 year old girl, 27 year old boy. So that's right.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker C: You had your first child when you were 13.

Speaker A: I'm thinking I had my first child when I was, when I was 21 years old. So I was, I was a kid having kids. Yes, I was.

Speaker C: I can't even imagine that. I've, I've had a chat with a few people and there's one of the guys interviewed this, and he's actually a granddad. He's 38 and his first kid when he was 14 or 15 or something. I think it was like bailing. Yeah. So tell us about M. Let's go back then a little bit. What's that? Being a dad at 21. Because that's young, right? Were you planning that? Prepared for that surprise?

Speaker B: No.

Speaker A: Some people might be able to relate to this. I was out on a date. I got my, uh, my girlfriend pregnant on our first date. A couple weeks later she called me, told me she was pregnant. And a couple weeks after that we were on an airplane to Las Vegas. It was my first flight I ever took in my life. And we flew to a little chapel out in Vegas and got married. And that's how our life started together. We got back and we didn't know much about each other. We had really just known each other a couple of months. And I had, uh, by that time been kicked out of three colleges. One of them I had a scholarship. I didn't keep my grades up because I started a business. I was doing house painting. I started a painting business. Two others I partied out of. And so she said to me, hey, we're having a kid. You gotta pick. You gotta either finish college or join the military. So I picked join the military. And a couple months later, I signed up for the Navy. I waited until my son was born and then I shipped out to boot camp and started on a eight year journey in the Navy, basically to help take care of my new family and to force myself to work a job I knew I couldn't quit.

Speaker C: Yes. Big start in your young life. You suddenly got a child that you weren't planning for. So, okay, well, now I've got a child, now I've got a new wife that know that well. And then you ship off to a career that, that takes you away from home a lot as well, right? Uh, being in the Navy, you're away at camps and training and stuff like that. I've never been in the military, but my understanding is from deployments and trainings and stuff. So then you're away from home too, right? Is that kind of correct?

Speaker B: I was.

Speaker A: And I didn't know what to expect. I went up to boot camp for, it was eight weeks, and then they sent me to a couple of schools that took a couple of years to get through. I originally signed up to run nuclear reactors because it had the biggest bonus when you joined. Then they found out I was colorblind. So once they found out I was colorblind, I couldn't run nukes anymore. And I ended up being an intelligence analyst. It was a really good fit for me because my mind's very analytical. But, uh, I had to get a really high security clearance, and it took two years for that security clearance to go through. They were going back and interviewing my high school girlfriend, my principal. What they're really trying to do was to see if I did any drugs and if I lied about it and if I was a good or a bad person, trustworthy, stuff like that. And so once I got the security clearance, I got to go through intel school. And then after that, I got sent out to a ship. And very shortly into my first tour of duty, I was on the USS Wasp out of Norfolk, Virginia, as a mini aircraft carrier carried about 1500 Marines, plus a whole bunch of Navy sailors. We were the second ship to deploy after 9 11. So not only did we deploy shortly after I got onto the ship, but we stayed out at sea for over 10 months in a row. And it was difficult because we were away from home the whole time. Communication back then wasn't like it is today. You couldn't just get on, uh, an email and. Or get on a web chat and get an instant response. You had to send mail and mail call was very exciting days and stuff. So that's pretty much how I started my life out.

Speaker C: The 10. 10 months out at sea.

Speaker A: Yeah, that was. That was the first one, 10 months in a row at sea. And I'll tell you what, it got monotonous. It was like if you ever saw that TV show Groundhog's Day, the movie, you'd see the same people walking down the same ladder wells at the same seats. And eventually people just started wanting to

Speaker B: punch each other because they just got sick of each other.

Speaker A: One thing they did nice, though, was every. I think it was 30 or 60 days that we were at sea, they would have what's called a steel be picnic. And then they take us up to the flight deck and they barbecue for us to give, uh, everybody two beers. And that's really where I became an entrepreneur. I realized that everybody wanted more beer, so I started copying the coupons for the beer, and I started selling them for five bucks each and made a whole bunch of money. That very first one,

Speaker C: you were copying them?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: To run in a little bit of fraud in the Navy.

Speaker A: Sure was.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: That's where it started.

Speaker C: Where did it end up?

Speaker A: It ended up in the next part of the story. I was people in the military. I don't know what it's like in the Australian military, but I'm sure it's similar we weren't paid very much. And so I had big goals and dreams. And eventually after my tours of duty on the ship, they gave me choice of orders anywhere in the world. So I picked Hawaii. It was great weather. It was just where everybody wanted to go, right? It was shore duty. I didn't have to deploy out into the sea anymore. And uh, but I needed more money. I wanted to travel with my family, I wanted to buy cool things for them and, and I just didn't make enough. So I started doing probably the dumbest thing you could do. I started selling bootleg DVDs online. I started finding all the TV shows that weren't already released on TV like Seinfeld and the Wonder Years. And these are American shows that you

Speaker B: may or may not know.

Speaker A: And then I just got DVD copies of them, put them on ebay, made some websites and I was banking, man.

Speaker B: I was making an extra 20k a month in addition to my Navy salary. And we were living a really nice life. And so that was what I was doing. However, that's illegal. The chances of getting caught wasn't very high. However, I did have a, uh, really high security clearance and they were constantly checking my background for like, why is this dude getting an extra 20k a month?

Speaker A: I was doing. I was always looking for an entrepreneurial

Speaker B: experiences to enhance my life, enhance the quality of my family's life because it just, I just wasn't ever really willing to settle. And sometimes I did things that was outside the lines, but I was always looking for something.

Speaker C: And how did that end up then with the if you've got security clearance and the Navy are looking at you because 20k a month, this is a, this is going back a few years, right? So we're going to be talking 25 years ago or so. So 20k a month is not bad money now. Yeah, 20 plus years ago, that's really good money. I'm sure people were looking at that reasonably hard. Uh, and what's going on? Where's Russ getting this extra cash from?

Speaker B: I did show up one time with a brand new BMW and that uh, that got a second look one time. The only way anybody at work really knew was because I had some friends. I eventually got into football DVDs and in America we were big time NFL fans. And so I do that. So I got a copy of every super bowl ever made and I started cloning these Super Bowls and I called it Super Bowls on dvd.com. one of the dumbest things I've ever done. Because the NFL comes after you Hardcore. To protect their copyrights. I showed somebody at work because they were a football fan too. And then they turned me in and they said, hey, I think Russ is breaking copyrights and making a bunch of money. So they came at me and they asked, uh, me about it. By then I had already done the smart thing and I transferred everything into my wife's name. So I was like, I don't have a business doing that. My wife might. And that's where it ended. And they actually put me on a polygraph for that.

Speaker C: Thank God.

Speaker B: I really transferred it over to her because I passed the polygraph.

Speaker C: Uh, your wife didn't get in trouble for that. Did she know that's what you were doing?

Speaker A: She wasn't in the military.

Speaker B: She could do whatever she wants. She was a civilian.

Speaker C: But there's no repercussions legally from the real police, so to speak. Not the military police.

Speaker B: The military wasn't worried about her. They were worried about what was I doing. Right. The police came down the road, and when my life completely falls apart, we'll get to that part. But anyway, just to kind of show you the backstory, I was in the Navy. I was also running this bootleg DVD thing on the side that my wife was actually helping me with. And I was able to do cool stuff, man. We lived in Hawaii, but we flew to California all the time, took the kids to Disney World and all the great stuff. And we were having a really good life. Yeah, it was good.

Speaker C: And, uh, were you thinking at the time when you're doing that, I'm doing something wrong here, I shouldn't really be doing it, or was it just a case of, hey, look, I'm doing this, maybe I'm breaking a bit of morals, but it's okay because nobody's getting hurt kind of thing. It's like this I might be doing, breaking the. Nobody's getting hurt, so there's no crime. Was that your attitude towards it?

Speaker B: Looking back, I was a pretty messed up person. I had a pretty crazy childhood. A lot of just chaos as a child. My dad left when I was little. My mom was a party girl, so I was like, just in a. The way I looked at it was that my life was gonna suck regardless. And so I played my whole life. And to this day, I still have a tendency to want to do it. I try to keep myself from it, but I've always looked at life as like, I'm just playing with house money. If I can get out of that little town and not be poor and not be on public assistance. My life's gonna be pretty awesome. So I just pretty much my whole life I've done whatever I wanted and just hoped for the best. And I've greatly exceeded the expectations of me as a child. I didn't really think that I would do anything with my life and I've done a whole lot with my life. So at the time I wasn't really thinking, is this illegal? Is this ethically or morally bad? I was just like, ah, it's a

Speaker A: way to make money.

Speaker B: Now looking back, I've gone through a bunch of therapy and I've done a bunch of really big self improvement stuff myself. Of course that was the wrong thing to do. I would call it a victimless crime because I was stealing copyrights, I wasn't hurting people and stuff, but it was still illegal. I shouldn't have done it.

Speaker C: Okay, and your wife was okay with that? You mentioned she was helping you. At the time. Your wife was just like, okay, this is all right. Because it's helping feed the family and the kids and you get cool stuff. You can buy nice things and you can go on good holidays.

Speaker B: She was totally in on it because literally I worked in the Navy. I had a really stressful job once I was in Hawaii. They had me doing a bunch of different things. I was monitoring Chinese submarines. Uh, I was also deployed for a terrorist operation in the Philippines. I got deployed to the Philippines for a few months. A whole bunch of stuff that I never thought I would sign up for, I got, I ended up doing. I ended up working indirectly for the National Security Agency. And for those that don't know what it is, it's our, it's our spy agency for the rest of the world. So we have the FBI, that's like the top police force in the United States. And then the NSA is the spy agency for the world. So I worked indirectly for those guys. And then my job when I deployed to places was to monitor terrorist cells, give that information to the nsa, and then they would decrypt that information and then tell our SEAL teams where to go get these bad guys. So that, that was pretty wild job. And I wasn't really prepared for it. I was a young guy, man. I. When I deployed to the Philippines and I was working with these SEAL teams, I was probably 24, 25 years old. I was just new into this and I just had to learn on the fly.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's pretty young. I look at that sometimes. Like I said, I've never been in the military, but I look at it sometimes. And look at the young people in the military, and I think you've got these. The kids still, like, 21. You know, people join up younger than that, but they're kids. Right. And, uh, I guess that's. That's why they take them into the age as well, because physically there's reasons, but also they're malleable, and you can direct them and guide them to where you want them to go. But, like, at those ages, you just don't understand so much stuff that you can look back on now and have a different perspective of. I think it's, uh. Yeah, that's a really young age to be doing that kind of stuff and. All right, so I've heard a little bit about where this story goes in the end. But tell me, in your words, what ended up happening with this. This bootleg DVD business that you're running?

Speaker B: Yeah, so really just to tie up the ends on that, I ended up getting out of the military. I was never really cut out to be a military guy. I'm an entrepreneur at heart. I don't follow rules and directions very well. I was always getting in trouble for not following directions. I wasn't disrespectful. I loved the service that I did. I loved serving my country and all that stuff, but I just was butting up against so many rules and regulations, and it's just not my thing. So eventually I got out after eight years. I moved back to Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, where I'm from. And then I really ramped up the bootleg DVD business. I had it. I had my whole basement just full of these duplicator machines. I had my brother and his friends down there running it for me. And I was. I made probably, I don't know, two to three million dollars over the course of ten years doing that. And it was all money I didn't pay taxes on. It was all money that was completely illegal. So that all culminated years later when all my merchant accounts got completely frozen. And I probably had 50 to $80,000 had just frozen that I was never going to get back because it was illegal money. And it ultimately culminated with the FBI raided my house and they came and took all my machines. The NFL sued me for $10 million. The IRS got me for a tax lien for $119,000. They were being kind by doing that because I'm sure I owed a lot more than $119,000. So my life was pretty much frozen. Thankfully, I didn't get any charges. They were just like, we're taking all your stuff. The FBI, that's what they did. And they just interrogated me. They were like, what are you doing? And I said, I'm just a Navy guy who just got out and I needed to make some money. They had no idea how much money I really made made. But the NFL was the one because they sued me for $10 million. That was a big deal. I thought I'd just have a lean against me for the rest of my life. So it all culminated with that stuff. And fortunately, by God's will, because man, I prayed every day. I went into a, uh, I wouldn't call myself depressed. I, I, I, I didn't feel sad, like I want to die, but I felt like there's no way I'm ever going to get out of this. And I contemplated killing myself for about a week because I was like, uh, I don't think I want to live the next 60 years of my life homeless or this hanging over my head or whatever. And I seriously thought about it and the only reason I didn't do it looking back was I just didn't want my kids to find a dead body. I was laying on the floor for about a week with a gun to my head and I was just drinking and uh, it was just, it was a terrible time for me. And there came a time where I was like, if I haven't done this yet, I'm not going to do it. So I got up off the floor, I started searching on the Internet for reasons to want to live. I found Les Brown, my favorite motivational speaker. He had this talk called It's Possible. He said if even one person ever did it, it's possible you can do it too. So I thought somebody was probably in a worse mess than me, so I'll try to get out of this mess. And I went to church, I started praying, I got involved in a men's group and these men at this church, they were, they really took me under their wings and they said, man, you're pretty messed up dude, but we got you. And that really got me through to tighten all that stuff up.

Speaker C: At ah, what age were you at that point and how old were the kids? Did you have all three children then?

Speaker B: Yeah, I was about 30. About 30. Well, when it all crashed down I was in my late 30s, maybe like 38. And so the kids were, the kids were like 14, 8, 8, something like that. But then I had got married to my second ex wife and we had a baby. So that's where my 14 year old comes in and my second ex wife, she was helping me with the DVD business as well because it was a phenomenal life as long as the money was coming in and we weren't getting in trouble. But when it all came crashing down, it crashed bad. We got divorced. So I had another divorce. My kids went to live with their mom because I had nothing, I had no money, I had nothing, I was going to lose everything. It was a really difficult time in my life.

Speaker C: How did you manage that with kids as well at that age? Because like when you have all those things going on, like it's pretty hard to be a parent, right? You're not managing yourself. How do you manage children?

Speaker B: Yeah, so I had a pretty difficult childhood. Growing up, I really just didn't feel like anybody gave a care about me. I've always been a super attentive, caring parent. I hug and kiss my kids, tell them I love them, but one of the things I did to make them not worry because I never wanted to think there was trouble, I never wanted to worry is I always made sure to keep the cable on because if they turn on the TV, they knew that dad had paid the bills. I kept the lights on, I kept the water on, I kept the cable on and I kept a little food in the fridge. And as long as that was normal and I could show a happy face to the kids when they were around me, like they, looking back, I've asked them, I was like, did you know that there was a lot of trouble, like I was thinking about killing myself or anything? No, you never really showed that. So to me that means I did a good job because I kind of shielded my kids from the problems I had created. And that was unfortunate that I did that. As a parent, I greatly, uh, regret that. But I was able to kind of get them through that without too much damage.

Speaker C: You've actually had that conversation with your kids and said, hey, did you know I was thinking about killing myself? You actually sat down and said that to your children?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I did. I talked to my daughter about that, my 22 year old daughter, because she's very intuitive.

Speaker C: She's.

Speaker B: Of my kids, she's probably the most like me. We were talking before the show started. Uh, she quit college. She told me it was a scam. She quit a sorority because she said they were all a bunch of whores and she didn't want to be a whore like those other girls.

Speaker A: Girls.

Speaker B: One time she called me from an operating room recovery room, told me she had just had her appendix out. She didn't even tell me she was going to the hospital. Like, she's super independent, just goes after what she wants, takes it. She went out and bought a high level account for 500 bucks a month, not even knowing that I would have given her one for free. And then she paid a coach 800 bucks a month on top of that just because she wants it so bad. So she's just. She's like just a beautiful young version of me, and I'm so proud of her. But, yeah, she. She, uh, knew I went through a lot of stuff, and she witnessed a lot of it. And it's unfortunate, and I'm sorry. I've actually written her a letter and said, hey. Dear Cami, I'm so sorry for being a bad dad. I've actually written that to both my older kids. Just because I was. I feel really regretful that I wasn't as good of a father as I should have been. I did the best I could with what I had, but I could have done a lot better.

Speaker C: That's a good turnaround. And to have those kind of conversations with your children, and I assume that those were very good connecting conversations for you to have to bring you back together. I think that sounds like something that would really shape a relationship with your child if you can have that kind of honest conversation.

Speaker B: It was my daughter, Cammie. When she was about 15, she kind of got what I called rebellious on me. She was very angry with me. She. She, uh, wants to live with her mom for a few years. She didn't really want much to do with me. My son, too, he went with her. And at the time, I didn't understand why this was happening. I was like. I'd always been a super attentive, loving father to them, but I had a lot of chaos going on in the back end, and I think they could really sense something was off. And so. So time had gone on long enough, and I had just got to the point where I was like, I gotta repair this relationship.

Speaker C: I.

Speaker B: With my children. So what I did was I just ate some humble pie and I wrote them both a letter. And I said, hey, listen, I was not the greatest dad in the world. These are all the things I did that were wrong. These are all the things that I'm sorry for. And if you give me another chance, I'd love to reconnect and be a family again. And you can see I'm getting a little emotional about that, because what ended up happening was Cammie called me right away. Daddy, I love you. My Son was a little more convincing. Uh, but I don't know if anybody knows this, but there was a guy named Xzibit. I think he was a rapper back in the 90s. And he ended up doing a TV show called Pimp My Ride. It was a really fun show my son and I used to watch when he was little. He'd go get these trashy little cars and he'd take them in and he'd pimp them out. He'd put like, uh, he'd take like a surfer van and it'd make them really cool and then bring them back to the person and be like, oh

Speaker A: my God, it's so awesome.

Speaker B: Right? So me and my son used to watch that all the time. And when this thing called Cameo came out where you could go to, uh, you could go to this website, you could just hire celebrities to give shout outs to people. So I went to Cameo and I found exhibit on there and, and I wrote him a little note and I said, hey, this is what's going on with my son. He doesn't really want to talk to me. I haven't been the greatest dad to him. Can you kind of make it be, make a shout out and just say, hey, I want to reconnect with you as a way to kind of break the ice. And man, he was so cool. He, he made this message and he goes, your pops reached out to me. I really wanted him to. He just really wants to let you know that he loves you. And I wanted to let you know too, that I had some issues with my pops back in the day and he passed away, so don't let this opportunity pass. So I sent that video over to my son. It kind of broke the ice. And then me and the three of us, we had a really nice Christmas together. And it was kind of like a Christmas blessing. And I was so happy and I was so thankful for that, brought everything back together.

Speaker C: So that's really nice because like my, my childhood, like my parents divorced when I was young. My dad wasn't really in the picture that much. I used to see him at weekends sometimes. And then that kind of fizzled out. Like teenager argued. There was a couple of things going on. I found out some stuff that happened and why my parents got divorced. So I was kind of like, that's not great. And then we just never really reconnected ever. And so like from the age of four, basically my parents were when I was four, so I never really had a, uh, father figure around. And I have these conversations with my Son. And I don't think there's anything that I could have done about it because I was the kid, right? But I've often wondered, why did my dad not try to make that effort to reconnect and just go, hey, look, you know, there was stuff going on, there was reasons for it, whatever. I get that now. And as an adult I can see it and just go, yeah, no, these things happen. Right? But he never made that effort to reconnect. I have these conversations, my son and go, look, I'm really sad for me that I didn't have that father figure growing up, someone that I could talk to. Because there's all kinds of problems you have in your life growing up as a kid that you just don't know, you're not prepared for. You don't understand relationships, information, how the world works, whatever it might be. And I missed the fact or I missed the fact that I didn't have a father to really have those conversations with. So I think it's really good that you've done that and made that effort to reconnect because, yeah, I talk with my son about that all the time. Look, mate, I'm trying my best because I don't know how to be a dad because I didn't like my. I haven't. I had a dad, but he wasn't really around. He was like a weekend dad occasionally. And then when I was a teenager, that was pretty much done. So I'm trying to, yeah, just trying to figure it out. And yeah, like having my kid, he's 8 years old now and he's going through getting the eye rolling and this and that and the other. You go, mate, I'm your number one supporter in life, right?

Speaker B: Yes, absolutely.

Speaker C: Don't give me. And I'll still be here for you. But you got to realize I'm here for you. So this eye rolling, all this stuff, mate, just tell me what's going on. We'll work it out. Right under the attitude.

Speaker A: The way I looked at it though, was when my dad left when I was a little kid, he never made an effort to even contact me again. I always looked at it as the parent. It's my responsibility as the parent. I'm going to keep this thing together, right? So I wasn't going to wait for my kids to come back and say, dad, I miss you. No, dude, I'm the dad. If it's. I'm supposed to be the leader of the family. And even if I didn't do a good job of doing that when you were little. I'm still going to try to do a good job of that now. As an example, I found out that my dad, when he left, when I was little, he went out and started a new family and he had three more kids. And actually they found me on Facebook and one of them came to visit me last summer. He had three daughters. And it's really interesting now that I'm friends with these daughters that he had. They say how he's a good dad and they tell him happy Father's Day and stuff. And it makes me feel some kind of way when I see them praising my dad who never had anything to do with me. But, uh, he's good to them. So I'm like, I'm happy he's good to them, but I'm also a little bit jealous that he wasn't good to me.

Speaker C: Yeah, I can totally get that. Who's that? I think people go through phases in their life, right? There's different people. The funny little saying I got a little while ago, some people will tell you I'm an asshole. Some people will tell you I'm great. They're both right. They got the version of me they deserve. Uh, yes. Where are you at in your life? Right. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, that's the stuff I go through as a dad now and then, trying to raise and raise a son, raise him right. Running a business, trying to give him time, uh, when. As we can, as much time as we can. But also trying to make him understand that sometimes there's things that we have to do. He's off school and holidays. Yeah, mate, look, you're on holidays. I will spend some time with you today, but there's a period of time I have to go in. I've got meetings to attend, I've got clients to take care of. I've got staff. I've got a business to run, right? So for these three hours, I need to sit down and have some quiet time. And then I will come back for you and try to balance all that so that they don't think that work is more important than them. Like trying to make them understand that I'm doing this for you, right? You've got to understand what this is, what buys your clothes and your food and our car and our house and pays for the lights and the bills and keeps the cable on, all that kind of stuff, Right? It's a real challenge to juggle all this stuff as a parent running a business. I just think I'm just make. We're all just making it up every day. Really?

Speaker A: Yeah, it sure is.

Speaker C: Sorry. So you went off there anyway, so you've had the FBI. What happened with the $10 million thing from the NFL? Did that go away? Did you have to? Uh, so yeah.

Speaker A: One of, one of my best friends

Speaker B: is an attorney, and he was a very new attorney at the time. And he went up to New York City and dealt with the NFL for me. And he basically told him, hey, this is a guy that just got out of the Navy. He's just trying to make a few bucks. And he basically settled with them. So I gave them all of my original copies of the DVDs I was using to burn everything and I signed this huge agreement that was like this fat. I swore to God I'd never do it again. And so he basically settled with them to promise to never do it again. So I got out of that. I, I settled the tax lien because by this time I had, I had really no income. So the IRS saw me as non collectible. So I settled 119,000 with them for $6,000. I got no charges from the FBI. I did lose everything. I had to declare bankruptcy. So I literally walked away from my Life with about $5,000 in cash. And so by that time I had nothing. Really. All I had was a dream. And I was starting to sell solar because I was literally throwing anything against the wall that would stick to try to reboot my life a little bit. What was strange though was I'm a really educated person. I have three college degrees and one, uh, of them is an mba. But by the time it came time for me to start looking for a job, when I was desperate, I had a whole 10 year gap of what the hell did you do for the last 10 years? And I couldn't be honest about that. Oh, I ran an illegal bootleg DVD business. I made about $3 million, but I can't tell you that, right? So anytime I want to just said

Speaker C: you managed the blockbusters.

Speaker A: I could have said all kinds of

Speaker B: things, but the problem was is I had no real good answer to that. So I couldn't get a job. I was basically unemployable. So I was going to every sales job I could find. I got fired from multiple sales jobs because I sucked at sales. Finally, I found solar. I was really good at selling solar because I was passionate about it. I thought it was really cool. And then Tesla bought the company. So now I was working for Elon Musk. And I thought that was pretty cool too. Everything changed though, and the Company went out of business that he bought from us. So I had to move on. So how I ended up getting into the marketing world, though, was again, I was throwing a bunch of stuff against the wall. I had a real estate license, and I just started running ads. I had no idea how to run ads. I was just guessing. And I started trying to generate leads for myself for real estate. And it worked. I was generating a bunch of real estate leads, and I started telling other realtors about it. And how this really got off to a good start was I was charging people $50 and a video testimonial to set up their ads for them. It's like nothing now, but if you look me up and you Google me and you find my old testimonials and you'll see none of nothing I have online is AI because everybody asked me, now, are, uh, those testimonials real? Yeah, they're real because you can make fake ones now. But if you see me, I have tons and tons of video and written testimonials because that was my payment when I originally started in marketing. So it helped me get off to a good start. Because then once I did start charging a little bit more money, I had a lot of video evidence that I was good at what I did. And so I still remember the first month I made $10,000 legally. I was like, oh, my God, this is amazing. I can do this right? And I had to get an accountant. It was just. It was incredible. So I ended up moving to Florida with ex wife number two. By then that time, we had been divorced. And I said, hey, I want to move to Florida. I want to get started new life. But I want to bring Emma with me. Emma's my little one. I wasn't going to leave her behind. And she said, I got some stipulations for you. You got to pay for my move. You got to try to work it out with me for one more year at least. And you got to let me work for you if you're gonna do a business. And I was like, okay, fine, whatever. So we moved to Florida, we found an apartment, and we ended up trying for one more year. And one more year was all it was because we still couldn't get along for that year. But, uh, it was good. And something I love about my second ex wife, her name is Heather. Heather is an excellent mom. She is. She is the greatest mom. Every. Every Mother's Day, I do something nice for her because I know what a bad mom is. Cause my mom wasn't so Good to be me. Even though we haven't worked out and we've tried a few times to work out, she's an excellent mother. So I'm really glad to have her here with my daughter and stuff like that. We still get along really well as co parents as long as we're not

Speaker A: in the same house.

Speaker B: So ended up doing that. The business grew a little bit. I branded myself as the lead king. It sounded a lot better than freelancer Russ Ward. The lead king.

Speaker A: Russ Ward sounded good.

Speaker B: So I had this goofy looking character. That was my logo. It was when I had some hair and so my hair was goofy and it was just a silly look. But I even put it on my screen suitcase. I put it on my polo shirt and everywhere I went I told everybody I was a lead king and it just kind of stuck.

Speaker A: So I got a whole bunch of

Speaker B: business, I got a bunch of success really fast. And I wasn't even using High Level at first. I know a lot of people tune in to talk about SaaS. I was using clickfunnels just because I knew of Russell Brunson. And I made a bunch of funnels. And the only reason I didn't try High Level at the beginning was because I had so many freaking funnels that I was building for. Eventually I got into mortgages as well. I was building mortgage funnels, I was building real estate funnels. And I just didn't want to move them over to High Level. So eventually the guy who was gave me his affiliate link, said, hey, I'll move them all over for you if you just use my affiliate link. And that guy's probably made tens of thousands of dollars because I've been paying that affiliate commission to him every single year for, since 2018. So I'm like an OG with high level. I remember when you'd call support and Sean Clark, uh, the CEO founder would answer the phone and uh, I have

Speaker C: a video call from a support call with him.

Speaker A: If there was one little glitch, the

Speaker B: dude would be on a zoom call with you trying to fix it.

Speaker C: I mean, he's such a good person.

Speaker B: All the guys at High Level are so good.

Speaker C: Good.

Speaker B: And the cool thing, you know this, you were at the party. We had the black tie party after the award ceremony. And Sean and the crew are out there just getting down dancing with us. They're not like too good for anybody. They don't have security guards. They're just nice people. I just love the High Level family. I really do.

Speaker C: Yeah, they're super nice. I Just want to step back to one thing that you said at the beginning of this, like when you began your journey and you were setting up ads for people for 50 bucks plus a testimonial, right? Yeah, I talk to people about this all the time because people often say, and this is what hopefully for people listen to this, who are on their journey or begin their journey or want to start a journey, they go, uh, oh, where and how do I start? Start doing something like that, right? Just set something up for people charging 50 bucks or do it for free and get a testimonial and a case study, because that's like your price of admission to doing it anyway. I don't think it's right when people go, oh, that's cool. There's this SaaS business. I can set this up and I can charge people $1,000 to do this or whatever. When you haven't really done it, you don't know how to do it. So I always talk to people when they say what you'll do, go and talk to three businesses that you know that are friendly to you, maybe a friend, or maybe there's a shop down the street where you're always buying stuff. Anyway, talk to them, find a problem, fix that problem for them, and then get a case study and a testimonial from it. And now you can start going to selling stuff. And that sounds like exactly the path. Not exactly the path, but pretty much the path you took. As in, hey, I'll set this up for you for really cheap. I need a testimonial out of it.

Speaker B: So it was what I did, but I did it out of just sheer. I had no idea what I was doing, so I knew I couldn't charge too much money. I think where a lot of people go wrong is recently there's been a lot of these gurus that make a course, and somebody thinks because they watched a few videos, they know how to do this. As an expert, now and then the guru is telling them, charge 10k a month, and you shouldn't be doing that, man. Anytime I charge money, I don't know where I heard this. I probably heard it from Alex or Mosey. But you should always make them feel like they're getting 10 times the value you're giving them. So if I'm charging someone a thousand bucks, I want them to feel like they have $10,000 worth of value just so there's no reason at all that they're upset with me and they don't want a refund because that's the biggest thing. It could sting you when you're new. You get some money in and they get a third of it in a refund or a chargeback or something. That's no fun. So, yeah, I'm totally on board with that. I think what you do is you humbly go to people, you build your reputation a little bit. I've never got cocky in this business. I always know that I can be knocked right back down because I've had so many ups and downs and swings. I've jumped niches all the time because real estate burned out. I got into mortgages. But then Facebook ads changed some things. I lost my Facebook ads accounts and that kind of put me out of business. So I got into AI. I really just roll with the trends and I roll with the punches. And I think people have to come with that open mind because if you just come into this and say, hey, I'm going to get a high level account and I'm going to be a saaspreneur. I'm gonna make 10 GS a month in two months. You're not going to do that most of the time. I know there's people out there that have done it, but it is hard work. Like I told you, it took me six years to get to the point where I got a gold award and I really wanted one and I was working really hard. People just have to have that mindset that they're willing to grind it out.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think that's an important message people to try and get across on us from SAS Daz that we've all got our lives, we've got these things going on and. But everybody I know who's got to be a SAS preneur, I uh, don't know anyone that didn't have a journey to get there. They worked really hard. We always see the end polish result of people. We live in this Instagram world these days, but that's why these conversations are important, so people can get on board. And it's not to dissuade people or tell them it's impossible. It's none of that is to go, hey, look, this is the reality is like when you do this, you're going to have to learn a lot of things. You're going to have to do stuff at uh, a lower rate or free to start with generally for most people because a lot of people coming in don't have the experience. I know people that have jumped from work for agencies and then they jump into this world because they go, I've already got the skills over here. Now I'm going to start doing it for myself and I can accelerate and go really fast. Keaton Walker, who I was talking to, he does incredibly well as a high level affiliate. He makes six figures a month as a high level affiliate. And he said to me, he goes, yeah, but nobody wants to talk about the two years where I was posting videos and getting 10 views, 100 views for the first two years where I was just grinding out and not really making any money there. It took a couple of years to build that base and then to go there. So I think people just need to be prepared for that, build it. But once you've built it and the stability that you can get, like I said six years to get in your first one. Now you've got two in a row. I assume you'll be back this year for number three.

Speaker B: Absolutely. I'll see you there.

Speaker C: You'll see me there. What's that like now? What's your life like now? You've gone through the journey you've got here, that recurring revenue, having that model, the knowledge that you've built through that time as well. Right. If you, how do you feel now in security in your business?

Speaker B: Um, yeah. So I don't live a phenomenal lifestyle by any means in terms of rich and famous. But I'll tell you what, coming from where I came from, I grew up super poor. But I live in a beautiful housing plan here in Florida. It's a gated community. I always thought rich people lived in gated communities when I was a kid. I think it's pretty cool. I live at Howard from the beach, I literally do pretty much whatever I want whenever I feel like it. That's to me, that's freedom. To me that, that's a win. Right. And so my business gives me the ability to do that. I don't miss anything with my daughters. We something my 14 year old daughter Emma and I do a lot is we go to sporting events together. We just, that's just what we do. She loves sports. I'm fortunate that I have a daughter that loves sports. We travel all over the place to go to sports. We go up to Pittsburgh, we go to, we go up to Ohio, we travel all over the place. Place. So it gives me the freedom to do that. And just like my daughter Cammie, she just moved into her first apartment, right. I was able to help her out with that, help her out with some money. That as a dad, what I really want money for, man, is I want to Have a reserve of cash. So when my kids mess up or if they need something, I can be there and say, I got you. Because when I was a kid, no one got me. If I had a problem, if I needed a car, if I had a flat tire, I had to go scrape and beg for it. And because of all the ups and downs that I've been through to get to this point, I have no doubt that if I was to ever, God forbid, lose it all again, I would get it all back. And I'm not even afraid of that. So that gives me the ability to take more risks. It gives me the ability to have no fear. When stuff used to really drive me nuts back in the day when I was brand new at this, it doesn't really drive me nuts anymore. Worst that can happen is it's just money and I lose it and I make more of it. When that's kind of how I started to look at it. But in the beginning, you just, you'd so tightened up like I got, I can't blow this. And I know people feel like that because it feels like that in the beginning. But once you work hard for a while, once you build a little bit of a reputation, once you get a little bit of recurring money and it doesn't take much, man, the way I looked at it was if I could just get enough money to pay my bills, then I could. Everything on top of that would be gravy. That would be quality of life. And by the way, High Level is so great. Their affiliate program. I didn't even really try to be an affiliate when I was first getting into this. I would make some courses on some of the stuff ways I was generating leads and I would just tell people, hey, you need a High level account to do this. And so some of my first people that bought courses from me like six, seven years ago, I've got affiliate commissions for them over the years. And I get enough affiliate commissions from High Level that they pay my, my, they pay my mortgage payment, my car payment, just the affiliate commissions. And I don't even try to be an affiliate, which is wild. So that, that's a huge boost right there. And if you could just set little goals like that. If I can make enough money that my house is paid for, my car is paid for, or whatever your little goal is, it just kind of gives you more comfort. Because I know a lot of people, when they get into entrepreneurship, their main worry is I don't have a guaranteed income, I don't have health insurance. I know In Australia, you guys have

Speaker A: health insurance, but we don't.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So if you don't have a job

Speaker B: here, you got to be paying for that stuff. Right? So people are terrified to not have a paycheck, and they're terrified to not have health insurance because God forbid they get into an accident and their life is over, they'll have to go through bankruptcy. That's just how it is here. And so if you could just do little things like, hey, this month I can make enough to have recurring income to pay my bills, that'll give you that cushion to be a little bit bold to go out and try new things and really grow your business. That's some advice I give people because I know a lot of people don't talk about these things, but I came up so desperate and so poor and so screwed. And by the way, all my own fault, all my own bad decisions. I'm not blaming anybody for this but me. But I know there's a lot of people out there that are in some pretty shitty situations. And if you're in a shitty situation, you can get out of it. It's just mostly just hard work.

Speaker C: Hard work. It is definitely a cure for a lot of things around people. Yeah, Sometimes people just don't want to work. Huh.

Speaker B: Hard.

Speaker C: But I like that around the money. Right. Because money's nice. Money can get you nice things. But, like, how much do you need? I see. I think it's unfortunate, the world we live in, this tick tock Instagram world where people will see Ferraris, Bugatti is all that kind of stuff because it's so easily accessible online to view. And people think that, oh, uh, that's what I want to go and what I want to strive for, but it's not, it's not what you need. At the end of the day, as long as you've got your family and your home, you've got to pay your bills. Obviously you want all that stuff covered and you want kind of security in your life in those areas. Uh, like all that other stuff is just not important or it's not important to me anyway. I would rather spend that money on experiences and family and doing things. I'm trying to get that message across to my kid at the moment, like my son Finn, because, like, he's 8 years old and he sees all these things and he's. Ronaldo's got a Bugatti. Can we get one? I, uh, was like, no, we were having a conversation last night in the pool and he's very smart. My Son, he's super smart, but he doesn't want to apply himself because he's just. He can't be bothered to apply himself, right? We had a teacher's meeting yesterday and they're like, yeah, look, he. He crushes it when he does stuff. They said, here's his math test, right? He got like 87% on his math test, but he only got the 87% because I came and sat down next to him and said, hey, look, you need to do this in this time frame. Because apparently he'd sat there for half the time and he'd answered two questions. And they went, what's going on? He goes, just whatever. And they said, look, just carry on. Just go through. If you don't know the answer to something, just skip that one and go to the next one. He went, oh, all right. And then he just went through. And he's. He can do really well. He's just. He's not applying himself. So anyway, I was trying to talk to him last night in the pool afterwards. I look and I'm trying to explain to him, give him positive feedback from his teacher, say, look, your teacher says that you're really smart and she thinks you're going to do really well one day and you could be really successful. And he went, yeah, whatever. He goes, maybe I'll just be a bin man. I was like, mate, you don't want to be a bin man. I said, the bin man's not going to make you want things, right? So then I tried to cycle it around to him go, look, you want things, right? There's stuff that I know you want. You want nice cars, you want these things that he talks about all the time. I said, if you're a bin man, you're not going to get that. He goes, how much does a bin man make? I said, let me explain to you. I said, and if I do explain to you, I said, you're not going to get it because you don't understand the concept of money anyway, right now. You don't get it. And he said, just tell me, how much is bin man? I said, I don't really know. I said, maybe $50,000 a year. I have no idea.

Speaker A: Is it man a garbage man where you're from?

Speaker B: Is that.

Speaker C: Oh, garbage man. Yeah, garbage man.

Speaker A: We call him a garbage man here.

Speaker C: Okay, yeah, garbage man. Bin man. So sorry. Yeah. So a garbage man, $50,000. Yeah. I don't know if that's right or wrong, but I thought 50 grand a year.

Speaker A: And he said he wanted to be a bin man, huh? Uh, that's wild.

Speaker C: Yeah. But when I tell him 50,000, he goes, that's so much money. He goes, that's loads, that's a thousand dollars a week. He goes, I'll be rich. And I was like, no mate. And then I tried to break it down to him and explain no. So I said, how much of that thousand dollars a week are you actually going to get to take home? He goes, a thousand dollars. I was like, no you're not. Because the tax man is going to take some of that money so you're probably going to end up with about $800. So you've already lost $200. Yeah, but $800, I can buy so much money with that. I said okay. And then I went through the bills for him. I was like, went through a couple of bills and this and the rent and stuff and basically we've gone through a few things. And I said, and after that I said you haven't got any money left. And he goes uh. I said and have you eaten yet? He went no. I said so you still gotta buy food but you've got no money left, like how are you gonna live? And he's like yeah, I don't know, trying to get that concept into it to make them wanna drive to achieve things a little bit more. I don't know, he's eight, I think he'll come out of it. But yeah, I don't know how you pull 8 year olds along the track but you sound, your kids are doing really well. You said you're 22 year old is very entrepreneurial. Your 14 year old is doing a music, an AI music website, is that right?

Speaker A: Um, she came to me and she wanted to join the young entrepreneurs group. They have these little tents they set up at farmers markets and they're all selling things like soap and pillows and bracelets. And she says I don't want to do something stupid like that, I want to do something cool with AI. So we brainstormed a bit and we

Speaker B: found an app on called Suno and

Speaker A: Suno, you can go to Suno and you can just type in a prompt and it will make a whole song for you and it's awesome. And so what we did is I helped her build a website and through High Level and you can fill out a form on there and say what kind of song you want it to be, like what genre do you want it to be? Like country, pop, R and B, whatever you want. And then you can say who it's for in a special occasion. And then literally five minutes later, we have a song. So we started going to farmers markets and put a boombox, uh, up full of custom songs we were making. Had a little flyer that was up there from. We made it on vistaprint. And she started selling stuff and she said, wow, this is awesome. She's getting venmos coming in, right? And so she was pretty excited about that. That and every once in a while she'll help me with my business too. I'll give you a funny story about her. A couple. I think it was like when she was like 12 even. She was. I said, hey, Emma, do you want to make some money? And she said, yeah. I said, listen, I don't got a lot of time to. To do this. I'm going to treat you like my va. I'm going to make you a video. Follow the video exactly. And if you finish this up, I'll pay you some money. She goes, okay. So she actually did it.

Speaker B: It was a website I needed to update with a bunch of numbers on it. It was something pretty simple. You just had to update the website and just hit save. So she does it, and then she sends me an invoice, a venmo invoice for 50 bucks. Bucks, right. And this is a lot for her. She. I'd never given her that much money before. And I said to her, why did you send me an invoice for 50 bucks? She goes, I calculated what I think you're gonna make off this website. I think it's gonna be probably at least $5,000. So I thought 50 was fair for me.

Speaker A: And I was like, wow. So I paid the $50 invoice, and I thought that was pretty cool. So she. She has a good head on her shoulders.

Speaker C: That's good. That's very good. Yeah. I don't know what the age is when they start to get to that and you can bring them to that next level. I feel like my son is just going through that transition at his age, and there's going to be no. When it. Maybe when he gets to double digits will start to. To grasp this stuff a little bit more. So it's part of me wishing him to hurry up to those next levels. And there's part of me just going, oh, just so. Yeah, because you're right and you're just. You're still a kid. But he's. I can see his internal struggles between. He's a child, but he can see that he needs to grow up and do other stuff and be a Bit more responsible, but he's not ready and he doesn't want to do it. And I can see with him, he's got these little struggles with him. Even he. Every day where we take him school, we have to drive him to school, but we don't park at the school. It's just. It's a pain because school drop off, there's loads of cars going in. So we park just nearby. And then I'll skateboard in, and he goes on his scooter, and then I take his scooter back, and then when I come back to pick him up, I skateboard in, carry a scooter, and we skateboard and scoot out back to the car. Like, that's a pretty good idea.

Speaker A: I love it.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's cool. It's fun, right? And then the start of this term, he's just turned. He's just gone into year three. And we did it the first couple of days. And then the third day he goes, dad, I think I'm too big to scooter, uh, anymore. That's for the little kids. I can't do that anymore. And are you upset? That's cool. You can do that if you want. Whatever. It's fine. So he's seeing these things where he just. He's thinking he's too old to do it because he sees the younger kids doing it. He's trying to be a bigger kid. So it's a challenging time right now. So we'll get there. We'll get there. Like I said, I'm just winging it because I didn't go through this. I just went through struggles when I

Speaker A: was doing a great job. You can tell you, you are just based on our conversation, you're doing the best you can. And that's all we can do.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. It's that. It's being accountable. And I really liked what you said earlier as well, like. Or the parent, right. Start with your kids, but you're the parent and it's up to you to fix that. Right. You shouldn't be waiting for the kids to come back and resolve that, because they're kids, they don't really understand all that stuff and they don't really know what's going on. So you're the leader of the family, the parent. You got to go and take that responsibility and look after them. At the end of the day, that's my job. I view my job with my son as my job is to make him independent and not need me, which makes me really. It makes me really Sad to think that at the same time, but that's your job, right? It's, hey, I'm not going to be here forever. So you need to be able to figure out your life on your own when you're not around. You going to get ready for the wide world out there that I hope he goes and sees and travels and explores. And as soon as he's ready to go off and travel, I'll be like, man, you got to go do it. Like, go and explore the world. And I'll be really sad to see him go, but I'll be so happy at the same time.

Speaker A: Yep, same with me, man.

Speaker C: Yeah. So with High Level, anyway, let's go back to the High Level, the community. You've seen that grow a lot through the time, right? If you started in seven years ago, God, what, There must have been like a hundred people in the Facebook community group when you started.

Speaker B: It's grown so much. And I'll tell you what, if it wasn't for High Level, I wouldn't be doing this. It changed everything for me once I got into High Level, everything was in one place. And in the beginning, if you were an early user, anybody who was, you know, it was frustrating. They were having growing pains. They were building software, and when you're building software, it doesn't always work right. And they just kept on saying, it's coming. And it eventually did come. The product that we have now is so big. I've been using it forever. I don't even know all the features, just because I don't use them all anymore. And. But I'll tell you what, the community of people, the founders, I can't tell you, like, how good Sean Clark is, has been to me as just a human, just as a person and a friend. Like, he's been such a good guy to me. The whole team there, man, they're just such good people, and they're changing a lot of lives. I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be in the position I'm in financially, professional growth, anything. And it's crazy to say that about a software, right? But it's not the software, it's the community. And if anyone's gone to the summit like you did, like you, you can just see, like, we get to meet up there. Like, we talk over Zoom Calls here, and we talk over messenger, and we see each other in groups. But when you really get to meet. Meet these people in person, you get to meet how cool people are and how nice they are and how helpful they are. And I've never been around a community where I've gone to a conference and everyone's cool. Every other conference I've gone to, I've gone to clickfunnels, I've gone to other ones. There's always somebody there who's an. But you don't find that at High Level.

Speaker A: You could be a brand new guy

Speaker B: or you could be a multi millionaire and they'll still be able to help you out and they're nice about it.

Speaker C: What's really cool, you can't tell who's who as well. Find out when you go there. Exactly. You don't know who's uh, like a diamond entrepreneur and who just started last week. Like you talk to people and then you find out what they are and. Or you see them go up on the stage. Oh my God. I was talking to you earlier and I realized you've got like 3,000 accounts.

Speaker A: It's just, I put it on my

Speaker B: calendar first at the beginning of the year. I want to be part of that. And so it's a really good thing to look forward to.

Speaker C: It's a great event. And I tell people like, definitely go for like connections, like inspiration as well. I think that's an important thing. Right. You can just go and see this. It is inspirational to actually go to. And inspiration helps drive a lot as well because you're going to have to do some hard work. But if you can actually see what else is going on and actually get to feel what the availability and the options are, uh, there's different systems, the process. You got to find your little niche. Right. Like you say, High Level is a beast now. Right. No one's got, no one should be going out there anymore and just selling their white label CRM and going, oh yeah, you've got a problem. Here you go. I've got a CRM that will solve all your problems. Right. That's not a good way to go. You're going to go and figure it out. Yeah. Go figure out like what's your niche, what's your bit that you're actually going to go and build and sell and manage for people and getting that idea and then meeting the people. And people are so helpful too. Right. Because people are figuring that out now. Right. There aren't people just selling their white label serum. So there's people that are doing things that are uh, either complementary or overlap with what you do. And people are just generally so helpful in that. We have a great community in Australia and it's not a competition. People just they, uh, will share information. We have our own little chat group as well. People ask questions, oh, I don't know how to do this. Can somebody help me? And so, oh, yeah, I did that a little while ago. This is what you need to do. Rising tide rises, all ships. Is that the right word? Yeah.

Speaker A: I saw the.

Speaker B: The episode you did with Michael Reimer, and I'll tell you what, he. He's one of the most helpful people I've ever met. He's so knowledgeable and he's so talented, but he's also the first guy to jump in there and help you out. And I've never seen that guy ask for anything. He's just always been 100 helpful. And that's the kind of thing I'm talking about somebody like him who could go out and demand $10,000 just to talk to him. I've had message conversations, said, hey, can I ask your opinion on something? And he'll spend 15 minutes, just give me his opinion. I just really appreciate that about the people in our community. Community.

Speaker C: Yeah. He's a super nice dude and super smart. Yeah. Super knowledgeable, very laid back.

Speaker B: He just kind of like genius level, man, the way his brain works. He's amazing.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Ah, yeah. He's done a lot of good things. So, yeah, if anyone wants to go and check that out with Michael Rema, he's. He's done some amazing things, mate. So what's. What's next for you, mate? We'll see you in Dallas. What's the, uh, what does the future hold for Russ? More of the same. Any plan, new things, put more AI into.

Speaker B: I've been working with a partner a little bit on a project. We've been doing car dealership marketing. And what we found in car dealerships is that they're old school. They're usually behind tech a little bit. And so my partner that I'm working with, he was bringing in a lot of leads. He's great at Facebook lead generation, but a lot of the leads were just going into a Google sheet. So I came in and I implemented AI systems where when the leads come in, the AI takes over. And so now the dealerships are just waiting for lead send up on their calendar or a live transfer to come through. So they don't just go to a Google sheet. We actually actively pursue these people with AI. We transfer them over. So I've been having a lot of fun with that. He's the first partner I've really had. He's about. I don't know, I'd say I dedicate probably 60 to 70% of my time with him right now, and then the other 30%, I have a group that I'm actively growing where I coach people on how to build bots and do all kinds of cool stuff with AI. Uh, recently I've been learning some code with Claude code. And I'll tell you what, that stuff is wild. So I like to keep the opportunities open because I like to switch it up whenever the market shifts. And it's changing, man, it's changing wildly every day.

Speaker C: Yeah, I'm trying to figure that out how Claude, or not just Claude, AI works in our business now, we are really focused on that and all the different things we're doing and how. What. What AI do we use to automate stuff that we're doing? And I had a really good talk with Danny Clark the other day and said, it's really shifted. And I said, uh, even just a few months ago, I was using AI, so I would give it a task and it would pop out a Facebook ad for me or a post or an email or blog posts, whatever it might be. Now I work with AI. We're giving it complex tasks and getting it to do it in stages, giving it feedback, iterations, letting it run for while it comes back. And it's a blessing and a curse right now. I know, um, I know there's other people going through this because there's things that I'm doing, and I actually find that I've got more work to do in a way, because I've got all these little AI stuff that I've got running tasks in the background. I have to keep checking back in on getting it fixed because I don't know how to manage it properly at the moment. It's a bit of overwhelm for me. So I'm struggling to find my balance with that right now. I know I'll get there. And this is just the path of figuring it out, right? Because you don't know what you don't know. And I don't know how to do it properly. I don't know how to do it efficiently at the moment. So I'm just doing it and doing it the best I can. But I find it overwhelming because I can churn out so much stuff now that I end up with more on my plate because all the ideas I've got, I can build out presentations, I can build out workflows, I can build out all these things. But now I've got all this stuff that I've now got to launch or get live or whatever it might be. Uh, and I just don't have the time to finalize the last push of the bits that I have to do as well. Because the AI did its part so quickly. I got the content done. Now I have to push that out and market it or wherever it might be. And maybe I'm doing that wrong. Maybe I need AI to do the other part as well and push it out on the other end where I'm the bottleneck at the moment in certain areas. But again, I'll figure that out as it goes. But it's changing so much and I have no idea what it's going to be like in six months time at the moment. It right now is when I see a big change, but so many people don't see that change as well. There's so many people that are not working with AI in their businesses that there's a massive opportunity in the market to come, um, and do this for those people. I was watching a video today. I'm going to hit Haley up as one of the best AI videos that I've ever seen, which has made a music video with the. You talk about your daughter doing something. I'll send you the link after this. You can show it to your daughter. But it's like music lyrics and video. And it's one of the best videos that I've ever seen done with AI. Yeah, I'll show you afterwards. It's quite scary how amazingly good this stuff is becoming.

Speaker A: But I actually met a guy yesterday. I work at a cowork office sometimes and he is a commercial real estate guy. We're just talking a little bit about AI. Uh, he made a whole entire TV

Speaker B: commercial with AI and it was done in a day. So we used to have a crew, used to have many revisions, tens of thousands of dollars. This dude had this done and it's going to be on TV with. Within the next couple of days. He's doing that with AI, which is wild.

Speaker C: It's. It is wild. And yeah, I think there's going to be levels to it as well. I. It's funny because I talk to some people who are not in the AI or in the digital space and like, oh my God, you know, so much. And then I see other people, like I just mentioned, like the thing that Hayley did, like Michael Remus. There's other people, you know, Bryce from Close, all these people, and I'm like, oh, my God. Like, I look up at them, I think, I don't know anything. So there's levels to this game. I don't feel like I, I feel overwhelmed and under knowledged half the time. But, uh, I still, still think I know a fair bit. But yeah, I think we just got to keep going and learning it and not get left behind because it's gonna, it's just on a trigger right now. Very exciting, very exciting, mate. Thank you for your time today. If we were to wrap this up at this point, have you got a last little bit of advice that you could leave for SAS dads or SaaS mums? We have mums on here as well. But last little bit of advice you could leave for a SAS dad or a SaaS mum watching this. Who's on their journey? What advice could you give to them?

Speaker A: Anytime I do any type of an interview or a podcast, I just like to encourage people because I was at the bottom that you could get. And again, a lot of people have difficult circumstances that are beyond their control. I created my own circumstances. And I think especially there's a lot of guys out there that if you're not an alcoholic, if you're not a drug addict and you're just somebody who

Speaker B: messed up in life, there's not a lot of help out there for you. Nobody. There's not a bad ideas, bad choices anonymous group out there anywhere.

Speaker A: You know what I'm saying? So if you make bad choices and you screw up, you got to suck

Speaker B: it up and just deal with it, right?

Speaker A: There was times when I was like, I wish I would just be an

Speaker B: alcoholic because somebody would feel bad for me and help me. So the reason I even say this is because I went through all that stuff. And I know every single time I do an interview of some kind, somebody comes out to me and says, man, I'm going through that right now. And my message to them every single time is a couple of things. Number one, if you don't quit, you're eventually going to win. That's it. Even if you have to go homeless, which is the worst case scenario, if you don't quit, you'll eventually get there. And number two, I don't know if anybody out there believes in a higher power, but I do. And I'll tell you what, when the hits the fan and there's nothing else, you got nothing else. I just pray. And when you pray and you lift it up to a higher power, you're going to get something out of that. If nothing else, you'll get peace and you'll get something coming back at you. And that's all I got to say is just don't give up. Hand it off to God if it gets too tough. And I really think most people can get through it if they. If they just follow that advice.

Speaker A: Right. Right there.

Speaker C: Wise words, mate. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming on and explaining your story. You've had a hell of a journey. Congratulations on everything you've ended up achieving and where you are now, that's amazing. M, mate, so well done. Congratulations. And thank you so much for your time today, and I will. I'll see you in Dallas in a few months, mate.

Speaker A: Looking forward to it, brother. Have a good one.

Speaker C: Thank you, mate.