SPEAKER_01
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Learn how HubSpot can help your business grow better at HubSpot.com. All right, you guys are gonna love this. It's another special episode, so here's the deal.
On this episode, we have this guy named Ryan Beagleman. I met Ryan in our Trends group, and he's so fascinating that we had to have him on to do a special episode. And Sean and I had him on as a normal, my first million guests, but this one's a special issue for Trends.
And let me tell you a little bit of the background about this guy. He's so fascinating. I think he's 36 years old and he's done so much.
So Ryan had this company called BizNow Media, which was a newsletter business that, it was like the hustle like my company, but for real estate, and he grew it and eventually sold it for $60 million in cash. And at the time of the sale, it was doing like 20 million in revenue, seven million in profit, and he did it bootstrap without taking any funding. And during this process, he started this thing called Summit Series.
And you guys got to Google Summit Series to kind of get the full picture. It's so weird to explain, but and this is gonna sound derogatory, but it's not. But it's kind of like a TED talk, but for like techies and entrepreneurial folks and rich people, and they originally started out by hosting these events where it was kind of expensive, like two, three, four, $5,000, but they would get like Kendrick Lamar to come.
They would get ASAP Rocky. They would get Reed Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn and Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix and all these amazing people that had like Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Russell Simmons, Richard Branson, like these worldly people, Johnny Legend. It's crazy.
And it started as a festival and eventually it was like an annual conference. And then they even hosted it one time on a cruise ship and like the founders of Uber and Dropbox and Facebook go. And eventually Ryan had the idea of thinking like, okay, this conference is cool, but how do we keep this party going? How do we create a community of folks like this year round? And so he somehow convinced all these people to pre-buy land and he collected $50 million and went out and bought a mountain in which he turned into a, this thing called Powder Mountain.
It was a ski mountain. It's one of the largest ski mountains in the country, privately held ski mounts in the country, I believe. And it's crazy fascinating.
I went out and visited it and it was so cool, so interesting. Like he was 27, 26. I believe when he did this, they built all the roads, all the plumbing.
They did everything. And it's just crazy fascinating what they did. And Ryan's whole deal is that he's very calm.
He's very collective, but he's definitely alpha, like ain't all retentive. And I love that about him, but he's so calm about it. And so in this episode, what we talked about was how Ryan operationalized his business, both Summit Series, Powder Mountain and Biznow.
And he walks through the steps that he took. Like for example, when he would hire people, he like would have them go through this crazy process of hiring to prove that they had the attributes that he was looking for. And it's incredibly fascinating.
And he would document the whole process. And at the company, the employees had a handbook that documented everything at the business. And it's really hard to do that, but it's so important to be able to sub people in and find talented people and get them on boarded really quickly.
And so in this episode, we walked through Ryan's tips for operationalizing his business. And it's just really fascinating. So I hope you enjoy it.
You get the first 15 minutes for free. If you want the whole thing, go to trends.co and you will be able to listen to the whole episode along with all the other episodes that we've done like this.
People are loving it. So we're gonna keep doing these. And if you sign up, it costs a dollar.
So you can pay a dollar. And if you don't like it, you can just cancel within 14 days and you just lost a buck. But folks have been loving these.
And if you sign up, what you'll get is the Trends Weekly email where we dive deep and we do analysis on all the cool businesses that we're discovering and talking about, but you also get access to the community. So this is actually where I met Ryan. This is where I met a lot of big name people.
So check it out. Go to trends.co and sign up and you'll see this podcast and all the other stuff.
And we hope to see you in the group. Okay, so this podcast, as of now, my first million listeners are listening. So half a million people a month are hearing this right now.
The rest of this, they're gonna get this little preview. And then the rest of this is just gonna be for the Trends people. And we're actually gonna send this out to our 10s of thousands of Trends subscribers and then our million plus email subscribers, a blog post that I'm gonna write about this.
So you're gonna get some push.
SPEAKER_00
Sam, I'm gonna send this to my 20 followers and my mom.
SPEAKER_01
That's good. That's good.
SPEAKER_00
I'm gonna give you a push. I'm gonna give you the bump, the Beagleman bump.
SPEAKER_01
The Beagleman bump. Yeah, right, the Beagleman bump. Okay, so you came prepared with a list of things that you wanted to talk about, right? Well, one major topic.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I thought we should talk about four ways that people can be a better CEO. How to be a high performance and not just CEO, but frankly, if you're running your own one-person show, if you're running a department, then this is for people who are getting shit done and managing other people and relating to other people.
SPEAKER_01
And this is better than buying a company, I think so.
SPEAKER_00
Well, this applies regardless. This is not necessarily about building a company. This is about how to run a company once you have a company or once you're in a division of a company.
SPEAKER_01
All right, well, let's do a little background. And let me start here because I built the hustle because I was inspired by a bunch of stuff. One of those things that I was inspired by was I learned about BizNow Media.
And BizNow Media was a, or still is, it was a newsletter business that had a thriving trade show business or conference business. And you co-founded it with the two other founders who's another guy named Mark and his son, Elliot. And then after you worked there for six or seven years, you sold it for roughly $60 million.
And while doing all this, you co-founded this thing called Summit Series, which was a festival conference type of setup that had Bill Clinton, Russell Simmons, Travis Kalanick, just like the world leaders. And then eventually you convinced a lot of those folks to give you a little bit of money and you pre-sold land and you used that $50 million to buy a mountain. Now, where you are in your stage in your career, you are looking for a new project, but the whole thing that you've done has all been because you're kind of like an operational powerhouse.
That's my long, but short summary of your career. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that's roughly correct. And yeah, I consider myself like an operator first. Like I'm good at optimizing and managing and leading.
Company's probably better. You're probably better than me. I mean, you're definitely better than me.
It's starting on my thing.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and you helped me. And we met because someone introduced us and then I eventually went to your house and now we've become good friends in a very short amount of time. And I've already like beaten you over the head with a million questions on operating.
And that's why you are here today because to talk to the listeners about operating because even when you sold the company, you like walked me through some of the details of how it happened. And I'm like, oh my God, like you planned this whole thing. And this was like the most process-driven thing I've ever seen.
I want to learn a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I was obsessive about process systems, culture, and how to get the most out of the organization for sure. And doing that profitably and in a way that where we could own and control all the equity or most equity, all the equity with our team instead of raising outside capital and lead a good life and be what I would call like a holistic entrepreneur, like an entrepreneur who wants to work hard, wants to create cool things, but also is trying to self-actualize and enjoy the ride.
SPEAKER_01
And the last thing I'm going to add before I let you talk is that you're kind of like a weirdo, and that is a compliment, in that you're like this, you worked at Carlyle, so a pretty cutthroat, like alpha-driven PE firm. But then you operate your businesses like very tight, like in a good way, like it's a well-oiled machine. But then you're also into like the fun woo-woo spiritual stuff that you call mental fitness.
So you're kind of like an interesting person.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think once I realized that I could control my thoughts instead of my thoughts controlling me, and I could go from being an automatic robot who's just in reaction mode all day to actually choosing how I react to stimuli and being more in the moment. And then I was like, man, I got to get better at this. This is so freaking rewarding.
It was like when you discover that going for a run gives you like endorphins that makes you feel good and breaks down things and helps you be productive. It was that for the mind.
SPEAKER_01
So before we get into this, you're going to talk about you have this little list to call. That's probably going to be great. But can you brag about yourself? How big was BizNow Summit? Can you give some sense so people understand where your perspective is coming from and what you were dealing with and pull you wise, maybe revenue-wise? I don't know.
I want to give you a platform to brag a little.
SPEAKER_00
Thanks, Sam. I'll try to do my best. I'll channel my mother.
So yeah, I mean, I worked at one of the world's biggest private equity firms, like Carlisle. I actually bought into BizNow and grew it from a small four or five-person company to an 80-person, $7 million profitable business. $7 million in profit.
In profit and not revenue. And distributing money to our partnership and never raised a bootstrap, no outside capital whatsoever. And sold that company, like you said, for a bunch of money to a private equity firm.
SPEAKER_01
The headline is $50 million. You don't have to confirm that, but that's what the headline says.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah. And then at the same exact time, literally in the same week that I started doing that, we co-founded Summit, which became also like a $20 million revenue business with thousands of customers. And as you mentioned, we bought Powder Mountain, which is the largest ski resort by acreage, 10,000 acres, of skiable terrain in Utah with seven lifts and hundreds of employees in the winter and a development team.
And we've sold, I think, like $160 million worth of real estate at the project. We also built a $30 million venture fund called Summit Action. Started a nonprofit that's been in existence now for seven years and done a lot of real estate.
Like probably done 20 some odd real estate investments. And how old are you? 36? I just turned 38.
SPEAKER_01
38. So you've done a lot.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah. And I think the thing I'm proud of in terms of the business is that we operated with no outside capital and bootstrapped it. And we had to learn how to be really optimal at running everything.
There wasn't a lot of room for low performance.
SPEAKER_01
OK. Well, let's get into it. So Ryan is very type A.
He's calm, but he's type A. And we planned this podcast a week ago. And he brought me this list.
And it's always the best. It's exhausting because he sweats the details so much. But I know for a fact he's come very prepared for this.
SPEAKER_00
All right. So I thought we could start with hiring and onboarding. Because that's obviously fundamental to every business that grows beyond one person.
And does that sound good?
SPEAKER_00
So I mean, one of my big epiphanies early on was that I was doing all the hiring myself at Biznow and at Summit. And quickly I realized I should replace myself in that role and hire a full-time recruiter internally. Do you have one of these yet?
SPEAKER_01
We're interviewing her right now. We're interviewing for her. The couple of candidates that we like.
SPEAKER_00
I'm always amazed by how large companies get before they hire a recruiter. Because with a recruiter, you're just constantly seeing more candidates. You're going to get better people into your company.
The people make a huge difference. And on top of it, when you have a pipeline of new fresh talent coming into your company constantly, it puts some pressure on everyone else who's already inside the company to level up. Because of course, they could get replaced by the new talent that's coming up through the ranks.
So it's super helpful to have a recruiter. And initially, you can do this yourself, of course, if you're a small company. And I'm really wary of executive recruiters, like outside recruiters.
I have had success with them. But a lot of times, they just are shuffling people from another company to your company. They'll come back to you and steal the people they put in your company to move them to the next company.
And they just don't care. They don't know your values. And they're just like, they're hustled generally as mediocre.
So I'm not saying never, but I mostly use internal recruiting.
SPEAKER_01
How big were you when you got one at Biznow?
SPEAKER_00
We were probably 20 employees when I hired. The guy who I hired to do recruiting ended up being the CEO of the company and is still the CEO of the company.
SPEAKER_01
So then this guy will. I think his name's Will, right? Yeah, Will's friend, yeah. You said he was like a noob.
But he was a young kid with zero experience. Is that right?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I hired him out of college. I literally went to his college and met him there, where he was a party promoter, which is one of the things I filter for, which I'll talk about. I love hiring people who are drug dealers, bookies, people who have hustle, people who are, I love party promoters.
I don't know what they're doing now during COVID. If you filter for high intelligence and you filter for. And the one way to filter for high intelligence is just look at people who are at top 30 universities.
They've already done the job for you. People who have high intelligence often just learn quicker, I discovered. But there's a lot of people who have high intelligence and are lazy and don't have hustle or not creative in terms of being inventive.
So I also look for a background and signals that suggest that they might have a lot of hustle per your brand. And the other thing I'm looking forward to is, one thought I wanted to share too is it's best to test and not rely on just talking to them in traditional behavioral interviews. Just interviewing somebody, people are good salespeople that often come off really good in an interview.
So you really need to test them. And in order to come up with tests, you can just slow down your processes, think about how you do what you do well and whatever you're hiring for. And one way to do that, of course, is to do it yourself first, master it, and then figure out what is a test that could give someone that would help me understand if they can replicate the kinds of things I do.
And if anything, do it better than me. And then give them those tests. And we were at business now, we were constantly iterating.
So for accounting, we gave people an Excel test with 20 different things that they have to label and move and shuffle around, formulas to calculate. We also gave them a written test with problems to solve and questions about the balance sheet and things of that nature.
SPEAKER_01
Do you have any of those? Would I be able to give those tests to my listeners, or do you not have them?
SPEAKER_00
Probably business. I might be able to get some of them for you. Probably business as most of those, but I might have some.
I definitely have. I had tests for writers where they would have to write a profile and write ideas for stories that they would pitch us. I would give tests for salespeople.
If part of being a good salesperson was going to networking events, I'd have people go out in Times Square and get business cards from people off the street
SPEAKER_01
while we're in there. Can you walk step through step for that? So all right, you say, we need a recruiter. We're going to hire a recruiter.
What do you do? You create a job listing?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, we create a job listing just to make it easy. And then we go on LinkedIn. And usually, we want to pick off talent from other shops that are young and that we think are coachable and then train them.
SPEAKER_01
And where would you, on LinkedIn, what company did you try to poach from mostly?
SPEAKER_00
You know, initially, I poached from our competitors. And then I discovered that they had a lot of the wrong lessons learned and that we were inventing new ways to do things. And so we started building more of a pipeline directly out of colleges.
And so we literally went to Georgetown University, GW. We were based in DC at the time, NYU, and looked for kids from top universities and hired them and built a pipeline, built an internship program. And that's what we eventually did.
We also, though, would look for young, scrappy people who are working and not necessarily working in jobs that reflect what we do, like not looking at media companies.
SPEAKER_01
So what would you type in on LinkedIn to find this recruiter?
SPEAKER_00
I'll give you a good example. I love hiring salespeople from media companies who work in software because software sales reps can run circles around media sales reps, like in general.
SPEAKER_01
And so then, let's say a recruiter, you're on LinkedIn. What do you do you say like, all right, so BizNow was a real estate media company. Would you say like, all right, Politico is a political media company.
They're in DC. Let's go after them.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, for writers, I would definitely do things like that. So I would connect to them on LinkedIn and in the message where it says, how do you want to connect to them, I would write, hey, can we jump on a call? We're interested. We're hiring for a position.
And I thought you might know someone. I learned my lesson the hard way. You don't say we're interested in you or you might get a call from their boss pissed off.
I would also cold call people at their office. I would literally Google map them, call their office, and hit four for sales and try to find the sales department, and then be like, hey, we're looking for somebody. Could I tell you a bit about it? And then they'd be like, yeah, what does there say about it? And I would tell them how amazing the position is initially.
And then that would get them, they might be like, they might whisper and be like, can I call you? Can I call you back in a second? They're going to walk outside and call me. And then I would persuade them to come in for an interview.
SPEAKER_01
And then in the interview, what would you do?
SPEAKER_00
So I would usually tell them upfront. So I would usually, either myself or a recruiter, do a very, very brief interview just to make sure that they're excited about the role. And then I would tell them that there's going to be the first and next step is a test.
And if they said to me or my recruiter, that's ridiculous, I'm too senior to take it, or it just felt awkward, then usually if I had a recruiter, they would elevate it to me as the CEO. I would call and persuade them of why this role is worth taking the test for.
SPEAKER_01
OK, I'm sorry, guys. That's the end. I hope you liked it.
If you want to listen to the whole thing, go to trends.co. And you'll sign up. It's only $1.
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co. Check it out. See you.
Thank you.