Zach, we got to set the table. Zach, how old are you?
You just sold your company. You just sold your company for how much money, Zach?
All right. What's up, Zach? You're here, 19 years old. The last time you called on this podcast, you were in high school. I think you were like between third and fourth period or on lunch break, and you did a podcast recording with us in front of, I don't know, a quarter million people or something like that. And now we fast forward, I don't know, a year and change later, and you just sold your company. You just sold your company for how much money, Zach?
I can't reveal how much we sold for, unfortunately, but I could tell you that right before selling, we finished 2025 having done $30 million in revenue, and now the company's grown. In January, we just did 5.7 million in revenue.
5.7 million in January. So if you were to multiply by 12 and say like what we could do this year, you're talking about like a, you know, 50 million plus revenue company, but 30 million last year. Dude, that's amazing. Like, you know, just the way you say it, you say it so calmly and like a grown-up. But like, can we just take a second, Sam, just to be amazed and just give the kid some props? Like that is incredible. You're a teenager who built an app with your friends. You got it to 30 million in annual revenue and sold your company just now to MyFitnessPal.
And last time we talked to you, you were on, I think literally, your lunch break and you were in high school. I know that you were applying to college, and on the podcast you were like saying, 'I think I'm going to go to college.' Are you like on your lunch break at college now? Is that where you are? Are you at a dorm?
I mean, I'm not going to lie. I've missed like many classes this semester.
I'm at the University of Miami. I am a freshman, but...
Okay, so you're a freshman at Miami. And I believe, by the way, I remember being outraged on Twitter by this. I think I was one of your defenders here, where you applied to a bunch of colleges you wanted to go to and you got rejected, which is insane to be a teenager who's got an app that's doing tens of millions in revenue, and the college admissions office was like, 'We didn't like your essay,' or whatever, your SAT score doesn't show that you're exceptional. Obviously you were exceptional. Can you tell that story of maybe facing a little bit of rejection and how that felt?
Yeah, I mean, right after the podcast that we did last time, I was submitting everything. I applied to every single Ivy League school, Stanford, a few others. Stanford was my top choice that I wanted to get into. And just one by one, rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection. And I mean, I tweeted about it because I had a 4.0 unweighted GPA. At the time I applied, my company was doing like I think 15 million a year when I applied, and I had on paper what most people need to get in, but I was just rejected from everywhere, which I felt was pretty surprising.
Why do you think that was? Do you know? There's no way to know, really. It's a black box, but do you have any suspicions?
Well, your post kind of went viral. Did anything happen from that? Did anybody reach out?
Yeah, to be honest, it was actually great that, like, it might have been better that I got rejected from colleges than gotten into any, because I posted it, got like 40 million views on Twitter, and I had a ton of really cool people. Like the mayor of Miami texted me afterwards, and we actually met up. That's part of the reason I even decided to go to Miami was the support from him and a bunch of other cool people like Alex Hormozi and a bunch of others that had reached out to support me after that.
That's awesome. Yeah, you kind of needed that. Nobody wants a team that's too perfect and successful. So you kind of needed a little bit of likability, a little bit of rejection in the backstory. So I think in the end it's a good thing.
Yeah. But I didn't get any sympathy from the post. They were just like all mad at me.
Yeah. I don't think that you deserve sympathy. I don't think you deserved it. I think things have worked out as they should. Did the University of Miami or any of them ask you for a donation already? The first freshman to have a library that he donates.
No, seriously, because they have really good processes for identifying whales and reaching out to people.
Yeah, you actually should hire one of them. They'll kind of help your onboarding flow. The university donation people are exceptional.
What's your dating life like? Like when you're in college and you're 19 and you just sell an app for $100 million, and even before that, you own an app that is doing tens of millions in revenue. Are you by yourself all the time working, or are you able to have fun? And is the world's easiest pickup line actually successful for you?
So I'd say the first semester I had way too much fun. I was doing too many things. We had thrown a bunch of parties. Me and a couple of my other entrepreneurial friends who were living in Miami with me at the time, we all moved into this house together. And so every couple weeks we'd throw a house party. And I'm not going to lie, it was definitely like I had a lot of aura throwing these parties. And the word got around in the college that this is like the Cali guy or Calorie Boy. Those are like my nicknames.
That's amazing. Calorie Boy. Okay. So by the way, we didn't say what your app is. So your app, Cal AI, is basically an app on your phone where you could take a picture of the meals that you're eating, and it kind of uses AI to track and log your calories. So you don't have to type in that you had six ounces of chicken breast with the skin or whatever, you know, you don't have to do all that logging. You just take the picture and it does the thing. And so that's what you guys had built. And for those who haven't seen the first episode, give just a quick origin story. You did the full one before, but just do the quick one here.
Sure. So I started programming when I was seven years old. I was obsessed with video games and I wanted to learn how to make my own. So I started building. By the time I was a freshman in high school, I built my first company. I built an unblocked gaming website that let students play games in school unblocked. It was actually kind of accidental that I stumbled into turning it into a real company. First I just built it for my friends at school, but it spread really quickly and it grew to five million users through mostly me just making TikToks about it. It was generating $60,000 a year by putting banner ads on the website. And then when I was 16, I sold it for $100,000. After that, I got into the app space, started building a few small projects, and then Cal AI is really the one that I went all in on, and it really took off. It exceeded all expectations.
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And you just, I mean, you're not like, you started programming early, but like you're not Albert Einstein out here. You're not Mark Zuckerberg. You're not a prodigy in terms of coding, correct? Like what makes you unique, it seems like, was the blend of good enough at building and then, you know, good enough or great at marketing and just being an entrepreneur. And the combination is what's important. I think that's important to call out because I remember when I was on the come-up, I sort of had this misconception that I needed to be some sort of 900 IQ gigabrain in order to enter a space. And what I didn't really realize was that, you know, if you just kind of, even if you know nothing today, if you just give it six months of full focus, you'll be good enough to be dangerous. And that's kind of all you need at one of the skills, then you just got to stack two others. And it's the combination of the skills that's really valuable, not having to be world class at any one thing. Was that your experience or was it different?
Yeah, I would definitely agree with you. I mean, especially now, like coding is just becoming easier and easier with AI tools. And I'd say my skills now, being able to code, has really helped me understand how to lead a team. Like I always think that the most important thing is the Pareto principle. Learn the 20% that gets you the 80% of results. And that's what's necessary to actually hire someone that's smarter than you and being able to manage the team. So I've pretty much done that in all of these different areas, and it has allowed me to build great people around me and put in the systems.
I think your biggest skill is your audacity. I think that what Shaan left out was maybe one of the more interesting things is that when you were starting to build, I think you made a tweet or a video and you said, 'In the next three years,' I think you were 15, 'I'm going to have an app that does 50 or 100 million in revenue.' You said some audacious thing, and then I think you even tweeted that out. And so there's this interesting combination of audacity to think that somehow you, a young kid, are good enough to figure this out, and then also the tenacity and IQ and get-after-it-ness to make it happen. We found that video of you in your kitchen, basically when you're, I don't know, 13, 14 years old, saying, 'I will do this, man,' sort of speaking the words into existence.
Yeah. I mean, it was honestly pretty crazy, like looking back, that I did that. My plan was that I was going to make a YouTube series out of it. But I just made that first video saying that I was going to make a million dollars before graduating high school. That was my goal. And I always, I kind of from a young age always believed in my heart I was going to do it. I just, I wanted it so badly that I needed it to be true. And I think self-belief has gotten me so far because it's helped me get over so many points of life where I could have just said, like, 'If no one, like, I have to go to college before I'm able to do this, like, I have to take a class, I have to get a degree, like, no way I could do it before.' But no, I always believed, like, I can do it. I tend to...
You forgot to add the 'per week.' I want to make a million dollars before I graduate high school per week.
So you said, like, 'I always had that,' but I'm going to question that for a sec because, you know, maybe some of it you were born with. Maybe some of it you just kind of came out of nowhere. It's just aura, natural aura, as you would say. But me and Sam, we've both been on our little motivational arc, right? Like I was a big Tony Robbins guy. I went to the seminars. I used to listen to the audio tapes and go for walks. And he had this walking series where you would walk and he'd be like, 'All right, every four steps you're going to say this thing. You're going to believe this. I'm going to ask you this question. Whatever comes to your mind.' And it's, you know, I got Tony Robbins in my ear. And Sam, I'm sure you had a similar sort of self-braining where you worked on it. You practiced the muscle of self-belief. I'm curious, Zach, I don't know you very well, but I'm curious. Did you work on the muscle of self-belief in any way?
Well, it's honestly a great question. Of course I had doubts. Like in my head, I was like, 'This is a crazy goal. Can I actually do this?' And I remember there was this one story that, when I was really young, I was in the car with my mom and I asked her, like, 'Mom, if I'm rich, if I'm rich when I'm older, I want to do this.' I said something along those lines. And then I was like, 'Wait.' And I changed it. I was like, 'When I'm rich, I'm going to do this.' And I think I've always been conscious about shifting my language to a 'when,' not an 'if.' Even though, of course, I had doubts. I was like, 'Can I really do this?' But yeah, I had those doubts. And the motivation arc, dude, I used to be obsessed with motivational content. I still am, but not as much. But especially, it was like the year before I started Cal AI, I curated my TikTok For You page. I would only interact with videos of motivational speakers. And so my entire feed was just David Goggins yelling at me, 'Get back to work. Get back to work.' And all these other people. And that's actually why I started my first app, which was a motivational alarm clock where you could choose people. Basically, I identified by watching these TikToks, everyone in the comments was like, 'This got me so pumped up. I want to make this my alarm clock. How can I do that?' And there was no way to really easily do that. So I was like, 'Shit, I want to build an app because I want this for myself too.' And all these people clearly want it as well, that lets you set these motivational sounds as your alarm. And so that was the idea behind Grind Clock.
Grind Clock. Grunch, and thus Grind Clock was born.
So, Zach, dude, I would use that now, by the way.
So you're rich. How do you feel? When did the wire hit? It's March 4th, Wednesday. When did, I think you announced this a few days ago? How's it feel? When did the wire hit?
We announced it on Monday, but the sale actually took place in December. We couldn't speak about it until now. And so the wire hit the same day it closed. And honestly, like, I'm just going to be real. The excitement hit me like when they first made the offer, like over the phone. But then I was like, 'Wait, but it didn't happen yet. We don't have anything signed.' So quell the excitement. Quell the excitement. And then it never felt as good as that did.
And how long did the process take? And was it miserable or was it all right? Was it smooth?
It was honestly much faster than it would normally be. And some of that was like the timing. Like part of the reason we didn't share anything until now is because peak season is January and February, and so we didn't want to really influence anything.
So real quick. Okay. So let's tell the story about the acquisition. And one of the reasons I want to do this is because the acquisition, the exit part of it for any entrepreneur is such a huge deal, right? It's literally, it's probably the biggest deal you'll ever make in your life. Most people don't really talk about how it goes down. They don't talk about how it feels. They don't talk about what they did. They don't talk about the ups, the downs, the techniques that actually really made a difference. Right before we started this podcast, you were mentioning that you had watched, I made this video a long time ago actually for Sam's conference. I was, Sam, you were like, 'You want to come speak?' And I was like, 'Yeah.' I gave a talk called 'How to Sell a Failing Company.' Now, your company wasn't failing, but mine, I would say, was, meaning it wasn't achieving the goal I had for it. And there wasn't like, you know, just huge companies knocking at the door every day offering me briefcases full of cash. I had to sell the company. I didn't get bought just passively. And I felt like every story I had ever heard about somebody selling was everybody was knocking on our door. They wanted us and we picked. And I was like, 'Well, that ain't me.' And so I had to run a process and essentially create an auction, and it had a good outcome, but nobody really talked about.
I think the line, Shaan, is like a bunch of Silicon Valley big shots say companies are bought, not sold. And I remember hearing that and I'm like, 'Oh, so people aren't hollering at me all the time that I'm a loser.' And then the reality is that's not the reality. That is the reality of...
Maybe for some people, but for other people that ain't it. It wasn't it for me. I had to figure out how to sell it, and I shared some of the lessons. So you were saying real quick that you would watch that. I was, you know, somewhat helpful for you. But can we talk about that? That's why I want to talk about the acquisition because I feel like it makes a huge difference. Founders get very few reps. You get very few chances to practice doing it. So it's kind of useful to hear stories of how it all went down.
Yeah, great point, honestly, on that. Because going into this, it was my first time with everything. So it was honestly scary and stressful, and I kept overthinking things, but hearing stories was helpful.
And by the way, you sold to a company that's owned by private equity. So it's your first time. It's their, you know, they're basically, you know, they're pros. It's like sitting down with Magnus Carlsen for your first game, right? This is what they do, whereas this is your first time doing it.
Yeah. Yeah. 100%. The process honestly started back in May of 2025. It was right before I was, like, a few months before going to college. And so I kind of was thinking, like, you know what, maybe there's a world where I can be a normal college student and get a normal freshman experience where I don't need to worry about a company at the same time. So let me just talk to some people and see what they're feeling, see if they're interested. So I kind of ran a sales cycle at that point. I made a list of the 10 companies that I felt made the most sense, and out of all of them, we were extremely undervalued, to be honest.
So explain the details. You make the list. Great. Now what do you do? You emailed them, called them? You, how do you, 'Hey, just wanted to see if you maybe would want to do something,' right? Who'd you do? Corp dev. Who'd you talk to and how'd you talk to them?
So I was recommended that, or I heard somewhere, it's, you lose leverage if you're just cold outreaching. So I tried to get people that I knew to make warm intros, kind of saying something along the lines of like, 'Hey, I think you guys should meet. This is a cool company.' I just thought of this like as if it was his idea, not if it was me asking him.
And so he made all those intros, got on calls with a lot of the CEOs of these companies, and a lot of them immediately just kind of shut it down, like, 'Oh, nice meeting you, but we're not interested.' Some even in the email were like, 'Cool company. We're not interested.' But then a few, they were interested. We did a few calls, just met some of the team, and honestly I was surprised that like only after a couple meetings it was like very quick to get an offer. It wasn't like I imagined it would be, like, I don't know, talking to the team, getting to know them for a long time. But like you could just, they just, some of them, it's different for everyone, but like a few of the people we were talking to, they were like, 'This is the information we want to know. Okay. Hop on two calls with the team. Okay. Like this is, you know, a number. What do you think?'
Right. And you said the offers at the first round were low. What were you, did you just have crazy expectations? Was it, were they not actually low? Do you have crazy expectations or were they actually low? It's like, you know, 1x revenue or something. Like what were they offering basically at that time when you thought they were too low?
Less than we would make in a year.
It was like about what we would make in a year in profit.
Okay. Wow. So 1x profit type of thing. And so did you just politely turn them down? What'd you say? And by the way, did that ignite some rage in you? Did you get a little fuel from that?
Well, after that, I guess we did kind of, I politely did turn them down. And after that, I was kind of like, wait, is my company just not sellable? And then I was looking at it, I was like, wait, Weight Watchers just declared bankruptcy? All of these companies, like how much money do they really have in the bank? Are we just not going to be able to sell? Is this just going to be a cash flowing business forever? And I kind of started to accept that idea in my head that we are just going to be a cash flowing company, and like actually started to move some things in place, like looking for a potential CEO to bring on so like I could step away and move on to something else. And so like the next few months, that's really what I believed. And I think what changed was I spoke to another founder who sold his company, and he told me what worked for him. He basically explained how bankers work, M&A bankers. You go to them, they create a list of all these companies you've never even heard of before, and like these companies that are about to go public, they just want to roll up all these smaller companies into them. And so they're willing to give you actually fair market value for your company anytime you want.
Dude, your experience is very similar to mine except you were 10 years younger. But I think it's a similar experience to many entrepreneurs, which is you build a company, you have these huge aspirations of selling it. And I've talked to so many people who have done this. You go through your first process, massive letdown. You think, oh, this company, like they lowballed the offer, and it's like, it's equity at a privately held company that's overvalued, so it's basically worth nothing. Then you go through this process where you got your hopes up. Then you're defeated. You're defeated for 10 days, and then you're like, 'All right, I have to go back to work, and like maybe I'm just going to own this forever, so I might as well just build the company to last forever.' Then months later, years later, sometime later, then you get the second round, you care a little bit less, and your company is a little bit better because you've just assumed it's going to last longer. And it's exactly like dating. The second you don't want to date someone or you don't really care, they start coming to you. And so this is like the exact same process I've gone through. I have probably five to 10 friends who have gone through this exact same emotional process. And by the way, yours was actually faster. I think you said like it was like a low stress. You kind of implied it was like, 'Oh, it went pretty smoothly.' It didn't feel smooth. If I had to guess going through this, it felt kind of defeating. And this is the exact same process except oftentimes that's like a five-year process.
Yeah. Like that's exactly what happened. And I just resonated with that fact. And then actually, and this goes into Shaan, what I was saying before. So then the second time, so I was just, I was set on building the company into like a long-term enduring business. It's going to bootstrap whatever. Like let's just figure out how we make it endure long term.
Dude, you're just making a potential buyer like weak at the knees by saying those things.
Yeah. So on that note, we were thinking like, okay, we really want this company to last. We probably want to think about making it premium because any company that's been around for 10 years that's like really big in the app space that I could think of, they're all premium. So that's what we started to work towards. And you know who's really good at freemium? MyFitnessPal. So I wanted to hop on a call with their CEO and squeeze whatever information about freemium I could out of him. Pitch it as like catching up, but just try to ask him questions about freemium. Reached out, got on a call, and they did not answer a single question about freemium. And it makes sense. I mean, like it would definitely be not in their interest at all to help us. But yeah, like they actually spun the conversation from talking about that to, okay, maybe something else makes sense. Maybe the company's, maybe a partnership or whatever. And that's how things really started.
That's so great. There's a moment in Ben Horowitz's book, 'The Hard Thing About Hard Things,' he talks about a few like kind of key moments that happen. It feels like when it's happening in your company, it's unique to you, but then you read these books and you realize, oh, every company goes through these moments. And so one of them he calls like the WEO moment, which is the 'we're effed, it's over.' And it's like you'll hit a moment where you feel like you're just screwed. And you know, but that's common. And what you realize is actually a pretty high survival rate from that moment when you feel like there's no survival. Another one I would say is the 'no one's coming to save us' moment. And that's not from Ben, that's just from this conversation, is all three of us basically had that. It's like, oh, so I guess we're not just going to get a magical offer and it's all just going to work out. Like I guess I have to actually make this company work for me. And there's nobody coming to save us. All right, cool. And that actually just really strengthens your resolve. And so some of these things that seem bad in the moment are actually exactly the sort of dose of medicine that a founder needs when it happens.
Zach, you talked about, so then the conversation picked up. Can you give us like, you know, Zach's acquisition corner here real quick? Like what do you think if you're now advising the next 19-year-old kid who's going through acquisition talks? What are sort of the dos and don'ts of how to have that conversation literally? Like do you throw out a number? How do you react? How do you position yourself or present yourself well meeting in person versus doing it over the, you know, like give us some things that you felt you learned out of this experience.
Yeah. So like Sam said, very similar to girls, like you basically want to play hard to get. Kind of you don't want to be too interested. You also don't want to be not interested at the same time. So it's kind of like the push and pull.
It's like that, what I describe it as is you could let them know you're interested, but you let them know also that regardless if they get on board or not, I'm going some places.
Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. That's a great way to put it. What helped me the most was that I had a friend, I actually had a couple people that have been through acquisitions who I was constantly getting on the phone with them and they were giving me advice throughout the whole process. So if you're trying to sell your company and you know someone that has gone through an acquisition, just having them help you through this, I think is super valuable just to talk through things. Like you said, things are very similar along any company even if you think they're not. So like they've seen things that I'm going through right now and they would give me the right things to say.
You, Shaan, or have you guys, Zach, have you seen Good Will Hunting? You've seen that, Shaan? Of course. And there's this one scene where Ben Affleck, he's like talking to Matt Damon, who doesn't want to go work for the NSA and get this fancy job. And Ben Affleck is like, 'No, f that. You're not doing it for you. You're doing it for me. You're doing it because my favorite part of the day is that second when I honk the horn to pick you up to go to our construction job. I hope that you don't come to the car because you're off doing something amazing and fancy. You owe it to me.' And when Zach was talking about he was like, 'I just want to go to college and have a normal experience.' There's like all these people that are like, 'No, f that. You go build this company and you do that for me. You're not doing it for you.' You know, that's how I feel when I hear he has everything that, you know, in my late 20s, 30s, that I would have begged to have. You had it at 18. It's so funny hearing you go through this experience because I remember when we were talking to you before, you were like, 'I want to go to college. I want to do this.' And you're the man. You're the best. But in our head, I imagine both Shaan and I were like, 'But you have this gift. You're blowing it.'
Yeah. I think we actually, I think you did what we told you, which was like go for the social life, but you know, this is your path. This is what you're good at. This is what you should do. Like don't worry about the classes side of thing. Did you feel when you were in college like you have two different lives? Like were they separate? Do the professors all know what the hell's going on? Did they put some respect on that name? Did the other kids know what's going on or did you just sort of have this dual life where you're trying to be a normal student and they treat you like a normal student? They don't really know what's going on.
It was a pretty dual life. There were times when it was close together. So as I mentioned, I was living in a house with a bunch of my entrepreneur friends. And so when we were throwing parties, it was like all the entrepreneurs and then a bunch of college kids. And like we would invite our other entrepreneur friends too. So like the actual going out aspect, that was very cohesive, I would say, which was really interesting actually. It was the wildest thing to experience.
Zach, I got a question for you. You had what is I think pretty normal for a teenager, a college student. You had a little douchebag arc. So you go and you're doing this amazing thing. You come on the pod. You're this upstanding guy. You're this self-belief, work hard, build this app, doing well with his friends, trying to be a good student, good grades, all that good stuff. And then you're like, you launch a course, you release a video where you're standing on a Lamborghini, throwing money in the air, and we were like, 'Oh, what is this? Where did he go? He went entertaining us. What happened? Can we talk about the douchebag arc?'
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the guys that I started the house with, the entrepreneurs, we kind of decided at first the idea was, let's just get a house, live together. It's a beautiful city. It's Miami, and we're going to all build our companies side by side, and we'll share learnings, and that's going to be great. We'll all grow very quickly together. Then we were like, wait, we're all super talented individuals. Why don't we, and this is a really interesting thing that we're doing. We're all young, having fun, and building companies. Let's record it. Let's make some content out of it. Then it became, oh wait, hiring videographers and editors and all the backend systems in place actually is going to be pretty expensive and take some time. How can we monetize it? And so that's when the idea was like, okay, let's make a course to help other people learn how to make apps too. And then we could continue to do what we do, make cool content, and we're at least breaking even. And a lot of people's criticism on that was like, you're already making so much money. Why do you need to make more? It's because we're business people at heart. We want to break even. But then when we were thinking about angles to launch this and everything, we decided to go the super controversial route like you said, that Andrew Tate, it was like sell the dream, sell the lifestyle instead of sell the product. And it was interesting. I don't think it's definitely not a real representation of any of our characters. We very intentionally wanted to rage bait people. But yeah, definitely, I mean, it worked. It took over the Twitter timeline, but it definitely started a lot of beef with people that might have not been great.
Yeah. Looking back now, are you like good move, bad move? What's the post game?
I think that it makes the story more interesting. But if I were to do something again, I would definitely take a little bit of a different angle. I mean, to be honest, there was no reason to even launch on Twitter given what we were trying to do. Like the Twitter people were not who we were trying to make videos for. So that was kind of just like our native platform. So we decided to take over. But yeah, I don't think it was like the right strategy.
What's the first dumb purchase going to be? Or have you already had your dumb purchases from the cash flow? I guess like you're 19 years old. You just sold your company. I can't say the number, but I'm just going to, I think it probably was a number close to $100 million. That's my guess. So I'll just make a guess for you because you're not allowed to say anything. What's the dumb purchase going to be? You got to do something dumb. What are you going to do?
So I already had the car, the dream car I always wanted. That was out of the way.
Green, yellow. What'd you do? What color did you go with?
Matte black. Okay, gotcha. The funny thing is you look like the guys who walk up to a guy in a Lamborghini and say, 'Hey, you're on TikTok.' You have a little fake microphone and you're like, 'Hey, what do you do for work?' And it's supposed to be an old real estate guy or like a shipping magnate. But you're also the guy in the car. It's crazy. It's like the Spider-Man meme.
Okay, so you got the car already. What do you want to get now? You're a Long Island kid. You're a watch guy if I had to guess.
I mean, I didn't get any like crazy watch yet. Maybe I'd get a watch to be honest soon. Like I do have one, but I'm not like a huge collector of anything yet. However, what I did do, and I wanted to do this for a while, is I kind of threw out, or I'm going to donate everything in my closet. And last week, I went shopping with a stylist and I redid everything. So a whole new wardrobe. And honestly, it's been great. I feel like it's...
That's such a great move. And by the way, that costs so much less than people think to do something like I did that when I was 24 years old. It didn't, yeah, I'm 15 years later. I don't wear any of that stuff anymore, but like it was such a great move. I think at the time I paid something like three grand or something for the stylist to come with me for a day or two. Maybe I found like kind of, I don't know. I literally posted on Craigslist originally and got a bunch of applicants. And I just told her, I was like, 'Yo, I don't want to buy like a $500 belt. Like I'm not trying to wear Gucci. Like that's not the goal. Like I just want to look good and have clothes that fit me right because I don't really know how to do any of that stuff. Can you help me out?' And she was, it was amazing. It was such a good process. Like I think every young guy who comes in a little bit of money, it's like one of those purchases that sounds a little silly. It's like you kind of don't want to say you did it, but actually is a great move.
Yeah. No, I think it's definitely worth it.
So are you working at MyFitnessPal now?
Yes, I am. I'm still the CEO of Cal.
How long are you going to work? Do you have an earnout or like, are you there for two years?
I can't say exactly on this, but there is a period where I'm staying before I leave.
Okay. Okay.
Do they, they bought 100% of the company though? Like they own it now. You don't have to like, it's not like an investment that you then... It's not an investment. It's actually an acquisition.
I looked up the MyFitnessPal CEO. It looks like Mike Fischer. He was at Etsy. So, you know, huge company. And then I think if I had to guess, my West Point made an article on him. So I assume he graduated from West Point. I think that would be, that is going to be really cool for you to learn from this guy. If I had to guess, he's an operator. He's probably pretty rigid and in a good way, and that's going to be like, you'll probably learn a lot.
Yeah. Yeah. It's been good so far. We catch up like about once a week and it's nice.
Can you teach us some of the tactical good decisions that made a difference for you in actually building the app? Right. We're kind of glossing over the fact that like you built this app. A lot of...
Of people build apps, but your app actually started to work and grew and scaled a lot. We talked about this a lot on the first episode about your TikTok strategy, how you basically, you know, would message tons of people, have them create content that would be talking about the app in an organic native way, and then that would lead to awareness and downloads of the app. But are there like small things like, you know, either product decisions or like a marketing hook that you stumbled into that kind of changed the way you guys thought about things? Oh, we thought it should be X and then actually we — I remember one day we realized this other thing was the way to do it. Can you tell a story like that? I love those stories.
There were two things here that I would say were crucial to the growth of the business. As I mentioned the last time I came on, influencer marketing is what started us and it took us really far. We got to about $2 million a month just from influencer marketing. The thing is after that we kind of plateaued a little bit. And what really got us over the hump, the next step was running ads, performance ads on Instagram and TikTok and Facebook. And so I invested a lot more time learning and scaling ads and that's actually what's fueling most of the growth at this point. So there's a lot of learnings on that.
