It All Started with a Fishing Trip - Tales from Brandon C. White

I promise you that in this episode we will cover the widest range of topics that I think we have ever attempted to cover in a single conversation. We will go from fishing to venture capital to writing bestselling books, and somehow, we will end up talking about artificial intelligence.  I know what you're thinking...you might as well throw in some politics for good measure.  Well, we do that too!

How many business relationships are made over a common bond that we find that we share with people we end up doing business with?  In my experience, people do business with people - not companies.  

Brandon C. White is a success entrepreneur with, by his own admission, lots of strikeouts, but it makes that next homerun that much sweeter.  He also has gone by the titles angel investor, venture capitalist, and worked as an employee believe it or not.  

Today, he has also started multiple podcasts, he is an Amazon Best Seller on How to Write a Business Plan, and he is a public speaker.  He is a true modern-day renaissance man.  

As you listen to our conversation, you with find out very quickly that he is a passionate fisherman at heart, and this has connected him to people that shared his enjoyment of being out on the water; it's even lead to a deal or two.  

This is truly a story of Making Cents of It All.  Enjoy!

Transcript

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Jesse Stakes: Hey, everybody! Welcome to this week's episode of making sense of it all. I am very pleased to bring you my guest today, Brandon white. Brandon. Thank you so much for joining me.

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Brandon White: Jesse. Thanks for having me, man. I feel like we almost did a mini episode before we hit record.

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Jesse Stakes: I think you're right. So the word or the title that would come to me when I think about you, or when I think about. You know. Everything we just talked about is kind of a Renaissance man. You do a lot of things, and you've gotten pretty decent at a lot of different, a lot of different disciplines. Wouldn't you say.

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Brandon White: Yeah, I've been really lucky to be honest, and I think it's all driven by my just curiosity that

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Brandon White: I dive into. I don't do much of anything in moderation. So when I go into these things, I just dive in a hundred percent fully focused. And then when I

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Brandon White: get to that 90% or 95% of it. I don't say I get bored. But if another opportunity which we can talk about here in a minute, how my career sort of been a windy path. If it's something else jumps in, then I

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Brandon White: go all in, and I've really been lucky in the sense that it's knock on wood worked out.

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Jesse Stakes: I'll go down my 1st rabbit hole because I think you said something there that I hear a lot of people say when when people, you know. People will tell people do everything in moderation, or they'll tell people when they invest. They'll say, Make sure you. Do. You know that you're that you're safe with your money, or that you allocate it in different parts of the. You know, different parts of the economy. But I hear a lot of successful people, not just yourself, but but a number of people that I would consider successful

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Jesse Stakes: say that they're all in when they believe in something they dive into it, and I just want my audience to hear that. And I want to. I want them to hear your take on how you feel about that.

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Brandon White: No, I think moderation is for people who are scared, I mean.

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Brandon White: here's what I'll say without going.

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Jesse Stakes: Say it.

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Brandon White: Without having some rant.

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Jesse Stakes: Hmm.

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Brandon White: Usain bolt did not moderately train to be the fastest man in the world.

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Jesse Stakes: Fair.

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Brandon White: Steph Curry doesn't moderately train to be the best shooter who has ever lived. Period.

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Brandon White: No great person that I know

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Brandon White: or not know, but or know of.

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Jesse Stakes: Sure.

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Brandon White: Has ever moderately done something and been great at it, I mean, sure. Look!

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Brandon White: Fun! Fact. I was a grand prize winner in the Harley Davison, Freeride Sweepstakes. I won in 52 million. I won a dynaglide super sport, great motorcycle.

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Brandon White: You can occasionally get lucky.

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Brandon White: But the reason that that even happened was because I didn't moderately build my fat boy. I went all in, and I was charging on my credit card, and the parts were giving me points. So there's just not, I mean, for your listeners out there. If you think of anyone

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Brandon White: like.

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Brandon White: don't you don't need to be preached to just think of anyone that you know, whether they're public or in your life

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Brandon White: that is really great at what they do, they? You just can't do it in moderation. And for people, a lot of these

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Brandon White: amateur armchair psychologists and coaches out there that you read on the Internet.

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Brandon White: They just don't know what they're talking about, and and they act like they do. But then, if you ever ask to see their tax returns, or you really peel back the onion of what's going on. You see, it's just a farce. So I just I don't believe it. It doesn't mean that

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Brandon White: it doesn't mean that you can't still have a good life and have some balance. But you're you're going to be out of balance.

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Brandon White: You're going to be out of balance if you're going to do something great, and that's not bad that society has said. That's bad, because

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Brandon White: I don't know. Some like middle

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Brandon White: achievers have decided that that's like a way to justify the middle, but

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Brandon White: it just doesn't work, and I don't mean to come across as

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Brandon White: as too harsh or anything like that. But the reality is, if you follow that advice. I'm just not sure how you're going to make it.

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Jesse Stakes: Well, I think you said something there, and I think it's very true. The people who kind of who preach work-life balance are people who are probably middle of the road at a lot of things. But what you're doing really is you're redefining success. You're telling people that success now is, you know, being, you know.

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Jesse Stakes: What do you think? 50 to 70% at everything, you know, if I get C's on everything, I'm a happier person. I've got more balance in my life than the guy who's getting a pluses and studying his tail off. That's what they're essentially trying to redefine as success.

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Brandon White: Yeah. And you have to go all in simply because you can't outrace time, meaning experience.

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Brandon White: And and like, it's very, there's really no shortcut in that way. So you're gonna either have to.

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Brandon White: You're gonna have to go all in at some point. I mean, I just don't know

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Brandon White: how you ever get to that extra level without it? And if somebody out there is listening and has it, please write to Jesse and Jesse, forward the email and the framework for it to me.

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Jesse Stakes: Fair enough. I'll take those. So

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Jesse Stakes: you know, before we dive into everything. I feel like there's 1 thing I always liked. I always kind of like to pull back and have my audience understand who they're listening to. And so I know that you have bought and sold 3 different companies, and like like at, you know, at

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Jesse Stakes: at different, you know, different levels of success with each, or however, you would define success. But but you had to start somewhere like, what was it like? Where in your whole life's journey? And when it came to business, did you decide to decide that you wanted to be an entrepreneur that you that this is what you wanted to do, that you weren't just somebody. You weren't just going to be somebody's employee. You weren't going to be that 9 to 5, guy looking for work-life balance like, Tell everybody, where did it start?

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Brandon White: Yeah.

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Brandon White: And I just want to preface this by saying, we're going to highlight

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Brandon White: the successes. But I want everyone to know that I failed as much as I failed more quite frankly call them projects that never made it to a company, or call them semi companies that never made it. There's a lot of things I just want to say that up front, but

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Brandon White: I didn't.

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Jesse Stakes: Highlight. Those 2, I mean, like, honestly, it's a great point people learn more from their failures than they do successes. So please call out any of them that you want to, because I think people learn a lot from it.

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Brandon White: Yeah,

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Brandon White: the. So I started my career. I was. I'm going to roll back because you sort of set that up. I went to college. I was raised by a single mom. I thought that I was going to go to law school. I graduated college, and

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Brandon White: I really just told people. I was going to law school because I really didn't know what I was going to do. And if you tell people you're going to be a lawyer, or a doctor, or something like that, like people don't keep questioning you, Jesse.

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Jesse Stakes: Sounds good. Right.

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Brandon White: Well, and it's people know what it is. It's a known thing like, Oh, you're going to do this, this and this. And you're gonna have a career and whatnot. But I graduated. I went actually back to the tree nursery where I had worked and and paid my helped pay my way through school.

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Brandon White: and after about a year there, my mom said, like this is, she said, this is not your future. You went to college. This there's a better path for you. You have more potential is basically what she was saying. And she said, Let's why don't you just go back to school? So I applied

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Brandon White: to go, get my master's in psychology and undergraduate in psychology, went back to get my master's in psychology, and I went to school in a small private school on Eastern Shore, Maryland, and where I had been. I fished all. I'm a big fisherman. I fished through school all through school I actually lived on the house on the water, and had a boat, and really had a good time, and

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Brandon White: when I was working on my master's I

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Brandon White: was looking for a magazine that was fly fishing and light tackle focused, and there was no magazine. Now this is 19 nineties for people listening. So the Internet was around. But it was a very small community on the Internet at that time, and I had previously taught myself how to code. I was coding basic on a Commodore, Vic. 20, and a commodore 64, which ages me a little bit. But I was self taught, and I didn't code all the time, but I was

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Brandon White: very intrigued at his young age, and I always was on the computer. So

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Brandon White: I decided at that time that I was going to publish a magazine that was targeted. I was living on. The school is in Maryland, so it's in the Chesapeake Bay, which is largest estuary in the world, has great fishing in the Chesapeake Bay and on the coast, and a million tributaries that have just I mean, it's it's an epic place to be, for if you're a fisherman, and

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Brandon White: I went to the local printer.

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Brandon White: and I said, Hey, I want to publish a magazine, and he very kindly walk me through a very

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Brandon White: good set of questions that led me to the fact that I did not have enough money

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Brandon White: to be able to execute, that I think at the time I had like $800 in my in my savings account, which was written on paper at that time in these little savings account books they used to give you.

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Jesse Stakes: Yep.

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Brandon White: So I

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Brandon White: I said, well, I thought to myself, I was always on the Internet, on bulletin boards and whatnot, and I said, Hey, why can't I put a magazine online which to everybody listening? And yourself, Jesse probably rolls your eyes and be like, Yeah, of course you could do that. Well, that wasn't. Of course you could do that in 1996. That was, that's interesting. I'm not sure you can do that, and I have no idea how you're ever going to make money, but I did it.

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Brandon White: I recruited a kid from the computing lab where I used to hang out and do coding and surf, the Internet and whatnot. And I got a job on a spinach farm of all things, doing basically finance and things to help them run the farm. I use that money to pay him.

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Brandon White: And then we built this thing, and in 3 months we were written up in this magazine, and so it was called Chesapeake Angler at the time, and it took off, and it was a magazine online with writers, and we were getting traction. But then I said to myself, Why.

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Brandon White: why do I need to pay which I didn't have a lot of money, anyway, to pay writers? And I mean back then you could get 800 bucks for a photo. I mean, you know, you start adding up, and you got a $3,000, $3,000.

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Brandon White: Give or take 4 to 800 word article and not just not, you know, for the Internet. You're pumping those out as anybody listening knows. And yourself, Jesse, you put out a blog post like that every day.

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Brandon White: I said, Well, why can't we just have the users leave the content. So we built a message board I built. We built all this tech from the ground up because there wasn't wordpress. There wasn't message board. There weren't all these things you were.

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Jesse Stakes: Right.

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Brandon White: In the beginning we were flat file HTML, we were literally writing HTML and text files and uploading it to the Internet.

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Brandon White: So we did that.

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Brandon White: and we kept getting traction kept getting traction, and one day I used to read every morning in the library, and from the time magazine they had up and coming, or like this little text section. In the beginning it had an article about David.

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Brandon White: David Filo, and Jerry Yang, who were the founders of Yahoo. And they had just raised something around 1.7 million dollars from

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Brandon White: Sequoia capital. And they're going to do this phone book thing which I knew about, because it was called Yahoo. It was called something else before that, but

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Brandon White: I looked at it, and I was like, if they can raise money for that thing. I can raise money for this fishing idea. Fishing is a huge market. It's actually a 50 billion dollars market in the United States, very fragmented. I learned a lot of lessons along the way, but it's a very big market and a lot of people

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Brandon White: fish.

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Brandon White: and in saltwater fishing there's a lot of money. The average angler spends something, probably around $1,700 a year.

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Brandon White: So that's not a roadmap.

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Jesse Stakes: That cannot be, including gas.

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Brandon White: No, I mean not anymore. So I had no idea how to write a business plan. My then girlfriend, now wife and I got in her car, drove to Annapolis, Maryland, picked out the best book on how to write a best book, meaning, I had no idea, just said, how to write a business plan. I bought the book, read the book, wrote a business plan

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Brandon White: just started reaching out to people. I had no idea how to raise money at all 0. And in in those days it wasn't like these online communities where it's like, here's how you raise money. You do 11 pitch deck and blah blah none of that.

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Brandon White: So I wrote a 50 page business plan effectively. I sent it out. I networked with some people. One of the alumni from college was in the Alumni magazine. I'd reached out to him. He was interested. And

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Brandon White: one day he emailed me and he said, Hey, I had lunch with a guy today.

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Brandon White: I didn't give him your name because I didn't want to give up anything about your business, and blah blah blah! But I think you should meet him.

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Brandon White: I was like, Okay, well, thanks. A lot sent. Sure. Make the introduction. A few hours later I get an email that says, Hey, this is Tom.

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Brandon White: I'm from Sequoia. Capital. You might have known us, we did. Yahoo Cisco Apple, and a few other companies.

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Jesse Stakes: Very cool.

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Brandon White: Now Scoia capital, for those who don't know is probably one of the

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Brandon White: arguably the most successful, but one at least in the top 3 in the entire world. Most successful venture capital firms in the entire world.

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Brandon White: And to get an email like that

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Brandon White: from a partner, the the top of the line partner, not partners like the these days. Associates are called partners because entrepreneurs don't want to meet

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Brandon White: non-partners because they they want to make sure that they're meeting people that are worth their time so they can get a deal done.

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Brandon White: Title titles are meaningless at this point in life.

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Brandon White: Yeah, like they. I mean the industry changed the titles because it was true, because I will get to it. But I was a venture capitalist, and I was an associate, and Ceos don't want to talk to associates. They want to talk to partners who they know they can get a deal done. So, anyway.

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Brandon White: I I was a little bit in disbelief. Jesse and I said so. I wrote back, I said, attached to my business plan.

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Brandon White: Here's my address, love to see you.

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Brandon White: he wrote back, I'll be there tomorrow. Now.

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Brandon White: I'm living in Eastern Maryland, which is a very small town on the eastern shore of Maryland.

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Brandon White: I'm living with my then girlfriend, now, wife, in a 1,400 square foot house, that we paid $107,000, for which I think a Tesla X costs more now.

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Brandon White: living on peanut butter and jelly and tuna fish sandwiches. Basically starting this, this company on the Internet, of which people think it's crazy in the 1st place. So

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Brandon White: the next morning he actually I heard a knock on the door. I came down from my office, which was a spare bedroom, and

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Brandon White: I was like, Oh, my God!

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Brandon White: Thanks for coming!

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Brandon White: We started to do some talking, and he looked at me and he said, Hey, let's go check out your office. I turned around and walked up these old pine, really hardwood pines floor in our our house, which we still own, and walked upstairs.

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Brandon White: and I look back to see if he was following me. It was like this weird look on his face, but.

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Jesse Stakes: I was like.

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Brandon White: All this is upstairs. Let's go. So we walk up there. He gets into this. You can imagine this small bedroom

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Brandon White: just stares and looks around. He's looking around, Jesse, and he looks at me, and he's looking around doesn't say a word. So you can imagine

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Brandon White: my temperature is going up because I'm worried. Now.

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Jesse Stakes: Sure.

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Brandon White: I'm probably getting red in the face. I could have sweat, I don't know, but finally I break the silence. I said, Hey, look!

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Brandon White: I know you drove at the time he was living in DC. And DC. Is about 90 min away, I said, listen, thanks a lot for coming, man. I'm so grateful. Not in a million years could I? Could you put like, make this up? But if you came looking for more.

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Brandon White: the only thing I can offer you is my partner, who who became an early guy in the company. The guy I hired from the computing lab.

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Brandon White: He has a spare bedroom down the road, and that's our other office. We can go see him, too. He's.

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Brandon White: I said, but otherwise like if you were looking for more, this is it. Now.

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Jesse Stakes: Right.

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Brandon White: And of course I was like that. I mean, this guy's from Silicon Valley, which is, you know, he's a

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Brandon White: he's he's the top of the top. So he looks at me straight in the eye. Jesse, he's like calm down, kid.

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Brandon White: He's like this is how we found Cisco. He's like I actually thought you were bigger because I called your line. And you have this answering machine. And I did I? I rigged that thing up, Jesse, like

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Brandon White: I had you go through a phone tree.

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Jesse Stakes: Right.

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Jesse Stakes: create a bigger shadow. It's like the little dog with the with the big dog, or whatever you create a bigger shadow. If you just put the light in the right direction.

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Brandon White: Exactly. So he said, I said, Let's we talked and went through some stuff, and I said, You want to go to lunch? And he said, Yeah, so we went to lunch, flipped over the placemat, and we did the business plan on the back of the placemat literally. And it was it was he? He? I'll never forget it was team

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Brandon White: product.

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Brandon White: market financing, that's all he really wanted to know. And we wrote it on the back of placemat after we had a good lunch, and I said, Hey, you want to go fishing? He's like, right now. And I was like, Yeah, let's go fishing the boats at my house. We'll hook it up. We'll go fishing. He puts a

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Brandon White: puts the business plan in his pocket. We go back to the house. I load up the stuff, hook up the boat 21 foot, Parker, and we roll down the highway to the boat ramp. We go across Chesapeake bay, and we just slay striped bass.

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Brandon White: and on the way had a really good time, really didn't talk business that much at all on the boat. Quite candidly, we just he loved fishing, and he had been you actually using the site? Come to find out. On the way home, he says to me, I'm driving a car. I'm driving 60 miles an hour down a major highway pulling a 21 foot boat.

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Brandon White: But he says to me, he said, Well, how much money you guys have, I said, well, I don't. I don't know how much we have in our bank account right now. And he said, Well, what do you mean? And I said.

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Brandon White: Well, we trade stocks to fund the company. And he said, what I was like, yeah, we we

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Brandon White: trade stocks.

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Brandon White: he said. He said, with company money, I was like, I own the company. Yeah, yeah, with company money. I said, we could have 7, and we could have 25 today. I don't know what's going on there

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Brandon White: with my partner today, and he just like shook his head. Jesse! And then he, out of the corner of my eye. See him writing something turns out he's writing a check.

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Brandon White: and he hands me over a check for $50,000, and he says no paperwork, no anything.

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Jesse Stakes: Yeah.

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Brandon White: Said. Let's go, kid, he said. But one thing you can't train. You can't.

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Jesse Stakes: But say, don't put it in the market.

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Brandon White: He's like, you can't. You can't trade that. And you know I don't know how many weeks it was 8 weeks later raised a million dollars, and we were off to races. I'll cut short on on how it worked out. So

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Brandon White: the market.

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Brandon White: so we had a chance to sell the company for about 25 million dollars, which is even in today's world life changing money.

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Brandon White: turned it down. I'm not going to go in as a very big media company of which everybody who's listening knows.

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Brandon White: And they were going to take our online presence and make it their make it

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Brandon White: basically their fishing component distributed to all their major newspapers at the time. Newspapers were big, put it in the columns, and then run their fishing shows on Saturday mornings, based off of that. And then it was like this whole because they needed an interactive. At the time it was all these companies were scrambling. How are we going to get on the Internet

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Brandon White: board, turned it down. I did not turn it down, but board turned it down. Market crashed in 2,001. I wound up. We had raised a bunch of money after that few 1 million bucks.

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Brandon White: All the investors breaked out. Internet's going away, you can. I was like the Internet's not going away.

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Brandon White: I bought the company back from the investors, and in 3 months it was cash flow positive, and I ran it as a side hustle for many years.

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Brandon White: Because I

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Brandon White: I was just to skip. I was a venture capitalist. I worked for 2 venture capital firms investing in technology.

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Brandon White: I worked at America online in there for about a year and a half before I was recruited back out I went to business school, got my Mba. And then, after my Mba, I decided that I had a 5 year plan that I was going. The fishing site was throwing off some like multiple 6 figures a year. It was a very good side hustle, and.

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Jesse Stakes: Sounds like it.

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Brandon White: I I had a 5 year plan to sell it

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Brandon White: for a lot of different reasons, but one is, I was living in still living in that house. I wanted to get to Silicon Valley.

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Brandon White: I wanted an exit like every entrepreneur wants that that exit, and at year 4 a big at the time the media company was about 9 billion dollars market Cap came knocking and said, Hey, do you want to buy it? And that's how I got here to Half Moon Bay, where I live now, and this recording store and whatnot. A lot of stuff happened in between there. But

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Brandon White: that's what the outcome was with the phishing site. Like I said, I worked for 2 venture capital firms. I work for Aol. I started another company that is actually in the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community space. And we built a product that was originally going to be a Crm customer relationship management tool that you didn't have to put data into. And it turned out to be an intelligence product that company turns out the government doesn't really know how to buy software. We then tried

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Brandon White: as an offshoot of that to build a

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Brandon White: Government services company that ultimately we sold, and then ultimately actually just got resold to a big public government contractor.

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Brandon White: and then I.

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Brandon White: The last major thing I did was I was in finance and managed bonds, a few 100 million dollars worth of bonds. I was a junior partner.

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Brandon White: quote unquote, but one of the 2 partners in a major firm of which basically we got a buyout. So I've had. I mean, I've gone. And and we were doing

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Brandon White: like, not just regular government work. We were doing classified work in the Us. Government. So and one of those companies got funded by A,

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Brandon White: The Government's investment vehicle. It's just. It's been an incredibly wild ride in between there like I said, I started projects and failed, and, you know, learned. Got a lot of scars on my back. But it's just been an incredible, incredible career.

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Jesse Stakes: You know it's crazy, and you know, take it back for a second everything that you just said in here, like everything you just talked about this amazing ride that you've had

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Jesse Stakes: it all stemmed from taking a gentleman fishing.

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Jesse Stakes: You created an experience for somebody that ended up changing your life and put your life on on a potentially different trajectory than it would have

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Jesse Stakes: if you didn't. If you would have stopped at lunch if you would have stopped at the business plan on the napkin or on the back of the placemat.

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Jesse Stakes: and if you wouldn't have created an experience to where that guy had a great time, as you said, slaying Striped Bass or whatever you guys caught like.

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Jesse Stakes: does it even happen? Does he? Does he walk away from that?

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Jesse Stakes: And doesn't. He doesn't have that passionate, exciting experience with you and create that bonding moment to where he pulls out a checkbook? And he writes you a check. Does it even happen if you don't go fishing.

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Brandon White: No, there's been so many pivotal moments in my life that are just and in everybody's life. If you really reflect on yourself, I

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Brandon White: be very different.

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Brandon White: could could have still turned out, could have still been here. I don't know but what I will say is, I've never been a person

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Brandon White: I'm A, I'm super curious. My wife doesn't ask. Let me ask questions. After 11 o'clock. I think that's why I got into podcasting the and I

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Brandon White: think that.

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Brandon White: you know I never, even when I hire people interview people I think interview is terrible. I want to get

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Brandon White: didn't know people. I mean, I joke that my master's in psychology, and my concentration in counseling is worth more than my Mba. Which

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Brandon White: you know I'm half joking a little bit. But at the end of the day.

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Brandon White: It's about people, and I never really thought about it the way honestly, it's been 20 plus years in the way that you just said, I've always

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Brandon White: really just said I got a guardian angel that you know I and and a lot of people help me, Jesse, in my life. I mean clearly investing. He wants to make money and whatnot. But

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Brandon White: there's a lot. There was a lot more help than just that money, and a lot of people helped me along the way that did not need to help me, and I

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Brandon White: have been.

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Brandon White: you know. I I try to pay that back. I mean, I'll tell you another quick story of like a mentor. Blow your mind one of my customers

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Brandon White: email. I call him customers. Viewers had email me. He's like, hey? You want to go fishing on Friday. So I'm like, Yeah, of course, I want to go fishing on Friday.

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Brandon White: I go fishing with this guy. He's a big real estate, Mogul, apparently, but I don't pay attention, and we're just like slaying fish. We would go to these fishing spots and have fun.

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Brandon White: Well, turns out. No, it didn't take me that long to learn it, Jesse, that this guy

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Brandon White: had sold his first.st He built a real estate company, sold it to Merrill Lynch when he was 31 years old, made a lot of multimillions of dollars.

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Brandon White: got a 5 year non-compete, came back right on the day after his 5th year started another real estate company that started residential and commercial sells.

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Brandon White: takes that part, combines it, takes it public.

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Jesse Stakes: Okay.

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Brandon White: Warren Buffett buys it, which is now

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Brandon White: Berkshire, Hathaway real estate, and this guy's on the board with Warren Buffett, and I'm riding around with him on Fridays, and ultimately we traveled around the world

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Brandon White: for years to this day he's been a mentor to to me, and once I learned that of course, I started asking business questions.

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Jesse Stakes: But.

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Brandon White: We would spend hours in the truck.

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Brandon White: driving to these places on Fridays, to, you know, to fish for an hour or 2 great great places. And we you know those conversations. And he and he didn't have to teach me everything he did. But you know that's just an example of shared passion, of course, and he wanted it. He needed somebody who could fish on Fridays because he would work part of the day and take off really on Fridays, so he needed someone else who could do that. And but

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Brandon White: there's just, you know.

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Brandon White: those types of things. What what happens if I don't meet him. I could tell you like 5 things that don't happen, and.

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Jesse Stakes: Sure.

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Brandon White: You know, real estate investments, and I invested in a water permit here in Half Moon Bay and paid 7, and it's worth 125. I wouldn't even known about those types of quote air quotes for those who are listening. Real estate investment right like that's a real estate investment, whether you realize it or not. But you don't learn about all those types of things that are even available unless you have somebody who's really teaching you that and you and they're not going to teach it to you in a textbook.

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Jesse Stakes: No doubt. I mean, I feel like anybody listening right now, just typed in water permit. And

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Jesse Stakes: here into the into their Google search.

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Brandon White: Yeah. Some cities have limited water.

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Jesse Stakes: Yes, especially out in California.

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Brandon White: Yeah, that's probably another. Podcast. Yes.

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Jesse Stakes: So, you know, there's probably a lot of people that are going to be like, hey? Why didn't you dive into some of the stories that you or some of the things you touched on, but I mean for for time's sake, but also.

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Brandon White: Yeah. I'm sorry if we ran long on that.

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Jesse Stakes: No, we're good. We're totally good. But I'm just saying there's certain, you know I don't want to touch like go into everything that you have done for a living or everything that you know all of your different things. But what I find really fascinating is like you said you've had a lot of mentors. You've had people that have, you know, been pivotal in your career, things that have happened, that if you didn't create an experience with that person, or if that person didn't see value in you and the relationship that you represented for them, then things don't happen for you the way that they do.

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Jesse Stakes: You've also taken the taken the chance to give back to people you're you're a number one bestseller on Amazon.

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Jesse Stakes: You've.

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Brandon White: It was. Yeah, I was. I mean, I teach the class for free to kids in high school, because I think they need to learn how to write business plans.

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Jesse Stakes: So share with my audience about that. What is your what was your number? One best seller on Amazon? And you know, what does it represent for people who are listening.

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Brandon White: Oh, it's just a. It's a book on how to write a business plan. 11 slides, business plans changed, and they don't need to be complicated, and I made a lot of mistakes, and I pitched a lot of investors. I've been an investor. I'm still an angel investor, and

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Brandon White: I wrote this book mainly because I got tired of repeating myself, Jesse, but it's do it again.

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Brandon White: Very simple, easy read. It's called back of the napkin to business. Plan 11 slides so easy you can do it on a flight from San Francisco to New York. And that's that's how easy I made it. I formulated. I mean, like your, your problem slide is a problem does something. Their pain is existing. Solutions are broken, because that's really how easy it is

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Brandon White: to figure out. I mean, there's more to it, obviously. But those are the types of formulas that I've come up with over the years. Just because, like I said, I've tried so many businesses, and I've been pitched and and have been pitched and have pitched. And I wrote the book. And

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Brandon White: yeah, I like, I told you. Nobody gets rich off of selling books unless, like, you know, I don't know. Maybe this thing sells a million copies.

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Brandon White: but I which I hope, but

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Brandon White: at the end of the day. I really hope it just helps someone like.

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Jesse Stakes: 100%.

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Brandon White: Let's put a framework around their around their

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Brandon White: idea to give them a better chance. One of the things that I do say and I think is important is that in my career I've taken a lot of risks.

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Brandon White: but people look at risk, and they don't understand. That risk isn't just.

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Brandon White: Hey, Jesse, I've got an idea. I'm going to quit my job, and I'm going to go after it like that's not using risk correctly to use risk correctly. You really need to control every single thing that you can control, because there are so many things that you can't control, that it's that slightest edge that's good. It's like playing blackjack. It only gives you 0 point 5% edge if you count cards, but that's the difference between winning and losing. It is.

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Jesse Stakes: Very well, said.

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Brandon White: That's what you've got to do. So I teach. I teach the course

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Brandon White: to high school kids here in town. I have a podcast. That you can listen to it just called. If you.

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Brandon White: I guess you could just go to your podcast player and search business plan, Brandon and it'll come up. You can buy the book. It's like 19 bucks. I make like

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Brandon White: little, no money off of books, but it was really just to say, Hey, you know

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Brandon White: if you have an idea.

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Brandon White: Here's how you can get it quickly done, and you know, live, live your live, your dream.

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Jesse Stakes: Yeah, no doubt. Well, and I think that you know you said it. It's not like it's not about making money all the time, but it frames you differently as well for people who don't know you. It frames your expertise, it teaches them who you are, from a position of, you know, from a position of of being an expert in your field, it doesn't necessarily.

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Jesse Stakes: It takes away some of the limits for the people that you might potentially get to know you never know. Somebody might pick up the phone and call you one day, shoot you a message on Linkedin saying, I read your book I got a great idea, and maybe it becomes the next thing that you may make a few bucks off of being an angel investor, or, you know a venture capitalist, who knows but it's just. It's another way. It's another medium that gets your name out there and your expertise out there.

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Brandon White: Yeah. And writing a book is actually hard.

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Brandon White: It's harder than you think, even a simple book. But I 100% agree. And the truth is, Jesse, if someone reads the book and builds a business, and I have no part of it other than that that helped change their life. Then, you know, that's a win for me, because I've been in that seat.

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Brandon White: and I know how it feels

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Brandon White: to have someone help in some way that really changed the trajectory just like we went back to that story, and you said it that that that lunch I had changed that meeting changed the trajectory of my life.

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Jesse Stakes: Like.

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Brandon White: I mean as a kid on the East Coast. I you know Silicon Valley was a dream. He brought me here, I mean it was, you know, now I'm here. But you know those types of things are just. They change your life, and I know how

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Brandon White: I know how grateful I've always felt to to have someone do that. So if I can do that for someone else like.

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Brandon White: you know, it's like catching fish. Jesse, what happens is, 1st you want to catch fish, then you want to catch a lot of fish. Then you just want to catch a lot a lot of big fish. Well, then, you want to catch a big fish. Then you want to catch a lot of big fish. Then you get to the point where I'm like, I want to take you fishing, Jesse, and I want you to catch fish, and I just want to take your picture and see how happy you are like you do get to that point, and that's enough, payback. So if it helps someone that's listening to your show, then I'm

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Brandon White: you know I'm grateful for that.

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Jesse Stakes: I think that's absolutely fantastic. So along those lines, talk to me about what you're doing with a company called 3rd Brain.

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Brandon White: Yesterday, Thirdbrain, a friend of mine's had, and he asked me to come aboard in the last year and a half. We help companies automate

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Brandon White: their operations with AI. So bringing AI into a company, there's so much buzz out there as everybody. Yeah.

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Jesse Stakes: I feel like overnight. It was one of those things that just all of a sudden it was a conversation in every single industry and in every single, you know, every single business topic had AI or automation somewhere in it.

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Brandon White: Yeah. And the problem is is that you can't just like willy nilly. Do that. If you own a business, you need to have a strategy. And

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Brandon White: that that's what we bring to the table is a and a structure of which to work in to be able to do that. So that, because basically what you have right now is everybody grabbing every tool that they see and cool and

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Brandon White: automates and optimizes. And I don't know what other buzzword. We can use Jesse. But

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Brandon White: all that. And then I've been there. I mean, we were there in the early Internet days. You've got 50 programs, no unified data lake.

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Brandon White: And you're going to have to rebuild from scratch. And it's going to be really painful. So 3rd brain's a cool, cool company. You can just number 3, Rd brain, and you could check that out. If you have any business business people out there are looking for help with their operations, and we really act like the company embeds operation digital operations team in your company so that you don't have to hire it. And I mean, there's like

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Brandon White: there's so many things you have to know in these days, even to get into AI, much less hire people. Make sure that you're hiring the right people.

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Jesse Stakes: Yeah, I mean, I I've I've seen it kind of from a from the side of just hearing

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Jesse Stakes: the conversation switched from, you know, kind of a standard and traditional way that people are manufacturing things. People are trying to get their products out and trying to, you know, deliver their services to their customers, and in the last, probably, I'd say 12 to 18 months. I've really heard my customers and people talking about. Okay, you know.

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Jesse Stakes: I need to do this differently. You know I have to change the way that I think I have to change. I have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable when it comes to

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Jesse Stakes: learning things that I don't know, because I think that I think there's a lot of people who are in blue collar industries who are in industries that didn't necessarily have to. They didn't have to utilize a computer for the most part. But now, if they're not, if they're doing, if they're not utilizing the tools that are available to them. Now, from an AI and automation standpoint.

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Jesse Stakes: I'll give you an example.

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Jesse Stakes: Phone calls.

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Jesse Stakes: I've got people that'll still make manual phone calls to drive sales leads.

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Jesse Stakes: and they might be making, you know, they might make 25 dials in a day or 100 dials in a day and feel good about themselves, whereas they might have an auto dialer, and you know, and essentially a robo caller, making 10,000 dials a day on the, you know, with their other, with their sales competition. It's apples and oranges, I mean, you're bringing a you're bringing a butter knife to a gunfight. It's it's not even close anymore. And if you're not utilizing these tools, you're you're very quickly making yourself a dinosaur. You're going to be extinct from the game.

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Jesse Stakes: Would you agree.

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Brandon White: Yeah, I think you have to. I mean using them properly. But you're absolutely right. I mean you.

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Brandon White: It is a force multiplier, that is.

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Brandon White: it's not the end, all of end all. So I want to say that although in a minute here we're going to have robots like we, Rosie and the Jetsons, and that's going that's going to be real in my estimation in less than 2 years

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Brandon White: mainly because I do have a Tesla, and I have full self driving, and the car drives itself and it literally drives. It really does drive itself. It works. But

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Brandon White: yeah, if you're not, I mean.

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Brandon White: if you're not up on. And we've had really traditional customers come to us, and we have a company who does pole buildings, and they're adopting AI, and they've totally changed their whole operations and inventory and timeline to build because they've got their operations automate. I mean, there's so many. And these are not some of these things for your listeners. This is some of these things can be small lists.

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Brandon White: you know. Small implementations is what I'm saying. But you know your example with the auto dialer. It's even worse than that. Actually, I talked to a person the other day

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Brandon White: who actually wanted some help with consulting from Thoroughbrain. But he he has.

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Brandon White: The caller isn't just calling, and it's not. It's calling his customers and giving them updates on statistics. But there's no human right. It's all AI.

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Jesse Stakes: And it's getting better and better and better.

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Brandon White: No, he eliminated. Well, what happened? What he told me is a person quit, and he figured out how to automate it. So he automated it, and now it's replaced that person. And now they don't need to hire a new person.

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Jesse Stakes: It's crazy. And it's I think, that you know, we were talking about it before we actually started recording, we were talking about people in entry level jobs, and how there's so many what we call an entry level job that is about to be automated. And it's I mean, it's if you know, the less intelligence that it takes to do the job, the more basic tasks it is, the easier it is to automate.

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Brandon White: Yeah, it's good. It's it's scary to understand

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Brandon White: how it's going to work. Meaning, if you can automate entry level

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Brandon White: positions or in any any industry?

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Brandon White: How does someone get started.

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Brandon White: Get the experience to become the experience is the key

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Brandon White: to be to be able to move their way up the ladder to

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Brandon White: whatever like junior manager, manager, senior manager, director, etc. How do you? How's that gonna work?

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Brandon White: I really don't. AI is one of those things that one is AI has been around for 50 years. What's happened is is that the interface for AI has made it so easy for non engineers to actually implement AI that now, it's just like going mainstream. So.

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Brandon White: But the problem is, nobody did any planning here. What happened is the tech got built. It got released to the wild, but no one, no one thought all this through.

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Jesse Stakes: Because do they ever?

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Jesse Stakes: No, no, because tech geeks.

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Brandon White: And I say that lovingly, because I am one.

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Brandon White: we just want to innovate and build crazy, cool stuff.

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Brandon White: And sometimes you know you, if you thought 1st of all, you don't have enough bandwidth to think about everything like that, because you're trying to just innovate and invent, anyway. But yeah, I don't know, Jesse, I mean, if you have a good idea, I'd be interested in hearing it, because there's going to be a gap, that is.

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Brandon White: I just don't know how you get the experience to to bridge that gap.

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Jesse Stakes: Well, and I'll tell you. I mean I don't know that I haven't have an idea.

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Jesse Stakes: I don't feel like you can trust, and I don't mean it in a trust or not trust way, but I don't know that you can trust Academia to replace what you get in experience when it comes to going to work. Because I think it's 1 thing to learn about a job, and it's a completely, another one to actually do the job. So I don't think that you can just teach kids more and then expect that to fill in the gaps.

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Jesse Stakes: But I also feel like some of this, and it becomes that. I don't want to be that guy that's in here saying, Get off my lawn. But at the same time I feel like sometimes our innovation is actually almost.

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Jesse Stakes: it's gonna end up bringing us backwards as a human species or as a huge populace on this earth, because we're going to have so many mouths to feed, and instead of teaching them how to fish. And instead of, you know, putting a fishing pole in their hand.

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Jesse Stakes: people are gonna have to figure out how to feed these people. And it's and to me that's the scariest part is that you're no longer equipping people with tools and saying, You know, go do it yourself.

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Jesse Stakes: like people are going to say we'll take care of you. We're going to hand you what you need, and I and I feel like when we get to that point. It's going to be very. It's going to be very difficult to put the cheese back in the can or put the genie back in the bottle. However, you want to say it, but you know I don't want to get there. I hope it happens after I'm going off this planet.

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Brandon White: In our generation. There's going to be a gap.

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Jesse Stakes: And.

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Brandon White: Basically the gaps already started.

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Brandon White: There's companies that put hiring freezes on engineers. The kids are even top schools are having trouble getting getting jobs. You're finding. Even younger kids are not getting entry level jobs already because they're being automated. You're finding professional lawyers who are being replaced by AI, I mean, I.

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Jesse Stakes: 100%.

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Brandon White: In a law firm for fact.

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Brandon White: They there's going to be a gap, and my biggest concern is

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Brandon White: what's going to happen is that's going to be not linear, but exponential in in wealth distribution. So those of us who got a head start like and were able to save and are a little bit older.

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Brandon White: We we've got that that compounding interest investment type time.

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Brandon White: these kids. I say kids lovingly because they are. They're young. They're not going to get that opportunity just to do that which.

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Brandon White: fundamentally for the economy is problematic.

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Jesse Stakes: Oh, it's a it's a death march, I mean.

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Jesse Stakes: Excuse me, had to cough. It's a death march, I mean. If you look at right now, as far as to your point, you've got inflation that is causing things to cost more money. You have a younger population who can't afford to buy their 1st house, who are struggling to pay their credit card bills and maybe pay a car payment. And so to think they're going to get ahead at any point in time

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Jesse Stakes: the direction we're going right now. That's not going to happen. Things are going to have to change, and they're going to have to change quickly, or you're going to have at least a lost generation. Maybe more than that.

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Brandon White: Well, it's gonna yeah. I'll say a few things. One. I'm not sure that. So the owning the house thing is a big thing. It's 1 of the things that really inspired me to teach kids how to build a business, because in my neighborhood I mean in California in general. But we live on the coast

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Brandon White: homes are really expensive, I mean millions of dollars for to get in, and millions of dollars like 1 million dollars, even a million dollars a lot of money to save after taxes. I mean, it's an incredible amount amount of money

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Brandon White: that I think I think a few things are going to have to be readjusted. One home ownership

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Brandon White: really wasn't something in America that people felt

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Brandon White: that everyone should have up until after World War 2. So after World War 2, we had all these veterans. And we, we basically had the Gi bills and all these things that allowed these these people to buy homes. And and that's where you got the craftsman homes and all these homes that were built in America, and homeownership at that time became the norm. But if you look at prior to World War 2. It wasn't necessarily

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Brandon White: a given or the thing right. I'm not saying that to justify I'm just saying there's so many.

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Brandon White: This thing is way more complex than than at 1st glance. But you know.

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Brandon White: you know, Jesse, nobody likes to listen to my to my history lessons in general, sometimes because they want to hear all this right. They're like, I want to get home and I get it. The the future.

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Brandon White: There! Is it going to be this

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Brandon White: so I only say that to like adjust expectations around homeownership, having said that

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Brandon White: I think people should be able to afford a home as an entry home, I mean my wife and I.

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Brandon White: We bought that house for a hundred $7,000. I mean, literally the Tesla

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Brandon White: we have is more cost more than that right, you know now. So you don't have these cheaper homes. Now, there's some parts of the country a few 100 grand, but a few 100 grand. You still have to have money to put down, and

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Brandon White: you know, with taxes and inflation is crazy. I talked to my friend I was riding bikes with, and he said, I want shake shack the other day, and I was like, oh, he said, well, listen to this.

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Brandon White: he said I bought it the burger. It was 10 bucks.

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Brandon White: he said. I bought the fries. It was 8 bucks, and he bought like 2 or 3 other one person, one meal. It was basically $32 after taxes. And it's like.

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Jesse Stakes: Or a hamburger in front.

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Brandon White: What?

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Jesse Stakes: Yep, it's crazy.

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Brandon White: How does a family of 4 do that.

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Jesse Stakes: Yeah, you're seeing it in smaller markets, too. You're not just seeing it in in the larger California markets or in some of these major cities.

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Jesse Stakes: It's it's filtering throughout all of our markets. And you're starting to see it. I mean, you're starting. I live in Jacksonville, Florida. And you see it even in this market, this market in the last 3 years. And some of it's because of covid and driving people into this market. But you're also seeing the cost of food, the cost of electricity, the cost of everything has gone up.

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Jesse Stakes: and it's it's not gone up by, you know, by single digit percents like people want to say, it's over 10%, you know, sometimes 20 plus percent increases on these things. And when you add all of that up, and you look at that year over year, and you put it on somebody who's an entry level person. As we were talking about with somebody who makes in Jacksonville, Florida, an average salary of 40 to $50,000.

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Jesse Stakes: That person can't afford to live. So you you start to drive a a feeling.

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Jesse Stakes: You start to drive a feeling of, why am I doing this? What is it for? Because you can't see that goal at the end of it? You can't see the gold at the end of the rainbow if you will, so I think it's I think it's a huge topic to tackle. I think it's something I really enjoy speaking with you with. I feel like we have. You know, we've kind of. We've we've gotten to touch on a few things here, and we're kind of running up on our time, but I would absolutely love to have you back on the show if you, if you would have interest Brandon. You have an open door to be on making sense of it all anytime you like.

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Brandon White: Well, I appreciate it. Maybe maybe we should just make this 2 episodes episode one or 2 volume for your for your listeners. But I'm really grateful. It's fun talking about this stuff. And you know, I think you've got to talk about this stuff. People are going to have to have conversations at some level, because it's only through these conversations I mean, our country was founded by Federal. You know the Federal papers that were written and and.

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Jesse Stakes: No doubt.

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Brandon White: About. I mean, we're we're at that.

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Brandon White: We really are at that moment, and I'm I am.

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Brandon White: I don't even know what party I am because I don't even understand the parties that much anymore. But I do understand that we have like 36 trillion dollars worth of debt.

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Brandon White: When interest becomes more, then you can generate and becomes a 3rd of your Gdp.

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Brandon White: You start to get into a bad place. You've got people not going back to work with empty buildings. You you've got

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Brandon White: so many things here. I almost feel like we're in 2,008 again, when you know the big short happened with the real estate market. I mean, we're in a pivotal moment, I guess, is what I would say.

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Jesse Stakes: Well, and I think it. We're at a moment where you've got a I feel like you should fix it. You can't just kick the can down the road.

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Brandon White: No more.

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Jesse Stakes: 2,008 right.

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Brandon White: No, no more kicking the can down the road. It has to be fixed.

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Jesse Stakes: 100%.

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Jesse Stakes: All right, man, I appreciate it before we wrap up.

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Jesse Stakes: Tell my audience the name of your podcast so they can go out and find it on their favorite podcast host sites.

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Brandon White: Well, I'll just give. I have the Brandon White show. It's a it's a long form conversation show. I have a also a show called productivity, which is a productivity tip in less than 4 min an episode. So it's a quick little thing. But if you just go to my website, brandoncwhite.com. You can check out me. Get a hold of me. You can see what I'm up to. I try to keep it up to date. I write essays and things like that. I have a newsletter where I just write what I've learned in life which is free that you can. You can

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Brandon White: join. So it's just Brandon C. white.com.

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Jesse Stakes: We'll make sure everyone has a link to that below this episode when it comes out. Brandon. It was a pleasure. Thank you again.

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Brandon White: Thanks a lot. Jesse.