building a network & betting on yourself w/ co-founder dee murthy

full transcript

auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

I love it I love it all right y'all good afternoon special edition guidance counselor 2.0 West Coast I always have like a West Coast time for friends D is obviously very busy um but I always have like a West Coast time and that is usually lunchtime or at the end of the day Central um so uh pump for everybody to be here I know no one's here yet it takes it takes a second to hit the interwebs anyways um D I wanted to ask I wanted to kick it off with one question while people are tuning in yeah um what's obviously listen to your podcast

and I'll get you Inu yourself here in a second what's the hottest brand you're watching right now um just either just any founder brand that you're pretty pumped about that's up and coming um a brand that I'm always checking is a a UK brand called represent oh yeah I follow yeah yeah yeah George George has become a a friend and um I've been watching their business pro and I'm like curious to see how he scales he launched women's yeah foot Cadence yeah you know he's like really like growing so that's really exciting um I'm into running so I'm I'm I'm always watching running Brands yeah

one of the brands is Anta which is a brand that launched the Kyrie Irving shoe Yeah you mentioned on the Pod I have not heard about that yeah they're growing fast and they're they've launched a running product that I started running in phenomenal um there's another running brand called satisfy okay it's a French running brand they just launched the SHO which I have not tried yet but okay curious It's like a luxury kind of price point but it's cool there's it's there's always exciting Brands it's the best I love it that's awesome well for those you tuning in again welcome um PP for this if

you're tuning in and and you know if you happen to get caught up in one of these networks like why is D on some dude's podcast in Nashville so guidance counsil 2.0 again just a podcast a live show to really help individuals kind of level up their careers and whatever stag e they're at um I've been following D for a long time um and actually pumped that even responded to which again for those of you who tune in and know my Spiel I fire off DMS all the time to people who I never think would respond to me um and uh somebody finally did so

obviously pump to have D on um first off as always um I'm an app right hero so if you want to check out app right doing really cool stuff um backend as a service technology go check them out um also check out Tor Community we're building something special um over at Tor Community again really just want to be a place to help people level up their career wherever they are at so go check us out torque Community jump in the Discord we got 4,000 members in there doing a lot of things we're about to do a lot of Believe It or Not brand Partnerships with

some companies and just helping people up their careers and if you want to get text messages obviously when I go live uh shoot me a text 615 23556 five um and uh you know again I don't spam you I just let you know who I'm chatting with so d as the people tune in again we have Ricardo and Daniel starting to uh come in here this afternoon want to give the people obviously a little bit of your backstory and who you are so go ahead yeah so I've been an entrepreneur for like 20 some odd years uh started in fashion in 2002 as a senior

at USC in Los Angeles and um co-founded a bunch of Brands one called 54 one called Young and Reckless a subscription box called meno club and a shoe brand called New Republic and for like almost 20 years launched all these Brands and uh became like a real expert in everything from manufacturing to distribution to sales to warehousing and learned everything the really hard way on how to make a brand and build it up and and you know really scale and in that I um experienced so much and and learned so much and felt a lot of pain and out of that was one of the

big challenges in retail as a lot of people are now coming aware of is excess in ventory is like a mega problem and uh it it affects the profitability sustainability so many impact secondary impacts of having all this excess inventory so we started building um a business a few years ago called ghost and it is kind of one of its kind now there's obviously a lot of CopyCats in the space today but we started to be a One-Stop distribution platform for the world's best Brands and and we started with excess inventory and now it's moved into International distribution wholesale distribution it's kind of a easy

way for Brands and retailers to expand where they sell their products I love that so those people those people tuning in probably like I don't know anything about warehousing We're Not Gonna We're Not Gonna dig into warehousing side because be honest with you that's way out of my realm of expertise but D if you ever software Engineers let me know but what I what what what I do want to talk about is kind of your journey right I mean I think um you know you and your brother graduated from uh so I graduated from South Carolina which is the real USC and uh you know

obviously kind of hearing y'all's Journey kind of through this I I I I want to start really by by just talk about building your network right and I think one of the things I want to dig in on too specifically fin getting some people tuning those after hours times for me is like you you well let's even start even further earlier is that you just I feel like are now starting to do podcast yeah I would say more yeah I mean like obviously we've done our own for the last eight nine years sure generally uh I wanted to save the time for when we were

going to talk about ghosts I think we're doing is extremely special and transformational but it had to be ready yeah absolutely so talk about you're you actually weren't a buildin public guy which I think's really kind of interesting I'm I'm like docu all the things I mean I got the Vlog I mean I actually really follow George at represent and also Ros s at Cadence and kind of emulate that kind of style what what kind of caused you I mean really kind of more kind of second third layer what caused you to not really kind of do his building public yeah I think um the

first was you have to be ready to explain to the world what you're doing yeah when you decide to go public and in many cases like we didn't know specifically what we were doing we were in a learning phase and in that learning phase you're going to keep pivoting keep shifting to how you build a business and we weren't ready second I felt it was important to keep our heads down stay focused and actually create value for our customers and if we do that our business will grow so 20 years ago we we built in private with our app BRS right no option to build

and it worked out pretty well like we we really scaled some incredible businesses so there's something to be said about like you know you can build in private and build an incredible business and you know it is not meant for everyone sure there's a lot of criticism that comes with building in public um there's a lot of attention that comes with building in public some of it's good some of it not good some of it's copycats and and sometimes you know if I had be became a public figure like in terms of putting myself out there when I was 25 I don't know if I

could handle it as I can now as a 44y old person that's fair as an adult I'm mature and I I can handle feedback and like not be affected by it yeah you could say anything about me I'm gonna go go to sleep fine whereas a lot of if you had told me that at 25 I might not have been able to take it yeah and I would have been insecure about how I felt so I I think there's you know you have to have the personality for it sure first and foremost and you'd be ready for the criticism and I also wasn't didn't want

to tell anyone what I was doing because I think it's so special that I don't I wasn't looking for competition yeah yeah now that makes sense so going I act ually want to just ask you that selfishly I do have another agenda but definitely want to ask that selfishly because I've I've always been curious um talk about networking I think one of the things you and your brother said on your podcast that really read away was many episodes ago is about just showing up yeah um it was you guys were talking about showing up to birthday parties or or whatever and just a lot I

think I think your brother was like half the time I didn't want to go but I knew I just needed to be in the room yeah I think I don't know so I would put my network up against a lot of people in the tech industry just because that's all I've been doing your network is nuts can you talk about how you just have built such an incredible Network and if you want a name drop you can but you don't have to yeah I mean I think the key was uh we we we talked about the rule of propinquity which is being next to the

people right and like when you start building incredible um businesses uh you want to be surrounded by other people building incredible businesses but everyone wants to be in the room right the room right and there's there's only so many the rooms in the world yeah you don't just get to show up there's a lot of work that goes to get to the point where you get to be in the room and part of it is you know one of the things we've been talking about a lot lately just even in my own house I have two young children is with technology going the paces going

IQ is going to become commoditized right like intelligence and we're all going to get access to the same thing so we're all going to know if we choose to some people will choose not to but we'll all have everything at our fingertip if that's the case then EQ emotional intelligence becomes extremely important and the only way you get that is by being around a lot of people and so my my kind of way of throwing myself in the fire was when was 18 years old in college I started going to events by myself it's terrifying to me yeah and I didn't want the crutch of

another human being yeah like I didn't want my friends there because if my friends came I wouldn't talk to anyone so I would awkwardly go up to people goes hey my name is D I go to USC I'm a freshman oh [ __ ] off like no one cares about a 18y old kid from us yeah and so but I think that gave me a lot of confidence to be able to communicate to be take rejection like I I I my first business was a fashion business like I used to walk up to the most famous people in the world and asked them can I

give you clothes and it's not always very nice responses sure um but I would it didn't affect me and I think you know Everyone likes to look at my network today and be like damn he knows yeah I mean it's incredible but that's from like 20 years of putting in the work a lot of these people I knew 15 years 15 years ago when they were you know a a barista yeah I didn't know them when they were the CEO of you know whatever company and so I think like that just has to be a long-term Horizon thinking and that like there's this urgency today

of networking where like you have to meet someone today and then tomorrow you have to add value to them and then the next day they're gonna you're going to make a million dollars together that's not how it works there's people that I would see it like Coachella then at a conference then at dinner five years later I'm like what do you do I don't even know what you do yeah I see you everywhere and I think there's just like today when a college kid walks into my office oh I want to add value to you I'm like well leaving would add value so I can

get back to work so is that adding value no like patient like yeah get just say hi nice to meet you this is who I am and then look out for me I'm doing these types of things or what whatever like I think there's too much of an urgency right now well and and I agree I mean so everybody tuning in is in the software space other Community Builders and and one of the thi ngs that I do a lot on is like going to conferences right I mean you know I was I just went on a string of two conferences a row definitely want

to talk to you about that some of your recent pods about the importance of just being in the room at conferences but I I feel like what I try to tell people is like hey just you don't always have to come up with I mean I had I talked to one guy was like yeah I came up with like a 30-minute elevator pitch I said the elevator broken like no one wants to talk to you for 30 minutes like what what are you doing so I feel like there's just such this pressure go up to conferences and be like hi my name's Taylor I do

this what do you do and it's just a lot of times it's making a joke and leaving the room leave on a high note Seinfeld reference um the key to it is leave an impression yeah and move on and you know we did an event years ago in La for all our podcast listeners and we said the one thing that we recommend is introduce yourself make an impression and keep it moving don't get stuck in a long conversation with people because you don't know the other person well enough to have that conversation yet and you don't want to be like a burden where they remember

like ah that guy really talks too much like it's it's like you know kind of read the room and know that like hey love to meet you this is what I do leave an impression move on and I think that's how you're truly do Network in real life right like you can't like talk someone's ear off and think they're going to call you the next day no not at all talk about uh I I kind of want to segue into conferences and we're GNA come back to kind of your risk-taking and kind of kind of some of the some of the failures in your career

um that I've kind of made you who you are talk about the importance of conferences right you go to a lot of conferences you go to the cool ones I feel like where there's like a lot of cool stuff happening I go to nerd conferences they're very very different um but talk about just the importance of actually just being going to conferences I know that was a kind of episode with y'all's pod yeah I mean I think there's a couple things that happen by going to a conference one you get to be with your peers you get to be with people in your industry you

get to be with people that think like you have probably same interests as you and so like you're with like-minded people which is very very very special yeah second you get to get the pulse of your industry really really fast like I go to a wide variety of conferences like I went to Expo West which is the organic food show but then we'll also go to we'll also go to like consumer electronic shows CES and so like we'll we'll go to everything and we'll get a sense of like where the trends are going where people are going and then more importantly getting FaceTime with your

customers your vendors the people you work with and having that drink sharing that joke ending up at a party with them it that is important right like ultimately like whether people realize it or not a lot of people are just optimizing for fun and having a great life and so yes you are laser focused on building your company or becoming a leader and building your career the guy across from you just may want to have fun and that's okay like you should want to embrace that too yeah and conference is is a boond doggle yeah people want the break yes these are people that are

married with kids and they they want to come over here and be like I want to I want to learn I want to talk I want to be with my peers but I also want to maybe get drunk and have a nice meal I mean that's a Vibe for sure I'm out yeah and I think I think like that's the that's why conferences are so successful yeah is because it kind of feeds every need which is you want to learn you want to progress your career progress your business and then you want to have a good time yeah and you do that when you go

to Vegas or Nashville or Miami or New York for a conference yeah yeah absolutely and and talk about you know you've built a an amazing Discord I can't even keep up to be totally Frank like it's just I I hop in I maybe say a word or two I'm like I think I just commented like what happened now I think on a recent political thing uh talk about y'all's kind of thought around I mean to be totally Frank with you I've definitely uh looked at what you guys are doing you know building a directory for us something that you guys have done um I think

the the engagement is is killer what do you think makes a really successful Community um because what's crazy is there's some topics that are talked about in that Discord that are wild and everybody remains really respectful which is uh pretty impressive so talk about how you guys have built this and and and what do you think makes it special yeah I think anything with Community it has to be slow it has to be a slow burn and take its time I think if you launch a community tomorrow with a 100,000 people it won't work no everyone's intention is not the same our Discord is is

for a podcast that's been around for eight years and in those many of the people in there have been listening for eight years they know the temperament of uh other listeners you know the temperament of myself my brother and our our other host drama and we've come to uh display how we act and talk and the community respects that yeah and so like yes my brother and I go off the rails and fight and yell at each other but like we're still every week sit across from each other and do the podcast right yeah and I think the community respects that and we're able to

have that kind of civil discourse on everything whe Sports whether it's technology whether it's the future whether it's politics and I think if you do it slowly and thoughtfully um that's that will happen yeah yeah absolutely Jason he's on my team he's giving me heck um talk about um uh I am curious I haven't heard you talk about this you may have um Talk what are your thoughts on community focused companies obviously a lot of the brands these days are very Community heavy um you're a little bit more of our Marketplace side of things um you know I don't I don't know if I don't

know if there's a community that can be built in the marketplace side kind of what what you do but what's just your general thoughts on like Community First companies uh moving forward yeah I look I I think you have to do it in today's age um because like there's so many people doing the same exact thing why do I work with someone over someone else it just that's the that's the only Mo you have and so if that's the only Mo you have it it giving people um a sense of belonging like think about it consumer brands do that like you look at like my

experience with Nike in the 90s when I was growing up is n Nike was worn by winners Michael Jordan wore Nike Kobe Bryant wore Nike you know the winners woree Nike and so that's their Community they created a community of people that wanted to win yeah that's what Nike was always about today no matter what you're doing you're able to create a community because the beauty beautiful thing about LinkedIn and just the internet broadly is you can find your tribe like if you're a a software engineer that's into the Lakers that lives in Nashville there's probably 50 of you yeah exactly so so I think

like and and I think think that power is so important in building a business yeah because there's a lot of loyalty in community yes a ton of loyalty Community yeah and so I think you should take advantage of that and and and and find a way to do it but it has to be an authentic way right like like you know ghost does our community is not done publicly it's done extremely privately it's done very much oneon-one in small group settings we want to intimately know our customers that's awesome we don't want a thousand people in a room raw riding that's not our business we

have very deep relationships with the people w e work with one of our biggest suppliers is in town today that's who I was meeting with when we were here we're going to the Dodger game tonight we'll go to dinner we're going to spend 12 hours together that's my community like I we're a little bit more hand toand because we're a B2B distribution platform but you know if you're a consumer you could do bigger things but building Community is incredibly important I love that um thank you for that up as well that's going to go great for a clip um uh talk about you know you've

kind of been on this crazy Journey you've had businesses fail um um honestly your last uh podcast with open residency and Mark was incredible just a killer job by him and his team and you know I didn't realize this about that investment falling through um you know and then essentially you know you've kind of built up another business I mean talk talk about just if you're open to it talking about your failures at a super high level I feel like everybody talks about successes these days but I feel like you learn from your failures the most yeah I mean look starting a business is impossible

having a business lasts its first year is impossible having a business have employees and pay them on time impossible having a business that actually grows and makes money is [ __ ] virtually imposs like it's all impossible right so you know people have the courage to even step and do it you should be proud of yourself because you've taken a leap that most that most don't I think what I realized in in in in in business I used to be extremely fear fearful of failure and today I am I embrace it because I learn from it and so instead of I used to feel very

much it's it's definitely like a younger version of me where I'd be like ah someone screwed me someone something did something to me and that's why I failed yeah where I never took accountability to maybe it was my fault maybe I let us down this direction right like I've always been CEO my brother always says like you've been CEO your whole life yeah you never had even just that's my frame of mind yeah and so like ultimately if something fails it falls on me right and I think that's what I learned through these failures like what did I do wrong in this instance to end

up in this situation it's a really hard thing to look at because we're all egomaniacs and we all think our [ __ ] don't stink and then when you actually get to the point where um you could be because you made a wrong decision or you created a wrong culture that's a hard thing to swallow yeah but it's very important to get to that point yeah absolutely um I you uh ghost is scaling like crazy um you know and and I me you guys have you always have open roles um you guys are on site correct yeah so so talk about the decision with that

because obviously I deal a lot of remote roles in the engineering space so I'm curious why in person so so we have an office in La we have an office in New York and we have a handful of remote roles I believe the greatest companies that have ever been built were built in person okay and let's take forget my my background retail let's talk technology sure Amazon Facebook Google what where they started and where there are today is a function of people being in the trenches together Y and it's been spoken about to death of why people should work in office together and it's been

spoken about to death on why remote is better for you know certain types of people and I think I I could be proven wrong over time that remote ends up being the winner of this competition uh my belief is that running and starting a business is incredibly difficult and building anything whether it's technical a sales team a product team the the immediate impact of speaking and spending time together and understanding how we all think is priceless and so I believe that that was best for our company to do this in person build it together and we've had the results so for me it's was the

right decision other people will get the results be building completely remote our our business is really hard really hard and it's an extremely complex and the even the engineering piece to this business requires you to have very deep understanding in our business and that happens by spending time together yeah yeah it says any Hardline stance on remot versus in person doesn't make sense to me um and uh at least one person likes what you're saying D which is great so you you doing a lot of hiring talk about from a hiring perspective this is a lot of what my podcast entails what you look for

when you hire where are people missing the mark how do you like to be approached just by somebody kind of off the street if if that's even a thing kind of just give me a little bit background just like put on your hiring manager hat for a second yeah so you know if I look at our companying to two functions like call it epd engineering product design and then Revenue y very different characteristics of people right in in those two groups on on the engineering and product side I would say that we um we are we're we're over indexing people that have had exposure Ure

and experience to our business so have you worked at a Marketplace yeah a distribution platform do you understand the nuances of that type of business any type of B2B Marketplace or B2B type experience yeah has a huge impact on like how we think about how you can add value and impact sure so if you look at the people you know like our CTO Marco he was at uh goat which is a consumer Marketplace he was at Network which was a live streamer live streamer so like he has very specific experience and and and that's part of the reason why we thought he was such a

good fit for this company is because he's kind of seen it from a startup level to a scaled level we love when people have been a part of the growth we are not you know at the end state of what our business will look like we are figuring it out along the way we're building the plane while we're flying it so we need True Builders people were at a company like um Uber is an interesting example that people like to use is like they love Uber people it does matter when you worked at Uber yeah I have I have worked with some people at Uber

I've not been impressed because of where they were at yeah it matters at what stage of that company Were You There Were You There When They were trying to figure out how to you know launch surge pricing and they did it for the time that it was a manual process were you there and then they automated it or were you there just at the point where you just oh instead of 3x let's do 5x like very different time of so I I think it matters what what part of the company's Journey were you a part of um and for startups which is we are we

a three-year-old business yeah we are looking for people that have want early stage exposure like it is a cultural mismatch when you find people that come from the really big companies I have realized that I am a startup guy for Life yeah I mean torque is very unique where we operate as our own entity within the confines ronad but the the speed at which I like to go I I yeah you know if you if you if you're used to the Google Netflix Microsoft type bit lifestyle it's a very different speed and there's a lot of bureaucracy that goes on to making a decision here

at a startup you want to do it you ask text someone you're like yeah can I do this go do it figure it out like we don't we don't by the way we don't even have time to even have that discussion just go do it yeah yeah so I think like speed is an important thing and I think of people at large companies and we've interviewed a lot of people at large companies they're really frustrated that their work is not being impacted right away I love it Dan was supposed to join us today he's a big fan of your pod but he had a client

dinner tonight so getting business is more important yeah than talking yeah um where where do you see canet missing the mark right now who are interviewing with you guys uh you know practical experience do they Ju Just just a bunch of fluff and their resume like where are people just really missing the Mark I I would say like do your homework I'm actually quite surprised how many people don't do homework yes um I also am surprised at how many people when we say hey um we really enjoy spending time with you and you may not be the right fit right now and the um it's

really important how you respond to that question because I said right now I didn't say forever yeah and I think if you know how to communicate you can leave the door open for the future yeah and if you what you say in that response keeps you in a pile of resumes that says you know what that person was great just wasn't the right fit right now yeah that's all the difference is and and the reason being is you know we had a data um a data scientist that we hired early on in our company but we had no data infrastructure so they were like what

the hell am I supposed to do all day y they left full circle we have a open role and they're interested yeah and we're interested because it's the right time correct and we kept a very good rapport with that person she kept a good rapport with us us we feel great so it's like these are things that like um I think it's important to do your homework be prepared try to give Insight onto what you you know ask the right questions in terms of like what my day-to-day would be and how I can you know uh be a part of the team but like those

are all the basics the main is like how you communicate how you kind of you know hold yourself and then like how you respond to the process like if you're a pain in the process they're like if this is painful scheduling with you you're we're never going to hire you never you know it's like the most basic fundamental things the B boxes have to be checked well I think you guys talked about one of your recent pods like at the end of the day whether you like or not people just want t o work with people who they like yeah I mean it's so simple

like we work with some of the biggest brands biggest retailers in the world biggest e-commerce companies so many of those people work with us because they love us that's it and but mean that's sales though right like think about how many Cloud providers there are yeah why do you pick AWS over Google over azour over they like the sales guy that's it took me to a you know good concert or whatever and they had a good time hey if you even want to consider using torque I'll take you to a [Laughter] concert we do actually have a lot of open product roles at the moment

we can help with that and so we're always looking looking for smart talented hungry people that have really um exposed you know have had exposure to the startup World I'll I'll um I'll get your roles we'll do a we'll do a torque special we'll just post them in the Discord just tell just just tell D that you saw the Pod um d as we wrap up uh I want to be respectful of your time and get try to get out a little early um got some questions for you yeah got kind of a hot take uh a little hot take all right th this was

off I think this was calls it's a tough one I think if it's a first conversation Zoom is important okay um I think if it's a existing recurring relationship a phone call will suffice okay um I'm an in-person person I my stack is iners you know Zoom then phone call that would be my preference just text uh Dan th up here people do business with people they like and buy from people they can share more about why they do it or not just what they sell yeah 100% yeah um uh talk uh running so you're a big running guy uh I can't run at all

um I got bad feet that's not NE here or there um what is your favorite running shoe right now and then what shoe do you want to try um the shoe that I've been running in in the last three months is Anta it's a it's a brand that I think I told you just recently from Asia and then the one I want to try is satisfy wh ich is a French running brand that and I've been seeing a lot of the a lot of French Runners post it it's a very expensive shoe so I gotta myself to spend the money out checks out Luke in

here in person person yes um uh I know we ask about this in the beginning um so I'm going to change that right now I know I said hottest brand what about what about founder any specific founder outside of George uh with 247 just like anybody who you're a big fan of what they're doing who am I big fan of um I'm I'm really um fascinated with all of the kind of public facing AI Founders yeah because I think the risk it's such an interesting game to play they are talking about everything they're building in public and a week later the world gets completely upside

down what they said is completely irrelevant yeah and watching them kind of all compete against each other it's the biggest nerd off ever it's wild yeah and and it's it's it's very exciting right because it's like these guys are putting their money with their moust and saying we just been the best blah blah and then a week later Chinese company says we not only Built it better it's free here take it seriously nuts absolutely nuts um the last question I always end guest with again thank you for coming on for those of you who are tuning in I'll drop D's LinkedIn um in the show

notes after this but please go connect with him um but the show is called guidance counselor 2.0 because we had guidance counselors in middle school high school and college but now as adults we don't necessarily have anybody to turn to necessarily and ask for General career advice if you could go back in time and tell D something Young D yeah what would be the biggest piece of career advice that you give them uh that's a great question I would say be PA patient number one your time will come I think I was too like dying to get out of college dying to become successful I

just had to put my head down and work and learn so patience is number one number two I would say um you can move fast but when you're wrong you got to move on oh and I think that that was um it an incredible Learning lesson where sometimes I knew I was in the wrong place the wrong situation but I did not take the effort to move on and you know it's a very you know important lesson to learn and the last is if you're a really good communicator and you're a real personable person and you're around all these great people the the single worst

thing that can happen is you could drown an opportunity too much opportunity equally as bad have you oh nice so like for me I'm I'm very much out there in my industry all day every day people are giving me opportunities which is amazing a beautiful thing sure but have the ability to say no and focus is the most powerful thing I can do for myself so focus is an incredible important key component to um success I love that that's awesome we all thank you again for tuning in D stay on so say bye to you backstage but y'all have a great one again like I

said I'll drop D's LinkedIn feel free to connect with him go check out his podcast group chat which is fantastic uh I a big fan and we'll fly out the next Meetup that happens in LA and turn into a business trip you all have a great one uh tomorrow morning 9:00 am I'm back 900 am's 9:30 AM uh I'm back with my guy Demetrius Clark uh the head of devil at netfi uh so super excited to talk with dom tomorrow so we'll see yall have a great rest of your Tuesday evening and