Ep 225: Why The Answer To A.I. and Robots Are People and Relationships In Online Businesses with Jaryd Krause

William Griffin:

If you're looking to fight the robots, then we've got the episode for you. Hi, I'm William Griffin, co-host of the BOB Podcast, and today I'm speaking with Jaryd Krause, who is the founder of buyingonlinebusinesses.com. He's an expert on buying and growing online businesses, and he now also helps people with no online experience buy and grow their own online businesses. With a decade of experience, Jaryd's strategies have generated millions of dollars in revenue for his clients. He's helped clients buy and grow online businesses across a range of niches, all with less time and less stress.

Specifically, we talk about how to value a business and how to notice trends in the online business industry that you will definitely need to know. We talk about how getting information from the news is different from getting news from people that you know. Then we move on to the cooldown in the market and how buyers might be enjoying themselves a little more lately. Then we talk about AI, when and how to use it, and even if you should. Then from there, we move on to shiny objects, and we talk about execution versus research. Also, we talk about two angels that you may be interested in if you are having trouble in your own business. We also discuss why the solopreneur is a myth. And then we wrap up with how relationships are so important in online business and how they can lead to success in all areas of your life, and so much more, guys. Such an incredible episode. You're going to love it. I did. I loved recording it.

Before we get into the episode, I wanted to tell you that this podcast is now the only way we can help you for free. We have our Due Diligence Framework, which has saved literally millions of dollars for lots of people and all of our clients. It'll help you take the guesswork out of buying a business, and you can get that framework at buyingonlinebusinesses.com/freeresources. That link will be in the description below this video.

Jaryd Krause, welcome to the Buying Online Businesses Podcast.

Jaryd Krause:

Awesome, thank you. I'm here every time, but let's do this.

William Griffin:

Yeah, let's do it. Let's get cracking. So let's get right into it. I feel like a lot of the conversations we've been having lately with buyers revolve around valuations. So I wanted to ask you, "How do you determine a fair price for an online business?" and "What factors are you considering when you're doing that?

Jaryd Krause:

It’s going to be a different answer for how I do it versus how some others, like beginners, do it. And I'm going to explain why. I know the market. There are a few factors. First, step one, due diligence. You absolutely need to know how to do due diligence. And the more data that you get for a business and the better data that you get, the more you're going to be able to determine what that business is worth.

And second, anybody can do that, and that's what I do, right? Nobody should skip that part. In fact, I'm going to put a plug in here. Get our Due Diligence Framework at buyingonlinebusinesses.com/freeresources. It set an industry standard. A lot of people are copying it. And also, what we see is that how brokers and marketplaces are listing information and data is based on the questions that we have started asking first.

So we've sort of laid some foundations through this, and it's very, very important. And that's how businesses and listings are presenting the data based on a lot of the questions that we asked through our framework. So, guys, if you don't have that, you'd be just silly. You're just in the dark there.

So number one is that doing due diligence is going to help you extract the right data to be able to understand the business better. And then to know the real value of it, you have to understand where the market is at as well, because a business will only sell for what the market deems it worth or deems its value, and that fluctuates and changes.

So it's time for recording, and I know that this is recorded and will be released in the future. For people listening, time of recording, and just literally time recording, which isn't long ago, our podcast episode getting released, is that the multiples on businesses have started to decrease. And so knowing the market really helps and how you can do that. I've got a unique position because we look at businesses all day, every day.

William Griffin:

All day.

Jaryd Krause:

So we're biased, right? And that's another valuable thing that people get in BOB is that we help them with estimations on their office and stuff like that, based on what we believe it’s worth based on what we see in the raw data of what businesses are actually sold for. But for beginners that aren't in BOB, how you can do that is not as accurate, but how you can do that is look at what businesses are listed for and try and get close to working out what they do sell for as well.

Because listed and/or asking prices do not mean sell prices, And you'll start to see, even with brokers in marketplaces, that multiples have started to come down for different business models. And being on top of that helps you value the business as well. So those are the two main things. DD and understanding the market and where it's at.

William Griffin:

Okay. So for example, someone could go to the market, go to Flippa, see what the listings are, and notice the multiples. And what are you saying about the asking price? Why is the sale price, the actual sale price? What are you saying?

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. So if we're going to use Flippa, for example, or another broker, Flippa is a tricky one to see what the multiple is because they're so varied, versus going to maybe a more established broker and seeing what the multiple is between different businesses and different business models.

When you look, when you understand your buying criteria and the business model you're going to buy for in that particular price range, as you continue to look at those businesses regularly, then you start to get a feel and a sense for the market and what that sort of business is worth based on the data and where the market's at. Because you're also regularly looking at those businesses in that category, in that buying criteria of yours. So you're typically on top of it, and you should be. And that's how you will gauge it by looking at the brokers and maybe flippers in different places and seeing where those multiples are heading. And also understanding what a bad business looks like versus what a good business looks like. And that comes about from doing your DD repetitively and having somebody showcase that to you, like what we do.

William Griffin:

Right. Yeah, yeah.

Jaryd Krause:

So there's that piece. And then you asked about the difference between the asking price and the sale price. The asking price is what a broker or seller wants to sell the business for. It's their listing price, which is the same as the asking price. They've listed it at that particular price because that's what they're saying it's worth. Let's be real, a seller and a broker want to sell their business for as much as possible. If I were selling a business, I would too. I'd want to make as much money as possible, too.

William Griffin:

Absolutely.

Jaryd Krause:

And so would everybody listing. So that's understandable. But then you've got the market, which determines the value of the business, right? Who's willing to hand over what amount of cash, what actual dollar figure of cash for that business, is a very different thing. Because what it's listed for is not necessarily what it sells for. And typically, we see that there is a price difference between the two.

William Griffin:

Right. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the seller wants to get as much as they can, right? And the buyer wants to get as much business as they can for as few dollars as they can. So let's say there's a content website, and that content website was launched one year ago. What multiple would it have sold for? And then, in this day and age, what would that same content be? (And this is incredibly vague, I know.) Give us an example of the same content website selling today versus a year ago. How much of a difference do you think people are seeing?

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. I know this is a loaded question because I actually showed you this business the other day.

William Griffin:

Yeah, that’s why I was raising.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. I'm glad you did. I was going through a business, and typically I push people towards a no on the purchase. And this business looked like quite a good one. I didn't know the price of it yet. And it probably would've sold for a 42 or 43 in mid or at the start of 2022. And early to mid as I was going through it, I thought, "Oh, they could probably get this for 43. That's what the multiples are going to be. And it was still up for sale for a 31 or almost a 32 multiple, and that's a 10 multiple less. This is a content site in the range of, let's just say, 70K to 100K. It was in a good niche, and it had a lot of good metrics when I was looking through the business and the DD.

And yeah, I was just like, "Wow. And our member who bought that business got an absolutely screaming deal, like a really, really good deal. And I guess that's due to multiple factors rougher tougher, and getting finance approved for other assets and stuff is tougher. And then also because interest rates are higher, more people have on their leverage, on their finance, their repayments are higher, which means they have less spare cash or expendable money to just buy other assets. And also people that may be holding or out leveraged holding assets like online businesses may need to sell their business cheaper than what they could have a year ago or two years ago.

We also did have the multiples just go up crazy through and prior to COVID with Amazon FBA aggregators buying a lot of FBA businesses, which also forced up the prices of other business models as well. And a lot of those guys went bankrupt. So there's been a flurry of things that have happened that have allowed the multiples and the prices of business to ease, and I call this at the end of 2022. If you guys are on my email list, you would've seen. If you are not, what are you doing? You're missing out on the deals. Yeah. And now it's coming into existence and it's some absolute deals out there.

William Griffin:

Yeah. From what we're seeing, it's becoming a buyer's market. And who knows how long it lasts or any of this or that, but it's becoming more of a buyer's market than it was a year ago, a year or two ago. It's a good time to have real cash. If you don't use any leverage, it's a good time if you do have cash.

Jaryd Krause:

Correct. Correct. Yeah.

William Griffin:

Yeah. I mean, you've mentioned the multiple dropping by 10 for that one specific business. I mean, that's a huge difference. Are there any other ways you stay up with industry trends besides scoping brokers out and seeing what sites they're buying and selling for? Are there other ways you keep a thumb or a pulse on the industry when buying online businesses?

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. I'm an anomaly, or whatever the word is here, because it's not going to be the same as what I do to somebody listening. But the reason is that, number one, I'm a hermit. I really dislike social media. I know it's controlling, and addictive, and I stay off it. And it's not good for mental health, and I'm all about mental health. And so I'm not into news. I don't even own a TV, so I don't watch news or consume news, media, or all the new things that come out. But I'm in a lucky position, and I've created this position where I learn all of this stuff, these updates, and stuff out of association with just being in the industry and our work.

So us looking at all these businesses and then me speaking to so many people on the podcast and speaking to so many people, I can't not learn it, but I learn it in a way from the people that I know, like, and trust rather than having to get scared by the media, which is a lot of what's gets put out there. Fear sells. So people create fear in the media. And that's what a lot of people consume. And I'm grateful that I don't need to.

And if I were to give advice to somebody on how to stay on top of things in the industry, be in the industry. You don't need to be looking at the news and what's coming down the pike and all that sort of stuff. A lot of it is hot air, and a lot of it just freaks people out. And it's a distraction. It's a massive distraction, to be honest, just like this AI thing. It's great. AI's awesome. Cool. But you don't need to spend all day every day learning about what it could be or what it could do when it may never play out, right? And it's really distracting people from the results of their own businesses.

I've got a friend, one of my best friends, working in a startup, a property startup. And there's two founders, and they want to get it to like a 10-mil valuation and sell it off. And they're getting there. But the thing is, one of them is really hungry and doing the work, and the other partner is just looking at all these AI things and what they could do in the business. And that person, that partner, is just super unproductive.

And there's a clash between these two partners. And that's what happens in your business, especially if you're a solo entrepreneur. There's one person that's driving the bus, which should be you, but you are actually off chasing this shiny object of, "Oh, how is AI going to change the whole revolution of online businesses? Nobody freaking knows. And it's all speculation until real things happen. Things like Drop, like ChatGPT and we're like, “Yep, we can actually use that for this. And we've got proof of use.”

So my word of warning to people is that if you want to stay up to date on the industry, be in it. Do your DD, look at businesses, and yeah, without having to flood your newsfeed with shiny object syndromes and things like that.

William Griffin:

Yeah, I love that. I've never thought about it that way. There are multiple ways to get new information from the world, and if you get it from real people, sometimes that can be a nice buffer, and it's building a relationship versus getting it from the news or from a screen. It's like getting it in 3D or 2D. And one's maybe way better for us as people, it sounds like.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. It's so nice to get it from a human being that you trust because that human being that you trust is going to filter in a way that's more serving to you than you are going to die if you don't know about AI.

William Griffin:

Yeah, the fear-based hook—that's just nuts. That excites us, ignites us. Yeah. I like the example you gave of the two entrepreneurs, there's a pair, a partnership, one's executing and one's researching AI, and that can be a real problem. And I totally see that among a lot of people, including myself. There's an angel on each shoulder. One angel says, “Execute,” and the other angel says, “Go look at 20 different shiny objects and then never execute.”

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, it's really cool because I would urge people who do have that part of themselves that says, "Oh, I need to stay up to date on what's going on and what could possibly happen that may never happen. Ask yourself if you've done that for a year, that portion of you, or that part of where you spend that time researching, doing R&D and, working out what is going to happen in the future, how you could be more productive and all that sort of stuff. Look at all that time spent. Are you getting a better ROI from that time spent on all of that sort of stuff? Or are you getting a better ROI of like, “I've just got to get this task done.”

And typically, and I find this is what happens when entrepreneurs become parents, all that shiny object syndrome stuff like news and whatnot and all that is just like poof, it's out the window. And they're just like, “I've just got to get these two tasks done and keep my head above water with that. And then I tend to my family and stuff like that.” And parents go, “Oh, I'm way more productive because I just get done what's needed to be done.”

William Griffin:

Right. Yeah, I think we see the same thing. Someone told me that a wife, a spouse, a partner, or any kind of deadline, honestly, or any kind of external thing that keeps you accountable is going to help you, channel you, and keep you from procrastinating and doing a bunch of junk. If you have dinner at 6:00 PM with your family, you have to get all your work done.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, yeah. And the work that needs to be done is the important stuff. It's 80-20. And I've been saying this for years and years and years and years, and I'll continue to say, is that if you want to grow your business, you focus on the most important tasks, the 80-20 that are going to get results, and you do more of what's working and less of what's not working. But yet people still go, “I'm going to try to find other things that may work for the business and blow a lot of time and money on that,” versus “Oh, this one thing's working. How do I just lean into that more?”

William Griffin:

Right, right. Yeah. You'll be more direct, and you'll be able to eat dinner earlier, so it's just better. So guys, if you're listening to this podcast, Jaryd Krause is telling you to go get a spouse, basically. No, I'm joking. He's not saying that. Real life can help us be channeled. Real life or a full life, other people, and these things can be together and help channel us for good in different facets of our lives.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, yeah. I'm not saying the best way to grow your business is to have children at all. But yeah, there are some good things; actually, it's been a weird week—not a weird week, but interesting. At the start of the week, I was having some chats around, and for everybody listening, I don't have children. Love kids. And whether you have children or not is something you should very consciously decide.

William Griffin:

Yeah, I would hope so. You mentioned AI earlier, and honestly, that's one question I was going to ask you. I've been looking at some shiny objects myself lately, including AI. Maybe we could zoom the question out with anything new, such as these shiny objects, the solopreneur or the individual person, what is their response to these new things? I guess we've kind of mentioned that just before, but as these things do come about, as these new things come about, how does someone kind of balance execution and then discovering new things? What are your thoughts? How do you channel that, set a rule, or do something that keeps you fairly focused?

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, it's a really good question. And I guess it depends on your business. But I guess in the rawest form, it's because AI is such a hot topic and there is so much hot air and so much fear media around it that, like, "Oh, you are going to die and everything around you and your assets are going to die or you're never going to have a job again. It's gnarly to think about what people are saying. If anything, it really hurts people's progress in their businesses more than anything.

So one thing I would say to people is to have a really good filter. What I like to do is challenge everything. A lot of people will mention things like how to grow your business, how to use AI and all that sort of stuff. I like to challenge everything. And so that's one way to go about it. But if you were to start using AI to grow your business, I would not drop the strategy that you're already using to grow your business or to run your business. I would keep the same strategy because it's working.

In fact, what I would do, as I mentioned before, is even lean into it even further and see how AI can complement that process or system or make it better without going, “Oh, I need to use AI,” if you're a blogger, “Oh, I'm going to use AI to do all this video stuff or all this audio stuff,” where it may work, it may not work, and it could just be a massive time and money waste, right? Versus like, “Oh, just getting content created.” You can just create better content with AI and use it to your advantage rather than, “Oh, I'm going to get distracted and try all these new things.” And if the AI tools and the suggestions that people are shoving down your throat, wink-wink, nudge-nudge, are not actually helping your process that you already have that's working, then work out how you can make them help that process. And if you can't, just get rid of it. Don't use it.

And then when something else comes along, maybe try that, and test it versus saying, “Oh, all of these AI tools are great,” and you've just learned 20 of them, “and how do I make all of these 20 AI tools work in my business?” when you may only need one or two to make the process that's already working in your business better. And if you can't, don't fret because something will come down the line in two- or three-years’ time that will make it better. And you don't need to go away and spend a hundred hours searching for that when it may not yet exist, and then waste all of that time. So if anything, it's funny to think how we're adopting, and I believe, this is a very broad thing. I'm adopting AI so damn slowly compared to everybody else.

William Griffin:

Really?

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, yeah. So damn slow because I'm going to waste a lot of time and a lot of money on things that aren't going to be exactly what my business needs. I know how it wants to grow, and I don't want fast growth. Fast growth is great, but what goes up really fast comes down really fast. Typically, you get something so hot and heavy that you just can't contain it, right? And how do you juggle all that work? It blows up in your face. It's happened to me and my business before.

So yeah, fast growth is cool, but most people can't sustain it. And I forget where I was going with the fast growth thing, but I'm a slow adopter because I would rather a lot of other people make a lot of mistakes, try out these tools, burn and waste their time, and then go, “Yep, I've tried 20 of these, and the one thing this is really good for, and I only use this one AI tool because the rest will just burn, like a waste of money and time. Didn't really help me be more productive.” Cool. I'll let other people do that.

William Griffin:

That makes complete sense because that's the philosophy of buying a business versus building one. You're saying, “Oh, I might as well buy a business that's two years old that's already working versus trying to start from scratch, essentially.” It's the same with new technologies, you're saying.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. And look, do I seem stressed about AI?

William Griffin:

No, you don't.

Jaryd Krause:

Not at all. And I don't know as much about it as most people do. So I save myself time and money. Time is probably the most valuable thing, but I think almost as valuable as time is saving yourself stress. And I just don't fret about, like, "Oh my God, this new AI—how do I make it work for my business? Or this new thing. I just don't fret about that because I know that when change comes and it's crunch time that I need to change something, I'm going to do it. But only once I know that those certain tools have been tested by so many other people that they've just said, “Yep, this is it. You can't ignore this AI tool.” Just like what ChatGPT is for bloggers. There are all these other ones you could use, but how could you ignore this one now? The game has changed a little bit, and it's pretty damn helpful.

William Griffin:

Right, right. I like what you're saying about using AI or any new tool to complement what's already working. What you're already doing is already working. You don't have to go do a whole new workflow just because you have a new hammer. You need to listen to your business.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, correct. I'll give people an example. Say you have a blog, and want to grow it. And somebody's like, “Oh my God, I took my blog, I took snippets of my blog, put it through an AI tool, and it created some TikTok videos for me. And I'm trying to grow my channel through TikTok, my blog through TikTok.

What if you are in a niche that people just don't care about on TikTok? And you'd go and spend all of this money and time on doing it, and it just doesn't work as well as, “Oh, how much money have you spent?” Say you spent five grand doing it and 200 hours; how much more ROI would've you gotten if you spent that same amount of money, five grand, and 200 hours on creating better content for your site, for your blog?

Probably get a better ROI. Why? Because people coming from Google are actually wanting to learn how to tie fishing versus people really going to TikTok who are like, “Yeah, I want to learn how to tie fishing,” the intent from Google traffic is so much higher. So there are these other elements that a lot of people don't understand. They haven't yet built those filters.

William Griffin:

Right, right. Yeah, the intent of what people want—the intention of what your audience wants determines what you are going to create for them.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. Correct. Correct. Meeting people along their journey where they need your help the most versus going on Instagram and Facebook—I've mentioned this so many times. Are they really going there to make their lives better? Not really. They're not really trying to learn anything. They just want to be passive and look at things. But that's just an analogy, that's just an example of how people could think, “Oh my God, this one person was creating a TikTok channel for their blog. Oh, I need to create a TikTok channel for my blog,” when it's just not the actual case.

A lot of people that come to me that I do one-on-one coaching with, I asked them, “How do you think we should grow this business?” I know the answer, but they're like, “Oh, I could do this, I could do that, I could do this, I could do that.” I'm like, “None of that is going to work.” The answer's right in front of you, let's just make that better.

William Griffin:

The answer is in the data, which is what you're alluding to, the data of the business.

Jaryd Krause:

Correct, yeah.

William Griffin:

I feel like you and I were discussing that a few days ago about someone somewhere asking us a question about, “Hey, I just got a site. What are the first action steps?” And someone piped up, “You need to make sure all your tracking is set up.” Someone's handing you a bus or a car, you need to make sure that your windshield's clean and your hands on the steering wheel before you change anything else.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, yeah. Don't start trying to eat McDonald's while you're driving when you can't even see through the windscreen.

William Griffin:

Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. Earlier, you mentioned finding information, maybe not necessarily through the news or through screens, but through people. And I think there's a misconception in online business that you don't need people or relationships. Could you speak to that? If someone's new to the space, how should they be viewing or approaching relationships?

Jaryd Krause:

This is such a good question. I don't think you could have brought up a better question. Relationships are absolutely everything, and I want to explain why relationships are everything. You cannot live in this world without relationships. Number one, a relationship with your mom to be born and your father at least. You don't need to have a relationship with them afterwards, but that relationship existed, right? And without that, you would not exist. And we can't actually operate our lives in this world without people—people that come pick up our trash, people that grow the food on farms, people that bring that food to our shopping centers, people that run the shopping centers.

Relationships are so damn important. And when you're buying an online business, how are you going to find businesses without having relationships with people? And how you build those relationships is through marketplaces or blogs. So if people didn't exist, or people didn't create marketplaces or blogs, how would you find those businesses? Yeah, you could go away and talk to people and ask them if they wanted to buy their business—an outreach strategy. But what comes first, the relationship. The relationship comes before you can even buy or find a business. It’s that important. The business that you're buying would not exist without the person who created it. And then you need to build a relationship with that person to be able to build that business.

And then all of these relationships that you build, if you are a valuable person and people like to have a relationship with you, I'm not saying that you need to know a lot about online businesses, but if you are just a nice person that somebody trusts, they're going to want a relationship with you. If you are going to give them money for a business, great. And it's worth upholding that relationship and keeping a good reputation among relationships. And the more relationships you have and the better your relationships are, the better your life can be.

And I wouldn't say it's just about the quantity of relationships. I would talk about the quality of relationships. So if you had a few really good quality relationships with people in the online business space—number one, somebody that you bought the business off—they could help you a lot. Maybe two or three, other people that you are looking at buying businesses from had some good ideas to grow a blog or a business. And then maybe a mentor and maybe some other people in the community, which is what we actually do in BOB, which is facilitate relationships. That's why we have networking calls.

That's why we have a community. And people don't actually feel alone. People are so invaluable on your journey. Just being able to speak to somebody else who's bought a business and having them share their experience is absolutely relieving and absolutely supportive in a way that people didn't understand. So relationships are literally everything. None of this would exist, and you, the listener, would not exist without a relationship.

William Griffin:

Yeah, absolutely. I want to harp on that again. If someone's looking to buy an online business, really looking to do anything in life, if you don't have a community of people who are facing the same struggles and who you can't speak with or aren't able to speak to, if you're a lone wolf, anything you try to do is going to be difficult. And I think that's especially true in online business because, inherently, you're not near people already. It's already a challenge. So if you're never growing relationships as if you're trying to buy an online business or grow it, then you are going to be more demoralized than you need to be.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. Let's just have a goal, right? And that goal is success. And what success looks like is buying a business and growing it. Or the first step is just to buy the business. Let's compare that, have that, and see how that can run parallel to somebody who's a successful runner. Most people know who Usain Bolt is. Was he the fastest person on the planet, Maybe he still is, not sure, right? But how did he get there? Not by just running the track alone. He would've had a coach to guide him. He would've had a trainer in the gym. He would've had an osteopath, physiotherapist, and chiro.

William Griffin:

Sponsor.

Jaryd Krause:

Somebody, sorry?

William Griffin:

Like a Nike sponsorship.

Jaryd Krause:

Sponsorships that help pay for his whole team. Anybody that has any level of success, especially if it's an individual, people think it's an individual sport, it's not an individual sport, right? He gets the glory, right? He runs the race. But it wouldn't have happened without the whole team. He wouldn't have achieved that level without the whole team.

And just like I do in any venture, I try to build a team around me of amazing people. If I get into real estate, I should build a team, right? And that team does not need to be, I'm going to hire somebody fulltime to do this work for me. You could have a contractor. A mentor can be a contractor. You could pay per month, per year. Your team. You can have a team of contractors that can help you.

Just like if you were to run a blog, you could have a team. You don't need to hire your writer full time. You could just hire them on a contractor basis, but they're a part of your team. So, absolutely. To achieve anything, you need a team. And that comes back to mentioning what you said before, it's just relationships.

William Griffin:

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. There's no glory in being alone. It will be much harder. You may potentially fail, but you're more likely to fail if you're alone. And yeah, what's the fun in it? There's no fun.

Jaryd Krause:

Well, there are none. Because unless—I wouldn't say maybe not fun—there's no fulfillment. One thing that I've learned in my life, and I learned this from traveling, This is what I considered to be the most valuable thing in life is I went traveling, and I thought, "All right, the most valuable thing in life are experiences, right? And experiences are so damn enriching. But I did a lot of that. I traveled for years and years and years solo, with friends. I had the best time with my friends. And realized that it's not just the experience that's the most valuable thing. It's experiences with people that you love. And the reason why I believe it's experiences with people that you love, and that's the most valuable thing in life, is that when you have those experiences with people you love, you get to reminisce about those experiences again and again and again.

Because I've actually done some incredible things with people that I've had short-term friendships with but will never speak to again. And they're more incredible and outrageous than some of the things that I've done with the people I love. But what I cherish the most are those little things and little experiences with the people I love because we get to reminisce about them.

When it comes to solo entrepreneurship, that's a lonely journey. And it's just not fulfillment. And in fact, solo entrepreneurship does not actually exist. There's no such thing as a solo entrepreneur. Because just to be born, you're not solo, right? You need your mom; you need your dad. And then you need to learn through school how to read, write, and maybe do some math. Use a calculator or an iPhone. Social media is just going to show you some of that sort of stuff. iPhones are pretty native, and a lot of us are intuitive at learning them. But even if you're just listening to this podcast, you've gotten help from somebody else.

William Griffin:

Oh, this counts.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. You're not a solo entrepreneur anymore. Sorry, guys. You listen to podcasts, and you're stuffed up.

William Griffin:

Sorry, everybody.

Jaryd Krause:

So yeah, the solo entrepreneur thing is just an egometric humanity claim.

William Griffin:

And to piggyback on what you're saying, you've got to remember the relationship—so yeah, you mentioned all these relationships that form and go into someone doing anything. Also, you've got to remember that in business, it's about you serving and having a relationship with all your audience or customers. So to say that there's no relationship or that relationship isn't important.

Jaryd Krause:

That’s so true.

William Griffin:

Who are you going to provide value to? You have to have an audience or customers.

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, yeah. Spot on.

William Griffin:

What about those people?

Jaryd Krause:

Such great insight. Such great insight, William. Yes, exactly.

William Griffin:

I got the question the other day. Someone was like, "They're considering buying a business and then ways to grow the business, maybe having an email list was an idea and how to find out what kind of email content the audience would want. And I think one option is to ask the audience. To use that relationship and ask them. I mean, what are your thoughts on that, about how to grow the relationship and asking?

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah. Think about it this way. If you've got a partner, like a life partner, a lover, or whatever it is, the best thing you can do is ask them what makes them happy and do more of it.

William Griffin:

Yeah. You mean they don't just want me to cut the grass? And that's exactly what they want. You hear that all the time. I don't know what his or her problem is. I do X, Y, Z. But that may not be what the other person wants.

Jaryd Krause:

Guys, here's a tip. Here's a tip for you, lads, listen to this podcast.

William Griffin:

Listen up, guys.

Jaryd Krause:

Get the book The Five Love Languages.

William Griffin:

Oh, I'm ready.

Jaryd Krause:

It's a game changer for your relationship. Or if you're a lady, get it for your relationship. If you haven't heard of it, it's so valuable. We're talking about relationships here, and the five love languages can relate to relationships with your intimate partner, but there's so much value you can use for that in relationships with anybody. Anybody. Friends, family, and colleagues. And it's funny because we all feed ourselves ideologies of what may make your partner, your friend, or somebody else happy, right? So I won't go into too much detail about what the content of the book is about, but that book could actually be a really good business book as well because it's about relationships with your audience and your customers. And yeah, it's out of this world valuable.

I might have this idea of what's valuable for everybody in the BOB community. And I put it out there, and people were like, “Cool, thanks. Don't care about it. Don't need it.” So what I always do at the end of most videos is ask people, “Did you find this valuable? If you didn't, what would you find valuable? And can you give me feedback?” And more precisely, constructive criticism and feedback. I'm not going to get hurt because I want you to tell me what I'm doing wrong. I want you to tell me how I can be better. Versus putting my hand up and saying, “I already know everything, and I know what you need.” That's just ridiculous.

William Griffin:

Yeah. That's no way to live life, grow your business, or anything else. To just assume without asking is insane.

Jaryd Krause:

Coming back to what you said before about how important relationships are, The better you are with relationships, the better business person you are because you understand how the relationship works, the dynamics, and what can be valuable, what could not be valuable when you know what to do. You find out how to be a better business owner; I'm just learning how to be a better business owner. I'm just learning how to be better at giving you guys value. And you guys only see value in what you see value in. And I need to learn from you what you see value in.

William Griffin:

Right, right. So if you're watching us on YouTube, put in the comments What are you digging? What are you not digging in this video?

Jaryd Krause:

No, spot on. That's good, yeah. Tell us, guys. What do we suck at?

William Griffin:

Yeah. What do we suck at? What are our annoying habits as we do this podcast? What are we doing well? We're very open to that. I completely agree about this relationship thing. I had business this week with someone who took extra steps to show that they wanted to have a working relationship with me. They commented on my Twitter. They checked out different content, my business, and different projects that I'm working on.

Jaryd Krause:

Awesome.

William Griffin:

And they took time to comment on it and discuss it. I mean, that person has my loyalty for life, basically, because they showed they wanted a relationship. You know what I mean?

Jaryd Krause:

Yeah, yeah. Guys, if you can just build better relationships with everybody in your audience, it's not about how many relationships you have; if you have a few quality relationships, everything's going to be so much better. There's just going to be so much more value because you've got a stronger and more connected relationship. And you find out what they want. You find out who they are. You learn how to help them better. You get to know them better, and they gain more value. You add more value. Everybody wins.

William Griffin:

Right, right. I think that's the whole point of that book or article, 1000 True Fans. If you have a thousand people who love you, you're set. You can do pretty well. We don't always have to be grasping at more and more people. So, Jaryd Kraus, I think we've hit a great stopping point. So if you've been listening, guys, relationships, relationships, relationships. And Jaryd Krause, thank you so much.

Jaryd Krause:

Thanks, William. Thanks for having me on and asking me such great questions and guiding me down different rabbit holes on value relationships, online businesses. And yeah, it's always fun.

William Griffin:

That's it. That's it. Well, great talk, and see everyone next time.