Podcast appearances and mentions of seth rosen

Jeff Grubb and the whole Giant Bomb crew have brought a couch to Los Angeles for Summer Game Fest! Let's fill it with friends and shenanigans in and around the industry.Segment 1: Simon Dasan, Seth Rosen, Sam WinklerSegment 2: Jake Steinberg, Jason Fanelli, Mark Medina, Taylor Cocke, Geuillermo LeozSegment 3: Dash Oshry, Casper Van Dien, Celia Bee, David Kim, Ash Thukral, Trey PowellSegment 4: THE NASTY BOYS - Charlie Wacholz, Jesse Vitelli, Alex Van Aken, Eric Van Allen, Moises Taveras, Kenneth Shepard, Michael Higham, John Carson, Ryan TatumSegment 5: Louise Blain, Crista Castro, Bryan Singh, Jurge Cruz-Alvarez, John Warren, Rayme VinsonSegment 6: Greg Miller, Tim Gettys, Blessing Adeoye Jr., SnowbikeMike, Andy Cortez, Dan Ryckert, Mike Minotti

Jeff Grubb and the whole Giant Bomb crew have brought a couch to Los Angeles for Summer Game Fest! Let's fill it with friends and shenanigans in and around the industry.Segment 1: Simon Dasan, Seth Rosen, Sam WinklerSegment 2: Jake Steinberg, Jason Fanelli, Mark Medina, Taylor Cocke, Geuillermo LeozSegment 3: Dash Oshry, Casper Van Dien, Celia Bee, David Kim, Ash Thukral, Trey PowellSegment 4: THE NASTY BOYS - Charlie Wacholz, Jesse Vitelli, Alex Van Aken, Eric Van Allen, Moises Taveras, Kenneth Shepard, Michael Higham, John Carson, Ryan TatumSegment 5: Louise Blain, Crista Castro, Bryan Singh, Jurge Cruz-Alvarez, John Warren, Rayme VinsonSegment 6: Greg Miller, Tim Gettys, Blessing Adeoye Jr., SnowbikeMike, Andy Cortez, Dan Ryckert, Mike Minotti

Trent Kusters chats with Ironwood Studios' Alex Dracott and Seth Rosen about their hit sci-fi first-person driving survival game, Pacific Drive. Together they discuss their journey including their work on AAA games; what led to them creating their own studio and the hurdles they had to jump through to get started; the origin of Pacific Drive and what inspired them; and how the premise of a driving survival game allowed them to implement original ideas and add new levels of immersion. Watch this episode on our YouTube channel. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving us a rating and review.

Thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring the video. If you want to set up your own website (and get a discount while doing it), hit this link for more info: http://www.squarespace.com/skillup--Big show this week! First up we're joined by Tamoor Hussain of Gamespot and Gene Park of The Washington Post for a deep dive discussion into Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (spoiler free). We all love it to different degrees, but some pacing and story issues threw a few of us. We also spent some time comparing the many (many) things that FFVII Rebirth delivers that FFVXI didn't. Following that we were joined by Seth Rosen, game director for Pacific Drive, a game that both Ralph and Jake reviewed and loved. It was a great chat delving into how the game came about, the biggest challenges developing it and how the studio is responding to feedback since launch. #FinalFantasy #PacificDrive #Dune2--Timestamps:00:00 Intro7:17 Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Chat w/ Gene Park and Tamoor Hussain01:03:07 Squarespace (ad)01:04:45 User Question 101:14:17 Interview With Pacific Drive Game Director Seth Rosen01:54:10 User Question 202:02:38 What We've Been Playing02:16:45 Show And Tell02:35:51 Wrap Up--Let's meet our hosts!- Jake Baldino (aka the Before You Buy Guy) is pretty much the most watched reviewer on YouTube across both Gameranx and his personal channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/JakeBaldino). If you're obsessed with Delorians, The Mummy and Pizza you can discuss that stuff with him directly over on Twitter:  @JakeBaldino- Lucy James is a Senior Producer at Gamespot and a Creative Producer at Giant Bomb. She's actually, like, experienced and credentialed and has real life skills and stuff, while the rest of the gang would be funemployed if the YT algorithm didn't kiss them for random, inexplicable reasons. - Skill Up used to work at McDonalds but he got fired for skimming too many chicken nuggets. He says he regrets it since he hasn't had a better job since. --Listen to the Friends Per Second Podcast on your favourite podcast platform: https://linktr.ee/friendspersecondFollow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheFPSPodcastFollow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/friendspers...

Do you struggle to overcome adversity as you strive for success?You might believe your humble beginnings mean you'll never be able to achieve anything great…You might believe failure in business is too difficult to overcome or that it's an indication that you're just not cut out for entrepreneurship…If you find yourself struggling with those limiting beliefs, this episode is for you!In this episode, I interview Eric Toz and discuss what he has learned through his entrepreneurial journey, taking what some might consider failure and turning it into lessons that have helped to take him from struggling entrepreneur to multi-million-dollar CEO! In this episode, Eric and I cover:How his childhood influenced his determination for success What timeless principles and skills can be applied to your personal and professional interactions Why what seems like a loss can be an opportunity for future successHow to build stronger relationships with customers and employeesHow seemingly insignificant decisions can create massive change in outcomes If you got value from what you heard here, please be sure to subscribe and rate this podcast! Bonus points for you if you write a review! ;) — SUBSCRIBE & FOLLOW — Subscribe to Dan's YouTube ChannelSubscribe to Dan's How To Think YouTube ChannelFollow Dan on FacebookFollow Dan on InstagramFollow Dan on Twitter— TRANSCRIPT — Dan Henry (00:00:09):So welcome everyone to the inaugural episode of the, how to think podcast, the show where we break down the inner workings of the human mind and learn how to think like successful people so that we can achieve anything in business or in life by changing the way we think, Eric, how you doing, man?Eric Toz (00:00:30):So good. I'm so happy to be here. Been waiting for a couple months now for this.Dan Henry (00:00:33):So it'd be honest if it were friends. So if it wasn't you, that was here for the first episode, I'd probably be, you know, pretty nervous right now, because last night I did this Instagram story and I was like, I'm gonna research, like all these world-class like podcasters and interviewers and try to try to be a good podcast or in the next two hours.Eric Toz (00:00:55):I think by the end of it will, you'll be doing good. Dan Henry (00:00:58):Yeah. I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. But I'm glad I'm, I'm glad I have a good friend on to start out.Eric Toz (00:01:02):Take it easy, slow and steady.Dan Henry (00:01:04):I'm not much for intros, but you built $66 million business. You've done about a hundred million in sales, selling customizable jewelry online, and you started it by sleeping. You were sleeping and you were in Brooklyn, sleeping on a mattress. A whole bunch of crazy stuff went down and, and now you're here. And before we get into that, I just, I just want to say, like how, how would your parents describe what you do?Eric Toz (00:01:32):I think they would describe me as somebody who is always willing to burn all of the ships for me, like, you know, I had a pretty tough childhood. I think a lot of entrepreneurs did that provides an initial chip for them. They're off at whatever their circumstance or their parents, or just something bad happened to their health. And so they have this huge chip and for me, like there was never a plan B, like I was, I felt like I was going to be successful no matter what, if it wasn't like this thing that I'm currently doing, it was going to be something else. And so maybe not even about the money so much, but just such a strong desire to be successful in whateverDan Henry (00:02:16):It was. What gave you that chip? Because I know it gave me the chip that I had. I had a bunch of people who I would, I was delivering pizza and I would be like, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to build a business one day and they'd be like, shut up, like the delivery, you know? I mean, what, what was, what gave you that chip on your shoulder?Eric Toz (00:02:32):Well, a big part of it was my family has been very entrepreneurial. Like my grandfather, he actually, he had a factory in Massachusetts, literally called package machinery. This is like your old school factory, literally making like boxes and like packaging and stuff like that. And he, he sold that business. He was pretty successful. And then my dad growing up, we had a power sports business. So we were a family business. We sold jet-skis, we sold, we sold ATVs, like all these toys we had, like each of us three kids had our own everything. And then we had a few bad winters in a row where there was no snow up in New Hampshire where I'm from. And the business ended up going bankrupt. And so bankruptcy, you know, 30 years ago it was a lot different than now. Yeah, it was a true like seven years to repair your credit.Eric Toz (00:03:22):And so, you know, my dad, he went from being this entrepreneur to being like a Knight Security Watchman. Like I literally remember him coming home with like, you know, eggs and breakfast for us all after he was working all night at like a hotel. So I had no idea what was going on at the time. Had no idea what happened, how old were you? I was like five, like five, six, and all three of us. We were me and my brother, sister. We were like three, four or five, something like that. So yeah, that was really difficult. I was the poor kid at school. I was on free lunch. You know, I remember Christmas, like three Christmases in a row. I got like the same thing, which was this little, like a Hot Wheels set. And I'm like, oh, another Hot Wheels again, but we couldn't like afford anything.Eric Toz (00:04:07):So for me you know, going through puberty in high school at that point, I kind of wanted to latch onto something I could feel good about. And for me, it was sports at the time. So I threw myself into that completely. I would train for football, like during the summers, literally till like two, three in the morning, I'd be doing suicides and doing squats and stuff like that. And I had very good influences at the time. Like I had really, really great mentors. I had my football coach. I still can hear him yelling in my ear to this day saying, you know, stop feeling, sorry for yourself, stuff like that. So those were really good motivators at the beginning. And I had been influenced a number of times by some very important people not just in sports, but like later in business too.Dan Henry (00:04:55):So, so let me ask you this when you, cause I've seen, you've taken me to your warehouse in it's within the St. Petersburg city limits. And you, you took me there and it was super impressive. I mean, it's this gigantic it's like, you wouldn't even know it was there. You would not know it was there. You would not know that this building randomly in this industrial part of town is on a hundred million dollars in fricking e-commerce you know, and so you take me there and you've got these machines, let's see if we can get it, maybe Brandon can get a picture of your, of your thing up. And I can hear myself like a delay in, in my headphones a little bit, Brandon, I don't know if you've got the live stream going or not, but there's a picture of, of your, and how many people do you have working there?Eric Toz (00:05:53):Currently, we have 70 full-time employees. Yeah. Seven zero, I think during, during peak Q4, we'll have about 200 in the US and then we have an Amsterdam factoryDan Henry (00:06:05):Setting up now. So, so this right here is your, this is your warehouse. Okay. And I mean, that's, that's pretty big and it's actually bigger than that. That's just one section of it. And then you have another one where you do media, but I remember being in there, it was just like last week and yeah, zoom in a little bit, Brandon, like, look at that, look at all those people. So I want to understand the business model, because as far as I know it, you, you, you know, you have this company called shine on. Yup. And you, and you got to correct me if I'm wrong. Cause we've, we've been pretty stoned sometimes when we were talking about this, actually funny before I get into this funny story we met at this, this mastermind it was founders mastermind in downtown St. Pete. And we you had this you, you had this little segue thing that you were riding around on all, all through St.Dan Henry (00:07:00):Pete, that little, the one wheel, the one wheel. Yeah. And I remember I think you wrote it over to my penthouse here in downtown, and we got stone and just talk business for like three, four hours. It was amazing my condo. And it was a great conversation. And you told me and I definitely want to talk about this. Cause you, you told me about, you know, a lot of people say, oh, read this book and read that book. And you told me about the book, how to win friends and influence people, which I think a lot of people I think a lot of people say, Hey, read this book and people go, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cool. I'll read that book, but they don't actually read it. And they don't actually put it into practice. And I re I noticed some things when we were, we were talking like, you would be like, oh, I'm sorry for interrupting. And you, you just said certain things. And I'm like, I really like this guy, like what the, what the, what is going on? You know? And I said to you, I was like, why are you so fricking likable? And you told me, you cheater that you read the book, how to win friends and influence people. And you like went hardcore on it. And you just, you, how much does that help you network and get through business and, and, and just in progress in your career.Eric Toz (00:08:12):Yeah. So I think, I think there are certain things you can learn that are timeless, right? There are certain principles that are timeless. And I think to be a good business person in the 1930s, when that book, how to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie was written you know, you couldn't hide behind email, then you couldn't hide behind social media. Like if you, if you wanted to conduct business, you had to like, look people in the eye, you had to shake their hand. You had to like, keep your word. You know, these are like old-school fundamentals. And so I think it actually be really helpful if entrepreneurs more entrepreneurs read that book today because it's really head-slappingly simple. Lee's simple things that he says where you're like, oh my God, I shouldn't have, I should have been doing this my whole, my whole life, like simple stuff. Like the sweetest, the sweetest word to somebody as their first name. So try to use their first name as much as possible because they immediately perk up. Right. You know,Dan Henry (00:09:06):Eric. Yeah. It makes me feel good. It does. And you know, when I read that, but I literally, because when you told me that it, it stuck with me and I've, I've read a little bit of the book, but I actually went out, I bought the book and I read it and I read it all the way through. And then I listened to the whole audiobook all the way through it. And then I downloaded the cheat sheet and I might've had one. I'm not going to lie. It's hard. It is super hard. Like some of this stuff is just hard to remember and hard to implement, and it's sort of like, you have to take. And when you first read it, you really feel like a Dick. At least I did, I read this and I'm like, well, I'm missing a lot of this. Like my first reaction was I must be a total Dick because I'm just reading all these things that we forget on a daily basis, you know, like not interrupting people, using their first names, smiling, you know, just, just, just something as simple as smilingEric Toz (00:09:58):With a pleasant tone. Dan Henry (00:10:01):That's the whole chapter on that, the whole chapter on that. And you dive deep into it. And I think in business and, and not even business, but in life, you, I mean, I'll give you an example. I was downtown. And I ran into somebody who was had actually followed me for some time and bought some of my products and stuff. And he had a friend who's this like high, high level, you know, manages billions of dollars in real estate. And I was just, you know, very nice to them. And I, I mean, anybody could have been any, any one of a thousand ways with their personality. And I was just trying to be very nice. And I noticed that his, his wife was a super, super sweet woman. And I remembered the book where it said, you know, think about what appeals to them, you know, think about w what brings value to them and how to appeal to them.Dan Henry (00:10:50):And I noticed that she wanted to talk about like cooking and making food for people. And that was like really important to her. And so I had a conversation with her about that, and I learned a lot about a lot of food that I didn't know. And then we ended up getting invited to their penthouse, which is actually four penthouses that they bought at the top of I forget which building, but it's, I think it's park shore. And they combined all four penthouses into one mega penthouse. Jesus. Yeah. It was you. And I learned so much about real estate and all that, and that was just, IEric Toz (00:11:23):Think it was from the, you conducted because of the cookingDan Henry (00:11:26):Conversations, because she invited, she invited us over for breakfast. She wanted to cook for us. So, yeah. So like, I mean, we didn't get an invite before that. And then, I mean, or maybe he, he would have invited us anyway, but it doesn't matter. The point is, is that, you know, sometimes I think we, we get wrapped up in all the problems in life. And so we're so focused on those problems and thinking about those problems, that when we go and all these differences in life, our problems are on our mind. And it's not that we're not, not nice people, but we don't take the time to articulate how nice and how genuine we are, because we're just so drowning in our own world of negativity and all the stuff we have to do. And I think that that book just gives it a great reminder to how to bring that to the surface.Eric Toz (00:12:11):Yeah, totally. And there's a whole chapter, literally just on listening. And at the end, he tells a story about how he had like an hour-long conversation with a woman on a couch. And he may be said like five words. And he was just asking questions, maybe like five or six questions. And she was talking the whole time, like, blah, blah, blah. I mean, he was into it. But at, at the end she was like, oh, you're such a good conversationalist. And he was like, I haven't said anything, but he just allowed her to sort of that. And just being there, like just holding space, I think for people can be really beneficial because everybody, especially in our business, our line of business, they just want to talk about what they're doing, like all the time and what they're currently up to.Dan Henry (00:12:58):Right. I, I do notice how did, and how do you think those tactics and that paradigm shift of how to interact with other humans? How do you think that differs between dealing with employees and dealing with just like other entrepreneurs, other, other people in your life that, that you don't pay?Eric Toz (00:13:17):I think the principles are, are the same, right? Like a mentor of mine, he's the co-founder of Zappos. His name is Fred Mossler and he, he treats his vendors the exact same way that he treats his employees and he treats people in the Las Vegas community the same way he treats vendors and, and they'll actually have vendor parties. They'll fly in their vendors once a year and have like a huge mega blowout party and something awesome that he told me was like friends, this concept of friends first. Like literally if you, if you just try to become friends first, all right. You know what they're doing a little bit, maybe not a hundred percent, but just focus on being friends first and really solidifying that. And then the business will come naturally. If, you know, if what they're doing is, is good. But you should be able to kind of know that ahead of time. So you don't have to worry so much about the business. Just kind of relax and see how you connect on different things.Dan Henry (00:14:15):And a lot of people, they try to create opportunities and that that's sort of, I mean, it's cool, but when you're networking and you're trying to make connections, a lot of times you just have to let opportunities come to you. And I think that if you try to create opportunities, you will go into meeting people in a disingenuous way. Cause you always have an agenda going in. I mean, if you meet somebody that is a player, right. Something is at, at some point is going to come of that. Something, at some point you don't know what it is right now, but at someEric Toz (00:14:49):Point and be like an A-player. Yeah. I mean,Dan Henry (00:14:52):I mean, it could be, it could be somebody that becomes an, a player. It could be somebody that's already an a player. It could be somebody that has done something that you respect. It could be a huge person in the industry. It doesn't matter. But the point is is if you try to go into that relationship thinking, what am I going to get out of this from the beginning, it's just going to, it's not going to be genuine. And if you go in and you just become friends and let the opportunity come to you, I think it's a lot better. Yeah.Eric Toz (00:15:16):Yeah. I have a firsthand example of this recently. I think we did a little bit of that also, my friend will, who, you know, who lives downtown here? He's just a really interesting guy. I just like him a lot. He does some cool things in skincare and in like NFTs. Right. And so I knew, I knew when I first started getting to know him, like there immediately there wasn't going to be any way where we do business together. And I was okay with that. Cause I didn't care. I just loved what he was doing on his own stuff. And I just wanted to be friends with them, but you know, over the past week or so, I've had an idea where I was like, holy will, would actually be like the perfect partner on this. And so you can't like expect those things to happen. It's just sort of, you know the way is of the universe sometimes if you have if you established friends first. Yeah,Dan Henry (00:16:05):Absolutely. I, I totally, totally, totally agree. So let me, let me just go back to this mattress that you were sleeping on. And you don't have to go deep on mattress pizza boy. Yeah.Eric Toz (00:16:17):My office is your pizza.Dan Henry (00:16:18):I see, I, you know, I actually I'm a mattress sleeper, every time I move into a new place, doesn't matter what my financial situation is. I always end up sleeping on a mattress for two months. Cause I can't find, I can't pick out what bed I want, you know, but I do like sleeping on a mattress, surrounded by nice walls versus the walls I used to have around, which were crumbling. But you know, let me ask you this. You had some stuff happen, you know, you, you, you took on some venture capital. You don't have, I mean, you can get into as much in this as you want, but you had some, some bad stuff happen and you basically had to sort of start over. Would that beEric Toz (00:17:00):With on yeah. So you know, starting, excuse me one second. Dan Henry (00:17:11):So polite. Is that in the book too?Eric Toz (00:17:15):I'm doing it for the listeners.Dan Henry (00:17:16):That's awesome, man. So, so, so what, what happened? They're like, well, whatever you want do.Eric Toz (00:17:22):Yeah. So I like to say I'm a two-time venture capital refugee. So the, for the first time was when I was at CustomMade.Com. We ended up raising about $25 million. Google was our investor, like all the top Silicon Valley investors. And we were basically you know, we were basically a high-end Etsy average order value, like a thousand bucks. But that it was a great idea. The business, it didn't work. At scale, we were burning a million dollars a month. And so it was just a reallyDan Henry (00:17:56):Burning a million dollars a month, whatever. I mean,Eric Toz (00:17:58):We were losing a million dollars a month just because of our overhead. And when you raise that much money, you're actually encouraged by all of your investors. Like, dude, we gotta, we gotta spend this as fast as possible because they either want it to pop in two to four years or they want you to, they don't want you to be the walking dead indefinitely. They would rather have you die or, or crush it quickly time value of money. But yeah, so I saw, you know, some of the advantages and pitfalls of raising that much money. You know, you lose a lot of control of your company, you have bored. And so when I started Shine On, you know, I didn't have any money either. So when I couldn't even pay myself, really, I actually started it on unemployment, which is honestly, that's the best trick.Eric Toz (00:18:45):If you want to start a company, try to get fired, ask your company, Hey, can you please fire me instead of leaving? Cause then you can get unemployment and you can get it for like nine months. So I was actually like, I went to Germany, I was like doing my unemployment forms from Germany. And the whole time I was taking literally all the money from the unemployment and putting it into shine on at the very beginning. Wow. Then that money ran out. And then I was, I was selling motorcycle rings to motorcycle clubs because I had this jewelry production knowledge. And I was like, how can I sell to a lot of people very quickly? So I made rings for like six or seven motorcycle clubs and that's how I paid my rent after the unemployment money ran out.Dan Henry (00:19:24):Did you have a machine for that or did you see all the machines you have right now, but what did you, what did you have that?Eric Toz (00:19:30):So at that time, so I had a friend who had a massive factory in Thailand in Bangkok. And so the first version of shine on was, you know, we would, us a, a marketer would give us their idea for a piece of jewelry, like a ring or a necklace. We would actually do a 3d render. It looked like an, a photo. It looked realistic. Can you give me an example? Yeah, if you actually just Google scooter ring, like on on Google something I designed it's like, it looks like a Vesper. Okay. So like Vespas scooteringDan Henry (00:20:01):Now. I feel like an idiot, cause I don't know what a VestaEric Toz (00:20:03):Is. Just like a stallion scooter.Dan Henry (00:20:06):Oh, okay. Okay. Actually, do you want, [inaudible] we'll talk about funny scooter story in a few minutes. You reminded me, do you remember what happened to me when I met Maura?Eric Toz (00:20:17):No.Dan Henry (00:20:17):You all, you don't remember that. I'll just tell it real quick. Cause Brandon's going to bring up, Brandon's gonna bring up a picture of this example, but you introduced me to Mara Glazer, who I ended up hiring to do some copywriting for how to think. Oh, okay. Yeah. And I remember I got that segue to go downtown and so I, I Google like how to change, make it go faster. Cause it was only going 15 miles an hour. And I got it to to a different mode where it went 25 miles an hour and right. So, but here's just a crazy thing about how, how, how thoughts can create reality is I'm driving down the road or scooting or whatever. And I think to myself, how bad would this suck if I totally wiped out right now? And five seconds later, I went to scratch my head, which I don't know why I did that. And I went over the top of it, wiped out. My knee was bloody. My hand was all messed up. I was goingEric Toz (00:21:10):25Dan Henry (00:21:11):Fast. Yeah. And I don't even know how I, and so I, I literally like the scooters all bent and I end up scooting down to beach drive and meeting Maura for the first time and right after, and I'm full of blood. And my, my stuff's ripped, like my jeans are ripped up and I sit down and I'm like, instead of saying, hi, how you doing? I'm Dan Henry. I had to explain to her why it looked like I just got to fight.Eric Toz (00:21:34):And she probably liked it like, well, this guy's edgy.Dan Henry (00:21:39):He still showed up, you know? But that just reminded me about how, like when you think of something you can like create the situation to happen. But Brandon, do you have that? Do you have that? There it is. Okay. So, so click on this.Eric Toz (00:21:53):This was the first, the first thing I ever designed for Shine On. So I was the first seller. I was the first, I was the first CS agent website, designer, jewelry designer, marketer. I was packing the jewelry myself like the whole first year. But anyway, what happened was yeah, this is how I kind of got started with it. I would, I would work with a marketer. I would make something custom and then I, they would actually put that on their store that just a render. So there's no inventory. And then we would take all the orders each week and I would put it in an Excel sheet and then I would send it to my friend in Thailand who ran a factory there. He makes all of David Yurmans jewelry. If you've heard of that brand high-quality men's men's jewelry. And so, yeah, that was great.Dan Henry (00:22:39):I'm going to stay silent. So I don't have to admit that I don't know what that is, butEric Toz (00:22:42):There's not a lot of guys do. But yeah, that was the first version of shine on. So I went from this like a motorcycle rings to actually designing some stuff myself. And then what happened was you know, Teespring came out, Teespring is like print on demand t-shirts and it was one of the first things Facebook marketers sold. There, I know a ton of guys who were millionaires a couple of guys, even in this area who made millions selling t-shirts there. And I had this jewelry knowledge. And so I was like, man, I, I love working with these marketers. We could really scale, I could scale this up much more quickly if I started working with Facebook marketers. And so luckily, you know, I had the prior experience from custom made which was, you know, it was still a success. Like it didn't work out, but we still raised a lot of money. We made a lot of noise and there was some trust there just from me being around that environment. And so I raised about a million bucks in venture capital and then immediately after actually hired Teespring's head of sales and Teespring's head of marketing. And that's how the initial Shine On got started. Wow. And they, then they brought all the sellers overDan Henry (00:23:47):Now, did you, I know that you raise capital and then something went wrong, and then did you have to raise capital again?Eric Toz (00:23:55):What happened? Was it wasn't that anything went wrong per se? It's just that we're kept pretty capital intensive business. A million bucks is not that much money if you want to build something large-scale. But what happened was we were it took four to five weeks for these items to be made in Thailand and then sent back to us where we would repackage it and then ship it to the customer. So these items sold super well. And we did over 5,000 various 3d designs and we did about five, 6 million in sales that first year. But what happened was we were getting a lot of chargebacks because of the weight. People didn't want to wait that long. They didn't trust it, even though the quality was super good. But no matter how many did it take, it took like four to five weeks after your purchase. So buyers are, you know, I think their limits around two, three weeks for reordering, they get pissy, they get antsy. So we started getting a lot of chargebacks and because we, we pay the sellers out like next day on their commissions or when it chips we would get these chargebacks after the fact.Dan Henry (00:25:03):So, so Jay, just to get the business model, right, you partner with people who want to sell their own personalized jewelry and you make the jewelry, and you ship. So it's like drop shipping and I believe you also give them the education on how to promote their products and get it out, get it out into the,Eric Toz (00:25:22):Yeah. So fast forward to today. I mean anyway, we, we, there was, we were running out of cash and at one point I said, never again, am I going to not make something myself? Okay. So I was like, I want the, I want to own the entire supply chain. Right, right.Dan Henry (00:25:38):And just so I'm clear, I just want to be sure I'm clear. That was because they were, it took too long. Right.Eric Toz (00:25:42):Just cause it took too long. That was okay. Got it. You literally the only reward to interrupt. And then there's, and then there's another thing about, you know, having more control of your margins, right. Being able to provide better customer service for everybody. But yeah, fast forward to today, I mean, we started in jewelry but we're, you know, we're an on-demand factory that we, we prototype, we develop and we sell ourselves viral gift products. So jewelry, wallets, watches, all personalized. And then what we do is we launched them through what we call an IPO process, initial product offering. So we'll say, Hey sellers, we got this new like wallet. That's personalized. You know, we, we sold like 500 grand in our initial tasks. And then we literally give away the farm. Like, here's exactly how we're doing it. And boom, now it's live in your app and it's free. Just go click, click, click, and you can add it to your store. And now you can sell this product. So we're almost becoming a little product agnostic. We're adding like metal wall art. Like that could go up here. I'll I'll have something for you. Oh,Dan Henry (00:26:44):Oh, okay. Yeah. I can, I could use some more, some more brains around this Personalized man. Yeah, yeah. You might have to, you might have to get me selling some products because I'm going to be honest with you. I'm gonna be honest with you. E-Commerce physical products is super difficult. And I told you this when I was at your, your warehouse, I doEric Toz (00:27:07):Hear like, oh no, I don't know if IDan Henry (00:27:09):Can, I couldn't do it. I could not do it. I mean, I'm looking at all these machines just to break down the thought process here. Right? I'm standing in this warehouse. I know that you guys have hundreds, you know, you've got, you've sold almost a hundred total, almost a hundred million dollars worth of stuff. You have machines that are like, w w what's your most expensive machine?Eric Toz (00:27:30):Ooh. we have we have auto pack machines that are about a quarter-million-dollar.Dan Henry (00:27:36):So $250,000 machines. And in my mind, here's what I'm thinking. What happens when something breaks, you got to call somebody, they got to come out, they got to get a part, and then you got orders. And like all this stuff going on, it's just, I gotta ask you this. How do you deal with the stress of going to bed every night and knowing that at any point, something like that could happen that could massively derail your business. Like, how do you deal with that? And how do you cope with that?Eric Toz (00:28:06):E-Commerce is complex because, you know, not only are you doing the marketing, sometimes you're also doing the training, but you're also if you're doing it right. I mean, you're also doing your own supply chain. You're buying inventory, you're storing it, you're shipping it out. So sometimes what we do because we're moving fast and we actually forget how many potential points of failure there could be, but we'll actually just write out a list. I'm like, you know, what, if, if, if any of these things fail, are we, are we screwed? Like, is this going to ruin the whole thing? And so a lot of times we're like, wow, yeah. If we ran out of X, Y, Z, that would shut down like everything. And so I'm constantly making lists constantly. If there's a new thing, that's a super imperative, making sure there's ownership of it.Dan Henry (00:28:54):But what do you mean by making sureEric Toz (00:28:56):There's ownership that somebody owns that it's like, Hey, if you have one job to do, it's making sure that we never run out of these like 50 different things. You know, we have an inventory manager too. Yeah. a lot of it is automated now. So like all our inventory management's automated their software to do it too. But you had to build, we built, we built our own. Yeah. So we'll kind of get a heads up of something running out, but look, honestly, stuff just happens to like, it's guaranteed, that stuff will happen. Major stuff. Whether it's a flood here or like a hurricane, or like, there's, there's a crazy cargo ship backup right now, like are all around the world. There are like crazy logistics problems. And so the number one thing for your customers is to just be a good communicator with them.Eric Toz (00:29:49):And that's honestly, it's a lot harder said than done. So that's where some of these Dale Carnegie principles come into play, just like thinking about them and their feelings being proactive, saying like, Hey, there's an issue. There's an issue here. You, you probably won't receive this in this time, but then give them some options. Like, I can do this for you. I can do this for you, or I can do this for you and just make them feel like they're the decision-maker next. And usually when you allow them to make decisions on what they want to do with their order, then a lot of the time they're, they're more cooperative and they actually will want to work with you. And sometimes you build stronger bonds with people and with customers when you screw up and then you, you like something detrimental happens. And then yeah, the redemption and you like go through this like thing with them. And they actually like, you have a tighter bond because they're like, then they're like the next time Eric screws up. Like, I know he'll, he'll be in my corner and he'll like, figure it out. So the same thing with employees too.Dan Henry (00:30:51):Do you feel that, cause I don't know if you've ever read the psychology behind likability and being imperfect, like, you know, what a Mary Sue is. So in, in film, Mary Sue is a character that is basically perfect and has no flaws. And so like imagine Superman, but there was no kryptonite. Like he wouldn't be that interesting. You know? And like when, when the star wars movies came out, a lot of people were saying that Ray was like a Mary Sue and that's why people were interested in her. And then so like later in the movies, they reallyEric Toz (00:31:24):Didn't know she had no flaws, she hadDan Henry (00:31:26):No flaws. And so you'll notice it in the second and third movie, they really dived into her like flaws around you know, her parents and things like that. And, and some other things. But, but the concept is that if you have a character in a movie that is perfect and has no flaws, then there's nothing to be interested in. There's nothing to be likable. There's nothing to, to bond with that because you can't relate to somebody. That's perfect. And I think a lot of times people strive to be perfect and they let perfection get in the way of the thing that makes them human. It makes them relate to other humans. And that in, in of itself is having flown.Eric Toz (00:32:03):Yeah, I think you know, we have our seller group on Facebook and so we're always analyzing what's what gets the most engagement and it's, it's usually two things it's posting about success. And then it's posting about like the hard times that you went through or like stories, hard stories, like redemption stories. Like people are so into that because we can all relate. Yeah. We can all relate to that.Dan Henry (00:32:28):Do you feel entrepreneurs have an ex an unrealistic expectation that things won't, that nothing will go wrong, and that if something does go wrong, that means they did something like there they failed or they're a bad person or they were wrong this whole time in their dreams. You know, like I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs really have that expectation going in that everything is going to go right. And they don't know how to mentally deal with it when things go wrong.Eric Toz (00:32:54):Yeah. I think that entrepreneurs understand that things are going to go wrong, but every entrepreneur is different in, in there how much they're willing to deal with. Like a lot of people will throw in the towel on something where somebody else won't. And I have two really good examples from my, from my life about not throwing in the towel. And this is not, I'm not saying I'm right by or right or wrong by throwing in the towel or not throwing in the towel. Right. But I'll give you an example of custom made.com where, you know, we, we raised that, all that money. And then I ended up leaving the CEO ended up leaving, but the sort of the third guy in our gang mentor of mine, Seth Rosen, he said, no, I'm going to stick with it. And so he made a deal with the bank wrote off all of the debt and he just went into this incubation period.Eric Toz (00:33:49):And now custommade.com is like 20 million, $30 million a year business. And he brought it back to life solely because he had a high tolerance for going through that. And he was so obsessed with it that he wanted to continue working on it. And same thing with me, I got to a point where after I burned all this, this seed capital that we raised and at one point I actually had to let go of almost all the company, like 90% of the company had to let go of like 15, 20 people in one day, once 15, 20 people in one day in one day. Yeah. We called it the red wedding. Like fromDan Henry (00:34:28):Game of Thrones, you have to be a game of Thrones nerdEric Toz (00:34:31):Joke, but not in a mean, not in a mean way, but it was just like, no, like, and everybody was like, Eric, give the investors like the rest of the money back. And there was maybe like, like a hundred grand left in the bank account. And I was just like, no, I'm not going to because like, I still have this vision for it. I need more time. And so I literally went from the super high and there's actually, if you Google the entrepreneur's journey, there's a graph of this where there's like this initial excitement. And then there's this period called the trough of sorrow. And then if you keep continuing going through the trough of sorrow, you get to experimentation and pivoting and new ideas. And then eventually you get product-market fit. And then when you get product-market fit, then you can scale.Eric Toz (00:35:21):And so how, how much are you willing to tolerate going through that trough? Because I'm not going to lie. I was, at that point, I cut my salary to like 40 grand a year. And I wouldn't say I was a loser. It's just that I kind of went into like hibernation mode. We're actually had to, my mind was going crazy. And if I didn't turn to meditation to help me calm down and just get refocused, like, all right, how am I going to pull this off? I would tell myself every day, this is going to be a book in a book someday. So yeah, we were down to like 20 grand bank account,Dan Henry (00:35:54):A book someday, dude, that's a roast on that for a second. This is going to be in a book someday. Yeah. That's that is that's deep, man. I mean, if you think about it, like, that's some internal motivation.Eric Toz (00:36:11):Yeah. I mean, I would tell people I'm like, you don't understand like there's no, I'm not going back. There's no plan B like I'm, I'm in this thing, you can't kill me basically. And I don't care if I make $0 for like four years like I'm going to make this work. And so there's, and then I kind of learned that there's always something that you can do. I had another, I hired another mentor who helped me out with some financing and I actually bought the company back from the investors. Cause I believed in it so much. So I was literally taking out like per personally guaranteed loans to buy back the rest of the company. So not only was I going from $0, then I even put myself in debt, like to get the company back because I was like, no, you don't get it.Eric Toz (00:36:56):Like I still see this path forward. I just need time. And so I actually have never raised money again since then. So we went from having 20 grand in the bank account to, we did, we did a hail Mary, we bought one machine and I moved out from Brooklyn to New Jersey and we started tinkering in a 1000 square foot garage with machinery and we built, then we built our first Shopify app in 2017. And we were the first people to do print on demand jewelry. And so then just incrementally building, building, building, building, building, come up with some new products, keep promoting keep doing what you say. You're going to do, build trust with the seller, with your customers. And yeah, now we're doing like 66 million a year in product sales, all bootstrapped. Yeah.Dan Henry (00:37:43):So if you were to like, imagine that on a graph, right. Where how much money did you raise at the, at the height of that?Eric Toz (00:37:50):At the beginning, we raised 1 million and then we ran out of that and we got down to 20 grand and thenDan Henry (00:37:55):Here at 1 million. Right. And imagine the, imagine it's a plane, right. And the plane starts nose-diving and it's heading towards the ground. And it literally goes so close to the ground before it pulls up that hits like 2200 feet off the ground. And it, you know, if you're on the ground, it literally blows your hat off as it scoops up. And then sky rack skyrockets up to, you know, from its original elevation of, of, you know, a million up to 66 million. That's insane. Yeah.Eric Toz (00:38:29):So when I went through the whole range of emotions, like you could possibly imagine like an idea raising money. Oh, other people believe in me, like this feels good. Like everyone thinks I'm smart. I have a great idea. And then reality sets in and just being like a total loser, firing everybody going. I had to learn accounting because I had to fire my accountant. I had to get rid of all the insurances. I'm like, what am I in? What am I protecting here? Something that's like worth nothing. So I was like, it, no insurance, no nothing. And so, but that was like the best lesson I ever learned because I had to learn, I had to learn a little bit about everything in the company, all the operations efficiencies. And so that going through that experience actually is really helpful today when I'm seeing all the pieces from a high level, because I've done all those jobs myself to a certain extent, I know enough about everything.Eric Toz (00:39:23):So I'm very grateful for that experience. But I'm also grateful for capitalism. I'll be honest because it allows you to go through that whole adventure and like that whole journey. And it is you against yourself. You're not really like competing against other people, even though you think you are, it's just like, you have to like, it's you in the mirror. So how can you, how disciplined can you be? Right? Like how disciplined can you be? How can you calm your mind? Can you get over your old? Because a lot of people, they, they bring their old life's experiences into their current business and they'll actually project some times. So if they are very needy, if they're a very needy person, cause you know, someone left them or whatever in the past, then they're just going to be attention-seeking in their business. So these can be, these are bad habits that could kind of take you down. So you really have to quiet your mind and try to get over your old and not project. A lot of people to, you might hire people from outside the company coming in and they're in a position of power and you don't see their bad habits in an interview and you would never know. But then after six months of working there, you're like this person's horrible. Like just like they're projecting because they're in this position of power now,Dan Henry (00:40:41):How did you, did you identify anything about yourself, old baggage that you were starting to bring in to your company and then you, you like identified it, you acknowledge it and you got rid of it. Did you ever go through anything like that?Eric Toz (00:40:59):Hmm.Dan Henry (00:41:04):You couldn't have always been the super nice guy that you are, that you are now. Eric. I refuse to believe that cause it'll make me feel even worse though. I'm just kidding.Eric Toz (00:41:14):Well, I'll be honest. Like when I had to let the whole company go I had somebody that really pushed me into doing that because I was like so nervous to do that. And it was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. But going through that experience made me a very strong person. Right. I think me probably wouldn't have done it and I would've taken, taken it down, and gone down with the ship with everybody, but I got the sort of push from a friend, and he kind of helped me plan letting go of the whole company. And so yes, like the entrepreneurial journey, it helps you grow as a person too in many, in many, many ways. So I'm very grateful.Dan Henry (00:41:56):Do you think the unwillingness to let somebody go or let people go because it's a good business decision. That was a potential thing that was kind of brought in. That was a detriment. And you had to learn how to get over that was that, would that be one of the things that I guess as you called it earlier I think you call it baggage. Would that be something that you think was baggage that you brought in, that you had to, you had to get over? That was like a major thing?Eric Toz (00:42:22):Oh yeah, for sure. Like I think, you know, Inex inexperienced in younger entrepreneurs, they have trouble doing that. Like letting people go, but then I started seeing things through a different lens with running a business. Now I actually see it as we're working, we're here together. We're working on this project for like a finite amount of time. So instead of thinking about like, there's an owner and there's an employee and they're basically like slaves to the company, like they own you. I don't, I don't think that way. I think, and I'm open with my employees, like, Hey, we're, this is a project we're working on for two to three years. So let's go get committed to this thing and let's go crush it and let's see what happens. Right. And then, you know, provide the right incentive for them to, for us to crush it together. So having that sort of, we're working on a project mindset, it's helpful in letting people go because everything is finite and I'm not even going to be there in five, 10 years either. And I tell people that this is a project, so we're not going to be doing this forever. It's not like we're married. So, you know,Dan Henry (00:43:34):Okay. Like Michael Jordan was not always going to play in the Chicago bulls, but while he was there. Yeah. And while his teammates were there, they did the best, they could to win as many championships as they could. But ultimately that entity, that, that concept, that project will live on. Right. Is that how you view it? Yeah.Eric Toz (00:43:54):Actually so the term I use is let's go out and like get this Superbowl ring if we can, if we can go. And that might be we go public or we get acquired or something that experience that all the employees had. They can look at the Subaru warring and be like, yeah, I was part of that. I did that. And then what they can do is parlay that experience and go off and do their own thing and their com and their next company. And then maybe I'll even invest in it or there'll be able to get investment because people are like, wow, they worked at shine on. So that's what I'm trying to do with this whole Shannon thing is employees. If they can get a Superbowl ring sellers, there's a lot of sellers started with selling our product and e-commerce, and now I know two dozen guys that I'm friends with who started selling our product, and now they're doing $10 million a year on their store selling something else. But, you know, we all got, we all got wins like early out of it and that's, what's important is getting wins together.Dan Henry (00:44:49):So if I was going to read between the lines here, I would say that one of the biggest things to keep in mind with everything that you said is before all this, you have to really get clear on what, why you're doing it, where, where you want to end, because, you know, if you were, I'm just giving an example, right? Like Tony Robbins, Tony Robinson's, Tony Robbins, you know what I mean? That's his brand is his name. So, you know, the whole, like maybe the concept of I'll be here, you know, for a temporary amount of time. And then eventually I'll be gone. Maybe that still applies to his company. I'm sure he has an exit or I'm sure he has a death strategy, you know, cause nobody lives for other, I'm sure he's not just going to die in his company. That's it. I'm sure he's going to live. He's going to somehow has a plan of action in there. But you know, I think if you were to say, well, my goal is to exit or my goal is to build something great. Or my goal is to change the world. Or my goal is to, to, to do this. I mean, would you say that you have to get super, super clear on what that is before you can start, as you said, going after the Superbowl rings because you got to know what game you're playing.Eric Toz (00:46:01):Yeah. 100%, a hundred percent like people ask me, how is my vision change? I'm like, no, my vision has literally been the same thing for five years ago. Like where we're at now is where I thought we could eventually be. And so I need to keep going, but wouldDan Henry (00:46:17):You articulate that vision?Eric Toz (00:46:20):So five years ago I said I wanted to be the Teespring of jewelry. So I was just looking at that model and I want to build something just as big as them. And they're at the time they were doing a hundred million a year in sales. And so you're almost there. Yeah. Now we're getting, we're getting close to there. I actually, in two weeks we'll hit a hundred million in sales all time. So yeah, like if you don't have that, if you don't have that vision and you're not committed to it, if you go through hard, like, like I went through, if I didn't have that that level of commitment, then I would have totally thrown in the towel. It might be different though, if you're, if you're making good cash, if you're cash flowing and then suddenly it starts hitting bumps. I could see getting out then because you've made all this cash already. But for me it was kind of like instill like most of my personal like all my assets, like most of my wealth is actually in the business. So I'm thinking like longterm and it's, it's definitely risky. It's, it's a huge risk. And that's my personalityDan Henry (00:47:28):Condo that that's being built right now. Saltaire in downtown. It's a littleEric Toz (00:47:34):Sexy start my podcast there.Dan Henry (00:47:38):You got to invite me over, man. That place looks, looks like it's going to be sick. Yeah.Eric Toz (00:47:42):I think we're going to do some events there, some mastermindsDan Henry (00:47:45):And it's going to be awesome. Let me ask you a question. And I know that you're not your company is a little bit different than say mine where I'm a little bit more like the face of it kind of thing. And you're you're, I mean, you are, but like e-comm, it's about the products and all that and, and you know, so I'm sure a lot of people, as somebody who built this, they have a way they view you probably a lot of different ways. They view you. What would you say is something that people misunderstand about you?Eric Toz (00:48:19):Hmm. That's a good question. Misunderstand. Well,Eric Toz (00:48:34):You know, even when I throw these figures out, like a hundred million, 66 million I try to not make it about me. I try to say, we sold this together. Right? Like we did this together. And so I, people might see me as, I dunno being selfish because maybe on my Instagram, I promote like all this personal stuff. But at the end of the day, like I want, I want everybody to win. Like I truly do. And one thing is if you make other people money, they'll always invest in you and your next thing, they hit,Dan Henry (00:49:14):They stay with you on the ride. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, look at, look how a lot of these funds have been built. Like you got guys that they run a certain type of business. They make people money and then they start like a real estate fund or a, or this, and then they're investing in that so that, you know, that's totally makes sense. Yeah.Eric Toz (00:49:31):Yeah. If you were, if I was your client and you know, I made a lot of money from your trainings right. Or teachings, and then you were like, you said to me, Hey, I'm going to go start this other thing. Do you want to invest in it? I'm like, hell yeah, you made me so much money, dude. Like literally here's like, you know, here's a million bucks or whatever investment, like no brainer. I, I trust you. You made me money here. Let's do it again.Dan Henry (00:49:56):No, I think people underestimate the value of creating a great product. I think there's a lot of people out there that do it for a cash grab and they do it for clout and they do it for a lot of the wrong reasons. And they don't really care or not. It's not that they care, but they don't put the effort into making a great product because at the end of the day, a great product will, you know, it will transcend a lot of mistakes, you know? And that's the thing that you're going to make mistakes you're going. And you know, when it comes to a lot of people in life, not just entrepreneurs, but a lot of people in life, they lack confidence. And I always say that you cannot build confidence. Does anybody tells you, you can build confidence full of. You build competence.Dan Henry (00:50:40):And as a by-product of that competence, you are granted confidence. Let me ask you this. I like that. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. I, you know, I want to resist the urge to ask you a classic question. Like what, if you could go back to your 18 year old self and tell them something, what would you tell them? But what I'd like to ask is, you know, how did you in the ups and downs, it's easy to feel confident, have faith and stay the course when things are up. But when things are down, that's where people break and they fall off. What did you do specifically in your brain, in your mind that helped you get through those dips and maintain the course and maintain the faith and keep the confidence. Even when things look bleak, especially when that plane was right, the bottom, you know, 20 grand left in the bank or whatever other challenges you've had. How did you maintain, what did you tell yourself every day to maintain that level of dedication? Mm,Eric Toz (00:51:53):Well, I think, I think that you have to take the pressure off yourself. And so I'm in the process of writing this book. It's going to be called the entrepreneur survival guide, 20 things you can do when you're totally AFT, oh God, I loveDan Henry (00:52:12):That title. I really, oh, that's a great titleEric Toz (00:52:16):Too. So it's kind of like, imagine like how you would equip yourself for the zombie apocalypse. It's like that before, like business for business, I've been through like 20 of these things already. And at some point though, like once you're like, I'm doing this, no matter what you, at some point you have to take the pressure off of yourself in the day to day. So you have to say, all right, like, look, man, I still have to sleep eight hours and I can work like a maximum of 16 hours. And so, you know, you just have to be as efficient with your time, because if you literally do everything like perfect. And when you have no money left in the bank, you have to like, watch literally everything. Like watch every dollar spent every, every hour you have to be doing the right things. I remember literally going to like open certain tabs in Chrome and I'm like, no, like you can't do that. Right. I didn't know what the are you doing? Like, stay focused here. We don't have time for this right now. ItDan Henry (00:53:14):Was, it, was it porn hub you were trying to open or it was just likeEric Toz (00:53:18):It could be anything like ESPN. It could be like news, you know, I've been in, I've been addicted to news before. And so newsDan Henry (00:53:26):Sports. So, so have you ever got addicted to looking at things that you didn't have yet? Houses, cars?Eric Toz (00:53:34):Ooh, that's a good question. Like fantasizing about cars and stuff.Dan Henry (00:53:41):Yeah. Like, like imagine you're sitting there and you're working and you're like, if I just work hard enough, I'll be able to buy X or Y or Z. So then you go and you look up that car, you look at the features, you look at the you know, you look at how much it costs. I mean, I'll be honest. One thing I used to do is I used to put real estate up that I liked and I'd say, okay, this is called a vision board, like a vision board. And I would leave the tab up on my computer and every like two hours or so I would just flip over and I'd look at the house. And I remember I did that with I don't think I knew you then, but when I had that 8,000 square foot house on the water in Gulf port, I was looking at, yeah, I sold it and I bought the penthouse because I just living on the water, man.Dan Henry (00:54:21):It's like, dude, there's always a contractor at your house every single day or something. Well, no, just fixing stuff because the salt water blows with the Florida winds, they blow against the house and I'm in you're right on the water. So stuff, Russ, I had to replace my outdoor fans. Like every three months we would just go get completely rusted, no matter what you did. And just all kinds of crazy stuff that doc, you know, just so much stuff. And I just didn't want, I wanted to focus on all my business and I wanted, I wanted to stop leaving my phone around. And then not finding it for six hours because it was on the, you know, it was on the third floor and this and that. So when I bought the penthouse downtown, I just liked it a lot. It was actually more expensive than the house I owned, but it was smaller and it was just, I don't know, I liked the lifestyle more, but what I did was I would, I would put up a house that was very, very similar to that house.Dan Henry (00:55:18):And I would leave it up in my tabs and every two or three hours, I would just take a break and I would look at it and I'd be like, all right, I got to get to this much money. You know, obviously after taxes that dah, dah, dah. And so I would look and I'd say, okay, I need to sell this many units of my consulting or whatever. And I would, I would basically make that sort of like my, because you know, goals are weird, you know, like what are goals? You know, people have goals, but goals change. I just knew that I wanted to have a really nice house and I wanted to invite my family over and I wanted my family to experience being in a nice place. Cause they didn't really get, get to do that. And so I would leave it up. Yeah.Eric Toz (00:55:57):So my opinion on it is are you familiar with lead and lag measures?Dan Henry (00:56:03):No. I would love you toEric Toz (00:56:04):Explain it to me. Lead and lag measures would be like, so lag measure would be how much revenue your company didn't last month. Okay. But that's lead measures are more activity-based so here are the things I'm measuring each day for things I can control. Cause you can't, you literally can't control somebody else buying your stuff. I mean, you can't take their hand and force them to click and put type in their credit card. But I think you'd get arrested it's to me it sounds fun. It's like, oh, open daddy's wallet,Dan Henry (00:56:36):Dude. We should film. You should film an ad where you like break into somebody's house and make them buy a little customized pendant under their heads that would not get approved.Eric Toz (00:56:46):Yeah. So if you think about lead and lag measures, like a lag measure would be revenue. You can't literally control somebody opening their wallet and buying them. They still have to do that on their own, but something you can control every day is I'm going to go live two times today, I'm going to set 40 appointments. I'm going to try to close X amount of sales. So these are the things that you can control. Like I've always looked at houses and cars and stuff as like a lag measure. It's like I would rather set a goal of like doing X, Y, Z for the things I can control, because if I do everything I can control, most likely I'm going to get, get those other, those, those prizes. So my goal would be like only the things I can control, which would be maybe orders made or on whatever metric, because then my taste might also change. I might also want to drive a car or something later on.Dan Henry (00:57:38):Could I present to you a different way to think about it and maybe mate, this how to think, bro. Yeah. It's how to think. Right. And, and, and get your perspective on it. W so I have this crazy concept that I've really started to delve into recently the idea of not having goals now, before I that's hyper bowl right now. Right? So a lot of people like that, but let's, let's, let's dive into it. So if you have a goal, like, let's say you want to go to the gym. Okay. And you want to get Jack. And the only reason you're going to the gym is because you want to get checked. So you go to the gym and when you get there, you realize you're kind of fat and out of shape, you don't have abs, but you look around the gym and you see all these people with abs big muscles and you say, well, they're jacked and I'm not jacked.Dan Henry (00:58:18):That's why I'm here. So now I feel out of place, I feel like I don't belong. And it gives you this sense of automatically right off the bat, you feel unaccomplished, you feel less, you feel like you don't belong, right? Because you're setting this expectation that there's the reason you're there is for a goal. When instead, if you simply fall in love with the process, you fall in love with working out. You just, it doesn't matter what you look like. You love working out. You're going there because you love working out. And you love that process. It's sorta like when you Jitsu, right? If I like, I love jujitsu, I love it. I don't go to jujitsu class and say, I'm only going, because I want to win worlds. Or I want to win ATDC or I want to be a black belt. I go because I love it. And I noticed that when you love a process and you don't necessarily have a goal, you end up getting, so you end up getting rapidly good at that thing. And you blow past any goals that you could have achieved, or you could have made for yourself by falling in love with the process. I'd love to know your take on that.Eric Toz (00:59:21):So I think, I think more people should set goals around how they want to feel. Right. Because ultimately isn't it all about having a feeling of happiness. So it's like, I envision, I envision a world where I wake up everyday and I feel this way. Right? It's like, that's not something that's tangible. That's a feeling, but it's also inarguable, right? Like if you feel a certain way, there's no metric that can dictate whether that's a success or not, because it's about how you feel. So I think people should focus more on that because they can literally get to that goal, like a lot faster than any other like metric based.Dan Henry (00:59:59):Well, what do you think creates happiness? Do you think happiness is created by feeling like you've made progress, feeling like you've. So I heard a Jordan Peterson talks about this. He was saying that a lot of times we feel happy because we solve problems. Cause if you think about it, right, what is the human mind? It's the computer. What is it? So forget the human mind for a second. W what, what does a computer do? What does it really do on a fundamental level? It solves it crunches numbers, and it solves problems. One after the other that's its purpose. And then one day the motherboard goes out and the computer stops working and it stops solving problems. And it dies. The human brain is basically a computer. And it, I mean, you know what I'm saying? Like, like, like what happens if everything was perfect in your life? You'd almost go crazy.Eric Toz (01:00:43):Well, actually we see this with super rich people and celebrities. They're like super depressed because the mind, even when, even when you saw everything, the mind will look for new things to solve. So it might actually drag you down. It might actually cause chaos in your life so that you can solve them. Like a lot of people, they bring themselves down from from success because their mind is just needs a new problem to create and solve. Oh yeah. I can feel that. And that's another thing. There's this amazing book called the big leap by gay Hendricks. And basically it's like you know, success for a lot of people is foreign and the, their subconscious it's almost scary to be successful because their subconscious is not used to that. So they would rather, almost subconsciously self-sabotage to bring themselves down to what they're used to.Eric Toz (01:01:38):So I've seen it with a lot of people and alcoholics too that runs in my family. Like people will get a certain taste of success and then there'll

Seth Rosen has broken data Twitter many times, and in his early-fatherhood sleep deprivation developed a wonderful Twitter persona as the battle-tested data analyst. IRL though Seth is a serious data practitioner, and as Founder at the data consultancy HashPath has helped dozens of companies get into the modern data stack + build public-facing data apps.  Now, as the founder of TopCoat, he's empowering analysts to build + publish those same public-facing data apps. In this episode, Tristan, Julia & Seth graciously dive into spicy debates around data mesh + “dashboard factories”, and explore a future where data analysts become full-stack application developers. For full show notes and to read 6+ years of back issues of the podcast's companion newsletter, head to https://roundup.getdbt.com.  The Analytics Engineering Podcast is sponsored by dbt Labs.

We all know the potential value data can bring to businesses. But the potential to deliver that same data and value to external customers is often left untapped. Many companies today feel like they should be doing more with their data in service of their customers. Yet, they often struggle to unlock it and deliver it in a way that accounts for the end user's experience. As Co-Founder & CEO of TopCoat Data, Seth Rosen , sees this every day and believes approaching data with a product mindset can be the key to unlocking this untapped value. Seth joins us on the podcast to share how companies can build data products that win over customers and create real advantage over their competitors. At TopCoat, Seth and his team help companies and data teams everyday build customer-facing analytics products. Previously, Seth held senior product roles at Drync, Catalina, and LivingSocial. Seth was a co-founder at BuyWithMe.com, a leading social eCommerce company that competed with Groupon and LivingSocial, from January 2009 until it was sold to Gilt Groupe in November 2011. Prior to BuyWithMe, Seth was a consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers in the System and Process Assurance group, working mainly with large financial institutions. In the episode, we cover a variety of topics including: Where Seth finds inspiration for his Twitter The problem Topcoat Data aims to solve The pitfalls of traditional BI tools  Modern data team looks more like software product development. The challenge in blending software development and data teams. Why companies treat their product data as an afterthought What a modern architecture looks like for your data product. Does every product ultimately become a data product? Why embedded analytics usually = a poor user experience Check out these resources that were mentioned in the show: Check out TopCoat Data Follow Seth on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn If you want to hear more, subscribe to Leading with Data on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or here. Listening on a desktop & can't see the links? Just search for Leading with Data in your favorite podcast player.

What's the secret sauce behind today's most successful sales enablement programs? In this episode of the B2B Sales Trends Podcast, Harry chats with Seth Rosen, Global Head of Sales Enablement at London Stock Exchange (LSEG), about the key elements of effective sales enablement and the next wave of innovation when it comes to equipping B2B sales teams with the recipe for success.

Our bodies are not ours alone. We share them with trillions of bacteria, fungi and other microbes. Most of these live in our large intestine and are known collectively as the gut microbiome.  The health of your gut can influence a surprising range of conditions, from obesity and diabetes to cancer. Baptist Health gastroenterologist, Seth Rosen, M.D., illuminates the fascinating world of the gut microbiome with host Jonathan Fialkow, M.D., deputy medical director and chief of cardiology at Miami Cardiac & Vascular Institute. 

Ben chats with Seth Rosen about building membership and subscription-based businesses and finding members you are uniquely positioned to serve.

Seth Rosen is the Co-Founder of CustomMade, the world's largest online custom jeweler. It's a simple business strategy to make people happy, with a complex process behind the scenes. Seth shares his journey of buying the CustomMade.com website, selling it, and repurchasing it with a different idea in mind. His story will get you hooked, and his lessons learned make this episode a must-listen for any business leader.

Bienvenue au 28e épisode du podcast Hypercroissance présenté et produit par J7 Media, une agence de publicité Facebook. En gérant près de 1 million de dollars de publicité Facebook par mois, J7 Media aide depuis 8 ans maintenant les entreprises à accélérer leur croissance via l'entremise de la publicité Facebook et Instagram. Si vous êtes un commerce en ligne et que vous désirez passer de croissance à Hypercroissance, rendez-vous au www.J7media.com (https://www.j7media.com/) et demandez à parler avec un de nos conseillers. En l'espace de quelques jours seulement, notre équipe saura vous bâtir un plan de match afin de faire grandir votre entreprise. Vous l'avez certainement remarqué dans l'introduction, le podcast d'aujourd'hui est exceptionnellement en anglais. Mes contacts en affaires et également les gens que j'admire en entreprenariat sont souvent des anglophone donc il se peut que plusieurs podcasts dans l'avenir soient également dans la langue de Shakespeare. Ceci étant dit, revenons au vif du sujet. Mon invité aujourd'hui Seth Rosen va nous raconter l'histoire atypique que son entreprise Custom Made a vécu lors des 11 dernières années. Après avoir levé près de 30 millions de dollars avec des investisseurs externes, Seth Rosen a décidé en 2015 de vendre son organisation à Wayfair avant de racheter une partie des assets existants qui lui a permis de construire une entreprise spécialisée en conception de bijoux de luxe qui risque d'atteindre les 10 millions de chiffres d'affaires en 2020. En plus d'être un entrepreneur à succès, Seth a également connu une carrière comme "investment banker" qui lui a permis de parfaire ses connaissances dans la négociation d'ententes complexes. Vous allez d'ailleurs voir le processus qu'il suit à la lettre afin d'acquérir d'autres entreprises. Sans plus attendre, ma discussion avec Seth Rosen. Pour en apprendre plus sur Seth Rosen; Custom Made : https://www.custommade.com/ Gem Society : https://www.gemsociety.org/ Ganoksin : https://www.ganoksin.com/ Un podcast de J7 Media

In this special episode of Drill to Detail Mark Rittman is joined by Seth Rosen, Co-Founder and Principal at Hashpath to talk about the impact of COVID-19 and the subsequent economic shutdown on the business of analytics and product startups, the work being done in the community to help find a cure and the role that data and analytics can have in accelerating the post-shutdown recovery.“A COVID-19 Dashboard for Massachusetts using Looker and BigQuery” - Hashpath.com blog“The Virus Survival Strategy for your Startup"“COVID-19: Implications for business” - McKinsey“As COVID-19 data sets become more accessible, novel coronavirus pandemic may be most visualized ever” - ZDNet.com“Leave COVID-19 analysis to the experts” - Japan Times

In this special episode of Drill to Detail Mark Rittman is joined by Seth Rosen, Co-Founder and Principal at Hashpath to talk about the impact of COVID-19 and the subsequent economic shutdown on the business of analytics and product startups, the work being done in the community to help find a cure and the role that data and analytics can have in accelerating the post-shutdown recovery.“A COVID-19 Dashboard for Massachusetts using Looker and BigQuery” - Hashpath.com blog“The Virus Survival Strategy for your Startup"“COVID-19: Implications for business” - McKinsey“As COVID-19 data sets become more accessible, novel coronavirus pandemic may be most visualized ever” - ZDNet.com“Leave COVID-19 analysis to the experts” - Japan Times

Heartburn, acid reflux, indigestion – just an annoyance, or something more serious? Get the answers to this burning question and more on this edition of Baptist HealthTalk with host Jonathan Fialkow, MD and our guest Seth Rosen, MD, Gastroenterologist for Baptist Health. For more information on this and other health-related topics check out BaptistHealth.net/news.

Hello and welcome to the tenth edition of our mix series, Mirrors! For this edition we have a wonderful two hour adventure from Set This Record (@djsethis)! Taking users on a musical journey has been an integral part to Set This Record's mixes and Dj Sets. Always finding obscure yet powerful, emotional music, Seth Rosen brings everything to the table when it comes to song selection between tech house, deep tech, techno and afro house. For his Fortune Teller moniker, Seth brings the darker, harder hitting desert music to your speakers. Seth has been a part of the Palm Springs music scene for 5 years, while also playing in the Los Angeles and San Diego music scenesl. Tracklist: 1) Merveille & Crosson - Intro (Almost Raw) (Original Mix) [Visionquest] 2) Boddhi Satva - House Dancer (Original Mix) [At Jazz Record Company] 3) Aimo, Xewst - Goga (Original Mix) [Union] 4) Djuma Soundsystem - Soma (Armonica Remix) [Get Physical Germany] 5) Yost Koen - Kusomo Mars (Original Mix) [ATLANT RECORDINGS] 6) Nure - Deathco (Original Mix) [ Mango Alley] 7) EarthLife - Sand (Orignal Mix) [Stayoyoke] 8) Miyagi - Cosmic Girl (Original Mix) [Do Not Sit on the Furniture Recordings] 9) Matthias Schuell - Solarplex (Dahu Remix) [Ritter Butzke Studio] 10) Be Morais - Sleepwalker (Original Mix) [Not Another] 11) Serkan Eles - Belong to Sun (Original Mix) [Merkaba Music] 12) Jonas Fritz - Zenith (Orignal Mix) [Traum] 13) Mikalogic - Call of Cathulu (Original Mix) [Live Productions] 14) Mark MacKenzie - Slow Burn (Original Mix) [720mau5 LLC] 15) Balcazar & Teruel - Medium (Original Mix) [Anathema Records] 16) Fussion - Atoms (Original Mix) [Reload Black Label] 17) Siege - Robalo (Original Mix) [Circus Recordings] 18) Architechtural - A Girl With No Friends (Original Mix) [Ellum Black] 19) Alex Heide, ND Catani - Constellation (Original Mix) [Lauter Unfug] 20) Roman Weber - Metropolis (Original Mix) [Gain Records] 21) Maksim Dark - Chainsaw (Original Mix) [Senso Sounds] 22) Albird - Starling (Orignal Mix) [Jannowitz Records] 23) Hannes Bieger - El Fuego (Original Mix) [Poker Flat] 24) Christian Hornbostel - Implicit Function (Original Mix) [Phobos Records] 25) 2088 - Do You Have a Choice (Original Mix) [Pursuit] 26) Barber & James Trystan - Fever (Original Mix) [Ballroom Records] 27) Clawz SG & Never Lost - Tenebris (Original Mix) [Steyoyoke Black] 28) David Gunter - Raldery (Original Mix) [Blurry Records] 29) Alert Minds - The Completion (Original Mix) [Funk N' Deep Records] 30) Benttum - Raptor (Original Mix) [Uroborus] 31) Lux21000 - Eta18 (Original Mix) [Mind Games Recordings] Enjoy this mix and keep up with us for more to come! Catch our livestreams @ twitch.tv/reflectionsfm & stay tuned for more music and keep up with our socials: [at] reflectionsfm on instagram, twitter and facebook

Eric & Matt talk with entrepreneur Seth Rosen of CustomMade, Ganoksin Project and the International Gem Society. Seth is an expert in turning underperforming websites into profitable businesses and generously shares gems from his experiences.

We're now in the critical year-end fundraising season. It's daunting. My guest, Seth Rosen, will help you sort it out and make the most of these 2 months…

We're now in the critical year-end fundraising season. It's daunting. My guest, Seth Rosen, will help you sort it out and make the most of these 2 months…

We're now in the critical year-end fundraising season. It's daunting. My guest, Seth Rosen, will help you sort it out and make the most of these 2 months… The post Ep 45: The Final 60 Days of the Year (with Seth Rosen) appeared first on Joan Garry Nonprofit Leadership.

Most nonprofits see 30% of their revenue come in the door in December. Have you planted sufficient seeds? Will you hit your numbers? Are you ready?

Most nonprofits see 30% of their revenue come in the door in December. Have you planted sufficient seeds? Will you hit your numbers? Are you ready?

Most nonprofits see 30% of their revenue come in the door in December. Have you planted sufficient seeds? Will you hit your numbers? Are you ready? The post Ep 25: Year End In T-Minus 30… (with Seth Rosen) appeared first on Joan Garry Nonprofit Leadership.

Seth Rosen, my fundraising genius and associate, lays out the steps for building a happy and productive development team.

Seth Rosen, my fundraising genius and associate, lays out the steps for building a happy and productive development team.

Seth Rosen, my fundraising genius and associate, lays out the steps for building a happy and productive development team. The post Ep 14: Building a Great Development Team – with guest Seth Rosen appeared first on Joan Garry Nonprofit Leadership.

Asking for money can be intimidating. Fundraiser extraordinaire Seth Rosen and I discuss concrete ways to ask for money without panic and fear.

Asking for money can be intimidating. Fundraiser extraordinaire Seth Rosen and I discuss concrete ways to ask for money without panic and fear.

Asking for money can be intimidating. Fundraiser extraordinaire Seth Rosen and I discuss concrete ways to ask for money without panic and fear. The post Ep 1: The Fear of Asking for Money [PODCAST] appeared first on Joan Garry Nonprofit Leadership.

This week on Random Assault, we're once again joined by Seth Rosen of Klei Entertainment to talk about stuff like Ryu and Roy in Smash, Don't Starve (of course), possible names for kids, and helper apps. We also learn about disgusting foods courtesy of a quiz Alex put together, and create Angry John, the angry video game reviewer on YouTube. Because we're just so damn clever. SEGMENT 1: - Bonus Stage Flash Cartoon - Bloodborne - Splatoon - Ryu and Roy in Smash - Nintendo goes crazy over the leak - More amiibo woes - Don't Starve merch - ANGRY JOHN - Don't Starve Together SEGMENT 2: - Don't Starve Chaos Mode - Too Much Semen Guy - Aaah Real Monsters - Soup to Nuts - I Would Rather Starve quiz - CAMEL FACTS SEGMENT 3: - Kid names - "F**k Buzzfeed" - " " - "Favorite" - "Bus Station 16" - "Carter Carter Carter" - Knock-offgames - Slow Jerry - Helper apps - Nuckleavee

Capsule Computers editor Nick Boisson speaks to Seth Rosen from Klei Entertainment on Don't Starve Together!   Check out the interview here

We're just barely recovered from our marathon of game coverage at PAX Prime 2014 in Seattle, but we managed to crawl to the computer and edit together one hour of interviews for your enjoyment. Why? Because we're gluttons for punishment and we will do anything for our listeners.  Out of courtesy to you and your internet connection, we've broken all our interviews down into separate shows of about one hour each. We're also offering these up in sequential order of when we recorded them so you can hear us slowly deconstruct as we become increasingly exhaused and succumb to the effects of too much booze and not enough sleep.  This episode features: Shaz and Duncan Greenwood of Free Lives about "Broforce and Brospendables;" John Ribbins of Roll7 about "Not a Hero" and "OlliOlli;" Seth Rosen of Klei Entertainment about "Don't Starve Together;" Bunny Dast and Rikki Knight of On the Level Studios about "Boo Bunny Plague;" Armin Ibrisadic and Oscar Jilsén of Coffee Stain Studios about "Goat Simulator" for iOS and Android; Jon SmallWood from Deep Silver about "Escape Dead Island;" Adam Winkles of Asteroid Base about "Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. Also, don't forget, details on how to win our gigantic PAX Prime Swag Bag will be on next Wednesday's show.  Enjoy.

Nick Dinicola, Edie Sellers, and Steve Ortegon visit with Seth Rosen, designer of Klei Entertainment's hit Don't Starve, about the title's upcoming multiplayer expansion, Don't Starve Together. We get the an inside look at what it takes to make a relatively small single-player experience into a multiplayer one. Spoiler: It ain't easy.We also find out details about how many players will be allowed, how the servers will work, and when it will come out.

Nick Dinicola, Edie Sellers, and Steve Ortegon visit with Seth Rosen, designer of Klei Entertainment's hit Don't Starve, about the title's upcoming multiplayer expansion, Don't Starve Together. We get the an inside look at what it takes to make a relatively small single-player experience into a multiplayer one. Spoiler: It ain't easy.We also find out details about how many players will be allowed, how the servers will work, and when it will come out.

This week on Random Assault, we're joined by Seth Rosen of Klei Entertainment (yes, he's heard every single joke you've just thought of already), who worked on Don't Starve! He's also one of the guy's responsible for Elizabeth's behavior in Bioshock Infinite! ...I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing, but hey! We talk about theme parks, Don't Starve's Reign of Giants DLC, wrestling, and ghosts! Boo!

In this first installment of three or four parts, we feature five of the developer interviews we did from PAX East 2014 in Boston, Mass.  This episode features: Matthew Armstrong, Gearbox's franchise director for the Borderlands series, and Tony Lawrence, head of 2K Australia, talking about "Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel;" Seth Rosen, designer for Klei Entertainment's "Don't Starve: Reign of the Giants" expansion; Joe Mirabello, developer of "Tower of Guns" from Terrible Posture Games; Justin Amirkhani and Jake Reardon from Vagabond Dog Games to talk about "Always Sometimes Monsters;" Infinitap Games' Matt Gilenbach, designer of "Neverending Nightmares." Enjoy.  

Nick Dinicola and Edie Sellers meet up with Klei Entertainment's Seth Rosen, designer for Reign of Giants, the expansion for Klei's wildly popular survival game, Don't Starve.Rosen outlines what Reign of Giants will add to the Don't Starve experience, including new seasons, new biomes, and new challenges.

Our first meat-space guest, Klei and BioShock: Infinite designer Seth Rosen joins Nels and Jesse to talk about tips for newcomers. With the complexity of a game like Netrunner, learning how to play is just one step down a long cyberroad to victory. But perhaps Seth will help folks, new and veteran alike, get a little further down that path.