You said garage sailing is one of the best start right now business experiences that you can go get. It's very practical so so I took it around with it. so I did that for summer I made about five thousand dollars but this snowballed into bigger opportunities so I started with that. Then my brain started to change.

Yeah yeah! I need to know what was your best single flip? What did you buy for the least and sold for the most? Yeah, so amazing. Uh The Amazing Spider-Man first appearance of of Carnage I spent a dollar I sold it for eighty dollars that that same day uh I sold travel bags I bought two of them for 15 ended up selling them for 300. so I never had that like I still got that throw of the hunt. the amount of people listening or the amount of friends of the people listening right now that like desperately could use.

fifteen dollars to 300 is like very real and I know right now someone's like oh yeah but gas and eBay piece I'm like cool. 15 to 197 is like a real win for a lot of people and it is the thrill of the hunt and that's why people we're going into that season. Now it is absolutely garage sale season. Vayner Nation How are you A very very very very special episode of the Garyvee Audio Experience.

As you know, Uh, the guests are more rare, the original content is more rare. It's more chopping and figuring out and obviously working. Thank you all for enjoying the podcast As a matter of fact in this opportunity, being live with you! Um, for everyone who's listening to the podcast I Really do see all my tweets so please hit me up on Twitter and put hey Garyvee the Podcast and then finish your sentence any way you want. but I'll search Hey Garyvee the Podcast would love to get your perspectives what you like, what's helped you I know it's working, but today's episode is really kind of a meta thing.

I'm going to let the uh guest explain it and then I'm gonna jump on and tell you all while it's why it's important, but um, Jonathan why why don't you tell the Vayner Nation how you got here, give us the whole story, take the next two three minutes and first tell us who you are, what you do, but then tell us why you're here? Yeah, yeah, definitely. So my name is John Tory Co-founder and director of marketing at Searchlight So we match data online activity to offline sales for home service companies. Uh, We've grown rapidly over the past few years and really, this journey started about four years ago in 2019. I was a product manager at a technology company I had a really great first part of my career but I felt very stuck I was approaching my 30th birthday deep down I just knew that I should be doing more I always have that entrepreneurial Spirit but I didn't know where to turn and I was listening to one of your podcasts and you said garage sailing is one of the best start right now business experiences that you can go get.

It's very practical so so I took it around with it. so I did that for summer I made about five thousand dollars but this snowballed into bigger opportunities so I started with that. Then my brain started to change. Yeah yeah! I need to know what were your best single flip? What did you buy for the least and sold for the most? Yeah, so amazing.

Uh The Amazing Spider-Man First appearance of of Carnage I I spent a dollar I sold it for eighty dollars that that same day uh I sold travel bags I bought two of them for 15. Ended up selling them for three hundred dollars. so I never had that like I still got that throw of the hunt I Love it, you're outside, you're talking to people the first appearance of Carnage which I actually was a comic book and baseball card dealer. At that point there was a very short window when I was flipping comics in addition to cards and Carnage's first appearance was the comic that started that business because I bought 80 of them.

Yep and like it really got hot Carnage got hot. Um, so that's massive I love that story. but by the way, the thrill of the hunt. a dollar going to 80 or 15 going to 300.

we're so caught up in the Elon Musk or the Jeff Bezos or this that and the other thing that we don't realize how epic that is. For so many the amount of people listening or the amount of friends of the people listening right now that like desperately could use 15 to 300. is like very real and I know right now someone's like oh yeah but gas and eBay fees I'm like cool. 15 to 197 is like a real win for a lot of people and it is the thrill of the hunt and that's why people we're going into that season.

Now it is absolutely garage sale season. We need to do it. but go ahead. Yeah so so absolutely so I started there but the taking that action and it's it taught me business skills that actually helped get Searchlight to seven figures and we can go into some of that.

but that turned into sports card trading. So I was walking through a mall I saw Carson Wentz autographed helmet and I thought this is interesting. this is April if I buy this now and he gets back to his MVP form. this is a couple years ago Yeah, I could probably put that and then you started talking about sports cards and I thought oh that's a lot easier to store I know the print runs things like that So I got into sports cards right away.

I built a nice little collection for myself, but it was during the boom time so I was able to save a year of income. literally a year of income buying and selling I got into the communities I learned I know they don't like to talk about it as investing things like that but then that led me to writing for 1 37 pm So in February of 2021 I called DM Tyler I had written two articles I wrote a summary for him I said hey I I'd love to do some freelance writing I applied hadn't heard back so let me you know demonstrate that value to you. He got me connected with Jay It took a couple months I had to send you know follow up with another article but they said hey we love your your latest piece We're gonna go live with it. let's do this on a more regular Cadence So that turned into that and then a couple months later you on the Props and Drop podcast said hey, if one of my listeners writes the top 50 famous failed card games and publish it I'm going to share it across all my social media channels and because I had been writing for 1 37 p.m I've been doing the list goals I was more prepared than ever to take the bull by the horns there so I wrote it I I it was Saturday I was in Burke Vermont I was with my friends they were mountain biking so Saturday I'm in this house alone because they're mountain biking and I just started going I wrote 50 ad at five.

you shared it across all your socials and then what I learned in that moment was I need my own blog I published it on Medium.com you drove thousands of people to like man I should have had a Blog I could have captured email addresses. This could become a nice little little side hustle and so two weeks later I launched start with Nfts.com because of that experience like no, I'm not letting that pass up and you were talking about Nfts and uh, you know I I was kind of drawn to that from the collectibility of sports cards. I wrote a couple curious articles which you retweeted crypto Strikers you retweeted then Tyler DM me and said hey man, you should write about Nfts for 1 37 p.m and I said sweet like how do you want me to do it he said I trust you just find some people to interview and and write some stories so Ezra on your team Jeremy Hone uh the local weather team I got to interview Matthew Lillard one of my favorite actors he played Stu and scream and he was so kind and he's like I Love Garyvee I Love I Love that we're going to do this! So I really built this skill set of writing and putting content out there. but in between there we started a little company called Searchlight Advertising and at first we were an agency in the Home Services space doing PPC and Facebook marketing.

We got a few clients. it was nights and weekends but I knew at my full-time job they were gonna we're gonna get rid of me at some point because I was remote I was gonna go where my girlfriend is I'm down in Raleigh North Carolina Now um and you know we grind it I mean nights weekends. We we had our first few clients. we delivered exceptional experiences.

PE Firms were coming into the space and buying these companies like crazy. So the clients that we went above and beyond for started to get acquired and then the PE firm would fire us and those clients would say no We need this team uh to do this and we were able to win some of that back. But but the biggest thing to connect us took a garage selling for people. We had three accounts in our first six months of business.

family friends just hey, we'll do this at a low cost. We did this in automotive for 10 years. We care about your business. We're gonna help you grow.

One of the things that I discovered with one of my clients that came back to me and said hey Jonathan we we love your team. We know that you care about our business but we don't see the return on ad spend in the CRM and so for my eBay days What? I would get really detailed I would look at the the sales comps and the details of the listing. If this Nerf gun has this cartridge, it sells for ten dollars more. so I want to look for that So I tracked by hand thousands of leads from lead to revenue and we found a huge problem in the HVAC Electrical Plumbing Industries which is blowing up at the time, really accelerated by Covid.

so we built a solution around that and we we're bootstrapped. We found product Market Fit! But the best part of all this is we find this product Market fit Now we got to go tell the world about it and I I super I use that writing experience from 1 37 PM from medium.com A lot of a lot of what you talk about like everybody had a podcast, everybody had a Facebook group. We had very unique data. We could tell you how customers convert on the website the actual customer acquisition costs.

It's a long journey in. HVAC You get an appointment consultation, you turn it into events so we can track that better than anybody. even some of the big players that are competing with us. and I started the data driven trades sub stack took me two minutes.

It was about eight months in when I have gotten multiple DMS on LinkedIn a week John I Love your content, let's talk I Want to learn more about how your billion dollar companies PE firms and we can't even keep up with them? We just, uh, partnered with a company called Chirp. They do outbound, you know, get a consultation, send some text so we're measuring the revenue there with our capabilities. and and that came about because a client heard me on a podcast. They hired us.

Then they hired Chirp and it's I've been blown away and it's all of this. You talked before about ingredients and then cooking those ingredients, garage saling, writing on medium, writing for 1 37 p.m starting at Blog, the Arbitrage of the sports cards and the garage sales all kind of culminated. Seven figure business bootstrap six of us full time and we're growing like crazy at a time. We're very empathetic to, you know, the larger economy right now, but that's created more demand for our data because it's been a lot harder out there.

Amazing. So thank you because your advice, just taking it running with it really helped. Well, it's it's the thing that I think about every day even like having you on. right now.

it's like there's six people listening to me for nine years. who, now that you just said it and it's not me saying it, have decided to do it. I thank you because without people like you, it's not. It's not fulfilling.

You know I know what I'm putting out I know what happens if people do it I just know that 99 of people that listen to me don't do it right. You know there was this thing I would do every couple years where I was like stop listening to me right now like unsubscribe from this podcast unfollow me. stop listening and go and I've met a lot of these people who did it. They're like Gary I'm so pumped you told me stop consuming, me, start doing and I met these people.

The reason I don't do it the last couple years is what happened was the same people that wouldn't listen to the advice and do anything about it. thought that stopping following me made them do it but they didn't So I really up because they stopped getting positive you know energy and Karma and they still weren't doing it and instead they found like bad versions of that energy and like it's almost like like that's why I stopped doing I'm like this is it up. It's like like that's bad advice. The good advice is doing what I'm doing right now which is like my friends.

everything you just heard is real. like if you do the push-ups you get the muscles like I promise you like. Let's just not make this historical if you do Facebook reels right now three a day instead of just doing Tick Tock and Instagram I promise you you'll grow much better on Facebook reels than everywhere else and I don't care if you're selling to 23 year old cool kids. if you title your YouTube shorts the way that people search on Google which oh by the way, you don't need any special tools, go type in every word any word HVAC I can type that into Google right now, forget about Google and better analytics.

Just typing it in Google will populate 10 things that most people type in in the bar. If you like a video on YouTube shorts that's like a tick tock or an Instagram reel or YouTube short, but you title it based on what people search, your YouTube short might become a video. that leads to a lot of business opportunities for you. Just the YouTube short because unlike Tick, Tock and Instagram it's not like ephemeral or it goes away after a day or an hour.

It's kind of there because YouTube's the second biggest search engine if you start a podcast, if you post on LinkedIn three times a day, if you start a Facebook group, if you, if you if you if you eat more protein than carbs, if you work out every day, if you sleep seven hours a day, you will lose 13 pounds like you know what I mean like and so it's It's huge that you're doing that. And what about getting on this podcast? Yeah, I mean getting on this podcast like hey so I saw a tweet from you and I and look like I pay attention. So when we talk about like right now because of the an email newsletter right? and I hear you like we need to do video and we turn into videos but it's my email newsletter we are either working with or in conversations or RFP with seven of the 10 largest private Equity firms and we didn't exist as a business a couple years ago. Uh but getting to this podcast I saw a tweet where you you responded to somebody and said it's my biggest challenge that person sort of mentioned hey Gary you you talk about doing all these things but most people listen, they get hyped, they flex and then it just kind of dies off.

So I saw that and it was for me. the story was really just I heard that you know I felt super stuck and anxious about where I was at my career in life. so I just went garage sailing I just went and I did it and I and I loved it and I did it every single weekend. Then it turned into sports cards.

then it turned into writing for 1 37 p.m somewhere in the middle there I got you know a call like hey dude, you're killing it. You should join. Search that out! Let's grow this thing and and again all the ingredients there helped. but you and I have interacted a bunch like you've retweeted a lot of my articles because I know what you like and you're interested in.

So by the time I got to that five minute face time with you because I bought one of the slots from an Nft holder and I kind of prepared, it's like I I think I'm actually your perfect case study because I didn't four years ago I think I was gonna be able to do this. That was my goal is to inspire people who listen to this. but I just followed it for four years. didn't give up.

There are a lot of times I wanted to but I didn't and now it's like whoa like I wake up in my life I moved from Burlington Vermont to Raleigh North Carolina I've got a new business I sold the blog in less than 18 months I Sold. Start with Nfts I Went through that whole process, got myself a nice little bonus and now if you ask people like all of a sudden, they're like John Tory came out of nowhere in the HVAC space. but you need to subscribe to his content and it's opened tremendous doors just from written content in the context of what's valuable to our customers. And it was just doing it.

By the way, John You know this because you really do pay attention. I Talk about the written play as a real play. Yes, do I think people do Facebook reels I Sure do. but I It's clear to me you very much pay attention I can't even imagine how many times you've heard me say it starts with self-awareness and if you're a great writer, just write.

be a blogger like there's a lot of people that would literally let me give you an example if I wasn't if I was scared of the camera if I was scared of the camera which many people are, they're insecure of how they look, they don't like it and that was the only difference in my life. I'm just scared of the camera I'm incapable of writing which is why I've never been a blogger. What I would do is I would be an audio Monster audio monster I don't mean just a podcast I would turn my audio clips or I would do memos on my iPhone and I would do memos on my iPhone Actually, what am I talking about right now? One of my best creative pillars in my Garyvee brand is just audio with a visual on Instagram where it's just me talking and we're doing word overlays and like a nice little mountain in Vermont I Don't know. Yep, yep, we got to get the Vermont there.

Well so what I would do Gary is I would go into these Facebook groups do that they existed I don't want to compete there. that's just it's not my thing. it wasn't sort of my like that's not my Superstar going to these Facebook groups and every night I would just read the comments because you talked about this before too. Just read the comments.

get the feel of people. So I would people would ask the same questions over and over. How do you deal with manual calls? What's your cost per acquisition? What is this? What is that? So yes, I wrote These articles but I answered the questions that I saw over and over again in these groups. where these HVAC companies are super brutally honest with each other.

I was able to get in there and I just kind of alert and and read answer the questions. Then what we do is Elena on my team she'll do the same thing. We'll do a visual of the data you know you can click through. We do video content.

we'll do audio content. Uh, we could be doing it way more, but just literally. The new header itself has been tremendous. So effective that I've actually had to go and up with some of the onboarding and and you know, some of the partnership work there because it's just it's it's grown that quickly.

Listen there, there's nothing I'm more sure of I'm more sure that content that scale that comes from an authentic place of either passion or knowledge at scale in all formats in all the relevant distribution channels it I know that that is effective if you do it for a year or two to create unlimited opportunities. I believe in that more than I believe that the sun will come up tomorrow. Yep from the five minute face times that were part of my Nft project because I want everybody to hear all of this because they may not be able to do it with me, but they may be able to do it with many of the others that are people like me. Um, yep in that like I believe that I'm one of those people and then what happens in that five minute Face Time Yeah, so you know I you you had a fever the night before so I knew going in I'm like right? Gary's probably tired.

so I want to be succinct and and clear about this journey I started from Step One 2019 hated my job was really freaking out about to turn 30 like I felt helpless and stuck. Not a great place to be serendipitously. I was driving to Connecticut to visit my girlfriend. Heard your podcast where you said garage sales.

Great start right now so I took did it. then it turned into sports cards. Then I actually started a podcast. There's so many different things I tried I started a podcast interviewing UVM University of Vermont alumni to talk about their career Journeys We actually did a show with a student where it was during covet and she went through the process of getting a job.

She got multiple offers, we document it. then I went on to you with Garyvee with you and I asked like what do you know, how do I grow the podcast and and what ended up happening from there is I wrote how I got on t with Garyvee you retweeted it so I wrote for medium and this is what I told you in that call told you about. Okay then I wrote 70 articles on me I got my writing chops up, made some money doing it, and then from there it was writing for 1 37 p.m then writing the 50 famous film card games, then starting this blog and again all behind the scenes doing the Searchlight thing and growing the hell out of that. and I sit before you and and this is what I said I think this is the not angle but I think this is why you were because I said I see you talk about how you really want to see case studies that's your biggest someone asked you like what's your biggest need or what would you like to see the most like I just would love to see case studies of people who take the things that are relevant to them like I like the garage sale I'm not doing it just because you said it I liked it I loved it.

Sports cards the same thing and nobody I think nobody's waking up at 5 30 to take 18 into 150 even though they need that 150. Um, unless there's some level of like The thing that most people don't realize is most of people listening right now don't realize how much they're gonna like it. Especially the people there's somebody right now listening. Cliche cliche, 48 year old dude fan of Garyvee with me I with you by the way Johnny Big Shout Out has a six-year-old daughter has working loves his daughter plays with her but doesn't have his thing with his daughter yet.

You know what I mean doesn't have his thing. He has no idea that if the Saturday after he listens let's say he's I don't know when we're gonna post this podcast. let's say it's Tuesday that if he right now Googles while he's at work, while he's running, while he's on a treadmill right now takes his phone and Google's garage sales around Gary Indiana because he lives in Gary Indiana or garage sales near me or downloads a garage sale app on the App Store that shows him garage sales around him comes home Tuesday Night says his six-year-old daughter. we're doing something this Saturday morning you and me just daddy and daughter time plops her in the back seat and goes from 8 AM to noon and then has lunch with her.

that the reason that AJ Vaynerchuk and I are such close Brothers is because garage saleing Yeah, like and so like a lot of parents don't realize oh it's not this or they this or they take them to things but it's not quality time like you took him to karate, but you weren't with him. When you're in the car together for four hours, when you're driving 17 minutes to your next garage sale and you ask your six-year-old daughter, hey, why'd you want me to buy that rabbit she says something, you get a little more insight to her. You say something You by the way are such a good listener that that would really work for you. But like I just don't think people realize what I'm saying which is like hey, a lot of you listening right now could use an extra 5 000 bucks this summer.

Hey, this works every time. If you do the homework of searching on eBay what's valuable, it's not. You do it 10 20 times you get your chops up, you learn how to copyright headlines, you learn how to take photos, you learn how to have humility of like packing the boxes and shipping it. But most of all you're going to get quality time with your under 10 year old because taking them to soccer matches and then watching them is amazing and talking about the game after.

But being in a car together for six hours, go into garage sales where there's a million different things at these homes that lead to conversations, learned interests, shared interests. If you watch your child of what they're gravitating towards, you're like oh you like that? Why like like I'll give you I'm just gonna keep playing up this imaginary story. She picks up a badminton like racket. She thinks it's cute.

You're like oh, you like that you buy the set for three bucks, you come home, you put it up in the afternoon. Now you're playing bad like this is life Yeah anyway I'm sorry I wanted to get that out because to your point, the whole meta of this conversation I am desperate for more people after this podcast to do the thing and I don't think I can be the only Storyteller of it because they didn't see me at 17 20 I said this to Dustin in Asia I was like I wish I was dramatically less successful so that everybody would believe me more. They only see the end result right when I say in my 20s that I was making less than 100K and working. You know all these hours and doing it for my parents, they he, they don't hear me.

It's the same reason when I when I was saying 99 of Nfts are going to go to zero people didn't hear that they they heard it as 20 of Nfts are going to lose 30 market share. they didn't hear 99-0 Yeah, I mean when I quit my full-time job to go to Searchlight I made less than a hundred thousand dollars and I lived with my parents in South Philadelphia for five months and ended up selling my car I still haven't gotten a car again and I love every second of it. like like in those moments you think I'm 32 and living at home with my parents, right? It didn't bother me at all because I I knew where I was going but just to the point that's so big you know I always talk about don't give a what they're saying you said something right now that I say but not as clear as you just said I never was confused how the out I always say I I said it in a brunch a few minutes ago with a bunch of Nft holders I know how this movie ends I know what the scoreboard is going to look like when it hits triple zero. The reason you didn't give a at 32 is the same reason I didn't give a 32.

I knew where I was going yep and I have more data on it because you asked me that five years ago to be like well I don't know I had success in a large company. but then I started to get data through the oh garage sales I'm actually good at this so the writing actually built an audience I got as I got more data when I'm 32 working 15 hours a day you know my parents spare bedroom like I I know where this is. Let me tell you what's important about the data you got. it was affirmation on Merit not based on subjective opinions in a corporation and that's always right.

You know you know in a job right you're getting Julian is going to get affirmation of my subjective opinion and I'm a human since Dustin's drocks. it's flawed data. it could be. It's fine, but it's a human's opinion.

Yep, when you buy and sell on eBay when you write articles, the market decides. Yep, and that's important because when I felt stuck I knew those subjective opinions I'm like these people are undervaluing me and they're overlooking me because I I didn't get promoted for five years and I was traveling across the country presenting the Audi and a lot of these big Brands like subjective taking for granted. they didn't even do it logically. Sometimes sometimes managers owners I say this because it's happened to me and I watched it happen to a million people.

Sometimes it's not even quote unquote on purpose. as a matter of fact, I would argue the best people live lives where they're being taken for granted. my kindness, my empathy, my my generosity is always taken for granted because people become used to it, right? Anyway, we're wrapping this up I got I got to go to my next thing unfortunately. but I think for everyone you could tell why I wanted this man on I Feel like this episode is gonna get 16 of you off your butt.

and 16 out of 150 000 is better than zero out of 150 000. So Brother I'll give you the last few seconds here. If you want to shout out anything or say anything or do anything, it's yours. No I mean just shout out to you Gary everybody listening I I Promise you like just just try it out.

Nothing better than a Saturday morning when the sun is shining and you're sitting thinking about what Netflix show you're gonna watch by the time then to go out do with your friends like I would do with my girlfriend and that brought us closer together. You're outside. You get to see all this cool Collectibles Why do people buy this? Why do they air about it? Why are people paying all this money for it as a way to get started? Because look at what it turned in into for me. Searchlight Digital Dot IO I'm gonna go take a look look at my LinkedIn and some of the interactions and stuff that are happening.

but Gary man I'm so humbled that you made the time I know how busy you are. You made the time to let me tell this story. So my man I'm so grateful. Listen honestly brother I'm being selfish I want this for my community because too many people just don't believe it.

They don't think them I can't work for him I'm not. it's just not true Love you See ya bye everyone Hope you Enjoyed this episode!.