Transcript was automatically generated.

0:00:02 – Announcer

Wall Street Unplugged looks beyond the regular headlines heard on mainstream financial media to bring you unscripted interviews and breaking commentary direct from Wall Street right to you on Main Street.

0:00:19 – Frank Curzio

Hey Eric, thanks so much for joining us today on Wall Street Unplugged.

0:00:22 – Eric Goldreyer

Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

0:00:22 – Frank Curzio

Well, I always love having industry veterans here. I mean what I’ve been doing in the markets for 30 years. You’ve been a veteran of a certain industry, which is online travel, which is pretty crazy for almost three days.

0:00:36 – Eric Goldreyer

Hospitality baby.

0:00:38 – Frank Curzio

Oh yeah, over Crazy. So it’s one thing to say that you’ve been part of that industry for 30 years. It’s another thing to say you started one company and, successfully, you sold it, and then you started another company and did it again, and now you’re looking to do something with another company. Before we get to that part, give us a little bit of your background. How did you get into this industry and why you love it so much? Because it’s not easy dealing with people sometimes.

0:01:03 – Eric Goldreyer

You know, so true, so true. You know, so true, so true. Um, you know, I mean, I’ve always loved hospitality. I just, uh, my wife and I we’ve been married 35 years now and out of college, which is where we met uh, we would actually go stay in bed and breakfast, like legit bed and breakfast, not Airbnbs. This is back when there were guidebooks, so you literally had to read the entire guidebook to find the one that matched your price range and had the hot tub and had the view or whatever you were looking for. And then by the time you called them maybe a toll free number, maybe not by the time you called them they were out of business, because the book has been published for three years and the research was two years before that or they were full right. So this was sort of pre-internet. This was like 93.

And so I had the idea of creating the most comprehensive database of bed and breakfast that existed in the world and license it. You probably remember this, frank to. At the time the proprietary networks were talking MSN Prodigy, the proprietary networks. We’re talking MSN Prodigy, compuserve, aol, all those guys. And by the time I sort of built this database and we literally mailed out paper forms and innkeepers would fill out these four page forms, send us physical photos that we had to scan. We had to do all the data entry. So we built this database and when we were getting ready to go out to market and we had, msn was our first that wanted to sign an agreement with us.

This internet thing was was turning out to be like the next thing, sort of like where we are you know, today, maybe with AI, um, and I just decided, okay, uh, we’re gonna, we’re gonna go internet um launched bedandbreakfast.com and uh, over the next, you know, net um launched bedandbreakfast.com and, uh, over the next, you know, sold it. Sold it once and ran it for that company. Uh, for a bit. Bought it back because that company didn’t end up making it. Uh, they were trying to do. Uh, uh, what was HRN at the time, hotel reservation network became hotels.com. They were trying to repeat that model, weren’t successful. Bought it back. Uh, ultimately sold it in 2010. But I like creating companies that bring people together, to create memories with friends and family, loved ones, et cetera, and I’ve been fortunate to find that passion early and surround myself with the right people and be able to have some success and hopefully we’ll get a 3P here.

0:03:26 – Frank Curzio

You know, speaking of success, I see this a lot with entrepreneurs and even friends. I have a friend that sold vitamin water and then it’s body armor he sold. Is it so much? And it’s a good question. It’s not bad if you say, well, is it greed? Do you see it disconnected in the market? You could retire after those two acquisitions pretty easily. But what makes you jump back into the market? Is it that spirit where I see there’s something broken in the market that you could fix?

0:03:54 – Eric Goldreyer

Or is it more than that? I’m curious. I think for most entrepreneurs, it’s just where you find your energy. It’s seeing an opportunity and solving the most complex Rubik’s Cube there is out there, which is finding a market, finding a product, market fit, assembling a team that can actually deliver that, raising the money, listening to your customers and meeting the need and actually bringing a solution that provides value to everyone. Ultimately is, I think, the biggest reward. Sure, there’s a financial reward if you’re successful, but you get to a point where it’s like okay, this next company is it going to change your lifestyle or not? And a lot of times the answer is no, but you’re just doing it because that’s what you do. You’re an entrepreneur and you like creating stuff.

0:04:42 – Frank Curzio

No, it’s great. I love that explanation. Now I’m going to give you a lot of credit, because this is a competitive industry. I mean, everyone knows if it’s Expedia, tripadvisor, I mean you can go on and on. You can go Bookingcom, airbnb. I mean, when you did this too, you did this early, when it was BenandBreakfastcom to the point where they’re called hyperscalers now, but those companies were also looking to get into this industry and you created, I guess you know great companies that they would purchase, right. So you know, and the reason why I’m saying that is because there’s a lot of competition. Now it seems like there’s so many of these companies. What are you looking to disrupt? What’s wrong with this industry right now?

I mean, I can tell you my concerns, you know, in terms of using Airbnb. You want to go first? Oh, I mean Airbnb, I’ll go first. The Airbnb’s fees are crazy, right, vrbo fees are crazy right now and it used to be a great service. But you know, I go to Saratoga racetrack, go to opening day with my friends every year that I grew up with, right 30, 40 years ago, and you know. So I go back to New York and we do Airbnb all the time, and this time I was like whoa it. I was like whoa, it was like double the fees. I look at Expedia. I’ve been using Expedia, now Expedia I don’t know if they have AI controls, but they know my habits and I usually book late because I’m busy, I travel a ton and I’m booking late and the charges that I have on my account and I’m whatever member it is. I’ve spent literally over $100,000 because I’ve traveled and I back on as I don’t have an account there, and it was literally 40% cheaper and that really pissed me off.

0:06:11 – Eric Goldreyer

So I see what’s broken in the industry.

0:06:13 – Frank Curzio

But what do you see now? Because there is a lot of competition in it, but also it seems like these guys are doing anything they can for profits to keep their publicly traded companies. They have to continue to grow, like every Wall Street company. You got to grow every quarter. Is that what’s going on right now in the industry and how you see it’s broken, how you can fix it?

0:06:29 – Eric Goldreyer

Yeah, I mean there’s a lot to unpack there, but ultimately, yes, I mean I can’t say this with actual data, but I’ve heard and I think I’ve seen the same thing happen on Amazon. Right, I went to buy the six pack of the coffee beans that we get and they went from like 60 bucks to 80 bucks and I was like what the heck happened to the price of the coffee beans? I literally had read something about this, logged out of my account, searched it not logged in and got my original price back and it’s like, okay, they find what you want and they just they yield it to the specific customer, which, in a way, is brilliant, but it’s costly. It can make money, right. What’s broken? I mean, when you look at vacation rentals, you know they’re they’re supposed to be a place that you go to decompress, to go have fun with friends and family, to create great memories, and they, for a bit, were sort of a less expensive way to travel.

Right Now, with the fees that you’ve seen come in Airbnb, vrbo and even, I think, overall overarching fees, in general, people are just sick of fees, whether it’s Ticketmaster, it’s StubHub, stub hub, it’s Airbnb, it’s vrbo, it’s it’s resort fees. I had a freaking fee to take out some tech specs. A month ago I was getting takeout and they were charging me to do takeout and I’m like, wait, I’m bringing you. I’m on that, I’m allowing you to make more money than your restaurant can hold. I’m not taking any of your space. No dishes to wash, no, nothing, nothing. And you want to charge me more to take out. So I mean, I think it’s, it’s certainly a share of wallet grab that you’re seeing by companies, as you said, that have to show a profit and increasing profit.

I mean, um, but the, you know, there just comes a point that as a, as a consumer, you’re like, okay, I’ve had enough. And that happened to me when I was taking my family to a seaside, the Florida coast of Florida, and we were booking a place. It was four nights, $400. I thought it was going to be, you know, $1,600, plus some, you know, cleaning fees, tax, maybe two grand 2750. Wow, and I’m like what the heck just happened? So, seeing that as a, as a, on the traveler side of the of the marketplace, and then understanding the, the supply side, I own a 20, a co-own a 20 key in just outside of Austin. Um, I own a vacation rental. I’ve had it for 12 years, so uh and, and I co-founded a company called turnkey vacation rental.

So I’ve been in the space enough to see from the supply side that the supply is getting squeezed and the travelers getting squeezed, and there’s just too much money being taken out of the equation. That is shorting the mom and pop property manager that you know lives in Vail, Colorado or wherever Port Aransas, Texas. It’s shorting the homeowner because more of their profits go into this platform. Now they’re creating an audience and demand a marketplace, so they should get paid something. But it seems egregious and ultimately it all gets passed on to the traveler.

Because if a property manager has a an eight percent distribution cost in a channel, well, they just raise their rates, oftentimes by eight percent. So the travelers paying eight percent more on the nightly rate, plus the 15 fee or 13 fee that they’re getting charged by the platform. So ultimately it’s 15 to 20, maybe a little more percent. That is not going to someone having a better trip. Right. With that money the traveler could upgrade their stay. Right. If they’re in a beach town, instead of being in town, they could be on the beach. If they’re in a ski town, they could be on the ski slope, they could stay an extra night, uh, they could bring in a chef or take the group out for a spa day or a private lesson or a deep-sea fishing excursion or whatever it is, but ultimately it’s preventing, in my opinion, travelers from having as good of an experience and creating the best memories that they could, because so much of their money is going towards fees, and that’s what we’re set out to aim to fix it Savvy.

0:10:48 – Frank Curzio

And your aim is to fix it with a new company that you started called Savvy. And when I say new company, this isn’t an idea. You actually have a platform, which I’m going to show in a minute, and it’s a no fee platform. And I want you to explain that, because when I hear no fee, it sounds great. It sounds great for the consumer, but as a business right, I mean to disrupt markets it’s got to be good for the business, it’s got to be good for the customer, it’s got to be cheaper, it’s got to be faster, Right. And then you disrupt markets and that’s right. When I hear that, you know, ok, no fees, I’m like OK, it benefits everyone. Exactly how does it benefit you? And you know, is this the reason why you came up with this idea? Because you saw the disconnect, because I I’m seeing the same thing.

Exactly, like that money could be used for an extra day or like an excursion or something. And it was to the point where we go away once a year, right. And if it’s like one hundred hundred dollars, you might be like it was significant. It was, it was a significant charge. Well, it’s like whoa, what the hell was that? It’s. It’s I mean, it’s like 25 more than what we paid last year for a small house. You know so, so you know.

0:11:43 – Eric Goldreyer

Talk about Savvy and how you disrupted the market and how you plan to disrupt this market so I had a friend a few weeks ago that was like, hey, we’re going to puerto ranzos, do you guys have any uh inventory there? And I was like, of course you know. Look at all this. And I’m scrolling through the phone and he’s like, well, let me look into it tonight with my wife, text me back the next day. He’s like we literally saved 1100 using Savvy over airbnb and I’m like that’s real savings. That changes their trip, right. Um, so the model. Uh, you know how do we do it? I wish I could say I’m this brilliant guy and I’ve come up with this amazingly new way to do things.

The truth is is we’re taking it back to the OG models that when I launched bedandbreakfast.com in 1995, when David Klaus launched VRBO in 1995, you know the original home away it’s we allow property managers and we only have professionally managed properties on the site. That’s one of the other things that we do to differentiate you. You have peace of mind knowing that when you show up, it’s going to be as it was advertised, right, if there’s a problem, if the Bluetooth lock doesn’t work and you’re locked out, there’s someone there. You’re not rooting from some bro that’s surfing in Costa Rica and you can’t get into your house, your AC goes out, whatever it is, there’s a professional. So professional property managers or property management companies can put all their properties on our site absolutely free, very little cost to us to do that. Right. They can pay a flat low monthly cost and they can get a premium listing and just get more exposure for their site and drive more reservations, and it’s that simple. So we don’t have to charge the travelers, we don’t have to charge all the property managers. We’ll create a marketplace and those that want to get some more exposure can can go in and get more exposure, exposure can can go in and get more exposure.

So I see you’re showing the site there and, yeah, that’s, that’s the, the site that you would see if you’re coming in as a property manager on why you should.

You know, look at Savvy, take advantage of Savvy and and the way the model works is, uh, we are passing you through to the professional property manager. So when you book on Savvy through to the professional property manager, so when you book on Savvy, we’re a book direct OTA, so we’re going to take all of your information, just like if you’re on Airbnb or Vrbo. We’re going to securely pass that through the API to the property management software and the property manager is going to book your reservation just like you were on their website, like you called them and spoke to them directly. So you’re getting the best rate and you’re not paying us a fee because, guess what, we don’t have credit card costs, we don’t have fraud costs, we don’t have to staff this massive care team, because why would we replicate all that? Property managers already have that. So we’re not building another layer and becoming an intermediary where we’re taking the customer from the property manager and we’re able to pass that savings on to travelers.

0:14:45 – Frank Curzio

So you’re already. This is 150,000, right Properties 2,500 professional hosts. I see you already generate revenue from the site, right? So this isn’t like hey, this is what we’re going to do. This is happening now.

0:14:55 – Eric Goldreyer

This is what we’re doing now. I would say we’re generating revenue. Yes, um, like any marketplace, you’ve got to get. This isn’t a service business. We’re not. We’re not, uh, selling mattresses. In the first mattress we sell, we’re making money. Right, we’re creating a marketplace. So we’ve got to build out supply.

So we spent the last two years getting nearly 3000 now property managers on the site, representing over 150,000 properties. That gave us enough inventory so we could go out to travelers and say, hey, we’ve got a solution for you. Uh, come check us out and when you find a property on our site and maybe you show this in a bit or not, but when you find a property on our site and you give dates, you’re going to see our price and you’re going to see Airbnb’s price and Verbo’s price for 90% of the listings right now on the site. So you see exactly how much you’re saving or not. And if you’re not saving, we’re going to show you that as well, because Savvy travelers will know what they’re going to get, right, yeah, so there we are, uh, on the side and, um, you know, we got good inventory now. So, back to you know, once you have the marketplace and you have the supply, now you can go out and and let people know you exist and start driving demand, and it’s not until you’re driving demand to the supply that you start monetizing the marketplace.

Last thing I want is for property managers to come in before we’re really driving enough traffic and start paying me, because I want to be making sure that I’m providing value to them. So, yeah, we’re, we’re, we’ve got revenue. It’s small because now we’re starting to work on the awareness. Thankfully, everyone’s sick of fees. Thankfully, most people are Savvy and like to save money and thankfully, travel’s sexy. It’s something you talk about right, when you get together with friends and family, you’re like, hey, what’d you do over spring break? Or what are you doing this summer? And everyone inevitably is like I’m going to get a vacation rental in Costa Rica, I’m going to do an Airbnb and whatever. So we think that that’ll help awareness, get the marketplace going, and that’s when the network effect will really take off.

0:17:07 – Frank Curzio

How important is the technology behind this? Because you can see, as I’m using the site, it’s very smooth and I know they have maps, like this Airbnb that you could see. They could bring it out and stuff. How important was it to get the technology right? Because you seem like a tech guy that understands this part, which is so, so important, right? I mean, everybody wants that smooth experience and when you get a clunky experience, it’s not good. I just did it right now. It was very simple.

0:17:37 – Eric Goldreyer

So how difficult to get the platform up and running. And and you talk about that part, yeah, I mean, uh, there’s, there’s the table stakes. Now, right is, it’s gotta you’ve gotta have a good ui ux, it’s gotta look very professional, it’s gotta be tight. And hats off to airbnb. I mean they’ve done that maybe better than anyone, right? Um, they’ve built a really, really great site and app that’s very clean and tight, and you know we knew that that was what we had to set out to replicate. And you know we’ve got so many things in the pipeline that are coming to make the site even better than it is today. But I think your question is on point and the answer is it’s very important In that you know, as the new OTA on the block, we’ve got the newest tech stack in the industry and that will allow us to iterate much more quickly with adding technology and features.

And even you know AI, for example. Right, I mean, we’ve got to be prepared for that. For example, right, I mean we’ve got to be prepared for that. We’re using it internally right now and we’re looking at what type of integrations we do to leverage. You know AEO. But if you don’t build the foundation right, then it’s tough for you to scale, not only provide a good UX, but it’s tough to grow the business and to scale from tens of thousands of properties to hundreds of thousands, to millions, et cetera, and we fully expect to be in the millions several years from now. So you got to build it right so you can do that.

0:19:03 – Frank Curzio

And this is cool. I click one of the properties on here. It says you know, book now and then underneath it it says Airbnb. It says, yikes, $114 more. Vrbo was not found. This wasn’t listed there. So what happens? Is there going to be a case where, say you know, airbnb is less than you and do you beat that price there?

0:19:18 – Eric Goldreyer

has been.

0:19:19 – Frank Curzio

Sure.

0:19:20 – Eric Goldreyer

No, no, we don’t beat the price. We just let the traveler know that they came to the place, saw the prices. Go book it on Airbnb if they’re less expensive. You know, we’re not always going to be the best, the best price. We should be ninety, nine, one hundred percent of the time. But we’re going to show you regardless. So it’s not like we’re going to show you when we’re less expensive and we’re not going to show you when we’re more expensive. Savvy travelers want to know that they’re making the best decision and we want to support them in that. So we’re going to show the price either way.

0:19:54 – Frank Curzio

So you had two exits, which is amazing, right, but more importantly, it’s how you exit. I think you see some people exit and now you’re getting back into the industry and it seems like people want to follow you. And the reason why I say that is because when I look at your advisors and you mentioned David Klaus he’s a founder of ERBO. Carl Shepard, co-founder of HomeAway. Carl Sparks, president and CEO of Travelocity. Brad Sorica, gmvp at TripAdvisor Plus I mean these are your advisors, these are people working with you. How did you build those relationships over time? And it seems like they really. I mean for guys like this to really be your advisors, I mean they have to really believe in this idea.

0:20:32 – Eric Goldreyer

Yeah, I think they do. They all. They all see it and they know that that’s what the industry needs. Um, that’s one of those situations where I’m fortunate to have. You know, when I was starting bedandbreakfast.com, rich Barton was starting Expedia, Terry Jones was starting Travelocity, uh, Hafner was starting Kayak. I mean, we were all there together and so I sort of maybe it’s just because of affiliation or just because I’m the old guy in the room now call it wisdom or whatever but they see the market and they see the same problems that I see and they feel like we’re in a really good place to provide a solution.

And we’ve pulled a team together. That’s, you know, people from Expedia, people from HomeAway, people from Verbo, people from Turnkey, bedandbreakfast.com. Uh, we’ve got a good team. We’ve done it before and it’s one of those things where we don’t have to educate the market. Right, when I launched bedandbreakfast.com, when we launched turnkey, um, we, when I first went to my first bed and breakfast show in keepers, literally, we’re like what’s the internet? Like you know who the heck are you and what is this? We spent the first five years educating the market. Yeah, right, this, you know.

It’s nice to be here where everyone knows what Airbnb is and everyone’s sick of the fees. When I say everyone, nine out of 10 people are sick of the fees. 10% of the people. They’re going to use Airbnb because they’re brand loyal and that’s awesome. If we get 10%, huge right.

We’re not saying we’re going to beat Airbnb, we’re just saying for the Savvy travelers out there, we’re going to give them a better solution so they don’t have to go search and then right click and do a photo search or go Google some property management name or property name and try to find it where they can book a direct and save that money. No-transcript. So as an individual property manager, yes, I can invest in SEO and AEO and I can do stuff on social and I can have a good website with good UI and UX and a booking engine that’s clean and all that stuff, but that works maybe for my word of mouth customers or my repeat customers. It’s not really going to get me those customers that were going to Airbnb and to do that we as an industry need something like Savvy, where the traveler can go to a single place, see a lot of the inventory, see the price comparisons and then ultimately book direct and get that book direct price.

Now are you worried about and I think that’s why you see so many property managers that are participating. Sorry, go ahead.

0:23:35 – Frank Curzio

No, no, no. It gets to my question Do you worry about the competition here? Because what I like about this idea is when I see Airbnb, whatever the mark cap is 70 billion, 80 billion, whatever it is now. Now they’re starting to get into experiences and outdoor adventures, cooking classes, museum tours and more personalized experience and stuff like that, so they’re finding ways to generate revenue.

Right, that’s what they’re trying to figure out is how they continue this growth, but it seems like they can’t lower their prices or come down and say, hey, we’re not going to have fees anymore. So the level of competition you’re seeing others try to use this business model that you’re using and, with that said, are there other ways for you to generate revenue off of your platform? Because it seems like you know if you’re charging no fees and you’re charging it, you know, based on you know the people who are booking and if they want slots and stuff like that, you know what’s the revenue model going forward. Is it just strictly some of these people using getting, if they sign up to your site and selling their properties and the hosts sell their properties, or is there?

0:24:34 – Eric Goldreyer

ways of advertising and things like that.

I think, ultimately, in any marketplace, there are numerous, numerous ways that you can monetize a marketplace right. When you truly create a marketplace, uh, you can monetize the supply side, you can monetize the demand side, you can monetize the people that support the industry and that your customers are their customers. I mean, think of this We’ve got almost 3000 property managers, um, that are members, if you will. Right now, I think the largest association in the industry, vrma, has a thousand. So we’ll continue to grow rather quickly and we’re not competing with the association. We fully support the association and we attend their conferences and stuff. But we’re in a position to help vendors reach property managers because we’re one of the biggest aggregators of property managers. So there’s and there’s other types of ad units you can create right, think of Google and they’ve got their AdWords at the top. I mean, you can have a featured property spot.

You know, go back to choose Austin. I’m in Austin, Texas. We’ve got, I don’t know, 650 properties currently in Austin and that continues to grow. But let’s say that, uh, you’re a property manager and you’re like, okay, well, I want to get more exposure for my, my homeowners in Austin and you know I can buy the premium, but out of the 650, I can buy the premium, but out of the 650, 65 properties have bought premium. So I’m going to be higher than 90% of the properties, but I’m still one of 65. I want to be themselves like that. So, yeah, I, you know, it’s like what we did at bedandbreakfast.com. We had property of the month where you could be, that we had featured property, we had the listing levels.

Um, ultimately, though, it’s, it’s like okay, to the degree that it makes sense for the marketplace, I would see us doing it. But if, if, if we can deliver I say if I know we can when we deliver to the industry, uh, a fully built and working marketplace we’re. I mean, the model that we have with premium listings is plenty. It’s not like we’re not going to be answering to, you know, wall Street, necessarily, and if we end up going public down the road, then maybe we’ll have to find ways to keep that revenue. Uh, you know, go and go and go, and but I think there’s so much opportunity there.

Right, you look at, five years out, it’s supposed to be 30 million vacation rentals. Uh, globally, you know, uh, sorry, sorry, 20 million globally. If we get 20% of those 20 million. That’s 4 million listings on our site for free, not paying us 4 million. That’s twice the size that Vrbo is today and that’s half the size that Airbnb is today. I think we can get there no guarantees. I think we can get there Out of those $4 million. If one in 10 decides that they want a premium listing, that’s great revenue for us. We don’t need half of them, we don’t need a third of them. I mean we’d be fine with 3% or 4% or 5%, but I think 10% is very realistic and probably low.

0:28:26 – Frank Curzio

It’s interesting how you talk about it because I think when you’re looking at a first-time entrepreneur that’s starting a company, their ambitions are so high and they want to capture the whole entire market and just to segment it the way you are. It’s goals that are achievable and you’re still going to be wildly successful. I see that mistake made, and I’ve made that mistake in the past too, before starting the company. But what is the goal? Is it to IPO? Is it to are you positioning the company to be bought by somebody else? I mean, you had two exits or do you really want to disrupt the market? Does it matter? Cause I know you have private investors and you invest a lot of money to start this yourself. You know what is the goal for you.

0:28:59 – Eric Goldreyer

You know that’s. That’s such a great question and maybe I’m just such a uh, a bad entrepreneur with this answer, but I’ve never started a business. Maybe I would get where I was trying to get quicker, but with a goal of how I was going to exit. My goal was always to build the best business on a standalone basis and then we would exit whatever ended up making the most sense to exit. Maybe, if I was more intentional, we could have gotten a higher premium, um on EBITDA or on revenue, or we could have focused our energy on meeting what that potential buyer or marketplace uh was going to want.

But, um, you know, I I’ve just said let’s, let’s, build the best business we can and, uh, we’ll figure out how we, how we monetize it. I mean with, with Savvy. Uh, you know here, throw my, throw my hat on here, there you go, there you go With Savvy. The business is large enough that could IPO. I mean, if we hit what we’re thinking we can do, we could IPO, we could sell to a strategic investor. It could be private equity. I think would make more sense because you know really what we, what we’re building as a, as a marketplace, doesn’t have to just be vacation rentals. I mean, that’s a marketplace, but our tech stack and our infrastructure can support a marketplace in any market, all right.

0:30:40 – Frank Curzio

So final question here and you addressed it just just, you know, with the previous question if you’re an entrepreneur, could you tell me some of the advice that you would if someone has been successful, maybe the do’s and the don’ts, or you know some of the things that they need to focus on or not focus on, because everyone has a dream of starting their own business. I tell people when they ask me, when I started my own business, you don’t realize that what you’re really good at doing could only account for 30%, 35%. You don’t know about. You know HR, you know about counting. You got to know about all these things, especially as you grow and you get more and more employees and stuff. But is there any advice you can give? Because we do have a lot of entrepreneurs, we do have a lot of people and business owners that that you know have their own businesses that listen to this podcast.

0:31:28 – Eric Goldreyer

Yeah, wow, there’s a lot. And to distill it all down, I mean, I think there’s a few things. To be an entrepreneur, you’ve got to be an optimist, right, because there’s always stuff thrown at you Uh, and there’s, you know, uh, you think of I think I’ve said this before uh, on a pod, but you think of, you know, brian Chesky at Airbnb. You think of Jeff Bezos at Amazon. I mean, those guys were both turned down for funding over a hundred times before someone actually believed in what they were doing to invest. So I think you you’ve got to be optimistic. You’ve got to see the vision and go for it, like get it started and and push it forward relentlessly, like sometimes you know you’ve got to will it to get the next step of the business evolve. But, you know, certainly have self-awareness to the degree that you do understand your strengths. Get the absolute best people that you can afford, uh, and the seats around the table and on the bus with you, um, I certainly there’s been the secret to my success. I’m not the smartest person in the room, um, but I get the people that are to be on the team, um, and I know what I’m good at and what I’m not good at and what I need to just sort of stay out of.

Uh, you gotta be a salesperson, right? You’re selling people to invest. You’re selling people to join your team Uh, you’re selling customers. So I’m not sure there’s any one thing, and I don’t know if you learn it or you’re sort of I was doing this stuff when I was in first grade. I mean I just I would pick up shells on the beach and then go door to door and sell them. I just I don’t know what it was, but I had this, this desire to be this entrepreneur guy. Um, but yeah, I mean I don’t think there’s any right path. It’s sort of like when your kids go to college, they’re going to be successful, probably at whatever college they end up at, um, so there’s a lot of different ways to success and there’s a thousand books you can read and things you can listen to. But, uh, persevere, get out there and just focus, focus, focus and uh, get the best team you can, cause it’s, it’s hard. No, I love it. I sort of laugh when I say that, but there’s no sugar coating it. It’s not easy.

0:33:59 – Frank Curzio

Yeah, no, it’s great stuff. Well. Well, eric, listen, thank you so much for joining us. You know, good luck with Savvy. It’s, it’s. You know, I follow trends all my life. It’s what I do. I love it. I love seeing which is successful, which are not. You know, I described the formula earlier, which I think you know if you just make it cheaper, faster, better for both parties, you know, make it easier and you check off all the boxes with this, it made so much sense that I wanted to learn of people, and I’m sure it will, because you could see your positive attitude. You could see how excited you are about this. You could see how some great people in the industry are following you behind this. You could see how much you’re investing your own money behind this. So I think it is going to be very successful and it’s exciting. I know a lot of people sign up, probably after this, after they see this interview.

0:34:48 – Eric Goldreyer

So I just want to say thank you.

0:34:50 – Frank Curzio

Thanks for having me and I hope some people get some, get some momentum from it. No, it’s great stuff.

0:34:54 – Announcer

Wall Street Unplugged is produced by Curzio Research, one of the most respected financial media companies in the industry. The information presented on Wall Street Unplugged is the opinion of its hosts and guests. You should not base your investment decisions solely on this broadcast. Remember it’s your money and your responsibility.