Colin and Brent discuss Brent's secret club, visiting Austin, launching a Latin American staffing company, and managing remote teams.

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[00:00:00] Colin Keeley: All right. Hello and welcome back. This is Colin Keeley here,

[00:00:03] Brent Sanders: and I'm Brent Sanders,

[00:00:04] Colin Keeley: and we are two guys buying and building wonderful internet companies.

[00:00:07] Brent Sanders: Yeah. And we haven't recorded in a while, so we want to kind of give a, a recap as to what's been going on with us, what's been going on, you know, in the, in the world of, of, I guess we wanna call it indie acquisitions.

Recently I came down to to Austin from Cleveland and, and visited Colin which was a, a blast. I gotta say, your, your neighborhood's is really, really cool. And just in general, Austin seems like a, a great place to raise a family.

[00:00:34] Colin Keeley: Yeah. We've had the weirdest visitor experiences. So my dad came in the winter and it was like 17 degrees when he flew out.

So he walked away thinking, Austin's like the coldest place ever. And then you came, you walk through the neighborhood. It's really nice. Normally. And then, you know, we had this you know, ax murder on the loose on the street and we had the stuff Yeah, that intense,

[00:00:55] Brent Sanders: that was kind of, that was kind of crazy.

So do we want to tell that story? It's, yeah. They, it's notable.

[00:01:01] Colin Keeley: They still haven't caught the guy, to my knowledge. This is wild. I've learned a lot more about the police since then.

[00:01:06] Brent Sanders: Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny, we, we like. We're just hanging out on your back deck, which is, I found that's like your office, that's what you do.

You do. Which it's, it's like great, it's perfect weather, fresh air, sunshine, sunlight, all that stuff. And you know, you, you heard it, I heard like a boom. I knew there was a job site or something going on across the street, so I didn't really didn't really think twice. But you were watching, I, I guess you saw this guy was breaking into a car.

[00:01:32] Colin Keeley: Yes, we were hanging out on the back porch and we heard a big crash like around the side. And so just walked around the side of the house and this guy was throwing a huge rock at a work guy's pickup truck. And I yelled at him and he stopped and he kept walking away. And then he came right back and he threw it like 10 more times to try to break through this window.

And eventually it shattered, which, you know, kudos to I guess like Ford pickup truck windows. I was shocked how long that thing lasted. But yeah, then he broke in the car and he was like, I guess trying to steal it or something. He was in there for a long time, rummaging around, and we called 9 1 1 and eventually he got outta the car with like.

Probably eight inch knife. And then I, I said that on 9 1 1 and eventually they're like, oh, okay, we'll actually send someone now, I think was the, yeah, the response from their end. 'cause I don't think they cared about someone breaking into a car.

[00:02:22] Brent Sanders: Property damage is not, not quite on there. There we're gonna send cars.

But yeah, once, yeah, once you said he had a weapon and he was like gorked out, he was not respond. I mean, he's not responding to you, but he also just looked, you know, glazed out. Kind of cracked out. He definitely, so the guys in the, in the job site came out and they're, they like pinned him in, right? Like before he got outta the car, they like pinned.

They had another truck and they kind of pinned it in. They, they got kind of freaked out from the, they weren't like they weren't really like, they were like, this guy is like, not, he's not here. Like he's not responding. He's not like a normal person.

[00:02:58] Colin Keeley: Yeah. And so this guy eventually got outta the car, walked down the block, I think he was bleeding, so there was like blood all over the truck and broke into a house.

And then a like hysterical girl came running outta the house. And eventually it was like 20 to 25 minutes later the cops showed up in force. They had like 10 vehicles and like the whole SWAT gear set up and huge guns. And they surrounded the house and then they confirmed with everyone else was no one else in the house.

They eventually went into the house and they found out he wasn't in the house. He had somehow escaped out the back before the cops had arrived. Yeah. Which is, yeah, wild. It took him so long to show up and then I. I, to my knowledge, they haven't, you know, caught him or anything either after that.

[00:03:39] Brent Sanders: But the, the freaky part, especially what freaked out the, the girl who lived in the building who got broken into, is that they suspected this guy that he had like murdered somebody.

Like what, like a week before or something like that?

[00:03:50] Colin Keeley: Yeah, that's what they said. I don't know if there's any truth to that. Yeah, Austin is not Chicago, so it's not like there's a murder, you know, every day here. So that would be a pretty big news story. Okay. But yeah, that's what she said. Well, I thought your neighborhood was, was lovely.

It is. I mean, it's beautiful old homes on like, you know, treeline streets in one of the nicer neighborhoods, like in Austin. Mm-Hmm. But yeah, it's funny, it got interrupted with that. Yeah. But the largest story here with cops, I was talking to a friend that has lived here for a number of years is back in the riots of like 2020.

At that time, they defunded the police. Okay. And so they. Cut the budget back dramatically. It was like a third or more, and they fired a bunch of cops. Maybe it was two thirds, just something absurd. And then that got overturned just a a year later. But that made this like enormous hole in the police workforce.

I see. Because they got rid of so many people and now it's like, I don't know, a decade long backlog of like staffing issues to try to get staffed up again. So apparently if you call 9 1 1, like, unless you know you've just been shot it doesn't seem like you're gonna get anyone that soon.

[00:04:53] Brent Sanders: Yeah. I just figured everyone had a gun in, in Texas.

But I, I guess not, not always the case in Austin. I, I always thought it was like the most dangerous place to be a criminal. That was just my recollection is they're just cowboys with guns being carried at all times. But I mean, and by the way, like, I'm not advocating you, you should have shot this guy, or we should have shot this guy.

I mean, unless he was like coming for you, but like at the end of the day, you know, the knife was gnarly. That, that for sure was like, okay, I'm not going over there like. It's a car and yeah, I don't think anybody needs to be shot over breaking into a car. That being said, he, he he was whacked out, but hey, the food I gotta say the best thing about Austin.

So I, on your recommendation, even on the way out at the airport, I got some breakfast tacos at what was it, taco Deli? Was that it? Taco

[00:05:42] Colin Keeley: Deli is, yeah. Fantastic. P Food.

[00:05:44] Brent Sanders: Oh my God. Like airport food. E everything I ate was, was phenomenal. The, the barbecue was. That was a great culinary trip. I could easily gain 20 pounds moving to Austin.

[00:05:56] Colin Keeley: That's dangerous. Yeah. It's warm here though, so you can't wear very many clothes and then that keeps you in shape.

[00:06:04] Brent Sanders: Right, right. Yeah, so I mean, it was a great trip. It was good to, it does seem like there's a, a much more vibrant investor community for what we do. Versus Chicago, I would say like, you know, at least my experience with, I mean, it's funny, we, we kind of got into this both as we both left Chicago, like Covid was going on and, you know, I, there's, there's a bit of a.

A gap I guess in, in our networking abilities during Covid. But we were able to meet with some cool people and you know, there just seems to be a little bit more of a community. Definitely larger tech community for sure.

[00:06:40] Colin Keeley: Yeah, it's been super fun. This is a big entrepreneurial community. I get meet up with periodically, but yeah.

Eventful trip for you. I'll have you back, I'm sure. What else did you want to cover here?

[00:06:49] Brent Sanders: Let's talk about jus. So this is something that when I catch up with people, they're like, Hey, how, you know, how are things going? How's Verne going? What's this Jules thing that, that you guys are working on?

I'm like, you know, I don't, I don't really work on it. It's more Collins thing. So, yeah, I figured that would be a good topic to, to introduce to our, our audience.

[00:07:09] Colin Keeley: Yeah. So Jules is a, you know, Latin American recruiting and staffing firm that I launched. I don't know if I ever told you this story before, but I wanted to do this back when we were at Builders and I actually launched it as like a Typeform and I got I think, like three clients that signed up from it.

And I talked to our GP Paul about it, and he is like, oh, you got all these people issues. There's so much competition. Like, ah, I don't really like that idea. And I was like, huh, okay, maybe I shouldn't do it. And I just refunded people and I shut it down. And that was like, you know, three years ago and then, or maybe it was more than three years ago at this point, but then Covid hit and all of these, like outsourcing agencies rocketed upwards.

So I've been noodling on this idea and I was basically let astray. But, so yeah, I returned to it. It's going great. So I've don't really, or really have never worked on it more than like a few hours a week. So I got, I set up the landing page on Webflow. I had some recruiters which I had used for recruiting for other things.

'cause our background is like, we were using the other agencies and it was costing us a fortune. And I was like, at some point we should just like launch our own one of these. And so I returned to it, hired a recruiter, got some clients, and then it was kind of off to the races. And so they were fulfilling.

And then I took a number of sales meetings. I had a great sales guy who like basically runs everything now and he collaborates with the recruiters and he is an assistant and he's like my assistant. And so yeah, it's just been scaling up. It's you know, it's going great and growing quickly.

[00:08:40] Brent Sanders: Cool. What, like, what's the what's the typical, is it salespeople mostly?

What's the typical hire that you're, you're placing?

[00:08:48] Colin Keeley: The most common are like SDRs, so sales folks. Mm-Hmm. And they're like a thousand to 1500 a month. They're really, really good. And then. I'd say virtual assistants or marketing assistants are probably the next most popular. Sure. And then after that is like graphic designers and bookkeepers are up there.

Hmm. And more recently we get started getting way more technical roles. So like full stack developers, Shopify developers and bringing down a recruiter just to like, focus on that, you know, especially.

[00:09:17] Brent Sanders: Cool. Cool. I mean, in terms of like where this fits in and on your plate, like, it sounds like it's, it's largely managed by the.

The person who's running it, I mean, how involved are you?

[00:09:30] Colin Keeley: Not terribly. Yeah, at this point it's more like working on the business periodically. Like if I ever get asked to do anything, I just try to shuffle it to the next person. Someone had this phrase of like, every one of your employees has ability to throw a monkey on your back.

And as long as you take things like you have a bunch of monkeys on your back, and so anytime they try to throw something to you, you're supposed to throw the monkey back to them or like throw it to someone else. So you, you're never holding any monkeys.

[00:09:53] Brent Sanders: Got it. Got it. Okay. I mean, it, it's, it, it's kind of begs the question what, well, I mean, you still, you promote it though, like there's work that you do there, right?

Like that I guess, you know, if you were this entrepreneurial, person that that's sort of running it, you know, what's stopping him from just launching his own enterprise? Right. It's, there is some connection maybe that, that you have to an audience or like a US based audience that, you know, drives that.

[00:10:21] Colin Keeley: Yeah. So, so. That's the, the biggest part for sure. I just kind of skipped over getting customers and how it grew so quickly. Yeah. It's a hundred percent that I've, you know, for years have written online and have this huge like email newsletter base, and all I did was I have a bunch of automations already, so if you sign up, you get like a bunch of emails.

For different email courses or different, you know, things around different topics. And so all I did was inserted JUULs there, like periodically Mm-Hmm. Almost like a sponsor, like I'm sponsoring my own newsletter. Sure. And so I out the gates, it was the majority were friends and then it was like just friends and followers, and now it's starting to get into referrals.

Great. So, yeah, a hundred percent. It's like a complete unfair advantage to have, you know, thousands of people that are small business owners following you.

[00:11:06] Brent Sanders: Mm-Hmm.

[00:11:08] Colin Keeley: Cool. Well, that's exciting, right? So it's like the trust is built up over years

[00:11:12] Brent Sanders: and, and that's exciting. I mean, it, it, it is I know you've always had an interest in this like remote worker sort of va and we've, we've definitely like, progressed and leveled up our skills around hiring and, and retaining.

I mean, I think we have probably the longest stretch now of. va, not VAs, but just like remote workers all over the world. And I think back to when we started this podcast, we started talking about this like, Hey, we're interested in trying it. And I think we cycled through. I'd like to think probably four to five.

Roles, now that I think about it, four to five different people in the same role. I, I mean to say over the years, but over the last two years, really, you know, I don't really know what the main change was other than, you know, us kind of understanding what the, the environment was like and screening better, but really like, retention has gotten significantly better.

[00:12:05] Colin Keeley: Yeah. I'd say we have a lot more processes in place. I think we've both been reading more books like Scaling people and EOS on kind of these topics.

Mm-Hmm. Do what do you think we're doing differently? That, you know, it seems like all our employees are rather happy with us.

[00:12:20] Brent Sanders: I think we're paying a little bit more n not like. A lot more, but at least for like the Filipino and South American roles, I think we pay a little bit more than like markets.

So we do get access to a little bit better. Candidates, I think experienced people that we've done reference checks on. That's another thing, like I think our current roster, it's everybody who came highly recommended or had, you know, prior role and then. Yeah, I, I, I guess the Reddi, I mean, I do a fair amount of time.

I spend a little bit of time, I wouldn't say a fair amount of time. I, I do a one-on-one with everybody every month. Right. And that's, that has certainly helped. I wasn't doing that before, just 'cause it was kind of weird. But you know, I think all of those factors kind of, as well as expectations have been set a little bit better.

I think we've been a little bit more verbose of like, what's acceptable, what's not. Yeah, I don't know. It's, it's hard as I think about it now, I, I think it's, it's a blend of, of a whole bunch of stuff and it's giving people, if I had to boil it down, probably giving people more ownership of like, you know, over time getting them up to speed and then saying, Hey, you are in charge of this metric, and own it.

Like you are the only one in charge of it. And that's, that's definitely seen the, the best results in my mind.

[00:13:36] Colin Keeley: Yeah. I think we've got a lot better at it. You could probably put the pillars out there of like what we're doing, but I think we, so we do the ownership, that's a big thing. I think the work is interesting.

The work is probably far more interesting than being a cog at like, you know, a much larger company, which is what Mm-Hmm. Alternative is for a lot of these people. We pay, you know, I would say above average for sure in all these countries. That's something we do at jus too, we recommend people like the retention is just way higher.

Yeah. If they're just getting paid like 10 to 20% more than they would get otherwise. Or else like the people that are looking for jobs are like, ah, I'm doing so much work, I'm underpaid. And it's just easy to steal those people away. Yeah. Yeah, I would say those are the probably biggest things.

Autonomy we're not like super micromanaging anyone, you know, to any real extent.

[00:14:22] Brent Sanders: Yeah, I agree.

[00:14:25] Colin Keeley: Do you wanna talk about any scout stuff?

[00:14:27] Brent Sanders: Yeah. So since the last time we recorded, I think we, last update there was that we're gonna dive into services. And as of right now, what's first week of April we have what, two branded app customizations already underway or signed.

That's actually an update I, I didn't share with you, but we do have commitments from folks that have, are like, great, send the contract, I'm in charge, my credit card, let's go. And then we have one growth engagement sort of pilot that's already underway. So like, you know, in a a very micro level, what we wanna do is kinda start small with this and flush it out.

We're seeing a lot of progress there. And I, I would say like I would attribute it to. We talked about it on a prior podcast, but this book monetizing Innovation, and I don't think you need to read the whole book, but I do think I think there's a podcast that, you know, maybe this podcast, but there's a podcast that the author was on.

But it really, really enabled me. I was really struggling with, like, I get on a call with somebody, they want to do something custom. How do you talk about it of like, Hey, what you're asking for probably could be 10,000, could be 50,000, and you probably want to pay 1500. Like how do you have those conversations and bridge the gap?

Because there is an element to all of the, at least on the tech side, the engagements where I'm like, okay, we're gonna build some stuff to support this, but really you're getting like a custom thinking, like who pays for what and how. And that book has been just gold to army with. Like arm yourself with really clear, poignant questions that are like, what's this worth to you?

How much would you pay for it? What's too much money for this? Like, where does it, and none of those answers have elicited a quantitative response where it's like five thousand's too much, two thousand's, too little. Like it's been hemming and hawing about answering the questions. Like, well, you know, this is a nice to have, but it would be great for customer experience in order to.

It in the customer's own language. Like, tell me where does this fit in, in their priorities? And then I can, you know, because they're already customers, I can look at what the revenue is and they, they'll even tell me, this is what I charge. And it's really easy to say, okay, there's an incremental 20, 30% that you could charge to a customer to have a great experience and therefore, you know, a, a branded app that has some special customization makes sense.

So I think. Monetizing innovation. If, again, if you haven't read it and you're in this world where you have a SaaS product and you're thinking about productizing some services definitely read it or at least listen to the podcast or skim it. I'm not sure which one's best, but yeah, I, I don't, I don't think I actually finished the book 'cause it's a lot of case studies, but the, the core of it was great.

So the first half is, is definitely worth reading.

[00:17:13] Colin Keeley: Yeah. It's funny you didn't get quantifiable answers. I got very specific answers to these questions. Oh, really? Which I think are gold. Yeah. The what do you think is an acceptable price? What do you think is an expensive price? What's a prohibitively expensive price.

Yeah. And then, you know, would you buy this at, you know, this price, something specific? Yeah. In my customer calls, I don't, maybe I'm a more blunt, you know, question asker. I just let them sit in it until they give me an answer. But yeah, I got real numbers and that's how we, you know, arrived at the price effectively for our first engagement.

[00:17:45] Brent Sanders: Great. Yeah, so like the, the goal is. Bang out the, the first couple and then pilot them or, and then promote the, the results as testimonials. And I think there's, there's like a, a great way to obviously grow all the ancillary services, but just overall, MRR you can, you can multiply, MRR is is kind of what we're expecting to do and we'll see how it goes.

But so far so good. And I think the other thing that I'm really looking into, i, I is seeing like what we can do to really dive into the boarding space. I mean, you've brought this up, like moving up market a little bit specifically like Borders have a lease, borders have generally larger businesses and it's, it's there are some venture players that are, are just getting into this space.

There was a company called Goose, you raised to me that raised about, I think 8 million in their most recent round or, or in total. But you know, I look at that product and I'm like, well, we have all that stuff, but they have like an iPad and like a check-in app. And so I feel like Scout already has some of the very difficult parts of pet care, like walking and GPS and media and all this stuff to facilitate like a wag or rover like experience.

And we can kind of take a step sideways to support boarding. So I've kind of started prototyping a couple things. You know, we really don't need to go crazy to, to support these things. And I think one of the things that would be worth doing, and I don't know if it's whether this is like something we pilot or we find a, a design partner similar to what monetizing innovation recommends.

But building an iPad app that has a point of sale integration, like, I feel like that's a very simple thing to turn something that's like just an app into something that, like you can mount at a front desk, at a boarding office or a boarding facility, and all of a sudden you have you know, a, a different whole, a whole different channel or a whole different segment.

[00:19:46] Colin Keeley: Yeah. I, I love this. This kind of came from client discussions to some extent of like. The successful dog walkers generally do pet sitting as well, and that's like in their homes or in other people's homes. And then the natural progression from that is like, well, we should just have like a retail facility to do it.

Yeah. So they're kind of moving up market and more of 'em are requiring some version of this. And it's just it's a waste stickier customer. It's goes back to, we talked to about it before a little bit, but like the customers that are irate about paying 25, $50 a month and just running away from those people, you know, as quickly as possible.

[00:20:20] Brent Sanders: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we have a great product for those people, for the 1, 2, 3, 4 person dog walking companies. But, you know, the people that we are like probably speaking the most with are these larger companies where they have a fleet. And, and it very quickly goes into grooming, it goes into training, and it's like, we can do that.

And I think now it also speaks to. I mean, it's, we're 18 months into the acquisition now. And it's like, I think the reality is, is I feel comfortable with all the different parts of the code now. It's really taken this long to like understand how everything works. Like you have to almost break it a, a fair amount or see it break a fair amount to see then how to fix it and then, okay, where could we tailor this experience like.

You know, our walks all have the same services, right? There's pee, poop and water on every single meeting. So like, if you're doing training that's not relevant. If you're doing boarding, that's not really, they're gonna pee, poop and water all day long. It's like knowing how to kind of, but everybody uses appointments, everybody uses invoices, payments, and so there's parts of the domain that you can still use.

And, you know, now that we've gotten intimate with all the touch points, I think it's, it's an appropriate time to start digging into, okay, well what would this look like? To have sort of like a. You know, more of a facility based approach. And by the way, like what could we do that's unique that leverages our existing infrastructure such as, you know, a daily update.

You know, I don't know much about some of the competitors, but I do know that the hardest part of what we do is related to walking and related to these real time updates. And if we can leverage that and come, you know, kind of backwards a little bit on the easy stuff of like, Hey, make it so you can have a, a multiple day appointment, right?

Like that's. Not supported currently, but that's a pretty easy thing to say, Hey, it's gonna be a three night stay and you're gonna get updates and other stuff. That's kind of more unique to Scout as part of it, to, to set us apart, frankly, which I think will be very interesting to see how that shakes out.

[00:22:24] Colin Keeley: Nice. Yeah, I'm excited for that. It, there's a big dominant player that seems to be getting attacked more from all sides. 'cause I think their prices are really high and now it's a little outdated 'cause it's been around for like a decade or more.

So it's an exciting spot. Yeah.

[00:22:38] Brent Sanders: Yeah. I, I agree. Anything else you wanted to chat through?

Any other updates?

[00:22:43] Colin Keeley: A funny one is, so I got a ice cream maker that we've been using like every other day. I don't know if you've seen this in like the, it's really popular in the fitness community. Because you can make a, effectively a protein shake. It's just like milk and protein powder and freeze it, and then it makes this like glorious ice cream.

And so the backstory here is that professional kitchens use a $7,000 Paco jet to make ice cream. And people are obsessed with it. It's a great device. But their patent ran out recently, so Ninja, this company copied it and they sell it for $200 and it's huge. But it's a really nice ice cream maker.

So $200 instead of $7,000. So yeah, we've been doing, you know, protein ice cream every night. And so like a jar of ice cream is like 50 grams of protein. At the, like, macros around it are wild.

[00:23:33] Brent Sanders: Oh my God. That's awesome. So you're getting swollen off ice cream is what you're saying?

[00:23:39] Colin Keeley: Yeah. And so is everyone else. These things are super popular. I tweeted about it. It was liked, this is my most popular tweet in like a year, which is kind of funny.

It's not ice cream. I think likes and bookmarks combined are like 9,000 and then over a million views, like 1.3 million. I think I sold like a hundred Ninja Creamies from it 'cause people were asking for it and I put a, you know, Amazon link below with my recipes and stuff. But yeah. That's wild. Do, do you get an affiliate link

[00:24:05] Brent Sanders: or anything?

[00:24:06] Colin Keeley: Yeah, I think you make like 10 bucks per, you know, device sale.

[00:24:11] Brent Sanders: Wow. So,

[00:24:11] Colin Keeley: yeah. Made a little bit from it. Nice.

[00:24:15] Brent Sanders: Yeah. It's funny, the internet to work.

[00:24:17] Colin Keeley: All my most popular tweets are like health related. It's like this niche business acquisition stuff. No one cares, but you tweet about, you know, Brian Johnson and it's like 10,000 likes.

Yeah. Something crazy.

[00:24:27] Brent Sanders: That's funny.

[00:24:30] Colin Keeley: Anything else? New over there.

[00:24:32] Brent Sanders: I could tell you. So I, I was basically initiated into one of the coolest things in Cleveland, and I don't, I don't know if I'm able to speak about it publicly per se, but there's this spot in Cleveland that's essentially like, an old world like European bathhouse, essentially Russian bath, like a banya, right?

It's called the Cleveland Schitz, appropriately named. So, I got invited. I, so I moved here, what, three years ago, and I heard about it through the grapevine. And if you look it up on Google, it says it's closed. It's not open. But you hear rumblings from people that have been, and they tell you, you know, it's an old world.

Exactly like giant sauna, cold plunge. I finally got invited, A friend texted me last week and they're like, Hey, do you want to go to the Schitz? Immediately respond, yes. You know, there was a whole bunch of other information, but I'm just like, yeah, I'm there. I don't care when I'll make time for it. So the Schitz is in a pretty rough neighborhood in Cleveland.

You turn down sort of an alleyway and there's just like no markings, no signs, no nothing. You, you pull in and there's like a, a parking lot that's, you know, there's an attendant there and you, you park your car, walk in. You, you gotta smear the guy, which begins, you know, it's, it's a cash only thing.

You smear the guy, give him, you know, 20 bucks to watch the car. You go into this building, it looks just like completely dilapidated. You open the door, it kind of smells like a bowling alley, like the. The tinge of, of tobacco smoke a little bit. You walk up and essentially you have to give someone's name.

So I came to find out, all you have to do is you have to go there and like, you know, get, get the name of the guy who, who, who runs it. And so it's a seasonal business. It's not open in the summer and it's really, it's kind of like a, a speakeasy vibe, right? So you text him, maybe they have an opening, maybe not.

You make a reservation so you, you fork over some cash. He takes your order for your steak, which I wasn't really aware of. What do you want on your steak? I just said Everything. That's my style. Medium rare. Go get changed. Go downstairs. And they have the biggest sauna I've ever been in, right? And so it's a huge, but you know, for people that have been to more of like public bath, this is probably, you know, not all that huge, but six level benches that go up and at the highest level of the sauna, it's like 220 degrees. The, it, it's basically a room where it's split down the middle. One side of the room is the oven, essentially, which they filled with rocks, just mass, and it seems like they turn on the oven before they open and then it's off for the rest of the day, and it, the, the heat is just in there with the rocks.

And so it's about two 20 on top. At the bottom, probably about a hundred. So you go between that and then there's like a cold plunge pool, which was ice cold water. It was great. And that was like a huge, you know, 10 foot by 20 foot cold plunge. By far the, the, the, the best, you know, like body experience I've had, I've had and, and I've, like, I used to have a sauna in, in my house.

It was great. So I'm, I'm super into this by the way, but the part that no other place that I've been to was going back upstairs. So we. We, we were probably downstairs for about an hour and a half going between the sa and the cold plunge and just feeling amazing. Go upstairs and essentially it's a, a restaurant and you're served your steak, which I didn't quite know what to expect, but on the table are, you know, cheese, bread, whatever.

There's a fridge. It's unlimited drinks, whatever you want, beer. People bring wine and whiskey. People are playing cards, smoking cigars, and this is the part that I was like, my mind was blown. It was like an old world men's club. You can smoke inside you, you know, there's a fan going so you're not just stinking.

Not that I smoke, but I definitely try to, you know, had had a cigar. Chatted played, you know, and everyone's in their towel, which is the funniest part. So you people are continually going up and down. I'm not really one for drinking and going into sauna. But still people kind of, you know, come up, have a drink, have something to eat, go back down, and then they serve this, this meal, which was just a, the biggest steak I've ever had in my life.

It was, I think, like a 32 ounce bone in ribeye with just completely coated on top with sauteed garlic. And peppers and potatoes and that, that was basically the meal. And by the end of it, I walked out of there feeling like a whole new person which is, it was probably the coolest thing I've ever done in Cleveland and is very unique to the area.

I, I don't think there's a lot of these places all over the country, but I was able to talk to the owner and I was able to get his card and now he, according to him, I'm a card caring member, so I'm hoping to, to go back soon and, and experience it again. I.

[00:29:05] Colin Keeley: So I, I love this, like, are you gonna go back weekly or monthly or, you know, whenever someone visits you, you bring 'em, like, what's your plan going forward?

Yeah, it's, I

[00:29:12] Brent Sanders: think it's a special occasion. I definitely wanna bring my dad I'm going back this weekend. My cousin's coming in town and, and this is right up his alley. Like, we'll, we would go Schitz and we would say that, oh yeah, let's go Schitz. Like, it's such an old Jewish man thing. It's funny, right?

It's like, but that's what we say. And so it was ironic that this place is called that in, in a. But that is what it is. That's what the word means. So I guess it's not ironic. But yeah, it's not an every weekend thing. I think. It's expensive, right? You're paying for this this meal and you gotta be out by eight 30, by the way.

Like you can get there around two, I believe, and then they kick you out because I, you can just tell, people will linger, right? They eat and they start drinking and there there were people playing cards, smoking cigars. It was, it was hilarious. So. I'd say yeah, probably more of like a special occasion kind of thing.

I definitely want to take my dad, my cousin, I'm gonna take anybody else who comes in town. This is by far the coolest thing I've ever done in Cleveland. And, and definitely there is a certain thing about living in Cleveland that I have to say that it's like there's a certain level of like, authenticity is the word I'm gonna use, but like, it is a very unique place in that respect.

And this place epitomizes that. And is, is like. It's great you walk out friends with, you know, 50 other people that you've been basically sitting half naked in a room with you know, not just in the sauna upstairs too. Everyone's wearing towels. It's hilarious. So, very, very unique experience and I would highly recommend it.

Now, I don't know how to tell you to get in unless I know you, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna vouch for anybody and, and risk my, my chance of, of losing. But yeah, that I had to wait three years to, to get my invite. So, you know, it's, it's super cool.

[00:30:53] Colin Keeley: Who, who's like the average clientele there?

[00:30:56] Brent Sanders: Oh man, there is no average.

So I'm, from what I was told, I was there once. The day I was there, there was like a table of 20, like a case grad students, like younger, probably in their mid twenties. And then all the way to the spectrum of like the old man. Table that was, you know, just big guys that were, I didn't really speak much to them, but like everyone was very jovial friendly.

And everywhere in between it was a lot of just like, you know, there was it was interesting. There were like, you could kind of, it was like table lunch tables. You could kind of tell. Roughly. So there was like these, these educated kids that, and then there were some more blue collar guys and then older guys.

Our table was, is kind of a mishmash. I didn't even know everybody at our table. I was like fourth hand invited because I told a friend of mine, like, if you ever hear about an invite but you know, it was just kind of a smattering. It was all male. That was one thing. There is a co-ed night, I guess they do.

And then they also have ladies nights as well. I don't think it goes over as well with the the steak and. Cigars with the ladies. I don't think that's as quite as popular as with the, the mail crowd. But yeah, all walks of life every, every kind of person in Cleveland seems like they might know something about it and they go.

So, I'm definitely going back this weekend for the you know, visitor coming in town and I think it's the, the perfect way to show them. This is actually for the eclipse. Perfect way to show them the eclipse. 'cause you know, the eclipse in Cleveland is gonna be cloudy. There's no way we are actually gonna be able to see the sun in in April.

In, in, in Ohio.

[00:32:34] Colin Keeley: The eclipse is a big deal. I was looking at flights like you know, some of my family was looking at flying in for it. It's instead of like the usual price is $2,000 'cause everyone's coming to Austin for it. It's crazy.

[00:32:44] Brent Sanders: It's probably a way better chance of actually seeing the eclipse and, generally probably better food. Cleveland's got some good food, but it's not, not quite the, although I did notice about a, a block away from my office. Some guy just rolled a smoker into a parking lot and it looks like he was, he was smoking some stuff, so might have to try out the Cleveland Smoke shop, whatever that is.

It's gonna be we'll see how it rates against Austin.

[00:33:11] Colin Keeley: There you go. Yeah. That's all I got. You want anything else?

[00:33:14] Brent Sanders: No, no. The Schitz story, that's that's very special to me.

[00:33:18] Colin Keeley: That, yeah. I love that. Hopefully you're not getting inundated with requests to join you now from all the, the Cleveland,

[00:33:25] Brent Sanders: Hey, if, if people are, are here, I mean that's, it is kind of like, it does seem like, you know, you hear about, I don't know if you ever watched like Blues Brothers, it was like the old way of doing business, you know, of like.

You spend time with somebody, you're, there's, there's no clothes necessarily. So, you know, you know, there nobody's fronting, so to speak. And it's just, you see how they handle pressure, see how they handle being in a 220 degree oven with you. And yeah, it's more fun than golf, I'll say that as far as a, a networking and business activity.

But yeah, I don't know. The cigar and, and drinking part of, of schitz has never been. That's never been a thing for me. I've been more of like a, oh, this is more like a health club type thing, but you know, it's Cleveland, so it's very fitting.

[00:34:10] Colin Keeley: Yeah. It is an odd combo, but, all right. I love that. Let's end on that.

[00:34:16] Brent Sanders: That's all I got. Take care

[00:34:17] Colin Keeley: everyone. All right.

Yeah.

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