{"id":12785,"date":"2026-04-16T22:28:50","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T02:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts-4-hour-workweek-success-story-brian-dean-from-dads-basement-to-selling-two-companies-861\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T22:28:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T02:28:50","slug":"the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts-4-hour-workweek-success-story-brian-dean-from-dads-basement-to-selling-two-companies-861","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts-4-hour-workweek-success-story-brian-dean-from-dads-basement-to-selling-two-companies-861\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: 4-Hour Workweek Success Story Brian Dean \u2014 From Dad\u2019s Basement to Selling Two Companies (#861)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/hop.clickbank.net\/?affiliate=infohatch&amp;vendor=J1R2C\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10614 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png\" alt=\"Profit Gen\" width=\"400\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png 400w, https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px-300x163.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Welcome to <a href=\"https:\/\/tim.blog\/2026\/04\/16\/brian-dean-backlinko-case-study\/\">another episode featuring a\u00a0<em>4-Hour Workweek\u00a0<\/em>case study<\/a>\u2014a conversation with someone who has read the book, applied it, and built a life and a businesses I never could have imagined. In this episode, we have Brian Dean, the founder of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/backlinko.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Backlinko<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/explodingtopics.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Exploding Topics<\/a>, both acquired by Semrush, which itself was recently acquired by Adobe for $1.9 billion.\u00a0We cover geoarbitrage, testing assumptions cheaply, building a muse, automating income, and\u2014the chapter almost everyone skips\u2014Filling the Void. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/tim.blog\/2026\/04\/16\/brian-dean-backlinko-case-study\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Full introduction<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/tim.blog\/2026\/04\/16\/brian-dean-backlinko-case-study\/#:~:text=SELECTED%20LINKS%20FROM%20THE%20EPISODE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Books, people, tools, and resources mentioned in the interview<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/Brian-Dean-legal-conditions-transcript\">Legal conditions\/copyright information<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"podcast-player\">\n<div class=\"podcast-player-inner-wrap\">\n<p>4-Hour Workweek Success Story, Brian Dean \u2014 From Dad\u2019s Basement to Selling Two Companies<\/p>\n<p><noscript><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.art19.com\/shows\/58dacbdc-646e-4585-9914-19c3de11d1ba\/episodes\/917664ad-04c8-42c6-95b3-5b33d5cd654c\/embed?type=micro\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 30px; border: 0 none;\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/noscript><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Additional podcast platforms<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Listen to this episode on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/861-4-hour-workweek-success-story-brian-dean-from-dads\/id863897795?i=1000761803342\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Apple Podcasts<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/3Rih81uXUF9nVg2UEjurd6?si=SQc165y_SR2wLlspjvgC1Q\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Spotify<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/overcast.fm\/+AAKebuAOBLY\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Overcast<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/podcastaddict.com\/podcast\/2031148#\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Podcast Addict<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/pca.st\/timferriss\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Pocket Casts<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/castbox.fm\/channel\/id1059468?country=us\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Castbox<\/a>,\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/music.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLuu6fDad2eJyWPm9dQfuorm2uuYHBZDCB\">YouTube Music<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/music.amazon.com\/podcasts\/9814f3cc-1dc5-4003-b816-44a8eb6bf666\/the-tim-ferriss-show\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Amazon Music<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.audible.com\/podcast\/The-Tim-Ferriss-Show\/B08K58QX5W\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Audible<\/a>, or on your favorite podcast platform.<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<p>Transcripts may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Brian, nice to meet you finally. Thank you for taking the time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Hey, great to be here.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Brian, where should we begin? I\u2019m thinking maybe because the impetus for this is somewhat around the connective tissue of <em>The 4-Hour Workweek<\/em>, should we just begin with how on earth you and <em>The 4-Hour Workweek<\/em> intersected? Maybe we start there?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>So it intersected at a really weird and sort of low time in my life where I had just started a PhD program at Purdue and I basically hated it. It was just overall not great experience. I went in gung ho, \u201cI\u2019m going to be a scientist,\u201d and all this stuff. And then the hard reality of pipetting in a lab and having an advisor, breathing down your neck was like, \u201cI can\u2019t do this anymore. I\u2019m out.\u201d So my plan was to get a job because I had a degree. I was like, \u201cLet me get a job as a dietician.\u201d Unfortunately, that didn\u2019t really work out and I ended up in my dad\u2019s basement.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>What was the timing of this? This was what year, roughly?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>This was 2008. So I think the book was relatively new then.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. 2008, that would\u2019ve been a year after publication, let\u2019s just say. And also not exactly the hottest job market for people who may not recall. It was a tough time overall because of the financial crisis.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Totally unbeknownst to me as going to graduate school, spending most of my time at bars, drinking, the great financial crisis was over my head. Never heard of it until I started to get a job. And suddenly it became very real, very fast. So basically I was in my dad\u2019s basement, broke, no girlfriend obviously, no real prospects. I\u2019m just kind of lazily applying for jobs every morning and just sitting around and watching <em>Jerry Springer<\/em> in the afternoon. That\u2019s pretty much my day.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And then one day I have an idea. I\u2019m like, \u201cI should start something.\u201d I don\u2019t know where this came from. I\u2019m like, \u201cI should start a search engine for nutrition questions. When people ask how much vitamin C is in a carrot, it\u2019ll just give them the answers.\u201d This is basically what an LLM would do way before and someone that\u2019s not remotely qualified to come up with something like this.<\/p>\n<p>So I was like, \u201cHow do I start a business?\u201d It\u2019d never crossed my mind before. I literally thought starting a business was like in <em>The Office<\/em> when Michael Scott gives this lecture and he\u2019s like, \u201cFirst, you need a building.\u201d So I\u2019m thinking this is this huge undertaking I\u2019m about to do. So I go to the bookstore to find a book to help me get started. And I basically saw <em>The 4-Hour Workweek<\/em>, grabbed it, and it just sort of spoke to me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>What happened after that?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>It blew my mind. I read the book. I\u2019m like, \u201cWell, I could start a business.\u201d It was just a crazy, mind-blowing concept that someone has no experience was totally broke, could start something, not necessarily be a smash hit, but you could start something. So basically I just followed the book exactly as it was written. I mean, I literally had notes in the margins. You had those little Q&amp;As at the end or little steps at the end. I would make sure I wouldn\u2019t go past that page until I did everything. I was like, \u201cI\u2019m not going to\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>My dream reader.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>I was like, \u201cI\u2019m not going to go to the next page until I\u2019m good and ready.\u201d So basically I followed the plan and then created an ebook about nutrition, how to help your back pain with nutrition.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>And we have so much to cover. I know I\u2019m cheating a little bit, but I think it\u2019s fair to say that your first attempt did not turn into the mega hit that you might\u2019ve hoped.<\/p>\n<p>Turns out it\u2019s hard to get traffic, right? Or it can be hard to get traffic. And if you don\u2019t have a budget for paid ads, well, I guess necessity is the mother of invention or at least learning. And just I want to add a sidebar here, which is this is so fucking common. It is incredibly common that you basically have your sort of first love\/relationship. Seldom works out, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>But you learn a lot and that leads to something else. But tell us about what you learned and how you adapted to that first experience.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>I spent all this time on creating a product that I thought was helpful, I thought was good. And then it was like, \u201cNow what? How do you get people to actually see this thing?\u201d And like you said, Tim, there\u2019s paid ads, which wasn\u2019t really something that I could do considering I was broke in my dad\u2019s basement, having Dinty Moore beef stew for dinner every night, or so called free traffic, which I was like, \u201cWhat? Free traffic? How does that work?\u201d So of course I went all in on that and eventually sort of stumbled on this thing called \u201cSearch Engine Optimization,\u201d which was like, you can rank in Google and people who are searching for what you sell, you can get in front of them. And I was like, \u201cOh, I\u2019ve used Google.\u201d And I never really understood that there was this whole world behind the scenes, figuring out how it works, trying to game the algorithm and stuff. And that sent me down the path of learning this thing called SEO.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss:<\/strong> Also, I would say, just to paint a picture for folks, because I remember looking at this when I started my first, let\u2019s call it real business, also out of necessity when everybody at the startup I joined got fired in 2000, 2001, not a great time for most dot com companies. So I was working off of my soon to expire COBRA healthcare in California and eating also microwave dinners. Or I remember I had a couple of favorites at Jack in the Box, which was in the parking lot of a Safeway. So that was my nutritional intake. Very similar, it sounds like, right? But slowly figuring out the mechanics behind these things that we use every day, right? And you took it certainly a lot further than I ever did. And it\u2019s the Wild West, right? I mean, SEO can be, especially those days, kind of the Wild West.<\/p>\n<p>So you built up a huge kind of portfolio of domains, it seems like, something like close to 200 or over 200. What was the game plan? When you started getting into SEO and then flashing forward, what was the sort of plan in terms of revenue generation?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>The idea was you\u2019d have these one-page websites rank and then you\u2019d have AdSense display ads on each of those. And back then, it was sort of a loophole that if you had a domain that matched the keyword exactly, then it was a massive advantage in the search results. So I would have lorealshampoo.org and I would just write a thousand words about why L\u2019Oreal shampoo is great, which I obviously don\u2019t really know a lot about.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>For those who can\u2019t see the video, we are both completely bald. Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>And then putting AdSense ads on the pages times 200, and the idea is that you scale up enough and take a few steps later, you\u2019ve got a private island or something.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, right.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>That was the plan.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Right. ABC dot dot dot M and then private island. So let\u2019s backstep for a second because we can talk about the business and the business experiments and adventures, which we will, and misadventures, a.k.a. Panda Death, which we\u2019ll probably get to. But if we\u2019re looking back to your reading of the book, there are a couple of different directions as a choose your own adventure map that you can take. And part of that oftentimes is figuring out your target monthly income, doing exercises like Dreamlining, which people can find for free to figure out exactly what it is that you are building as a lifestyle and the things you want to do, et cetera. And you come up with this very precise, not necessarily accurate, but it\u2019s a starting point number, right? Where were you when you\u2019re going through all of this? Because you can build a business for the sake of building a business and generating all this cash, but then the question is, what do you do with that?<\/p>\n<p>How does it inform your life? Were you thinking about that stuff at the time or was it just get out of the basement, and eat something besides the Dinty Moore stew?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Have a proper meal. Yeah, exactly. Have a meal that\u2019s not out of a can. So I just wrote that in the whole dreamlining section that was basically what I wrote. It changed. It morphed a little bit. At first it was that. And then during this building the 200 websites at some point, I was in Asia backpacking and then my whole world changed to 3k a month. I was like, \u201cIf you can get 3k a month in Thailand, you can live like a king.\u201d So my whole goal just became to get 3k a month passive income. That was my entire focus. So it sort of shifted once I had sort of a lifestyle that I tried and liked, I was like, \u201cOh, I could live like a backpacker. I can do this.\u201d So then it just became 3k a month for a long time. For, like, a year.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>For a year. Did you hit the 3k a month before the Google slap, which may be one and the same as the Panda update, I\u2019m not sure. Maybe those are two separate things entirely, but where were you before things got pretty strongly corrected?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Yeah, it was maybe a 3k a month around there for like a couple months. Had a good ride and then it kind of got slapped. Didn\u2019t last long.<\/p>\n<p>The first was a Panda update, as you mentioned, which was a very content-focused update. That was where \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>By Google.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>By Google. It was an update that basically was, \u201cIf your content is thin or repetitive or not helpful, we\u2019re going to wipe you out.\u201d And it was like one day they push a button and thousands of websites get completely obliterated, including mine.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>That\u2019s a rough \u2014 where were you when this happened? Do you remember when you got the news?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>That first one\u2026 I got slapped twice. The first time didn\u2019t scare me straight enough. So I went back to the \u2014 I was like, \u201cOh, I\u2019ll just do a different type of black hat SEO and I\u2019ll get away with it.\u201d It didn\u2019t work. So that one, I think I was in Thailand when it happened.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>So let\u2019s then go to, you get scared straight as you put it, and you build your first, as I think you\u2019ve put it, real site, right? Which isn\u2019t L\u2019Orealshampoo.org. It\u2019s something else. When you decided to hop to the white hat side of things, what did you end up doing and why?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>So there was that first update and then a second update where I was in Spain and Granada and I went to my hostel, I checked the laptop and it was like, again, it was like a repeat of the Thailand experience. Everything dropped. This was a different set of websites that got knocked out. And I was like, \u201cYou know what? This is crazy. Why am I doing this? This is an insane way to live.\u201d So then I was like, \u201cI\u2019m going to build this one real website.\u201d And I was kind of inspired because there were these forums at the time with these marketing people and they were basically like, \u201cSpam, spam, spam.\u201d And there were a couple voices in there of people who were like, \u201cGuys, build a real business. What are you guys doing? Build something real that\u2019s durable, that\u2019s not 100 percent reliant on Google.\u201d And I kind of ignored those people.<\/p>\n<p>And then once I got hit that second time, I was like, \u201cOkay, it\u2019s time to build something real.\u201d So I basically built a sort of real site in the personal finance space, wrote real blog content, didn\u2019t do any shady spammy stuff and tried to keep it on the up and up.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>And what is the bridge or what happens between that and then building Backlinko? How do you end up segueing? I mean, I guess this could be a very fast montage in the sort of fictionalized movie of your life, but what happened to go from there to Backlinko, which ultimately you ended up getting acquired? What transpired between those two?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>So once a site started to get a little bit of traction, I was like, \u201cWow, this is a whole world I didn\u2019t know about. Real marketing, white hat SEO.\u201d And it was fun. It was working and it was more enjoyable because I didn\u2019t have to look over my shoulder that I was going to get hit with an update next week. And it was cool because I\u2019m reaching out to other websites and they\u2019re like, \u201cOh, this is really helpful,\u201d And they\u2019re linking to me. I\u2019m not paying for links. They\u2019re just naturally doing it. And I\u2019m like, \u201cHow do I learn more about this?\u201d This whole world opened up. I\u2019m like, \u201cHow do I get better at this?\u201d And all the advice that I read on all these white hat SEO blogs were basically vague advice, create great content, build relationships with other people, market your site in a \u2014 yeah.<\/p>\n<p>What do you do with that?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Lead with integrity. You\u2019re like, \u201cOkay, what\u2019s my next step?\u201d Very unclear.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Exactly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>All right.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>It was as vague as you could imagine.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Then Backlinko is a case of sort of creating the thing that you couldn\u2019t find?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Exactly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Is that a fair way to put it?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Yep.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>One thing that I saw here in the prep notes, which I was like, \u201cOh, that\u2019s so smart,\u201d and I wanted to highlight it is \u2014 there are a number of things, obviously, that you ended up doing really well that seemed to have set the stage for a lot of things that came. One of them was digging through Google Patents and engineer statements. And I\u2019ll come back and expand on why this is smart, but it\u2019ll probably become very obvious once you explain why you did it. Why were you digging through Google Patents and then engineer statements, are those part of the patents or are those something separate?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Separate.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Okay. So could you explain what you were doing?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>When I launched Backlinko, I was like, \u201cThere must be other people like me who are getting into this whole world of white hat SEO. They want to learn more about it and they\u2019re disappointed about what\u2019s out there.\u201d And it turns out there was. I just didn\u2019t know how to reach them at first. So I basically followed the same advice that I read for starting a blog, which was, you need to publish every week or every other day, and that\u2019s how you build an audience. You just publish and pray that people come. So that\u2019s what I did.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>People still give that advice. Publish and pray. Yeah, exactly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>So yeah, I did that and banged my head against the wall. And I was like, \u201cYou know what?\u201d I came up with an actually creative idea for a post that would be really special instead of just the stuff I was putting out every week, which was good. It was definitely actually decent to give myself some credit, but it wasn\u2019t anything that\u2019s going to grab you by the shirt and be like, \u201cI need to read this.\u201d It was just slightly above average and what was out there. I was really going on that consistency play. \u201cIf I do this consistently over time, there\u2019ll be like a secret society that will just send me traffic as a reward for being so consistent.\u201d I didn\u2019t really have the whole thing planned out, to be honest. I just knew consistency equaled traffic at some point, and it honestly didn\u2019t for me.<\/p>\n<p>So I had this idea for a post, which was Google recently had said that there\u2019s 200 ranking factors in the algorithm. So I was like, \u201cLet\u2019s just try to find them.\u201d Obviously a lot of it\u2019s going to be conjecture and guessing and speculation, but let\u2019s just do a list of 200 instead of the list of 10 or 20 that I\u2019d seen out there. And then I got to like 55 and I\u2019m like, \u201cMan, you have to really dig to find some of these.\u201d And that\u2019s when I went through the Google Patents and also people would interview Google engineers or they would give statements about, they\u2019d be at a conference and they would give a talk and one of the slides would mention a ranking factor that they\u2019re considering. So it took a lot of digging. It took like 20 to 25 hours to complete. this single post.<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s really why I was digging into all this stuff.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>And I just want to add an addendum to that, which is people who have not heard of this approach, for some folks they\u2019ll be like, \u201cOh, I or someone else has done that.\u201d But it is incredible what you can learn through reviewing patents and looking at very niche events, industry events for videos and transcripts of presentations. This was incredibly valuable when I was getting started as well, mostly looking at kind of closed door or very small event presentations and things like that. All right. So I guess that was sort of a massive post that you really invested in. I mean, 25 hours is not trivial, right? I mean, that\u2019s a lot more presumably than you\u2019re putting into the kind of publish and pray consistent approach to just sliding a plate with content salad out the door and hoping that leprechaun\u2019s going to show up and trade for a pot of gold, right?<\/p>\n<p>So what was the response to that post?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Massive traffic and controversy, kind of everything you want in a piece of content, to be honest. I mean, you had the traffic, you had people, the wow factor, and then you had the controversy, which is like, \u201cThose aren\u2019t Google\u2019s 200 ranking factors, no one knows those.\u201d And then people saying, \u201cWell, this is at least trying to come up with something,\u201d and then people saying, \u201cWell, they shouldn\u2019t do it.\u201d So there\u2019s a perfect little debate around it that was pretty lightweight. It\u2019s not anything super controversial, but just enough to get people\u2019s attention. So yeah, brought in, I mean, I would say I was probably getting 150 visitors a month, that probably brought in a couple thousand when I first put it out. It\u2019s brought in a million since then.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>What did you then follow that up with in terms of lessons learned, coming up with new rules for yourself in terms of how you were going to approach the business? How did that inform things going forward once you saw that response?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>I just threw out the whole playbook I was doing. I was using this consistency thing. I would even have on Fridays, I would have like a Q&amp;A, I would just put five questions and answer them. And of course I wasn\u2019t getting any questions, so I just completely made them up and then answer my own questions, just to have something to put out there. And I\u2019m reading it. I\u2019m like, \u201cWhy would anyone want to read this?\u201d So then I just scrapped the whole thing and was like, \u201cI\u2019m just going to put out something once a month and it\u2019s going to be the best thing on that topic that\u2019s ever been written by 10x.\u201d And that was sort of how I totally changed my content focus to quality over quantity.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>So you had a fun YouTube video on ultimately the acquisition of Backlinko. And I guess the original email you got was like, \u201cHey, we\u2019d love to connect to collaborate.\u201d And you\u2019re like, \u201cWell, that smells like every bullshit spam email I\u2019ve ever received.\u201d So you just ignored it, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Yep.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>As I remember. And we won\u2019t spend a ton of time on this, but what is Semrush? This is the acquirer ultimately, but for people who don\u2019t know, what is Semrush?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>They\u2019re essentially a marketing platform that help you get better results from SEO, pay-per-click, and also now AI search.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>And are they private, publicly traded? They\u2019re publicly traded, right? Yeah. It looks like on the New York Stock Exchange.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>They got acquired by Adobe last year, so they will be part of Adobe, I think, sometime this year when everything goes through.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Got it. And they acquired you ultimately while they were public, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Yes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>I mean, there\u2019s so many good aspects to this, but do you want to tell the story about flying to Boston? I mean, eventually this contact, I can\u2019t remember his name, but since you ignored the first email he wrote and they basically said, \u201cHey, look, we might be interested in buying your company. Let me be direct.\u201d And you\u2019re like, \u201cOkay, I\u2019ll reply to that one.\u201d But can you tell the story of flying to Boston? I think it\u2019s pretty funny. I also liked in your video when you said, \u201cUp to that point, I hadn\u2019t sold anything, except for maybe a used car.\u201d I think you said something like that. I was like, \u201cThat\u2019s a pretty good line.\u201d Okay. So the first Boston trip, what happens there or what\u2019s in your mind?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>In my mind, I\u2019m like, \u201cWe\u2019re going to close this thing. Let\u2019s go to Boston.\u201d It was really a meet and greet where the executive team just wanted to meet me and chat about, see how it could help them, how Backlinko could fit into their platform and their business. And so I spend the day with them in the office and then afterwards we all go out to drinks to celebrate the deal, and I\u2019m shitting myself. I\u2019m like, \u201cWhat? We\u2019re celebrating the deal now. I never saw a contract or an agreement or anything.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cWe\u2019re going to sign it tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So we go out and we\u2019re at Legal Sea Foods just taking shots, \u201cYeah, this is great, Brian. This is going to be the best thing ever.\u201d And I\u2019m thinking, \u201cWhere\u2019s the contract? When are we going to sign?\u201d I really thought right there they\u2019re going to buy this company \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>\u201cDid I miss something? Did I black out? What happened?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Exactly. I\u2019m like, \u201cDid I agree? Is a verbal agreement enough for a deal like this?\u201d So yeah, that was definitely \u2014 I was way off on that. It took two more months of due diligence after that meeting for the deal to actually close.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>You said two months?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Which, for people who have never gone through it, it can be very challenging if you don\u2019t have your ducks in a row, which almost nobody does unless they\u2019ve kind of been through this before or are venture backed and they have people overseeing all this stuff. Two months is pretty good, right? It\u2019s painful, but man, due diligence can go on forever. For people who are starting a company, maybe they never intend to sell it, but hey, you had not gone into Backlinko thinking that you were going to sell it, right? But they want to preserve the optionality.<\/p>\n<p>I remember coming across, and I haven\u2019t read it in a long time, but a book by John Warrillow called <em>Built to Sell<\/em>, which talks a bit about this. And I thought it was actually very good, a very kind of, I don\u2019t want to say basic, but pretty sort of foundational primer for some of this stuff. But what advice would you give to folks? I mean, one comes to mind, which I have also had to learn the hard way about independent contractors, but what are some of the tenets or sort of commandments of like, \u201cHey, just in case one day you want to sell this thing, here are a couple of things that I learned.\u201d? Anything come to mind?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Independent contractors, for sure. Maybe you can expand on that, Tim, because you have experience with that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Look, if you ever want to sell something, the acquiring party is going to want to know with some assurance, and they\u2019ll have reps and warranties in the agreement that basically say, \u201cHey, if you miss something or you\u2019re not telling us the truth, there\u2019s going to be a world of trouble and we\u2019ll probably be able to back out of the deal and take all the money back.\u201d But they want to know that everything they\u2019re buying is free and clear, right? So if you\u2019ve had, as I have and as you have in some cases, well, I\u2019ll just speak personally, always maintained a very small full-time team, but have used dozens and probably hundreds, certainly hundreds of contractors over the span of decades. And if you\u2019re building something and they want to see, they meaning the acquiring company, every single contract to make sure that someone isn\u2019t going to come out of the woodwork and say, \u201cHey, I own a part of that. Hey, I contributed to this and therefore I am entitled to a piece of equity. Yada, yada, yada, yada.\u201d Which if the deal\u2019s big enough, come out of the woodwork no matter what. You see this with a lot of tech IPOs and stuff. As soon as they file the S1 getting ready to IPO, then some rando comes out of the woodwork and says, \u201cI\u2019m the seventh co-founder.\u201d And you\u2019re like, \u201cWhat? No one\u2019s ever heard of this person.\u201d And they just want nuisance money to go away.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>So that\u2019s the relatively short and sweet on independent contractors. This is going to be true also with pretty much any agreement or contract, right? You just want to document, document, document, make everything formal. No verbal, no handshake. If you want to preserve the option to cleanly and hopefully relatively quickly sell a company later. Anything else that you would add to that, Brian?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>If you don\u2019t have your finances in order, like you don\u2019t get P&amp;Ls, that is something they obviously will care a lot about. And I was good. Luckily I had a good accountant that did that stuff, so that wasn\u2019t a big deal. The number one time sink for me was the independent contractors. I mean, I\u2019m like you, I hired so many people that did one, like created a blog post image or something or like a social media image once for like 10 bucks and I had to go try to find them. Basically I have to hire, almost like a private investigator to find these people because you don\u2019t even barely remember them. And even people that ghosted me. I had people that I paid a deposit for work and they never even replied. They totally, they ghosted me.<\/p>\n<p>And I still had to reach out to those people. Of course, they\u2019re not going to reply, but you have to show that you tried. And then obviously since this experience, every contractor that gets hired signs an ironclad agreement that says, \u201cYou don\u2019t own any of this work. Once you\u2019re paid, it\u2019s a property of blah, blah, blah.\u201d And yeah, that made things a lot easier the second time, but I had no idea this independent contractor thing was so important to the acquirer, but absolutely is.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. And so we won\u2019t spend a ton of time on sort of what followed, but there was one funny anecdote about the public announcement. Could you just explain that given the time zone differences? I thought that one was great.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Time zone differences and I\u2019m like early to bed kind of person. So they told me that, \u201cHey, Brian, we\u2019re going to announce this tomorrow and we\u2019re going to announce it at 5: 00 p.m. Eastern.\u201d And I\u2019m like, \u201cOh man, I don\u2019t know. Is it possible to send it earlier? That\u2019s like 10: 00 p.m. here. I\u2019m already kind of getting ready for bed.\u201d Basically say, \u201cI\u2019m in my PJs at that point. Is it possible to push this earlier?\u201d And they said, \u201cNo, because it\u2019s a public company due to SEC rules, we have to make these announcements after the market\u2019s closed.\u201d Yeah, I was so embarrassed. I was like, \u201cOh yeah, right. I forgot the league I\u2019m playing in here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>So you sell the company, presumably there\u2019s some type of earnout or period of time for which you\u2019re required to still work on Backlinko, right? Who knows what the exact terms are of that, but for people who\u2019ve never gone through it, right, you can have a vesting period, you can have an earnout where you get X percentage of the total purchase price based on hitting or exceeding X, Y, and Z metrics or whatever, right? So there\u2019s a period of time like that. Post acquisition, let\u2019s just say, because I know that was very stressful and you started grinding your teeth and that kind of evaporated as soon as the deal was done. Let\u2019s just flash forward two or three months after the acquisition. What does your life look like? What does a week look like for you?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>It\u2019s honestly not that different because I had another startup that I was already working on. So I was basically running on a treadmill and then I just hopped onto another treadmill that was right next to it and just kept going. So there wasn\u2019t a whole lot of downtime to really reflect or analyze. That one day that the announcement was made, especially the next day, because it was late here. So the next day was really when I was sending messages to people and stuff and getting congratulations and whatnot. But after that day, I was pretty much back working on the next thing, like, didn\u2019t reflect too much on it. So my life was more or less the same one day after. Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Looking back, are you basically like, \u201cHey, I\u2019m a border collie. I need to work or I\u2019m going to go crazy. So I\u2019m glad I did that.\u201d Do you wish you had approached it differently?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>I kind of wish I approached it differently. Yeah. And looking back, I wish I took some time off. It was just tricky because you know how it is. When you have a startup, it\u2019s kind of a strange situation. I had a new company that was growing. I had this old company that I sold and it felt weird to say to the new team like, \u201cHey guys, I need to reflect about how great my life is. I need to chill out. You guys still work though. You work your assess off. I\u2019m going to sit on the beach for a while.\u201d So it felt a little weird. I felt like I kind of had to go back into the trenches with them right away, almost even more so to prove like, look, I\u2019m not done. I\u2019m not going to rest in my laurels. We\u2019re still in it to win it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss:<\/strong> Financially at that point, were you focused on the new company, Exploding Topics, because you wanted to get to that sort of big pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? What was the driver behind that? I don\u2019t know to what extent you were sort of financially stable, had savings. We don\u2019t have to get into all the nitty-gritty if you don\u2019t want to, but I\u2019m just curious, what was driving the involvement in the new company for you?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>It wasn\u2019t really a hundred percent financial. When I sold Backlinko, before then I was probably okay for most of my life. Then when I sold Backlinko, it was like, okay, I\u2019m probably good forever. And then I wouldn\u2019t have probably started something else right away if I hadn\u2019t already. So, towards the end of Backlinko\u2019s, when I was involved with it before I sold, I was honestly getting a little bit bored with it. I was bored talking about the same things, writing about the same things, doing the whole course launch thing, and I kind of wanted something new. And I saw an opportunity where there were more trends than ever, but I couldn\u2019t find a good tool for curating them that was like, here are all the trends in this space right now. There was Google Trends, which is fantastic if you know about a topic and you want to see how it\u2019s trending, but what about a trend you\u2019ve never even heard of?<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s sort of where I realized the opportunity was. So it wasn\u2019t really purely financial. It was more like, this is kind of exciting and new. I think it\u2019s a good opportunity as well, and it\u2019ll give me something to do between these sessions with Backlinko, which was, it was also boring because it was so optimized. I work three hours a week. It was like <em>4-Hour Workweek<\/em>, honestly, at the end. It was getting so much traffic on autopilot. The launches were really easy to do. Even courses were easier to create at the end because I just had it all down to a science. Even if it was a totally different topic, I knew exactly how to create a course. So the challenge wasn\u2019t really there. And this was like, okay, new challenge, new space. And that\u2019s basically, it wasn\u2019t so much financial, it was more just to freshen things up and to try something new.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. And you\u2019d also already committed to other people, right, with this new startup. So it makes a lot of sense. When you had, with Backlinko, so much on autopilot, the three hours per week, right, what were you doing with the rest of that time? Because the most, and we don\u2019t have to dig into the book too much here, but if I had to point to one chapter that people pay no attention to, because typically they\u2019re like, \u201cOh yeah, that\u2019d be a nice problem to have,\u201d and they forget about it, is the \u201cFilling the Void\u201d chapter.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>\u201cFilling the Void\u201d chapter, <em>4-Hour Workweek<\/em> is really important so you don\u2019t go into psychological free fall, among other reasons. But what were you doing with the rest of your time if Backlinko at one point, right, when the flywheel was really spinning, was only occupying or requiring three hours a week?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Yeah, I was bored, honestly. I wasn\u2019t filling it well. I wasn\u2019t filling the void. I was basically going to the gym, reading books, playing video games, nothing, and I think that was part of this and we, this boredom was I needed to reread that chapter essentially and fill this with something meaningful. And I think that\u2019s why I was seeking another startup project because I\u2019m like \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, 100 percent. Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>It was like, I need to work. I need to build something. I\u2019m not building this. I\u2019m just maintaining it. And so that\u2019s really what got me into Exploding Topics. So honestly, the filling the void chapter, the whole filling the void concept, I really only took seriously recently, but before then I basically filled it with sort of nonsense to be honest, and then started another startup.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>What were some of the things you did differently with Exploding Topics after all of the experience with Backlinko? And maybe things that in retrospect you\u2019re like, \u201cWow, that was a really smart decision and change.\u201d And maybe somewhere you\u2019re like, \u201cHmm, okay, lesson learned. Right. Would probably, if I were starting from scratch with Exploding Topics, I would\u2019ve done it differently.\u201d Anything come to mind in terms of good and quote, unquote bad decisions?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Yeah, we can start with the bad one, which was how to monetize this site. I had this very strange idea that we\u2019re going to create this awesome free resource that anyone can visit and just see trends right away. They can filter, they can go by category and you think, \u201cOh, how are you going to monetize that?\u201d Logically, you think SaaS, an upgraded version of what they\u2019re seeing for free. And for some reason, I was like, \u201cA paid newsletter. Let\u2019s create a paid newsletter.\u201d So we created this paid newsletter that was, granted, helpful in objective terms, but not necessarily for that person who wants to see trends in their particular niche. So we would send them a trend on some sort of face cream and then on a car and then a battery and then a tech startup and they would be like, \u201cWhat is this?\u201d People were like, \u201cI want just trends about e-commerce. I just want trends about this one thing. Why are you sending me all this stuff?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And then people would also sign up thinking it\u2019s SaaS, even though we said everywhere, like paid newsletter, paid newsletter, and they\u2019d be like, \u201cI thought this was SaaS. I thought it was SaaS.\u201d That was our number one complaint. And yeah, sometimes you just need to get that beaten over your head because I was like, \u201cOh, SaaS is so complicated.\u201d I mean, my co-founder was a coder, but I\u2019m still like, \u201cOh, we\u2019re going to have to hire developers and I don\u2019t know anything about this whole world. UI\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>And for people who may be listening who don\u2019t recognize the term, a lot of people will, but Software as a Service, right, think about Dropbox, maybe not the best example, but I mean, Dropbox is a great example, but with a lot of these products, there\u2019s a freemium version. There\u2019s a version that you get to use for free. And then if you want a bunch of additional storage or features or access, whatever it might be, then you pay 9.99 a month or whatever. And there\u2019s the basic, intermediate, advanced version, enterprise, et cetera, that\u2019s SaaS. Sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to define that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Yep. Yeah. But if you had told me that before we started, I would\u2019ve been like, \u201cOh, logically, then we should have the premium advanced enterprise version in the backend instead of the paid newsletter idea.\u201d So that didn\u2019t really go well until we ultimately shifted to what we should have been in the first place. So that was sort of the bad decision. The good decision was definitely investing in this data, publishing data early on. So with Backlinko, this is something I only discovered after five years of running the site. And then with Exploding Topics, I was like, \u201cDay one, we\u2019re going to publish tons of data. We\u2019re going to be the source.\u201d That\u2019s another strategy, like be the source of information on technology, software, e-commerce trends, anything trend related, we\u2019re going to be the source. We\u2019re going to have the latest data, we\u2019re going to have the best visuals, and we\u2019re just going to be the source for that information. As opposed to writing how-to content, we\u2019re really focused on data-driven content.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Did it work right out of the gate or was there a formula that you realized worked after you had a particular well-received publication of data?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Yeah, it did. It took a while to get going. A lot of mistakes, a lot of posts that weren\u2019t great, or the topic wasn\u2019t a good choice. What really helped us, what was sort of the smash hit were these very specific stats that people look for. So what I discovered through this process was this stats page idea is nothing new. People write the biggest stats around the fitness industry or LinkedIn stats or whatever, and those are fine, but usually journalists aren\u2019t looking for LinkedIn stats or TikTok stats. Some of them are, and that\u2019s fine, but most of them look into something very specific like how many users does TikTok have or how many people use LinkedIn every day, like daily active users, or how many posts are on LinkedIn every day. It\u2019s super specific. So if you\u2019re able to find a credible stat around that, then you can crush it.<\/p>\n<p>Even if you\u2019re not the one that developed it. A lot of times these are also buried in PDFs or white papers or again, interviews that you have to pull out. One of our biggest smash hits in this area was how many users that ChatGPT have? Granted, we publish this early. That\u2019s another thing that can help a lot. If you publish one of the first or the first specific stats page, then you get into this virtuous cycle where you\u2019re very visible when someone\u2019s searching for that topic, then they link to you, they mention you, makes you more visible, and then you just are in this massive flywheel. So one of our best pieces was how many users does ChatGPT have? And every once in a while, Sam Altman will give a talk and he\u2019ll mention it, or when they raise a round, they\u2019ll mention it. And all we did was just document their user growth based on these statements that they made.<\/p>\n<p>The initial post probably costs, hiring a freelancer like 200 bucks, and then to update it every couple months is another 50, and it\u2019s been referenced like 3,000 times. It\u2019s absolutely insane. The effort to reward ratio is nuts on that. And of course it\u2019s just like, part of it is some pieces do better than others, but we\u2019ve noticed that that formula tends to work well. If you can find a trending specific stat that bloggers or journalists are looking for when they write about that topic, they\u2019re very likely to reference you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>So I read, I\u2019ll give credit here. This is on growthmanifesto.com, found this doing research. You were interviewed. Towards the end of that interview by Alex, he asked you what the best piece of business advice was that you\u2019ve ever received. Now this may have changed and there\u2019s probably more, but it was Noah Kagan advising you to double down on what works. Could you expand on that? And then I\u2019m wondering if there are any other sort of mantras or short pieces of advice that you would also put on the Mount Rushmore of your best advice that you\u2019ve received.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>It sounds so simple, but it\u2019s one of those pieces of advice that\u2019s simple but hard to follow because when you\u2019re running a business, there\u2019s like a million things to worry about, to focus on. There\u2019s new opportunities, new challenges, other competitors, you have an employee that\u2019s sick. It\u2019s hard to really focus on that little thing that works. But I think this is especially important when you\u2019re first starting out, because when you\u2019re first starting out, nothing\u2019s working almost by definition. You\u2019re starting something new. At least in my experience, when I\u2019m starting something new, I don\u2019t know, nothing\u2019s working. And then when something does, most people are like, \u201cOkay, that works. Now let\u2019s go with something else.\u201d But instead, you should just take that niche. It\u2019s almost like a little niche when you\u2019re rock climbing. Just take that niche and just double down, triple down, quadruple. It should really be like 10X down on what works, but it\u2019s so rare that you find something that works. And honestly, in most businesses, if you can find one thing that works and scale it up, that can get you pretty far.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Aside from <em>The 4-Hour Workweek<\/em>, which was, I suppose, a catalyst of sorts in the beginning, have there been any other books that stand out or resources when someone comes to you and they\u2019re like, \u201cI\u2019m thinking about starting a business. I\u2019d like to start a business\u201d \u2014 are there any books or resources that you tend to recommend frequently?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Yes. For people that are just like, \u201cI want to start a business,\u201d and they\u2019re like, \u201cI don\u2019t know what to do, how to do it,\u201d they\u2019re totally green, then <em>Ready, Fire, Aim<\/em> is usually the book that I recommend. Are you familiar with that one?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>I\u2019ve heard of it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Michael Masterson.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>What leads you to recommend this book?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>It gets people into the action mindset, leaning towards action instead of analysis. I was guilty of this when I first started, like doing a lot of spreadsheets and analysis and business cards, registering your company, all those things that you can do later that don\u2019t really matter. This gets you going on the most important things. And then later, you can always change course. If you can start \u2014 but the key is really starting, starting, starting, or like Paul Graham says, \u201cAction produces information.\u201d So this book basically will hopefully give people a kick in the butt to get started instead of analyzing and then being like, \u201cOkay, now I\u2019m ready.\u201d Just be like, \u201cStart today and then change as you go.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I feel like that book is almost a litmus test. If you read that book and at the end you don\u2019t do anything, then you\u2019re probably not ready.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. Yeah, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>The book, the whole point is to get started and it gives you advice on how to know you\u2019ve got traction and what to do once you get traction. So I feel like if you just read the book and you\u2019re like, \u201cOkay, what\u2019s the next book to read?\u201d It\u2019s probably not the best approach. So that book is hopefully the kick in the butt that someone needs.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>This might be a tough question to answer, but how would you define the startup costs for Backlinko and Exploding Topics? In the first three months of those two companies existing, how much money was invested in each of those? How much money was required\/invested?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Yeah, I would say for Backlinko\u2019s case, a few hundred bucks at the most. It was domain, WordPress. I probably hired someone to create a basic blog design theme for WordPress. Don\u2019t remember how much, but if I spent a thousand, I would say that\u2019s a lot. It was probably more like 500 bucks because it\u2019s a blog. I mean, really, at the end of the day, there shouldn\u2019t be a lot of costs involved with that.<\/p>\n<p>Exploding Topics was a lot different because I acquired a prototype version from someone for 75,000 to start with and hire them and that was part of their pay package as well. So just on day one, I was in with that much. And then it was a redesign and a rebrand, adding more trends, hiring a couple of people to do some basic things. So that was probably more like 90,000, something in that range. But it was a unique situation because it wasn\u2019t built from scratch. It was acquiring someone and then that was also paying for some of their time. It was like hiring them as part of the acquisition and that was paid out over the course of a few months. So I\u2019m not exactly sure how much would be in that first couple months, but it was in that range.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Why did you acquire something and what was the deal structure of the acquisition?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>So I acquired it because I was trying to build this exact thing myself and just stumbling and stubbing my toe over and over again. So I knew that there was an opportunity for this trend. I couldn\u2019t even describe it very well. It was just basically, you want to go to a website and it just shows you trends in whatever niche you\u2019re interested in. And that sounds so simple, but nothing existed like that, believe it or not.<\/p>\n<p>And I hired someone to build something like that and it was horrible. It used Reddit. So we\u2019d look at Subreddits and we would see how many times a word was mentioned or something, and we found nothing valuable. The signal-to-noise ratio was completely backwards. It was like for every 200 hits, one was decent. And then one day someone forwarded me this random site this guy started and I\u2019m like, \u201cNo, this, this is exactly what I want,\u201d but it was even better than I had imagined.<\/p>\n<p>So then I reached out to him, and then the deal structure was essentially buy it 100 percent, straight up. Part of the acquisition costs will be \u2014 you\u2019ll get paid that. And then on top of that, if it goes well over the first, I think, couple months, then we can set up some sort of part-time deal. And if that goes well, we can do full-time. And if it goes well, then \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>And he would be helping you throughout that entire period of time to help you determine if it\u2019s going well or not?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Exactly. And he was the coder and developer behind the original version. So he was best qualified to continue to work on it and improve it. Rather than hiring someone random to come in, it was his vision to start with. And then I said, basically, \u201cIf it goes well with full-time for, I think another month or so, we\u2019ll basically be co-founders on this thing. The only rub will be if you want a lot of equity, then you\u2019re going to have to put money in to fund this thing, or if you prefer that you get more cash, then you can just get a proper salary and then I\u2019ll own most of the business.\u201d So that\u2019s basically what we did. He chose more money and then he owned part as equity in Exploding Topics.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>How did you end up in Europe?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>I mean, love, to be honest.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, that\u2019ll do it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Yeah. I mean, my wife, we met in Thailand many years ago, and then we moved to Berlin, this is actually a funny story, partially from <em>The 4-Hour Workweek<\/em> because you mentioned Berlin as this cheap place.<\/p>\n<p>So we\u2019re in Thailand looking at Craigslist and looking at all these apartments that are like palaces for 300 euros a month. And we\u2019re like, \u201cTim was right. This is amazing. You can live like a king in Berlin for nothing.\u201d So we start replying to all this. So as we\u2019re flying there, we send out all these emails.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Uh-oh.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>And of course, they\u2019re all scams. It\u2019s like, \u201cI\u2019m lost. Oh, I\u2019m out of town and I lost my passport, but if you leave this money in this Western Union.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cNo!\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Oh, no.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>We show up to Berlin. We\u2019re in a hostel for like eight euros a night in a 12-bed hostel while we realize that this whole thing, all these ads we\u2019re applying to is a scam. No one uses Craigslist in Germany. So then we eventually found an apartment, lived in Germany, and she\u2019s Portuguese. So we visited Portugal a number of times where we lived there and eventually it was like, \u201cWe could freeze our asses off or we could live in the sun, so let\u2019s look at the sun.\u201d So that\u2019s basically how we ended up here.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. The thing about <em>The 4-Hour Workweek<\/em>, the principles and frameworks all still work. Obviously some of the tech tools, since they were last updated in 2009, most of them are completely irrelevant. Probably not going to use GoToMyPC at this point to access your home computer remotely to do the work you need to do. But the pricing examples, obviously, have changed since it was first written in 2007, 2009.<\/p>\n<p>So the principle, the idea of geoarbitrage and applying that to what you earn and how you pay contractors, employees, and then your sort of living expenses, it applies. But definitely for anybody who ends up picking it up, if you read that doing something in Buenos Aires costs A, B, and C, I would go online and fact-check that because it\u2019s probably changed a little bit.<\/p>\n<p>Looking at all the questions I could possibly ask, what are other sort of lessons learned or things that you would like to share with folks? Could be about your journey, could be about mistakes along the way, really anything at all. Because part of the value of these conversations is that we can get into a lot of specifics that are omitted in the magazine and profiles of people that end up reading like a list of highlights, right? And there\u2019s obviously a survivorship bias to begin with if people appear on magazine covers. I know that\u2019s an antiquated example to use, but what else would you like to share with folks or anything else you\u2019d like to add just about the journey? Because it\u2019s not over, it still goes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Yeah. One thing was that I wanted to share would be actually filling the void. I felt the void after selling Exploding Topics and how I was able to fill the void.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, please.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>So yeah, so set the stage for you. I sold Backlinko, and then about two years later sold Exploding Topics and was just going full-time. Not super crazy working all the time because I was fairly efficient, but still working all the time. And then went from that to basically stop, to zero. And a lot of people, I think they have this feeling of listlessness, no direction, maybe a bit of depression. For me, the symptom was stress. I think I was wired for stress, not only just in general, but also because of the sale process is stressful. And then just because the sale is done, your body and I think part of your reptilian brain doesn\u2019t really recognize that, and it\u2019s looking for threats and it\u2019s looking for opportunities and it\u2019s just not chilled out.<\/p>\n<p>So I struggled for two months with stress. On my Oura Ring, my stress was like 2X baseline from after I sold. And you\u2019d think it\u2019d be the opposite. You\u2019re like, \u201cThis is great. I sold two companies. I\u2019m good for the rest of my life. What is there to be stressed about?\u201d And then I realized what I needed was a hard reset.<\/p>\n<p>That was the first step. We went on a trip, got away from the environment, got away from the day-to-day life, and then it somehow was able to hack my brain to be like, \u201cOkay, you\u2019re safe,\u201d or, \u201cthings are chill now.\u201d So when I went back home, the stress was gone. It was back to baseline or below baseline.<\/p>\n<p>Then I got a little bit more \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>What was the trip? What was the extra \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>It was a trip to the south of Portugal, to The Algarve.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, it\u2019s a nice spot.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>So went to the beach.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Nice oranges. Toasty.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Yeah. Yeah, good oranges.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Depending \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Good oranges, yeah. Yeah, so spent some time down there and that was just the hard reset. I think it\u2019s just to get you to get out of your environment.<\/p>\n<p>But then when I got back, it was like stress is gone, but now feeling a little bit bored. That boredom was coming back. And I was tempted to start another startup. And I read this \u2014 someone sent me this, another friend who had a big acquisition. He sent me this thing by, I think it was Yale School of Management, and it was basically they interviewed founders that had just exited and they asked them their advice. \u201cWhat was it like? What were the good ups and the downs?\u201d And they basically said,\u201d When you sell, there are psychological dangers that can occur. One is that you lose your sense of structure. The other is you lose your sense of purpose and you lose your sense of connection with your team. It all goes away. You have it and then one day you literally don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>So different people react to it in different ways, but they warn that \u2014 a lot of case studies in this paper were saying people that started companies within a year of selling usually regretted it. So it was basically, \u201cTake a year and don\u2019t make any major commitments whatsoever.\u201d So that\u2019s what I did. It kept me from starting these. I had all these ideas, \u201cI\u2019m going to start a startup,\u201d and then I\u2019d be like, \u201cno, wait a year, wait a year, wait a year.\u201d And then by the time a year came around, I didn\u2019t really want to because I was able to fill the void largely with tennis.<\/p>\n<p>For me, tennis has been \u2014 one activity fills almost all of these boxes or checks all of the boxes and fills this void. It\u2019s amazing, man, because if you think about it, if you want to have fun, you play video games or watch TV or something. If you want to socialize, you go out drinking. If you want to exercise, you go to the gym. If you want to get fresh air, you go for a walk. Tennis does all of these things in one activity. And if you want a community, you need to \u2014 whatever, I don\u2019t know. I actually don\u2019t even know how to do that outside of tennis. That was the thing that changed was I joined a tennis club and there\u2019s a lot of other entrepreneurs there. A lot of Americans, man. It\u2019s like the 51st state over there, to be honest. It\u2019s getting a little crazy.<\/p>\n<p>But anyway, so yeah, I filled the void with this community of people that are playing tennis, trying to improve, obsessed with the game, watching YouTube videos, reading about it, practicing all the time. And now I don\u2019t have that same sense of wanting to start something new.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>I love that. And just a few observations since, as you would imagine, since the book came out in 2007, I\u2019ve had the opportunity to vicariously watch a lot of people grapple with this. And having worked with so many startups and angel investing, granted in a venture-backed environment, but a lot of the challenges are the same, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Yep.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Whether you\u2019re coming out of, for instance, I know guys in special operations, if you\u2019re coming out of running a company, if you\u2019re coming out of starting and running a company, when you lose, as you put it, and I really liked the categories you mentioned, when you lose the structure, when you lose, in a sense, the identity, when you lose the connection to team, you can end up with a severe degree of vertigo and a very precarious paradox of choice. And something like tennis \u2014 and some people listening might think like, \u201cWhat? Tennis?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Probably.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Even if it\u2019s not the forever solution and the end-all, be-all, what it does, just like getting your recommended daily allowance of essential amino acids and vitamins and so on, you\u2019re getting just enough that it provides you with the psycho-emotional health and space to think about things more clearly instead of being reactive. You know what I mean?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Yep.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>You\u2019re getting enough of all of those things and it provides you with a buffer and a certain equilibrium that allows you to think about things more clearly. And furthermore, this is not necessarily a problem you have to solve after everything vanishes. You can think about this in advance and experiment with things so that when you have a real phase shift, which in the context of <em>The 4-Hour Workweek<\/em> isn\u2019t necessarily selling a company, it\u2019s just like once you get it to a high degree of automation where it requires two, three hours a week, if that, to manage, which is more common than people might think, what you do with the rest of the time is a tremendously big question.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Yep.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>So I love that. It makes me want to go back to The Algarve also. It can get a little toasty.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Could be worse. Let\u2019s put it that way.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. It\u2019s a good country for tennis.<\/p>\n<p>Brian, this has been super fun. Where would you like people to find you online, if anywhere?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>So let\u2019s start with YouTube. So that would be the first place, and then LinkedIn. @BrianDean on YouTube and @BrianEDean on LinkedIn.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Perfect.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>The other Brian must have grabbed that one. I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Brian, is there anything else you would like to say before we wind to a close?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Brian Dean: <\/strong>Oh, this has been great. That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. Thanks, man. I know it\u2019s late, several time zones away, and I appreciate being flexible on the timing. So thanks so much for taking the time.<\/p>\n<p>Everybody listening or watching, we will link to everything we discussed in the show notes as usual at tim.blog\/podcast. And until next time, as always, be just a bit kinder than is necessary to others and also to yourself. Thanks for tuning in.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"Brian-Dean-legal-conditions-transcript\">DUE TO SOME HEADACHES IN THE PAST, PLEASE NOTE LEGAL CONDITIONS:<\/h3>\n<p><em>Tim Ferriss owns the copyright in and to all content in and transcripts of The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, with all rights reserved, as well as his right of publicity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>WHAT YOU\u2019RE WELCOME TO DO:<\/em>\u00a0<em>You are welcome to share the below transcript (up to 500 words but not more) in media articles (e.g.,\u00a0<\/em>The New York Times<em>,\u00a0<\/em>LA Times<em>,\u00a0<\/em>The Guardian<em>), on your personal website, in a non-commercial article or blog post (e.g., Medium), and\/or on a personal social media account for non-commercial purposes, provided that you include attribution to \u201cThe Tim Ferriss Show\u201d and link back to the tim.blog\/podcast URL. For the sake of clarity, media outlets with advertising models are permitted to use excerpts from the transcript per the above.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>WHAT IS NOT ALLOWED:<\/em>\u00a0<em>No one is authorized to copy any portion of the podcast content or use Tim Ferriss\u2019 name, image or likeness for any commercial purpose or use, including without limitation inclusion in any books, e-books, book summaries or synopses, or on a commercial website or social media site (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) that offers or promotes your or another\u2019s products or services. For the sake of clarity, media outlets are permitted to use photos of Tim Ferriss from\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/tim.blog\/media\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>the media room on tim.blog<\/em><\/a><em>\u00a0or (obviously) license photos of Tim Ferriss from Getty Images, etc.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/hop.clickbank.net\/?affiliate=infohatch&amp;vendor=J1R2C\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10614 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png\" alt=\"Profit Gen\" width=\"400\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png 400w, https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px-300x163.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to another episode featuring a\u00a04-Hour Workweek\u00a0case study\u2014a conversation with someone who has read the book, applied it, and built a life and a businesses [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-growth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}