Jason Schappert is an accomplished entrepreneur and aviator who bootstrapped his way to an 8-figure business exit and is now revolutionizing the finance world with his latest venture, Moola.
This AI-driven stock scoring and decision engine is designed to help the next generation of investors achieve financial freedom. But that’s just one chapter in Jason’s story! Here’s a quick overview of his achievements:
- Began his journey in the aviation industry, founded MzeroA
- Authored 8 flight training books
- Produced the acclaimed “Flying Again” film
- Earned multiple awards, including AOPA’s Outstanding Flight Instructor of the Year
- MzeroA was named the Inc. 500’s top growing private companies and “Best Place to Work”
What you will learn
- How AI-driven tools like Moola can simplify investing by analyzing stocks and tailoring recommendations to your risk profile.
- Why resilience and learning from setbacks are crucial for entrepreneurial success.
- How to build and scale a subscription-based business using innovation and community engagement.
- The benefits of smart financial habits, such as automating savings and focusing on long-term investing.
- How professionalizing your business systems can set the stage for sustainable growth and successful exits.
Transcript
Jeff Bullas
00:00:03 – 00:00:51
Hi everyone and welcome to the Jeff Bullas show! Today I have with me Jason Schappert. Jason Schappert is an accomplished entrepreneur and aviator who bootstrapped his way to an 8-figure business exit and is now revolutionizing the finance world with his latest venture, Moola. This AI-driven stock scoring and decision engine is designed to help the next generation of investors achieve financial freedom. But that’s just one chapter in Jason’s story! Here’s a quick overview.
Jeff Bullas
00:00:52 – 00:01:41
He began his journey in the aviation industry and founded Mzero.Then he authored 8 flight training books. He produced the acclaimed “Flying Again” film. He also earned multiple awards, including AOPA’s Outstanding Flight Instructor of the Year. MzeroA was named the Inc. 500’s top growing private companies and “Best Place to Work.” So it’s great, Jason. Welcome to the show. It’s an absolute pleasure.
Jason Schappert
00:01:42 – 00:01:47
Thanks Jeff, I appreciate you and I promise all those questions will get answered throughout our time today. Alright,
Jeff Bullas
00:01:47 – 00:02:16
cool. So Jason, you uh live in uh Florida in a place called Naples. And uh what I love about American DNA is that it’s incredibly innovative, uh very capitalist driven and out of that rise, a lot of innovation and passions and especially for running business. So where did the passion for business start or did it rise out of a passion for flying? I’m just curious about how this journey started.
Jason Schappert
00:02:17 – 00:02:46
Great question. So oddly enough, uh I come from a family of entrepreneurs. Uh my mom and dad work together. Uh they still do to this day and they have a pest control business. So killing bugs, which is Florida. But if you’ve never been to Florida is a great place to kill bugs, there’s plenty of bugs to kill year round. So uh that’s actually how we ended up in Florida was for the bugs. So during summer break from school, I found myself running the pest control route with that and just learning so much and
Jason Schappert
00:02:46 – 00:03:29
um not just learning customer service and how to, how to deal with issues and customers complain and all these things I got to see. Um just a, a large despair in, in wealth. For example, we grew up very, very poor. When we first moved to Florida, we lived in a motel for several months till my parents could afford and find a place to actually put us in. Um, and we lived, let’s say, eventually, middle class, but probably lower middle class and even less than that at the very beginning here. Um, but my dad had very wealthy clients and it was very interesting to be killing bugs with dad and walk into what I saw as a 12 year old kid to be a mansion. And I remember just being that nosy, 12 year old kid going,
Jason Schappert
00:03:29 – 00:04:06
I wanna be like this one day, like, what do these people do differently that I’m not doing? Or my parents aren’t doing it in our own lives. And I would, I would go to their offices, I’d see. What kind of books do they read? Well, clearly they have, they have larger bookcases and they have TV. S, I’m going ok. So wealthy people are readers, right? They’re always learning there, their desks are this way. And I just thought, wow. Um, then you would go to another client that’s, let’s say they were, um, not as well off. Right. You go into some of these houses that are infested with roaches and everything else. You go. Well, what are these people doing? Well, it’s 12 o’clock and we had to knock on the door to wake them up and they’re still sleeping. I thought, ok,
Jason Schappert
00:04:07 – 00:04:46
so wealthy people wake up early. Right. I just built all these different things. I know that’s not the case all the time, but as a 12 year old kid I’m seeing all these things happen and I just began to dive all into this idea of entrepreneurship. I’d go to the library, I’d get my Sony Walkman and I’d run audio books on cassette tapes because I wasn’t a big reader at the time. Most young kids are not. So I’d be listening to Bob Proctor, Tony Robbins, Jim Rone, Zig Zigler, like the classics that you’ve listened to as well and just diving into all of this and just immersing myself. And I was weird, like in middle school, I didn’t have a whole lot of friends because no one wanted to listen to Tony Robbins with me at the time.
Jeff Bullas
00:04:49 – 00:05:21
Yeah. Well, it’s um, yeah, I’ve read all those books, you know, went through all the training and, um, but it’s really, you know, trying to work out what’s your truth amongst other people’s truths, isn’t it really? In terms of what, you know, we all say a lot of us when we’re young, we say when I grow up, I want to be like this person. It’s both good and bad. In other words, aspiring to another person’s life is good in the sense of aspiration. But in terms of trying to find what you should be doing because
Jeff Bullas
00:05:22 – 00:05:59
not all of us can be a Steve Jobs or a Tony Robbins. In fact, I wouldn’t want to be. Um, but what can we learn from them? And, uh I just read a book by Charlie Munger called, you know, the poor Man’s poor Charlie’s Almanac, which was amazing, his mental models and his dive into the wisdom as a 99 year old entrepreneur that worked with Warren Buffett and built Berkshire Hathaway into a nearly a trillion dollar company. And in your allusion to rich people or wealthy people, successful people read books. And
Jeff Bullas
00:05:59 – 00:06:27
I think that’s actually one common trait, well, not the only trait, but Charlie Munger was called by his family. Basically a book with two legs sticking out of it. That’s how it was described. And so you’ve learned from your dad, you’re doing all these books. What was the next step for you? And how did you get from there to being in the flying industry, the aviation business?
Jason Schappert
00:06:27 – 00:06:52
Sure. So in addition to entrepreneurship and killing bugs with dad, um, one thing dad instilled in me early was Jason. I don’t want you killing bugs, right? He says I crawl under houses. I go into the attic. It’s August and it’s hot like, I don’t want this for my kids. It’s providing a living for us, but you need to do something else. I was always intrigued by aviation. Right. I was that kid, an airplane flies over and you’re looking at it and you’re watching all this happen,
Jason Schappert
00:06:52 – 00:07:18
but I didn’t know how to get into aviation. So, of course, back to dad, he had a client that was also a pilot offered to take me on his first flight and I was kind of hooked from there. But you very quickly realize no matter where you are in the world, learning to fly is extremely expensive. Even this is, you know, 25 years ago now. Um, it’s prohibitively expensive. So again, dad came to me and said, hey, Jason,
Jason Schappert
00:07:18 – 00:08:06
whatever you Upsell my clients, his pest control clients, pressure washing lawn mowing, picking weeds, whatever it is, whatever you Upsell them, that money is yours. So now I’m here learning sales. I’m walking up to Mrs Johnson. Say Miss Johnson, I noticed there’s an oil stain on your driveway. It’s a little bit dirty and I’d love to come out on Saturday and pressure wash it. So I’m, I’m learning sales while trying to fund my dream and you know, 40 bucks at a time, $40 for a lawn, 40 bucks for a pressure wash, whatever it is I was working to save up for uh flight lessons and just lesson by lesson, begin to really pay for those. So not only was aviation a passion but man, when you, when you self fund it, right? And you put yourself through it, um
Jason Schappert
00:08:06 – 00:08:35
you take on just a different respect for what you’re doing, um, as well. So, you know, fast forwarding quite a bit. Uh I, I went through all my uh flight training. I ended up going to college for flying as well. Uh I became a flight instructor by 18 years old and I remember becoming a flight instructor and this was where the first light bulb moment went off for me previously. All my entrepreneurship had just been working with dad. I’d never been on the numbers and really on the true business side of it.
Jason Schappert
00:08:35 – 00:09:14
And I remember I went into the flight school and Jeff, this is the same flight school I started with like, as a 1213 year old kid, taking a few lessons here and there. Uh, I’m now 18 years old. They say Jason, we’re so happy, instructor. We’re, we’d love to hire you. Now, I’m thinking this is great. I’ve got, I’ve got my first job. He said, we’re gonna pay you $11 an hour. I said, wait a second for the past, you know, 34 or five years, I’ve been paying $25 an hour for instructors. And now I learned that I’m on the wrong side of this deal. You sit in your cushy office here. You don’t even, you know, have to go out and sweat in the airplane and you’re taking half of that money. I said I’m on the wrong end of this deal.
Jason Schappert
00:09:15 – 00:09:35
So I had saved up, uh, some money on top of that and you’re gonna laugh at this, Jeff. But I went out and I bought my first airplane on ebay of all places. This is like 2008 now for $10,000. So I, I don’t know what the conversion rate is and everything else, but just picture what a $10,000 airplane looks like.
Jeff Bullas
00:09:35 – 00:09:37
Slightly, slightly, very frankly,
Jason Schappert
00:09:37 – 00:10:23
scary, ugly two seater 100 horsepower 1975 cloth seats. It is, it’s yucky. It’s, it’s ugly but you know what, it was gonna serve the purpose for me. So, um, I began teaching out of that airplane and someone like Jeff would come to me and I would teach him the flight lessons and, um, about this time I, I’m listening to Tony Robbins Zig Ziegler again. Everyone’s saying, Jason, you have to get leverage in your business. I’m thinking, how do I get leverage in my business? It’s Jason and an airplane. And by the way, if the weather’s bad, Jeff, we don’t fly if it’s too hot, if it’s too cold, if it’s raining, like you could get a hurricane season in Florida where you don’t fly. But, you know, 10% of the month and,
Jason Schappert
00:10:23 – 00:10:42
but your mortgage doesn’t care about that. The mortgage bills keep coming, the car, the car, you know, loans keep coming even though you’re not able to work. So, I’m thinking, gosh, how, how am I gonna create leverage when I’m, I’m weather dependent. A student cancels? I don’t, I don’t make money from that standpoint. There were just so many different factors. So, um, you’re,
Jeff Bullas
00:10:42 – 00:10:48
you’re basically, it’s the old adage in business like getting that leverage. You were trading time for money.
Jason Schappert
00:10:49 – 00:11:18
I was training for money and I didn’t know how to get out of it. I like aviation. Just if I told you, Jeff, go learn to fly, you would just say, well, I’m gonna go find a flight school and get in an airplane. Like that’s just even, even today, that’s how people really think so about that time, there was a little company called gopro that was just getting started and there was secondary little company called youtube that was like, not owned by Google yet, but, but out of the garage it was in kind of in that, in between. It wasn’t as popular, obviously as we know it here today.
Jason Schappert
00:11:18 – 00:11:46
I said, wow, this is interesting. I’m gonna take, you know, Gopros were expensive back then. There’s the ugly kind of hero ones. The big plastic cases. I bought two gopros. I said, I’m gonna put these cameras in the airplane, one in the airplane, one actually outside the airplane. As crazy as that sounds. And I’m going to leave the pilot seat empty. Meaning like Jeff, if you came to fly with me, you would sit in the pilot seat. I sit in the copilot seat as your instructor,
Jason Schappert
00:11:46 – 00:12:13
I’m gonna go up, I’m gonna sit in the copilot seat. I’m gonna leave the left seat empty and put a camera right about where Jeff’s eyes would be. And I’m gonna fly our entire flight lesson just like I would if you were really there and I’m gonna figure out how to edit it. And I got on a movie and I’m trying to learn how to edit and all these different things and I began uploading these flight lessons to youtube. And again, that was kind of like the MVP, right? They talk like a lean start up model. That was the first, is there any interest in this?
Jason Schappert
00:12:14 – 00:12:38
And they’re begun to generate some interest? And I thought, wow, I wonder if I can teach people to fly on the internet, which sounds like, imagine saying this 16 years ago, like, it even sounds a little crazy today. But in a post COVID world, like you can probably learn anything on the internet now. But telling people I’m gonna teach you to fly on the internet, people thought we were a little bit crazy. But from a ground school standpoint,
Jason Schappert
00:12:38 – 00:13:02
I teach radio communications regulations, weather, all these things I just would teach on the ground to a video camera or in the airplane and actually demonstrate the maneuvers to you then. Yes, you would actually go to your school and learn to fly. Um, I began to put those videos behind a paywall. Uh I put AAA very, very good friend of mine came to me and I’m so thankful he did 16 years ago. He said, hey,
Jason Schappert
00:13:02 – 00:13:28
there’s this new business model on the internet. It’s called subscriptions. I think you should do it as a subscription and I’m like ground school is a subscription. Ok. So I, I set up a bronze silver gold level and gave different uh you know, uh criteria and courses based on what you signed up for and webinars and access and launched uh this, this online ground school, which was not even a term that was used at the time. Um
Jason Schappert
00:13:29 – 00:13:56
And again, it was not an overnight success as, as, as you know, Jeff, I remember I launched and that, that day I launched, I had one member sign up and I thought something must be wrong, right? I see all these people on the internet and they’re so successful and they look out, look at their Porsches and their Lamborghinis. They must, I must have done something wrong. But that was my first forte and realizing like there’s a lot of work to this entrepreneurship stuff and as an internet entrepreneur in the boot.
Jeff Bullas
00:13:57 – 00:14:18
Yeah. So how did you go and market that description model today? Actually, you know, the subscription model is great, you know, so as a service, creative as a service and the list goes on. So that’s great. But how did you grow it? And what were the challenges in growing a basically a subscription model business?
Jason Schappert
00:14:18 – 00:14:56
Um I, I received a lot of pushback actually on people not wanting a subscription model, but I just really stayed the course and I’m, I’m jumping way ahead here. Um But it, it’s tough when you receive that push back like, oh, hey, eventually we did get competition. They said, but your competitor charges at one time for $500. Why would I pay you 147 a month yet? Over the years, I began to collect the data and say, yes, I know my competitor charges $500.01 time for that course. But if I did the same thing, I’d actually be losing money because a member doesn’t come and just stays for one or two months at $100 and $47 a month.
Jason Schappert
00:14:57 – 00:15:28
What we began to do is really build the community. We began to say, hey, stay for the webinars. They stayed for the people, they stayed for the team, they stayed for that true community aspect and people would end up staying years with us. So what my competitors were making $500 on, we were making thousands of dollars on. But to your point, it was not always like sunshine and rainbows like we did get a lot of kick back and a lot of people said I, I I’m not signed up for another subscription. I don’t want another subscription and you have to in your business, be willing to say that that’s fine.
Jason Schappert
00:15:29 – 00:15:44
This may not be the product for you, right? This is how we’re structured. Um, we really kind of stuck to our guns with that. And that was challenging, especially early on when you’re hungry when you only have 12345 members. Um It’s uh it’s very, very challenging.
Jeff Bullas
00:15:45 – 00:15:51
So where was it? When did the breakthrough happen? Took you from struggle to it’s flowing and it’s happening.
Jason Schappert
00:15:52 – 00:16:17
Well, there, there were, there were so many struggles. Uh It was, and it was actually a great struggle uh that, that led us to the first big breakthrough. So for the 1st 23 years of this business, I had just 1 ft in, I had 1 ft in actually teaching students in the airplane and 1 ft in, I’ll t I’m making these online videos and I was just dividing my time between the two.
Jason Schappert
00:16:17 – 00:16:45
Um And I wasn’t doing very well either. Uh There was a season uh in, in my life where I remember going to leave to go to the airport. Uh We were just, we were broke on broke. I remember leaving to go to the airport to fly with a student uh in that little airplane. And there was a tow truck waiting at the end of my driveway and unfortunately I knew exactly why that tow truck was there. I was behind on car payments and everything else. I thought, oh, this, this is not good.
Jason Schappert
00:16:45 – 00:17:11
I remember sneaking out the backyard and walking like, 22 miles to mom’s house and taking mom’s car so I could still go work later that week. The sheriff comes by and puts a notice of, uh, potential foreclosure on the door. I’m thinking this is, this is getting serious. And that same week I hopped in that little $10,000 airplane. Um, I was going out to film some videos, uh and on takeoff, I had an engine failure.
Jason Schappert
00:17:11 – 00:17:39
Uh I lost one of the cylinders. The little airplane only has four cylinders. I lost one cylinder. I was able to nurse it back around uh for a safe landing, but the plane is covered in oil. It is smoking at this point. And I remember Jeff and every entrepreneur has that moment. I just sat there and cried literally just like all these things are happening. I don’t have the money. I can’t even make my $200 a month car payment. What makes you think I can afford now to put a new engine in this airplane? And, um,
Jason Schappert
00:17:40 – 00:18:20
Shortly after that, uh, a mechanic who was based at that airport came by and said, hey, I’ll buy the airplane from you in the current state it’s in. Wow. Ok. And I don’t know what that number was. Maybe $5000. I can’t remember what it was but it was just enough money to pay off my debt, not pay off the debts, but get caught up on my debts, get caught up on the car, get caught up on the house. However, now I’m in this really weird spot, Jeff. I’m a flight instructor with no airplane and I, there’s only one thing I can do is gonna make that internet business work. You know, Napoleon Hill and think and grow rich calls it the burning the boats moment. Like there is no return. You either make this work or, or, or you don’t,
Jeff Bullas
00:18:20 – 00:18:23
but you didn’t, you didn’t choose the burning boat moment.
Jason Schappert
00:18:23 – 00:18:24
No, no,
Jeff Bullas
00:18:24 – 00:18:34
because there’s, there’s two types of, I suppose what we could say crossing the Rubicon is that you choose to cross it or you’re forced to cross it, isn’t it?
Jason Schappert
00:18:34 – 00:18:42
Yeah, I was, I was more so Julius Caesar’s soldier that was forced to cross it. No, I wasn’t, I wasn’t Julius Caesar making this great decision.
Jeff Bullas
00:18:42 – 00:18:44
We didn’t have a choice really.
Jason Schappert
00:18:44 – 00:19:26
I didn’t have a choice but we crossed the Rubicon. We burned the boats, whatever analogy you want to use. And, um, but you know that, that level of humility, that humbling moment, uh, you have no choice but to succeed and we just got scrappy and, and really began to kind of figure things out. Um, and, and went all in on growing that business. I mean, fast forwarding a funny story. I actually a few years ago bought that little airplane back, that same airplane that kind of started all kind of like, uh, I don’t know if you know the story of Papa John’s pizza, but Papa John had to sell his first delivery car in a similar situation and bought back his first pizza delivery car. Um, so kind of a fun story with that. But, um,
Jason Schappert
00:19:27 – 00:20:08
it, it all comes down to leverage. You ask the question, you know, what is that big deciding moment? Well, uh crossing that Rubicon was one of them. But the second one in the theme of this entire podcast would be the word leverage because I was still the one man doing everything. Jeff. I would, I would write the curriculum. I would focus the camera on my chair. I would press record. I would run around and sit in the chair and go, hey, everyone, Jason Cher here and I would teach the whole little video, I’d run back around the stop record. I’d upload it, I’d edit it. I was a one man band and every entrepreneur has been there and I kinda like, I, I like that attitude, right? I like an entrepreneur that’s scrappy and can kind of figure everything out on their own. Um
Jason Schappert
00:20:08 – 00:20:33
But it’s when we made our first hire, which of course was someone to help film edit so I could focus on what my strengths were, which was writing curriculum and, and writing aviation safety material and getting ready to produce it for being talented on camera. Um That person was back editing the last video while I was writing the next video and, and that began to make our business exponential from that standpoint.
Jeff Bullas
00:20:33 – 00:20:40
So how are you marketing? It built an email list? How did you actually get business across the threshold?
Jason Schappert
00:20:41 – 00:21:21
Uh I wish I started with an email list. Um, my largest marketing tool was actually youtube at the very beginning. And I was so naive going into it though, Jeff because what I was and it was a good strategy. I would release little sneak previews. So because these are long lessons, they’re an hour long lesson. I released five minutes of it on youtube. Hey, you wanna see more, check it out, head to this website, take a trial and, and youtube was just our best marketing method. However, I wasn’t collecting emails. I assumed in my, in my limited thinking, I’ve got 35,000 subscribers on this channel, Jeff like that. Those are my people, right? But you know, one day
Jason Schappert
00:21:22 – 00:21:45
and you don’t own it and I learned that the hard way. So youtube uh was a victim of a very large hack back in about 2010. Um And many channels got deleted. Uh I lost all my videos, I lost all my subscribers. I lost everything I had no email list. I had no way to get in touch with these people. Nothing. And that, I mean, another moment where you just cry as an entrepreneur.
Jason Schappert
00:21:45 – 00:22:11
Uh You know, I woke up and said, never will I let someone else be in control of the data. I work so hard to collect. So right after that, I liked the free plus shipping offer. Hey, get this book, uh you know, kind of thing or whatever it is to start building an email list. We did build a youtube backup. It’s over 200,000 subscribers here today, which is only around 400,000 pilots. So it’s a good chunk of the market share. Um
Jason Schappert
00:22:12 – 00:22:36
But the value is in that email list and of course, eventually in that text list, like when we realized we need to own our own data that became the game changer for us because, and as we even know today, I don’t care if you have 100,000 youtube subscribers, you’re not going to reach all of them. And that’s just how the algorithms work. It’s a vanity metric is what I call it now and it looks good, but all 100,000 of those people don’t get notified that your video just posted. Unfortunately.
Jeff Bullas
00:22:37 – 00:23:03
Well, that’s a challenge we’ve constantly faced in the digital world is the battle of the algorithms. Um So you know what’s working for SEO one day? In other words, you’re optimized on page one. Suddenly you’re page five for no particular reason except Google changing this algorithm. Um Then you’ve got, you know, email lists that actually still they’re even challenged because now they deliver your email because you haven’t done A B and C or we just uh
Jason Schappert
00:23:03 – 00:23:03
huh.
Jeff Bullas
00:23:03 – 00:23:03
And
Jason Schappert
00:23:03 – 00:23:04
then you got the
Jeff Bullas
00:23:04 – 00:23:04
Gmail
Jason Schappert
00:23:04 – 00:23:33
update too recent. Not too Fargo, you know, was, was, was kind of devastating to open rates as well. So we’ve really made a big push. Uh even in Mula, especially the S MS marketing, obviously we’re app based. So a lot of push notifications like you want to really make sure you own that data. I thought it was funny when Facebook changed its name to me, which essentially just means data. I said, you know what, that’s actually a really good name for this company because that’s what they’re really good at. They have a lot of data on a lot of people.
Jeff Bullas
00:23:33 – 00:24:12
Yeah. So let’s move forward to you. You, you, you got the business really working well, you started to get a lot of market share and obviously you became attractive to be bought out. Tell us a bit about that. And, and the thing that you mentioned to me before we hit record was that one possible company that wanted to buy. You didn’t go ahead, then you actually learned the lessons from that, which was actually putting in place good processes and systems that were instead of being a messy little business. Tell us about that because it’s a good story, I think.
Jason Schappert
00:24:12 – 00:24:37
Yeah. So um we were approached uh by private equity looking to acquire us a, a at about this point, we are maybe 30 or so team members um doing very, very well. A couple 1000 members, a lot of big uh b to B clients as well selling to colleges. That was, that was actually what drew a lot of the private equity in if they want to see those, those large uh businesses that you’re selling to. Um,
Jason Schappert
00:24:38 – 00:25:07
but unfortunately, even at a 30 person payroll company, we still ran this business like a mom and pop. And there’s nothing wrong with that from a cultural standpoint. I mean, from a bookkeeping standpoint, I mean, you’re, you’re listening to or you’re looking at who was the bookkeeper back in that time period. And uh unfortunately, I’m sure nobody from, from the IRS is, is listening to this. Um, but you know how it works as a small business. Sometimes you go to your local grocery store,
Jason Schappert
00:25:07 – 00:25:28
you run your credit card, the business credit card and you put in quick books as, oh, that was an office meal, right? And, and again, I say that candidly and humbly because every small entrepreneur has done it before and they haven’t, they’re probably lying to you. Um, that first private equity company looked at our books and said, Jason, I’m sure you have a great business here,
Jason Schappert
00:25:29 – 00:25:57
but it is so messy. These books are so all over the place. We couldn’t make heads or tails of it and we walked away. It was just, it was gonna be too much effort for them to do a full audit of our quickbooks, files to even figure this thing out and, and you know how it is. And at least here in America, you’re always looking for every write off and tax deduction you can have within reason. So you keep your tax returns low. But then when you want to sell, you want to look like you have all this money. It’s such a balance, right? So, um,
Jason Schappert
00:25:58 – 00:26:19
It was kind of sad, um, when we lost that deal, but you know what the greatest thing was, it was a wake up call. Uh, it was time to start running this thing like, like a big business. So we moved away from our small town accountant and went to a slightly larger city accountant. Um, someone who could really help us, hired a true real bookkeeper full time.
Jason Schappert
00:26:19 – 00:26:46
Uh, uh, brought on a fractional, uh, uh CFO as well just to really kind of help clean up these finances, clean up these books. Uh, and, and lo and behold about nine, about nine months to, about a year later. The next was a successful private equity company. Came around and, uh, that’s what, uh, that was the one that did it and we had the clean books because of it. I would argue if that first one didn’t happen, we would have been in the same spot all over again.
Jeff Bullas
00:26:46 – 00:26:54
Exactly. So, you’ve exited and you’re going, we’re going to retire and you said that lasted what, how long
Jason Schappert
00:26:54 – 00:26:56
48 hours?
Jeff Bullas
00:26:58 – 00:27:02
Ok. Were you bored? You just, yeah, it had too many tequilas. But then, no,
Jason Schappert
00:27:02 – 00:27:29
no, we um you know, just being honest, it was, uh the 1st 24 hours were very exciting. I remember my wife and I on closing day. Uh, we were just refreshing our bank account that morning waiting for the wire to come in and we refreshed it so many times the bank locked us out, we had to call them to, to get it unlocked and the, the funds came in and of course, that, that sounds good and give us a little dopamine and ok, that’s all great. But
Jason Schappert
00:27:29 – 00:28:02
Then, reality kind of sets in. Wow, this has been my life for the past 16 years. This was my baby that we hatched from nothing. You know, this is the thing that saved us when the tow truck was sitting at the end of the driveway. All, all, all the highs and lows. It’s kind of a wave of emotions in a, in a, in a weird way. So, um that was that for us. But, you know, we’ve always kind of had one, we’re teachers at heart. So, the last business, if the listeners and gathered it was flight training, we’re, we’re teachers. I’m a flight instructor. Um,
Jason Schappert
00:28:02 – 00:28:35
and Mullah really came from the idea of aviation. Oddly enough, you see, in my airplane, Jeff, I have six instruments and those six instruments are always in front of me and they tell me three things what just happened 30 seconds ago, what’s happening right now and what’s likely to happen in the next 30 seconds if you keep doing what you’re doing, a climb a descent to turn what, whatever that is, I thought, you know, why don’t we have the same thing in our finances, in our personal finances. I, I don’t know what it’s like where, uh, where you’re at but
Jason Schappert
00:28:35 – 00:29:12
our big banks here, online banking is ugly and crusty and old and looks like they are set up on a windows 95 computer. You know, where, where is the, where is the intelligence? Where is the beautiful banking? Where, where is the ease of investing all of these things? And that’s why I really set out to create Mullah and increase financial literacy because you run into so many people that serve our communities that we call, they have more months than they have money. And I’ve been there and I pulled myself out of it and we’re using Mullah as that tool to educate the next generation.
Jeff Bullas
00:29:13 – 00:29:18
So Mueller launched, what about 69 months ago? Is that right?
Jason Schappert
00:29:18 – 00:29:21
Yeah, shortly they’re after the sale and everything else.
Jeff Bullas
00:29:21 – 00:29:41
Ok. So basically it was you looking at starting this app to help financial literacy of course, and aided by A I, which is, of course, so, of course. But, and that came out of your own struggles with money early on. Is that correct?
Jason Schappert
00:29:41 – 00:30:22
Very much so. Um, you know, it’s funny we began to hit a little bit of success in the aviation business and no one ever told me about making quarterly estimated tax payments and you better believe when tax season came around and I got $100,000 bill and I didn’t have $100,000 to cover it and I didn’t understand why and no one ever took the time to pull me aside and teach me. I remember going to try to get a loan and they’re talking about, well, your credit score is only a 630. I’m thinking, well, what does that even mean? How do I boost my credit like these things? Like, unfortunately here in America, you’re not taught these things. Certainly not in high school or primary school, certainly not in college. Um, they don’t teach you how to fill
Jason Schappert
00:30:22 – 00:30:48
to check. And, we, the demographic, the avatar for Mullah is like a 30 year old firefighter, a 35 year old nurse. Uh, someone enlisted in the military, like these people who are serving the community, working, working hard making ok money and just don’t have the time nor the knowledge to go and apply these practices. So we’re working through quick little videos. There’s a whole learning management system inside of it
Jason Schappert
00:30:49 – 00:31:19
to boost, like you said, financial literacy, which is unfortunate because these big banks here and I’m not going to name names, but you can think of the big banks. I’m sure these big banks preach Jeff. We are all for financial literacy and yet you look at their profit loss statement and boy, they make a lot of money on, uh, non sufficient fund fees. They make a lot of money on late payments and a lot of money on credit card interest. But they’re all for financial literacy and I feel like they almost want to keep people suppressed and ignorant because they do so well on the fees.
Jeff Bullas
00:31:19 – 00:31:27
Yeah. Well, the credit card fees, uh, for late payment are just HRI we’re talking 27% I think. Yes.
Jason Schappert
00:31:28 – 00:32:00
Yeah. The average here in America is 24%. I just looked it up. It’s ridiculous. And I was, it’s funny, I’m, I’m preparing for a webinar. I’m presenting a little bit later today. So the numbers are fresh. The average American has $6500 of revolving credit card debt, uh, 24% interest. Your minimum payment on, that’s about $100 and $30. And if you run the numbers, you will never pay it off. Even if you stop charging you at 24 percent interest, the interest outpaces the minimum payments. You’ll never pay it off. That’s why they call it revolving credit card debt.
Jeff Bullas
00:32:00 – 00:32:23
Exactly. Yeah, I look, I was in a situation, well, well, a long time ago and, uh, the only way to survive was actually using a credit card. Uh, but now I’m at a point where it is paid, it is fully paid off every month. In fact, what happened now is they don’t get any interest from me.
Jason Schappert
00:32:23 – 00:32:26
Love that, but you get your reward points, which I like.
Jeff Bullas
00:32:27 – 00:32:47
Well, I don’t even, I’m not, yeah, reward points. I’m not even a big fan of that because it’s, uh, but yeah, so it’s for me. I play my game using hopefully a bit of financial common sense. So let’s lean into Mueller and Mueller is actually a, basically a what we would call it a, um,
Jeff Bullas
00:32:49 – 00:32:52
I’m trying to think of the term for it, but it’s actually a term for Money
Jason Schappert
00:32:54 – 00:32:58
Muller is a slang term here in America.
Jeff Bullas
00:33:00 – 00:33:16
Ok. So what does Mueller do for me? Does it help me control my cash flow? Does it help me make decisions, send reminders? Does it help me invest? Um, and doesn’t predict the future? So, you know, a way to invest?
Jason Schappert
00:33:17 – 00:33:21
Well, I can’t, I can’t promise anything. Right, especially we’re recorded. Don’t, don’t get me in trouble now, Jeff.
Jeff Bullas
00:33:23 – 00:33:24
Right.
Jason Schappert
00:33:24 – 00:33:53
Yes, there’s my disclaimer. Thank you. Uh, Mullah is your savings banking investing app essentially. So it’s really twofold. I’ll start with the investing side because that’s where really, uh you’ve mentioned A I a few times and that’s where that’s really built on and on the investing side. We’re trying to really democratize investing here in America. If you want to invest in top exchange traded funds and everything else, many of them are $10,000 minimums, which may not sound like a lot to some people, but uh that third
Jason Schappert
00:33:54 – 00:34:20
A year old firefighter, they don’t have $10,000 to go lock up in some mutual fund or ETF. So we’re working to democratize that a Mola account you open with as little as $5 and you have access to all the same ETF S all the same funds um in that low and no fee environment just like the Wall Street Pros or just like those that open up their Schwab or their fidelity account, which carry much higher minimums from that standpoint because and how we’re able to do that is
Jason Schappert
00:34:20 – 00:34:51
We are not trying to create nor are we seeking out a bunch of day traders? Like if you’re listening to this and you are a day trader, Mullah is not for you, Mullah is for the kind of person that wants to make a smart decision on a few smart companies, few great companies, some ETF S in there as well. Exchange traded funds and let time and compound interest work for them, set up their retirement accounts, everything else like what, uh, day trading is so tricky. I don’t even do it. I follow a set it and forget it type long term model. And
Jeff Bullas
00:34:52 – 00:35:34
Let’s dive into that because this is interesting in that we have financial advisors that want you to come in, they will trade money for you. They charge large fees, they show you the fact that they’ve earned this much return over the last year, but they’ve got their hand in your pocket essentially because of the fees. And, uh, I think the numbers and this is what, you know, financial advisors don’t want to be known for, don’t want you to tell the industry or tell people is that, um, trying to predict the markets, like trying to predict the weather next year and, uh, taking a long position and using compound interest and playing the long game is actually
Jeff Bullas
00:35:34 – 00:36:25
disclaimer. We’re not advisors, financial advisors here, but the reality is that compound interest works. That’s Charlie Munger in one of his Warren Buffett, they take long positions, they reinvest in overtime. And I’ll use an example that I discovered on a weekend at our Australian Financial review newspaper the weekend it showed and this is a very, very powerful illustration and I actually used it in an article recently of the power of compound interest, it showed the American stock market with 10,000 just left in their dividends, reinvested left for 30 years in the American stock market index. Ok. Then there’s one with the Australian stock market index 10,000. And that for 30 years just left $10,000. You put it in a set and forget.
Jason Schappert
00:36:25 – 00:36:27
I reinvest dividends. Yeah.
Jeff Bullas
00:36:27 – 00:36:41
Yeah. So at the end of 30 years, the Australian stock market at an average of 9.7 or 9.9. Well, I can’t remember the exact number of people who have earned between 100 and 35,000. Um, it was the value of the account.
Jeff Bullas
00:36:43 – 00:37:04
The American stock markets actually earned two percent more over 30 years than the Australian stock market. So here’s the difference. $10,000 in the American stock market just kept sitting there earning dividends, reinvested everything else, not pulling anything out. $235,000 and,
Jason Schappert
00:37:04 – 00:37:30
and it’s a 2% difference. Now, now, now let’s go back to what you first said about the state of the industry. Imagine you and we’re not going to name names but imagine you go to that big fancy financial plan or whatever it is and their fee is one percent, 1.5% 2% right? You, you are missing out on so much and people don’t realize that fees just kill it.
Jason Schappert
00:37:30 – 00:37:53
So, uh at Mullah, we’re actually a judiciary essentially, we cannot legally charge commissions or anything like that. And don’t let these others, I’m not gonna name names, other apps fool you. Um, Some say they’re no commission, but there’s a little secret spread there that they’re really a market maker. And you think you’re buying Apple at 100 you’re really buying Apple, you know, at a, at 100 and five or whatever. And they’re keeping that nickel in between. It’s not
Jason Schappert
00:37:53 – 00:38:37
commission, it’s a spread and that’s how they get away with a lot of the stuff. We have no commissions. Um, as far as that goes and our, our monthly fee is 0.05 percent. So for an example, on every $1000 that’s 50 cents a month that you have to pay like it is, it is pennies compared to what these big firms are charging you. And by the way, those same, those same, uh, big brokerage firms, they’ll sell you whatever. They’re getting the highest commission on that, that week. There’s a reason there are stadiums and such named after these large brokerages because they’re making so much money and, and they call themselves wealth managers. And my wife and I joke that they’re really good at managing wealth into their pocket.
Jeff Bullas
00:38:37 – 00:38:38
Right. Well,
Jason Schappert
00:38:38 – 00:38:38
you know,
Jeff Bullas
00:38:38 – 00:38:40
We Steelers maybe are better.
Jason Schappert
00:38:40 – 00:38:49
Yes. Yeah. But I mean, the average assets under management fee is two percent and that’s the difference in your formula that you just shared. And math is math.
Jeff Bullas
00:38:50 – 00:39:32
Yeah. It, it, it’s, it was just such a powerful representation of the difference of just 2% over 30 years. And the thing is like I read recently a book which is by a top financial broker and he’s, he’s doesn’t act, doesn’t do day trading. And um I am not even going there, I don’t day trade at all. Um, I just take long positions. So uh but in Australia it’s interesting. And what next question I wanted to ask about is how you use A I in the investment part. I’d be interested in that. And you mentioned um exchange traded funds ETF S which are actually in Australia, it’s quite easily available. I have a well good, I’ve got a bank here and I’ve,
Jeff Bullas
00:39:33 – 00:40:04
I’ve actually taken a position in segments which are a basket within a certain industry such as the A I, such as the market as an index, also the fangs, the other. But that’s for me because I like putting a little bit of skin in the game rather than doing it just through my super or you call it a 401 over there. And um but how do you use A I in your investment? How the app does that and helps you with A I
Jason Schappert
00:40:04 – 00:40:35
Sure. So the best part is just now consolidating through all this data. So we produce a score on what we call the mullah meter, which is based on your age, your risk profile. For example, you and I would not see the same score and not have the same buy and sell signal at the same time because it’s customized and based on you and your parameters as far as that goes. But what we’re actually doing is we’re running through our algorithm which I back tested over that same 30 year period to make sure we’re exceeding the S and P 500 all of that. And
Jason Schappert
00:40:36 – 00:41:14
the math of that’s all on the website as well. But what we’re really looking for, these aren’t sexy companies. I know people want to invest in NVIDIA and Tesla now and all these things. But let me tell you if you went on the Mula app and looked at either of those stocks, they would actually rank very low because they are so hyped up now, price wise, Mula is gonna flag those overpriced. Not that NVIDIA is a bad company nor Tesla, a bad company. The price is just too hot right now. So not only are we looking at the fundamentals and by the way, we love our dividend paying stocks. Um, we love our gross stocks. The stock has to be profitable. It’s not even gonna pop up. Um
Jason Schappert
00:41:14 – 00:41:36
You look at an example like Uber people, people, unfortunately, they always want to invest in things they know and I, I agree you need to understand the company you’re invested in. But someone says, well, I use Uber all the time. Uber must be great. Did you know Uber was unprofitable for 16 years. It took 16 years to turn a profit and you just think, but they, but they were publicly traded for about half that time period.
Jason Schappert
00:41:36 – 00:41:58
Mullah would never recommend an unprofitable company because it’s just going VC round to VC round raising money, you know, trying, trying to stay afloat here. So, the kind of companies that are shown up. Uh I was looking at it recently, a Procter and Gamble is shown as a, as a, as a and again, the people listen to this recording. So please don’t run out and buy Proctor and Gamble. I’m not recommending that. I’m just using it as an example.
Jason Schappert
00:41:58 – 00:42:24
Procter and Gamble sells toilet paper and toothpaste, right? These are so you have to look at that too. Go. These are things whether it’s COVID, whether, whether Trump or Harris or whatever, right? It does not matter. People are gonna need toilet paper and toothpaste. So it looks at these sorts of things too. It looks at market sediment. The recent news about this did the CEO of Procter and Gamble just leave because Procter and Gamble may be a great company. But if they have a leadership gap, it’s gonna fly
Jason Schappert
00:42:24 – 00:42:49
that as well. So there’s so many different factors that go back to that avatar. I’m a 30 year old firefighter. I work 12 hour shifts. I don’t have time to be on C NBC or BBC or whatever it is all day following the news on Procter and gamble to see what’s happening over there. So we syndicate and do all that for them producing one simple score based on their tolerances to give them that smart buy, sell, hold type decision.
Jeff Bullas
00:42:49 – 00:43:01
OK. All right. So that raises another question for me that I’m very curious about. And that is how you, how did you build the algorithm that is actually sifting and trying to find the signal in the noise, all that data?
Jason Schappert
00:43:02 – 00:43:32
Sure. So I mean, the short of it, uh I hired seven different quants basically to go through it and, and, and work through and actually create the algorithm. So um we, I kinda they’re all remote. I can’t say I locked them all in the basement for six months until they came out with it. But we just continued. That’s the beautiful thing about the market is we have the historical data, build me the algorithm. We built the large language model to say OK, now run your algorithm over the next 30 years that one failed. OK, tweak this variable and they were just
Jason Schappert
00:43:32 – 00:44:12
data scientists. So we took these data scientists through and honestly, we took the best practices from a modern portfolio theory. We took the best practices if you’re familiar with like Ben Graham’s work uh on, on growth investing, we took some of the best practices from what Warren Buffett does. We looked at these people, uh even some of the day traders, right? We’re, they find this um we don’t get into candlesticks and all these sort of things. At the end of the day, we’re invested in great companies with great fundamentals and favorable tailwinds and news behind them. That’s what it shows. We’re not getting the candlestick charts. No, this is a reverse curve for this. We don’t get into any of that. This is a buy and hold type strategy,
Jeff Bullas
00:44:13 – 00:44:48
right? So I did love the fact that actually your, your overall strategy is buy and hold and let them run with it and because a lot of people aren’t prepared, they want quick wins. We want sugar hits. Um, reality is playing the long game is tough and you can watch the market go up and down just, I’ve got a, I got paid some Bitcoin a few years ago by some Russians. I was doing work for, I don’t know who exactly they were but they paid me. Um It’s not, I want to do drugs or anything. It’s just that they paid me for advisory work.
Jeff Bullas
00:44:49 – 00:45:18
Um It was, it was a very, very strange project but they paid me one crypto, I think some crypto anyway. So, but cryptos plummeted and rose and dropped. And it’s like if you lived your life based upon the algorithms rising and falling and rising and falling, you’d be a mess. You’d just be sitting in the corner crying just like you do when your plane engine blew up. And that’s right. So, ok. So,
Jeff Bullas
00:45:18 – 00:45:46
All right. So that’s really, I love the strategy. It makes sense to me based upon my experience and just continuing to take long positions and not trying to predict the market because as I said before, that’s like trying to predict the weather. You have no idea. And the thing is you can read the news about markets and are going about a certain big company. You do not know what’s going on beneath the surface.
Jason Schappert
00:45:46 – 00:45:47
Exactly. Right.
Jeff Bullas
00:45:48 – 00:45:55
So the other aspects to what you’re doing then with, um, the app, what, what
Jason Schappert
00:45:55 – 00:46:30
I’ll get on the saving side. I just want to make one more quick point to what you said. It’s great. Um, I don’t know how popular baseball is at all there, but it’s a sports analogy. So I apologize but everyone looks for home runs, the home runs, make it on the news. Everything’s great. But at the end of the day, a baseball game is won with a bunch of base hits. Just hit it, keep it in play and get on first base and then we’ll move to second base and we’ll take it little by little. That is true in business. That is true in investing. That is true in all aspects of life. I would just encourage you to stop looking for home runs. They may happen and that’s awesome. Right. Congratulations.
Jason Schappert
00:46:30 – 00:46:36
But don’t go seeking him out, just keep the ball in play one more time and keep going is the focus with that.
Jeff Bullas
00:46:36 – 00:46:45
So, give us a quick thumbnail sketch of what else the app does. And, uh, and also, uh, it’s a subscription model, isn’t it?
Jason Schappert
00:46:46 – 00:47:21
Uh, no, it’s actually not a subscription model. So it’s, it’s all that, uh, what we call an asset under stewardship fee. It’s 0.05% per month. That’s how it actually works. So, uh, our goal is to reduce the fees so much like this is a volume play for us. We, we are not, we’re not trying to get rich off just a few little customers or whatever it is. My wife and I have been wealthy and done very well and this is a great opportunity to give back and put the power back in the people’s hands. So the other aspect is the savings side of things. So, um, my mother still to this day uses the envelope budgeting method where she has a little envelope for everything for all her little cash and
Jeff Bullas
00:47:21 – 00:47:24
everything else. She says the way my mom operated.
Jason Schappert
00:47:24 – 00:47:59
Exactly. Exactly. Um, we’ve essentially digitized that and we call them pockets. So Jeff logs into his Muah account and Jeff, you’ve got your travel pocket, you’ve got your education pocket, you’ve got your going out to dinner pocket, whatever it is and you place your money in those different pockets and they’re actually savings accounts that are stashed away with the, with the goals attached to them, with, uh with the incentives and affirmations to encourage you to achieve those goals. And then you have your debit card, your spending card, which is actually very interesting and we encourage people, you have a spending pocket.
Jason Schappert
00:48:00 – 00:48:19
We encourage people to say, Jeff keep, just keep a few $100 in your spending pocket. So your debit card only works for a few $100. And when you go out, let’s say you and I go get lunch, Jeff, you hop on the Mua app. If you’re a diligent spender, you go to your dining pocket, you grab the $60 that our meal was, you move it to your spending pocket and
Jason Schappert
00:48:20 – 00:48:42
you give the waiter or waitress your debit card. And what you also did in real time is you reconcile that transaction like a quick book. So I now know that’s a dining transaction and you get this very detailed report by the end of it like, wow, Jeff, you really like going out to eat a lot, don’t you? Maybe there’s an area you can cut back on your spending, right? Whatever it is,
Jeff Bullas
00:48:43 – 00:49:11
I would actually hate to check my dining pocket. Um, cos I’m luckily in a position where I don’t need to. Um, but you never know when I might need to. But um, I just don’t want to think about it. So, how much of this is? I know the app’s doing it for you, but how much cognitive noise are you trying to manage about all these little things going on in your app? What it is like, all you’re doing is just watching money coming and going in your app. What?
Jason Schappert
00:49:11 – 00:49:42
Well, no, at the end of the day, we’re trying to produce the data for the people to make informed decisions and, and here’s the truth of it. These are all just guard rails that you don’t have to use back to the investing. If you don’t want to follow our recommendations, it’s your money, do what you want with it. If you don’t want to, you know, move it from your dining pocket to not, it’s your money, do what you want with it. The data will be as good as the effort you’re willing to put into it. Um And, and actually, in that way, we’ve tried to kind of make spending. This sounds very counterintuitive in an Amazon society.
Jason Schappert
00:49:42 – 00:50:12
We try to make spending a little painful again by having to move money from dining to the debit card because Amazon boy, are they good one click? And like it shows it’ll show up tonight if I order it and it’s, it’s getting a little bit crazy how easy it is to spend on something like an Amazon. So we’ve almost tried to add a little emotion, a little pain back to spending, to help those that need that and not everybody needs that. Right. We’re not, I’m not trying to be all things to all people, but some people need a little, uh, shock therapy when it comes to swiping that card.
Jeff Bullas
00:50:13 – 00:50:27
I do because it’s too much easy money, isn’t it? Yeah. And suddenly three years later they got 20,000 credit card debt and, and they’ve got three or four or 56 credit cards they’re going
Jason Schappert
00:50:28 – 00:50:30
and nothing to show for it. Just a bunch of junk that they buy.
Jeff Bullas
00:50:31 – 00:50:56
And like you said, their months are longer than their wages in terms of longer as in, they just run out of money. They hand to mouth. In fact, they’re actually still incurring debt every week, every day. Ok, let’s go, are there any other features of the app we need to talk about before we go to how people would use it? And
Jason Schappert
00:50:58 – 00:51:50
there’s one more I want to mention, um, and it’s the way to really automate our savings for people. We believe that small seeds grow into big success. So let’s use you. And I again as an example, you and I go to get a cup of coffee. Uh, that cup of coffee is uh, $6.95. You use your Muah card. Muah actually charges you $7. It gives $6.95 to the coffee shop and it takes that nickel extra that five cents and puts it in whatever pocket you choose. Maybe it’s saving for your child’s college education or that dream vacation. And I understand five cents, 25 cents, nickel quarters. They don’t sound, they’re coins. They don’t sound like a whole lot of money. But what we want to show people is small, purposeful actions over time,
Jason Schappert
00:51:50 – 00:52:14
add up to hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. And that’s another number we track is we call it our spare change feature. How much have you saved using spare change? When most people see it, they go, there’s no way I can save, you know, 10 cents to every swipe. Well, you’d be amazed every time you swipe your card. Uh, it’s, it’s painless when you do it because it’s just 10 cents. But boy does it add up and it shows people that small seeds grow into big trees.
Jeff Bullas
00:52:15 – 00:52:51
So there’s a, it was written recently and I’ve also been across it because I was brought up a fundamentalist Christian and there was a thing called tithe, but you didn’t give it to yourself. You gave it to the church, right? So that was 10%. And there’s nothing wrong with giving money to the church. But I think the church I like starts at home frankly. And so there’s just a simple strategy and sounds like what you’re doing with the app is fantastic is that you could almost say every time I spend some money, 10% goes into my savings account.
Jason Schappert
00:52:52 – 00:53:08
Yes, you, you are. Exactly right. We actually have it set up where every time you get paid you can move a percentage into the pocket and it never even hits your spending pocket. It just goes right in that savings pocket and is kind of out of sight, out of mind, a little bit right. To try to prevent you from going to spend it.
Jeff Bullas
00:53:08 – 00:53:46
Yeah. Yeah. And there’s just that power of putting away 10% every month. But the trouble is, people are hand to mouth so they actually never do it. And 3040 years later they want to spend a bit more time traveling and they, you know, I don’t believe in the R word called retiring. Um, I like to be doing things so it’s, it’s not, not putting up the feet on the sofa and, uh, essentially going and playing golf every second day. I, for me, it’s still about creating. So, but if you put away 10% just like the illustration on $10,000.30 years ago, it isn’t that compound.
Jason Schappert
00:53:46 – 00:53:47
Yeah.
Jeff Bullas
00:53:47 – 00:53:52
It is incredibly powerful. But people want those quick hits, don’t they?
Jason Schappert
00:53:52 – 00:54:29
They sure do. Uh, again, these little base hits are what wins the save. Just like the problem is people feel like, well, I don’t have enough money to start saving Jeff. Yes, you do. Start with a dollar. You know what, what’s that gonna add up? To $2.01 a day, just put it in there and get to work. Ok. That’s a 100% return. It sounds so insignificant to them. But you have to just start where you are. And that’s the big part of financial literacy that people don’t realize is, I don’t care what you make, I don’t care what your situation is, we’ll work on that. But let’s get you, let’s get you heading in the right direction because time is not on your side when it comes to the market, if you’re sitting on the sidelines like that.
Jeff Bullas
00:54:29 – 00:54:49
Yeah. So um the other question I had uh is so you’re taking this small clip of the ticket through which is so miniscule that people don’t even notice it. That’s how you get paid to provide the service that you do, which is great. So how do they sign up for the Mueller card? And let’s say it’s most probably is, it’s USA based, wouldn’t it?
Jason Schappert
00:54:50 – 00:55:17
Sure? Yeah. Uh us base, we are looking to expand kind of internationally. But even if you travel, uh and have the ability to set up a US bank account. If you’re coming over here on a visa or whatever that is, we’re still able to do uh all of those things even get you signed up um with a visa. And actually on the investing side, we’re working very diligently on getting approved in some additional countries because many people want to enjoy investing in the U SS markets as well. Uh, my wife is from Spain, uh, Majorca in particular.
Jason Schappert
00:55:17 – 00:55:42
So looking at kind of expanding to those markets of Europe and everything else too, eventually in Australia. But yeah, everything’s in the US uh app store. So you can see it there, whether that’s Google Play or Apple doesn’t matter. You can find everything just by searching Muah. The technical name is actually Muah Copilot. Uh You’ll see it come up there had to work in the aviation term and now Copilot Jeff is like this cool A I buzzword. So it’s like I feel like I was cutting edge on something, you know.
Jeff Bullas
00:55:42 – 00:56:04
Well, that’s what uh Microsoft codes, one of its apps now, the A IA I which is basically this assistant that helps you, which is the A I being in a lovely term with Justin Bars. I just talked about creativity and the use of A I and he says, well, instead of A I taking over everything, you’ve got to make A I your bitch. In other words, it’s working with you, which I thought
Jason Schappert
00:56:04 – 00:56:06
like that. Yeah, I like that.
Jeff Bullas
00:56:07 – 00:56:14
Yeah. So how do we, so what’s the process for people to sign up? And can you use it as a payment card? Just like a debit or a credit card?
Jason Schappert
00:56:14 – 00:56:21
Absolutely. Absolutely. So it’s a Visa card. You can run it right through just wherever, wherever that’s accepted. Super easy to do. Ok,
Jeff Bullas
00:56:22 – 00:56:29
cool. So the process is you put your information in and you send a credit card out essentially. Is that correct? Which is then connected to your Muller app? Is that
Jason Schappert
00:56:29 – 00:56:34
right? It’s gonna feel just like signing up for a bank account or your savings partner from that standpoint.
Jeff Bullas
00:56:34 – 00:56:44
All right, cool. So you’re, what, nine months in approximately, is that right? In terms of how, how’s it going without giving away your secrets?
Jason Schappert
00:56:45 – 00:57:04
No, I hear you. So, uh we are bootstrapping this business as well right now we have a little firepower behind us. So that’s, that’s nice from this uh from the exit of last business. But uh you know, we didn’t seek out any investors or VC money. Will we do that one day? II, I don’t know. Um But for now it’s still just back to that mom and pop business. But the cool part is
Jason Schappert
00:57:04 – 00:57:28
We learned so much over the past 16 years of the successes of the failures of our, of our last business. Uh you learn more from the failures and you do the successes sometimes and we like, it’s funny you say it, like, look what you’ve done in nine months, right? Nine months of the aviation business, we were still without customers, right? Whereas nine months of true effort on this and working smarter, not harder, you’re so much further ahead.
Jeff Bullas
00:57:29 – 00:57:58
Exactly. So just so just to is there anything else you like to cover like what you’ve learned along the way? And then I’m gonna ask you a final question, which is what would you do every day if you had all the money in the world? And that brings you deep joy. That’s the final question. So, but before we wrap it up, what are the major learnings you’ve learned along the way as an entrepreneur? Um, we’ve heard some of the stories. Is there like a top three or 42 or three?
Jason Schappert
00:57:58 – 00:58:37
I, I would, I would, yeah, I would say the biggest uh and it comes from Napoleon Hill in the book, think and grow rich in every adversity. There’s the seed of a greater advantage. And if you look at every problem with that lens of OK, there’s a seed of a greater advantage here. But what is a seed? Right? A seed is nothing if you don’t put it in good soil and water it and give it sunlight and bring it in when it’s too cold and put it out when it’s springtime and all these like you have to nurture it. So every time you hit a wall, every time these things happen, there could be a greater advantage to that like the engine failure or whatever it is, right? There’s always an advantage somewhere you have to look to find it.
Jeff Bullas
00:58:38 – 00:59:15
Yeah. And I think what you’re talking about is the attitude and mindset. It can be cliche as such, you know, there’s a gold lining in every problem. And, you know, for me, I don’t see it as a failure. I just see it as a lesson and, and sometimes the things that we really want in life, including some marriages or a marriage, um, hanging on to that, even though you want, you know, the best for the family, sometimes that produces the best opportunities in life. Um, so even though at the time it could be, you know, turns you to tears like your engine blowing and the sheriff turning up on your front driveway.
Jeff Bullas
00:59:16 – 00:59:46
Um, if you bring the right attitude, which is what you’ve said is the number one lesson, then, uh, you can keep learning and growing and I think that’s actually very, very wise. And, uh, thank you for sharing that. Hm. So, just to wrap it up, um, what brings you deep joy that if you got, had all the money in the world, uh, what would you do every day? And I think I know what the answer’s gonna be, but can you tell me about what brings you deep joy and can be several things that intersect or just several things or it could just be one thing?
Jeff Bullas
00:59:47 – 01:00:03
Well, we talked about it before we started recording. Uh, my, my wife and I, we have a six month old and, uh, her first word was dad. Not that I’ve been programming her or training her. I get the 5 a.m. shift. So that’s just like I’ve got a, I’m playing in the background, da da, da da, you know?
Jason Schappert
01:00:04 – 01:00:10
Ok. So don’t feel too important here because that’s actually much easier for a job to say dad rather than mama. Ok. So my
Jeff Bullas
01:00:10 – 01:00:42
My wife said the same thing, but I, I’m not, I’m not looking at that data. Ok? Um, but seriously, um, man, you see that little girl light up and, um, it’s, it’s funny because just, just before we started this recording, she was laying down here in the, we had this little studio just up above our garage. She was just laying down here, just laughing, watching me work and getting lights set up and everything else. I’m thinking like this is exactly what I did with my dad, you know, but pest control is just very, very different. So it’s just, it’s very, very cool to spend time with family
Jeff Bullas
01:00:42 – 01:01:02
and to bring others along that ride. So if money is not an issue, whatever it is, I’d still be working. Um and just working just as hard to bring as many people along. Um I, I don’t like the saying that it’s lonely at the top, right? That means you just need to bring more people with you on your journey up there. They gotta be wanting to go up there and put in the effort. Um But that’s what I do. I wanna bring more people along for the ride.
Jason Schappert
01:01:03 – 01:01:28
Cool. So what you really talked about is happiness comes out of people and community. And um that area and guess what? That just sums up a 87 year old Harvard University research that showed that the happiest people in the world were those that actually leaned into relationships um and community and um yeah, just summed it up. So you discovered the secret, Jason. All right,
Jeff Bullas
01:01:28 – 01:01:33
I didn’t even go to the harbor. They wouldn’t want me anyways.
Jason Schappert
01:01:34 – 01:02:05
Yeah. Well, yeah. So I tried to join IBM one year and a long time ago and they knocked me back. But then I went to kick their ass by out selling them in the government marketplace later with a competitor. So there we go. I love that. So Jason, thank you very much for your insight and wisdom and sharing experiences and stories. Is there anything you’d like to say before we wrap this up? Um In terms of you know, Muller and, um, or just anything.
Jeff Bullas
01:02:06 – 01:02:23
No, I’m just truly thankful for everybody’s time. I mean, obviously this is, this is over an hour now. Right time, time is the most precious resource that, uh, that you have. And the fact that they listen all the way to the end of this episode tells you that they’re pretty serious about, uh, kick starting their business, getting it going and, and really changing lives.
Jason Schappert
01:02:23 – 01:02:35
Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing your wisdom and experience because that’s what we’re trying to do, uh, with this podcast. We’re trying to share stories that make a difference in people’s lives and thank you very much for doing that. Yes, thanks Jeff. Thank you. Thank you.