Chris & Anil | Plan for Trip

Chris LaFay: Let me tell you about the story of car and Donut. You never know what you're gonna see. Just a furry little laser cat and stuff. Stunted, grown up with cute little toes made for squishing. There's Morai, the manager who loves his potions and keeps his emotions all under control. Sathamere the fabulous, who's up for anything. And when she's unleashed, you know heads will roll. Will the universe be chanting or cursing their name? Will they finally break them all or get broken by this sadistic game? Let me tell you about the story of Car and Donut. You never know what you're going to see. Just a little arma dressed us today. Who's dressed both of you? I dress myself and then I went off of the colors off of this too, and I picked Maya. It both look really nice. Stage biggest watching look. I've been told before. Calm down, it's just sports. Which sure, fair enough.

Anil Gupta: Really?

Chris LaFay: That's completely impossible. Because one moment can mean so much. And now four nations are this close. The four highest ranked. It's. It's. He's back. You feel your.

Anil Gupta: What do you call it, electricity jolt or something that why is not lighting up or like. Yeah, background.

Chris LaFay: Wait, my. Wait, wait, wait. What's up with my background?

Anil Gupta: What's happening? What is that thing?

Chris LaFay: This right here?

Anil Gupta: Yes, that one. Yeah. What do you call that?

Chris LaFay: The lightning bolt. Yeah.

Anil Gupta: Lightning bolt. Yes. Yeah, we call it jolt in India. That was like a weird word for that. Yeah. So I was having a hard time thinking about it. Yeah. So in your loom, it has some like multicolor effect. Why is not today.

Chris LaFay: Oh, it does. Oh, it is a little bit of a different color, isn't it? So what. What I've noticed and I don't know why this is so we have. I'm not going to use the word, but the Amazon voice devices in our house and that's what I trigger my lights for.

Anil Gupta: Okay.

Chris LaFay: In a lot of different rooms in my house for whatever. My. The lightning bolt is only triggered when I talk about my office light. So. And I have like, I have three different settings. I have regular office meeting, office and then off meeting. Turns on like, you know, these lights and turns on that as well too. For some reason. The Amazon skills to turn lights on and off. When we turn the lights off downstairs, it sometimes turns this bad boy into disco mode. It is. Every segment is a different color. It moves around and so.

Anil Gupta: Yeah, I saw that.

Chris LaFay: Oh, in the video. That's right. Yes.

Anil Gupta: The loom that you shared with Me. That's where I saw that. I was like, I like that actually.

Chris LaFay: It's, it's cool and. But what's really freaking creepy though is we'll. My office is upstairs and our upstairs. We don't. It's like a tiny little hallway. It's like if all the doors were open when you get to the top of the stairs, you could see all the rooms. That's how tiny the hallway is. So when we get home late at night and it's pitch black upstairs, but that dude's having a disco party. It is a very odd feeling when you're walking up these dark stairs to see the res of these like flashing lights going on. You're like, who broke into my house and is having a very silent party right now? And it's like, oh, my lightning bolt is having fun times. So. Yes.

Anil Gupta: That is weird. Yeah, that's crazy.

Chris LaFay: The joys, man. The joys. Are you back to 100%?

Anil Gupta: No. Yeah. And Aiden has been still sick. So just earlier like Adam had to change a couple of meetings today, but I was also starting like I changed my meeting with Chris three times. Like I'm not gonna change this time. I'm gonna. Even if Aiden is up, I'm gonna. He's gonna sitting. She's sitting on my lap, you know. But I'm gonna do this call I'm taking to the hospital after this call. Oh yeah.

Chris LaFay: Do you want to go take him to the hospital now? It's.

Anil Gupta: No, no, I mean I have an appointment. So they gave us an appointment for 3 o'.

Chris LaFay: Clock.

Anil Gupta: So anyway, so.

Chris LaFay: Oh, okay.

Anil Gupta: That's fine. But I needed it. We needed an appointment for, even for the urgent care too. So it's weird.

Chris LaFay: That's normally like all the urgent cares around here are dropping.

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Like you, you go. Yeah, you, you can schedule it like you can let them know you're coming within like a one hour window. So you can like right. Do all the like the pre paperwork ahead of time. But like if you're like trying to get an appointment for tomorrow. Yeah, that's not happening. That's weird man. That's weird.

Anil Gupta: I think they do that for like, I think more severe, serious situations. He has a fever and it's kind of like a follow up conversation but also like he has a fever. So we need to get see someone today, not like one week later.

Chris LaFay: Yeah.

Anil Gupta: So that's where they're like, okay, we can see you but we'll. But it will still be, you know, like that's part of like Urgent care.

Chris LaFay: I found out recently because I. I go to urgent. Almost said I go to urgent care all the time.

Anil Gupta: Yeah. I was gonna say.

Chris LaFay: That's like a weekly standing meeting just to get checked. No, the. The doctor's office that we're a part of, like, that's our primary doctor, our primary care. I found out like, a month or so ago that in that doctor's office, they have a couple of nurse practitioners that do urgent care there. So, like, I can. I now found out that I can go to my, like, main doctor's office that knows me and still do urgent care. I don't have to go see my main doctor, which I don't need to do that. That's fine. But I can keep everything, like, in house.

Anil Gupta: Right.

Chris LaFay: Which is such a nice feeling.

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Learned that new the other day. So I'm like, I know what I'm going to be doing from here on out. This is great. So the joys.

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Talk about next week. You still feeling good about next week overall? Yeah, excellent. Good. Just want to make sure that nothing changed with all the. The sicknesses and stuff like that. I figured.

Anil Gupta: Oh, yeah.

Chris LaFay: Make sure.

Anil Gupta: So, yeah, it's next week, right? Oh, wow. It is the 15th of July today, huh?

Chris LaFay: Yeah. Yep.

Anil Gupta: Okay. Oh, yeah. Next week. I'm still lucky in this. I think it should be fine. Like, I think what I have is probably just. It's nothing. What is called contagious. Infectious. Yeah. Like, calling is fine, you know, and all of that, so. And I'm getting better. It's just like Aiden, you know, because he goes to daycare, so I think he kind of like, can you get something from there? And I. I have, like, now more sympathy for the parents, especially the team members who are working in hospitals. I was like, sometimes I was like, oh, you know, you can still get things around. It was like, no. Like, once he's sick and you are sick, it's just a hell, like, you cannot do, like, I can't do anything. And like, all our schedule just basically. And it's one of the, I think, the craziest week this week because Colleen, I told you last time that they are merging with the big firm. So they have a lot of things signing and legal and all of that going on this week. So she's extremely busy, you know, talking to all these lawyers and figuring all the process out. So, yeah, we both have been just basically trying to do that. It's like, all right, you do two calls, I'll do two calls. That will be all the important One. Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Divide and conquer. You're over here, I'm over here. Hands in the middle break.

Anil Gupta: But no, I'm all set for that. And I think I'm excited about overall I'm excited about because there are a bunch of different things. While I was last few days I was a little slow down. I started writing. I was like, okay, what are the different topics I want to go over with you? So I started preparing that and I'll share the all the notes hopefully by Friday, if not by early Monday. So that in a Google Doc or somewhere where you can see things that I have on my list, I went through some of those like your care plan retainer that you shared with me, the 15k build and hiding a day designer combo. Some of those talk which was very helpful. So I went through all of them. I wrote down a bunch of notes and questions so we can also go over that too.

Chris LaFay: I have a couple of other thoughts that I'll be adding to that mix. One of my, the. The bullet point version. I sent you that event video. I also have like an operations dashboard that I built for myself and I've been showing it, not showing it off like in terms of like look at this, I'm a cool person but being like when people are asking me about like finances and stuff, I pull that up and I'm like, hey, let me actually tell you and show you. And a lot of people have been like this thing is so cool. I want this for myself. So my think one of my thinkings is and this is where I'll end my. My comment trail is yeah, I have these two systems that I actually am utilizing on a pretty regular basis that I think other agency owners would get value out of.

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Part two of that is my whole ideal client profile is agency referrals. So could I actually take these two tools that I have, the events thing that works really well and this operations dashboard that works really well. I don't want to create them as a software. I do not want to be a software company. These are vive coded apps. That's not a safe idea but maybe I could give them to agency folks for a small like one time fee and say here and kind of treat it kind of like the Basecamp guys do with their once.com things like hey, pay 200 bucks you have access to this now. You don't have to go vibe code this whole solution yourself. It's all right there. And it all has like API endpoints so you can use your Claude code or your Claude whatever and get data into it so that you don't have to do manual entry. So anyway, this idea of using tools as a source of cheap lead gen. Yeah. Is kind of that I haven't had time to put down a lot of words of that but one of my one somebody told me that last week and I was like that's a great idea.

Anil Gupta: It is a very good. Yeah. I learned that about that like how you can use all these different tools and share with you other founders or like your icps and if they are using it, you know, I think. Yeah, it's just like I think great way. It's a great like sort of like a business card, you know, where they will always remember you and keeping your mind top of your mind. Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Yeah. That's actually not a bad idea actually putting like getting a business card and having a QR code that links to like I created to. I create tools for agencies and. Here you go. Yeah, I know it's not what you meant by it, but that's the idea that popped in my head.

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Anyway, I digress. I'll send you over some updated stuff as well. We are still. So I'll be coming in later on Wednesday. Probably think around like 6 o' clock or so. When do you want to get. When do you want to get started? On Thursday and Friday.

Anil Gupta: Yeah. So let me. We have. There's one thing that I need to update you. I need to talk to Colleen first to confirm that. But our Austin house, we are closing that. So somebody put an offer a few weeks ago so they're buying it. And our closing date is July 23, which is the date of time. But we're going to do this virtually. We suggested them the 22nd of July. I need to confirm with Colleen whether they agreed to that. But we suggested like hey if we can do 22nd evening. So we will do all the paperwork. So then it will not basically disturb everything because I believe that you are getting in on 22nd here. Right. But we are starting on 23rd.

Chris LaFay: Correct. I'm not getting in until like 6. I'm not landing until 6 or 6:30. So like Wednesday is a dead day. Which I. I did that intentionally so that I could hang out with my wife in the morning of that day. So.

Anil Gupta: Okay. Yeah. And makes sense. And I think that will work to be. That's what I was trying to do is like okay, let's just get this done on Wednesday. So then we have a full July. July 23rd. I need to confirm with Colleen whether what they confirmed Whether they agree to that or they still stick to July 23rd. I suggested if it has to be July 23rd then I suggested them early morning so like 9, 9:30, 10. So then I can take care of that in that one or two hours hopefully. And it's all virtual so we don't have to go anywhere or anything like that. But maybe roughly less than an hour or something like that might be something that I would be busy. So I'll confirm with you on that. What's I talk to Colin. Nope.

Chris LaFay: That all makes perfect sense. So in. In general with or with or let's just pretend without the closing. What time does make sense to start? Is 9am a good start time or did you want to go earlier? Does not matter to me. Yeah, I know you're listening in general. So. Okay.

Anil Gupta: Yeah yeah no let's do the 9am because even though I'm only rise up at the same time like I think in the morning with Aiden, you know getting him ready to take care calling so need some help too with him before I think he goes to around 8:30.

Chris LaFay: Okay.

Anil Gupta: We'll be at 3,845. So yeah nine will be a good time and that sounds good. While we are on a call let me just text Colleen real quick here. So we also know exactly what's happening on the July 23rd. Okay, I'll let you know once I hear hear from her. But yes, if you start around 9 I think that would be good.

Chris LaFay: Perfect. That sounds. That sounds great. In terms of the messages. Nope, wrong one. This one? Nope. Hold on one second. In terms of the dinner day, let me. Nope, still the wrong one. I know how to use my phone. Could we do. We had put. We had said tentatively doing dinner either on Thursday or Friday night. Would you be game if we did? If we locked in Friday the 24th?

Anil Gupta: Yeah, probably actually. Excellent.

Chris LaFay: Yeah that'll be perfect. Okay, great sounds. Let me go ahead and update this.

Anil Gupta: Chris, let me put that on here too. Family calendar.

Chris LaFay: Yes, this is the.

Anil Gupta: You were going to have a dinner with somebody right? In D.C. too. Is that what you're planning on Thursday?

Chris LaFay: Yeah, and so they said. They said Thursday would work better for them and I knew I. You. I remember you saying that you were flexible and it didn't really matter too much and so I figured if they had a preference then I could just go with their preference so. So I just updated that in my calendar. Perfect. So we're good for Friday dope. Do we want to plan a place to meet at on the 23rd. You. I'm not. We don't have to plan all the like, you know, you kind of know the lay of the land. It's kind of new to you. I know zero you have a little bit of knowledge, but do we at least want to go ahead and pick together now where do we want to meet up on Thursday and then I'm pretty. In terms of as you're probably thinking through some like different places to go. The only things I don't really do are seafood. Like seafood. Outside of that, I'm not, I'm not suggesting you have to go through and plan every like five minutes of every day in terms of where we go. But as long as it's not a seafood only place, I'm pretty much okay. So.

Anil Gupta: Right. Always. So here is what I have a couple of like rough ideas in the. I haven't booked anything. But what I was thinking is we will meet near courthouse. There is like a cute coffee shop there which is Maman. Have you heard about Maman?

Chris LaFay: Wait, say one more time, what was it called?

Anil Gupta: Maman. M A M A N. No, I don't know Martha. Martha Stewart. Someone like she's I think famous. Has a books or something in cooking and stuff. I don't know her, but Colleen follows her.

Chris LaFay: Got you. Okay, I'm looking at. So this is like a place. This is a place in D.C. this.

Anil Gupta: Is a place in this. It's like a cafe coffee shop. But they have a bunch of. It's like a chain. So they have a bunch of like popping out everywhere. There is a really cute one I think where you are. Yeah. So they have like very, very nice interior and it's just like kind of like fun place to be. So yeah, they're in D.C. they are in courthouse. A bunch of different other places.

Chris LaFay: They are in courthouse. Okay, cool.

Anil Gupta: Yeah, there's I think very close from where you are staying and when my house is like it's like seven minute walk. So I go to that place a lot on the weekends too. So we can meet there. I think that will be the center for both of us. The middle. And then there are two WeWork offices. From where we are and we can walk to or take a metro to both of those we work places. Awesome.

Chris LaFay: That sounds good.

Anil Gupta: So what I was thinking about is I will book both. This will book maybe one WeWork on a Thursday and one on a Friday or we can find a wework Thursday you will be going. You're going to D.C. did you say?

Chris LaFay: Yeah. So Thursday we're gonna go. I'll be Thursday night for dinner. I will be. Did I put it in the calendar thing? I did not. Anyway, there's a Mediterranean spot I want.

Anil Gupta: To say Zytania,.

Chris LaFay: I am 98 sure that's right. Yeah, that sounds right.

Anil Gupta: Yeah, yeah, that's one of the. The top recommendation when it comes to the. The Mediterranean in D.C. yeah.

Chris LaFay: Yep. This is 100. This is it. So this is where I'm gonna meet them by 6:30. I knew it was near the White House. That's all I knew was it was that. And there's also a Metro stop pretty close by.

Anil Gupta: Correct.

Chris LaFay: Do it as well.

Anil Gupta: So, yeah, what I suggest is that we meet, let's say Maman at 9 to 10, you know, do a little bit of just thinking, planning, whatever, like, you know, and then I can book a wework. We work in D.C. and it will be easy train ride for us. So I can book and we work in D.C. and we spend a day on a D.C. that Thursday. And the later after our workshop, you know, either you can come back and go back again or like you, you can just head to the dinner. Whatever works for you. But yeah, we can do that because I don't go to D.C. as often, but that will be a good excuse for me to get out and do. And then Friday we will meet. We work closer to our house. So in the evening when we do the dinner with all of us, then we'll be also easier too.

Chris LaFay: Fantastic. I just wanted to make sure that we weren't. For the most part, all I really wanted to make sure was that we weren't scrambling Thursday morning. Calling you Thursday morning. Hey, where are we going? And so that's pretty much all I wanted to make sure of because at that, at that point there's a lot of places to walk around in D.C. as well too. And so like, if there's a WeWork, there's. It's probably in the middle of a city that's very. A part of the city that's fairly walkable in general. And that's just good to. Good to have.

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: So.

Anil Gupta: Okay. Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Awesome. That sounds fantastic. I'm so excited about this.

Anil Gupta: And you're flying back on 25th, right?

Chris LaFay: Yes, I'm flying back on the 25th. And it's early. It's just like at 11 or so. I did a. When I came back from New York, when I did the whole like New York Agency thing, I took a like freaking 7am flight. And that was right at like Friday was like the hangout Day. All day. And we ended at a bar. Now, like, I didn't.

Anil Gupta: Right.

Chris LaFay: I didn't drink and dance and do like, that's not. That's not me, as I'm sure you could assume. Yeah, but we were there until like 11. And that was me being extroverted from like 8am through 11pm and the last part of that was a loud bar. Like, it was loud. They had great live music. It was fantastic, but it was loud. So you were yelling for. I was yelling for three hours. And so then I didn't get back home to the hotel until like after midnight because ubering and training just took took time. And then I had to wake up at like freaking 5am to then uber 45 minutes. Anyway, all that being said, I don't do 7am flights.

Anil Gupta: One thing I will tell you that I. I have the same rule too. Like, I would. I would. I asked my assistant to kind of like find the flight, which is after like 10:00am, you know, so it looks like a reasonable time. And just recently, like, when I was in Australia, it just kind of like occurs to me, I was like, actually, I'm gonna change that rule when I'm traveling international. Oh, you know it. I learned that, like, if I, for example, for the time zone, like, adjustment, you know, this app that I was using, it wanted me to wake up at 4am So I was like, I woke up at 4am, there was a flight at 8am, I could have taken that. So I was basically woke up at 4:00am at the airport for waiting for my 11:00 flight flight, because that was the rule that I created. And I was like, actually on international, when you find that, like, okay, anyway, waking up early, like three or four is going to help you with your jet lag when you come back. So actually it's a good thing to do. Not. Yeah. So I kind of like adjusted my rule a little bit over there.

Chris LaFay: The. We went to Iceland, which is ahead of eastern time. And yeah, we had the only flights because it was a crappy airline were late night flights. So late time, Eastern time. So we landed in Iceland. Now, keeping in mind Iceland, at the time that we went, it was sunny all day, only like three hours of darkness a day. And we arrived, we got into the capital city, and I look at my phone, it's four o'. Clock. And I'm like, okay, great. I'm gonna call the Airbnb guy, see if we can get in. Didn't pick up. Yeah, didn't pick up. Didn't pick up. And I'm like, what? What is happening? Anil? It was 4am I called that man four times at 4am and we couldn't check in until 4pm logically. And so we had to be awake for like four for just a like a five hour, six hour plane flight. Because of that arrangement we were awake for like 48 hours and it was sunny midday, sunny the entire time. That yeah, that was the one of the worst travel day experiences of my life. Now I've never been across the ocean. Like I've never been to India, Japan, Australia, etc that I can't fathom that at all. Just that one little thing. I was like, I'm dead. I will whenever we do decide to cross the Pacific Ocean. Yeah, it's going to be a wake up call for me, quite literally.

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Awesome.

Anil Gupta: And I think earlier there was a lot of calculations that you have to do in your head like oh, what time I should now I found it very helpful and useful like Chrome asked Gemini extension. Like not extension but you can just on the sidebar you can chat with a tab and when I book a flight or all of that I can. I was like hey, I'm going to land it there here like I want on my written for whatever the times and perspective. What do you think this flight is better or I should get an early fight flight or later flight. So kind of like use me like oh, if you take that flight that will be better for you because when you land here you will land at this time and blah blah blah. So this kind of like things like earlier I was like oh this is a lot of things I need to calculate and process, you know. So I was like we'll figure it out later. So now it makes much more easier. So you should try. I actually tried that with some of my upgrades too. So when I fly international I tried to upgrade like some of the flights that I was like okay, I know that I have a client meetings and I'm not going to be so I will fly try upgrade to business first. When I upgrade it it will show me like okay which seat you want to select. So that's where I was like I lost on a Gemini on a tab and will give me like okay, this seat has a lot of I think you know the walking space and like noise. But if you see like this one there is no whatever like you know the stuff there. So it's like very helpful making some of those like simple decisions.

Chris LaFay: Ali just texted me, give me one second. This is not meant as a complaint but it Just a. Is a reminder of me, of how vastly different my life and my wife's life are. When she texts me something that is timely and she knows I'm in a meeting, I don't process her text messages. Like, in my brain, I see it pop through and I'm like, I'll deal with that later.

Anil Gupta: Right?

Chris LaFay: I. She doesn't do. She doesn't have to do meetings. She doesn't have to, like, she doesn't do that in her life.

Anil Gupta: Right.

Chris LaFay: And that's okay. Like, that's again, not a complaint. But she doesn't realize that, like when I'm in a meeting, it's not that I'm ignoring her, it's that I'm. It's getting bucketed over here to deal with later. No matter what kind of me. You don't care if I text my wife while we call. I know that. But I. There's this mode of just like, I'm doing a meeting, I'm not texting. And it.

Anil Gupta: She.

Chris LaFay: It doesn't. That doesn't calculate for her. It never has. And it's always like, why didn't you text me back? And I'm like, because I. It's. I'm doing. I'm using my whole brain for something. Which is shocking because I can have Claude code over here on this literal. I literally have a computer running AI.

Anil Gupta: Stuff on this guy. Yeah, no, I, I get it. I think I have a couple of friends who are like that. Like, if I text him in like 30 seconds, I'll get the text response back. And sometimes I tell Colleen and I, we both are like very focused. Like when we are focusing on something, we just do that. And later on, you know, I think I'm even probably worse because I take a very long time to respond to texts because I just kind of like need the time. Like, okay, this is my text response bucket and I respond to everything.

Chris LaFay: I was right. I was right, I guess that I was talking to Ali about this. I was like. And Neil always texts back, but it's like three or four days later. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure he has a window of time like twice a week to respond to all non family emergencies and non work emergency texts. And he just goes through all of them in that two hour bucket and just knocks them all out. Yeah, you should do that, Chris. Because I suck at so.

Anil Gupta: Yeah, I know. So Colleen and I, we both are like that. Yeah, we respond when, like, you know, have a time. But yeah, there are some other friends who basically Kind of like told me like you respond to text very late and I tell them. I was like, I'm actually not good at like, I text is like if something I didn't just call me, you know, I'll just talk to you and we can figure that out. But like I'm not good at text and emails. Like, like those are something that I do it, you know, when I, I. It's on my calendar, right?

Chris LaFay: Yes, exactly. Anyways, so what was the. I had a, had a question I was going to ask you. Do we want to put. Not literally in our calendar. Do we want to talk about like what do you, you do these types of things often with yourself, obviously.

Anil Gupta: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: When I went to Austin, you kind of had an idea of like, hey, this is kind of the arrangement of the day in terms of like overall topics. Do you want to kind of create like a basically like two part agenda for each day? Like part a, like part one of day one, part two of day one, part one, day two, part two. Not as a, like hour by hour, but just general, like, like some sort of structure? Yeah, yeah. My general thought was, was this. I wrote down a couple of notes thinking of it kind of in four buckets, if you will. So bucket, I think what we, I think bucket one, and maybe that's through lunch on day one is we decide, we can decide live how to do it. We kind of divide up the first bucket where we actually kind of, we ping pong back and forth between the stuff that we've written about. So you have a handful of things you're going to send me. I've sent you a handful of things. I have a couple more. And we focus in on those. We go, one for you, one for me, one for you, one for me. And kind of bounce between those for a little while. Even throughout lunch, I haven't thought about part two of day one. But then part one of Friday is where we do our collaborative brainstorming on what is this new. What would a new business be that isn't building websites? So I think at the end of day one, I know I have a couple of random thoughts. So I think the idea of closing out day one of kind of tossing out some of our random thoughts and ideas just to start getting the ideas percolating. Then on Friday we start with our brainstorming session which will be at. We work anyway close by. So we'll have whiteboards and all that other kind of fun stuff and we can spend the first half of the day on that as long as we want. And then at the end, if we, if we decide we want to use the whole day for it, I think that's a great mental exercise anyway to spend the whole day on it. But then at the end, we can then circle back to any of the topics from the day before. So basically we spend most of day one talking about what's happening in the business over the next quarter with the questions that we're going to talk through. And then day two is brainstorming new things. So.

Anil Gupta: Right.

Chris LaFay: That's my baseline. I haven't done this before other than the one time with you, so I am very much open to your idea on it. I just didn't want you to feel like you had to come to the table with like, here's all the locations we're going to, here's the topics, here's all the things.

Anil Gupta: I appreciate that because I'm not in the right mentally right place this time. Like, yes, last year was different this year. Like, there's a lot of things going on. So you are right. Like I'm not mentally. You don't know about it. Right.

Chris LaFay: Really? Shocker. I thought life was easy for you right now.

Anil Gupta: I know. Yeah, I thought so too. So. Yes. No, I need, I certainly need help in the sense, like collaboration. Oh, hi. You want to say hi to my friend?

Chris LaFay: Hey.

Anil Gupta: You met him, right? Didn't we go on a dinner?

Chris LaFay: We did. He should, absolutely. He should recognize my face. He should know my name. Yeah. He should know my company, what I do. I mean, I mean, the dude's like what, one and a half years old? He should remember all of this.

Anil Gupta: He surprisingly has a very interesting memory. Like some of the books when we read him. Yeah, he, like, he can't read the words. But on that page, I don't know, it's a picture or whatever, but he know exactly what to say on that page and he will say it. And I was surprised. I was like, wow, you know, like, I don't know how he knows that.

Chris LaFay: That's impressive, man. We, we don't have kids, but we have. My sister in law has two and they are six years old and three years old. And the six year old, she, she was born at the same time as a lot of our friends had kids. So basically during that season, we had a lot of kids popping up in our lives. And my sister in law's kid, dear Mercy, that kid is. We had a lot of direct comparisons of like kids that got it and kids that didn't get it. And her kid got the like the memory side of things where like she, we you. She would hear one word, she would see like an item and the word that's a toast associated like excavator and stuff. Like, and she would just hook onto those words and those images and like we would be like driving and it's not like the basic things like police car, fire truck. It was like weird construction equipment that I don't even know the name of amongst all the other normal things too. And I'm like, if you can remember this well now, hopefully this is going to be very pertinent for you later down the road.

Anil Gupta: So yeah, it is a great skill to have. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. And yeah, it is amazing to just see that like how some of those things that the way he remembers. Anyways, so going back to the planning the day. So here are my thoughts. Like yes, I need some of your help too. But right now where I am and what I have in my mind, I started to put like some topics and the questions that you know, I want. I didn't decide like okay, what time, what day, what place we will do. But I just started to put some of those questions on my notion. Doc, you want to go to mama? Where you are you guys going for a walk? You're going to go for walkie. Go for a walk. She can't hear you.

Chris LaFay: But no, that, that's. Yeah, I realized halfway there was like.

Anil Gupta: But yeah, like this is really easy to understand. So what I was suggesting gonna suggest is for those two days, first thing I want to do and this is what I'm gonna do by this Friday is kind of like write down. And that's what I started yesterday, writing down like okay, so the topics that you suggested, let's say how much time we should put. Put that 30 minutes, maybe an hour. So kind of like just different. And these are all different kind of discussions too. So I just putting some topics and just putting like rough time like oh, this topic is good for like at least we should spend 45 minutes or 30 minutes or an hour tentatively just kind of like stay on the topic. And so overall what I'm right now doing is just trying to put all the topics in here. And once we have the topics then the topics library or topics backlog from your side and some of the mito side. Then I was, when I was in Atlanta and that's something that I, I think we did some version of that in Austin too where we take one topic one place. So we kind of like there's a coffee shop let's say my mind, we pick up one topic, you know, so we talk about it, brainstorm it and, and we can stay there like an hour, 30 minutes and 90 minutes, whatever that looks like. But one or two topic. But once like okay, we are leaving this place, we wrap up there, move on to a new place. It can be a Weaver, maybe another coffee shop, maybe a lunch place. So that's kind of what I was thinking. And then wherever we are, the location specifically appropriate, we will pick a topic like something that requires a whiteboard. We'll wait for WeWork to go to WeWork. Something that's like, okay, this is just, you know, we're just basically doing some reflection on life and work and brainstorming. We can just do it while we are walking or while we are on a coffee shop or somewhere. That kind of. I was thinking about and you're right. I think the first day, what I was thinking is we'll just basically do this topics and we should put some priority. If we have a long list of things. What I would do is just put a priority like okay, what is something that we don't want to miss this topic. If we didn't get to cover it, it's fine, not a big deal. But this topic, we want to spend more time on that so we can set a priority if we have a lot of topics. If not, then we can pick whatever in the list and run the day one based on that. We'll see. Let's say end of the day, do you feel like, okay, we, we went through all the topics. Okay, great, then we can revisit some of the topics. Second, they feel like, okay, we only got to three topics, but we still have four topics that we will go over the next day or like, you know, go a little bit more deeper into the topic that that's kind of like what my idea was.

Chris LaFay: I wholeheartedly agree with that. And I went ahead and created a Google Doc that I just shared with you where you can go ahead that I'm putting. I will consolidate my stuff into here so that this doesn't become a 15 mile long document and then we can then put something like that next to each of them effectively something akin to that. And so that's what we could do there. So that's all, that's all there for us now.

Anil Gupta: So perfect. Yeah, so. So yeah, that's kind of like the structure I was thinking in terms of the team from my side, what I want to show like as I told you, I am very consumed. My Whole brain is, is consumed by the what's going on right now. So I have a couple of topics related to that where I just want to brainstorm with you. But most topics I have is like not much related to the existing business operations, but just kind of around like, okay, how I navigate my thing with Aslam, you know, also how I kind of like just as use these opportunities. Like, okay, this is like first time in the life where I was like thinking about like, okay, something beyond multi dots. Like, okay, this thing here, you know, it's not like a deadlock. So it's like that's kind of like what I, my team is around more. All my topics will be something around that where like, okay, if we have to start something new, you know what that looks like. I just like a bunch of different like ideas before where I was like, okay, I'm very busy with multitask. I don't have time to do this. But I was like, okay, now I want to put it down and just see that what it. What. Where those ideas can lead. So that's my primary theme from my side. Another thing, what I wanted to do is like with you. And that's. It's not going to take the whole day. It's just probably a couple hour conversation. And by. It's by design. So I will not have a long list of topics, maybe three or four max for now. But I want to spend more time with your topics because that's kind of like also be a good distraction for me and also kind of like something that I find when I look into and talk to you about like these other parts of the business and, and how you run it and how I can be helpful, that kind of like also becomes like really good actually. Yeah, just a little distraction and fruitful for me because then I was like, oh, this is something that we discussed. You know, I can also apply in multiras too.

Chris LaFay: Oh, 100. That's the. That's all fine with me. Like I, I have no problem with that. I know that when I, this is not an intentional part of my personality, it's an accidental one. But once I start talking about stuff when I'm talking with somebody that I know that actually gives a crap, and that's a, that's a big caveat is when I start talking about my own stuff, I just get on a roll and I just keep going and I keep asking questions and I keep diving deeper and all that jazz because I know the person on the other side cares. But I also know that that goes On Too far, Not too far, but like, it could very easily consume a large amount of time unintentionally. But I also know what it's like being on not exactly going what you're through, but just going through negative crap in general. And sometimes it's just nicer to talk about other people's stuff. Like, it's just. It's just like it's. It is helpful. Like, I mean, I have a couple people that I talk to here. Actually. One of the. The person. The people I'm gonna go have dinner with on Thursday. They run a small little squarespace company and they're two. Their twin sisters. I don't know who is who because they only ever join video calls together. And I've. They. They don't look identical. They have a lot of similarities, but they don't look identical. But I've never talked to them one on one. So I'm gonna have to figure out somehow how to remember which of them is which. But anyway, I digress. But like going through all their stuff, like, I'm very excited to go hang out with them because I'm gonna talk like, because they had a lot of struggles. I'm very excited to like talking about what all they've been up to and how I can help. They'd be a fun person for you to get to know. They're not. I don't know if you ever decide to do events, they would be fun. They would be good people to add into that mix. I think they know they probably. They actually, I can almost guarantee you they don't know your icp, but they're just good people. So I digress. That all sounds good.

Anil Gupta: Yeah. And regarding the. The time and that's kind of like what I was like. Let's see how many topics we have. If you don't have that many topics, then we can put more time to topics like, okay, this topic. Let's give it two hours. So then we are not rushing it or trying to wrap up. If you feel like, okay, we have a lot of topic, then we can kind of like allow. Try to kind of like at least touch on all those topics on a day one and then go on a topic where, okay, this topic we put an hour, but we wrapped up in 30 minutes because it wasn't required that much. So then. Yeah, so I'm not. Again, the goal is not to try to cross the list off. The goal is to make sure that we. We spend like quality time and brainstorming and kind of like come up with Something that helps you and me both, you know, navigating, you know, whatever are the next goals or the desires are.

Chris LaFay: And then plan the next one of these too. So I. There's actually going to be a week in April that my wife is going to be out of town again. So April of next year, April of next year she's planning a. She's thinking about doing a trip by herself which she is both terrified and excited about. And so we don't have to necessarily wait till next April to see each other again. But that is, that will be a week that yeah, I will have pretty dedicated where we can actually maybe even go somewhere if we plan far enough in advance, we can actually go somewhere different as well too.

Anil Gupta: So I like that.

Chris LaFay: That's all great. I know we have about 15 minutes, we don't have to use the rest of them, but I am curious, Give me the, like, give me the two minute version of what's all happened in the last couple of weeks with Aslam.

Anil Gupta: Where we are right now is we are finalizing a valuation company. So you know, so third party valuation company, they will value the multi dots. So that's where we are finalizing and it hasn't finalized. But once that's finalized, the next step is to get the company's true valuation. And once we have the valuation, I think at that point I will know what exactly is happening next because so far all the discussion that I had with Aslam, it feels like he was kind of like keeping all the options open. But my guess is that I think he's getting closer to the door where he will, he will sell it to me. You know, I feel like I have just that feeling again, I don't know exactly but he, overall it feels like once we have the valuation, my feeling is like once we have the valuation evaluation comes down super low probably he's like, I'm buying you out. You know, I'm not selling at that price, you know, or it's like this is my price. It's like if the value comes down a little bit higher or something that's like, okay, you know, then you can buy me out. So that's what I see. But again, I don't have an answer. But overall at least like I know that, okay, now we are not in the discussion of justifying each other why this is happening. You know, who's right, who's wrong, we can pass that, that phase and we both had accepted that, okay, this is something that is now, you know, doesn't matter who is right who's wrong? This is something that is not going to work. You know, we need to find a way how we can speed that. So overall, yeah, that's where the next step is that at the same time, like, you know, the options wise is like, either Aslam is going to. I'm going to buy ASAM out. That's the main, main, main. I think my goal is if for some reason, you know, I, Aslam surprised me and like, no, you know, it doesn't matter if it's a 10 million. You know, I'm. I don't want to sell. You know, I want you to buy me out. At that point, I was like, all right, in that situation, maybe I need to find some creative options. Like, okay, I'm buying you out and I'm also giving you the dots. Or I think we talked to some of our how we can kind of like create. Okay. It's not just the binary. Whether you buy me out and I buy or like there are other options too. Like, okay, if he doesn't agree to that, then those other options are something that I'm working on. But yeah, I think that's where we are.

Chris LaFay: Okay, so. So the meeting up in Canada was a good level setting time. That's kind of what I'm hearing.

Anil Gupta: It was. I think the meeting in Canada certainly kind of like helped us to both see where his head is, where my head is, you know, remove some of the ambiguity. But it necessarily did not, did not help us. Productive. The reason, I think the big reason was you never met Muslim, but his personality is like, he doesn't know what he wants to do in his life and he never, he doesn't. So he doesn't have that conviction or like strong like, reference to like, okay, you know, this is what I want to do. He's just, he's like a water. Which is what I told him. Like, he's. It's a great strength. He's not weakness. Like, he's like a water. He can bend in any way, you know, and. And that also kind of like become a challenge for the other person because you don't know what kind of hustlam you will get today because he will say something to you. Yeah, he will. Yeah, he will. He will make all the promise to you on a call and then second day, you will get an email from him like, okay, I'm not doing that. It's like, wait, what? You spend two hours discussing about that and you say that, that I just re. Agree. He's like, that. He's like not afraid to change his opinion. He's not afraid to, he doesn't have an opinion. So basically at this point that's, that's where my challenge is. Like right now the attorney that he's working with, they are basically a litigation attorney like Sharp, you know, so they are basically whatever they tell him, he's kind of like just going with that. It's like, okay, my attorney told me to do this so I'm doing that. So that's my challenge.

Chris LaFay: And I know I don't know him at all, but based on all what you told me, I have a couple of people that I know in my life that fit that mold so well and I know that they're not a one to one the exact same, but I can definitely, I can, I have a really solid picture in my head of what that's, yeah, how that is like talking to him and that's, those are some of the people that I don't talk to very much anymore. Shocker. They're good people, don't get me wrong. But yeah, yeah, exactly. They're that, yeah, I, I got you.

Anil Gupta: Same thing. That's what I think told Aslam too. And a lot of people I was like, he's a really good person. You know, it's just something that he's not, I think it's just not working as a partnership, you know. And it worked as a partnership because of his strength. But I was like, now we are getting ready multidots for the next summit and that's what something that I also explained to us like hey, we did like two, two mountains climb together but the next mountain that we're going to climb and it requires a very different kind of skill set, different of kind, kind of like leadership. And it's just that, you know, my honest assessment that you are not fit for that, that's my honest, that's the only reason. Otherwise you are a great person. You already climbed two mountains with me and those both were fine. But you know, we had some challenges but it was not an, you know, like a road blocker. But the next summit that we want to climb, you know, I don't think so that you know that you are the partner for that client. So he kind of understood that perspective then.

Chris LaFay: That's good. I heard somebody, somebody told me a long time ago, I, I, I know it's a common phrase but the, the people that got you to where you're at now are not the same people that are going to be able to get you to the next thing and the next thing doesn't even have to mean humongous and big. It's just right, the next thing, instead of climbing mountains, you might be going through different forest or something like that. Like, it's, it's very different. Don't get me wrong. Like, I still haven't come to like full grips with that. That phrase yet and understand it, but it is what it is, so that's good. I'm glad that. Glad the bumps in the road are less bumpy. The height of the bumps is a little bit shorter. That's good.

Anil Gupta: Yeah. No, true. And I think that's what I'm. I don't know what exactly valuation is and what, how he's going to react to the valuation. That's about unknown to me. And that's why I was like, yeah, okay. I don't know. So basically I have to just wait for the valuation and then I'll find out whether it's going easy or it's going to be more difficult. Whether he's staying or I'm staying. All of those questions will be kind of like get clear after that.

Chris LaFay: Do. When is that supposed to come back? Do you have a date on that?

Anil Gupta: That's a challenge. This attorney that he has hired, they basically are worse attorney. I think I. My attorney or like I have seen anyone. Anyway, basically they just find all the reasons to delay things, which again is a bad tactic. But we still haven't finalized the evaluation company. So once we find I've given a deadline by last Friday and they sent like Friday 11:30, 20 questions about the valuation. And I told my attorney this morning, I was like, why? They waited like we. Because we gave them a deadline of last Friday. They basically waited all the way end of the Friday, 9, 10:30 or 11:30, you know, and they are in east coast, they're in Delaware, you know, but still, like they sent us this email, maybe schedule it, you know, nighttime. So basically this Monday, this week, I talked to my attorney and I was like, give them another deadline, you know, but let's finalize the valuation company. So once we have valuation company, typically they take three to four weeks for the valuation. But that might be, let's say in our case, probably maybe longer, you know, for four to six weeks. So it'll be another month and a half by the time we'll have evaluation.

Chris LaFay: Oh, man. Not. I get it. Don't get me wrong. I get it. There's a lot that goes on to it. But that's nuts.

Anil Gupta: Yeah, it is nuts. Yeah.

Chris LaFay: My last question for you, that has nothing to do with anything at all. I like the new bookshelves behind you, by the way. I see you've adjusted.

Anil Gupta: Thank you.

Chris LaFay: But why? How did a starring Bucks cup make it onto your minimalism bookshelf? Like, that's just a regular old Christmas. I'm pretty sure it's a Christmas cup because it's red.

Anil Gupta: It is. It is. Why? Two reasons. One is it has lots of sharp stuff I'm trying to keep away from because Aiden just walks into my office and he just picks up everything it has. It basically my pen holders. So it has all the pens and stuff, which I keep it on the table, but he just comes in and just throws everything. So I'm trying to. One reason is I'm trying to keep it away from his reach. And the second is Colin is much better on organizing this stuff than I do. You know, I just throw every stuff. So what we did is I just. We built it this weekend. I got this IKEA bookshelf, and somebody helped me build it. I still have tons of book in our bedroom. So Colleen was like, when I get free, I'll help you organize. So she's just busy. And for right now, I just. I was like, okay, I'm just gonna put things where. Whatever, you know, and then later on you can help me. So she's gonna do some work later on when she has time. Then it will look better. Then probably Starbucks stuff will not be there.

Chris LaFay: The man who is, like, so intentional about every. Every, like, little minimalistic thing has, like a cheapo, crappy Starbucks cup just chilling out there. And I'm like, this does not belong here at all.

Anil Gupta: I know. Yeah, there are a lot of stuff like that. Yeah. Which we need to work on. But yes, it is something that. We built it this weekend, and Colin is gonna set it up so slowly.

Chris LaFay: Very, very nice. Very nice. Well, awesome, man. Well, hopefully the hospital urgent care has good things to say about Aiden. And have fun. And for whatever reason, I'll text you or talk to you before next Wednesday. I'll see you more than likely first thing on Thursday morning, unless you got to close the house. So.

Anil Gupta: Yeah. Yeah, so we'll sit down. Told me that she. She doesn't have a exact answer. She reached out to our agent. So. Yeah, I'll update you on that. But overall, yes, I'll try to update all the topics by this Friday as well. And if we need to connect again, we'll see otherwise. Yeah, I'll see you on Thursday.

Chris LaFay: Sounds like a plan, sir. Have a good rest of the day. I'll catch you later.

Anil Gupta: You too. Bye. Thanks, Chris. Bye.