Cooper Simson - How Martell Ventures Is Scaling AI Brands That Solve Big Problems for Businesses

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This is the Beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now, Sebastian Rusk Thanks for having me. Hey, thanks for being here. It takes time out of your busy day to hang out with me. I appreciate it, man. It's so great to connect with you guys. For some context for listeners, The one and only Coop is on the one and only Mr. Dan Martell's incredible team of world-class human beings over there at Martell Ventures.

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Dan Martell wrote a best-selling Wall Street Journal best-selling book called Buy Back Your Time. If you are consumed working on your business and in your business, you are doing it all wrong. That book will set you free. So quick plug for my friend, my coach, Dan Martell. being in Dan's group for the past eight plus months has not only been life-changing for myself, but also for what we do here and getting in that powering people to start their podcasts from that. Opportunities blossom. Cooper reached out and said, Hey man, Dan said to reach out. Let's have a conversation about podcasting. And while I said, well, we can start that on my show. So that's how there's a little quick backstory listeners. That's how we got to today. Uh, Cooper Simpson is the portfolio manager for Dan Martell. It sounds fancy as fuck and it totally is.

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because Cooper manages the entire portfolio of all of the companies that Dan both owns and partners with, with Martel Ventures. Martel Ventures exists to acquire and partner and or partner with AI brands and solutions that are up to do things. Cause let's face it, the robots are here and they're not going anywhere. So without any further introduction, let's jump right into it, Coop. And, uh, and actually let's back up a little bit. How the hell did you get a job on Dan Martell's team? Let's start there.

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You know what? Well, first of all, thanks for the intro. It's super flattering.

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Yeah. You make me sound a lot cooler than I am. But yeah, I mean, how I kind of ended up here was it's kind of one of those things where, like, when you look back in reverse, it's like everything just kind of falls into place. But It's funny, I was actually slated to go move to Denmark and then the pandemic hits. And so the town that I live in Kelowna, which is the same town that Dan lives in now, I basically just kind of made the decision I'm going to stay here, ended up bumping into Dan at a local event that was going on, knew a couple people at the time. I mean, he still runs them. I mean, back then. Dan, Dan still runs these things every Tuesday called the founders hike. And when I first got involved in this whole world, like we were lucky if more than four people showed up to this hike. So it was a pretty good way to kind of get to know both like Dan and a few other people took the time over a few months, ended up becoming running and biking buddies with Dan. So at the time he was training for an iron man. I did a lot of cycling. I did a lot of running. So we were just kind of running around. This is also before buyback your time. This is before. everything with social media. I think back then Dan maybe had 30,000 followers online. So not quite the social media personality Some people would say, I knew Dan before Dan was Dan Martell. I heard somebody Yeah. So like, this was kind of all prior to that, but ended up just becoming like pretty close to each other over, uh, just over biking and running. Also at the time he was like super frustrated because he couldn't do like a three 60 on his wake surf board. And I was like, well, I can know how to do three 60s. So kind of showed him how to do a three 60. And that I think kind of, me in the good graces and then fast forward about two and a half years ago with starting my own AI startup that was helping companies write government grant applications and Dan was also friends with one of my other co-founders in that business. We brought him into as a minority partner and then helped us get some pretty remarkable results for that business. Long story short on that, we ended up having to wind it down for a couple of different reasons, but right at the same time as that was shutting down, Dan was wanting to kind of gear things up and start launching Martel Ventures.

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So I had a bit of the experience at the time, plus the connection with Dan and kind of one thing led to another and the timelines just matched up perfectly and here we are now. So now kind of helping run everything Right. And so let's, let's talk about that. So what kind of things, I mean, what keeps you busy on a daily basis? What's the sole focus? I know I gave a quick 30,000 foot, um, overview. Um, and I still, I'm not, I'm not over there. I don't know what the hell's really going on. The new guy here. Um, but, uh, give us an idea of what's going on because I know based on our conversations leading up to the interview, I was already, my brain was already melting. I was like, this is outstanding. I love it. But let's, let's, let's chat about that for So yeah, basically what we're doing with Martel Ventures is essentially the concept is how can we take the audience authority and distribution that Dan kind of has now. So using all of the experience he has with building software businesses, all the people and contacts he knows that can help make that go faster and also the distribution that he has available to him to essentially partner with founders who are building AI first companies and just supercharge their growth and make sure they're doing it in the best way possible. So our mission is to basically get a billion dollars worth of enterprise value in the next three years. We partner with companies to do that all AI first. And so my day to day essentially split kind of between two things. One, I evaluate all of the companies that want to partner and work with us. So I think this year alone, I've probably met with directly over 300 founders that are all building AI tools. And So basically seeing everything and anything that's going on in the AI space. And the second part of my day is once we actually are partnered with and working with founders is how can we actually help those businesses get the most amount of results kind of with the levers that we get to pull. So, I mean, last week alone, we integrated some of our portfolio companies into a YouTube video Dan did, and we were like, we're still getting the numbers back in, but basically just a 45 second mention in that video filled one of our portfolio companies with over 600 new leads into their pipeline. I think he's still going, but I think like this week alone, he almost had like a hundred sales calls get booked in. So, uh, to put it lightly that one 45 second clip might actually just completely double his business. And I wouldn't be surprised if he's on track to be like close to a million dollars a year in ARR after like the first couple months and just like working with us. So that's kind of the I hate to interrupt you real quick, but this is important listeners. I need you to listen, but you might want to hit the little 15 second rewind real quick and listen to what Cooper just got done saying because Dan, Dan is what we, he is the epitome. He is the prime shining example of what true authority means authority means if I call you, if you know, like, and trust me and you consume my stuff or you do business with me or D all the above and I call you and I tell you to go take my car oil to get changed, you're going to do it with great. Pleasure.

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I use that as in candor on the end there. But the point is when Dan tells somebody to go do something, it's for good reason and they go and do it. Why? Because they know I can trust them and that my friends is Yeah. I mean, you couldn't have said it any better. I mean, it's like the one thing that. especially in this new AI era, one of the biggest things that is going to help, because essentially there's this whole concept that every company now, the bottleneck used to be development. Like you used to have to go raise a bunch of money, but a bunch of time, energy, and effort into getting capital to build out a product. And that's where your moat was. But with all these AI tools, now development is actually not the easy part, but it's kind of become commoditized. Like we have a lead developer that works with us at Martel Ventures. And every day he basically is just talking about how he's getting his little computer agent to basically just do all the programming for him. He's like, I don't even really do anything other than just tell it what to build. So development has kind of become this commodity now.

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So the real value comes into how quickly can you be creative, identify a problem, and then get customers to use your solution for that problem. And if you can get the distribution part lined up and done, you can win. But the trouble is, is that everyone's trying to go do that right now. So what you really do need them, what we're really noticing is if you can have like that trusted voice kind of stand behind the product or a trusted voice stand behind the brand and just say like, look, I've kind of given this my stamp of approval, which is essentially like all that I'm looking to evaluate is really just what are the companies that we want to kind of put that stamp behind, then you can make a lot of real cool things happen real quick. So that's kind of what we're really looking for and just finding awesome people building awesome stuff that So right. So so basically you're identifying someone's either pitching you guys or you're evaluating them.

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Yeah. This is really cool. Like if we could get our hands on this, we could absolutely, uh, put rocket fuel, um, on the solution, um, which everybody goes and wins and that's done through cash influence and contacts three things that Dan just happens to be really good at, uh, you know, but here we are. I love what you said about that. What was the traditional way of doing this? I'm a startup. We're going to go get a couple rounds. We're going to go raise a couple rounds. We're going to hopefully use those couple rounds to get this thing off the ground and profitable. Fingers crossed everybody. And if we don't, we got to apologize to our investors, wrap everything up and figure out what's next. Now, create the solution, meet a guy like Dan with a world-class team of resources and humans, and be able to say, hey, if we can get that stamp of approval, who needs this round, series round, that round, angel round? You don't. You can literally hit the ground running. I mean, that example you gave is insane.

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A 45, I don't know if you heard that or not, friends, you may want to go back to the episode earlier in this, in this episode to hear that a 45 second mention of a brand within Martel ventures and a solution 45 second mention in a video that Dan Martell did yielded over 600 leads. What in the world are we talking about right now?

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But, Here we are, folks. Welcome to 2025. The robots are here. They're not going anywhere. They're here to make our lives easier. That's another prime example of it. Replace a lot of stuff, but also make a lot 100%. It's less about like, I actually have a bit of a hot take on that. It's not, I don't think these tools are really going to replace the types of, there's certain jobs, like I'll be fully transparent. Like I've seen even this week alone, probably 10 ideas come across my desk that are like going straight after a receptionist. So there are certain roles where is definitely coming. But in the same vein, like we're seeing a lot of these tools, what they're really able to do is take someone who is on your team who might be like, say, a C plus or a C level player. And you can if they know how to use these tools correctly, it can actually augment them into being like a B plus a minus player. So if you're a smart business owner, what you're really thinking of is how can I get smart, capable people, give them the right tools. So I can essentially have a much better, more potent team of high level operator or high level executors. And that's really, I think like the smart businesses that we're seeing aren't actually like cutting stuff. They're just figuring out ways to find more people that can use these tools. So that way they're actually getting more output per person without having to like really increase complexity. So That's, I think, the real magic of AI, is I think a lot of people are really scared that it's going to remove all these jobs, when in reality, I think it's just going to augment a ton of Well, that's not happening in big tech, though. Big tech's just cleaning house and making big, giant moves. They're like, all right, 8,000, get out. Here's 200 million. Let's bring the best of the best in. Yeah. So it's interesting. But also, It's the way, I mean, they do innovate as large tech companies, but at the same time, you know, this is a whole different ball game. And I think that this is only the beginning because, you know, I've said for the past 10 years that everyone's sick of the guru and everyone's sick of whatever the influencer is. I joke that an influencer is someone who's paid to spread lies on the internet and everyone is sick of it because you don't know what the hell to believe. I mean, do you really like that widget or are you just talking about it because you're getting paid to be able to go and talk about it? The true influence is the person talking about a product resonates with the person that wants to consume the product or is actually consume the product. And I believe from the get that the tide will go out with all this. And I think this is an instrumental time and example of the tide actually going out where the only ones that are going to be left standing are the ones with true influence and true brains and true cash and Yeah, 100%. I mean, not to directly quote Dan, but like he's got one phrase that I think just rings so true. And it's just everything you want, whether it's personal business rests on the other side of your reach and reputation. And if you have reach and reputation, and if you've got that strong, locked in with the people that you want to resonate with, man, it's pretty hard to, it's pretty hard to lose in that scenario because you can just get in front of as many people as you want. And if they trust you, I agree. I agree. And I don't think he's going to have a problem with you quoting him. I mean, you're like two offices away. Number one, you know, number two, you know, as he tells us, Hey, take my stuff, use it. You don't have to credit me and I don't care. Go change some lives. When I saw that, that said one thing about the guy, his heart, 100%, you know, and that's, that's the other people when I wonder if he's ever going to listen to this episode, because I mean, I talk a lot. He said that you talk a lot. Like he would probably start climbing the walls. Like he might jump out of a window over there. Martel ventures with Sebastian and coop going back and forth, but we're talking about you, Danny boy. Let's go. Yeah.

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Yeah, no, it's actually funny. The other the other week, I actually got a shirt that just said, like, verbose over because Yeah, I am, too. I mean, he's not exactly quiet. So, I mean, there's not.

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But, you know, you and I were texting the other day while I was in the car. I was at a red light. Settle down, everybody. Don't at me. And he literally said, I got a guy named Coop on my team. Love to talk. Bought him a T-shirt.

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You know, this whole like, you know, but I thought that was kind of funny. I was like, wow, Dan's telling people he likes to talk.

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And I'm like, of course, and I'm talking to Cooper right now. I love, we have a lot of talkers here. Speak up. They told me to use my big words when I was a kid. I don't know if that was, that was great advice though. That was stellar advice. So it's middle of 20, yeah, it's middle of 2025 literally. We are right smack dab in the middle of 2025. What are you guys excited about other than getting on podcasts and spreading the gospel about what you're doing? Have more tell ventures. What are you guys excited about for Going into like, yeah, there's a couple of things that like, we're, that really get us excited. Like one concept that we have is just kind of like removing the middleman.

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So like, we're seeing a lot of tools that we've been evaluating, looking at, which are, Middlemen kind of sneak up in industries all over the place. You can think of it as essentially either a person who is responsible, sits in the middle of recruiting, a person that sits in the middle of debt collection, a person that sits in the middle of a number of different things. There's all these middlemen roles. And we're seeing lots of really, because what we also focus on is like, I'll be fully honest, like at Martel Avengers, we focus on like solutions that solve real problems for real businesses. So it's super cool that everyone in Silicon Valley is building in terms of like these massive frontier models and like breakthrough technology. Like that's cool.

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But we're like, what we want to focus on is, Hey, cool. Yeah. You guys can go build that fancy stuff. What's like a real solution that a business owner could use today to actually like drive meaningful change and growth in their company. So there's tons of opportunities with AI where it's developing to a point where you start to remove these roadblocks or bottlenecks within businesses, that gets us excited. And then the second thing is, man, we've just been seeing a lot more magic. We call them magic experiences. So anytime we see companies that come across our table that have these interactions or have these experiences that just make it feel like something happened and you're just like, wow, I had no idea that was even possible or, wow, that is a cool way of doing it. We're seeing just more and more of those pop up. And that's what gets us really excited because there's, there's things that people are doing now where we're like, we never even thought that that was conceptual or like that we never even thought that that was doable. And that's what really gets us fired. Like the other day, I was talking with a company that their whole business, they do multiple millions of dollars a year. They don't even have like a front end web interface. Like there's no product that you use.

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You literally just call. you just call a number on your phone, tell the agent what you want, which is like a voice agent, sounds like a person. And then on the other side of it, they just connect you with contacts who will help you reach your goals. You don't log in anywhere. You don't see a back end.

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And it was just like, it felt magic because all you do is you call this number, you talk to an AI and then in your calendar pops up three meetings and you're like, holy crap, that was fricking cool. And so we're just like starting to see more and more of these examples and starting to like, install them into like all the companies we work with to just make the world feel more magical Well, that's great. You guys are practitioners in addition to, you know, being, uh, you know, executors and integrators of, of these solutions. And I was like, Hey, listen, we're already, we're using these things because why they're great. And they make life easier, which is what we're all looking for. We're looking for an overall, easier life experience on here. And I think that's the very positive upside to AI and what it's going to do for life.

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Well, dude, man, I'm excited to see I'm excited to dive in and get in the mix. I know we're we're working on getting you guys on some podcasts over here at the podcast launch lab. And just, of course, being in Dan's ecosystem with Elite, his business coaching, by the way, if you are lacking in your business coaching arena, you need to follow Dan Martell and DM the word coaching, tell them the podcast suck I sent you and get in the mix. Come join some, these are some stellar human beings that we get to, we get to, to hang out with. And I'm, I'm headed your way. I'll be in, I'll be in old Canada, old Canada headed Yeah. No, it's going to be awesome. I mean, like, yeah, we're, we have a huge, uh, we got two events going on. We got one called like the social selling summit where basically we just break down the way that Dan was able to grow his social media. And then we have the second one, which is called the AI adoption summit, where actually that one is, if you, if you want to come to Canada and come for anything, come to that one, because we have some of the best and largest YouTubers and like content creators in the AI space that are coming there who are kind of giving their own speeches and keynotes in terms of how, they're seeing everything kind of at the tip of the spear with AI. Plus we're sharing everything that we're using, seeing, and doing to kind of stay ahead of the curve ourselves. And yeah, that event, the AI adoption summit, that's going to be pretty wicked. I think it's almost actually sold out right now. Is it open to the public? Open to the public, if what I'll do is I can, if you just actually message Dan AI adoption, what we'll be able to do is we'll be able to kind of get everybody set up with kind of, with kind of a link to go get access to that. I do think that it's a, it's about like 85% sold out right now. So if you are interested, act quickly, cause that one will sell out very quickly. I think there's only a hundred and some spots available.

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So that's a really cool one. And then Yeah, I mean, if anybody here listening is either building AI software or if you know someone who's building AI software and you think they either you or they can benefit from getting a lot of support eyeballs and basically just authority help, send me an email, cooperatdanmartell.com, and we'd love to kind of help get you sorted and figure out if there's a way for us to work together and partner together.

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Yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna include all this information in the show notes at the description of this podcast episode, in case you're wondering what the hell a show note is, or just reach out to me. I'd be happy to make an intro to both Dan and or Cooper as well, too. Cooper, you're the man. I'm excited. I feel like we're just getting started, probably because we are. And I'll see you in Kelowna in September. Excuse me, that's how excited I am, I got all choked up about it. I'm really excited about all that. Any final thoughts for our listeners on this whole world of AI and business and I would just say, yeah, probably the final thought, and this is one thing I just share with everyone is, You just got to play around with it. So at a bare minimum, like make sure you have a chat GPT account.

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It's like, I think the pro is like 20 bucks a month. Get the, get the pro one message around. And the biggest pro tip I could share is if you don't know where to get started, the beautiful thing is AI knows where to get started. So literally just ask chat GPT. Hey, I don't know what I'm doing. Can you give me a class or a masterclass or a walkthrough on how best to use you? You'll be able to start figuring out and you'll become a power user very quickly. But if you're not going to, if you want to avoid using these tools, Unfortunately, I think there's going to be a world of shock coming in the next few years here.

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But if you can get on top of it now, you're just setting yourself and your business or even just like for yourself personally, you're just setting yourself up to have a lot of fun and success in the in the next few years here.

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Absolutely. Listen, friends, this is not going to be like. the social media wave where I never needed this for my business. I don't need it now. Listen, the robots will regulate you, okay? They will show up and they will shake you down and your business if you're not aware, but it doesn't have to be like that. So the time's now. And also change your browser to chat GPT, okay? Just start prompting stuff every day. Cooper, you're the man. I appreciate your time, my brother. I'll see you in Kelowna in September. Sounds like a plan. Thank you. You got it. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story podcast. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. We sure do appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, launchlab.com studios.