And that's how we grew. And that's why I tell people I say to blog, I don't actually mean blog, but I meant create Beggars text-based bangers on a consistent basis and get people to love your free content enough to subscribe. T bb-baby text-based, bangers space that's been our strategy, right? I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to be like, all right, we're live.
Can I tell you about a few interesting pieces of content? I've consumed lately and I want to hear what you've consumed. Yeah, let's do it. The info diet section. The info diet section. Yeah, let me tell you the first one, so I have been on a Scott Galloway kick, Scott Galloway, has a podcast, and I think, that's what he's more famous for than anything, but he started a few companies, but he's got this, like one of his
companies, L2, I think it's sold for, like, 200 million. It was like nine figures. He did, he did this.
Called Scott's personal finance. I found it on YouTube where he talks about like money and and like how much money he has, and nobody spent spends it on and he like, he's like this is all going to sound douchey. But I'll tell you, he's like, basically I'm worth at least a hundred million dollars, he goes, he goes, I made it into the nine figures recently, he said I'm still incredibly anxious about money. It stems from childhood. He's like, we were just poor and I'm super anxious about it, but then he does, he does something cool. He says, two things that are interesting one he goes, I'm
I'm spending between 200,000 and 400,000 dollars a month and I moved to Europe and the guy was like, why would you move to Europe? He goes well, America is the best place to make money and Europe's. The best place to spend it. Love that. That's great. Yeah, it was awesome. He goes, he goes look what I've realized is that I'm getting older, I don't have a lot of time to live. Maybe I have 40 more years or something like that to live. I'm gonna spend it and I'm gonna enjoy the hell out of it. He's goes, it feels incredibly masculine for me to be able to provide these experiences for my family and I'm doing it. He says
Spend around 100 to 200 thousand dollars a month. Now on travel we fly private we went to the World Cup. I brought my brought another couple and their family just because I wanted to we pay for the whole thing and he goes through this like really like detailed thing about spending his money. And another interesting thing he said and I want to ask this about you so he has had I think three companies of which one was like a very big success and that it probably made him 50 million dollars, but he said I've made more money being on board on the board.
Boards of companies and the equity that they've given me then actual actually building companies. And what I'm surprised about is what he said is that I've made more money doing not my main thing or at least what I thought was going to be my main thing. Doing these, like ancillary things has that proven to be true in your career yet. 100%, I would say more yet, but I've definitely seen examples of that. So I'll give you a very simple example of my life and I'll tell you one, that was from a recent episode. So,
In my life, I started an e-commerce company, maybe e-commerce brand three years ago roughly, I can't tell you how many hours I've spent on this e-commerce thing. Like, it takes a lot of time to build a real company that actually has, you know, real revenues, real profits, that are significant and there's a physical product tons of energy goes into it. I have pulled out $0.00 from this business, but the business makes a lot of money, right? We're tens of millions of dollars in Revenue.
But I pull out zero dollars in all gets reinvested and all my time gets invested into this thing and it is very labor intensive. So I haven't made much money from this, but one thing that did happen was along the way, I was like, ah, such a pain. Like I'm always on my phone, you know, like often if you message me, I'll be like, oh yeah, I'll send it to you when I'm back on my computer. The think I'm not just like at my computer a lot and I wanted to be able to check out my store from my phone and the Shopify app doesn't really make that very easy, you can get in. You can maybe see your Revenue but you don't
Your ads are doing, you don't know how your Amazon store is doing. You don't know how your Google accounts do it. You don't know how your klaviyo, you Mills are working and so meet these two, you know, two to Jewish guys who are like, hey, we made this thing that's like a mobile mobile way to manage your storefront for any combat. The guy we have any combat, we built this thing for us and I use it. I'm like oh this is great and I'm like I like to invest and they're like oh cool like you know I think I've maybe the first investor maybe s something like that.
At very cheap, like five million dollar valuation, or something like that. Do you remember what you put in 75 thousand dollars to a company called triple whale? Was that all your money? I know there's all my investments have to go through the fund, unless it's like something that like wouldn't be eligible for fun but this would cause otherwise it's like a bias thing. So put it in from the front. So put this money in and I'm like, great, I hope this does well but I'm not sure it seems like, you know, maybe just analytics widget I don't know. Might not be the biggest thing in the world, but I think it's really useful for me.
I think other store owners will find it useful. Start telling other owners about it, blah, blah, blah. This company is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars. So, you know, on a five million dollar valuation of entry point, you know, we're up for TX or something like that, you know, 30, 40 50 x somewhere in that range. So you know seven, take 75 thousand dollars and X. Let's just take 40 x for a second. It's 3 million 3 million bucks. Now, of course, is the fun. So me on my carry-on, that 20%,
You know, but it's also not done. This is just like you know a couple years in if this becomes a 2 billion dollar company, you know, I there's it's easy to see that I will have made more and I'd by the way I invested in six, other e-commerce SAS tools it's like oh sales tax is a pain in the ass. Cool. Let me use numeral for that. This is like a new startup that's doing making it easy for e-commerce or sales tax. Oh I need a bookkeeping and accounting. Let's Lose. Final Loop instead of QuickBooks, like I started investing in a bunch of these. What
I thought was the best tool after I did the research, I was like, well, I'm not just going to be a user, I'm also going to be an investor and I just do that across the board and a lot of these are huge. Now PostScript for text message meant like what Rhonda Santa's is using for his text messaging. I don't know what he's using but it's probably should be using PostScript visits the like the best way to send SMS marketing and you just invest in these because your user but like I have made more money investing in e-commerce, SAS tools than I've made from my store and the store took all of my time. And these
other ones took one hour of emails to back and forth to just do the investment. And that's like, you know, not what I would have expected going in. However, had I not done the e-commerce thing. I would have never understood the value of these tools or been able to see them early or been able to be like, hey, let me in and I'll introduce you to a hundred other people that have stores because I'm in that Network now. And so you made money in this, like, not what you plan to make money, you made money in this other weird way, same way, Scott, Galloway, didn't make, make some money into company, but then his reputation is where he gets.
To be on boards, way easier and more money, especially when you count dollars per hour, I'll give you. Another example, we just did a podcast with some of your from Colin and Samir and in that he talks about like they got their start doing something that like nobody would look at it. Like this is a good business plan, he was like we're gonna basically I think there were fans of Lacrosse or look what they were lacrosse players or something and they created like a lacrosse Sports commentary Network on YouTube. It's like niche of a niche of a niche and they did this pretty early on YouTube and honest
See, it didn't work that well, but it did two things. It taught them about YouTube and making videos and now their YouTube channel is like million subscribers. It's a, you know, it's a multimillion-dollar brand easily so that taught them that but also, when they were doing that, when they were following the La Crosse scene, they saw this one guy. He was the best lacrosse player in the country and he's like wanted to go pro but there's like no Pro scene for lacrosse. You get paid nothing and so he's like dude, if I go pro I make thirty five thousand dollars a year. This sucks. It's a screw eye.
Make my own lacrosse league and this guy creators on the cross link will guess who became the first investor in the lacrosse league Samir. Because any that he's like, I don't have a lot of money. I put in whatever, I don't know what it was. Let's pretend it's 10 grand, but like that lacrosse league is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars. He got a while beginning. So like in this weird way he's going to he'll probably make more have made more from that one investment that all of the YouTube action. He was trying to do along the way, but it only would have happened by being in the game.
Game and getting giving yourself that opportunity to hit. Like I think it's called The Arena, it's being in the arena. So this is what is for brown, guys. Like me to say the arena, I don't want to get caught in that fire. You could say that it's in the arena. That's good. And by the way, that podcast was great, the second thing that I've consumed lately, I've been reading like crazy. So you you and Andrew kind of got me turn on this. I hate, I don't really love, love investing but I wanted to
Learn more about it. And so I read Warren Buffett's biography, not the ones. So Bock, that's too long, it's like 1,000 Pages. This one's called making of the making of an American capitalist. Have you ever read anything about Buffett back in the day? I like 10 years ago, I read a Buffett book but I don't really remember it, to be honest, man. I didn't know anything about. I didn't really know anything about them, but there's a few traits about him that are crazy. The one like he's got like this, aw shucks demeanor. Like, I'm from the Midwest. Like, what do I do? You know, I just super charismatic. He could be present. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's
Mostly kind of bullshit in a sense like the guy's a genius, like he's like the 1% of the 1% in terms of IQ, in terms of horsepower. And then there's this crazy deer. This crazy story where he's like helping to buy. I think it's Salomon brothers or no. Sorry. It's ABC. So he's buying ABC for multi billions of dollars and he's sitting at his desk and they're like, all right, let's work out the deal. He goes, oh no, let's just work it out right now. Like, it is like, well, what about your analysts like? Where are they? He goes, I'm the computer. It's all here and he doesn't have
Calculator, he doesn't have anything like that. He's like, let's just we're going to do the deal right now and I could just do it in my head and he just memorize has all these, their annual reports and all their numbers. And then he like, does the math in their head. He's like, Mike, Warren goes, if I can't do the math in my head, then I don't understand this deal and I probably shouldn't do it. So his IQ is crazy. The second thing is that his discipline is super strong. So before he had Berkshire Hathaway, he had a fund with like I think it started with like,
100 Grand or something not substantial, but it was growing 30% a year and he did that for like 10 years and in the 60s, he just shut it down. And they're like, why are you shutting this down? He's like, well, I just don't see any good opportunities right now, you know. I like I said, I'm looking for good opportunities. I don't see any right now. So I'm just going to shut this down and so he just doesn't, he quit investing in a little mini retirement is incredibly disciplined and then the last thing is that he has super high integrity. So like he's only sued someone one time.
And that time was, when he gave a guy, a charity 25,000 dollars and the guy robbed him of the he didn't actually provide the charitable work. That's the only time he's suits someone and there was another time where he was being investigated by the Senate. They thought that he was insider trading because he did a few things that were like smart and you just made the right calls and after investigating him for two or three years, they're like hey do you want to like join this committee on? Like fraud? Because you're really smart and you're like the most honest guy. We've met
And he joined the committee. There's another time where he wants to, he's like, in this country club and he's like, hey, why don't we let Jewish people in this country club? This is pretty ridiculous. He's like the guys were like, look, the Jews have their own thing, they have their own country club. It's 100 percent Jewish, let the juice go there. So instead of putting up a fuss about it, he goes and joins the Jewish Country Club. He goes, hey, they integrate and they let non-jews into their thing. I think we should do that to our thing. And that's like how he goes about doing stuff. He's like not confrontational but he's like pretty slick and
Last thing I guess, is he basically for the first like 40 years of his career, he only read annual reports and that's how he got his information. So people are like, how are you so good and he's like, dude, I just read like five annual reports a day and all the information that I'm using. He's like, I don't even have a computer, I don't have a terminal, all the information that I use any one of you out, there can go to a library and get that same information. So super unique guy, so I've been very fascinated with him but he's got one downside.
How do you know what is? You know, he's like a shit family man, right? Right. Yeah. He is a very weird estranged family Dynamics. Oh yeah. So he got divorced. Yeah. But then she didn't get divorced. So, his wife, Susie, they, she was like a hippie and for some reason he was into that, and they were married and he loved her and everything, but she was one day she goes, you know Warren. I just want to go off to San Francisco and I want to do my own thing, but we're not going to get a divorce. He's like alright, cool. And she goes also I have my friend named Ash
It she's going to come over and take care of you. I think is their sister. It's not her sister, it's just a frame. It was a someone, she was friendly with. Okay, and so within a week of Astrid, taking care of Buffett of warned they are like lovers had. Like she moves it, they like date. However, like they're all friends with each other and so Susie's, like, hey Astrid, I think you should redecorate the house from when I did it. It's getting a little old. Like she gives her tips on taking care of him and then like, when Buffett has to go to, like these big like presidential public meetings, where he's meeting with senator,
Never Susie comes when she wants when he wants to go and do like some local stuff or like some, some stuff that doesn't require a lot of press Astrid comes and they take turns, and every once in a while, if it's like a really big thing, they're both go and we'll team up and they'll support. Mmm. It's very interesting and it's a very strange but he's not a very present father and he's super fucking cheap this kid. So there was a time when his daughter was living in a really crappy apartment and she had just had a baby and this one of Buffets friends goes to check on her.
And the daughter can barely see the TV because it's a little small, black and white TV. And the friend goes warn, you should buy our big-screen TV, man. She just had a baby. She's sitting in the shitty apartment, just fire fucking TV and he wouldn't do it. He didn't want to buy her a TV and it like it took some convincing to these. I don't want to spoil them. And so he's really cheap and like didn't seem like the best father. I like that. There's one thing I always remember about Buffett that are like two things that I really like about Buffett. I have a whole dock that I keep called Buffett isms and because
has this skill of telling like these sick tiny stories, is little Parables that are both funny and interesting and then make his point for him and I just really he's got an arsenal of these and so I've been like I don't read a lot of his books by watch a lot of his talks and I watch a lot of there like annual shareholder meetings to try to find these little little phrases. He uses that I have like oh this guy is so Charming but also he's does a great job of making his point using that. Another one is another thing I like about Buffy.
Is he said one thing once that really stuck with me, he goes stock market like people like, why don't more people get Ritchie goes because they don't really understand how the game works. He goes the best rule of this entire game, in this of the stock market, is that you don't have to play. He's like most people's problem is that they just do too many things, they make too many investors. They buy and sell too many things and they feel constantly compelled to like come to an answer on. Should they are, shouldn't they do X. And he's like,
You really just have to sit and wait for the fat pitch. You just don't have to do, you don't have to swing. That's the way you got your fat pitch thing. Yeah, exactly. There are no called strikes in investing. Like you could sit there all day, just watch pitches go by and just wait for the fat pitch. The problem is people s waiting and that really stood out to me because I'm somebody who's stork Lee is very bad at. Wait am I very impulsive impatient person? It serves you well as an entrepreneur to be very impatient, you take a bunch of action as an investor impatience and
Of this is a terrible trait so as I've shifted my career to go from entrepreneur investor, I had to ask myself, you know, what do I need to relearn? What do I need to unlearn? What served me as an entrepreneur. That's not going to serve me as an investor and let me make that that conscious switch and that was one of the key switches that I realized I had to make and I just and I agree that's a that's a really good lesson. And I think he stole that from Teddy Williams, like a famous baseball player who hit lots of home runs and he liked Eddie Williams made this
It's like graph. He just has a strike zone. So it was just a strike zone and he's like, look my batting average. If I hit a pitch in this bottom, corner is pretty low. I might make connection with the, but the pitch, it might be a strike, but my batting average launch. I really shouldn't even swing at that pitch, even though it's a strike. He's like, I'm looking for stuff in The Sweet Spot because here I'm over 400, right? So here's Ted Williams, has a greatest batting average ever. And one of the reasons why was he was more disciplined than others in what pitches he would swing at. He would really wait for those fat pitches whereas most
Matters get quite impatient and starts hacking that everything. But my issue with Warren's advice on that stuff, was all right. Well, what's a good pitch look like? And so I ordered this book that's going to, it's like they didn't make a lot of copies of it but it so I had to find out on Amazon and it's gonna take like two or three weeks to come, but it's like how you just said Amazon. Like, it's like some Niche bookstore, you went to. It's hard - it's a good at amazon.com to find it. This is little bucket. This little mom and pop but tea
Eek. But they, they analyze all of his deals and they write out what he saw in them because I'm trying to figure out. Okay, you're telling me what a bad one looks like, what's a good one look like? And so that's some of the content that I've been consuming. It's been good. I've been reading like a book or two a week is because Kindle. You read on Kindle every yeah. Yeah that's all. I read on. Pretty much all I'm sorry I start on Kindle and then if I like the book I'll order the hardcover so that I have it around the house to just remember it, pick it up whenever I want.
But I start on Kindle. Well, they had this like percentage bar at the bottom where it says what percentage of the book that you've read and I'm like, I'm gonna get to 20% every night and it's been awesome. So shout out to give it all you got. Yeah you nailed it. Gamified your ass. Okay. So let me let me tell you two things that are interesting. One, the content I consumed. So I listen to this podcast by our friend, David Sandra. I don't know that that
Well, I hung out with him one time and he's he's a total nut in the best way, like he's a thousand miles a minute, but I want to share with you. He did a pot that I thought was really good cold, it was called the greatest interview I've ever done and it was a basically some there's Patrick or Shaughnessy interviewing him there. Like what did you notice about a lot that you studied all these great men and history, right? You read these biographies and what are some common things that you see? He goes the story of the sun, the Story Of The Sun,
It begins at the end of the story of the father. So, basically, like embedded in the story of the sun is the story of the father, hey say, this is very, very common, whether the father was great at all, these ways often you'll see the sun, take a totally different approach or if the father was limiting or hard-ass, or really brutal in one way, the sun takes that trauma and basically uses it in in what they do. And I thought that was pretty cool. Second, he said about reading that I really liked. He goes there.
Could you read books and he goes? Yeah, of course. I love reading books. We read books all the time and, you know, I think a common thing would be like I wasn't that kind of a waste to, like, read what you've already read. It's like you've already read that book is the same thing. When I read something new, he said it really well. He goes, I read books like several years apart often and he goes the words are the same but I've changed. He's like you know I'm a different guy than I was when I first read that book. So the second time I read it, I've had years of life experience. I've read a hundred, other books, I've had all these the
Things that I've done in my life and now the same words mean something. Totally different to me, or, I've elevated understanding, or remember memory or a different thing, stands out to me, I thought that was a really great Insight on rereading because I'm a big fan of rereading. Like, I'd rather find a great thing and soak in it versus trying to just move on to the next and count. The number of books I can read in a year and I thought the wreath at that point he brought up is one that I really never never heard. I also thought
That he did an amazing job of almost like building his personal story, so he said it really well. Why did you start doing this? Like, why did you start this? This whole thing, we reading all these books, you do this podcasting, how did you even have the inspiration for that he goes?
Look man. My childhood was not the best. Like I grew up and my parents did their best but they weren't necessarily the best he goes, you know, I'm the only person in my family to ever graduate from high school and he's like I wanted to be successful, but everywhere I looked around me all I saw was the wrong answer. All I saw was what not to do. I didn't read just a hobby for fun, I read because I was looking for the answers, I wanted to know what, what to do because all eyes
I saw in my life was not not to do, that's what led me to reading the biographies of great people. Because I've spent the last, you know, whenever 10 years of my life, having one-way conversations with the greatest people ever to live on this Earth. And he goes, that's what I think about reading he goes. I think reading is having a one-way conversation with the greatest people on Earth. And he goes and he goes and the, you know, the podcast to people. Like I just our podcast. I don't know, man. I didn't even start it because this is just an obsession. I'm just studying these people, I needed a way to put it for my thoughts down. He was, this is an obsession disguised as a podcast.
And I loved it. I was like, wow, he's good. He's our he's lyrical, little one line, he's very lyrical with it. And so I'm very impressed by David Center. I think he's doing a great job. And yeah this is there was a fun fun thing to consume. I joked with them. I was like you know, like David. The I got turned off on reading a lot of these books for a while because I would listen to them on Audible and I had my favorite narrators and I would go like oh I love this guy's voice. What else did he read this narrate? And this guy has read like a
A thousand narrated a thousand bucks and I'm like, what the fuck is this guy still and narrator? What do you think of, you can read all these business books? He would be way more successful. That's kind of what I bring up here. Like, I love the way he phrases things. I think it's really compelling. I actually don't agree with them that like, you're not actually having one way conversation with the greatest people on Earth. It's not like you needed to do all of that to be successful. Actually should probably just get out there and do some things, right? Like I actually could argue a bunch of the other sides, but what's the point? The fact that he believes that is going to
Him to a really great and successful place. I don't subscribe to all his thoughts, but I am a fan of his level of intensity and conviction in himself. And what he's doing in California. Like I think in the 90s, they banned weightlifting in the prisons because they're like, holy shit. We're build it super criminals. These guys are getting yoked, they're like too big and they're like they're they're surrounded by other criminals. They can like talk about like the best way to do stuff and how der? I know they're fucking bench. Pressing 5.
Policies are super criminals. We gotta get rid of them. David is like becoming a Super criminal a little bit. He's like one of the guys who's like reading it like to be ours just created way. He's plotting David's Pathak. Do they say? I feel like I could be like, hey, David, he's sitting there reading a book. I'm like David. You like that book? I can love this book. What are you? Joking me and I'm like, David in this room right over here. Heidi! Klum is standing there naked. She's surrounded by all the best desserts you could ever eat Michelin star deserts.
The music. It's the greatest music you've ever heard all of the unreleased Drake albums are in here. They the the, you know, it's the best music. It's the best party. There's no other guys in here, just all naked, supermodels and David. The best part is, would you walk in you become a billionaire? And I think he'd be like, he would have even heard anything. He just be turning the page to the next next face. Like this guy, do his fingers silent. This chump, I'm reading the best compliment.
And the best insult. I can give them at the same time. Like I think it is amazing that he is that way that he's, he really feels like this is the best thing that anyone could possibly do. He can't believe nobody else is doing this. He doesn't. It's like, this is the peak of the peak of like, yeah, perience. I'm inspired by him. Anything else that you've consumed that you like, not a consumer. But I have a different. So, in the way that I'm like, I'd by the way, I hope he doesn't take advice. I'm joking about some of these things. But like, yeah, I'm a huge fan of David of his stuff and I think he does an amazing job, and I have no
Vested interest in his success except for I think he's really cool and I think it does a great job. I appreciate his crap and he's one of the few pods that I like, listen to on a regular basis. It's quite good. Yeah, that was like a genuine endorsement, it's called Founders. By the way, the Pod is called. Founders will get my will give him a symbol of the other thing that. So, I'm so the other interesting experience I had was, I recognize I'm drawn to people like him, people who are slightly extreme, who are obsessed, who have a independent mindedness, they're deciding how they want to live life, and they their rubric of
Access is different than others, right? That's what I just described about him. That I like Ben had a meeting with somebody. He comes out, he calls me, I'll do it. But this guy, he's great, he's doing this thing. And he just kept saying he, like, said two or three times. I think really great guy. And I'm like, I was like, why is he such a great guy? Like you really there? 45 minutes, like, you know, what do you mean by that? Why did you really kept saying? I really liked him. I really liked him. I really like what he's doing. I could you really like, what he's doing or you really like him? Hey guys, I think I really like him. I go let me go.
Was he high energy when he talked a nice guy? Like simple, not didn't intimidate you, if I kind of being a hard-ass about anything and did he teach you one or two? Interesting things during the conversation? Goes bingo. I know Ben because that's your archetype of what you really like, that's why you really like me. I'm a high-energy guy. I'm a nice guy. I don't like, you know, I don't like kind of push people to a place that they feel uncomfortable and I'll usually if he talked to me for an hour, you're going to learn one or two things, that's why we get along.
Long and I said, you know, one thing we should do as again, how do you become a great? How do you shift from operator, to maybe spending spending more time? Investing is, I think we got to investigate. What are our bias in our blind spots? So basically, we made a little list of what's the personality archetype. I am irrationally drawn towards for me. It's the Davidson rock types. It's the slightly extreme uncomfortable, ambition around their thing, independent mindedness.
Obsession with their craft. I am drawn to that I will make mistakes. As, you know, it's like a girl who's like, you know, he's a 6, but he's wearing a leather jacket that's like, yeah, it's just does something to me. I gotta go for him. Like, that's what I'm drawn to. And I was like, on the other side, what can't I stand? Somebody who's just dry if you have no sense of humor, if you're dry IQ, could be the smartest guy in the world sitting on a goldmine of a business. If you're boring, like, within five minutes, I'm like this guy sucks. I'm out and
You know, I'm just like who's an example of that? Like a famous person. Well dude, I'm not trying to make a tourniquet famous like a like a like a someone who you've heard about public person. I don't know if it's all by everyone who's just dry. I mean there's like a bunch of like famous investors and shit who I've read about and I'm like, this is snooze Fest like yeah, there's like just like some I do Enterprise SAS repeat these people who are like yeah we just make the best.
We're like, you know, we just provide a solid procurement services to others, right? It's like I don't know. Like they don't have a lot of hobbies. Yeah. Like do you love that? I know. But I research, we service a need and it's like, cool. Like so like what are some of the cool growth hacks? You've been doing, they're like, we don't really need growth. Actually. Grow 17 percent year over year. It's like, we just really need a solid operations. It's like, okay. I just, I need to get out of this conversation right now. Like, I'm I feel itchy, I got to get out of here. Whenever I read about like hedge fund, guys, I'm like, this is a snooze Fest, dude. You're just like this, like
Like, when they do, like a lot of, like Fast trading, unless they're kind of like a criminal and kind of doing drugs, then I'm in. Oh yeah, I'm always down with like I love a good Crime Story unless you're driving. You're successful life off a cliff, I'm out. Yeah, yeah yeah, I need some drama but like whenever I read about like hedge fund, guys, I'm like, dude you're just play on Excel all day. I don't find that enjoyable to hear about but I think I think it is useful as he moves a useful exercise for us to do which was what do you irrationally drawn towards that? You should probably like dial it down. Discount be able to apply a
On after the fact, when you're, when you're yada heat and a what do you have an irrational? Distaste for where you're going to underprice or underestimate somebody it actually, you shouldn't. Be people have been talking about like bias and like the stuff like but like, you know, they always came at it from Like A diversity and inclusion point of view for me, I, you know, like sure that's fine but I've never been like drawn to like, you know, I've never been drawn to spending a bunch of time thinking about that. However, for this, I am
Immediately saw for myself. Oh yeah. I could see myself, making mistakes being overly generous towards a certain personality type, you say, the certain certain three key phrases and I'm all in. And I'm, I'm, I'm kind of repelled from these things, even though I really shouldn't be, it's actually like, I don't need to be your friend. I just like if I'm investing in you I don't need to think you're cool and want to hang with you. I just need to be able to understand what you're doing and invest in it. Do you, do you feel like you had the same thing? Do you have a thing you're drawn to? Like, I feel like one of yours, I'll just say it out loud.
Is I feel like you're drawn to people who are very meticulous and orderly and the way they operate. Like if somebody's got like a system and like there are a stickler for the details, I feel like in your like there go up 100 points in your book. Whereas for me that doesn't really do it. That does it for me because I envy that because that's not my natural, you know? Like my wife is like that, like, I'm drawn to people who are like orderly and systematic and discipline like people who wake up at 5 a.m. every morning. That's not me.
Me and so like I'm really fascinated by people who like grind really hard and are systemic and our operational and things like that. I've I get a lot of Joy being around those people because I'm not like that. Can I tell you real quick about a cool thing because I feel like we did a bunch of fluffy stuff today. So one of our most popular episodes on the Pod was, when I was talking about the fire movement, it stands for financially independent retired, early. And I'm not necessarily part of that because I don't want to retire, but I do love.
The idea of just being financially independent, I think it just gives you so many different options and I love content on that topic because I just love hearing stories and tactics and things like that on saving money and earning more money and just being financially independent. And the best podcast on that topic is called choose Phi have been around for years like six or seven years at this point tens of thousands of downloads thousands and thousands of reviews and the host is name's Brad. He's wonderful. And if you're into earning more,
Saving more and being financially independent. That's something that I'm a big fan of. It's something that was my goal. Starting at the age of 20, then you have to check them out. The host is name is Brad. He's amazing. He's a big MFM listener. So he understands what we're about and it's choose Phi at chosse, and then fi like, financially independent. So, F, I choose Phi. You can find it on Apple podcast Spotify wherever you get your podcast. We're big fans of them. Check it out. Okay, I gotta get a rant off my chest.
People are really drawn to things that are highly tactical or prior or highly like specific.
Versus and complex versus things that are simple. But might be a little bit scary. Let me give you an example. When I was in LA, we did a bunch of those dinners with Founders and I think I said this in my debrief but also I'll point out again people that their conversation would inevitably go like you have a bunch of people who've all sold their company. Everybody's everybody in the in the thing is you know Successful by traditional measures and the conversation would always gravitate towards two subjects like kind of Health and Longevity or just like kind of like
Being happy being a happier person, some sort of like life quality of life Improvement. Rich guy problems, rich guy shit because like oh I've already made it but you have is I feel like I'm not as happy as I thought it would be well within what you know, like and the longevity health things, gives him a new like the Character Chase and they kind of feel like they neglected it while running their company and the life quality. Every actually just wants a high quality of life. They just don't know how to ask the questions around it and what you would see was two things. Somebody would say something like that was just like simple and useful.
They'd be like yeah, you know, I like I'm you know, before bed. I don't really use my phone. I just actually kind of review the day and think about like, how I did what, you know, just in general like my interactions the day. What I might have done differently and like, you know, I'm like, oh I do that to its. I have this thing called revision and it's like, I just kind of see the day events of my day and I just go back and just play them out a little differently in my head. It's really useful and people are like the reaction to something like that. If you just kind of tell people like hey you know here's a simple thing you could do.
Imagine what you want and what would you like to have it? Or think about how your day went to just be kind of mindful thoughtful about like you know versus just always on to the next thing and the reaction I would get would be like cool and the coolest kind of like cool good for you. Like I ain't doing that shit like, you know, don't tell me to be alone with my thoughts and then somebody would be like, yeah, you know, I really I was feeling kind of, you know, I've just been feeling like I'm in a funk. And so I started taking
Six milligrams of low-dose, no trucks alone. And then people like what what what is it it was getting their ever literally everyone gets a phone out there. Start, what does it call? How do you spell that I'm like, are you just going to take this random drug person? You've never met they'd be like, how many milligrams is that? Five is five minutes where you get it? Can I order right now? Before I leave this thing up and I'm like, y'all motherfuckers are crazy. Why are people so attractive to the pill? The the, the complex thing you can't even pronounce.
That just might do it for you verse or, you know, they'd be like, yeah, I hired this, you know, this functional cognitive a coach and it really, what's the name? Does he take more clients? I love. Here's the money. Like, I don't know. Have you tried like fucking writing down like, you know, your thought of her as like? Nobody would want a simple thing, like nobody wants John's, like, wow, this thing I just Funk it up, I just I just I just sunk in my bed and it worked. I was like, hey, here's what I do. You know, when I go into a situation instead,
Of just reacting like, oh, it's kind of cold out here, so I'm uncomfortable now, I feel bad. I'm a little bit bothered by that. I just decided before I go in. Like, you know what, I want to have a, I want to have a like a, like a playful experiment. Have a laughing experience right now and then I'll just like, I was like, I decided that then I go in and I have that, I look for those moments, and I create that experience. Myself is pretty amazing. You could just do this, you can just decide what experience you want, and then go have it and they're like,
Is it okay? Can the next person? Say like a pill but I could take like a nootropic that's gonna help me. They're like, all right job, but can I put that in my body intravenously? Like it come with needles? Or do I buy them? I missed. Y'all are insane. You're insane or this guy's like, he's like, you know, I really want to like, what's that, you know, this equipment? I bought all this exercise equipment. Unlike based you walk and do you even
Minutes a day. He's like, no. No, I don't exercise enough time. But I'm gonna building out this home gym. I'm building it out in like like, you know, you could just do push-ups on the floor, right? You don't have to buy ten thousand dollars of equipment before you could work out. Like this, there's no gate to pass. You just you can literally just do 10 things, 10 person right now. In fact, let's do that right now and people are not ready for simple action. That doesn't require like a Magic Bullet solution and
It had always the hell out of me. I'm like, are you guys? Insane. Is everybody around me insane. That's how I feel. Like when people say magic pill, I definitely automatically get interested because, like, I would like that. Like why don't want that? They say shortcuts like it's a bad thing. But it's like, yeah, I mean, if I can get to my destination shorter and faster, I'm in that City, but you're not even sure cats literally, this shit that I was talked about this low dose, fucking whatever, it's called Nuttin,
Drax alone. I've met Anna drops of. I don't know what it was. Because guess what? I don't care. Don't need it. But I was like, I was like, so does this work? Like, if you felt like an amazing difference, the first was like, no, you have to take it for six months, first for your body, man. I'm like you're getting hosed. Like, okay, honestly, I don't know what this drug does, maybe it's useful, maybe it's a specific thing. I'm kind of jokes aside, but for that person who, you know, got it, prescribed maybe they needed it for the other eight bastards in the, at the dinner.
Like immediately trying to order it, I was like y'all don't need this. Like, you don't need that right now. That is not the answer to whatever your whatever hole you're trying to fill right now. Like there is no chance that that is the correct First Step. You should be taking. Well, I think we talked about like the different types of procrastination, like the good. There's actually good types of procrastination, which is like, like the forgetful scientist who like forget to like shower or like click on the right pair of socks was like, yeah, that's all right, he's doing the big things, right? That's okay. And then there's like the bad type, which is like, making plans that
Don't need to be planned or like buying domain names or like going back and Butler, coding it afterwards. Like it's okay, like, yeah, or like, and this case, it's like, buying pills when it's like just 10,000 steps a day will do the trick as well, but that's really funny. That's a good story. I would have liked to have seen you in that room. Yeah, I was just like you guys are not so hot. But okay. Now how to sad? I like this stuff. I like the stuff by the way, I like this stuff. It's just
Most because tactics change strategies don't you know what I'm saying? Like I like talking about strategy sometimes. Dude, if you've been following the presidential debates and campaign stuff that's going on, did you watch the Republican debate? I watched the the clips. The so everyone is it seems like the vibe. Vic is. Wow. There's two ways to say his name that and one is the right one with the wrong one and you just came with a third vivexx. Holy Ghost, it's Abby.
Bi V EK, right? Vivek is, is the way you say. So, some people say V vac and you went, you went. I don't even know where you just did. That's like correcting me if I say it like Lady Gaga. So you big Lady Gaga fan? I mean, come on. He was like the best. He was like the star of the debate because he's just looking at the guys, like a debate Champion. I was like a little what this guy's trained to do, but he's still pulling like, you know, I don't know. 10 percent.
Stuff like that. So I think that's all. I mean I think Donald Trump's could win, but I did want to tell you a funny thing that I remembered, when I watched that debate, you watched it. Oh, I love watching. I don't care about politics, but I love watching fights. I would not have thought that I love the debates. I love the strategy of the debates. I love watching its content creation. I just love watching the strategy that these guys take into it. I couldn't care less about who gets picked couldn't care less about their policies because they don't care about the policies. It's as far as I'm concerned.
To me it's a popularity contest and I like to see who markets themselves better. I think there's a lot to learn from that but one of the things that's I remembered was back in the day. I was working at Monkey Inferno and I used to work for a guy named Michael Birch and Michael Birch is a very interesting guy. He has built and sold multiple companies. So he sold Bebo famously for 850 million dollars. He of which him and his wife owned it. So,
They got, they own a wolf, all the thing. Yeah. So it was a huge exit for husband and wife couple before that he had built another social network, sold for a few single digit millions of dollars. So you kind of made one sort of a few million bucks then as soon as a non-compete ended, he created it again. He's like, oh now I know what I should have done the first time and that became the 850 million dogs it. Well, you also created birthday alarm, which is a company that had millions of dollars in cash flow every year. He had multiple wins very interesting guy but ever since the big Bebo,
And he created this idea lab but he kind of transition to a different phase of Life almost. He was like, you know, I'm not like, you know, what do I care? It is sort of like, yeah, I Angel invest but like yeah, does it really matter? Like I can kind of already won the money game in a way, right? He wouldn't say that but you can just tell it's not like his heart was in that. But see a billionaire at this point. You think even that he's like, I'm not really a billionaire but who cares, you know, like I, yeah I got you know like he's at that 510 511 range and like, you know, those guys want to be six foot. He
Like, that's pretty much six right now, what shoes? He's like, no, he's at 800 million or $9 million or something like that. He's like, I don't know, I don't really keep track of. It doesn't really matter. It seems seems Seems like Overkill to care about something like that. That's a nice. Billionaire response, he did to ensure things. One, he built a private member's Club in San Francisco. So, he bought a old Candy Factory that was, 60,000 square feet. That was abandoned, because it needed tons of like seismic retrofitting. Nobody wanted to put in millions of dollars. It would take to retrofit this place, he did it.
And he built a members Club. So if you go to San Francisco, you can go to this place called the battery and it's like, Soho house. But for San Francisco built that thing into real juggernaut, like, it actually like totally came to fruition. This idea that seemed kind of crazy and had no experience in it. Never done, Hospitality never done any of that stuff. One time I went there and I saw a booth of three people, and it was a bought, like, imagine a monk wearing like the Dali Lama, like, orange outfit. Like he was bald headed and sandals.
With like a black guy that looked like a rapper, like you had like gold chains on in like six shoes and then this blond haired lady and they were all leading in having a conversation. And I was like, this is just the funniest place I've ever been to. Yeah. That's like the start of a joke, a monk of rapper, and, and Sheryl Sandberg walk into a bar. No, but that's what happened. I saw Leonardo DiCaprio there, you know, tons of famous, but Elon Musk bunch of famous people go there. Anyways, so he'd that was one thing he did. But he always had these like random ideas and once in a while, he would just die.
On like to have an idea for you, and he would pitch me this idea. And one of the ideas he had was around the presidential debate, he goes, you know,
Trump got elected and I think what 2016 he was thinking about it for 2020. He was like you know, I think there's a good chance that Trump gets re-elected again.
And he's like, you know, if you think about why a lot of people in Silicon Valley don't really fully, you know, they're like they take these like, you know, strong stances on what it means, what you know, is it because part of America feels repressed and they're reacting to the liberal neocon, they start making up all these words. He's like I don't know if it's that. As much as it is, that Donald Trump was the more charismatic candidate and he's like, if you go back and you look throughout time, he's like it, every debate, rsr, every
If you go back to the last like twelve elections, which is like, you know, 50 years or something like that, the more charismatic candidate tends to win, not always but tends to it and they're usually like tall, not ugly people. He's just like the more charismatic candidate wins. It says the simple as that, right? Like maybe you're charismatic because you're really good-looking and you're, you know, maybe it's that, maybe it's that you got The Gift of Gab and you're like, you know, maybe an Obama or Reagan or something like that.
You know, Clinton you know, somebody who is just seen as very, very Charming. People always felt that about Bill Clinton so he's like, you know, the more charismatic Canada tends to win. Even though, you know, there are other reasons why you might pick. You know why I picked John Kerry over George Bush actually. George Bush is the more charismatic candidate versus John Kerry or alcohol or whatever it is. And so he's like you know I think that given that that's the case. I think, I don't think that should be the case.
It is, I don't think you could be able to change that because I feel like what the Democrats should do is they need to put forward the most charismatic candidate they can. And I would say he turned out to be wrong and that they put Joe Biden. Who's one of the least? Charismatic candidates. And he won, almost because the vote was basically Donald Trump or not Donald Trump. So I actually think it was a bit of an anomaly. I actually think he was correct. And you're seeing this right now. DeSantis has more experience, had the machine behind him. Had the track record. He's just not charismatic. He doesn't have that.
At that Jew. He doesn't have that sauce and so a guy like vacant come out and he's a better talker, he's more, he's got more energy, he's got better one-liners dingers, he's willing to take stands that will draw attention to him and he's the more charismatic candidate he's driving up. So Michaels idea was let's create a TV show he's like you know, just like the way we did American Idol and we did The Apprentice. Why don't
What is the show called the president? And we literally just cast people who want to be the president, but we give them an Avenue. Because right now, the candidates all come from the machine. It's like, you know, the party is going to kind of push their favorite candidates forward. And this is based on something, you know how controllable they are how likable they are, how much time they put in into the party. He's like, I don't think that's necessarily putting the strongest candidate forward especially if you looked at this most charismatic candidate. So,
He's like why don't you create it? He's like, why don't we create a show? That's going to take 12 hopefuls and it tells their story, the show works like almost like a Survivor or The Apprentice every week. They go to a new city, maybe they go do some coal mining place and wherever West Virginia, and they're going to talk to the coal miners at their sort of a challenge. They have to prepare a speech or talking points for what they would do to help those people. And then those people kind of vote off the weakest candidate. And at the end, you're left with the most charismatic candidate. And he's like that.
Be a challenger to whoever the Democratic party is naturally going to put up.
I love this idea. I was like, this is a crazy idea this and he's like, yeah, my friend Mark Burnett who created Survivor like he could be the producer of this and a a we could put this together this way and, you know, even if it doesn't work like and I think it would just be like a worthwhile attempt in an entertaining way to do this versus like I really want to get involved in politics. The reason I don't is that some sort of a very
Like, it's not a, it's a laborious and sort of painful, Endeavor, this would be almost a fun version of, like, a way to try to bring some influence to it. What do you think of this idea that that I just remember go anywhere, or is he just goofing around the old? So, he wrote a memo.
It was a very well written by mitts that the rich guy version of buying the domain name. Yeah, you wrote a memo. He showed it to me and I'm like, yeah this is great. And I think he was like, okay if I'm gonna do this, this is going to take some real kind of like Social Capital to do.
And I think he kind of was like maybe not maybe my life is amazing. As is that says version of like, when the remote is just a little bit too far for laid out and you're like I'm asleep with the TV on. Yeah. But I love this idea and I'm saying it because I I think that more business people should apply their kind of creative and entrepreneurial talents outside of just creating a yet another business.
So I like that he was taking his creative and entrepreneurial Spirit to be like, oh, how could I, what if I did a TV show that would influence politics? I thought that was cool and I think more people should do that. The second reason is I kind of wish this idea existed and I totally think this would work if somebody created it. So what's funny is like because you and I've I've I've complimented you with this, but this is actually a criticism at this point for this particular point. This is compliments a special. I don't even know what that man. So I prepare my
No, fur comforter insult, just tell me that. But the compliment was that your WorryFree in like, you're pretty optimistic and you always liked things also like that person, they're not trying to do anything bad from the pitch lap. But in this case, when I hear this, I'm like but I want like my president to like know what they're doing and not just be able to like be a good speech Giver. It's so like dude that's what we have now. You think Joe Biden knows what he's doing the guy's not even alive. Well, I'm not saying what I know works and what
No doesn't work. I'm just saying that. Like my romantic view is like, well, that would be it would be also nice if they knew what they were talking about rather than just good at talking. Yet your take on this is like when it be cool. If we just let the most charismatic person run away with it. Whoa. No. I think you could design the challenges to actually get them. Force them to think on the spot or perform in terms of figuring out solutions to real problems or like putting forth, what their solutions would be.
In a way, that's not just prepared by handlers who have talking points and they're going to avoid the issue or false promises or whatever. Like these people, that would be in this. You could design the weekly challenge to bring out, whatever it is that you want. Obviously people fall in love with the characters. That's how all reality TV works. You fall in love with the characters. However, you could follow up with them as they're trying to do certain things in the same way that The Apprentice would test you for. Can you figure out how to sell? Can you figure out how to organize a project or manage a plan? I think you could put people through
Battery of weekly challenges that are not just are you good at kissing babies and shaking hands, but like you know, that's part of it. But a fear there could be other parts of it. That, you know, the show decides is like, you know, what are the attributes that a president needs of the qualities or what do we wish? We could see them doing to be able to assess their abilities. I think the cynical person would say, well, we should look at the track record serving in government. Yeah, cool. But that doesn't happen. That's not really what this not really. What happens is not
Ali. What works if that worked? You know, Trump would never have beaten Hillary. She had spent her whole life in politics. He had, she's by far on paper, the more qualified candidate, but America didn't get to see that they didn't get to appreciate that. All they saw was what gets put forward today, which is debates and campaigning on social media or on TV. There's this funny story about JFK. When you remember, like, with the Cold War was, you know, it was in the 60s where like they thought that Soviet Union in America, we're gonna like bomb each other. Yeah, there's a story where
JFK John Kennedy goes to Soviet Union and eat meets with the president or the leader of Soviet Union and at the end of the meeting, the, the leader was like, you know, you're you're a really nice person. You kind of remind me of my son I guess like we could be. We could be cool. Like you know, you seem you seem kind and I read that story and I was like I guess like Charisma really does matter a whole lot when it comes to like diplomatic stuff like just being likeable and being like hey let's just calm down be friends. It definitely is any Robbins tells
The story. I don't know if this is real or not, but who was the, you know, who was the president during the Cold War, said welcome. Well, Kennedy Kennedy for Cold War was a long period. But Kennedy was, like, when we thought that we were literally going to bomb each other. Okay, there was I don't, I feel like it wasn't kind of he was talking about, but Tony Robbins tells the story he goes, I was tired a chance to talk to former president. Whoever let's just pretend I know it care about presidential history. Sure. And he's like the Cold War was happening and he went to go see
Is called or people who actually know what this are gonna you have full permission to beat me up in the comments. So he goes to see Gorbachev and they have a meeting. And the meeting is not going. Well, the Hope was we could deescalate but actually the meeting was sort of like tension and like neither side wanted to give and they were sort of getting more Doug and more stubborn in their stance. And this is a, this would be Reagan. Ronald Reagan Reagan, all my married man out there, know when this happens, you use your you think you're going into dies?
Late. But actually both sides are what stamp our calls Doug and and the tension is escalating, he doesn't know really what to do and he goes he goes, how did you do it? How did he say he something happened in that meeting that worked? What was it goes? Well, we hit that point. I said, this is not going to work and I got up and walked out of the room fast stormed out of the room and right before I got to the door.
Hit him with a little 360, turn back the big smile on my face said, let's start over smile and say shook his hand and said yeah I'm Ronald and you know I really appreciate these things about you and I he like Turned hurry. Just basically like you know broke the frame for a second and right used a little bit of Charisma a little bit of playfulness in order to reduce tension and then they had a conversation. Now, I have no idea of the story is true. Tony Robbins told me this. I believed it in the moment because it's a great story and
Who will I? Let the truth get in the way of a good story if it is true. That's unbelievable. If it's partially true, that's really cool. If it's totally made up ah whatever you know. It's okay. Still the story still serves his purpose. It is a very useful technique to be able to do this to be able to use a little bit of Charisma and playfulness in order to defuse a situation or to break through any like Deadlocks that that exists, whether it's in business or in personal life. So either.
Back is just not charismatic or I'm an idiot. But let me tell you a really quick story. I have. So I've turned down two presidential candidates to either come on this pod or speak at my events. The first one was Andrew, was his name Yang, the guy, the math guy. So he emailed me, I think in 2015 being like, hey, I want to come speak at your event and I don't know if the podcast existed them, but he's like or if you guys want to write about in the newsletter love to do an interview. You know, I run this.
This study test prep company, it did okay, and I'm running for president and I was like oh, you're insane. You're like you're gonna make me look like a fool. Just this nobody guy who run a mediocre business running for president. I can't interview you like that hurt. My my credibility Well turns out he was a serious candidate. At least you made it in the top 10 or ever. The second time, this happened was Vivek Vivek the this Lady Gaga it's out its out. Is it now called página? It's
He does, he does survive XDM to me on Twitter like a year ago and it was like, hey would you guys want me to come on the Pod and I stepped on them hard? I thought this was because he had a really his Twitter picture was him in a suit with a nice smile. Fit nerd, you're not coming on the podcast. Well and I think like I was like researching Martin shkreli and I was like oh this is and in his bio said he was in BIO like pharmaceutical industry or something like that and I was like oh this guy's a charlatan like he's so good-looking he's got a
Nice smile. It's like a crypto guy with abs and a Ferrari. Like I can't take this guy seriously. And I just said, what do you want to talk about? Like I try to like stiff arm to like make him prove himself and he replied and I ignored him turns out you know year and a half, two years later, he's actually a threat. So this is the second presidential candidate that I've had bad judgment on of whether they're going to be serious and not asking them to come on the Pod. Yeah, yeah, totally. Totally with you. I, by the way for high entertainment,
Do you subscribe to Ron? DeSantis is SMS program. No, that's how you want to learn about marketing or you want to learn how the presidential race. Really works. Go subscribe to all the candidates marketing emails and text messages morning. It's fucking annoying. Okay? So that's the first. If I wanted somebody to text me every day, I have a girlfriend and this guy text you all the time and they text the dumbest stuff. So,
Like here, I'm just going to read you the last five text. If you think this guy's like some super serious politician who's really making it a substantive raised about the issues, here's what he's saying. And was like five in one day text yesterday. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yesterday 421 p.m. new shirts, shirt Emoji, new Koozies, new cups, new buttons, new stickers, new hats. If you haven't seen our storefront, go get the hottest limited edition campaign merch here. Let's say yesterday. Okay, cool. Let's go back friend. It's Ron DeSantis. This is now
Them for 24, 2008 p.m. friend is Ron DeSantis. I want you to know that as president. I will not let the Government weaponize Federal Agencies against Americans who dared to disagree. I'm disgusted by the FBI's disgraceful act labeling Catholics as extremists. It's time to fire the FBI director and defend Liberty, religious, liberty for all can I have a donation to have your support, okay? So that's that's an excellent. Here we go again.
Let me find it. Particularly he just text me at 7:19 am. It's too early for a Textron enough with the talk Americans need action. And that's what Rhonda Santa's is all about. I'm the leader you need this time. The time to act is now this can't wait Rush your support in link to his donation Camp. Linked his donation. Then another one. Hey, like this? Like this credential and he puts a picture of a clicker, credit card that just says DeSantis on it. There you go. You can have your
On all caps donation with 47 or more to join my investor team. If you're an investor in this campaign, you'll have everything you need to show it off. Grab your membership card today and just continues every single day. Hey, enter this giveaway to come to the next debate. You have to donate and you can win a VIP experience. It just keeps going like and it'll just be like, hey friend. I'm out here. Draining the swamp right now and it's like, dude, just stop like
What are you talking about? Well, they're building like a billion dollar company and like 18 months there, like a moving company you ever notice how, like, moving companies, like, they don't give a fuck about the service because like, you're only going to use it once and they're like, yeah, let me just get you a borst. Got you bitch and then it's like, do your shit. They're, they're like, dude, we don't give it like, renewals are to think here, I don't care. You know, I hired this service that was like it was called like musclehead movers or something like that.
And all the imagery, all of the imagery was just a huge like, buff, guys. It was like, hey, we make it easy. We'll move that couch, will move that fridge. No problem. Just another day at the gym for us. I'm like hell, yeah. I almost like movers three tiny Vietnamese guys showed up, I'm sorry, the truck said muslim move ourselves, like the goddamn I'm looking at him and I'm just, are you gonna say anything and you're gonna dress this
Friend and they didn't. And I didn't because I was like, what am I supposed to say here is like, what a bunch of Grease. I'm not Punk's. Hoping and they did the job like they could move everything cuz they just use dollies and I was like, oh I want a dolly movers, I would have, you know, like it's different. It's a different experience. And I signed up for catfish, let a stupid, there's there is one cool thing I wanted to tell you about. All right, what is it? There's a guy named Seth ban and who tweeted this out he goes
Two million scientific papers are published each year, that's over 5,000 a day. Even if you're working 10 hours a day, no breaks. You'd have to read one paper every 7 Seconds just to keep up. So we built paper scraper to just like basically programmatically read every paper that comes out but not just every single paper we prioritize and wait any paper that's being shared by top scientists on social media. So basically builds a thing that makes it easier to keep up with science and
And he's the second person I've seen do this and I'm actually pretty convinced is actually just a good product idea. So what's the what's the URL? Do? You know because it's so new doesn't show up and there's not a website for you. He's like oh like we built this for ourselves but like I'll let some people in beta if you fill out this type for my, you know, like that sort of thing like soft launch. I would love to see what our Buddy Lee or who does alpha signal. So this guy built like a
You know, like an AI newsletter thing, but his and newsletters was one key difference, which is, instead of just telling you Bronies, like, what the new chat GPT feature is. It's basically a, i newsletter that's for technical people. So if you're a researcher, your machine learning engineer, you're a PhD type person. Alpha signal is a new center for those people, which I actually think is a very smart way to purchase business. That's a very high value, reader and customer. And for them, it provides very simple service. So he also built the thing like this internally. So what he did was he goes
All right. Every paper has you know a list of scientists that are like the researchers that were involved and actually there's a there's a naming convention just like in movies, the credits, like the stars, go first and the people at the back were looking at the end credits, in research papers kind of same thing. The people at the top did all the work. The last person is like the names person who reviewed it or edit it at the end, put our stamped, you know, their seal of approval on it or the lab they're associated with. So he kind of first created a page rank of
Researchers and scientists has awesome, then he's like cool. Now in a paper comes out that has one of them in the name or those people on social media share a paper. I immediately know this is probably an interesting paper, the so that first creates a Hit List. He gets alerted like alert, top, scientists to share the waiver page page rank is what Google invented. It's how they know what to show up. On the top of Google page rank is categorized. Like there's a bunch of different measurements that
Biggest measurement or they don't even tell people, but it's theorized or maybe they even set this 0, but which is how many people link back to your website? How many other reputable websites linked to yours. So every every website has Authority. So let's say New York Times has a higher authority compared to Sean foryou.com, right? And so if New York Times links to some other website that tells Google, that that other website might be an also, a high Authority sites, it increases its Authority, if Sean links to it increases in a
Tiny tiny amount. And so that's how Google basically figured out what's the right over. You know, what is the right web page to show when I when you search a question, who has the most authority to give you the answer. So this guide for Alpha signally or did this for for scientific papers? She's like, who are the top scientist? What are they sharing? What are they linking to? If they're linking to something that's an important paper or an interesting paper that you take the entry paper feed it through his LM and it gets summarize down into four bullet points. Like what was the at? What are the what was the finding? What was the
Methodology, who are the scientists and what's the kind of like key takeaways from from the and Alpha signal is only for like AI topics. Correct. But I'm like got it. This is a generalized product that's actually just really interesting. Like your I was like your method to create this newsletter is more interesting to me than the newsletter itself. Yeah, yeah. And paper scraper is the same idea just to my different guide approaching it from a slightly different angle, which was same thing. Like basically trying to figure out what are the important papers that are coming out, so
Of the of the two million papers are of the 5,000 that are published every day, which three should I care about? Which five should I care about? And then of the five that I care about what do they actually mean? And what do they say really hard to read? They're so damn hard to read. So, I think this is a really, really cool product idea. And then he also built like a thing called spin out GPT, which was basically like, you can it's like a cheap easy, you can ask it questions about things that might like, you know, could we commercialize this and or
Like, would this work in cell culture or tissue and then it'll go look in the paper and find. Did they do it in cell culture? Which is General answer to you that way. So, it's almost like being able to talk to research papers or talk to talk to a rare, very smart person that read all of the research papers. And it's like, oh, I see where this is going. Like, you know, the hustle milk Road. These were like the horse carriages, right? Like, yeah, we have random humans trying to keep up with what's going on, maybe they set up.
Google Alerts, the check Reddit and Twitter every day they make a list and we talked about it and then they read in summarize and they summarize it as good as they can. And then like you know the pitch was like it's like you're smart friend explaining what happened in crypto that day are yours was it's like you're smart friend explaining what happened in business news that day and this is like this is like your fucking genius friend that read every scientific paper ever and you can ask it any question in any variation and it will answer your like a seems pretty powerful, huh?
Yeah, we're on our horse back and just look at how I just flew by the. Whoa, what the hell is that? But what about my friend? Greg, he yeah, no II. By the way, I'm happy we would not want to be in the newsletter business right now. It's just the waiting arms, everybody's following us into the newsletter business is now like now he's like Peak hype on newsletters and also the way that people are acquiring users like I just subscribe to set the and sub stack and like right after I subscribed it said do you want to subscribe to these 18 other newsletters and
Auto checked and I almost accidentally clicked like, yes, it's like and they're all like, oh, look at my newsletter growth, it's insane. It was like, dude, anyone on sub-sectors talking about your newsletter growth, you're full of shit as my answer to you. Like, you are absolutely full of shit. It's like people think they're filling out a captcha and there's actually subscribing to 19 newsletters, like, at a time, it's insane. That's why. You know what? I like bee hive has a good feature. They did a feature like that. That's actually legit. Which is their thing was, you can you have to manually? Be like, who do I want to endorse? But also, they have this thing.
Thing we don't like Sparks or some shit like that but it's like you can pay to acquire newsletter subscribers. Like all of us know, the best news is that our subscriber you can get is somebody who already subscribed to either newsletters that are similar but that's really hard to get historically because you have to advertise in like a hundred different newsletters, so they create a little mini ad Network inside inside beehive of all the Beehive newsletters. But what's cool about it was you only pay for somebody who's a retained reader and I was like, okay that's actually legit. So instead of
Just like this, like AutoCheck vanity metric was like yeah, I got more subscribers but like, are they actually engage reader? You have no idea but you're you're excited about that. Anyways, what I like the Beehive did was you only pay? It's like, you know, CPA versus CPM or CPC like CPA is like you only pay for a reader. You actually acquired is still reading from you and and so, it forces quality because that's the only way you're getting rewarded in that Network. So I was like, that's smart. First of all, this set band thing is awesome. I just, I the tweet that Sean's
Owing to his from June 12th. So if you Google Seth Bannon and go to think it was on June 12th, that's awesome. He filmed the video in like an amazing place like it looks like a TED Talk almost but like with like it in IMAX style screen explaining his concept I don't know if that would be a good business. I'm nervous about people building businesses right now on top of open AI because I'm like they're just going to crush everyone and just do it themselves but this is awesome and second yeah to
Today, I'm happy, I'm not doing a newsletter as my main thing right now, it seems really really hard and like I remember at the hustle, we had one daily newsletter and then morning bruised. Strategy was to launch more but my thing was like fuck but if we have more our main thing was going to go down like they're not going to open to that. I can open three. Now people if the numbers are true, are subscribing to dozens and I want to know, is the engagement even remotely the same, it seems really.
Really, really hard. It seems the way harder. Yeah, I think it's a lot. Like podcasts, like, how many podcasts do you actually have in a regular rotation at any given time? It seems hard. I mean, with newsletters, it's easier because it only takes three minutes to skim it, but it seems really hard to get people's attention with the newsletter right now. It's so funny when we so I got the idea for a newsletter because I had my friend no Medora and then my other friend Noah Kagan. They were like they had one foot into the startup world one foot into like the internet marketing world and I was like, oh this internet marketing World, they love email.
And they use it in sometimes Shady ways, but let's just see if we can do it at legit way and people are like laughing at that. Now it's so cool but also that people take it seriously but I'm so happy. I'm not doing it. It seems way more challenging at the moment. I it seems really hard. Yeah, I think the best will still win because, you know, the best tends to win and everything like, you know, they're so I say it's not that the doors actually closed, but it's definitely much harder than when you started when
You sure 2015, 2016. Yeah, so it'll I got the idea of doing a newsletter and I started it in 2014 but it became what it was and on May 19th 2016, a great day in history. Well, I was remember that because it's the day before for 20 so it's always good. It was always easy to remember. But yeah and it would like I remember like at four I originally started as a conference and if I had five if I had
Subscribers to my conference newsletter. I think I made fifty thousand dollars in conference ticket sales and then when I had 10,000 I think we did a hundred and fifty thousand and ticket sales something like that and like the engagement was quite high. And then I remember people back then saying, I think, Gary vaynerchuk, I talked to him. What time he was like, dude, my newsletter we had a 99 percent open rate because no one else was doing newsletters. Yours is only 40%. It's so much harder. And I was like, oh man, I wish it was easier.
now, I don't know what those numbers would be, like, but I think it would be hard to make that amount of money with as few subscribers today, as it was, it was easier than, you know, the other thing that's funny is or I guess the other thing that that kind of variety of is your, I wish people would see kind of View Early blog posts are, you should we should do kind of like a trip down memory lane of some of our projects, because
You're incredibly good at creating content and writing. We like when I see what you did versus what I see. A lot of people doing now. I'm like, oh, there are like many rungs on the ladder above is where you were. You were with creating content back then. Like, I remember your early blog post that were just regularly going viral. Getting millions of hits to the site because they were that good like which ones like when you were doing the. Got you like first, you have the right?
So you were kind of like a YouTuber before YouTube. Actually, you really should have been a YouTuber like that would have been your calling. I believe we got we got asked to do it like, you know, you were thinking about doing it. But I said, hustle. I was thinking, Sam poor as a YouTuber would have been, I believe. Like, you would have been one of the most successful YouTubers on the platform. Let me give you an example. That's awesome. You're like, for example, I remember some of your early hustle blog posts, surviving 30 days on Soylent, only
Guess what? That sounds like every Ryan Trahan video. Every mr. B's video like, this is like, this is the current meta of YouTube. You were doing this eight years ago, you know? Like it was you were way, you did micro dosing LSD, you did an interview with a Anonymous entrepreneur, who, who hate Rises books. Yeah, yeah, you did the thing where you were like Amazon best sellers are bullshit. I'm gonna prove it by making an Amazon bestseller spending only like $1000 guess.
What? That's a YouTube video? These Are YouTube videos, they would these videos would still work, but the thing is
You have to do them with style, you actually did the thing with style. Now your problem was you were locked into this blog world because those are the people you admired at the time. But they're gonna do how to write you know, like writing was my thing. I wasn't I don't know if I could have maybe I could have had the visual aesthetic to like you're good on camera. You like lived in a freaking. Do you like lived on a motorcycle or something? I don't know. You're sleeping on a motorcycle Christian. That's like you had the dog and you had the look and you had the humor on camera and you were willing to you liked
jackass and those sorts of things. And I feel like you would have kind of torture yourself for people's entertainment as soon as you got that hit a feedback you would have gone all the way and yeah and I just wish you had kind of gone down that route. In fact I still think you should go down that route. Like for example I think I could be successful. In fact I'm going to be successful on short form video but it's not going to be the way you could have been because you're kind of like those like you know whoever this is Danny Duncan and and Ryan Trahan and and you know mr. Be sure your
A lot like them in the way that you are as a character and what you're willing to do and what you were willing to do and how long you were kind of like I'm single and don't give a fuck. And like, I don't need comfort and like, yo, oh, like this firecracker is going to go in my ass. All right, let's roll like the lights action, right? Like I think that you had all of that. And so anyways, I don't know what my I don't wish I would have done that right away. I don't, I think, I think, I think I probably could have done
In it. I think that that's a hard life. I think it's hard. Like, I like Danny Duncan a lot, but I'm like, can you do that at 40? I guess. It's just has to change. It has to evolve our like mr. B's. What's he gonna do it for T? Is going to be so wealthy doesn't really matter. Yeah, but you didn't the same. Yeah. But yeah. Like, our early blog posts were good and there was a period where I was writing like five a day. I would write so many of them. Not all of them were bangers but like we would write a ton and that's how we grew. And that's why I tell people I say to blog, I don't actually mean blog but I
Create bangers, tax-based bangers on a consistent basis and get people to love your free content. Enough to subscribe, TB, maybe text-based. Bangers space, that's been our strategy, right? Like, how did you like for me when we wanted to grow on Twitter? It was like, all the advice was, you gotta be consistent. Well, guess what? I'm like, the least consistent human being on earth. Like, if you weren't super consistent and a real hard-ass about like, we're going to record this, every Monday, every Wednesday 9:00 a.m. every single.
Every single week without fail, no matter what? There's no way I would keep up the schedule, right? Like, I only do that because you're my friend, I don't wanna let you down the, when I'm on my own, I'm inconsistent. And when I wanted to go on Twitter, I was like, look, we all the conventional wisdom. You got to treat every day multiple times a day. Find the right time of the day. Be consistent. Be on brand. Have a single message, do a call to action. I'm like, dude, I ain't trying to do all that, that sounds like hard sounds like the lame version of success. And I agree, it's probably right, but like I didn't want to do it that way, and my way was a texts
Bangers is, like, I've basically had like six viral tweets That Grew me to, like, almost 400,000 followers. This is it was literally just six tweets. Basically, that be crazy. The bulk of the grounds, like the clubhouse one. The metaverse one. This one about Elon Musk. This other one, it is like that's all it was that got me like kind of all the growth and then I'm just like several weeks in between posts, I'm completely inconsistent. Well, what I tell people was like my team and myself when I was starting. Also, I was like, you know, everyone says, it's a marathon not a Sprint but
You're kind of just telling me that you just don't want to work that hard and if you look at the world class marathoners, that's going to feel like a Sprint to most people. So that's just kind of like how we're going to live our life which is like it is a marathon and it's run so fast. It's going to feel like a Sprint to most people. The marathon not a Sprint but we're Canyon. And yeah, yeah, your last name is kipchoge. You know, you're gonna be a kid. Yeah, you can be Batali your
Ethiopian place, you know? Like worries Africans here, baby. We're gonna run fast and yeah I think but I actually I prefer writing. I think that it's more fun to be in a quiet Zone late at night and just bang it out and it feels a little bit more Artful. It felt like I was in my zone of Genius a little bit whereas with video it feels like sometimes you have to perform and I felt that writing was a different type of performance that is more enjoyable if create for me.
Yeah. Sure cries man, likes his choices and defends them by the way, look at my cursor. That's that. What they did was the correct thing soccer. I did live life life. Look at me when I was fat and selling hot dogs. But that was about it was about was that YouTube life? It just you know throughout the camera I was telling Sarah I was like I'm nervous about going to
For early Connecticut or like if we're going to move to the suburbs and she's like wives, like well one of my favorite things to do is like so every day, I like to go to this gas station near my house and get a diet dr. Pepper and loiter slick. I don't like this. Yeah, I get a slim jim in a diet dr. Pepper and I like dab it up with like the clerk and then I'll just sit and see the regulars. Like sup man. Right now? What's good? How are you? Like I just like to loiter and like your hood rat shit. Yeah, and I was like, Connecticut doesn't have like hood rats or if I cancel that
Thunder gasps. Yeah. What am I gonna do? Like we're like I want to watch people. Buy lottery tickets and scratch offs and like like smoked like a mi, like where am I going to hang out with? Like I need the smell of like the woods. They call it, you know, like the, the Blunts and where am I going to do that? You know, like, that's how you get, like good ideas and you like see, interesting people. So, yeah, I'm about how many incredible podcasters there are. That just don't podcast, but they just chop it up sitting on steps, like all day and just for a milkshake.
I'll Attack you imagine how good those people would be. If we just put a bike in front of them, they just don't know. Like, there's just like it's like--there's. Like it's her, like, incredible basketball player somewhere in Africa that we just don't know. We haven't found them yet. Like just imagine the dudes that just sit on the steps all day, just shooting the shit. That like Joe Rogan is lucky those guys don't have a microphone and they just like said outside of a gas station like reading newspapers, I was be funny. I always thought it'd be fun if you like walk up and you overhear the conversation and they're like dog you better diversify your
Yawns, man, like the Dow's down like this, having like the most academic ever say things ever, because they read newspapers all day. Alright, we've crossed Across the Threshold slab. Happy face is initiated all right, that's the pod.
I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to put my all in it.
