My First Million

i'll start with this chris i don't know if you could see this but i'm riding down today's date because today is the day that i become a better to negotiator i feel like got rude where i know why i could be what i want to from at all in in like a day's off on a road less travel never you're a master negotiator former fbi negotiator for twenty plus years i now you've been consulting teaching the art of negotiation to business people and anybody who needs negotiation and the funny thing about negotiation is it's the skill we all need that i feel like i personally never got taught i never i it's all self taught anything you learn and one of the things i realized was so often i was negotiating and i didn't even realize it whether it was with an investor or with a with a you know with an employee or a customer life is full of negotiations but so i'm excited because i think this is gonna be quite useful so maybe my starting point is this if today was the day i'm get better at negotiation where do i start yeah well first thing is let the other side go first and then is the difference actually listening is a challenge because they're when the other person's talking this time you wanna jump in it's almost impossible to resist it's basically if there five six steps to get becoming a better listener the real challenge comes at step two it's a hijacked point if you're listening at all as opposed to completely focusing on your internal dialogue where you're waiting to speak most people get past that stage but if you're listening at all either listening to re robot u here's way you're wrong the urge to correct is irresistible i mean like it's insanely impossible to overcome so you'll jump in there to hijack the conversation to correct the urge to correct is so irresistible that we actually use it as one of our negotiation skills i'll i'll say something wrong on purpose because you will not be able to resist the urge to correct me with the truth and it's a great way for me to trigger getting hidden information out of you they won't regret giving me because you won't the old saying we don't remember what was said remember how we felt in the moment dear to correct is so satisfying that you'll never regret telling me something you shouldn't have told me because it felt so good in a moment so that's that's the power of this hijacked moment hijacked to correct now the other thing that you're you'll do frequently is hijacked to relate and it's called storytelling stealing and you won't you won't mean to do it but the other person will say something it triggers this incredible memory in you of a past experience something it happened to you it's one of the file of common ground and you'll completely be unable to resist that urge to jump in to tell me your story oh my god the same thing happened to me and you feel incredibly good in that moment not realizing how squashed i feel and it's one of the peep one of the reasons why people refer to it to stories stealing because it feels so good to you you can't imagine that what i feel it's like how you had to have a better story than me you had one up me get it do better than me and you can't imagine that that's the case because the memory triggered than you was so good so actually listening through that hijacked moment is one of the big channel when probably the single biggest challenge of becoming a better negotiator because you gotta listen somebody all the way through and then and here's how powerful it is to make somebody feel heard because just because you've been hurt doesn't mean you feel her just because i do understand does it mean that you feel understood mh so i've at a wedding a couple weeks ago on ireland and it's my first substantive of conversation with the bride the night of the you after the wedding ceremony and as as you could imagine she's unconscious on her feet she's making the rounds through the wedding reception dinner she's obligated to speak to everybody because that's what bride gotta do it at the bride and groom was supposed to walk around say hello everybody make them feel happy that they were there and thank him for shaun up and all i'm doing when i'm talking to her my first real conversation with her is telling her what she went through that day i'm telling her what she went through i said you know this this is this is probably it's probably easier to run a small country in south america than it was pull off this wedding and you know you're here to celebrate the union of two families and your your husband is here because he's gotta be you know so i'm laying all this outdoor all of of what she's going through showing her completely that i understood everything that she went through leading up to that point she runs to me the next night at dinner and she walks up to me and she gives me this big hug and she says i have no memory of what you said to me last night i just remember how good it made me feel and that's the power of making somebody feel understood she literally couldn't remember work but she felt bonded to me because i thoroughly understood her that's the challenge of making and the the mission and the goal of making feel somebody feel completely heard and understood you have no no idea how many times i wanted to interrupt during that story and i just knew this if i'm ever gonna do it this is the one time i need to just listen the way you're what you're describing and and and also like you've you the urge congratulations on resisting at urge because in the moment you had you're like i wanna speak right that mean good job that urge is huge i have trouble resistant it sometimes and so you're saying that the starting point is skill of truly listening not waiting for your turn to talk not trying to hijack you the what you called the the fallacy of common ground where i think i'm building this bridge with you and you're like dude you just sides swiped what i was trying to tell you and you're you wanna tell me about you what i was trying to tell you how i'm feeling or what i'm going through and what what's happening in my life and so those techniques are not even i mean negotiation is just one small part of that that just seems like how to win friends and influence people that seems like you know it should be relationship you know the foundation of any kind of communication of relationships so is it that negotiation fundamentally is just connecting with other people is it that or is it that these skills apply to other domains i mean what's the right way to think about that well yeah it's across the board i mean and first of all negotiation if your objective is to have a long term relationship of trust we both prosper now if your complete social path that should be your objective because it's low maintenance it's at least amount of effort and it's a maximum amount of money i gonna make i'm you know i i get a number of people i get one of our top level coaching clients said i have made so much more money being collaborative than i ever made being cut your relationships you make deals faster your relationship flow more smoothly that should be your goal like you you if you're the most mercenary person in the world and the only thing you care about is making money then that's the fastest easiest way to make the money but not that's not everybody's definition most people think of it as win lose you know battle of arguments i'm gonna get the upper hand on you i'm gonna i'm gonna have you over parallel i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna force you to do what i want you know the the people of power negotiations if you will that that puts out of business you lose you lose friends you lose collaborators you lose college alright let's take a quick break because we got something for you you know we pinned a survey to one of our videos so we asked what's the biggest challenge you have right now in your business and the number one thing that you guys said was getting your first hundred customers that was the most popular response and it's of course that's the challenge because if you can't get to a hundred customers you're definitely not gonna get to a one thousand so what the team at hubspot did was they went through all the old episodes and they heard the stories where i talked about how i got customers for my first business how sam did it for his first business and some of the guests that came on and talked about what they did how they scrapped and claw and got those initial hundred customers to get the ball rolling and then they put those together in a report it's a pdf it's totally free and you can get it and it'll give you some sense exploration some ideas around how you might be able to go get your first hundred customers check it out it's in the description below so what is the right way to think about negotiating because in my mind you know my simple to brain if i imagine a a great negotiator if you said think about the best negotiator i think somebody who's either very powerful maybe slightly even intimidating or they're just very charismatic they're able to sort of manipulate when the other side over and i definitely default to a win lose dynamic i'm trying to get as much as i can and they're trying to give as much as they can and let somebody see who wins this negotiation whether i'm buying a car i'm going and getting a nintendo off of craigslist or wherever it is i'm that's the the default for me and so how do how did you do relationships if you're i mean maybe this just doesn't imply but if you're a hostage negotiator i i mean are you trying to have a relationship with these people that somebody you've never known and they're clearly you know off their rocker if they're hostage let's not let's not put them in the author rocker category let's make that simpler to start with okay let's let's say it's not the first person i would think of when i i a long term relationship with this person and so can you tell me a story about maybe i don't know your first high stakes hostage negotiation and how you approached it and i guess what the mindset is there well i i learned for the three things i suppose to start with i learned the application of empathy from a crisis hotline and what we now refer to as tactical empathy but just you know demonstrating understanding not understanding but demonstrating understanding in a way that the other side feels heard it draws them into telling you more removes you as a threat first move a negotiation is to remove yourself as a threat because why would they make a great deal with you if you're a threat why would they they they might make a deal with you if you're a threat but they're not gonna make a great deal with you so one of the one of the first really counter moves is to move yourself as a threat and hostage negotiator does that with a non threatening voice calming soothing late night fm voice and expressing genuine concern for the bad guy like i'm i'm i'm here to get everybody out that includes you mister bad guy now whether or not you let me get you out is gonna be up to you but that's my objective first first of all and i need to find out whether or not you're good with that some some baggage i wanna die i need to know that right away now here's the counter crazy counterintuitive thing when you talk about relationships hostage negotiators have repeat customers so i might not see you again but if i get you out alive another of negotiators going to which means if i lied to you if i deceive you if i didn't take the time to understand you that's gonna be your experience when you run across the next guy and things are probably gonna go bad so in point of fact you know the the whole idea of a long term relationship i i i gotta i gotta be willing to step in to be open with that and you're gonna be bad guy gonna be able to smell that what was your first big case first big situation where you you had to deal with a a hostage situation and you came out with a successful outcome it was a very rare event that i was lucky enough to get involved in a bank robbery with hostages where we trapped them inside with the hostages and so what happened you get the call that this is going down and i mean just well i mean what was that like tell me tell me about it so we didn't get the call we we became aware of it and we just went which is a a really a philosophy that i live by which is called run to trouble it's it's amazingly liberating if your philosophy is run to trouble and so we ran a trouble we showed up since it's a bank fbi i n ny are showing up the negotiation team from both sides knew each other really well we had a great relationship we had a bank robbery task force in the new york of the time so the the pd and the bureau already aligned on the criminal prosecution so the two negotiations teams blended and the the first hostage negotiator on phone was a was a pd detective i was his coach the pd commander was in charge of the negotiation operation center on the inside the bureaus lead negotiator or coordinator at the time went to the outside of any event any voice to voice bull stuff was needed when negotiated for a number of hours the commander decided to sort of disrupt the dynamic a little bit it was stalemate made at a very low threat level and so he pulled the penny negotiator and he put me on the phone with the bad guys and i had one of the bank one of the bank robber out about ninety minutes later would you start with when you got on the phone we went disruptive to start with which is was not the usual protocol the commander sensed gall great instincts great instincts he listened long enough to realize that the secret to gaining the upper hand and the conversation was gonna be how each conversation closed bad guy was constantly saying hey i gotta go they're coming they're gonna hear me or i gotta i gotta put you on hold i put you on speaker and and he just get off the phone so he said no matter what happens you extend every call you end every call he tries to get off the phone i don't care what you gotta do you keep on a phone five seven ten seconds longer than you end the call we're gonna take control of this but taking control of the end and the other thing we normally the normal handoff off is hannah hannah phone up to the next negotiator and the next negotiator does an elaborate summary of everything's been set up now because what you anticipate is a bad guy saying like oh chris who's this chris guy does he even know what hell going on phone right and so normally chris gonna say have been sitting here for a long time and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah so i'm up to speed you don't have to why do you hand it off at all it could be for a variety of reasons normally it's to take a harder line okay no negotiation team whether it's business or hostage hands a negotiator off to another negotiator to be nicer ever business or hostage if there's a change in negotiators on the other side it is always to take a harder line always and why why is it better to handed off to somebody else who'll take the harder line versus you yourself escalating to a harder stance it's gonna catch you other side off guard a little it's destabilizing without necessarily being threatening right away and if i've been a push over up to now and suddenly i'm demanding you have reason to believe i've been you know which guy is the real you the other guy or this guy right so lose there's an authenticity issue involved and so how did you get them out you said ninety minutes later you got hostages out what resolved it or what was the breakthrough point the inflection point for that one well i you know i threw the the first guy was high highly manipulative negotiator i in hindsight i now referred to him as the great corporate ceo negotiator a great corporate ceo if you're in negotiations with them it would be like oh my god you know my board's gonna fire me if i make a bad deal you know i mean there's my board is gonna kill me if i agree to that you know blaming people that are not in the room right so that that guy doesn't get cornered diminishing his influence at the table because if he does that that had to do this call in all the shots he's just smart enough to knock and corner at the table was always gonna blame somebody outside the room so the first bank robber at chase was telling us how dangerous his colleagues were and he he kept saying like you know these guys are crazy like you know i'm scared of when when he was calling all the shots so i took a harder line with him i was taken away is comfort level and being more confrontational without being aggressive he gets rattled and while he's trying to figure out what to do hands the phone off to the other bank robber on the inside who does not like how this is going down it was not part of his plan to be stuck in a bank surrounded by snipers with fifty caliber guns that might you know put a gaping hole in his forehead which he he would no longer could wear his favorite hat if that happened like he's scared a death about getting out of there and so i start in with them and i'm i've still got the late night fm dj voice which is calming and soothing them and then the real critical issues where somebody else on the team heard what was really bothering him and they handed me a note and i listened and i and i adjusted my stance in a moment on the note and he felt so heard and understood then in very short over was meeting him out in front of the bank he was surrendering to me wow what was what was on the net we were pressuring him to let a hostage go they had three hostages on the inside shocking that the hostage negotiators would be trying to let the bad guy get the bad guys the let hostage go and the note to me said ask him if he wants to come out and in in a blink of an eye i switched from ask him about the hostages and letting one go to saying do you wanna come up and his response to me was i don't know how i do it which is a great big giant yes just just tell me how get me out of here well i wanna count and when when we had him on that thread then i completely focused on the consequences that he was looking at how he was gonna get out of there he was most concerned about what was gonna happen to him in the instant he stepped out the door and as soon as i got enough reassurance i almost i almost had this guy out and then i got another note as it turned out from the same negotiator and then note said tell them him you meet him outside and i said you wanna just meet me front and they said says yeah i'm ready to end this shit and so we scrambled i i went around i got on the ball on on the outside got him out in front of the bike listen up the old playbook is slowing you down ai broke the funnel loop marketing fixes it it's a new era for marketers ai is capturing search traffic channels are fragmented and generating leads feels less predictable than ever before hubspot loop marketing playbook will guide you through this unprecedented disruption it's the system your marketing teams should use to move faster connect deeper and gross smarter the modern growth playbook for the ai era built by hubspot design for today's marketer get the loop marketing playbook at hubspot dot com slash loop dash marketing to find out more and leave your competition behind alright back to the pod when you talk to ceos and business people you know obviously different situation than a hostage negotiation what's the first message you try to get through to well but you say you have a room of a hundred of the most you know a fortune one hundred ceos we're in a room and they're all here to listen to you europe on the stage what's the first thing do you really wanna get through to them to to income where that this information they need that they could only get at the table i remember a long time ago somebody wrote a book i don't know if they call it a ten commandments on negotiation you i don't i remember what it was call but i remember taking a look at it and one of the one of the commandments was and which is i completely disagree with by the way it is what it is which is your experience you were not new it's not your first rodeo you've dealt with these people before it is what it is so i'll i'll ask these ceos when are you ever in a negotiation where you don't have closely held in information you don't wanna reveal to the other side whether it's your budget whether it's your pressures deadlines on other deals quarterly profits demands from your board when is there ever a negotiation where you don't have proprietary information that if the other side had it it would change everything right you always have yeah like all the time and i go i go okay so that means the other side's got that too which means it isn't what it it's not what it is and the other side will tell you if they could trust you not to hurt them with it so your first negotiation is trust because they got stuff as they could tell you it would change everything and that gets people out of the perspective is i gotta make my case or i gotta eat what's my leverage what's their leverage what are our giveaways what are our what are what are our a lot of executives say you know what are our must haves and what are our giveaways well if they've got proprietary information that would change everything then you you must have and your giveaways could be completely wrong right and you have and then so you've got imperfect information and what you wanna do is you wanna sit down and gather information and trust and then rethink what the best deal looks like and it's really hard to get experienced executives to do that because you know i know the lay landscape is not my first rodeo i've seen this before getting them out of this is something i've seen before is a really hard day right okay so that's great so i'm a i'm a executive in that room and i hear you and i say okay first of all even though i've been through a lot of negotiations there's more to learn so i'm open minded to this secondly i buy i buy what you're saying which is that if i had more perfect information we can we can make a better deal that might be mutually beneficial if we were willing to trust each other what are the simple ways to build that trust when you do meet with the other side and they're naturally initially gonna not not just be super willing to trust you what are these simple ways to build trust well the the the simplest way to build trust and gather information simultaneously it is nothing anybody's ever learned okay so basically what they're you're saying here is number one i gotta build trust number i gotta get the information so number one build trust tom ground let's find out what we have in common did you play little league baseball growing up the the you kids you know you made what are you kids doing you know how many times have been married in know this whole common ground thing because they felt so good when they shared it they didn't realize that they were squash in the other side so there's there's that's one of the worst ways to build trust and then gathering information you talk to gather information bias asking good questions well questioning somebody makes them feel cornered which then diminishes trust because nobody trusts your corner them or interrogated them so the the the counter answer is the you know the hostage negotiators tried and true tool called and hostage negotiation it was a emotional label in business negotiation just a label and i i i can start triggering information out of you right away if i sit down and i'll take a a sense of you and i said this to a colleague recently i hadn't seen him months i looked at him instead of saying hi how are you how are you doing today how can i help you and anita how nonsensical how questions i looked at this guy and i just i just kinda soaked them in for about three seconds maybe it sounds short but always feels like an eternity and i said you you seem centric and he set there for a second he said you know i just came off the mountain and the mine is where i go to meditate and i work out and he's all this asian philosophies and martial arts it's makes him feel phenomenal he said the last time you saw me i hadn't been on the month and months and i was just wound really tight and you know i just came off the mountain and i've been up there for about a months now if i'm listening he just told me a lot about himself and he also told me where he's at right now if i just sat down and said hey nick how are you he looked at me and went they are fine you right right and you did it with a observation a label but it was almost a compliment too it wasn't like you said oh you seem stressed out where you'd get defensive right you you said you you seem centered it is it important if it's a positive or negative label in that way it's just gotta be what it is okay like if he just seems stressed i said you seem stressed mh or if he seems stress one i like when somebody seems stressed is it's probably that day and i'll say tough day and you can watch them get their balance back when you say that and so the observation gotta be you have to observe what it is because of if they look stressed and i go like you seem centered then i'm an idiot okay so you you put the label to give some information that was what what happens next what's what's the next move to to continue to build the trust yeah well you know i'll probably i a i may feed it back to him i'm gonna i'm gonna sit back and you know i'm gonna let it i'm gonna let the other person talk and then i'm i'm gonna see if they got a next step and then i'm it's it's a little bit like there's gonna be a little bit of a dance here we may need to take a circuit route to where we both need to be but if you pick the root we'll get there faster by pick the route i you know i don't know what where where where you're going through i don't know where the friction points are for you i don't i don't know what i don't know what what's gonna make you lee i'm gonna let you pick the root because it's gonna be faster i'm a sit back and wait to see if you if you pick a next step i mean try to trigger you to see if we can go is it you know is it ridiculous to talk about what we're here here for so you caught that question then yeah it was a no oriented question yeah instead of do you wanna talk about what we're here for which you're drive for yes because that going for s creates friction but going for no creates protection safe price no no it wouldn't be ridiculous for us to do that there you go exactly yeah and so that's how i wanna when i when i wanna when i wanna maybe go some place i'll i'll trigger the decision via no versus yes mh and you know there's all these words when it comes to negotiation negotiations those sort of classic words you know compromise tell me but tell me your thoughts on compromise do you think the united states congress is deserves an a plus rating no but they compromise all the time i think so if you think politicians are awesome then you think compromise is good and it's a crazy thing about it because everybody preach compromise how do you feel about compromising your principles and not good yeah it's it gives you an instantaneous uneasy feeling inside right so it's compromise is to by definition make something lose lose and that is not compatible with a long term relationship of trust and prosperity it's it's compatible with being a c player mediocrity compromise is correlates very strongly to mediocrity and you gotta decide whether or not you're good with mediocrity and so what's the replacement to compromise because i don't think it'll goes in saying i can't wait to compromise they sort of feel like it's a necessary evil i guess we'll have to compromise in order for us to to agree and i think that's where people land settle for that that's the mediocrity part so what's the more more effective more powerful way of thinking besides expecting to and accepting a con accepting that you need to compromise well let me find out where you're let me make you feel heard first if i can make you feel completely heard on your position my guess is more than thirty percent of the deals we made in your in in my favor on the spot and about half of the deals are made on the spot once the other this side feels completely earned but let's say let's say it's only twenty five percent and it's it's well more than that alright so now you've knocked out you've just accomplished you have to negotiate twenty five percent less because you just made the deal by making other person filler just not twenty percent of your work off the table now what happens the remaining seventy five percent their positions going to move closer to yours and they're going to be more honest with you about what exactly the position is they're gonna tell you what they perceive that must haves to be they're gonna move away from their throw away right away so me gonna make the deal on the spot or eat i'm gonna find out what we really have to negotiate about immediately which is also gonna save me a massive amount of time now there's a difference between compromise and high value trades and you know i i'm not a hundred percent sure whether or not this is a great example but i like it steel is two percent carbon and ninety eight percent iron so let's imagine a carbon and iron we're two negotiating factors and they said we gotta compromise and go fifty fifty because we need we need a fifty percent representation here now in point of fact two percent of one person's idea and ninety eight percent of the other person's idea made a stronger ally that mankind had never seen before so your real challenge is what's the blend not the compromise right what's the blend you know there was a guy who came on this podcast and he said something great i don't know if this aligns with your philosophy and he said he's told me something that really helped me in negotiating he said you know most people when they go into negotiation they see themselves on one side the table and then the other person on the other side the table and it's sort of me versus you and i'm tugging this while i'm pulling this one you're pulling that way and he said this is a guy who buys companies and he said the best thing we did was we realized that that's the wrong mental model the right mental model is me and you are sitting on the same side of the table and across the table is the problem maybe the problem is you think the price is x and i think it may is why you know there's some problem that's preventing us from just doing this deal instantaneously but it's not me versus virtue it's us together jointly looking at this problem on the other side of the table and that was a very like effective visual metaphor for me is that something you would i don't know agree with is that something you you you would you probably know more about that than i do no i agree completely i mean for the longest time on my side and we've always said the series is a situation and what you just did was explain what that model looks like through that example and it becomes very real when you describe it that way and yeah that's a very smart way to describe it and where does a leverage come commit come into this because you know when i've negotiated i always think about you know leverage deals i deals i feel you know i do but i'm not hundred percent happy with i'm not not too happy with it's typically because i felt like the others i had a lot more leverage in the situation and this was my best option to go with it was ninety eight percent their blend and two percent mine and in other situation where i have leverage or create leverage or i apply leverage you know i tend to feel like i do better but is that a is that too simplistic like where how do you think about the word leverage because for me that's always been key in negotiation it's not simplistic it's a step up from flounder entirely to you know and it's gonna sound harsh i mean you get yourself to b level negotiator there you'll never get you'll never get yourself to a a plus on leverage because leverage is the ability to inflict time and if you're making deals based on the ability to inflict harm these these are not those those they'll go for stable long term relationships they don't go for the other side sharing information with you that'll that'll change everything because if you've got leverage you're a threat and why would they give you important information if you're a threat and vice versa how much leverage do they have on you holy shit i can't give them i can't tell them that they'll little more leverage oh my god so it can be useful in some situations but it'll never get you to the best outcome and because in many cases you can talk you can think about when you made a better deal because of leverage then that becomes really addict really satisfying and you lose track of the deals that you should've have made but you didn't because you didn't have that thought you had leverage or the right you know the the it's a it's a very limiting factor it it gets you you know into passing grade and it just doesn't get you to the top of the class gotcha and so what does get me to the top of the class so we've talked a little bit about it right i truly listening using labels to collect information plus make the other side feel you know heard and understood what else is kinda key to get me to the to the top of the mountain when it comes to negotiation well what you really negotiating what what people really don't understand is how important trust is and trust is based on your how predictable you are take out the word trust to put in the word predictability you all it automatically become more trustworthy because you're predictable and so then the ability to collaborate as we deal with issues because there's always gonna be issues you know the the making the deal is the beginning you gotta get into implementation and if we don't trust each other then problems are gonna crop up and we're not gonna tell the other side if we've compromised i'm gonna resent that compromise and what problems crop up i'm gonna keep my mouth shut it's gonna hurt you because i didn't like i didn't like the leverage you used on me i didn't like the way you forced me into this deal yeah you know what threaten me find find make me cooperate make me tell you about problems in the early stages as opposed to when they're turning into the land mine has gone on it's really an issue of you know how we're gonna do the implementation and so the whole issue of you know do we start and then and then you're even gonna talk about how we're gonna pro cross a bridge bridges when we get to because there are gonna be problems you know i i i'm gonna train a long time we'll before the book came out as ceo said this is my cfo and i want you to teach him how to put clauses and contracts i don't penalize the other side for non performance and my thought was if pen the other side of for non performance is your biggest problem it started a lot sooner because you're not making great deals if you you're telling me you can't get your deals to implement it that's what you're telling me so you need to back way up and find out what the problem was well before that because implementation is where it's at and if we don't trust each other if i can't count you to work through problems with me gonna cost us a lot of money alright this episode is brought to you by mercury they are the finance platform of choice for over two hundred thousand companies it shouldn't be surprised because i use it myself for not one not to but i have eight different mercury accounts i have seven for different companies that i'm a part of and then i have my own personal account because now they have a personal banking which is really cool feature i highly highly recommend it like i said i use it myself the reason why is because the way that mercury works is beautiful it's very intuitive and you could tell that it's actually made by a starter founder it's an entrepreneur you could tell it's made by somebody who used other banking products in the past and didn't like all the different rough edges and and annoy and decided to you know actually fix it himself really any type of entrepreneur you are let's say you're an agency well one of the things every agency has to do is be able to send invoices easily create them send them to customers and stay current on your balances with all your customers well you can do that inside mercury and so i think that mercury is great highly recommend you check it out and thank you for sponsoring the show for more information check out mercury dot com mercury is a financial technology company not a bank check show notes for details what are some examples of kind of the great deals you've seen maybe the great deal makers are great deals that you've you've seen i think oprah is a great deal maker and visible examples of that he gets lance off armstrong to come on tv and answer yes or no questions straightforward as to whether or not he dope and whether or not he did things now i'm not a acquainted a with over i am a acquainted with lance and i like lance a lot and when you look at the totality of the circumstances you get quite a different picture as opposed to somebody given you a very narrow view but anyway the lance on a armstrong interview he wasn't caught off guard by those questions that was the negotiation between him and her in advance as to whether or not he was gonna get on camera and what she was gonna asking you don't see anything in the media about lance armstrong being upset with oprah winfrey which means they negotiated a great deal upfront that they were both good with and then they executed it and it was no bad blood after the fact that to me that's a great deal and that's an example and a reason why and also and if you look at the totality of oprah think about the fact that she's dealt with some of the most difficult to handle people on earth celebrities who are used to getting their way at all times and she she she doesn't have any dust up city arguments with any of them now how is that possible when in today's day in age the celebrities love to have feud with each other all the time as a way to gather attention but that's not her method of operation and her such success is extraordinary especially thinking about where she started and i i'd take i'd take some very small percentage of her network and be quite happy do you have a sense of what she does or how how she accomplishes that the the interesting thing is it's very similar to what we did in the chase manhattan bank because i was talking about a woman talk with a woman los angeles several years ago to work for oprah and i'm laying all this out and i said the last impression is the lasting impression we didn't lieutenant did it buy and instinct that the chase bank i found out later on from i was at a gala poll conference on human nature you know the gala poll the long time collectors of polling data of course they're sitting on decades of human performance information and this one speaker stands up and says people don't remember things how they happened they remember and they don't remember it how it started they remember the most intense moment and how it ended the last impression is the lasting oppression so i'm laying this on my colleague who work for oprah she said says oh yeah oprah lived by that all of her whole life she said in in the entertainment business the joke is in an limo out of a taxi as soon as they get with a want from you you know you're out hitch up front finding your own way out but at oprah it was in an limo out in an limo and the philosophy was no matter what happened on any interaction no matter what you had to make sure they felt respected heard appreciated and loved at the very end and i've had several conversations related to me when know didn't see something i'd to eye with somebody else and her last words are will always no matter what i will always love you and i will always be supportive of you and the last impression is the lasting thing impression and she's she's a master how do you prep for an for negotiations so usa you're gonna go try to make a deal and some people have this idea of like a what's it called bat we're the best alternative to whatever you know they they sort of think about their their desired outcome and then the worst case scenario they're gonna accept other people do lots of research and they try to try to you know find as much as they can about the other party to be you know fully armed when they walk in for some people who do power moves how how do you prepare for for something that's a in the business sense in the business context it's gonna be a combination of two things i'm gonna first of all i'm gonna think about what negatives you're gonna harbor about me in advance and i'm and and i'm not gonna and everybody everybody's got that i actually interestingly enough everybody could do this right away even if it's a first interaction one of the things you wanted deny i don't want you to think that i'm gonna be greedy i don't i want you to think i'm i'm i'm know this slimy salesperson i don't want you to think that i'm to maximize my opportunity i don't want you to think i'm i'm wasting your time that i always tell people what would you wanted deny walking in that you got instinct telling you a negative is there and you make the shift from a denial to the straight observation but probably gonna seem greedy i'm probably just gonna seem like another slimy salesperson i'm probably gonna seem like somebody that's wasting your time that then instantly makes me the straight shooter the honest honest person and so i'm gonna think about what negatives you're gonna you are likely harbor because the brain is seventy five percent negative and that's the fastest way to for me to build a relationship deactivate the negatives and make me look like a straight shoe which increases your trust in me and then there's gonna be some stuff that you're gonna be thinking about that you're gonna be offended if i don't appreciate and you're gonna be offended if i don't appreciate how hard you work the fact that that i'm talking to you at all means you have value and that you have legitimate reasons in your own right to be respected and admired and it's taking what a lot of people would refer to as flattery but then articulating that it's not vac as flattery it's genuine appreciation from where you're coming from and i might say you something like you worked very hard to get to where you are today you have been in this business for a very long time and you know what you're doing otherwise if you didn't you wouldn't be sitting here in front of me at all and you have things that are valuable and worthy of my attention and of my respect and you put those two things together and you kinda get empathy mh that's what you were calling tactical empathy earlier right yeah because it there's there's brain science that backs up that approach particularly starting with the negatives before the positives right and why is it so important for i mean this is gonna sound like a dumb question but like it it just seems like it's the most important thing so i wanna talk a little bit more about it which is why is it so important for somebody to feel understood and heard and why do we default it seems like what we default to is i can't wait to make my case so the so that you understand me and right i feel hurt right like right right it seems like the biggest swing i could make as a negotiator is to let go of my need of that or at least initial need of that and really hone in on your need for that and if i just did that one switch i'm a much better a much better trust builder and therefore a much better negotiator when it is that the right summaries from what you said yeah you know it really is and it's fascinated to think about the fact that people come to the table with such a desire to be heard and to make their case they can't imagine that's what's driving the other side it's blinding and neuroscience wise what differences it make to make somebody feel hurt i will trigger to release a in you of your neuro chemicals oxytocin and serotonin if you get ahead of oxytocin in interacting with me you're gonna bond with me and you're gonna be far more honest with me oxytocin just it's bonding and truth serotonin is a drug a satisfaction which means you're gonna be less demanding so if i could make you feel heard you're bond with me you're more honest with me and you're less demanding it's a pretty good start for negotiation how does how does chris v you know buy a car how do you do in day to day everyday situations have you had any any implementation of any of your techniques that on like the low state stuff we've seen the house negotiation but like what do you do with when you're on craigslist do you need a couch or you're you know you're at the market yeah well you know i i tell the other side why what they are selling is worth what they're asking you know i make their case because that's what they're gonna say to me so what i've done is i've just now left them with nothing to say and then like see i can i can i can i can pound you down on price i mean i i and i still if i choose to be i can be i can really pound you down but i better never need to come back to you for anything and there are a few deals that are complete one offs so if i'm buying a car depending upon who i'm buying it from i will tell you i do not have great regard for car dealerships across the board i no longer ever get any vehicle i own service that a car dealership on a care what the warranty says because i don't trust them so i don't mind piling down a car dealer right i got no problem with that and i and i will do that to them i will i will make their case and then i will become very passive aggressive and you know my favorite is how am i supposed to how am i supposed to pay that well you would have said all the things that i just got sent if i hadn't sent it first but now if i said all if i if i took away all the wind out of your sails took all the bullets out of your gun then when i give you the opportunity point that got me you got empty you got empty chambers you got nothing to say yeah i know and your dealer on a margin and in in real short order i'm gonna get you down to your bottom line and then if i like it we'll make a deal if i don't more at but i better i better i better not ever need to come back to you because once i've killed you on price you are not gonna forget that and you were not gonna list a finger to help me ever again right okay what about other sort of day to day negotiations this is i i got little kids i have a five year old a four year old one year old and so my my most frequent negotiation is with them and i'm just curious do you have any parenting negotiation tips maybe it's just don't negotiate at all but i don't know i find myself in that pickle a lot now well you know with your kids this is the you know their age ages for thinking if you will but you're what you're really trying to do as as a as a parent help your kids think and so recognizing where they are in the stages i heard a long time ago up age five treat kid like a king five to fifteen you know work like an servant at fifteen let them go there's a lot of brain science that that overlap overlaps very closely with that in the development of the brain but all along the way is you you want your kids to feel slightly challenged and you want them to get them to think now that they have the ability to process that at about age four slash five six they start to cross over into ages where they're starting to process that and what a lot of parents wanna do is just order kids around like go to bed because i'm day i'm why because i said so i'm because i'm the father that's why right well that's not it's not really helping them think it's demonstrating to them that the only way we you can get stuff done this by through use of force now that doesn't mean you wanna put up a bay behavior either there's you know one of my favorite videos is some you know this mom trying to talk her five year old son into getting in the into backseat of the suv and she's come on you know and he's crying to make a noise and his nine year old sister walks up and grabs them and throws them in the suv and they get up they they leave you know at some point in the time you got a toss a kid in the car but in the meantime you know your your your jobs the parents just help them think and and it's not to shield them but it's to challenge them and make better people help them think and after all these years of helping people be better negotiators and you teach certain you know techniques and certain frameworks for for this what do you think is the most easy to implement of all of the frameworks meaning the easiest way to get points on the board and start the process of improving in this area well it it it's really gonna be the different ways to repeat back to somebody what they just said you know label you're you're focusing on their emotions or affect mirrors and para phrases focuses specifically on what they said it seems like it's got a waste of time and it ends up being a relationship accelerator which send as a deal making accelerator so how do you do it the more you can make somebody feel heard the less you could be a threat and they're yeah sometimes charm is involved charm and empathy you're are very close yeah but who's the most interesting at the table if i make you think i'm the most interesting person okay cool we had a great conversation but are we are gonna make great deals now if i made you think you're the most interesting person are likelihood for collaboration is very high right and how how do you find that balance or do you need a balance between like my business partner ben he's like this he goes into a lunch he asks so many questions because he's genuinely curious and he's he you tends to know a lot about the other person and what they're interested in because he's paid attention he absorbs he remembers what they said he remembers where they went and he's just so he'll feed them things that he knows they're interested in not to minute with him he's just that's like who he is i don't know his nature is to be that way and he leaves the lunch and they've talked ninety eight percent of the time he's talked two percent of the time he's asked them a couple of questions that he knows everything about them they know nothing about him and they go this was amazing we gotta do this again this was one of the this is so fun i would love to do this again and you know he comes back at the same time i'm curious if there's a sort of a downside to go in too far in that direction where you know you haven't sort of demonstrated value or you know provided the other side with an you know sort of an almost like a in tech like an api connection like an ability to understand what your needs are and how they might be able to help or intersect with what you what you do is there a danger in going too far down the kind of like let the other side talk route well first of all curiosity is the superpower like it and it in it like it is a superpower like it's ridiculous where it shows up in terms of your survival their survival long term relationships your resilience your ability to discover new things like curiosity yeah i can't tell you so many different ways it's the super superpower so now what's the danger at some point in time you gotta keep in mind while we're talking and if you get too curious then we have a finite amount of time we got an hour to be together if i if we got an hour together and we get nothing accomplished you gonna remember you really enjoy the conversation but we didn't get anything done so you might feel like it was a waste of your time mh you have to be aware of the progress that has to be made and i my team what we always do is we set finite periods of time for meetings period and we never go over it doesn't matter where we are we'll we'll set another meeting before we'll go over a meeting because time is this commodity that is so limited that if i don't help you manage your time and your interactions with me then preaching you're gonna start avoid well speaking of you seem like a guy who is very conscious of his time i wanna make sure wait it looks like we're eleven minutes over and i wanna we i didn't mind i enjoyed the conversation i i do wanna tell some people about some stock yeah town please so we've started this new thing called the black swan negotiation community and you go to our website and find it and it really is that across the board amazon one stop shopping for where you are in your negotiation journey you can't afford anything come into the community because membership is free and get started getting a return on the investment of your time in terms of dollars so you know get thought on your journey any any incremental change could be monumental very quickly awesome well chris thank you so so much for coming on also for i don't know all the content that you put out over the years i've always picked and picked and chewed on different little bits of it especially whenever i was in the process of either raising money or selling my company it was these very brief periods of time maybe three weeks four weeks six six weeks where the value of my years of effort would swing by fifty percent depending on how good i was at negotiating and understanding you know the other side and being able to find a a mutual beneficial deal so it's one of these arts where it can make a really big difference at a very small amount of time being you know the difference between being bad at it versus good at it versus great at it and so i i i appreciate you coming on and helping us be a little better at it today i was a pleasure i enjoyed the conversation conversation i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on a road travel never looking alright let's take a quick break because as you know we are on the hubspot podcast network but we're not the only ones there's other podcast podcasts on this network too and maybe you liked them maybe you should check them out one of them that wanna draw your attention to is called nudge by phil ag and whether you're a marketer or salesperson and you're looking for the small changes you could make the new habits you could do the the small decisions you could make that will make a big difference that's what that podcast is all about check it out it's called nudge and you can get it wherever you get your podcast salesperson

alright so we had da mesh shah on the podcast today da mesh is interesting one he's probably the most listened to and viewed guests that we've ever had and two the reason he is that way is because da runs hubspot which is a twenty five or thirty billion dollar company that makes billions billions in revenue and he's a billionaire he also is sort of like a hacker so he launches little projects all of the time sometimes they works if a fails sometimes they make five thousand dollars a month and so he's probably the only person on earth that has this perspective of both being a big thinker and launching new projects yeah and on this episode we wanted to talk to him about the early days like how did you actually get hubspot off the ground you had no money you didn't have any connections and he figured out a new model of marketing around blogging and seo and we wanted to talk about what did what did that look like then because today with ai and chat seems like there's a new opportunity and i have like more energy than i started with because he's got this kinda i don't know like playful builder like get after energy that's pretty contagious alright give it a listen let us know what you think in the youtube comments yeah i feel like i could rule the world i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off dumbass mess looking back do well back from a busy but fun week at inbound in san from cisco did you guys get together and in s yeah we did it da is like you know this was his coachella he's there he's the guy so sam i go to san francisco and basically like the street is shut down for the they take over that that area of the moscow center and they have this thing called inbound and so da is like hey after your talk let's go hang so we go hang out and my first question was like dude so what what is this because i'm you know i know it's a i know it's a conference or like sort of this event i'm not like confused about that but i'm looking at it and there's these giant you know like they make those block letters and it just says inbound but doesn't even say hub hubspot first thing is this is like it says inbound and then there's all these people walking around and i'm just thinking why are they here what is this all about and you actually told an interesting story about like the origin of this that that i think is kind of a like a pretty interesting business strategy der tell the story you you were you told me something you go talking to brian and he was he was telling about these very well funded companies that were had cmos that we're trying to get website like traffic to their website and here's der just blogging for fun at home and he's getting like way more traffic and then and they kinda looked at that they're like they have a chief marketing officer they have a ad budget they have like all this stuff how are you getting ten times more visitors to your website like people come into your store did they are there's something here right like wasn't that the story yeah that that's exactly the story so the yeah know the i was still in grad school finishing up writing my writing my thesis brian graduated a year ahead me but we would still get together like once a week and chat about ideas right it's like well you know because we had kinda considered the possibility of starting a company together and while we were doing that he was working as a venture parker one of the vc firms here in the in the boston area his sort of job his role was to help these startups go from ricky dink startups and and get scale right it was just to help them with their go to market marketing sales you know how do get customers and so we'd be meeting and as part of my thesis work called un startups the patterns and practices of modern software entrepreneurs because i'm a i'm a software guy and my thesis adviser who's won of tougher advisors but like three quarters the way through is star mesh like you've got a lot of words here but there's not a lot of data this is not like da opinion and this is supposed to be a thesis this is you know you have to have some like research and things and this is you guys know me well enough now so my immediate thought was well what he's asking for is going to involve like interacting with humans and that sounds awfully unpleasant that's not what i signed up before and so i thought this i blogging was a new thing at the time i'm like well maybe i can like write you know write a blog and maybe i can get comments on the blog and i can use that as like the citation of the was like oh you know on my blog article i said this and some people said this or whatever so that's that's what did i start a blog in order to come up with a name for the blog i just took the first two words of the title of the thesis which was on startups stuck the words together and put a dot com at the end of it and this was you know in the early days so that was available so registered it for you know fifteen dollars or whatever it was and anyway so that like how do i get people other than my mom and in you know two friends to read it right like what's what do i do and so then i kinda dig in it's like oh well there's you know this thing called google they got two types of traffic you can pay your way in or you can do what's called search engine optimization can get organic traffic there's social media sites like dig and read at the time like here are the things you do in order to get people to your website right that was a a collection of things and so those are all the things that i sort of dug into obsessively and learn about and we can talk about some of those because i think that's a good topic even for today as as things evolve it's and so brian's is watching me do this now when we're meeting is like da how's that blog going like going pretty well here's the traffic he's like how the heck are you doing that i'm like oh well there's this thing called seo and there's this you know like you're all the things that you do he's like well yeah like my portfolio companies like they can't get like a hundredth of that traffic they should be doing this not whatever it is they're doing like stop to madness in terms of spending this budget on things are just not you know not driving any engagement and style was a kinda of genesis of the kinda idea of inbound marketing it's like okay well everybody was doing it wrong they needed to be doing it like let's pull people into your website that are kinda curious how do you educate them how you put value out there and are kinda catch phrase of the time was you know try to add value to your prospective customers before you tried to extract it like all other marketing was forms of how do i extract value from you how i interrupt you at dinner or how do i you know get you in and we were the opposite of that and so now back to the conference so when we did that we're like okay what we didn't have a product yet right we're like okay well here's the things that we're i was using stuff that was you know the common things like google analytics and you know blogging software and things like that so two things we decided one was that the reason so many people weren't doing it is not that it didn't work it was that it was just too hard to put all those two two pieces together all the pieces that you needed to do and it anyway put that so we're like okay well there's lots of nodding of heads in terms of the idea being right of this kind of inbound marketing thing and so we decided amongst other things to say okay well let's start blogging about that let's see what the market has to say about it let's start getting up on stages when we can get up on stages and then part of that we're like okay well let's have people that are like minded that believe in this this kinda of new way let's get them together so the first conference was that a marriott that was across the street from the office it was like two hundred people in a ballroom with a marriott and we made a decision when we start the conference it's like this is not intended to be a company conference the idea here is there's this thing called in inbound marketing which we think is a better way and all this is really doing is we are acting as a host to kinda bring this community together to talk about these things in fact we actually i don't think ever used the word for before but it's it's like you're not allowed to pitch up hubspot from station if not if you're your hubspot employee not allowed to pitch any of your companies from all the speakers that we add it was just all of us internally at the time and so we sort of kept that up that's why the conference was never named hubspot you know this is the seventeenth year that we've been you know doing that event on an annual basis and we it was a con competing of the community not a tech conference the classic sense where you see the ceos get up there and pitch their book and like here's what we're doing and that's that proved to be good there's a few smart things that i did that i would wreck in that everyone should go off and try to do this but a few things that work if you're really looking to kinda start a movement start a category we did not trademark the term inbound marketing even though we had coined it right and and we were starting a company right so it's like okay well if this thing is actually gonna be a thing we want everyone to use it we want people to put it in their job titles and their job postings it's like we want it to be a thing and the way to be making a thing is to make it accessible to everyone make the event accessible to everyone so even the early years we had direct competitors that would send like half a dozen people that would send their entire team to the inbound conference even though you know hubspot was a competitor so that was it was a yeah it was an industry event not a conference i've seen this happen many times so i i was part of the early blogging community first as like a reader like i was really passionate about a bunch of blogs and then i had my own small blog and then i somehow became friends with a bunch of the people who i i read their blogs about read on the blog and then it was like from o eight to like fourteen or something it was like a really magical period for blogging and back then we felt like freaks where we there was a very few of us and we were kinda weirdo we basically all nerds and yep we loved like other beating other nerds then when i lived in s f which sean there were startups but then there was like crypto and crypto was like the same thing where it was a very very small and very passionate group of people and it was the same thing they were freaks there weirdo if you told someone what bitcoin was i was one of those guys where i laughed at it and i'm like this is a joke what are you guys talking about and my takeaway from hearing you tell us story is that i've seen this happened so many times where there's niche communities or you know also with like early youtubers we knew early youtubers and it really became a thing we have seen this happen so many times for a small a small group of really like unique or odd kinda odd people that but it's very tiny it's crazy how the signal is like how passionate they are who's that now i think ai is already it's our that's that's past yeah so like that's not it but i think that like peter levels has done that with like the indie hacker that was really cool but what do what is it brian johnson was that two years ago like the body hacker it's obviously easy for me to say what is past but i that it it's a hard question i don't i don't actually know what do you think it is now well well i was thinking about first the the strategy that the hubspot thing did with the category creation when you make it about a movement and a a way of doing things instead of like starting with your company and your product and so was thinking who's done that well and i thought of two just like little examples just while he was talking and the first one was brian johnson i think when brian started he didn't have a product to sell and so he basically was like he just made this like this way of bio hacking longevity let's call it the and then he named it the don't die movement like it's like if you believe what i believe and then you think the way is to like use science and be like yeah a little weird about how you're gonna yeah i'm gonna sleep at this time yeah i'm gonna put this mask on my face yes i'm gonna you know i'm gonna get this test done every six weeks yeah i'm gonna do all these weird things because i believe in this way of living i thought he did an incredible job of that and he created that that movement of you know the longevity movement really along with hub and others course the not one person or one company ever owns these things and so so i thought that was one example and then another example that's a little bit you know just smaller or more niche i thought you know i was thinking about okay so hubspot basically had of course this the people who believed in doing this new form of marketing and then hubspot became like a tool you would use naturally if you were gonna do that then i could build the tool for that community i was thinking who else did that and i think one is what russell b it did with click funnels yeah so first the idea just a rebranding of kind of like the funnel the the ward funnel so it's like oh yeah like we already had websites we had landing pages yeah we had growth we had all these other words but then to like own a word like inbound marketing of like funnel and then i think they have like funnel hacking competitions and conferences and it's not called the click funnels like if like the click funnels meet up you know it's for people who are great at funnel hacking and funnel building and have generated lots of sales and they make them feel like stars and they give them a huge plaque for how many sales they've driven through their funnels and then of course if you're gonna build funnels for you should use you know click that's like the natural like the secondary thing underneath i i thought russell brown did a great job of like popular like a way of marketing and then selling the way to do that well alright guys if you liking this interview with der you might want a little gift from him so der has put together a bunch of ai prompts that you can use to help your brand grow on ai so the old way of getting discovered was people with google and then you wanna be at the top google well the new thing everybody's doing is you're using chat or a perplexed hear all these different tools that are ai tools and they're asking questions and they're searching for stuff so how do you get found there how do you get discovered in ai well you gotta make content that ai likes you gotta make content that ai knows how to read well how do you do that that's something that da has put together he's got a bunch of prompts a bunch of things you can go put into chat gp and it will give you ideas for content writing that will help your brand get discovered by ai so if you wanna get the prompts go to site it's a here's a qr code there's a link in the description as well and there's a hundred of them you can literally just copy paste them and start using them for your company check it out it's pretty cool alright back to subset so one kind of category of ideas i've been obsessed with for thirty years which i think is a really great category like broadly defined category of ideas is making inefficient markets efficient right and so the kinda of macro level definition of an efficient market is that every transaction that should occur does right like oh and an efficient market is like oh someone wants to sell x and someone wants to buy x that transaction happens if it's an efficient market so a good example is like the public stock market someone's willing to share sell shares at why price someone's willing to buy shares at why price and so that transaction and what it needs to occur does occur and so then the question is like what makes markets inefficient right thing number one is the buyer and seller don't know each other so there's just no way to connect the dots thing number two is the buyer and seller know each other but they can't come to some objective way to kind of determine price by number three they can come up with a price but there's not enough trust for the actual transaction clear so there's all these things that make markets inefficient and if you look across kinda the span of history some of the most money that's ever been made are when someone took an efficient market to which there was what i think i was like latent economic value that was just being wasted as a result these transactions out happening they essentially took some of that inefficiency out so ebay was an efficient market for these niche market product like like pest dispensers and things like that like oh i've got this thing that i'm obsessed with or i'm selling and here's the buyer google in a way was creating an efficient market for niche information that says i'm writing a blog post about how to build fences for llama here's someone that's looking for that content that's fences and google is the market maker for a niche market content for the viewers of that content across a really really long tail right that's that's what they did and so this idea of a community is really a form of for a business perspective is a form of creating efficient market these are people that would enjoy knowing each other may be transact maybe they do business maybe they hire each other depending on what the community is but just the act of pulling those people together you're move removing some market inefficiency and as a result of removing market inefficiency you get to participate and some of that economic leave economic value that you uncovered and that's how communities make money and when they do well they do really really well just on a kind of profit margin basis because they're relatively cheap to kinda get started almost self sustaining if you can sort kinda get the people together and you get to critical mass that's actually got lots of other positive effects versus just blogging or said like content creation is because you have these kinda of network effects so wherever the community is already aggregated it's sort of hard to disrupt that once the good community gets going so one of the other things we talked about when we were hanging out was were telling me this story about like hey like early on i was blogging it was getting this kinda of crazy amount of traffic and then we realized like oh there's gonna be other people who wanna do this and then we built a tool and i was like one era of marketing was like when that was like you know early to like as it matured and hubspot became like a huge beneficiary and then i started thinking about we i think we talked about like a few other eras of marketing it's like okay when facebook launched its ad marketplace which i think was something like two thousand ten ish range but like paid ads across google and facebook became like a dominant way to market your product and a bunch of people did that cool then i was like you know there was one other one that i was like i told you i was i thought i was late to even though it was right in front of my face which is what i call a jacking and there's two people that i met that i think have done this incredibly well and they even told me about it specifically to my face they told me the secret i was too dumb to like acknowledge it and the first was actually steve bartlett so i hired steve bartlett when he was probably i don't know eighteen nineteen years old he came more for me steve had this one scale that was like really interesting to me which was he had he was building up all of these social media pages random themed accounts and he could grow them very fast they were run by like a single nineteen twenty one year old person and they got like ten times more engagement than my corporate accounts what's an example page so he had one like freshman problems okay and he would just post something and then like all the college kids would laugh at like the memes on the freshman problems but guess what once you get the attention and trust of every college kid through your you know freshman problems you know uni problems he would create these pages like that then he would then just shove in a product and spotify and others and nike would come and pay him a hundred thousand dollars to reach that audience through his accounts and so he had this like method i guess like in the same way da that you were like just a guy blogging in his bedroom and you were like basically out pacing these venture funded startups with cmos and budgets and you know marketing professionals who couldn't get one tenth of the traffic the same thing was happening and he literally was in my office who's sleeping in my office at the time and he was telling me he's like yeah you gotta think about you know jenny in her bedroom she's just scrolling and like what's gonna make jenny in her bedroom care she's not gonna care that you launched your app and like how do you get how do you pay attention that and he started thinking about just work backwards what does the algorithm want give it that and then find a way to slip your product and giving it the same things and now if you look at one of the most successful podcasts in the world diary of ceo the reason one of one the most successful in the world is because he figured out how to a jack youtube and instagram like look at the engagement they get on social there it's i don't know a thousand times bigger than what we get on our podcast and if you think about like you know he he out he worked backwards from the algorithm so what we do for example is we have a product and then we try to share it and it might may work it may not work what he did was he changed his product completely to be what the algorithm wanted so it started as the diary of ceo's his personal diary okay not that many people wanted that then he started interviewing other ceos about ceo stuff some business people wanted that if you go look at his feed today it's like south health sex conspiracies you know like whatever and it's basically like the mass mainstream thing mostly in the format of they've lied to you about carbs they're lying to you about this and they're like but guess what that's what the algorithm wants and when i just when i said algorithm really it's like what people like to click on when they're bored jenny and bedroom bored was scrolling on on on her phone mister beast did the same thing like if you go talk to about a great video what's a great video one that gets a lot of views you're like well by that definition but is mcdonald's the best burger and he's like well yeah it sells the most burgers so it's the best burgers like are you talking about and i'm like what we have different definitions of best but his thing has always been like i wanna make the videos they get views so i work backwards from what's gonna get a view i work records from how do i give views the book algorithm is basically what is what does youtube want to show a billion people and i'm gonna try to make that video and even though i saw that that trend that sort of a i'll go jacking trend you know i didn't really understand it and i think long story short da today you see a new trend what do you see today as like the next thing yeah so let's talk about because i think there's real value in some some history here so the thing that i was doing back when hubspot got started and we made a brief reference to this it was called search engine optimizations seo and the kind of practice of and there's an entire industry now that was has been about search engine optimizations which is how do you increase the odds that your web page your website will rank in google organically organically being you're not paying you know add dollars or whatever it's for free you know how do you kinda rise in the rankings and there was an entire discipline around how to do that and kinda of pulling on your thread sean around kinda a hacking the way i'm i'm a positive kinda guy it's like it's really optimization right it's not a hacking in the sense that you're sort of what you're really doing is just saying okay knowing what i know about let's say in this case google is looking for right here's what i'm going to do in order to kinda of have my website go up the rankings and there's actually lot layers the game and the first layer is always more of the hacking like how can i trick the google algorithm into ranking my website versus somebody else's website and there were lots of practices that we're kinda later labeled as being kinda of black hat because like oh it really likes when it sees a the keyword that someone's searching on on the web page it's like okay well i'll just put the keyword on the web page five hundred times right in white font on white under at the bottom of the face that exactly and then that was level two it's like oh well google got too smart about that is because because that would actually like show up poorly and in other results and i'll do it know in a tiny font or a white font on the white pack and slowly it was just this game that was costly being played to try and trick the google algorithm with google would do an update every year i don't remember whatever and then like you all like they do the update and then six months later you see an article this company lays off five hundred people or like and so it's sort of like so like you you see i remember we have we i'm friends with the nerd wall guys the nerd wall is a company that like writes articles about the best credit cards and i was with them and they were doing that well and then after three years google made an update and they became number one if you google best credit card and overnight literally overnight they went from making zero dollars the third year i think they made thirty million in revenue and it was like google rewarded us because they changed their algorithm and we did things the best practices and all these other people got wiped out and it worked out and so that's what you're kind of you're describing of of all these hacks and then doing the right away was exactly right and so and i really like really as i tend to i would deep down the rabbit hole on seo kinda back in the day it's like okay well what is this how does it work and there were a couple of key insights that i think are still applicable today that i think made us money would make other people money because i think it's it's a successful strategy which is going back to kinda sean's po is the first thing you have to figure out is that there are lots of smart people at google whose sole job it is is to deliver high quality results to the end user okay so if you say that that means that every black hat tactic you're trying it may work right now but you've got an army of really smart people whose sole job it is to make what you're doing not work so it's just a matter of time so that's kinda thing number one right it's like okay well are there other things i could do that would act make those people's jobs easier it's like oh yeah well you know they really like it when you structure webpage so their a crawl or has an easier time crawling it it's like well they will reward sometimes intentionally sometimes unintentionally just what we will call like good behavior make your site clean make it load fast make it do the make the content actually useful so the you know i i got up on stages and and wrote about seo all the time back of the day and my one thing i would tell small business owners that's some like kind of primary audience was is that whatever's term you wanna search for type it into google right now let's go don't type it in and it's like okay well here are people that are coming up right now do you have a web page on your website right now that deserves to rank higher than the ones that are showing up right now and be honest with yourself like not in a self serving weight if you are searching if you were the actual human typing this keyword in would you wanna find your website versus what the ones google are showing right now if the answer to that is no job one is to create the content that deserves to rank higher than ones that are ranking right now because google's is imperfect and all those battles are win it's like i see them the top two or three are pretty good but if i were really searching here's what i would actually want then produce that web page that the actual end user would want and nine out a ten ninety five out of a hundred times it was just a matter of time because you got a lot of smart people that want to find that web page if it's actually truly better for the end user than that right and there's a bunch of things you can do you know write good content right timeless content but you know i have content that i wrote for hubspot nineteen years ago that still drives traffic to hubspot dot com that still generates leads that still generates you know revenue nineteen years later and this is one of the big things about seo and we'll talk about ae kind successor to that which is this is one of those things that when you're doing like google adwords and then you do those things right it's like as a marketer you need to have a a repertoire of things that you do to reach customers the issue with like google advertising or any kind of advertising is you're effectively renting someone else's stage or renting someone else's microphone and you pay them to do that right like oh put me on the page and i will pay you x dollars and there's a nice efficient auction mechanism for the price but it's like yeah but the day you turn that off the traffic turns off your link does not show up in google search results on anymore so you're basically renting and you don't control the rent and you don't control what the prices are because that's a market dynamic thing so it's like it may cost five dollars a quicker down it cost fifteen dollars a click literally tomorrow based on what the supply and demand is so now you are at the kind of va of the market the nice thing about seo and doing this content focusing it's like building your own property on your own land that compounds value over so as land prices go up the value of the thing you built actually goes up not down and it's under your control if someone comes along and says oh i'm gonna produce a better blog article it's not gonna be instantaneous as they take all your traffic overnight you will see them come up the rankings it's very very rare that overnight some brilliant piece of content that google finds it trusted enough to put it in the number one spot instead of you so you will see your competitors come up if someone's doing again and you can do something about it them me so there's all this positive this to investing in seo versus you know paid paid channels and i i was gonna ask you this you know one of the painful lessons i've learned is this one phrase called intensity is the strategy so i'm the type a guy that always like to read the the next blog the next tweet the next book because i always was looking for like what's the better answer because i in my head life was a you know a game of chess and if you just knew the right moves you would win and chest is like the wrong analogy for life it's a lot more just like taking a chest piece and just battering the other guy as many times as you can in different ways and picking up different pieces and just keep hammering on and i've learned that like you know for most other things in my life i knew the strategy i knew the answer and the difference between success and failure was the level of intensity i took to the strategy and i think diet dieting is the easiest example like we all know what to do this is your question of like how intensely you do it or not but like a lot of things in life of this way i've asked you i bring this up because i can kinda tell and i want you to confirm or deny this maybe i'm wrong but your volume what's a lot higher than what was normal in those days so it wasn't even that you were the best writer or you were the smartest of seo necessarily but like i'm guessing what you guys did as normal was completely abnormal in terms of volume did you basically like was volume or intensity of out of the marketing the strategy more so than like coming up with the perfect you know the perfect strategies totally have this is my has been my personal belief for my i think my entire life as far back as i can remember is that i'm never like the smartest person out there or even in any given room that i'm in you could out think of me i think that's relatively easy to do you will not out grind me will not out work me because that's under my control and so i've always believed that the kind of quality of the outcomes is almost directly always directly proportional to number of iterations and that's it so if you can squeeze out more iterations compared to the the know the next person or whatever over the fullness of time you win that like the universe says you win right and and you just have to have a conviction like the the problem is that the universe has a kinda a slower feedback loop especially in the early years it's like okay when you're first blogging four people will read the blog post and then you have it's like then you like pour your heart and soul into it and then it goes to six many part your part and then it goes to five goes down was like okay well what the hell is going on here but you sort of have to have the conviction to say i know it's just a matter of and i i don't work out but it's just a matter of putting the reps in like it's it's meaningful thoughtful and they don't have be perfect reps right they have to be incrementally better each time one of the things i wanted to do was for some reason in hubspot you guys changed your blog where i used to be able to go to da shah or brian hall your blog your author page and i could sort by recent and then just go in reverse and see your early blog posts and it was pretty cool because like brian was very casual you're like this is this guy does it sound like a thirty billion dollar company and it kinda like gives anyone inspiration because it's it's pretty great but if you go to on start dot com which is your personal blog and you can kinda rig it where you like sort by recent and you gotta change the url a little bit but you can go and look at some of your old blog posts from two thousand and six and a few things one the headlines are are evergreen they're fantastic raising capital friends family and fools another one is revenue early revenue often the other one is the danger of solving venture capitalist is biggest problem like really good headlines for one and two there's days like there was a day in november where you posted five articles in a day and then for the most part in two thousand and six two thousand seven two thousand eight when i imagine hubspot i i don't know when hub hubspot started but i think two thousand and six so you are running a company an early stage company that it probably takes up your whole life and and i think i don't if you had a family at that time but sure you're very busy but your personal blog is posting something like three to five articles a week not even your company's blog your personal blog pretty crazy reps work my friend that's one thing and this this is you know and we've talked about this in terms of as you pick an idea to work on you know as an entrepreneur whatever it happens to be one of the most important kind of filters and criteria should be is this something that i at least enjoy enough then i will be able to put the reps in because if you you can't make yourself do something you hate for that long for that many times over an extended number of years it's just not going to work so pick a market you like pick a category you like pickup up kind of business that you like it's like if you like e commerce if you like selling whatever it is then do that right just because something else has higher margins or you know susie down the road was able to create a billion dollar outcome or whatever it just won't matter because if you just give up a along of the ways like do not pass go did not collect two hundred dollars kinda of thing so funny listen in april of two thousand six he wrote an article saying less is sometimes less and it's an article written about how a lot of people say less is more and he's like no i disagree with that i think more is more is more in terms of effort this pretty funny you you been say the same stuff now for twenty years did you guys see this video that's going somewhat viral of the youtube founders early on have you seen this what's this no so this is twenty years ago and this is chad and steve from youtube and they're just in their office talking but basically it's the guy saying like they're just been they're just sitting there like i was got depressed last week like we have forty videos on the site and you know if i came to the site i wouldn't find it i'd be gone i wouldn't and they're just like yeah this sucks and this is youtube is the founders of youtube and you were talking about like in early days blogging it's yeah i got six visitors and and i got i got eight the next week and you know being able to persist through you know through that time and then and then the volume right like you just don't have enough videos it's not that youtube doesn't work it's that youtube with forty videos doesn't work it's not that blogging doesn't work it's you're blogging once every two weeks doesn't work right like i think that's one of the big lessons here listen up the old playbook is slowing you down ai broke the funnel loop marketing fixes it it's a new era for marketers ai is capturing search traffic channels are fragmented and generating leads feels less predictable than ever before hubspot loop marketing playbook will guide you through this unprecedented disruption it's the system your marketing teams should use to move faster connect deeper and grow smarter the modern growth playbook for the ai era built by hubspot designed for today's marketer get the loop marketing playbook at hubspot dot com slash loop dash marketing to find out more and leave your competition behind alright back to the pod we didn't close the loop though der so you the new wave we talked a lot about seo and like that's good because history doesn't repeat but it rhymes what's the new wave clinton new wave and i think just like seo created an opportunity for seo consultants seo agencies and businesses you know driving direct traffic organically i think we have a a new thing now so a couple of things are happening one is and lots of marketers have been hit hit by the ai taken away which is organic traffic that used to come through seo very very predictably including to a folks like hubspot we are very good at the seo game have played it for a long time has gone down literally by about twenty to forty percent based on which industry you are in and the reason it has gone down is that historically the practice of search is that we would go to google we would type something in we would get ten links right that's the that's the whole game as it turns out there's this new thing called ai and a new app called chad gp which has eight hundred million weekly active users and what people are doing now is not going to google and and getting ten links are like going to chat gp and just asking a question getting an answer and and that's it right it's like okay well there's no quick through there's no reason for someone is like oh just tell me the answer instead of me having to go through and read the articles from those ten blue links and then figuring out my own answer so like just do it for me and so that's happening already and you can see it in the actual kind of data as we've seen and so what's happening now is there's this an new emerging discipline that says in the same way we had search engine optimization we have what we're calling ae o which is ai or answer engine optimization it's like okay well peep peep before people are going to google doing a search for my product my service my industry in my category and my job was to be one of those ten blue links hopefully the higher the better because it's a a power lock curve now it's like okay well people are looking for products in my category service in my category they're looking in chat ep let's just say that's the number one number one app right now how do i show up as an answer or part of the answer when they do that so that's the emerging discipline of of ae and there's a few things that are distinctive about it one is the click through rate in terms of web traffic to your site through ae is going to be down because if they could just get the answer there's no reason to come read your blog posts about x where you stole the virtue of how whatever your approach is and it also lists way less more way less so if you say like what's a good clothing company or whatever you only get like four options whereas on google i can click next next next and you get correct yes which which no one ever by the way did that those was a running joke in the seo world is if you ever had to hide a a a dead body hide it on the second page of google search results because no one ever went there like all they would do is they would just rewrite the query they would not click next they would just rephrase your queries like i must have asked this you know suboptimal optimally or wrongly i'm just gonna rephrase my questions instead of going to second page but at least i get ten like a lot of what i noticed when i asked it that dad should be stuff it's like they give me like two or three i agree yes so it's even more important and and that's a what engineers math people would call like a binary so it's like either you show up or you don't right if you're not in the actual citations and the answer that was given you might as well not have played the game because there is no difference right so you're actually literally zero in terms of the the traction you're gonna get okay so then the question is how different is it what should people be doing what should we be doing now in order to start getting that and so the number one thing is that so when google crawls your website back in the old google days they have a google crawl and it calls websites and you can kinda control that and there were things you do to make it easier for the google crawl to crawl make your site faster make it more structured to all those things all of those things still actually apply the difference now is there's a kind of a oa it's called oa ai search bot is the name of the bot that's doing the search thing there's another one called gp bot that does for the model training and things like that so they're they're are two different ones number one on the off chance that you're blocking unknown caller bots which some companies do it's like oh i only want bing in google whatever to call crawl i a lot random people just calling my website because it cost me resource or whatever even if you're doing that if you're blocking it explicitly go in and turn on the ability for oa search pod and gp bot to to crawl your website because if you don't get indexed then right you're not even in the game let alone you know you have no chance of winning because you can't be in the results okay so that's thing one for sure yeah know one thing too is that and this was nice of them is that they do report so any when you look at your google analytics or hubspot web traffic whatever analytics tool you use it now self reports when something comes from from one of those bots from the ai so you can it's a ut source per parameter on the for those of us analytics it's like so now start and hubspot has this in in the product now so we will tell you what percentage of your trap just like we used to tell you y here's how much you're getting from paid here's how much you're getting from organic here's how much you're getting from ai referrals you know broadly defined so take a look at what traffic you're getting now so as you do things you'll know whether you're not better or worse you to sort of like anything else you you know have to sort of measure it in order to improve it so start looking at that traffic see wherever the baseline is today and then and start tracking it number three and this is a a a tactical tip reframe your content either rewrite it we're putting new content out there that is closer to a structured question answer form right so this is less about the kind of pros and narrative writing and hook hooks and things like that because you're not trying to hook a human like you were back when you're writing blog post because that's when humans are reading it they were like clicking on the link so you needed a great page title that would actually get the quick then you needed an actual really good content to kinda get to the lead conversion right those are the things you did and you were solving effectively for humans and google was just a proxy for the humans but it effectively you were solving for the humans now you're solving for that that ai crawl and the ai crawl trying to get to a good answer to a question that the user is asking and it's easier like if the question is we're the top crm for small business and start there should be a webpage page on the hubspot website that says here the primary factors that kind influence what what you would pick or lever and here's is why the seven reasons why up hubspot is the the top you know thing whatever is like make it easy for them like reduce the friction for the ai to get the thing that's trying to look for the thing is trying to look for is the best possible answer so the question the user is asking number three is all the things you used to do in classic seo most of them still work you still want page authority because chat t specifically what it goes off in does things what it does is you type a question what's the best crm for small business it will take what you type into chat gp and it will convert that into search queries it will para us so it's gonna do a bunch of bing inquiries bing as of what it happens to use but doesn't really matter us most of the search engines are roughly equivalent technology wise so all the things you use to kinda rank a web page will still help you because when big goes out and gets asked by chad gp says hey the user is asking this question about small business crm may rephrase a query but still gonna do a a bing search it will come back with a list of pages those pages go back to chat gp chat gp puts it through the l and comes up with the answer that it's the game that gonna show the end user so so you know getting high authority links showing up and being doing all the kind of classic good practice white hat seo stuff still applies sean are you are you getting have you noticed that you're getting traffic and sales for your for your stuff from ai i don't pay attention to it at that level of detail but we've and and it's not that big for us but we've looked at a few of these tools because now there's some new like you know the way like with the seo you'd have either you know hubspot or you have like mas or whatever you'd have these tools there's a few startups that have come out and been funded for this and they're basically like hey we can help you track this and get you into the top you know the top the top answer box for for for this and so we're trying those now but i think it's like early still to see if if we're getting any results from it by the way i just typed i said i'm a small business owner and i think i need some kind of place to keep track of customers and perspective deals what should i be using for alright tops hubspot was the second answer in the thing said yeah here's here's the top you need to it goes you need a crm here's what a crm does and then it's like here's the top crm for small business two twenty five but it looks like in this case it literally just every the ranking is just pulled straight from tech radars article like tech radar has some article i've tested thirteen of the best crm at twenty twenty five and it just like pulled that exact list and it put a comparison table in there like you said and like it just gave me that as the answer whatever tech writer said is is the answer here so that that seems a little tricky we've for hampton we've got we've got a we've got a lot of business it's it's it's crazy how much is happening what are people looking for sam that they're finding hampton so so sometimes it's just like i want like what's like an entrepreneur entrepreneurial group that i can refer to you or or i can i can look into so that's like one that's major one but then sometimes people will be asking questions to chat as if they're an executive coach like saying like i'm struggling with this problem and it will say like you might need a have you considered a an executive coaching group or an executive like peer network or something like that and then we get shown and what's crazy is we don't try like i was shocked by this i started seeing leads and customers come in and it would say i we use hubspot and hubspot would be like yeah this lead or this new customer came from chat gp and it honestly shocked to me and i remember the first time we got that like eight or ten months ago and it was you sean us star mesh when was the time that you like the light bulb went off i felt a little bit of that light bulb the problem is that maybe it's not a problem i think the best way to make it work is you just do the same things that you're doing to rank on google no but he had some good nuances right like the fact that you know on google you would structure your page a certain way because it's like that's it's like a a guest comes over for a dinner party and you're like oh he really likes you know to discuss books and current events alright cool that's what i'm gonna give you this other guy really loves to debate and it's like chat loves question and answer and so format your your content has question and answer this is like a simple nuance of like the new the new way of doing right but in general like it's signed like it's kinda like just do what you think a customer wants and the last thing is even early on google had what what was called the keyword what do they have key tool yeah they used to call it one thing and they changed it so like in the early blogging days you could type in like a certain word and it would tell you ballpark how many people are searching for it and you're like and then it would also tell you how much competition there is and so i could just like replicate that i don't think that exists for chad does it der it does not yet no and it's the other thing that doesn't exist yet is that we don't really get so back in the early years of google as part of the data that would come through in your traffic analytics you would see which keywords people were searching for was show up in hubspot it would show up in google analytics google's have subsequently kind of curtail that so they don't pass that kind of granular what we think of was like intent data what was the user actually searching for yeah i i think things will evolve so the couple more kinda tactical tips that i think are applicable today sean for you and this may be happening automatically based on being on the shopify platform but one of the things is that chat pt and the ai engines really like is structured product catalogs right that's because as you would expect it's like oh here's a here's the standard semantic web way of described the product catalog which is size color all those things right and then another key thing is inventory it's like is it in stock or not you know can shipped or something delivery time those kinds of things if you put those on the website that's going to influence as you as you would expect to like if i'm searching for i wanna buy this kind of a musical s synthesized or something like that i wanna find a site that actually happens to have it right that's why you know amazon gets you know so much love generally but anyway so that's one thing to look at and for you sam the other thing that the aes of the answer engines kinda optimized for is more kinda human based stuff so if you look at the review sites of g two and things like that for product oriented companies but also it i won't say over indexes because that's a relative term but it highly indexes on things like reddit especially if there's like active lots of back and forth or whatever and if even if there's one comment in there that says oh here's the thing that definitively asks and you will find that the the the citations that you see that show up and chat and you could just do this through personal anecdote and just experimentation you will find that the the reddit threads it picks up are the ones where the original post was actually a question and that question sort of matches a question the user's ask like oh what's the best you know crm for small business if there's happens to be a reddit post that loosely kinda translates to the exact same meaning that re fred post if there's a comment in there where someone definitively says yeah it's hubspot and here are the five reasons why and that comment gets a bunch of folks because they have access to that data that has a very very high likelihood of being a sided source is gonna be the biggest company in the world imagine if google had a so google is already the third or something largest company in the world now imagine every customer is also paying ten dollars a month or you know what i mean three episodes ago we were talking about open it's like oh if you give me if we have to predict this to which what's gonna be the the next trillion dollar company this is before i i don't think any company had reached trillion dollar at the time we did that episode but one was about to it it's crazy how much like chat ep for it to be a eight hundred like they're essentially the new operating system for this current generation i i had a buddy and i i maybe mentioned it on the pod years ago but he was deciding between two very promising companies one of them was open ai and this was before chat was launched and i think they were already worth thirty billion dollars and we were talking and he was like man i think like i don't know if this equity can grow anymore like i i just don't think it i can work and he ended up taking the job anyway and he made already something like thirty million dollars or so from his stock and he sold a portion of it so he could like be very comfortable and then we were talking he's like what i do with the rest and i was like man there's definitely a world where it could ten or twenty x or more again who knows and it's just crazy to say that out loud that what's it worth now one trillion or eight hundred i don't even five hundred billion is the current publicly disclosed round that's happening currently alright this episode is brought to you by mercury they are the finance platform of choice for over two hundred thousand companies shouldn't be surprised because i use it myself for not one not two but i have eight different mercury accounts i have seven for different companies that i i'm a part of and then i have my own personal account because now they have personal banking which is really cool feature i highly highly recommend it like i said i use it myself the reason why is because the way that mercury works is beautiful it's very intuitive and you could tell that it's actually made by a startup founder it's an entrepreneur you could tell it's made by somebody who used other banking products in the past and didn't like all the different rough edges and and annoy and decided to you know actually fix it himself really any type of entrepreneur you are let's say you're an agency well one of the things every agency has to do is be able to send invoices easily create them send them to customers and stay current on your balances with all your customers well you can do that inside mercury and so i think that mercury is great highly recommend you check it out and thank you for sponsoring the show for more information check out mercury dot com mercury is a financial technology company not a bank check show notes for details yeah can we do like some rapid fire questions we have this document this is listening we have this document where we were like preparing different ideas and sean had sean said he wants to know your process from zero to one and how do you get ideas do you do research what do you do to move the ball forward and you replied something interesting you said two things you said this gives me a good chance to talk about algebra alibaba and i was like i no idea what you're talking and the second thing you said was iteration it's all about iteration could you elaborate a little bit on that yeah so a couple of things one is i don't have i don't do deep research on ideas i outlook look at the market like an nba wood should most of the things i end up pursuing are either personal itch issues i need the thing myself or someone close to me either my business needs it my wife needs it or something like that that should exist but doesn't and these are all all the things i pursue tend to end up being software the only thing i know actually how to produce if i was a carpenter to a musician and it would be be something different and my kinda of running thesis has been and this is referenced algebra i was making is around mathematical induction and so mathematical induction is this a very simple principle that says as long as it's true for n equals one and it's also true that if it's equal true for n that it's also true for n plus one that it's gonna be true for everything all along the way for until infinity for all positive numbers anyway i'll simplify this dis still down what that means is if you start that's condition one and if you can always take the next step make the next iteration it will work look at that that's some for some definition of work right it's like you just have to just kinda keep at it and i'm not saying stubborn pursue the exact same idea that you started with that does not work right you do have to sort and iteration is truly taking kind of market feedback and doing a true a true loop right and informative loop that says i i'm wanna gonna do it or at least try to do it better the next iteration the next iteration next iteration but that's my approach it's like find an idea that i can like and then just get started like often it'll be like can i write code tonight so right now i've got three projects in flight that are these kind distractions scratch my own niche ai projects and almost tempted to tell you what the three r because i'll force to launch them before this episode goes live they can give a one liner maybe for like one or two of them yeah so one is around it's like a like a visual designer as an agent so there's lots of great image generation tools there's you know chat a chat has one there's nano banana that's now from google but what's what i've always found lacking is the actual process i go through as a non designer as a business person like if why i'm doing a social media post for doing a blog post or something like that is it's like like i have a process like okay i wanna come up with like visual ideas what would represent this then i wanna say ten possible examples then i wanna iterate then i wanna say okay i wanna pick these five and i wanna create my own personal brand my own style that i wanna apply that style to the kind of is it's like there's this this kind of workflow that i go through and like that's just painful and i'm too impatient like i have access to designers this this is not a matter of saving money but it's like if i have an idea two o'clock in the morning and i want to get the idea out there with a visual that goes along with it so that's the thing i'm building that that goes through my entire flow as as an h agent tech process you have a name board i know you like to do names with the idea i do it's and i'll put it out there let's because it's it's close to launch of bowl it's called a image gen dot ai so image generated dot ai and is this gonna be i like one of your first or second tons on m word was popular and you said that you made a word alternative so for those listening if don't world is it's i don't know a game like sc whatever and your side project where you just launched us i think what your son was making eighty thousand dollars per month at the time i have no idea where it's at now do you have some type of ambitions or guesses as to where this is gonna be in six months i don't know lot so being a part of it we talked about this a little bit last couple of episodes you know i've been working as kind of part of my kinda hubspot hat knows is the the agent dot ai platform which is basically a a marketplace for agents if you can build agents find agents hire agents to do these kinds of things so in the back of my i'm gonna build this thing but i'm building it as an agent that will be on the agent dot ai platform and the hope that is that the utility is high enough either it will cause a bunch of users to be added to agent dot ai i which is now up to two million users which is awesome or you know i have thoughts about agents on the platform being monetized someday and this is like okay for me it passes a litmus test like if this thing already existed would i pay five dollars a month for it or ten dollars a month for it in the answer is yes it's like okay well i can sort of and i actually post it on linkedin exactly because the product roadmap for this thing was yesterday i'm like okay here's the thing i'm building i didn't disclose a name but you're the thing i'm building here's what it's gonna do and it's like like can it's like stupid simple things right now first is this when you do an image generation thing right now that has text which a lot of sort kinda of business images that you create will have like a i headline liner some sort of text in it the image models have gotten better a text still not perfect but one of the things i wanna do is like okay well if you generate image with text i can pass the generated image back through ai and say tell me the text that's on this image so if there's a typo in it just reroute it don't like waste my time giving me things that have typo and then means like oh by the way you got you misspelled this or whenever you have a typo in that by the time it makes it to me it's already done right like having a an intern going off and doing this stuff in the background and then i show up and it's got ten options for me i can pick and i can run and it'll it in my style without typos so which sounds like a minor thing but useful sean do you wanna ask him some of these other questions you had some pretty good ones like the request for startup or his chat eb history yeah well well i'll do the chat one i'm just curious so you you run a huge company you are also kind of like a scratch out guy your investor you do you have many hats so i'm just curious how you use chad gb i if you were to pull up your chat you'd like looked at the last five to seven searches that you did or or questions and answers that you do what are you talking to chad chat gp about i'm have a huge hat fan it'll get you wrong of even if i were an investor in open but my my the way i consume chat is not through the app the way i consume chat is through their api so i have my own kinda of command line thing that i put in and the there's a reason i do this so the the next big advancement we're gonna see in an ai apps generally is this notion of memory that they remember and you'll see as you've been using chat you will find that it's going to remember more and more things about you even though you talk about them a week ago a month ago right like it's it's the best out there in terms of being able to retain that memory which is awesome the non awesome part of it is that that memory is locked into chat ep so if you ever go to claude or if you ever go to gemini or something else those things don't have that memory of you and that's a very frustrating thing which is great for open ai because it makes a very very sticky well wait so it's your personal version that you're running in your command line has better memory than chat why why does that how'd you do that oh because it's it it has infinite memory and what what it makes it the better memory is because it's sticky under my control as my memory for instance i can go off and say i'm going i wanna go back through and i have this for my email as well which i think is just another form of memory i'll email archived and i have like you two and a half million emails in in my quote unquote memory i can go back and say through my chat history here's the thing i'm actually trying to kinda get to and then i can combine that with other things i can take that memory like now i wanna pass that to a google gemini or i wanna intersect it with google gemini which it has video analysis a lot better than chat pt does which doesn't do video and analysis yet it's it's the openness of it right that that's the the motivation for it it's not that i can do memory better it's the fact i can do more things with it because i can intersect it with other apps but why isn't this the product because i think everybody would want this right pt yeah give me that because it violates okay i have i have three rules of business rule number one never own a piece of a restaurant never be a shareholder a restaurant rule number two never be a landlord because i don't even wanna maintain my own properties let alone properties on behalf of other people and number three never compete with sam alt from open ai those are my three year rule that will violate the third rule which is i don't wanna create a chad gp competitor but well where will this this will manifest right is that hubspot building kinda of memory into our breeze assistant you know i i ai product and so that that's going to happen so localized memory in terms of you know for use case specifics i i wanna create a consumer app that tries to solve this kind of for the broad horizontal group of people but i think over time the industry will evolve where there'll be some forms like federated memory i think that's oh you can plug into this similar to how we plug into google docs and gmail and things like that it's like open i made not own like absolutely everything but right now someone needed to do the memory i think they did the right day it was not you know dia planned to to be that way it's just like oh it would this would be a better product if it had memory so they added memory right okay but be okay so but you didn't answer my my phone question she said i don't use the chad tv app i use it through api on my own little thing you've created which has better memory okay but what do you use it for like what's like the last few things you've used it for so i i do it a lot for kind of research i'm researching like ideas and i use it a lot for domain names as it turns out so i have a thing that can actually look at google trends so i can say oh like i've i've come across this idea for a domain name or whatever here's a price i can look that up in the marketplace right now i can look up the transaction history as has his domain been sold before was the last purchase prices like zillow for for domains one of the agents i'm also working on that we'll launch actually this week but i want so what i wanna do is to say okay i'll vibe coatings are good example it's like once andrew ka that i was actually part of that but sometimes i'm a little bit later for the like oh i see this trend kinda of picking up like what is that i wanna know who coined the term i wanna know what it is i wanna know what domains are available what's the price are you any of them listed or not are anyone's just free and cleared like no one's as a turns out vip coating i was early but late enough someone had already kinda purchased the dot com domain by the way vibe coating would fit your inbound framework like if i'm rep or one of these companies right now i'm creating the vibe coding you know movement in the the community and the events and the blog and all that and then like yeah i have the tool underneath that you could use but you could use many others right or maybe i'm super base or one of these other companies like putting it behind that the way you've done with inbound marketing i think would be smart right now i'll tell you what am i and i will i will sacrifice this idea not not for free but in the idea here and this was the original idea behind so i paid six figures for that for that domain that's on i think i'm what dot com or what you get voting dot com okay really and like oh my the idea i've logged hundreds of hours doing what people some would call live coating and there's other terms like agent coding i think is is a more accurate thing but it doesn't have the same vibe as vibe coating okay so that that doesn't exactly raw if a tip tongue it doesn't yep and just in case i own that one too but that's the okay so five coating dot com i think it's a great idea it lowers a bar lot allows lots of non developers to kinda get into the kind of product building game the problem is and i would bet lots of money on this is that almost everyone that is not a developer by trade will do live coating if they're trying to build a real so there's a class of problems that v coating is really really good at it's like if you're building software for yourself if it's got a short lifespan this is i'm building this i need it right now or whatever it's like disposable software or if you're just building it for your team as i only have to make it work for three people and if it stops working no big deal but as as you start violating some of those criteria for a like no i wanna build a production product i build a billion dollar software company around that's going to be long during and i'm gonna be maintaining this product going a year or three years five years ten years down the road van by coating invariably right now even with invariably non developers will paint themselves into a quarter that they will hit some bug something won't work something will break it will it's just a matter of time based on how ambitious the thing you're doing when that happens it's entirely possible that you actually have an economically viable idea but you have an un viable code base because you have no idea what's happening inside that black box when that happens gotten if when that happens what if there were a community in a marketplace called v coding dot com where a bunch of engineers hang out and what they do is to say hey i'll help i'll answer questions for you like my more questions but also for five hundred dollars an hour i will jump into your github repo figure out your problem and fix it in cause and set up you to test for you now and help you get through this corner that you've painted yourself into so i think that's gonna be a massive market so you listed i think so you probably own between five hundred and a thousand it's between five hundred thousand yeah okay so i could collect if i were you know had unlimited money in i i could probably collect five hundred over ten years you go to you just have an idea and you just buy it but what's crazier is a lot of these domains that you have they actually have projects on them so i'm looking at pitch craft dot com open graph dot com prompt dot com dad joke dot a i speed round dot com and it's like speed dot com it's an investment firm a check or no in twenty four hours dad dad joke dot ai a dad joke generator that's works but not that well and you said you have three other projects that you wanna launch but you said i need this podcast go and then i'm gonna go get it out so i'm setting this up sean came up with the idea of being generative this is the most generative i've ever seen so one which is how do you have enough time to actually do all this well just and just to be clear the the list of domains i put in i don't have sites launched on them right now so the thing i was kinda trying to share and i may just put this up publicly so like here in my top twenty domains for which i have ideas but i don't have calories to actually pursue them make me an offer if you're but you have to have like street cr some something that gives me evidence that you would actually be able to kinda pursue this idea and i'll will kinda contribute the domain and maybe some capital to kind of kick the idea off but to answer your kinda questioned bluntly sam my hours have not changed in the thirty plus years i've been you know doing this as as a entrepreneur i still think of myself as an entrepreneur despite being part of a thirty twenty five billion dollar company for all intents and purposes and i mean this the most positive way i can possibly put it i live in the matrix that's basically what i'm doing right like it's like long as like are we a simulation or whatever i personally is like okay my window in into the world is like i've got well talking character people that sometimes show up on this other screen that i have up here in my office or whatever is like and i'm just trying to play the game and this is and i in the same way people play video games and do it obsessively this is my version of a video game and i i did play video games a lot back when i was younger too but i really enjoyed it i i like it because if if i were a writer you know i my favorite writers are the ones that spent a lot of time on world building and character building right it's like they create this entire like especially the sci find fantasy writers they create this entire thing that a world that could exist that's got its own physical laws and here's the the species that live on and the powers they have in the in all that and this this entire world that they fabric out of thin air they dude in words i'm trying to in my own small way create a version universe that exists that solves all of the problems that i have or people that i love that and that i can sort of yeah kinda poke out of the and make a version universe that i think is a v one point one of the universe that exists does your house work like that in your in your physical life like in on your day to day life do you is your home life setup up to where you've built like your own like is everything about your life exactly and your a very particular way of of going about it is it set up that way no ends and i'm i'm actually probably drawing the wrong visual picture so my life is if you just looked at how i live it's more like the absent minded professor my desk is completely messy so it's not like i have like an engineers scientist kinda thing where we're like it's a lab you know white lab code clean desk and everything's is kinda of pristine it's the exact opposite of that right it's it's it's it's just not how i'd i i i work and so i'm not that the methodical about it i'm analytical in some ways but i actually play things actually very loose like i'll have a random idea and i'll drop the thing i'm working on i'll go play with something else for a day or two you or whatever and that i'll drop the fact that doing image agenda dot ai in the next few days or whatever is like and and now i'll i'll finish it and get it to some some sem of kinda of working but you know i i've said this before but it bears repeating is it's it's a really good piece of like personal advice is that you know when if a musician were out playing music and practicing when they're not doing like for twelve hours a day sixteen hours a day which people do that if an if an athlete if for a basketball like the if they're off you know practicing eight hours a and then even between games and looks like we never questioned that we never ever questioned like oh well that's what it takes to be kinda of top of that particular game music sports or whatever for some reason there's a stigma attached to work yep and there's some stigma attached to if you just happen to make money at the thing you happen to be doing like well was like you we all has all the money why would you keep doing this for a like i'm not doing it for money at all like i don't care about money at all but i do enjoy the the craft and the practice and the actual process of building business yeah you you have have you ever heard of the the famous clause that michael jordan put in his contract when he signed his big deal with the bulls so they added a clause and i don't know if this was nike marketing or if this was genuine but at the time if you were an nba a player you signed the max contract they would have all these rules like hey can't ride motorcycles like you know things that would jeopardize you as an asset to them and one of them was like you can't just go play like random pick up basketball games on concrete with strangers right like you might get hurt and that's on you know now you can't play on company time and he had this famous clause that he put in called the the for the love of the game clause and it was that jordan was allowed to play basketball anytime he wanted for the love of the game and i think that that's like a clause that we all just wanted in our our own mental contract of how we do things like you had this great tweet where you said if money doesn't let you do the things you love doing why else would you want it and i thought that's so good because oftentimes i know i to talk to my mom or my sister and i'll tell them about you and my buddy fur con is like this fe was my cofounder or a last company and then but the company built before that app love is now like a hundred billion dollar company and so like fe got all the money he he'll ever need right and they're like oh what's fe concept to i'm like oh yeah he built this lab called founders inc in fort mason and he's in there and he's there till eleven and pm and he's you know he's grinding and he's he's got a new start up and they're like oh my god if i had the money i would never do that and you know part of it is like well because you wouldn't he's not doing it for the money he's doing it because he wants to do it that's why he got the money so first of like yep you have it reversed the money came because he is this way not you know he's not he didn't become this way because of the money and also like you're right that whether it's athletes musicians you know we find it like noble when they do it but if you're a business person you're greedy or you're a work a hall like when your mom says that are you're like have a seat mom pull chair you see my lebron james are you familiar with jordan's contract in ninety six i subs section three seeds for the love of a game plug she's like oh i just wanted to know if he has kids yet at like he's like she's like actually an pretty at a in different level than me man der we we love hanging out with you you i always leave better than i came in i wish we could do this for for many more hours because there's just so many different things about life and business that we can learn from you we had howard marks on recently and at the end it was the same thing where it was like i was like man you you you came to talk about investing but you're really just talk about how to live a good life and you're that guy you kinda do the same thing where kinda funny right like the invent the the the kinda legend investors we have they they go they they bring this philosophical energy of like almost like patience and like like observe the world stay calm you know stay calm and carry on or whatever and like dha and like come of the builders have like a slightly different energy it's still philosophical but it's kinda like a let's make it happen energy like let's build it why not we could do this let's try this it's okay if it doesn't work it is a totally different playful builder energy that i think is is dope to be around yeah i have a tweet almost sent yesterday but i wanted to get my image generator working so i could attach it to the tweet and it's two lines i'm gonna share with you it's some nice warm kinda closing which is dance like no one's watching build like everyone's waiting nice we and i we have to do a quick plug this one of the ways this episode came about was the marketing team of house hubspot was like we need you to promote this thing and they told us to what was thing and we're like yeah let's just have dark mesh on the pod and maybe he'll like plug it because that's way better but it what is it loop marketing loop marketing finally way loop marketing is a new inbound marketing that's nice that your prediction learn about how to do marketing well in the modern age of ai look up loop marketing loop marketing dot com you own that one too i guess yeah we promised we would say it seven times so loop marketing loop marketing and loop marketing boom that's so yes they were like could you guys read this ad or talking it were like white font on white background at the end of the the pod you you didn't even plug it by the way we asked what is the new inbound marketing do you call it ae that true true thank you that's it that's a pod i feel like i could rule to world i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a goal travel never looking bad alright let's take a quick break because as you know we are on the hubspot podcast network but we're not the only ones there's other podcast podcasts on this network too and maybe you like them maybe you should check them out one of them that wanna draw your attention to is called nudge by phil ag and whether you're a marketer or a salesperson and you're looking for small changes you could make the new habits you could do the the small decisions you could make that will make a big difference that's what that podcast is all about check it out it's called nudge and you can get it wherever you get your podcast

listen up the old playbook is slowing you down ai broke the funnel loop marketing fixes it it's a new era for marketers ai is capturing search traffic channels are fragmented and generating leads feels less predictable than ever before hubspot loop marketing playbook will guide you through this unprecedented disruption it's the system your marketing teams should use to move faster connect deeper and gross smarter the modern growth playbook for the ai era built by hubspot design for today's marketer get the loop marketing playbook at hubspot dot com slash loop dash marketing to find out more and leave your competition behind alright back to the pod this guy's story is kind of amazing so this is basically a farmer billionaire love it and in i feel like i could rule world to i know i could be what i want to from at all in in like a days off on a road less travel never let me give you this one this is kind of a crazy story so do the words john brag mean anything to you no didn't mean anything to be either shout out to shane parish over at far street he did a great podcast with this guy that caught my attention this guy story is kind of amazing so this is basically a farmer billionaire love it and in like there was only two sources for this far street and the van trump report had written about this guy there's only things i could find yeah right he's got a biography as well but alright so so here's this guy story i just think there's like there's a facto toy about this guy that i just think you're gonna love you're gonna love this guy's whole aura his vibe he is the belly of the week cue the music million dollars isn't cool you know it's cool a billion dollars john brag this guy grows up on a family farm i guess saw or something like that and when he's in high school you know what a teenagers do this start to experiment they start to dabble maybe a little bit of maybe girls maybe we no no blueberries he tries to harvest blueberries for the first time at thirteen fourteen years old you know he starts to he gets the itch and then he goes to a local blueberry farmer he decides hey can i pick blueberries for you and he picks blueberries all year his last year of high school him and four or five other blueberry picker end up making four thousand dollars each pick and blueberries which was a lot of money at the time because this guy's very old and pay realize realizes wait i can pay for college if i just pick blueberries every year and so he's making college was like ten or twelve grand he's making four grand he realizes oh i can do this my parents otherwise we're weren't really gonna be able to send me but i can do this and so he makes more money the next year in the next year picking blueberries finally when he graduates he's got a couple options on the table you know plan a was gonna be to become a teacher and he was gonna make i think like thirty eight hundred dollars or something like that big a teacher an extra hundred bucks if he coaches like the the the basketball team or something and plan b was let me go work on the family business maybe over time buy out my data on the saw but he decides to go plan to he's like i think this blueberry thing there's something to it and he decides to start his own blueberry pharmacy so he buys a little piece of land and he starts trying to harvest blueberries and it goes pretty well the first couple of years he's doing alright but a couple years in he there's a problem in the blueberry industry which was that one year there was just huge supply glut so there was way too many blueberries not enough buyers and prices crashed and so he's like shit you know could quit but he's like no i'm just gonna figure out what i should have done differently he's like i need basically like a backup of plan of you know an insurance and he wasn't doing financial insurance but he's like i need another way to make money in case this ever happens again never again will i let this happen to be where i'm at the mercy of the prices and so he decides i think i need to build a packaging and freezing plant for blueberries now he's got no money but he's like i'm gonna try to do this so he goes to the other blueberry farmers he says hey guys we all just got whipped let's put some money in together and i'm gonna build this plant and then you can use the plant too you could freeze and package your stuff too if ever if we ever have overs supply and so they do that he borrows money from the bank he gets buddy from the other farmers he starts to build this thing never no experience by way no manufacturing no factory experience but he's like i can do this so he builds this plant and in the first year that they build the plant he's ready for two million like of capacity of two million but they only produce a hundred thousand because this is crazy frost that kills all the blueberry production that year and he's like oh my god i owe so much money and i and like we came in at like five percent of the like the estimated like freezing capacity this is terrible i have this empty factory now i owe a lot of money and basically it's like dude you gotta just let us go declare bankruptcy move on with your life instead he calls another guy who he knows guy mccain and he's like mccain he's like y what's something you need to make but you don't wanna make is there anything give me the the the last thing you wanna do but yeah you should do it and the guy's like alright got you onion rings it's like onion rings okay he's like hey he's like can you send me like a file like about so gets like a little book on how to make onion rings and he's like alright say less i'm never gonna ask you another question i will figure this out from here so he he's got an empty factory but he turns it into like just for that one season or whatever he makes onion rings for this guy it just tides him over enough to continue and so he carries on and he ends up building something called oxford frozen foods which today controls about forty to fifty percent of the global supply of blueberries it's like seventy million pounds of blueberries they're making every year here they still have onion rings in blueberries and onion rings and mozzarella sticks on their you never forget you never forget who got you there and so he builds this absolute juggernaut over time and they become bigger and bigger bigger his brother invent this like blueberry picker that can do the work of thirty five like humans doing this and he's like oh amazing and then what he does is he actually like gives it basically like freely shares it with other blueberry farms too he's like he's like what's good for one is good for all here we go and so he wants the entire blueberry industry to grow because he's like the more the blueberry industry grows the better we all do i don't wanna be the biggest fish in the smallest pawn i want the pawn to get bigger and we're competing with all the other fruits out there so if we can up our production and we can have more blue blueberries we can build more innovative products it's gonna be good for everybody and so he's got this very interesting business philosophy he ends up then going into a new business so it's many years later actually i actually i think he kinda did this around the same time i shouldn't say many years ago i i know the exact date on but it wasn't like once he is already like huge it was like somewhere somewhere around at same time tv was picking up and cable cable tv was picking up and this guy's from nova scotia population nine thousand and so they held like an auction they were like hey alright who wants to buy the t cable tv rights for nova scotia nobody shows up he's the only guy there and so he picks up the cable tv rights for that area and he's like alright i don't even know what to do with this like i guess i'll put like some old recorded programming on here there's like no programming basically but he's like whatever let's do this and so he's in that business and he's losing money the first couple years and his dad's like bro you gotta figure this out like this you can't just keep bleeding money over here and so he cuts his call off he fresh to figure this out and he finally gets it to like kind of a like a break even point or whatever he ends up over the next you know couple of decades building the largest private telecom company in the country and he owns cable tv networks you know everywhere he does a bunch of acquisitions he takes on a bunch of debt and he ends up buying up and he goes down he goes like sort of down the stack so whereas most tv companies wanna do the sexy fun stuff they get into original programming and content the like content is king he's like yeah no you know what what's king fiber like i'm gonna go own the underlying infrastructure for for cable tv and he ends up building this juggernaut so this guy ends up now he's like whatever like you know much older now his eighties or something like that and he's worth a billion dollars he built the largest farm but it's fruit farm basically in in the world and he's built the largest what largest private telecom company in in the country isn't this kind of amazing this is amazing i've i'm as you're telling me this i'm i've noticed there's a trend amongst this era of people was this was he doing a right wing cable was getting started yeah man there's there's a trend so ted turner who eventually went on to start cnn he owned a billboard company which he par into a radio station and then eventually a cable news network cnn cable news network do you know another guy named jim patterson have you heard jim patterson no who's that dude google jim patterson another canadian guy look at what he looks like he's like yeah yeah yeah i've seen this guy before he's like one of the rich richest guys in canada right yeah he's like the he's like one of these guys who is like he's like energize energize the bunny like like he he's like a wind up toy like he just can't stop like moving but he i think his story was he at a young age opened up a car dealership and within three years he bought like a plastic manufacturer or something very like out of left field and then another thing and another thing now he owns a telecommunications business but he also owns like rip believe it or not and i think that like the pate group which he owns the whole thing i think has a hundred thousand employees or something and insane like that and then another one is his name's john cat his last name is crazy i'm gonna butcher butchering cash manager meningitis yes is that it he's got a condition kinda that's you tell him do you know him no so he started a grocery store i think it was called apple foods dude tell you this and guy who looks like this i just showed you this photo and i said rich rapport yeah you already know everything about it just like looking out him one photo yeah like when he this guy when he gives you a hair handshake he's pulling you in do you know what i mean you just look it but you don't know what he's gonna do he's gonna pull you in and do the smack you really hard on the backs shoulder yeah and no chance this guy has one wife by the way let me just look this up i bet you i'll bet you anything right now let's just wikipedia if you google is kids they're beautiful of divorce new wife fargo this guy started apple grocery store it's like a twenty what it's a twenty store chain in new york city like it's it's tiny but then he bought a radio station and then that's like how we got extra rich and then i think he also bought a cable news network as well and so my point being is there's a finding company and the he owns company like an airline he i think he owns like a small private airline they he owns everything there's this type of entrepreneur where they're kind of cowboys where they start in one thing and they get the media eventually and a lot of it happened in the eighties the late seventies and the early eighties when cable was getting popular and it was sort of like the first version of of a of a saas business you know it was recurring revenue huge tam kind of weird and unknown people weren't weren't sure what what to do and i believe that a lot of the cable new news networks they were regulated by the f cc and you had a certain satellite like you'd only own x amount of satellites like there was some type of like limiting blocker where only a certain amount of cable companies could even exist and so if you were able like get in on that it was almost a near monopoly ted turner came along and he was one of the first guys that were like petition congress is like this is nonsense we need more competition and that's when cnn came about but in this whole era like i like how sometimes when we explain these things it's kinda like when i explain it to my kids like they're like how does like how does the picture come on the tv like where is this coming from and i'm like oh satellites and they and they're like but how does it get from a satellite to our tv i'm like it shoots it it's like it's a video that's it's shooting gabby doll house at our at the tower i think i think that's what the cables are for or maybe that's electricity i'm not sure exactly what's going on it doesn't matter no it's gonna but you're like they were rent there's was only so many satellite you had to buy these letters but they only had so many letters i letters okay you supply that it is true like my spectrum available there's like yeah yeah we know a lot about spectrum there was i do i do know there was a famous like like hearing we're ted turner like made this passionate speech to like politicians to convince them that they have to change the rules to allow small ups starts to to get a satellite but anyway that's cool i like this blueberry very guy alright so a lot of people will talk about how you need a million dollar dollars and three years of experience to start a business nonsense if you listen to at least one episode on this podcast you know that it's completely not true my last company the hustle we grew it to something like seventeen dollars or eighteen million dollars in revenue i started it with like three hundred dollars my current company hampton does over ten million dollars in revenue started it with actually no money maybe twenty nine dollars or something like that nothing and so you don't actually need investors to start a company you don't need a fancy business plan but what you do need is systems that actually work and so my old company the hustle they put together five proven business models that you could start right now today with under a thousand dollars these are models that if you do it correctly it can make money this week you can get it right now you can scan the qr code or click the link in the description now back to the show let me give you some of his his little business ism his philosophies okay so and this is again some of this is from from from shane paris stuff dude i just tell this guy is he canadians are in midwestern people where i'm from they're the same the same people aren't they yeah it's like goes is the species in the town so he here's a great line by him i have no reverse gear i just thought this an amazing line which is like he's like yeah you know when things got hard and the blueberry crop died and then the factory is empty like i just didn't consider going backwards i did not consider like it was just not a gear i have to either stop or reverse course like i just decided i have to find a way through and the onion rings were the way through another thing that that was interesting which was kinda counter to conventional advice so you know most people who are in the business the game of business buffett and all the real estate guys the famous phrase they all say is you make your money on the buy you don't make your money when you sell if you buy it right then you're gonna make money dude i read that line like after i bought three real estate projects that i totally lost money on i was like shit i i i'm i'm being serious like i it's not like the fine print by the way this this is like the first thing you learned like i was like reading a warren buffett book and i like read that quote and i remember thinking like that was literally the exact opposite thought doing the john brag so here's john brag philosophy intentionally over pay what okay i'm in so he goes he goes early on i intentionally over paid for acquisitions and word spread fast if you wanna sell sell to john brag you'll get a fair price quick close no games which i love that like like if i'm i'm i'm gonna put that on my on our like little mini private equity shop website i feel like he said that that advice typically isn't right though well typically so here's the caveats here's the caveats of you know they say like you know the amateur learn the rules or amateur don't know the rules professionals know the rules and then masters know when to break the rules or whatever that thing is this is kinda of when to break it so he goes i will over pay as long as it's something that's only available once because when opportunities are scarce you need to pay what it takes i know many people who tried to nickel and dime and then spent the rest of life regretting not getting that key asset so i think in the in the in the realm of buying the tv rights when there's only they're only gonna be up one once so whoever gets it's gonna own it those are that's like a time to over pay or if it's a key asset that locks down you know a certain competitive advantage don't qui on price in fact come in over so that you make sure you secure that asset and you develop a reputation he he said sits something like you can't buy a reputation i was like i think that actually what you're saying is you can buy a reputation it's like oh but the here's the reputation i will over pay right like it's like soft bank in the venture game right now it's like oh you you want a bunch of money and that a huge crazy valuation go to soft bank first right and there's actually like some merit to that strategy when they you have these like you know this this if if you can get the things that have huge upside so was he like an m and a guy like or or was it was a a lot of building the empire through m and a and what was he buying other cable companies or other farms both he here's another bang of a line so he has forty to fifty percent of the global supply and about half of that is like stuff that he owns and operates his farms at half his farms he's buying or owns like a you know a big stake and he's he goes here's the exact light he goes we don't wanna have one hundred percent of the interest industry that that wouldn't be good politics dude that's like imagine having the choice to have a hundred percent market share in the best that's that's not polite we'll what a baller but here here's here's some sam porn for you so focus is absolutely critical probably the biggest single principle you can have in business here's a big mistake people make they make their first million and they think now i can succeed in any business even once i know nothing about then that same sam buying the ranch yeah and then there and then he goes i just wanted to he goes i wanted to just stick to my knit figure out what i could do well and then just do more of it you know everybody else who came into this industry wanted to make a buck i was this young guy who said i'm here to play this game for a long long time says awesome sky awesome right i think it was my uncle then he goes here's a couple other great great quotes the guy who asked the question to me looks better than the guy who knows the answers i like that done did you get all this from shane podcast with him shane and then there's like a couple other people that have written about them but a lot of this from shane podcast which i didn't even get to watch because i i was doing that like i discovered this guy this morning it was like on my list of like things to check out and as soon as i checked i was oh man this is amazing i gotta i gotta go watch this later so i i've actually only like skim the transcript and stuff for this so i might be getting some of the details wrong a couple other the things he's one of these like buffett types where it's like he's a billionaire but the vast majority of wealth came like after the age of seventy so it's like you know just saying the same way for buffett where they just they keep compounding he had some other things that we're interesting so i would thought be richer if you own all half the blueberries in the world wouldn't you be richer than one point five billion yeah punk yeah weak shit he'd better be a huge like philanthropist and have given it a lot of away because i definitely would to thought he'd be richer right i mean i don't know i'm not gonna i'm not gonna knock him alright so he believes in buffett a lot he loves buffett and so he buffett has a great quote which is i'm a better investor because i'm a businessman and i'm a better businessman because i'm an investor yeah so at age seventy he was worth you hundreds of millions of dollars so he goes to each of the executives at his companies and he says today you're just businessman man you're not investors he gives them ten million dollars each not as a bonus but as an investment portfolio that they get to run and he said i want them to see how strong companies operate and how weak ones fail there was no penalty for losing the money and no bonus for the gains it was pure education isn't that like pretty wild to do so he gave how many managers did he have i don't know six teams so sixty million bucks he gave them what like a stock portfolio or or he gave him ten million dollars in total million dollars to go invest go buy businesses oh within the the their portfolio sure wow okay that's badass that's crazy said and this was at age seventy and then he's like most people stop learning once once they become successful but the outliers never stop being students love that resonate with me alright what else resonated with me let me give you one more and how about the fact that like i i just googled the i googled the the shane podcast shane went to his office which is really cool and he's eighty four years old doing a podcast like that's that's amazing that he's with it and he's sharp and he's had this pod dude what i'm eighty four i'm gonna be in the med i'm gonna be so just like plugged into what everybody's doing in the future i hope alright if do you wanna do one or do you want me to go have you read about united fruit if we're gonna talk about fruits i to read about united united fruit is that the banana guy man that's a great book i'm in the middle of reading it and it's the story of united fruit which is basically centered around bananas so like you wanna do the quick story i think we've talked about it before but it's on theme it's sun trend in the the late eighteen hundreds i think bananas were discovered i think in nic or somewhere in central america and they brought to america americans were like yeah we we want every banana we can get our hands on we love it it even got to the point where like i think in the nineteen twenties when immigrants with land at ellis island we gave them a banana and that was like you're here now this is a american this american thing and it's sort of american because went to hawaii and they give you the delay and like yeah was a banana and this the banana company united fruit it became so big that it basically a monopoly and they did the same thing where they tried to hide that they weren't monopoly for years and years and years and sam the banana man i think named samuel za he was i think a ukrainian immigrant and he started out like with like a fruit cart like walk the street that his whole thing was he would sell rights and so the way it worked is a banana train would start in one part of the country i believe louisiana and it would slowly make its way up over seven or eight days to the northern part of america and along the way it would drop off that bananas at different markets and his whole s was he was gonna sell rights meaning bananas that were already becoming a little bit brown that they previously thought were throw away bananas and he was like i'll buy him for a fraction in the price and i'll just be really fast at getting them to where they need to go and he eventually becomes so big that by the time he's in his sixties he he takes over united fruit and it's a big well he he starts with a hundred fifty dollars and by the time he's twenty one he's got a hundred thousand dollars and this doesn't neat way back in the day right so this is like a lot that's a lot of money and if keeps all going and it gets to be and and and that's you're saying he's basically he starts as just like a dude on the dock or whatever like a dude on the side of the road taking their discarded trash and going and hustling and selling it and by the time he reaches his peak he buys the he buys the whole company yeah where he was initially just like taking their discarded trash and the book is called the fish that ate the whale because he was the fish and he eventually ate the whale but it gets even crazier so samuel mary he has a lot of admirable qualities you know he's just like hardworking working immigrant he's pretty quiet and he's like a stoic guy but he's kind of a warlord because because at one point nic like they have like some type of meltdown and a new president or dictator comes in charge and they won't sell them bananas and so he funds a coup so he basically gets like a small unit of like ten or twenty people to like help this other guy assassinate the current leader and take over and that leader was like alright thanks for getting our back now you could have some more bananas and and so that's kind like the story of sam samuel z it it's pretty badass got that killer instinct let's go yeah that's this is is pretty wild right like imagine a story like that today is there such a thing i can't think of i mean what elon does in rockets is like pretty like you you're you're kinda like dominating another planet like potentially i mean that's like a crazy of like the republican party this year does that like going to the point of like actual like funding a malicious think i guess like donald trump is doing this like where he's like for shits and giggles i'm gonna like play a joke and run for president and just kinda starts to work but yeah i mean it's a pretty crazy story yeah so it it's been great so i did something this weekend and i thought about you and i've been holding this in me like waiting to like talk to you about this but like a like a man in atlanta or or november cold it in yeah oh man yeah if you know you know so i saw a broadway play for the first time ever this weekend phenomenal wow phenomenal it's called oh mary it's basically about mary todd who is lincoln's wife and it's just like a comedy it's it was fantastic never been to a never really been to a play honestly my whole life because you judged it or just happened did not go when it was the deal yeah i don't know like you know it just went on the list of things to do it just didn't it just didn't it didn't make its way into my life and i finally went the first thing is i thought of you because you had made an off handed comment a while ago that you cared about like running writing a show yeah i just thought it would be cool i and saw one and i was like oh that would be kind of a fun fun thing to work so you had the same thing i did which is like it was like a new art form that you hadn't previously experienced and then you go to it and you're like i understand the appeal now that was that right yeah yeah i'd had gone to a bunch when i was a kid and so i think i liked it from that like i was at theater kid when i grew up so i liked it now how is it related to this podcast well for one if you google o mary revenue you can see there's a website called broadway world dot com where they estimate the the revenue of each show i guess they look at like if they're selling out and the average ticket price online and this thing oh mary i think it's been live for june of twenty four it came out and it's been making a million dollars a week so it's doing quite well and it started off with about four million dollars in funding to to get going and it all reminded me of this podcast that we did about two and a half years ago you you didn't make it but we had this guy named michael harris did you ever look into who michael harris was she's what what was death which which record label was he the the guy sounds yeah so the short of it is some people call har because name's michael michael harris like har like harry og g gangster so harry was famous because in his early twenties he was basically a drug king pin and he made a lot of money selling cocaine and at one point in the podcast with him i said yeah you and i was trying to be nice i was like you know i instead of saying you are drug dealer i said i read an article saying that the article said that you were selling like one yeah the the article said you were selling one million dollars a day in cocaine and he goes i think that article said two million dollars a day he's like i told that journalist it was two i was like yes sir and eventually at the age of like thirty two i think he gets sentenced to life in prison one for attempted murder one four can drug conspiracy which basically is he's like the rico king pin law and he had a life sentence and recently i think like ten years ago trump commute his sentence and that's how he got out of prison and when he was thirty two years old he founded death row records with doctor dr and shu knight while he was serving a life sentence in san quentin and that's like how death row got started and one of the reasons why his called death row is because he was wait they c founded it with him while he was in prison and what did they would they want from way what was he able to offer them while he was prison for life money money so his wife actually his his wife was on the outside okay and she somehow had funds to fund death road records you know right now how this really to broadway well on the podcast that i did with him he said something that i didn't pounce on because i wasn't i didn't know anything about it but he made this comment to me where when he was twenty nine i think he was the first ever black producer of a broadway musical or a broadway show and he kinda told the story but basically somehow he got in c you know he was he was considered like well known for being like a drug guy and hope you said c damn yeah ryan i said oak okay i gotta even the podcast what which button ends this podcast i was like holy moly harry y you dog holy moly harry so somehow he got the loop at this but he funded den washington an early den washington his first ever play damn michael harris is har was the fund he was the investor that funded the show with a million dollars i think this was a ninety three or ninety two when den he was just getting going and he starts telling the story and while while i was at this play i was like holy crap this guy got his way into being the first ever producer of broadway like while i was there i was like oh my god i one like he was so much cooler that i even realized i i invested in den z before he became den z that's like you know you jason cali ann is like i was saying he's the fourth investor at uber i would never shut up about it goo google michael harris den washington you'll see a photo of them together and michael harris looks like a like a well to do guy he's wearing a suit turns out he was only i think twenty nine or twenty eight in these photos and he he was a drug king pin kind of amazing right yeah that's that's incredible when you're just twenty twenty for something a twenty six like i think is was pretty young yeah very young and like allegedly leap had made something like a hundred million dollar selling drugs pretty crazy and when i was like sitting there in this play i was like obviously what what do you and i do when we do everything we fix yeah go to the play and you type it like oh mary revenue on google and i started seeing a numbers and i'm like like the plays going on in front of you you're turned around counting how many seats are in the upper bleach and they're like are you were are you watching the show what are you doing here and this is how i remembered michael harris saying that where it all like click together i was like oh my god do you know how much revenue these shows generate i'm looking at it's a it's a astounding it's a astounding the number one this is i'm just gonna give you the top top five top five highest grossing broadway musicals of all time you have number one lion king grossed over two billion and just just the ticket sales wicked one point seven billion phantom of the upper one point three hamilton which is newer already crossed a billion and insane right and of course are guys from south park are they number one they're number five book of mormon number five eight hundred and fifty million dollars on their side angle that could be oh dude they're just it we just need to be talented and hardworking working that are we're missing they are so talented when i was at the show i was like the this it's just they're u with talent one of the guys a blinked the character was played by what's the guy from silicon valley k is is that his saying oh he's in the play yeah he's in the play and it's like it was like famous actors and actors actresses were like in the place he's like a jacked indian abe lincoln like what do you what you mean played a lincoln it sounds crazy and honestly it is crazy the guy who played mary todd was a was a guy so like it's all types of crazy yeah there's a it's a it's a whole thing but i just had to like nerd out with you about this so i looked into this pretty hardcore course so it's definitely a like outlier hits business just like no angel dustin yeah it's angel vest because and then i was looking at the venues i was like should i own the best venue in san francisco like can i go buy the san francisco like you know i forgot what it's called like the the the theater the upper house whatever there's like a bunch of there's like three or four different theaters for this and i was looking at them because the theaters make money either way because the shows have to pay rent they gotta be like hey we wanna do sixty days on stage they're like great take your money right whether that show becomes a hit or not they paid the money up upfront so i thought that was kind of interesting then i was looking at the shows i was at how much it cost to produce the shows because i just seen the one about le brothers which i recommend by the way it's like a it's too long first of all way too long i the one that i went to we only went to it because it was ninety minutes i can't sit there for more than ninety minutes yeah less is more guys it less is more here in the theater but it was great and it was bit of it was business entertainment which is what i considered to be my genre and i was like damn if they could take i wasn't even interested in learning about the le brothers if they took an uni interesting subject to me but they made it great and i remember the story because of it this is cool this is a really cool format and so yeah i've definitely definitely interested in if somebody actually knows how to do these things i would love to to talk to you email me maybe we could make some make something we were a story in mind but we had tim ferris on the pod and like the top comment on youtube was like rich guys finally discover board games and like like this all i'll be like the rich guys i was like yeah hell yeah hey not no this one's gonna be like the bros discover plays i'm like like sam they were singing in the middle of you're talking one second that they're singing that's incredible it's all part of the story listen up the old playbook is slowing you down ai broke the funnel loop marketing fixes it it's a new era for marketers ai is capturing search traffic channels are fragmented and generating leads feels less predictable than ever before hubspot loop marketing playbook will guide you through this unprecedented disruption it's the system your marketing teams should use to move faster connect deeper and grow smarter the modern growth playbook for the ai era built by hubspot design for today's marketer get the loop marketing playbook at hubspot dot com slash loop dash marketing to find out more and leave your competition behind alright back to the pod alright i got one more cool business story for you so i'm watching a lot of sports lately i know it's like like everything's kicking out like football season just kicked off tennis was awesome by the way did you see the i've you been following you file a tennis you using a little bit like i went last year and like i kinda watched a little bit on tv the the russian gal she's she's an athlete bad she's a freak what's it name abi i think she looks like a terminator so i follow i've i i've gone in and out of tennis right there's many years why i won't even pay attention and there's like oh my god the doll he's amazing and i'm watching these guys and the a great tennis match is up there it's like very thrilling to watch a great tennis match it's like a great you have c fight like there's some sports where you know the the median game is like really good i'll put like you know nfl in that category but then there's some sports where just the peak is just like peak drama right yeah boxing and u are like that we're like the average thing's not that good but the peak the biggest personalities when it's all on the line and it's just two guys going in there and they're trying to take each other's head off like hard for a basketball game to match that okay so tennis tennis is kind of up there in that sense so there's the new the new wave of tennis players so this sky alvarez and this sky center happened the men's final happen it just happened yet and so so i really wanted send her to win because i just like went down the rabbit hole of this guy's youtube highlights and he's unreal and and the other guy is also real unreal but he's he's unreal when it's in the sense of like do you know a guy who just like does all the right things it's like he eats right he works outright like he just does it he just like prepares really hard he's very talented he's maximizing his potential he's not like there's not a lot of like flaws to like attach with there you there's not a lot of like it's like oh see you work hard and do all the right things great yeah that's fantastic in fact they showed the warm up right before because i think trump showed up at the us open so it was delayed like half an hour or an hour or something like that and so the guys were just in their locker room like supposed to be warming up and alvarez is like you know doing a side plank in mid air with his trainer and like activating his core to get ready and the other guy was playing dodge ball with his trainer and like running around the gym like just throwing balls at each other pigs yeah so i like i was like i kinda like this up guy anyways they go out there center loses and he just keeps losing to a he's he's he's ranked number one because he beats everybody else but a has beat him i don't know four out of the five last times that they've faced each other and he's like and so he had this great quote that i thought like forget tennis this is just like a great like mindset quote so they were talking about like you know hey you know it must be tough you're at the top and then you you're ranked number one but the guy seems to you know you've had some tough matches this guys got your number a little bit and here's what he said he goes i was very predictable on the court today he changed up his game and the style of how he plays and now it's on me if i wanna make changes or not i'm definitely gonna work on this you know for example i didn't use a lot of drop shots i didn't do one serve in volley you know you arrive at a point where you're gonna play this guy i gotta go out of my comfort zone so here's what i'm gonna do i need to start playing more unpredictable i might even lose some matches but i'm gonna have to do it i'm have to make some changes i'm gonna have to try to become more unpredictable as a player that's what i have to do to become better at tennis and at the end of the of the day that's my main goal and i really just love this mindset from the number one ranked guy who's beating everybody else and he's like you know what i'm here but the top of the mountain is still a little higher but this path i'm on doesn't get me to the summit i gotta go back down for a bit and i gotta find a new trail and that is so hard to do in life it is so hard to go back of these things where like bottom and really yourself he's like i'm gonna i'm gonna learn how to play tennis but i'm really learning how to play the game of life it's like one of those type of moment totally totally like and and to be like i'm gonna lose i'm gonna probably lose some more matches because i'm gonna have to learn this i'm gonna have to experiment with this new style and that's gonna suck but i'm gonna do it and like i whatever you're doing in life that analogy probably holds for you right now whether it's you as a parent it's you on the book that you're writing it's you at your job it's you in your business like whatever it is i guarantee you there's an element of like if i wanna get to the next level what i've been doing doesn't it probably get me there and i need to like be willing when the time comes when when i recognize the moment i need to be willing to go back down the mountain for a little bit and then come back up a new way i have you ever heard of this guy named me k if you googled him it's a hard name name so no yeah that's a that's a hard last name to google but if you google marathon ne e b you might recognize his face marathon me e b you see me i don't recognize this guy he's fifty yeah so i think in two thousand and four he was the gold medal and the olympics in the marathon for america but he's an immigrant and so when he won it was sort of one of these things where everyone got behind him because he's a nice guy and it was like the american dream type of energy and i think it got to the point where he like spoke at obama's a much of obama events and and and whatever he's he's a big deal he's he's great his brother listens to m his brother howie and he reached out to me when he heard that i like running and i've been friendly with him for a couple years now and this past weekend was this thing in new york called the fifth avenue mile and so they get all these guys these olympia mile and they get them to run one mile down fifth avenue which is basically a huge treat and it's slightly shut down or they're they shut it down no no no they shut it down it's a big event it's like a huge event and there's tens of thousands of people there and so i went with howie and i got to like be like his like side kick so in howie who he runs a management company who he originally howie was managing his brother med now he manages other runners because med was like can you do can you help me make more money and was like yeah fine i'll it and then eventually now he manages just i don't know forty runners or something and a lot of his athletes were running at this race and so i got to be as like assistant basically he like took me and like i got to meet all these cool people whatever and these guys are flying by the way i think the guy who won ran three minutes and forty six seconds for the mile which is which is crazy and the guy who won what's your mile time dude back in high school a minute slower four minutes and forty seven seconds okay ted bundy now what's your mile now not wasn't files i'm that was not my question seven minutes not i mean seven minutes it's like very like recreational like average so wait did you run it or you just hung out with how we for the hell no i didn't run it i was watching of his watch i was just sitting on the sidelines watching now and we got to watch these guys run and they look like gaze they look like animals it was like crazy and i was asking them i was like what separates so like because when i was watching the race the winner and the guy who got third they're really close like it it doesn't seem very far when you see them but like it's like a second is only it's not that much but it is a lot when you're running and i was like what separates the goose the guy who won what separates him for from the guy who got laughs because they kinda looked the same they're tall and they're skinny and they look like freaks like what's going on and he was like it's mindset he's like once you get to this level and you're already a nine out of ten what separates the guys that get first versus last and these big races is when they step on the lines they're killers he he wants to kill you and he acts like a nice guy but the when they when they step there they think i am here to win i'm built to win i'm am not trying to finish second i'm trying to be the best and i'm trying to win no matter what and i was like well your brother was like a happy go lucky guy like he looks like really kind and he was like yeah he is but he would sit down for hours and envision winning the new york marathon and then when he got to the starting line you couldn't talk to him he was an animal he was out to win and i thought that was really fascinating and i'm always finding it fascinating particularly in sports particularly in these individual sports tennis swimming track and field cycling i think we had lance on and like we talked to him a little bit about this what separates these the freaks of the freaks what makes you a freak among freaks and it appears as though it is not physical it is absolutely mental running my company hampton it gives me the chance to meet with hundreds of different businesses and i'm always surprised by how many of them still use spreadsheets emails and clunky tools that do not talk to each other it's like watching someone build a house with duct tape so here's my take custom software that actually fits your needs isn't just convenient it's a competitive advantage should transform the way you do business and that's why you need to know about a no code platform called bubble with bubble you can build powerful web and mobile apps by literally dragging and dropping different elements out of the screen no coding required by the way i use bubble on a ton of different apps including hampton and if you want help building something complex on bubble you have to bring in zero code they're the top bubble agency out there and literally the biggest plug creator for the platform they can build anything custom portals saas products and they do about ten times faster and cheaper than traditional development zero code is also all about ai business automation transforming manual and slow processes into efficient automated ones so stop cobb together different tools and solutions and head to zero code dot com that's zero code as in the word zero and then code q o d e again code is with a q and tell them that sam sent have you heard this phrase you probably heard it because you're like into running but i i don't don't run i don't do it it's not a it's like motorcycles i just don't get on that so one of the guys who was filming for us he was talking about this he wants to film this documentary about this woman and she's like this amazing long distance runner i i don't know her name you probably do but the point is she if he's was talking about this phrase called the pain cave yeah we go to the pain cave you go to the pain cave yeah and i was like not into running but i'll just take that phrase out that was a cool he's like he's like so the pain cave describes like when you're in these like ultra long races hundred mile race or whatever and it's like mile sixty or seventy you hit this just like extreme level of like physical mental spiritual exhaustion and pain and you go to the pain cave and i'm like what do you mean what what does that mean you go to the pain cave he's like you go to the pain cave mentally okay and you basically i mean you can you probably describe a better than but my understanding was you accept that there's gonna be this stretch where you're gonna be this between pain you go to the pain cave you know you're there you become comfortable you become not comfortable but enough you you you become acclimated to the pain cave and you're able to stay there where others wanna quit other and you even wanna quit others would quit and then you push through and you end up getting you know to the to the second to the you get your second way to get out of there and you could get to the end did i did i butcher the pain cave or did i just remember right no no and a lot of you invisible i've been on vacation a couple times no i i was training for ultra before and it was miserable and i hated it and i remember going out for a three hour run and it just is it's it's horrible it it's not a fun experience and like you get to a certain point and what's it's crazy to do a sport or inactivity where even if you are winning you go through hell so we had brennan shaw on the on the pod who is a former fighter and he said that one time he was fighting on a on a car and the guy who was fighting above him cro cup who was the main guy afterwards brennan solved cro cop like on a stretcher and crow cup had just won the championship but cro cup still had gotten hurt and he was sitting on a stretcher of holding ice on his head or something like that and he looked horrible like he just got beat up really badly even him though he won and cro cup was like give him my thumbs up and brendan was like these animals think that this is winning and that's why i'm not going to be the best it's because even when you win you are beat down and broken and they still are giving you a thumbs up of like yes we did it and that's what separates the winners from the losers as the guys who like are willing to go through the pain cave because in a lot of sports i think it's so fascinating and i honestly i think this way about business or anything in really in life that when you win and you get everything you wanted you still have to go through hell and that's kinda of fascinating and interesting to me is like the the the mindset of of of these winners who can just eat so much shit and honestly business is the same way it's not as physical but it's still emotional where even if you think that you're on top of the world or things are going well i don't know if you've experienced this we're but where everyone on the outside thinks like oh you're the man you must be killing it i'm like dude it's really really hard and it feels like it's gonna fall apart all the time yeah i find that these phrases like pain or whatever there's some there's a lot of power in just having like a label to put on the thing so that when you're feeling it you don't feel like this is this is bad thing that you don't panic and you don't feel like it's forever you realize it's like a temporary phenomenon and so i i know that one of the things that people brought up to me is that this analogy that's been very useful and it's like if you're gonna be an entrepreneur you know intellectually there's gonna be these ups and downs if i told you that nobody would be surprised at that idea yet when it's happening you're like well you got that feeling in your stomach when you're going up and down a roller coaster and it does not feel good and you want it to stop and you don't like it and you think this is bad and then you're like but the thing we talked on the podcast is like you got in line for the roller coaster like what what did you think was gonna happen you stood in line you waited you chose this first you knew this is the nature of roller coasters and that there are no they there are ups without downs those downs ups like you this is has to be it's a necessary condition of doing this activity so don't complain and don't be surprised and don't feel like whoa is me and don't victim yourself and don't think this is forever because it's not and so like that's been a very helpful metaphor for people is just remembering like you got in line for roller coaster maybe like you there was gonna be ups and downs don't be surprised when they come and then a tactical thing that's helped me is i have the slack channel i've told people about it's called highs and lows and anytime there's an extreme high extreme low i go immediately that i put it in that channel it i put my exec team in there as well and well the beautiful thing about it is when you go in there you see something from like four to six months ago that was like an extreme low in the moment or an extreme high in the moment and now it has like no effect like obviously we if it was a low like obviously we survived it was fine and maybe even if it was a high it was like it doesn't have that same pull and so it keeps you from in this moment going too high too low because you could just scroll back and see all the other moments that in the heat of the moment you thought were such a you know such an extreme and now are like whatever you know just random random things in the past how from you adding stuff to that alright so last one was four months ago and it was oh cool trump just tariff all of our goods a hundred and fifty percent so like imagine a thing used to cost us ten dollars now we pay the ten dollars but then we pay an extra fifteen dollars is that same item cost us twenty five dollars that's the full sales price of some items you know what i mean like oh cool we'd make no money now oh got it cool business picked the money thing out of our control like got it the and then there was another one and then there's a high two months before that when you know this celebrity with six million followers is posting about our brand and it's like oh that's awesome but like now that i look at it i'm like who cares i don't care nothing out like nothing my life didn't change for either one of those two things my life didn't change we got through the we got through the low and i already forgot about the high you know another one rihanna manager emailed us asking for product like you know they rihanna wants our shit that's cool that's exciting wait wait hold on what brianna ask for free stuff yeah yeah they always hey really yeah wish people don't pay for things that's insane to me you ever people to buy things they've request things are you gladly give it to them have you deemed it i i think i've i've done it maybe twice have you damned people asking for free stuff asking for free stuff no i've never dm have anyone i think i've been like y this is a great if anybody wants to send me one i'm happy to take it like that's the i think that's the lowest i've s i don't think i maybe i have i don't i can't remember ever dm asking for free stuff in fact like we usually we go the other way which is like if it's like a friend's product or somebody we knew always buy we wanna be there like first customer and we wanna like purchase it to like show because you know like you feels good and right seems like the right thing to do another one christmas eve on christmas eve this last year the mexican president blocked all imports so like hey that's cool our warehouses in mexico and on christmas eve all boards are blocked with no notice and no there's no other thing you could do dude i think you cool the shit at the port do you have a coup staging team and this is just in one business this is just in the e com business this is not even like i five other businesses so imagine like if this is probably there's a higher or low every two months three months maybe but now you multiply by six businesses that means every single month you're getting hit with a high and a low in one of the businesses i think it was cool you so you said something actually that was quite good which is it feels nice to label certain emotions because it makes it feel better i went through a period it's sort of what's that that we always referenced that me where like mid midway yeah this is like the opposite of that which is like when i was really young and not very successful i consumed tons of motivational stuff and then i started like doing some stuff and i'm like oh that's for wee things yeah yeah now i'm like no i actually do like reading about like other success stories and love me a good quote nowadays yeah like i i actually do love that stuff because it feels nice to like label something it's sort of like when you read a book and you're like well that was of the best books they you people said the same thing about it to go everything they said was obvious but i felt nice for them to say it out loud for me to read it and to be told what to do and remind me of the right things to do and that has helped me all the time i that's like i pretty much read like lots of like or it's actually my youtube page is like only motivational shit here's the trick so i've rebranded it just liking motivation that's a pretty low class thing to do okay oh that's it that's you know very low status low fashion oh oh i need motivation i'm so so weak i need this is like i need a blood transfusion it's basically what you're saying you don't need motivation you don't like my motivation like wisdom no oh my god high class to like alright there i helped you out i listen to tons of wisdom i it gets be fired up yeah yeah my favorite wisdom speaker yeah there's this youtube channel called motivation for you best the best wisdom yeah exactly i'll give you another little label i was reading this book another high class than do i found this like old book out of print had to like call a guy to get this book and it's like it's amazing it is such a such a thin book and it's it's really amazing i'm not even tell anybody but it's my secret gem and so in it though he talks about so it's a book about how to have better ideas so he's like this this is great advertising exec who's basically like he's like you know and if somebody asked me this and i laughed when they asked me the question and then i realized i didn't have a good answer for it he's like and then i started thinking about it i couldn't get this question out of my head and he's like i have now come to the realization that producing great ideas can be as reliable of a process as ford producing model t's on the assembly line mh and here's how the assembly line works produced great ideas is and one of the things he says in the book he goes this just a great quote he goes the brain much like the body has a second wind and because he's talking about like there's gonna be this point like pain caves there's a point in the process where you kind of fatigue out he's like just i need you to hang in there for like give it there's gonna be another do you have a little like ten fifteen percent left you're just gonna give yourself a chance for the brain to have a second win much like the body and literally like the for the last two weeks as i've been working i hit this point where i'm like ready to like stop the thing go be distracted i'll go i wanna open up twitter or i wanna go like go go eat some food or do something and it just the brain the brain has a second one let me just give it a second here and then i pushed through for like another fifteen minutes and it's actually like been like very very productive this little was one little simple idea can i make a guess as to who wrote that and ignore this because it's way too much it was by a copywriter if i had a guess is that right who's by an ad man here okay copyright it's crazy copy like there's this weird underground world i don't i don't know if you ever have noticed this there's copywriter out there where they sort of have a weird mystical like wizard tree about them and they end up learning about copywriting but in order to be a great copywriter you have to understand how humans think and then if you can if you could be a master copywriter you're basically a master at learning about what motivates human beings and thus you can teach all about life but i've come across all these guys that are like old school internet marketers but also people who are around even before the internet and they often have these weird aura around them that if you find a bunch of their old landing pages they explain some of the things that you're talking about and you get on their web pages and you're like i have to give you my money and they're not even a buy now button i have to track you down but i've come across a bunch of these guys one of them is bill bon at the guy who started ago go so go publishing is like the billion dollar a year who's he's newsletter business that is quite shady but another one is mark ford do you know who mark ford is no who's that so he has this book called ready fire aim on business and he's pretty under the radar guy i think he's probably in his seventies at this point but he helped make go really popular there's edmund pagan do you know who edmund pagan is yeah that you're dating w from evan pagan was a guy who was one of the first internet marketers because he got going in the nineties when the internet was just getting going any other an ebook called w dating and he wrote it under a pseudo called david dean and ebb pagan is another guy where if you google eb pagan and come across his courses or books on copywriting you get entrance and it sort of becomes like a moment where you're like i used to think this way then i read this now my life has just changed and been pagan it those weren't one of those guys a lot of old russell b and stuff is like this but there's a copywriting world that like you come across these old guys or they're not old russell b is not old these guys are aged no yeah i mean like underground i don't know how to explain it no it's like almost like they ruled the world but they're not it it today they're less relevant and on the forefront and up in in the center of attention as they were fifteen years ago thirty years ago or forty years ago there's a bunch of people like that yeah and what happens and and a lot of people don't realize it is you can just copy exactly what they do and it still works and you don't do invent anything so i'll give you an example there's this guy named dan kennedy we talked about alex for mo and a lot of people say this to alex as if it's an insult i don't think it's insult at all but they'll say you just ripped off dan kennedy and so i started reading a bunch of it's not an insult at all it's totally okay it's to steal from the the greats but if you read a lot of dan kennedy stuff first of all if you googled dan kennedy you're gonna see what it looks like you're probably yeah you you'd probably dismiss them somebody be like oh what does this person know up business because he literally looks like a cowboy but you read their books and their advice is beautiful so long as you come with an open mind and it's incredibly effective you're but it's sort of like we talked about books that where you say phrases like oh it's banned in prison because it's too powerful yeah they all have catch phrases like that i love copyright i think there's certain professions where it's almost like darwin right so like the only way to survive as a copywriter let's say that was your google and a copywriter then we'll kind of extend that like an ad man right like the og vs of the world and the only way to survive is to have these breakthrough ideas and be super persuasive with the written word so it's like a an animal that was those was on an island and the animal had to develop this shell if it needed if it was gonna survive that was the only way to survive in that climate and so if you wanna get great persuasion you wanna get great great at the written word you could learn from a bunch of people you can learn from any elon musk or steve jobs but those guys in order to do what they did they grew up you know they they had to have a other disciplines that they were great at and they could be good or maybe even really good at copywriting but there's people who that was the only way that they could make it and so those people have like sharpen that and you see this with a bunch of different things so you see this with a lot of investors when we have on the podcast we're like wow like i wanted to ask you about like stocks and like you know analysis but ninety five percent of things you thought you think about and talk about is like mastering your own like your own psychology and disc yourself and like learning like impulse control and learning how to like be a little you know to to think for yourself and be comfortable in your own skin and it's like yeah that's actually what that's the thing it was required in order to be great in the investment world combination of like independent thinking and then like self control and playing the long game and patience right and then you talk to people who are you know maybe comedian and comedian are like wow you're actually like kind of a truth teller it's like well yeah like that's kind of what comedy is it's like basically like seeing things for what it is that nobody's saying out loud and then we say it out loud and then everybody laughs because everybody knew it and so you you realize like all these comedian are actually like pretty wise and pretty like spot on and spotting like the truth the underlying truth and society like yeah because if they don't do that they don't make anyone laugh and they get boot off the stage and it's horrible and so the ones you survive are the ones you figure out how to do that one thing at a world class level and so you could study different disciplines where like does darwin you know pressure had the natural selection forced them to become like a plus plus at a certain thing who who who do you think falls in that category where you learn about them and and they've done the same thing to you where you went to them for like let's say writing and they changed your life seinfeld seinfeld is the easiest example so i i wanted this year i was like oh like could you like make yourself funnier i just sort of us assumed that like you know growing up like you either are funny or you're not and in my house like my sister is really funny and so it was always like she's the funny one and she's the great storyteller taylor and i was like the nice kid and so i always had this probably like from a young age desire to be more like her and like today so funny people would be like from the podcast and like oh yeah you're a great story storyteller i'm like yeah haven't seen my sister my sister's is amazing at this i'm just okay but over time as i've grown up i've realized like a lot of these things that seem like you either have it or you don't creativity humor storytelling like no these are just skills you can develop like even if you just try you can get way better at it and so humor was one this this year i went into and i was like alright let me just take two weeks and be like let me just learn what there is to learn let me see if i make myself funnier so i went and studied seinfeld so i went for the jokes and then i came out and been like this man is wise and has some of like the best sort of like he has this incredible creative process like the way he works has changed the way i work like completely like night and day difference in what way so seinfeld does this thing in the morning you you you know about this but like maybe other people don't seinfeld for the last forty five years has a morning routine seinfeld morning routine is very simple he's like if you wanna be a comedian and you wanna write do you wanna you know tell great jokes you've got write jokes every day so he wakes up in the morning he sits down with a yellow legal pad a pen and a coffee and he has two hours where before it he's pre input pre everything nobody no meetings nobody can call him he doesn't read the newspaper he doesn't check social media does do anything else he's like i'm gonna do two hours of this and then i can do whatever i want for the rest of the day hey he sits down does this two hour morning blocks it's two hour morning routine he's done that every day for forty five years to the point where there's a photo where he took the pages from his yellow legal pads over the forty years and he laid it out on the street and anything in new york no way you haven't seen this no i'm gonna get literally becomes the yellow brick road this is awesome are you kidding me this is so cool so he to promote his book he so he prob he published a book basically of like all of his like scrap jokes that he didn't put into a stand up it's called his is this any is this anything i think it's the name of the but to promote it he did this yellow brick road of all his yellow pages and you know like for example you know how did i work before this right i'd wake up i checked slack i checked my email i'd then start to think about what i'm do but then i kinda hungry then i go do this then oh i had this meeting scheduled at nine so i'm gonna get to my main thing at eleven and just seinfeld like keeping it sacred of like yeah what's your main thing you spend two if you're gonna be creative you're gonna spend two hours the morning creating that's it tim urban from wait told me the same thing he goes if it goes all i have to do in life is wake up and spend the first two hours writing and if i do that life is amazing and if i don't do that my life sucks is again by the way it's only two hours it's not eight hours it's not ten hours i don't have to keep grinding all day two hours is more than enough if i actually do it so seinfeld does that and he talks about writer's block or they're like but jerry like what do you do on days or you don't know what to write he's like like do with writer's block he goes oh you know it's funny to you asked because there is a writer's block and they're like what do mean jerry like of course like we have all felt it there's writer's block he goes no there's lazy there's afraid there's having too high expectations but there's no writer's block let's be clear and he's like here's the security writer's block you're ready accept your own mediocrity don't sit down and think today i'm gonna make this great thing it's gonna be so amazing i'm the words are gonna flow i'm gonna make this funny joke because that's what stops you what you need to do is almost an anti affirmation can me to sit down and say today i'm gonna sit down it's gonna be hard to write the thing i'm gonna come up with is it's gonna pretty much suck i'm gonna look at it and i'm gonna hate it i'm gonna wanna crumble it up and throw it in the trash it's gonna be that bad but you know what i'm gonna put it down on paper anyways because every once in a while they'll be a little nugget of something good and then after i find a little nugget of something good i might be able to polish it with a ton work later and make it great and he's like they're sort like anti affirmation right so like i have taken that completely stolen that as my daily process from this guy i went to learn about like how to make people laugh and i'm like awesome i learned how to work how to live like you talked about does trans meditation they're like oh is that that's really great you love meditation goes no i just wanna write great jokes he's like but you have to whip the mind you have to whip the body he's like so why do i work out to be a better comedian why do i meditate to recharge my battery so i could be better comedian and he's like all the stuff i do is to be a better comedian he's like he's like you'll learn pretty quick if you don't work out you're leaving you know some of you on the table from being able to do your best work if you don't do something like a meditation he something to recharge your mental battery you're going to do worse work like it's just as simple as that right he's got a ton of stuff on that i've been that's so great jerry i listen to i listened to a lot of his youtube videos his interviews because it's the same thing where i learn more about life than anything you know there's a famous one where he talks about like consultants like an in in comedian comedian and making joke yes what let's you say about that the joke is he's getting interviewed by i think like harvard business you and they go you and larry david famously wrote seinfeld together with no writers room just the two of you guys you wrote every single season every episode and burnout was one of the reasons you stopped the show in the end like you know was there he goes the harvard business review was was there a more sustainable way to do it could mckinsey have helped you find a better model and he goes who's did they really ask that yeah he goes who's mckinsey and they go it's a consulting thing he goes are they funny he goes they go no he goes then i don't need him if you're efficient if you're efficient you're doing it the wrong way the right way is the hard way the show is successful because i micro managed it every word every line every take every edit every casting that is my way of life do you have this up right now dude i have like a dossier of seinfeld like a told i studied this man like i went deep on this that's awesome have you ever seen live yeah i've seen sci honestly wasn't that funny but boss i gonna say the same thing i was just say let's late thing love guy don't love his comedy actually his his stand up is yeah his writing is the best but his stand up for some reason is just fine yeah it's just okay i've been put it's it's part why i really love this guy right because he's been touring for fifty years as a comedian fifty years so this is an unbelievable like lebron james is jealous of jerry seinfeld longevity he's like fifty years unbelievable longevity as a touring comedian and he's also i i think was remarkable well he's one of the he's the first and only billionaire comedian mostly because of seinfeld the show but also like you comedian of cars doing coffee he sold for like a hundred million dollars like he can be really touring for a long time yeah netflix picked up for a hundred million dollars he's a super he's outlier but the great thing about seinfeld is if you see him he's not like naturally just oozing charisma and like talent like this some guy they could do amazing impressions you're like i could never do that right or there's other guys that are just like they've just a snack this gift for gap and you can just see it like the way they grew up like the these guy's just so funny and seinfeld is like a it looks like a hr manager right like it doesn't look like he's the most naturally talented guy and that's kinda why i love it like the guy's is the most successful comedian he's because he's just this craftsman he like yeah squeezed everything out of his natural talent and i think how often does that really happen like how often do people really maximize their potential very rare i remember when i was starting the hustle scott be like i cold emailed him and he asked him to invest and he didn't wanna invest but then i just like added him to the hustle and i started writing like extra good emails and he eventually replied he's like this is so good kind like a very small sum but i just wanna let you know like the the this is like you're you're fantastic this is great and he let me hang out with him so for the anyone listening scott be at this point he's known as like a legendary investor but before he was this amazing investor he had started the pants with which he had sold for i think a hundred and seventy five million dollars now he he was nearly the ceo of adobe which is one of largest companies in the world i think now he works at age twenty four is that right like the big shot hollywood production company he's like chief strategy officer and something else and i didn't listen to his advice when i when i met with him and i always regretted that i didn't listen to his his advice and i do understand it until now he basically was saying the exact opposite of scale scale scale i was like i need to automate this i need to hire more people i need to get away from writing this email every day and making it great i need to add more revenue i to get more advertisers and he was basically like you need to go in a room and just not have anyone around and you just need to write this email every single day for about four or five years and be he used the i never heard anyone use the word steward he was like you need to be a steward of greatness and a steward of taste for your audience and i didn't understand what that entirely met but what i thought in my head i was but you're wanting me to act like i'm a small business owner you're wanting me to act like a craftsman i was like i'm not trying to be some garage band i'm trying to be lady gaga like i'm trying to sell out stadiums what are you talking about being a craftsman do you what to be like don't understand what you're saying why am i gonna say small i wanna sell out i don't wanna like that's the whole goal and it took me years to understand what he meant which was you can become this like huge successful person and also be a craftsman you know who honestly does a great job of this and it seems silly is dave port dave port has his hat and i don't even like the comedy anymore but he's had his hands in it and he's been consistent now for twenty five years and he's ridiculous he's a ridiculous person and he's sort of obnoxious but you know what he's done it he's done exactly what scott be has said which is you need to be in the thick of it and you need to be focused purely on creative and you need to be a steward for taste and i didn't understand what that meant until i was about thirty two years old i think he told me this when i was twenty six and and i and i was like scott how are you so successful you don't know anything about this you're telling me not to like focus on scaling and all this gaga scott gaga and but now that i know like some of these people who are actually making the most money are actually still craftsman and like and and so like i just distinctly remember i'm like i wanna sell stadiums i'm trying to sell up i'm not trying to be a small little like korean family owned bode day like i'm gonna take over the world baby you you said dave port there's another guy who's like that bill simmons and he's probably you he's probably the reason i'm doing a podcast today because i was back in college and i don't know what what that was two thousand and seven listening to his to the bs report you know i used to like falsely asleep listen to the bs report like there's was like that there's was that like and at at the time podcast were nothing and he he had been a blogger before that then he was a espn columnist then he did the podcast then he did thirty for thirty documentaries then he went and he gets fired from espn because he does the he does the ringer why do you get fired he was pretty outspoken against roger god the nfl commissioner he's like this guy's like kinda covering shit up and like not like he doesn't care gonna be contained feel there was like a violent thing there like the concussion stuff and he was basically like he would make jokes but like the nfl espn biggest partner and so he was he got suspended a couple times and then they were just like this guy's too hard to work with and so they it's they killed his project grant land and they fired him and so he comes back after licking his wounds a little bit he come back with the ringer which is just the grant grant again and he'd been doing this now for like a long time but he ends up selling to spotify for two hundred million dollars and there's a great tweet that was going on the other day so the tweet was basically a video of simmons and he's walking through the office he's carrying like a chair like a school chair and he's carrying a chair at a microphone and he's like then they're like they're like bill what you it he's like a trade had just happened and then i nfl the parsons trade just happened and it's like kind of like a you know in the grand scheme of things not like a big story but like you know it was like the biggest story that week and the he his company has like fifteen other podcasts and so there's like this nfl podcast going on and he's like i gotta go talk about this so he's just carrying a chair through the hallway and there's a guy behind him like filming him i'm like bill what are you doing and he just barges in and like puts down his chair with his microphone phone and he wants to like talk about it with the guys and they're and somebody tweeted they're like honestly respect this guy's been doing this for like twenty years he's got he's worth like two hundred million dollars and yet on a like thursday he can't wait he's literally carrying his chair his microphone and wants to sit with his friends and do his do a podcast about this trade like that's kinda goals you know what i mean like that's actually like career goals and that really like i don't know that kinda looks stuck with me like i that is really what you want is like a job that's so fun and so like so you that it doesn't matter what's the money in the bank like you really just wanna do it you just want to do the thing to the point where you're just gonna carry your chair down the hallway and try to find a podcast to go do about it you know i i thought that was great where's he now so his grant still a thing grant died with espn he creates the ringer ringer soul or the ringer why and so it's part of spotify and he's been you know make a bank ever since why haven't we been able to get him on here you've talked about him like four or five times is like your number one he's like that girl at the dance i don't wanna to approach yeah i'm like hold on i just gotta like i'm a fix my shirt real quick i gotta take him my shirt i gotta go they i gotta go get some punch and thirsty yeah i gotta do do everything else except ask him yeah i mean he looks pretty awesome i i don't know really anything about them i would i would love to talk to this dude it seems great and you've talked about him them like specific yeah is he is he yeah i mean to go from a dude who couldn't even get hired by like a local paper basically so he starts blogging early on on the internet par is that blog into like getting his own section of being the highest paid sports writer at espn but the thing is it's not just that he was the highest he's it's not there that successful he did it his way like he created an entire style of writing on on like a a publication like espn he basically he wrote like a blogger on espn nobody did that he wasn't in impartial he was like no i love the red sox i love the patriots i'm from boston what are talking about i'm gonna write like a fan like i'm a right like a fan and sometimes be pissed at what my team is doing sometimes gonna be excited about it i'm gonna make a bunch of references to like mtv road rules the challenge like i'm gonna i'm gonna do what i'm interested in even though that makes none of it is like by the book and then he does podcasting early on then he does the documentary he builds the most successful sports documentary series what thirty per thirty thirty for thirty he like it was his brain brainchild he conceived it he created it inside of espn like nobody believed in it basically and he you know you've kinda fought for it got it done it became super successful i is is is epic dude what he's he done and still on the podcast he you would never know so he'll never reference the fact that like he's basically richard than like a lot of the athletes he covers at this point a super well connected to him but he's tried to like never really he doesn't let that sort of creep his content also he didn't really rub it in the espn face which he very much could have because they like literally kicked him to the curb and didn't believe in them and told him like grant land the ideas of failure like that that's a that's a money loser doesn't work and he replicated the same business and sold it for two hundred million dollars so you know like he he could have done a victory lap and never did that's awesome i'm a i'm a bill simmons fan no there go should i interview him without you yeah i think you should have know so sean not your day but it's much yours yours inspiration that you would do anything for you but you're not well these guests for you fan girl that would be one where i'd be i'd be too much of a fan girl and it really would be counterproductive to the podcast that would be great i'd say get you rattled you're not normally someone gets rattled for alright that was a good episode i enjoyed that but that's that's a pod i feel like i could rule word i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a day's off on a travel never looking back alright let's take a quick break because as you know we are on the hubspot podcast network but we're not the only ones there's other podcast podcasts on this network too and maybe you liked them maybe you should check them out one of them that i wanna draw your attention to is called nudge by phil ag and whether you're a marketer or a salesperson and you're looking for the small changes you could make the new habits you could do the the small decisions you could make that will make a big difference that's what that podcast is all about check it out it's called nudge and you can get it wherever you get your podcast

alright sam i got a billy of the week for you i'm excited about it i got goosebumps thinking about this guy he's an inventor he's an innovator you know steve jobs zealand elon musk thomas edison look if those guys were going on a road trip but there's only one set of keys they would toss it to this guy he would get to drive and his name is tom brian i feel like i could rule where i know i could be what i want to put at all in and like a days off on a less travel never tom ryan is basically the leonardo vinci of calories okay this is a guy who has invented some of the most iconic foods in history he invented the riddle he invented stuffed crust cheese pizza he invented smash burger the chain he invented the beef dip sandwich at k he invented his guy has just been inventing things in the food category the mc flu he's just been inventing things for you know just decades and he is like the godfather of food science so i wanna tell you a little bit about this guy okay i'm i'm interested because i didn't think that some like a dipping a sandwich in os i didn't think that was like an invention and so okay so some of these things i'm using the word invention a little liberally right some of them he genuinely invented meaning like nobody had done that before some of it is he created that product at that company which had was not previously a product and so sometimes it might be like oh well you know somebody else said had the idea of you know a sweet sandwich okay cool he he invented the mc riddle it's a specific thing that he invented that made it work and here's why but but can could we start by me asking how do you even discover this were you like on the mc riddle wikipedia page just you know when you're eating something and it's so good you're like i'd like to pay homage who's the man who invented this i'd like to put some flowers on his tombstone that's exactly what happened i saw tiktok about this guy and i was like there's just no way one guy did all this okay alright so this guy basically he goes to college and when he's at college he has his girlfriend the girlfriend taking a food science class so she convince him to take it he goes there and immediately falls on love he's like oh my god i didn't even realize there's a whole science behind things like ketchup and ice cream like there's literally like chemistry science but then there's also sort of the brain science psychology the tongue science of like what flavors work and so then he not only studies food science he then gets a masters in something called lipid toxicology right this guy is just studying like the science of fat and i would say this guy like you know i don't know what the what the equivalent of the nobel priest prizes is but for like obesity what this guy deserves so he he just so he goes and he gets a job at at duncan hines he then works at ji and he's like pioneering a lot of their peanut butter work that he eat that you know does some some really great peanut butter work the bus work yeah he's like you know these open ai researchers that are just getting poached from lab to lab that was him going from hines food lab to the ji food lab and then he gets a call from pizza hut and they recruit him as head of new products because he got his reputation because he even at jiffy he was launching new products and so he gets this reputation as being like this sort of mad genius and his friend tells him when he gets the job at pizza hut for head of new products he goes dude i'm so sorry because what he's like that's a tough position man everything's already been done in pizza like you're doomed you're doomed to male pizza is a solved problem and he there's a quote from he goes that pissed me off they he goes he goes it pissed me off that because they the guy was doubting me but because a lot of the world thinks like that they think the world is full of solved problems i don't think like that i think there's always an opportunity so he goes into the research and he's doing research and he's like alright what consumers care about when it comes to pizza and he's like alright two things are very clear to me after studying how people eat pizza number one cheese is the value driver the more cheese the better the cheese the better and there's really no limit to the amount of cheese that people are willing to have in their pizza and second the dog eat the crust he's like the crust is the necessary part because you need a handle to hold the pizza it's the worst part of the pizza that people just give to the dog and so he's like alright i need to put cheese in the crust and so you know he goes to his team and they're yeah just put some cheese on top of the crust it'll be great he's like nah doesn't have that wow factor he's like we gotta have a wow factor he's gotta feel different it can't just be that we've added cheese to crust it's gotta like be something that's marketable and so he's like let's figure out how to put cheese inside the crust which was a whole like physics problem because you know he's like the first one he made like that he's like it tastes pretty but it looked like a like a bike tire like i burnt the whole outer crust was like this fat you know like burnt thing and so you had to figure out how do you cook the pizza so that you can have gooey cheese in the crust without burning the crust and so he does some work and they figure it out they fit get a special dough and a special pan and they get it to work and it becomes a huge shape but then he's also a marketing genius and so he creates he's like you know what we don't need to do something new what we need to do is have you ever seen this malcolm glad talk that he gives his his big ted talk about the the perfect pasta have you seen this no that sounds great what is it so it it's malcolm glad famous ted talk from back of the day when he was you know malcolm glad was the man writing tipping point and mother's and he basically talks about this guy another food scientist who got hired by a pasta sauce company rag or whoever and they were like we need you to figure out how much like what's the perfect pasta sauce like should it have like chunks in it should it be just smooth should it have like herbs in it or just be plain should have cheese like what what's the perfect pasta sauce and the guy and then the the the big takeaway the spoiler of this ted talk is the guy discovers discovers there's no perfect pasta sauce there's only perfect pasta sauce is meaning you cluster people into like four or five categories if you like chunks then give them way more chunks than you're currently giving them like they want way more if you like spice make it way spicier it's too mild for them today and if you like cheese put it until you basically like the middle that they're trying to serve everybody wasn't working and they actually needed to like go extreme so this guy discovers the same thing in pizza he creates the meat lovers pizza he creates the pepperoni lovers pizza the cheese lovers pizza and he creates the lovers lime of pizzas there and that becomes a huge success so he's crushing it at pizza hut which but all this sounds like silly like i'm laughing this not silly this is great this is actually and this is really hard to do at a corporate setting to convince someone one true inventions true innovations on i'm yeah like i'm laughing but because it's legit and this is moving billions of dollars of product right and this is like you know hitting millions of customers and this is also by the way we have friends that work at facebook and google and they're like yeah i'm optimizing the like the marketplace banner ads to be like you know whatever happens like you you know you were talking about this with that i you're like like like if the like my wife worked and the team of them trying to put stickers on photos and she's like well if the dog's tongue is out of the mouth the the click rate is five percent versus if it's in the mouth it's only one percent right and there's definitely like a cynical side of this which is like our world's greatest minds are basically just fine tuning knobs inside of giant slot machines which is really what's happening inside of most big tech companies and most big food companies but hey i'm not a hate let me just see some of positive things of this okay so he gets the call he's at pizza hut he's crushing he creates all the all those products ring ring hello yeah this is tom speaking and then on the other side he's ronald set you and ronald mcdonald calls he gets called up to the biggest of the big leagues he gets called by mcdonald's mcdonald's says we need you is he a kid right now or is he like grown ass man okay so and he has a great thing by the way one of his frameworks because they're like how do you invent because like odyssey is like one of the more creative inventors of our lifetime and they're like how do you invent anything goes i try to get inside the mind of an ambitious thirty two year old mh and why he's like basically when you're thirty two you have money you have taste so you kinda know what you like and you don't like but you're still open minded you're not closed off to the world and you're not like easily swayed by the latest and latest trend of everything so you're you but you're still like you're still with it and like you're still a part of every major trend that like has staying power and so he's like i studied the mind of the of an ambitious thirty two year okay and he works with that so he get some call from mcdonald's he goes there and they're like alright where's the opportunity and he's like alright let's look at breakfast and they start looking at breakfast and he's like alright you got coffee check and then you have all your like savory foods check he's like got nothing sweet and he starts thinking about it and he's like alright you know casual answer we need french toast we need pancakes and he's like this average first level thinking you get out of get out of the room and he's he says no what are we really gonna do and he goes so he he's a master of constraints so he says how do we take the denny's grand slam breakfast and put it in your hand and they're like what and he's like i want an entire grand slam breakfast but that will fit just fit in your hand because that's what mcdonald's up this guy sounds like a stalled character so he creates the gi which is exactly that it's a sweet breakfast item that fits in your hand pops off gi becomes a huge hit mcdonald's breakfast surges on the back of this it creates billions of dollars in market cap and all because and he had to do some invention he's like well we can't have this messy drip syrup up you know sticky sandwich like yeah i put a sticky thing in your hand then your your whole day's ruined you're not coming back the next day and i've never had a grid have you had one well hell yeah yeah of course there when you've never had a mcrib never had a you never had hard tied this is like the greatest like the greatest submarine one of those capes like where have you the war was still going on sounds i know man this is the best they're the best like honestly and never considered it but after this after this i'm i'm so in apparently there's so you tell me i don't know is it not like covered in syrup and actually there's something called syrup crystals that are inside the take little little balls of like sugary like syrup and it's wonderful and it mixes perfectly with the salty sausage okay so that's it that's what he did tom does it so he does that he creates and you don't get a mess in your hand so you get the syrup without a mess in your hand alright so a lot of people will talk about how you need a million dollars and three years of experience to start a business nonsense if you listen to at least one episode on this podcast you know that is completely not true my last company the hustle we grew it to something like seventeen dollars or eighteen million dollars in revenue i started it with like three hundred dollars my current company hampton does over ten million in revenue started it with actually no money maybe twenty nine dollars or something like that nothing and so you don't actually need investors to start a company you don't need a fancy business plan but what you do need is systems that actually work and so my old company the hustle they put together five proven business models that you could start right now today with under a thousand dollars these are models that if you do it correctly it can make money this week you can get it right now you can scan the qr code or click the link in the description now back to the show now you might be thinking alright is this guy like you know what he really about is he just is he just in this for himself is he an elite is he one of these elites that i should hate or is he a man of the people well he's a man of the people he creates the dollar menu the dollar menu you did what what a iconic i what a iconic move is he an employee at mcdonald's right now or entrepreneur no i mean in the story in the story at this story of course that's he did he's a mercenary he's a hired gun and he drops in like he's like a one man navy seal who drops in and like nails the target and bounces after for a handful of years i don't know why there's no movie about this guy yet right like i don't wanna see jason i wanna see tom the only question that we have at this point is this does it come in via a parachute or just do they storm the beach on a boat like what's he gonna do yeah the story has been told like a hotdog boat truck barges in so he creates the dollar menu who creates some mc flurry and then he goes to quiz quiz poach him he does a little bit of work there but the owner of quiz was like yeah this is the guy so he says forget quiz let's just create a hold of concept together and they create smash burger together which don't know if you've paid attention but as as a former r operator myself i'm i'm a lot of respect a steam for smash burger smash burger it's just it's just thin it i mean it's a burger that you when you grill it you put the meet you you stick the thing in the metal in the me right you spell it's kinda like a thin crust pizza but for burgers so they kinda smash the burger which gives it like a more of a char on both sides which is better for them too because it's less meat well i i think it's the same it just gets wider got it okay but you but a tastes better yeah i think okay so they create creates fast burger become successful but what a prolific career for this guy and what what what a what a track record like who has dominated their industry the way this man has dominated fast food science right like fast food food science pretty bizarre when i googled his name it came up with job foods corporation is he associated with that yeah i don't know what that is he's got like new stuff that he's doing he did like a like a new like like sports bar type of deal he's got smash he was a ceo of smash for a while i i don't know what all he's doing now but they were like you wanna retire he's like retire i wake up every day i i wake up every day i'm trying to dominate the palette you think you think i wanna do play golf like what what do you think this is have you googled him he he's got he's a beautiful man he's just got the most beautiful head of hair i've seen in a long time he looks like you know like like had a british reporter like who's like covers like sports he looks like that guy in the nineties and every rom com the woman was vying for an editor and chief job at v or something like that that was like it was looks like well no the he he looks like the second character now the second character is a british yes or california record label executive so they work in ar or they're running the label and they miss the kids baseball game because they have to check out this band right and like he he looks like that character he looks like the record label executive from every nineties rom movie so is he like this alpha like get after a type of guy or is he like a cookie forgetful for professor who wears to not matching socks okay that i don't know but he's an alpha in my mind he's an alpha to me i'm gladly ab abandoned to him this guy is amazing did tell you by the way if we back in the day when i was doing my sushi restaurant chain we went to a you don't like these industry conferences that you like you just some like you know we went to farm con it's like a farmer's conference well i went to like a food version of this i don't know if you've ever been any of these quirky like industry trade show conferences but they're so funny to dude so i like i to inbound the inbound the hubspot inbound marketing conference up next week yeah you'd be like that which there's a whole talk on converting m to sql yeah it's like that so i went to this thing because there's a qs r magazine quick service restaurant so there's a pre message and we we apply we're like hey we really wanna go to the conference can you give us free tickets so they're like yeah so we go and you know what the ice breaker was we got there and the ice breaker with you come in in the lobby they have three table setup of just like dirty dishes like it's a a a restaurant table and it was a speed bus competition so you would go with three other people and you'd have to try to like bust the table as fast as you can of whoever had like pretty good the best bus was you know like succeeded basically like one one the contest got like a a key chain or something like that it it was amazing the guy who organized his name was literally tom hamburger it was unreal dude this is this is i've this we've done seven hundred and fifty plus i think episodes of m and this happens a lot where a lot of people don't realize this but for the majority of episodes you and i don't talk in advance because we like to like surprise each other on air on the topic this is funny what you're saying is very similar to the topic that i had brought what you got and so this can all actually be related and i have but i think could be like a nice little bullet at the end to like how this could be good for entrepreneurs or business owners listening i found a photo of a billboard that i saw recently that stopped me in my tracks and so i want you to look at this billboard and tell me what it says okay so this says boiled cod and it's a picture of cod slightly more protein per calorie than our bars david the david bar okay have you good have you seen this no amazing okay so i wanna tell you a story about this it's it and i wanna explain a little bit like nerdy marketing about why it works so the story behind this we had peter ra on the podcast i think like six months ago so peter was the guy who started rx bar in his mom's basement and he eventually sold it for something like six hundred fifty million dollars only six years after starting by the way the episode he did with us was awesome like i if you if you wanna if let's go and listen to a fun episode listen to that one it basically he tells a story of how he built rx bar how we building david bar but also he had like four or five other ideas of like if i was gonna go into a category this is the type of category i look at and how i would attack it which is like what you always want from a an entrepreneur who's got like expertise that comes on the pods like great tell me how you did it tell me what you're doing now but okay that's great for you what about for me and do you have specific ideas and like a specific approach you take that i can learn from for like white space right now and he actually have a a a third part of that which was he had a beautiful attitude and not beautiful in the sense of fun to be around like he was sort of like napoleon like he had this like conquered the world energy that i thought was like actually kind of cool very intense energy yeah that i thought was interesting and so when he came on he told us the story of rx he told us a story about david protein bars i don't think david had launched at that point but the background behind david is when he was and i i have to give a shout out to new york times daily i'm i'm using them as a source for this but when he started david the idea was with rx bar it was a natural bar it was made out i think dates and it had a very small amount of protein and he noticed that had i had more protein in this bar i think i would have been able to approach a larger market and i could create something a lot bigger and so david finds this thing called ep p g it's a delivery mechanism for protein and eventually david actually the company has bought the company that owns the patent for ep and ep g is a type of chemical that allows protein to be delivered to you faster so so let me explain let me just ask this question because it the doc here says it's a modified fat called ep g which delivers the texture of fat but it passes through your body with ninety two percent fewer your calories is this remember when palmer lucky came on and he was like diet coke is amazing and he's like i just wanted to make like diet coke for like any food into the equivalent of diet coke so it's just like food that tastes really good but it basically just passes it straight through your body it can't be absorbed and therefore like doesn't make you fat is that what this is basically it's like something of it tastes good you could put it in a bar but because it can't be absorbed by your body it's you know it it doesn't have the sort of caloric impact is that what it is so basically it's the it's it's it's one of the most efficient ways to get tons and tons of protein into your body per calorie and the way they do that is be via ep g which is a incredibly ultra processed food so i don't know if it's what you're describing but the criticisms for david of which we had just mayors on the podcast he's one he was a very loud vocal critic of this he has basically said david may get you lots and lots of protein but it's incredibly ultra processed and there's the argument as to why that's not good because this this this chemical or wherever you wanna call it ep g there's a lot of people who who wanna criticize it and say it's bad and i'm not gonna place judgment me on either side i'm just telling you there's two sides of this argument which is what i'm gonna get to but people loved it and so david which i think is it even two years old yet i think it's one year old roughly because he was on about a year ago on the podcast and i think it was like just about to launch or had just launched so this year they're gonna do close to two hundred million dollars in sales in roughly the second year of business they're they're on they're on a tear they did a million dollars in the first week of sales and if you go to like any store right now i don't know what it's like in california but any store in new york they're everywhere david protein bars are everywhere and they've crushed it on the marketing in particular they've crushed it on the product side but they've really killed it on the marketing and so when i saw this sign boyle it stopped me in my tracks and the reason it stopped me my tracks is i'm reading this book i'm reread we had tim ferris on the podcast and he had mentioned this book that he loved was called the twenty two immutable laws of marketing yeah have you ever have you ever read of that i haven't i have it but haven't read it yet it was one of these things where like i skimmed before when i was younger but when we had him on i he made a comment that it was a great book and i was you know i should actually sit down and read that it's really short it's only a hundred pages you could basically read it in one or two settings and one of the laws is called the law of the opposite and the reason why this is relevant to the story that you just said is because it goes to like the science and the methodology behind in twenty two different ways to stand out and be different and you focus on something that's not better but different and so the law of the opposite states that if you're not the leader of a category your strategy is then dictated by the leader which means it's best to not to be better than the leader but to be the opposite customers already have the leader's position locked in their mind and you win by framing yourself as an alternative and the key is to embrace the differences and often extra exaggerate them and the reason this all works is marketing is a battle of perceptions not products the challenger doesn't need to disprove the leader they need to define themselves as the antidote meaning we are not them were the other choice right and so why is this so interesting because david took the criticisms of them being an ultra processed food and they ran towards the fire so much so that on their website i thought that this was a joke and so what they're doing is they are positioning themselves as an alternative to natural foods they're saying yeah natural frozen cod that's the best that's it's definitely the best but like it's disgusting who the hell wants to eat that eat this other thing that tastes good and it's like it's just a little bit less good in terms of protein per calorie but you're actually going to be able to consume it they're actually selling so that's not gonna say pod if you go to their website they sell it they're selling it and so this is a masterclass on how to handle this by the way on the site it's their cod sold their wild got cod and it's like twenty three grams of protein hundred calories of no sugar you can get it it's four filet flash frozen and add to cart and then there's all their bars like chocolate chip cookie dough peanut butter chunk all sold out said here it's all the sold out bars here's cod fully available and we got a lot of this stuff still stuck and there's a bunch of examples of the law of opposites do you remember i don't know if you remember this as a kid but you would see commercials for avi do you remember avi yeah the rental car yeah so basically avi was the number two in the market and hertz was the biggest company by far and avi had this amazing brand campaign where they said word number two so we try harder and that was their that was their campaign which is like we know number two we're gonna try harder that's another example of the law of opposite but david has executed this flawlessly and this like an amazing thing to lean into and this is like not something that like dude i'm just kicking myself because what he came on i literally fell in love with the guy i was like i love this guy's in intensity love this guy's honesty love approach it's clearly like an expert in this field in this industry and attacking this it was so obvious that the they had nailed the branding and packaging of the bar so i'm just mad that i didn't push to like try to invest in this thing and be like hey i just i'm so bullish on this and then it has played out exactly i i as that would have guessed i think you go i i think we said what's your goal he goes well i actually think we're gonna expand the tam and i think that there's gonna be a ten billion dollar company yeah that's crazy on i like their copy on other side we thank our predecessor in the protein industry we'll take it from here it's so good right they they they nail it on on branding they nailed a bunch of stuff and i saw when i saw this cod billboard i was like oh that's that's so good that's exactly what the book twenty two immutable laws of marketing that's exactly what they had mentioned with a law of opposites and they completely nailed it and if you are a small business owner very similar to what this guy tom ryan i would highly recommend reading this book and then downloading it and uploads a chat gb it's so cool and interesting to give you ideas on your product or and or your positioning and what what what he just was explaining about with the with the mc riddle and all that stuff it's all very very very similar to this which is it's not the goal is not to be better the goal is to be different because a meat lovers pizza that's not particularly better it's just that's remarkably different than anything else listen up the old playbook is slowing you down ai broke the funnel loop marketing fixes it it's a new era for marketers ai is capturing search traffic channels are fragmented and generating leads feels less predictable than ever before hubspot loop marketing playbook will guide you through this unprecedented disruption it's the system your marketing teams should use to move faster connect deeper and gross smarter the modern growth playbook for the ai era built by hubspot designed for today's marketer get the loop marketing playbook at hubspot dot com slash loop dash marketing to find out more and leave your competition behind alright back to the pod alright let's do another topic okay i have a little stock market thing can i do stock thing yeah any pretty stupid and dangerous because like most likely just gonna get be wrong gonna get ripped part here not entirely so last time we talked about this type of stuff you picked so we're we're all disclosure where it don't do anything we're saying the last time though you picked u and yeah so we did a episode called stock of palo i don't about a year ago i don't know when that was and the idea was mean and say i go research and we just try to pick a stock so we try to make a call similar to the zone conference we you you just try to find a company that you would believe in as a as an performer and then we made our case and i picked tee pto which is the parent company of u and wwe and you picked what ferrari i think i believe we did that episode so february twelve twenty twenty four let's see what the stock price has performed since then okay so the stock at that time was trading at eighty five dollars and it's currently at a hundred and eighty five dollars okay right you know up what what is that over a hundred percent hundred and seventeen percent did you put any of your money into it of course not bro you think i'm here to bake buddy what's going on not because not for any particular reason i was just like lazy i didn't i didn't pay attention so anyways that that pick has performed well i don't think for ferrari done i think far is down like five percent so i'm better than you so let me let me you just stay wife for a minute let me just do this segment here you could give a pick that's bad after this i was hanging up with somebody recently who's a guest he you know a guest on the podcast super successful like billionaire type of dude and asked him two questions one was what would you be doing right now what would bold be your ai play if you're just like young and broke but like wanted to do something with ai and he have a pretty interesting answer to that which is he's like i would go into he's like i go find a business owner who's built a successful book of business like let's say it's in insurance or home mortgages or you know some some some nice industries some juicy industry and like the owner kinda nose like oh ai probably could benefit like i i could probably benefit from ai in my company but who comes two sixty but i'm sixty i'm too old to like actually figure this stuff out and don't to he's like i would go to them i don't as many of those guys i can i try to build up a police instrument and be like hey i will do all of the work to use ai to cut our costs internally like i can automate a bunch of processes and jobs and whatnot like i can increase our accuracy and decrease our costs and if i do that like can i carve key basically when you carve me out ten percent of this business if i successfully do it i'll do it totally on contingency but like here's the deal and we can like measure the op x change that i'm gonna make in this business if you just give me free reign for you know twelve months please like it's the fastest way to kinda like own a piece he's like he's you know and then i would try to in that agreement maybe create an option to buy the majority of the business at a fair value if i can pull that off so he's like i thought i was saying this the first thing second thing he was talking about he goes he's like yeah he's like spacex he's like i just think it's unbelievable that people will and that there's any counter argument to spacex he's like spacex is the most def defensive company in the history of humanity like what's the second best spacex like is there anybody you you like there's there's so few companies that can even compete with spacex and think about how monumental difficult it would be to compete with spacex like yeah you gotta literally get into the rocket business and like not just the rocket business the reusable rocket business not only that but to do it and like be compete you know competing for these giant government contracts and you have to you know successfully debit demonstrate you know safe launches over a period of time he's like at this point spacex is so unbelievably def defensive he's like i think it's the safest place to put money and so i thought that was kind of interesting just like generational def def ability and really the question of like who is set up over the next twenty years who just has an incredibly competitive position for the next twenty years so i just took that frame and none none of these names are unpopular so i'm not giving you some like a obscure pick but i just like this is my honest take like i you know i'm basically trying to get into all of these companies because i think over a twenty year period i think all these companies have a very combination of they have a tailwind behind them so the wind is in their sales of they're in the right place at the right time like clearly the industry they're in and the tech wave that they're surfing is the big tech wave that we're gonna see play out over twenty years and two they don't have much competition which was my case for the for the the tk stock pick also because i was like there's no competition to u and there's no competition to wwe like the number two m mma you know promotions whether it's p nfl like bella like these were companies there's literally on the brink on the brink of bankruptcy and like they're they're like not just like in second place they're literally like one hundred or one thousand times smaller and behind and they and because of the network effect they have no chance to ever catch up u is a tens of billions of seller company and the second best one like they get in trouble for not being able to like make payroll literally it's like the rich guy's hobby you typically like close like the it's like it's like it's like lebron versus the freshman the freshman tea still even in the same category and so when you're in a category of one it's like that's a pretty big deal plus you have growth behind you but like the fact that there's just no competition same thing with wwe there's really no competition it's to w and of course since then they both signed major major like streaming deals way bigger than you know people thought they would sign like billion dollar a year plus streaming deals but what's this have to do with the first part of ai oh the ai part that was separate alright out so here's here's five other companies i think are extremely well positioned so the first is a company that i've been i i was wrong about i own the stock very early on and i got so mad during the games thing that i sold out of principal but i'm never gonna let those stupid principles in my way are a bad way they're the the they give you bad directions like en route to making money yeah my my big moral stand didn't seem to hurt this company so robin and who was the company i owed the stock when he was like i don't know five dollars seven dollars whatever it was like really early on like right when and ipo basically and it was like actually after ipo to kinda dipped or something and when the games stop happened and they basically shut off the ability to buy but continue to let people sell games i was like that is the most corrupt thing i've ever seen same and i it pissed me off so much that i was like if these guys i don't trust these guys i'm out since then they've just basically proceeded to like build what's clearly like morgan stanley for the next generation so like the tailwind behind robinhood hood is the following there's some like absurd amount of wealth i don't know what it is like twenty trillion fifty trillion there's like some stupid number like with the trillion behind it of wealth that's just gonna get transferred from like the parent you know boomers to millennials or gen z over the next twenty thirty years and so the question is as that money gets handed down what will those people do with it and it's pretty clear that like if you're a j z or your millennial the platforms you trust and gravitate towards the financial platforms you're already a user of when you have small check deposits is robinhood and that and then they're like great we have crypto we have four one k's have home mortgages and we got credit cards so like what else do you want wait they do they they do all those they have prediction markets which which is a code word for sports betting and gambling so you can gamble on there you can buy crypto on there you can buy stocks now there you can buy fractional stocks of private companies you could buy hey you could do all the margin training and options trading if you're you don't wanna get really degenerate you can do your free you could put it four you can open it before on k with them you can get a robinhood hood gold card and you can use that as your credit card and you get a home mortgage it's like an people amount of financial products that they've rolled out all in one app and it's basically this financial super app that gen z slash millennials are most comfortable with and as the wealth transfer happens they're gonna be the beneficiary of that so i think next twenty years they're extremely well positioned so austin raf the founder morning brew one of my closest buddies he has been texting me for the past six months maybe longer to be honest longer he's been texting me too about this in fact he's the only reason i bought it so i did buy it back again like maybe six months ago i had i was about to have a call with him and he had been talking about around it but he's kicking himself because he doesn't own any but he's been it was like his call he was like it's gonna be great i'm just waiting for a dip the dip never came and he he doesn't own any of it and it's basically ripped up like in a five x seven x since he's been like wanting to buy yeah he's been talking about a so before the call i bought a hundred thousand dollars robinhood stock just so i can get on the call as a robinhood shareholder ed be like oh thank you for the tip and since then it's up on thirty forty percent also it's a he's responsible for my robinhood conviction even though he doesn't own any of it now yeah and i think his reasoning i forget what it was exactly or he had more than one point but one of the points was like young people and he owns a company called or he did own morning brew which probably had two hundred employees which a lot of them were like twenty three year old like hundred thousand hundred fifty thousand dollar earning people and he was like my staff that's the the default they all have one hundred percent of their net worth in robinhood right and that is only going to continue to grow so they because they keep their money in there and it's just gonna keep on growing this is this company is unstoppable and he's been bragging about it or calling that for for maybe a year and a half and so he's absolutely nailed it i and i agree with you i did not buy into that argument at all i thought robin hood was silly i would i thought on principal i'm not on board with the what these guys did more of like a schwab type of guy i feel like you you want you know when it comes to money you want boring you want like a bow tie you want like you know got a man with a briefcase is what you well you know the i i i potentially have a lot of money and i didn't wanna to keep it in now like the they think that i'm keeping it an app was like kind of let's alone nerve wracking and like the interface is so cute that i thought it was like but they cared more about luxe i was like i want the ugliest website that got the biggest vault you didn't wanna keep it in an app as if it's like a shoe box like where where do you think the money's kept in any of these like if it was a website that's better but what did you want i wanted to like forgot password button to be like hidden like i didn't want someone to like i don't know i just it was too friendly yeah if it's too user friendly to me that means it's easily hack yeah that was the issue that it was too good you know it's like you find good deals on craigslist because you're you're finding something like interesting that no one else uses robin had scared me honestly obviously i i actually get what you're talking about i i actually felt similar i was like i wanna keep huge amounts of money of this app but i did keep i i had some money i think i bought like crypto on it before and i like they for years they did this thing where instead of giving you like uber for your new ride if you referred someone to a new ride they give you ten dollars robinhood had this amazing thing where you could like do a scratch off if you could pick option one two or three which obviously it's not actually one two three is all the same and they would give you stock and so like i owned like dollars of stock yeah i owned like ten dollars a ford and that is now worth more because i did this like you know right when they launched and so i like robinhood though as a company i just googled that is it true did they do one point one billion dollars of profit on three billion in revenue yeah basically when interest rates went up all of the like financial service companies started printing money because now all the money that they hold they're able they're able to like and any money that they lend out at high rates but like the money they hold are earning like four or five percent on their float which is like pretty crazy so there they're you they're very interest rate dependent right now by the way the criticism for all of these is that these are is crazy the valuation is crazy look at the fundamentals oh you know tesla you know they need to sell this many crazy amount of cars in order to justify this or like even self driving and have to be like bigger than uber to to just be where it's valued at currently right so like your upside is priced in would be the counter argument and by way i have no argument against that i just think very simply this says i actually served pretty well which is like i told you the story like in twenty ten i just kinda like oh like these internet companies seem to be like pretty dominant everybody uses it them every them let me get some of that that's the i like i don't really know how to do a discounted of cash flow you know i can't really tell you much about that about the pe ratios and like the any of that stuff but like i don't know interesting means that toothpaste is not going back in the bottle and so like similarly and it's like pretty obvious set with some of these is like yeah yeah like i like that partners that's the name of your let's save of your firm i like that running my company hampton it gives me the chance to meet with hundreds of different businesses and i'm always surprised by how many of them still use spreadsheets emails and clunky tools that do not talk to each other it's like watching someone build a house with duct tape so here's my take custom software that actually fits your needs isn't just convenient it's a competitive advantage should transform the way you do business and that's why you need to know about a no code platform called bubble with bubble you can build powerful web and mobile apps by literally dragging and dropping different elements out of the screen no coding required by the way i use bubble on a ton of different apps including hampton and if you want help building something complex on bubble you have to bring in zero code they're the top bubble agency out there and literally the biggest plugging creator for the platform they can build anything custom portals saas products and they do it about ten times faster and cheaper than traditional development zero code is also all about ai business automation transforming manual and slow processes into efficient automated ones so stop cobb together different tools and solutions and head to zero code dot com that's zero code as in the word zero and then code q o d e again code is with a q and tell them that sam sent you alright what's the next one let me just run through a couple of coinbase base is basically the same case except what they have is coinbase has nine product lines that do over a hundred million dollars of revenue each i thought that's a stunning stunning statement i can't believe how many different ways that they make a lot of money i think crypto basically it's like i'm bullish on bitcoin in general and crypto and if you're bullish on crypto the the most trusted exchange that basically everybody that takes a fee on everybody's interest everybody's enthusiasm around crypto they take a fee of everybody and every cell like that's a business gonna do very well and also like as now like the government's the government's pro crypto they're buying crypto there's etfs it's in people's retirement accounts like same thing can't can't put the two toothpaste back to the bottle on that and that's that ceos an animal he's an manual and so i just think they're they're extremely you know well positioned similarly for for you know the future when it when it ipo i'd never do this i've only done this two or three times or something like that i bought you jumped up and clap i i i click the heels right after i purchased like a hundred grand worth of stock and i just looked at my i just looked at it i i just made the money back now that it's like auto auto of there looks like i've i'm i'm even now after i think four years or three years alright the other two again this is this is so clear i i almost didn't even wanna do this segment but i do believe in this so like it it's not you to me because i don't follow all the this stuff so i think a lot of people won't find it totally cliche yeah okay alright well unfortunately the youtube comments aren't aren't as as forgiving and and kind as you are alright so tesla and the next one which is basically if you think about one of the next big industries to get unlocked a combination of self driving cars it's gonna change the world and then the robots now the time scale is obviously the question here but again i'm taking if you take a twenty year outlook nobody's better positioned to do self driving cars and robots than tesla so and then i also think by the way he's gonna end up merging x ai with tesla like he's gonna he's gonna put it all together i don't understand that i don't get that i don't get that combo why we go together well basically one is an ai lab and then all the although the future of tesla is as an ai company and if he's able till basically like financially engineer his way into owning more tesla by by having tesla by x ai like he's also like done this before it's solar city where he like bail out his own companies in in a way right i guess i get that the way how twitter has basically become ai which is then a tesla thing that's a wild journey that that's the wild part i wouldn't own any i don't wanna own any stock that of that elon controls because he's a crazy person and i don't mind being i don't mind him being crazy what i mind is like when he tweet something the stock changes or and so i'm like what if he gets shot which is definitely not unreasonable like there has to be like a one percent chance that he gets assassinated or a one percent chance that he dies doing something reckless yeah there's crazy demand risk with him yeah it's too crazy like when he tweeted that trump was a what pe file what did it go up or down like did it move get went down that what i got is but i i but yeah i don't have the stomach for that the stock trades in completely crazy ways in the short term like they'll be like oh we missed delivery estimates by a lot my bad and the stocks like up ten percent it's like what the ones going on here it's weird bad tesla too weird for me yeah i'm i'm too old school for that but i do i i understand the argument i mean again the idea is like we're gonna have robots doing human labor once you if you if you disagree with that then you're wrong and we disagree but if you realize that robots are gonna do human labor and the human labor is the biggest market in the world is the market for human human labor then the company that makes the robots that do the human labor is gonna sell more it's gonna be like the iphone the iphone was like this product that everybody in the world bought that you know sells billions of billions and billions of units as soon as they have robots i can actually do functional work they're gonna sell billions and billions there's gonna be more robots than humans because why would you not i'd be yeah give me give me five of those guys to be doing shit around my my backyard my factory my warehouse my whatever right like as soon as people as soon as that exists no then the question is do you believe it will exist do believe that that tesla can pull it off yes the the end the it's definitely worth betting that they will so once you go down the logic train of like the biggest market of the world's human labor we now have the technology wave happening where robots will be able to do that human labor and that if you had that what would be the demand for that okay pretty much the biggest demand we've ever seen for anything ever okay great so let's go to the next one who is gonna be able to you know who's gonna be able to do who's well positioned to do tesla okay you see you go down that chain that you realize like okay they're pretty well positioned it's just hard because so i have a friend that joined open ai in i forget the exactly what year but at the time i think they worth thirty billion dollars and he was debating he's like should i do this should i not do this and he said we also have the same thing which was wow thirty billion dollars that's a lot of money is there any upside to this well he joined i believe he's has made about thirty million dollars and as of now the stock that he was granted back then it is grant it is now worth ten million in a year so every vest it's something like ten million dollars right and he sold a little bit to to where he's good but we were talking today and we were like this could definitely ten x again like your grants could be one hundred million dollars a year and that's that's it's very hard to like overcome that that to get to that conclusion just because not logic because of emotion you know what i mean totally the smartest investors i know and the reason why i think there's merit to just having a very like simple simple model of investing is for most of the like i guess i if i look back in the last ten years i look back a couple the smartest investors i know they always had like a very like two sentence su two sentence level of conviction and they sort of pointed out there they're like hey like all you needed to do was btc and chill like all you needed to do was bitcoin and chill right you know when we sold to amazon and we got in our amazon grant and it was like okay you own this much amazon stock now guess what i did all these side projects i did all this other shit during the meantime i like try like work got up every day and went to work all i needed to do was amazon chill like if you get a big enough lump sum you just can let things compound and so like one of my friend zach has this this phrase basically every year there's one investment that's sort like the power law like you know when z happened he was like oh i think i just need to own the companies that are like the the oz epic companies and he's like yep like that was the only thing that you needed to do lo epic was the investment theme of the year you just had to recognize it and you had to take action on it it didn't take a like a literal genius to it right you didn't have to predict epic you didn't have to like be me deep in clinical trials six years ago like even if it just like after it happened you just had to like understand what was actually happening and buy and hold and like that was what you needed to do and every he basically has a list of every year what's the one thing that matter what was the one deal said i think he said one year was like only fans yeah one year he was like it's only fans this year and i was only fans what this was like before it was this was actually i think in in twenty nineteen we talked about it he talked sold and we sold a twitch and he texted me and he was like only fan i believe is gonna make more money than twitch i go broke twitch is making like and i shared him with you know i was like twitch pictures is making a lot of money he's was like i said what i said everything else is noise for me this year i just need to figure out if i can get into the did he get it yeah he did and so you know he's you know but i i just really respect that level of thinking and that that type thing in fact one of my friends who's like this he came to he came over my house and he goes take two don't take two what would it take must take two do your friends talk really strangely no so like this no connecting words it sounds like it's it's it was a kramer you just knocked on the door and take two i ask him i'm like what's the thing right now because he he was the one early on was just like you need to have one hundred percent of your net worth in bitcoin and he was just like every day he would just tell me and he would just tell me this every day this is twenty fourteen twenty fifteen twenty sixteen every day he just tell me the same thing and he would tell me exactly why and he would write it he wrote it down for me and he he just kept doing it and because of my own more bitcoin than i would have otherwise i you know i didn't listen to didn't do a hundred percent but i i i didn't listen to him he was basically making a case why the company that makes grand theft auto he's like grand theft auto is coming with the gta six is coming out and when it comes out is it right now the stock is a little depressed because it's the game's has been delayed for like multiple years because like the game is gonna come out and when the game comes out it's gonna be the biggest selling game ever there's no competition he got and he's like he uses all these economics where like you know some word for like there are no substitutes like there's no substitute for gta yeah he was using words like elastic elastic and something exactly so he's like rubber made there's stocks bra he's like you know a great investment has these like six properties and like you know here's the six properties and and i'm like and grand theft auto fits all those he's like yes and so that's like you know his big he said this what he was saying a year ago it's already up like thirty percent or something since he told me this and he would you to and whatever there's more to that story i well like i can't share here but like it's that type of thinking that's like i don't know it's very very attractive to be i'm i fall i i get seduced by that level at that type of thinking very easily and obviously i'm cherry picking like you know things that worked i'm sure there's if i really thought about it i'm sure i have a bunch of smart friends who you know fell in love with random single securities that didn't didn't do anything i'm i'm not saying this is like a full proof thing dude when you whenever we talk about i like i i started thinking i would be like the warren thing i'm like well i don't understand someone i'm gonna stick to that thing is really novel way of saying like you know whatever i'm i'm i'm not doing it and then i started thinking about this recently where i was like well it's been eight years maybe i should learn about it maybe that circle incompetence needs to expand a little bit i'm like it's so like six months ago i went and bought a book on it and like started reading it i was like oh yeah yeah yeah i wish i would have read this a long time this spoke was published like years ago what am i doing that's right well i don't know it i don't understand it so i'm not the to do it but that's been years yeah i don't i should have read ways sooner what's the fourth company open eyes is one of them but i think that's the most controversial one because i think they they you know there's so much competition who knows and i just was thinking like who else is uniquely positioned on a twenty year time scale where they have the winds of technology behind their back so they're they're in the right space where like clearly they're they're sitting in the lane where the the the the the highest velocity of like you know of of change in in and sort of upside is but then also that they have a unique def well they will actually capture it i like basic spaces is uniquely def i think coinbase is uniquely defense def i think tesla's is uniquely def none of these things are like you know completely full foolproof not of course like you know there's there there are competitors i'm not saying that but i just think like on the sliding scale of def it's very very hard to compete with any of those companies because they've built up these durable durable modes right like whether it's regular regulatory modes whether it's brand whether it's network effect whether it's like harp you know hard technical you know technical things that are you know take years for other people to catch up to but then by then they're on the next generation do not wanna like this is total like the bro signs of financial investing but i don't look into like i don't really read about the fundamentals of certain companies and the only few times that i've bought an individual stock it's been mostly because the founder the entrepreneur behind it and so when we hung out with mario the guy who started oscar health he like explained a little little bit about oscar and i was like okay it's a health insurance company but i i don't really know anything else but like you you're really inspiring and so i bought a little bit of that and then the first one was atlas i read an article about atlas and their office i don't know if you remember this but my office was at where was it it was in soma and their office was like on the street of my of my office the hustle and i used to like look in their office and i was like wow i love the interior design of your office and i read a a little bit about the founders and they seemed really smart and i bought i think a thousand dollars worth of it because i didn't have any money i think it turned into fifty fifty gram i think like fifty x and it was and so both of the times that they have made money it's literally just been because the founder was interesting to me total bro science no i don't even know what it atlas does to this day like i i i i they make software but i i don't know what software i don't know what got australian software i think yeah yeah like the the they they they say words like schedule instead of schedule i'm like like like you know it's a scheduler i don't know what a schedule is but it's been like that's kind of been like an interesting way it just seems like someone has will something into existence and the cool factor so for example talent here i'm pretty sure they're trading at like two hundred times yeah rev revenue or something like that and i have to imagine there's gonna be some research on what the alex corp like cool factor adds to that multiple yeah these become cults like there's enough like there's enough sort of like retail energy now are these things would become cult like right now they're trying to make it happen for open door i don't know if you paid attention this i have i have i've seen open door i don't understand why there's what's who's the cult leader behind it like what why do people care about door comp and it's like this guy eric jackson and others i mean i don't know i'm i'm not too far it i i stay away from the like the you know everybody's got their the their their vice but meme stocks is not not one that that does for me so like fortunately i don't get sucked into that so your buddy was like i should just pick one stock and go in if there's one skill set that you should go all in honestly like i learned it a little bit with her mo and we've seen it time and time again but like for becoming a very charismatic person that knows how to talk to the masses is obviously the answer that's the skills that you have to learn like manipulation ask everything else just learn that i think rob the bank who you had on a while ago he like talked about some book he's like i don't even wanna say the name of this book he like tee up perfectly and i think you did i i think you did the same he's like there's just one book on how to manipulate people i don't even wanna say the name it's just too powerful and i don't want the price to go up the dark do you remember what he said that maybe maybe i don't well like you said it on our podcast or somewhere else yes and or maybe he said it on and i started following him after you had him on and he said something like that and went and reddit it and i'm like yeah you're right this is like the this is like this skill that everyone should learn screw products screw would be what is it i wanna know now i'm not gonna say we go you get it to me i'll tell you after no but i don't even robert greene they say this about his right forty laws of power like i think one of the like marketing s which i don't know if he completely made up or is of true and then he used it to like temp to market his book but it was this book is banned from prisons it's bad because they don't want the prisons to like the prisoners to be able to like over overtake pretty powerful so powerful that it's banned prisons is just perfect marketing yeah you know that's that's like the cod level marketing and i i have it somewhere on my good reads that i'll say that i'll that i'll find it but it it's i know you remember the title i'm being honest but it like so you think i should go all in on on charles isolation or what yeah i mean you're we're kinda we kinda do that do it already yeah should sort like i'm just saying like go all in yeah it just be better just do what you're doing now but better is that it is that the pod yeah bit i feel like i could rule where i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a travel never looking back alright let's take a quick break because as you know we are on the hubspot podcast network but we're not the only ones there's other podcast on this network too and maybe you liked them maybe you should check them out one of them that wanna draw your attention to is called nudge by phil ag and whether you're a marketer or a salesperson and you're looking for the small changes you could make the new habits you could do the the small decisions you could make that will make a big difference that's what that podcast is all about check it out it's called nudge and you can get it wherever you get your podcast

listen up the old playbook is slowing you down ai broke the funnel loop marketing fixes it it's a new era for marketers ai is capturing search traffic channels are fragmented and generating leads feels less predictable than ever before hubspot loop marketing playbook will guide you through this unprecedented disruption it's the system your marketing teams should use to move faster connect deeper and gross smarter the modern growth playbook for the ai era built by hubspot design for today's marketer get the loop marketing playbook at hubspot dot com slash loop dash marketing to find out more and leave your competition behind alright back to the pod i'm not saying like i'm above this no one's above this this is cool these guys just sold seven million dollars and multi tools in like a week i feel like i could rule the world and i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on a go less travel never looked so in order for a creator business to work the creator needs to be loved what makes a creator lovable like what attributes do they have where you see it and you're like that person has it and people will buy because of them finding creators that have like real love from their communities is the is the whole thing right because those are the most durable audiences that will kind of go it makes them not cancel it they peep people feel like they are their buddies their friends so i think like what makes them loved is you feel like you're watching a version of yourself doing it you know when you're if you're a wood worker and you watch jonathan katz moses you're like oh this guy's just like me and he's teaching me i'm learning and it's like a buddy who's walking me into my favorite hobby my favorite niche so that's to be relatable i think so relatable was a good way to put it i think you know often feels like you're a big sister or your big brother too or where you're like okay they're teaching me you know like you like motorcycles right like they're pain in the ass to like maintain a deal with to find the right routes to find the right routes on road to find the right roots off road but i got three or four guys that i can call and say hey i'm going to pacific northwest where do i go what do i need to pack like what am i missing like walk me through that trip you took and they give me the tools that i need to kinda get where i wanna go and i feel like those creators are the most interesting that can build durable businesses and now you're a partner at slow is that right yeah i'm a venture partner slow i've been here for about a year and before that i was at the churning group man cher i've hung out with those guys a bit they yes they're they're i saw your i i saw your podcast of kevin which is great yeah we've had kevin on i'm friends with doug tomorrow doug found that i found that that was you yeah yeah yeah your guys insight back in like fourteen fifteen and sixteen which it seems so obvious now it was like we're gonna take creators and we're gonna make them into billion dollar companies and like obviously we know mister beast does that now but what a lot of people don't realize is that cher was early on this for one and number two they've had so many successes that are niche community so for example there's the what's the meat guy meat eater next steve vanilla yeah meat eater and then there is like probably eight or nine or ten more we had kevin on from epic gardening yeah and so like you've built these like really big businesses and that's what we're gonna talk about today particularly the creator middle class because there's like yeah yeah there's like these the mister beast of the world but there's so many people out there that are making ten twenty fifty million dollars a year and they have like eight hundred or four hundred thousand followers in a very niche community like meat smoking or something like that right one of my favorite creators is doug tomorrow doug tamara does these car reviews he turned it into cars and bids which i i have no idea how big they are but i i think it's a a a quite a large business i'll tell you sent since doug started he sold about four hundred and fifty million dollars worth of vehicles and then he takes a take rate off that oh my god so this guy doug does these like reviews where he will review an suv or like a two million dollar ferrari anything that's an ent car yes and yeah what's interesting about doug is i don't know how he did but i have a feeling it was just him probably i actually not even with an iphone when he first started literally like a cam quarter like a traditional one right and he looks sloppy like he has like a dirty t shirt that that year often two t shirts two shirts that fit horribly together so like his under is popping out from his and he's right usually wearing cargo shorts without a belt so it like it's faster like falling down and he wears high white socks and like he's just kind of a i don't know how i don't know like what we're what category is but like somebody like a cornered he's a partnered yeah but even amongst car many of them are more like they dress affluent because they wanna fit in he does not care about that at all and he gives these amazing reviews and so one that's the relatable thing but then you have these on this on the other end you have like the emma chamberlain where young women i think aspire to be her because she sure is cool and and has character and all that stuff is there something in there about a creator of like wanting to be aspirational versus quirky i can it depends on the audience right like doug audience loves him because he has the best information about every car like it like his videos that are ten minutes eight minutes twelve minutes long top to front everything you wanna know about that car which is generally like a couple things like what do i wanna drive what do i think is cool and sometimes it's purchase decision right so doug gives you everything you need to kind of learn about that rig and he's like totally una assuming and fun i'm not as familiar with emma i know she's like very loved but yeah aspirational you wanna be here when you grow up you think she's cool you love her access you like her take on things i think for the ent categories i think those pop the hardest what which is to say doug is driving a two sided marketplace that has real scale and can scale without having to put goo in a bottles or get distribution from stores or launch a physical location he is like building like a venture scale business and a lot of people who come to cars and business now didn't even know who doug was it's built the scale where they're just like oh this is like this is a great place to transact i don't even i even get here through the top of funnel from doug alright so a lot of people look talk about how you need a million dollars and three years of experience to start a business nonsense if you listen to at least one episode on this podcast you know that it's completely not true my last company the hustle we grew it to something like seventeen dollars or eighteen million dollars in revenue i started it with like three hundred dollars my current company hampton does over ten million in revenue started it with actually no money maybe twenty nine dollars or something like that nothing and so you don't actually need investors to start a company you don't need a fancy business plan but what you do need is systems that actually work and so my old company the hustle they put together five proven business models that you could start right now today with under a thousand dollars these are models that if you do it correctly it can make money this week you can get it right now you can scan the qr code or click the link in the description now back to the show so can i ask you about some of these middle class creators because this is pretty interesting you mentioned to one of them and i looked him up this guy's insane who's jonathan katz moses jonathan cas moses so jonathan katz moses is a wood worker he started a website called k tools it's tips and tricks on the right tool for the right job essentially and then he was like oh well here's this tool you can use to work with this buzz and here's this tool you can use to work with that and then sold out sold out sold out and then kept developing his own tools let me tell you i see when i go to youtube page because it's pretty incredible so yeah he just looks like a a just guy he's just doing we're woodworking stuff but what's crazy is he's the guy he only has i mean and this is like big but this is like you know pretty girl next door like attainable he only has six hundred thousand subscribers that's right which i think almost anyone dedicate four years to jerk virtually any niche and they spend twenty hours a week on it i think they can get to six hundred thousand subscribers so he only has six hundred thousand subscribers and each of and he only is outputting like one video a month like not even a lot of not even a lot of videos and they and they look great they look like really highly serious videos they're not like they're they're they're they're they're polished but his yeah his quantity is not through the roof and the views aren't even went through the roof no well the the cool thing about it is it's it's first of all it's evergreen content so like what he did like how often he published is important to kinda continue to to provide content for the community and build his audience and get to scale and i think like taking investment he will be able to do more of that he raised money yeah that's slow we invested a two million into to into jonathan business and how big is it now the investment is very recent he's doing around six million in revenue now from like strictly from his tool site and he's grown substantially year over year and when you and made the investment what was your upside like what did you what do you expect in five years how big of a business will this be yeah i mean we play a little longer than five years because we're early stage so i you know i i i don't know yeah yeah i mean we we'd love to see jonathan get to a hundred two hundred million dollars in revenue in the next ten years that's crazy yeah it's he gonna enjoy his life while he's doing that because it looks like you had pretty good life before taking your money he he loves he wants to build a massive business i mean we're not reaching out to creators and saying hey you look like you have a really nice lifestyle business making ten million bucks a year do you wanna go to a hundred like we're we're he reached out to us you know he's like i wanna build a business of scale you know he he needs more inventory he needs more product designers he sells out all the time so he he wants to get to scale like he love he loves what he's doing this is a great one and what's when you're when you're when you're doing research like if you're this guy jonathan or or someone listening and you have like a like woodworking is a niche huge niche but each nonetheless the is there like math between how you decide how big it can get or do you just look at like comparable are you like well there's just one woodworking eco com store that already does this much revenue i think it can be that big that's a good question i mean i think it's a little bit of both what where we say team and theme right so it's like can we invest in is jonathan back does he have the hunger is he a founder or is he just a content creator and then does he have the hunger to build something big so it's early stage we're betting on jonathan right now we can't bet on jonathan if he wants to it's funny he he made he said a funny quote it goes you know they have no control i could build ballet shoes if i wanted it now we have to look at the category that he's in and make sure we feel like it can be it can get to scale so yeah we do a little once we get deeper down and figure out that this guy's great he's gonna figure something out he's gonna take a lot of different shots on goal until he does which we've seen with lots of great creators who they're okay i tried this business and i tried that business and it didn't work and they're gonna keep going jonathan feels like the kind guy was gonna keep going no matter what and then yeah we've looked we looked at we're working like are there other businesses in his in his genre that are making tools that are at fifty hundred two hundred million dollars in revenue and we look at that and we compare them and we say hey listen this is a this is good signal can i actually walk through that because i i am curious because like if i have a passion or if i'm a listener and i a passion for something and i'm like did this have legs or maybe it doesn't quite have legs but if i just change it a little bit like the trajectory might be a lot different but still within the passion of what i wanna make content wise yeah so like alright so if you're doing word woodworking where would i start to research to give me faith that this can be a fifty million dollar year company right okay so that that's a really good question so the the really interesting thing about backing creators that are in passion categories is they have real expertise in the area that they're in which is to say because jonathan creating content in inward woodworking he knows all the other wood workers he knows all the tool companies he knows everybody in that area and we kind of trust them to understand their own white space so these creators that we're backing and the creators that like i think have the best opportunity are the ones that are deep so deep in a niche that they've been working in for five ten years they're like oh they identify the white space it's not for us like we're we're here to say hey you're we're we wanna match capital with creators and who are founders who wanna build something scaled and we rely on them you know doug d romero right back to doug like doug been in the car game both on the editorial side and creating content meeting all the manufacturers he knows when he you know there's four or five other auction platforms that are available to people who are buying cars doug like this is the one we need to build and this is why but when you're when when you're trying to justify that surely you're you're thinking like okay i feel like with some degree of certainty the best case scenario is it's gonna be a billion dollar company in ten years something like that and so what what i'm curious about though is let's say that like let's say that i'm interested in architecture but also like yeah art history let's say that i'm like you know a twenty eight year old person i hate my job i'm sort of interested in art history and architecture but i wanna build something sustainable and like potentially one like the the route that i pick went with my content i would imagine there's some type of equation where it's like i guess it would be the size of the audience multiplied by the gross profit per item sold multiplied by the quantity that they will buy do you guys have anything like that i think it's a little bit more creative than math which is to say we can't be experts in every every niche category and say hey this is how this is how this is gonna pan out i mean you have a sense of like hey these are these are i mean like look kevin kevin's in the seed business like seeds don't seem like they're very you know like you they're very inexpensive but at scale like it's a massive business i think we look for categories where they're they're high spend where people are passionate about them and that the founder really understands the category and is telling us where they think the white space is more than us saying oh here's a math here's math to solve that problem yeah that's funny i mean i my my last company was the hustle and like jesse or cher came to me and they're like oh maybe you can be one of these late i don't even think they had like a word for it but they they were recruiting me to become it was very light recruitment but it was like a let's see if there's a fit maybe we could invest in you to be one of these creator led businesses and i was like yeah i didn't even have faith that it can become that like i i didn't know yeah you ought be i definitely didn't believe it what yeah churn was really interesting because you know we at churn it was it was different at kind of a growth stage because you at post investment you can spend some more so much more time with the businesses that you can early stage you know there's a willingness to roll up your sleeves and like help help build it out like there's a lot of work we put into those companies post investment at churn in that earlier stage we kind of are betting on the founder to figure it out i think every man who's above like thirty five years old has a dream to do what this next creator is doing which is owning a ranch and selling meat what is yeah yeah what is five mary's well five mary's is rad so it's it was started by a woman named mary he and her her husband brian as well but mary's like mary's is the big driver of and and brian would agree with that as well she started as a restaurant tour in the bay and couldn't find like ethically sourced meats and the way that she really wanted at scale that she wanted for her for her restaurants so she started looking at ranches and she ended up buying a ranch she's like super entrepreneurial get up and go bad she found this ranch kind of in the mount s the area of this area called fort jones which is near the like california oregon border and she bought a ranch and started raising her own cattle there she now has six hundred acres six hundred ke of cattle she's got a butcher she does shipping she has a you know like a fda approved slaughter house and she's built a very large scale business from four hundred four hundred thousand followers on her instagram channel and what was her original content like what what got the first ten thousand followers it was all her moving to this ranch and building out this ranch life so she tells stories about herself her family she's got four otter that are all rad that are all cow girls obviously it didn't start that way when they were when they were little but they're now kind of like sixteen fourteen fifteen thirteen like in that area they're all rope they like compete so they're always going around but it's like ranch life caring about the food caring about the people who you work with building out business also just a very strong female entrepreneur vibe she like taught courses to other women who are building businesses actually the baller farms woman took her course and then launch baller farms with scale now that's another it's similar yeah baller farms has a lot has a little bit more controversy around it but the woman's name who i forget right now lives in utah her husband and her bought a ranch and it's like very well shot it's very beautiful and it's a little bit more composed than mary's content mary's content is a little bit more like if you look at mary's content right now you're like literally watching her bill the house her and her husband and her kids are going out and like grabbing rocks and putting from the land and putting them on the heart and she's building them out she's feeding cows she so was she successful before she bought the ranch no she had like three or four restaurants and san francisco got it she was like she's been she's i mean as you know with restaurants they're not like they can be doing great but they're not they're not like you can't it's hard to retire her off them until you get to real scale so she was a provider i think of as a provider that's a count category i would put it her and she had restaurants she was serving great food she had a good life but it wasn't what she wanted so she went out to the farm instead of she she saw an opportunity to like build the ranch that had ethically sourced meats and raised cattle and tell the story while she was doing it it's like so deeply authentic it's it's basically like i think i saw i forget the director's name guy something guy ritchie guy ritchie and he was telling this story that always stuck with me i think i heard it when i was a little bit younger and it always stuck with me but it was basically like when i try to live my life he's like i am a director and i want my life to be a movie and i'm the director of my own movie i'm the director of my own life and i hear like what she's doing or i see what mary doing and to me it's like social media makes it so much easier and attainable to say i'm gonna do something epic and i'm gonna bring people along the way and that is why it's going to be so epic because they're going to support me and this is so awesome so how big of a company does she have and she's and it's just selling beef well she does a lot of things so she sells subscription box boxes of beef she also sells these she she's done these courses like i mentioned she sells whiskey and cookbook she actually doubled down recently on a tall product line so she you know because she processes her own meat and has she has like tons of tall and has been making it you know sparingly the lady is awesome they do camps they do a cowboy camp where you could like go in into yeah yeah i think it's a small part of her business but it's definitely like she brings she brings people on it's it's a heavy lift she does it like it's seasonally but she brings people in and kind of teaches them with the idea that people can learn what it's like to live a ranch life and and come out there kind of in a dude ranch you kind way but she'll make you roll up your sleeves and do stuff for sure how how big is this business it's five mary's ranch i mean so as far as like all of these businesses that i'm talking about like as an investor i talk to all these folks and i like some of them if it's publicly disclosed i i'd be happy to to share that but the way i would frame this business is that it is like it has the ability to to achieve venture scale and i i would say the threshold of venture scale is probably a hundred million dollars in revenue right it can do it yeah yeah awesome also the the the coolest thing about mary is like you know the meet the meat business is great and i think she will always do it and it as but this towel line that she launched is something that can scale even more like i don't know how much you've seen about what's going on with beef tall and people using it for you know their skin and care it's very popular and she does it right there on her farm she make she makes it she they built the place to process it and they and they do it right there on the form and that's another line of business and that brings me to another topic with all these guys is they have opportunity to take lots of shots on goal it's like okay i've built out this meat business how much scale can it get to can i exit it do i wanna exit it and you get to a certain place there and then you say okay well what else can i offer my audience that it's totally organic to who i am they will totally buy because they it's something that they want and maybe that thing becomes the thing that is venture scale or maybe she tries something else that becomes venture scale but the beautiful thing about all these creators in this kind of creator middle class that we're talking about is like it's not just one business that they can start but two things i'm gonna push back on two things said i you to put me wrong number one focus like nine out of ten times one of the reasons nine out of ten times a lack of focus is what kills a company like it's sure it's more often than not it's better to do one thing incredibly well than to do a bunch of things because it's just hard to pull off a bunch of things great the second thing is operations is very challenging particularly for a ranch i mean just like a software company is pretty easy you're just behind a screen and there's no capex for a ranch that's really hard who is operating her business and how on earth do you find all these wonderful operators and also balance creating content because i do this podcast two times a week and then i also have a company and it's quite challenging and that's probably a lot easier than running a ranch great running a ranch is very hard and she will tell you and you can watch and you can see so i agree with that so when i think of focus i think of my answer to your focus is prioritization which is to say she's gotten the ranch to a place and now she decides if she wants to double down on another line of business and then she needs to make sure that she has operators in place that can that she has enough time to try and build out that next line of business and or bring in another person or two to operate and help launch that next line of business so she's got a ranch then she's gotta make sure she has enough time energy either with the people who are supporting her ranch or somebody to help her with the tall line so it's about prioritization and then building it out i agree with you but you look at somebody like can i like if you look at somebody like jo willing yeah are you familiar with jo i what i know bottom him is he was a a former seal yeah badass looks like a seal looks like a gi joe and has a podcast but i don't know much about his products yeah so that so that that's another example of like how you get to scale where you're trying shots on goal and thinking about prioritization so jo like you said he's got a massive podcast your agree he looks like a gi joe and you're right that he that he is a an ex seal and he's also very like taking pictures of his watch at four am when he's starting his workout and he's a big j you guys he's also very intentional father and talks about how to raise your kid you know kind of you know knock glued to screens and and and you know with with intentional things like that so jo like speaks to a lot of people and he has a great course called echelon which he teaches to fortune five hundred ceos and peep and the the the general public can can kind of apply and be part of those as well and he did pretty well with that business and he continues to do well with that business echelon is like so he dropped i'm looking at the website it's corporate so i imagine like if i had a guess it's six figures and he comes in talks and then like three of his team will drop in and help you with some leadership issues in within your business that's right that's right i think it's it more scale than that but yes i mean he does he he does big conferences with like multiple like fortune five hundred ceos and he's very well respected in that in that world cool in the leadership in the leadership he talks a lot in his podcast and in books about how to be a great leader and how to like you know manage up and manage down and he he's he's pretty prolific in that in that sense and then he launched a tactical apparel brand starting with boots and moving into clothes which are like you know your american made kind of workout slash military guy closed which i would have to do that would be one of the harder businesses actually to run that's a very hard business because returns and yeah returns and sizes and that would be hard yeah supply chain and yeah it's it's hard right and so he took those shots on goal right he saw a place where he thought that he can move his audience really interesting then he launched jo fuel what's that protein like it's like a pre workout post workout during workout energy drink kind of droop of drink because that probably crush it crush he probably makes a hundred million dollars a year in revenue off of that crush you know and then and then chris pratt joined in because you know chris pratt is very military friendly and likes jo and like all that kind of stuff and that thing is like you know it's in walmart is in gmc it's like you know and walmart really likes to support those like military founders and like you know it's a it's a product that people like and people really trust them because he has you know like a like like they would a human because it you know he's he's he's such a specimen and he talks about working out and training and people really do that so these are all places that he totally has permission to be in and so you could say okay well the focus is why one of them is not working better or you like try something you launch it it does fine but what do you do with the fine thing like if someone running his clothing company yeah i mean that's i think that's what you do with the fine thing is you say okay this thing is like doing fine let's get let's make sure somebody's running and i'm sure somebody's running and he he he's a prolific content creator so i'm sure he has partners and operators that are running these things you know being a leadership guy and being in the military i'm sure network is vast when it comes to like getting great operators and knowing how to work with them and communicate them i mean he's a proper entrepreneur you know what's it's funny is i i guess i am a creator which i i don't have anything wrong with that with that title but i didn't seek out to become that i previously started a business and right i was mildly okay at running a company i'm pretty good at hiring but i was mildly okay at doing the work myself and i would say mildly okay at being a creator but finding operators is still hard for me and like working with them as a partner is quite challenging how do you find a partner if like let's say that you're listening to this and let's say that you have twenty or thirty thousand followers and you're like something is here but i don't know when to get help and how do you decide when and how yeah i mean i think entrepreneurs have to be able to that that that is kind of one of the telltale signs if they if they're a founder that they know how to hire and that they can attract people to hire which is to say if you're a creator who like does general comedy and or just general entertainment and you decide okay i wanna start coffee or i wanna start goo a bottle i think attracting a operator is gonna be very hard because they're gonna say okay well is this person really gonna put the time into it are they really behind it is their audience really gonna believe it like is their audience really gonna move when they say move and you have to have a real value proposition for an operator to wanna come on board and work with you so i think if you have sound principles in what you wanna build and why you can find a good operator like part of that is the test of at least what we invest in we invest in a creator that is a founder that can attract talent to run their business so where do you go to find them i mean first you go decide what your special sauce is and where you need support and i've i've heard you talk about many times like where places that you need support and you need to be very clear about that and you needs to you need to like make sure that you're attracting talent that's gonna like cover the hundred and eighty degrees also you don't have to you can kind of date before you marry which is to say work on some projects with them you know work on like say hey i wanna build this out i wanna try this out make sure you're you're putting enough capital into it so you have money to pay an operator and that you have a plan for it so i think it's really important to we we look for we look for folks that you need that that can attract that kind of talent listen up the old playbook is slowing you down ai broke the funnel loop marketing fixes it it's a new era for marketers ai is capturing search traffic channels are fragmented and generating leads feels less predictable than ever before hubspot loop marketing playbook will guide you through this unprecedented disruption it's the system your marketing teams should use to move faster connect deeper and grow smarter the modern growth playbook for the ai era built by hubspot designed for today's marketer get the loop marketing playbook at hubspot dot com slash loop dash marketing to find out more and leave your competition behind alright back to the pod can i ask you about like maybe one or you tell me one or two more of these interesting folks because i love hearing about this but then also sure after that i'm gonna ask you about if you're starting from scratch like which niches or categories do you like well i love okay so there there's there's a couple creators that are really interesting in the auto care space there's this great not guy named larry he has a company called ammo nyc and larry does detailing of like celebrity cars wow larry has two point three million subscribers on youtube and all he's doing is cleaning cars and making videos about it he details cars sorry yeah that was that was really the caveman version of that i'm looking at his video and first of all there's like a four million dollar acid martin that he cleans but then there's also gonna be like a car that's been in a barn like a barn and that's gonna take like a week right yeah yeah so he yeah so larry has a robust business cleaning celebrity cars that either are going to auction or they just have a bad collection and they're gonna be taking it to you know a car show or they're gonna be you know going on going on a a a trip that's with all the like hot hotshot chick car owners and he really gets in there and like really understands the cars and has built products with his own mixtures and built his own brushes and towels and everything all d and he uses the top of funnel which is the car content of detailing these cars which is like kinda car porn for people and any car ent who has like a proper collection knows larry and uses his products dude i would watch these videos like silent like this would be like just play in the background of my living room on apple tv for like you know eight hours while i'm just hanging out a today just larry awesome check out this other guy detail geek so this is the other side of of larry oh my god this guy has almost four million subscribers and so what's he what's he do like more low end stuff he just like he is somewhere and i wanna say like the dakota or the midwest i don't know i don't i can't remember exactly somewhere where they drive lots of pickup trucks second dirty that's right it looks like the cars have been for like four weeks on a hunting trip in the mud where he's like getting out shotgun shelves and he does these twenty minute long videos that get insane views and he too launched his own products called detail geek really really interesting guy i've tried to talk to him many times i talk to him once he's very happy with his lifestyle business he does not want to engage with people who invest in these things and help scale these things he's like i like my family i like my life and i make good money and bob's your uncle and he he doesn't need and let let you know larry larry is a little bit more in the sexy world but this but but the detail geek does not care this guy's is awesome what's your what's your you probably can't say it's a stupid question for being even ask but this company definitely does more than ten million in revenue i would think here's what i'll say all of these middle class creators i think have the ability to be avail venture style businesses with the right with the right founder and the right hires so which is to say direct to consumer businesses who kind of somebody came up with an idea like casper or or glasses that you can buy over the internet or shoes that are different like they they were kind of built a brand boardroom and somebody said okay well i have a new product right that i think the audience wants and then i'm gonna go build a brand and then i'm gonna go build an audience and i'm gonna go spend a money bunch of money to to build consumers these kind of middle class brands have gotten to a place where they're like i already have the audience i know product mark market fit i'm ready to i'm ready to go and then it's the right fuel to the fire determines whether they're gonna get to venture scale or not when they're starting is it just oftentimes them with an iphone and them editing it either on their phone or on their computer and how how big have you seen them get it with just doing it in that sort of scrappy hustle way great that's a great camera so mary back to mary she just shoots everything on her iphone like that's it you know she's she's on instagram she shoots everything on her iphone it goes on her reels like you know it's just her making the content so that's one that's one version of it so if the question is from your audience can i get started without a big setup the answer is yes you know like yes and obviously depends on the genre you're in and the stories that you're telling you know mary's telling a story about her life she's relatable like you you wanna know where your meat comes from it's mary it comes from there it's not highly produced beautiful you know it's just mary doing her thing and mary's rad and her kids are at and her husband's are at and you can tell that right away larry started with a small setup and now he's got a four bay or a three bay garage in his spot in connecticut that's all lit and he's got a guy who shoots it with him and he still does it all himself but it's just two guys he two guys with two with almost three million subscribers basically yeah i mean he's got more people that work in the business but yeah it's like two or three guys but it's like a beautiful studio yeah slash detail spot it's all well lit he's very intentional about the look and feel and that makes sense for like these high end cars right like it's like for high end cars and people who are like very wealthy who have you know multi million dollar car collections who are watching this kind of video like you wanna like you don't wanna just shoot it on iphone you want it to look beautiful because larry cares about what one side of the car looks like before and one side of the car looks like after and you gotta you gotta really show that so you need equipment and you need light and it you can't just shoot it you know in the front you know in the in the front driveway there's one more really funny story that i think you you would you would like there's this guy named toaster name who's tony it's tony i don't really i i i don't wanna butcher your last name but better he better be some italian guy with the name of tones so he was working at sherman williams making like you know like it's like an entry level job making blends for paints oh tone like paint tone i thought it was like tony from the garage with like slick back there it's like a little bit it's like a little bit of that he's not like a slick old guy like that he's like he's a he's an interesting cat and he's done a great job so he starts making tiktok while he's working at sherman williams while he's blending paint just kind of like talking about paint blends and just kind of posting tiktok casually and he starts to blow up and then he gets fired from sherman williams because he's using their office for tiktok oh they blew that one which is like duh right so he launched his own paint brand oh my god tones through paints and it's like running a clown card into a bank other than he's not a clown he's really smart and he's done a really great job and he if you look at his tiktok you know he's got north of a million followers and he's how's like no dude don tiktok he's two point three and on youtube because you a million and i'm almost positive that all the videos it's literally just a camera on a pink can and you six the drills and there any mix it that's all it is that's right and so that's where it's kind of like back to your story where you can just start and then if you hit the right audience you can you can you can really build it out but i think the the ones that are and we'll see how he does he's doing great now and he's a smart business guy and he's figuring it out and is that the venture scale business like is he gonna have his own sherman williams is i gonna get to a hundred million dollars in here he could it depends on execution at that point i think the the ones that i look at and the things that we wanna invest in it slow and the things that i think have a better shot to get to venture scale businesses are the ones that have been building audience trust for years that are known for that specific niche and they have a really strong community and they are creators that are entrepreneurs how long are they typically creating content before they launch a product it could they could do it on their first one or they could do it after four or five years you know jonathan katz moses the would work you know he he launched a product very soon after and and kind of his story was about launching the product a lot of it but he he did a lot of videos about woodworking and tips and trips and people were following around for a while so i don't think i think it just depends on your niche in your audience like i think like you really have to be a trusted voice of authority in your niche you know like you have to people really trust jo you know people really trust a people really trust hub people really trust mary but i'll push back a little bit on that because because okay so jo was a veteran so like he knows about being tough which is like a kind of his thing peter tia is a doctor so he knows it's about health but yeah like this guy worked at she sure she and williams that's why it's like it's sounds not like you need a phd you know i think like they're not to discredit but like i bet you i could spend one year learning how to clean cars and i and i can like make at least interesting enough content and then maybe after a little while longer like formulate a product you know what i mean not like i need to i don't need to spend eight years of schooling to do this totally make totally i agree with your point exactly which was just to say toaster is a wool because he hasn't spent like for me somebody who has spent years and years and is a trust so back to your architect architecture idea or your art your your artist idea like somebody who has built five or six years of trust and authenticity with this an audience and scaled it they have more permission to launch paint and then you think that you you feel better about their understanding of about the industry and product market fit feedback from their audience what their lane is what they can sell like you feel better about investing in somebody who's been in it for a long time versus somebody who is like okay for a couple years they've been creating content so tone is like a big will i think he's great and he's smart and he's gonna do something but somebody like larry yeah i think you could start a detailed channel and like grow it but larry has been doing this for ten years and when it comes to getting distribution in other you know like getting to scale like the chemical guys did which you know they took an eight hundred million dollar check and they were they had shops they had locations they scaled into all the different auto specialty shops and home depot and everywhere like that comes from years and years being involved in the industry and really understanding the white space and really understanding our audience that people who kind of just get started like you know mary's been at it for six seven years and built that trust so i think the ones that build the trust and understand the community like they really have an opportunity to scale in a way that somebody just getting started is like a let's see so you can use a little bit of me as an example but just the just the audience anyone who's listening and has a passion but like i i've sort of thought like oh it might be interesting to do youtube or instagram a little bit more it might be interesting to get into this creator space what's the lessons that i should learn from these people on the repeatable process like what's the best practices that i should take away like i know that this is part art where it's just like if you have an if factor it just kinda can work but surely there's some type of workout plan where if i lift this amount of weight and you need this my might of food then i'm gonna be at i'm gonna be at least in the ninety percentile mile my do it for two years versus everyone else so like what are the what's like the the lift weights and eat and eat lots of protein and kinda checklist version of this yeah that's a good question i mean i a couple of things that come to mind and i'll and i'll we can decide together if it's a complete answer or not i think for you personally and for or or or to take you as an example like i think you double down on the stuff that's really interesting to you and stuff that you wanna talk about and bring people and you can build an audience around your journey right so you you're doing a lot of that now which is like business building you're interested in entrepreneurs you're interested in like what's going on in the business world and that that that'll drive into you can decide if that's gonna work in the a bottom of the funnel where you can go beyond being a creator every day so for example like you like motorcycles you are sober you have a family and you are interested in like intentionally raising your kids and being a husband i would think through the things that are your passion hobbies and that bring you the most joy and i would double down on creating for those things with keeping in mind it doesn't have to be day one but pretty soon that you have to be thinking about creating content building an audience establishing yourself as a voice of authority in something that there is a bottom of the funnel bottom of the funnel meaning a product that i could eventually sell yes kevin sells raised farm beds and seeds doug sells cars jonathan the wood worker sells tools the detail sells chemicals the tones their guy sells paint mary sells meet you know on and on and on do you think it's safe to say that any content niche can come up with a product or service that can sell or should you think first like what could i sell and then let me think of which content falls within that category of something i'd be willing to dedicate ten years to to creating that content around yeah that's a good question i mean i think you don't wanna you know like it's really hard to sell products if you're just funny right you know dude those those are like i was telling about my my mormon buddies they like the la in new york crowd might laugh at them like oh these like they might like you know be high brown laugh at these people the the funny new york gl or l actor comedian crew who i know who makes content they're yeah they're broke they don't sell anything that's right i think you can build the big audience that doesn't transact and you should be careful about that and i think if you're in a niche passion category that you like learn and love you will eventually figure out what the white space is and you can build a product or a service that works there and i can give you more examples of people who are doing that but i think if you're building content you have to be keeping in mind what's the bottom of the funnel like what am i moving what am i gonna move people to but i think you start by building a voice of authority in in in in an area like you can't even if you have a large scale audience in you know in an in an area doesn't mean that you can move product like you have to learn how to do it like the the people that we've been talking about today like have learned how to move product and learn how to build product and learn supply chain and hiring and you know subscription and blogs and how to keep their audience from churning and how to you know keep things in stock like you're an entrepreneur you gotta you gotta know how to you gotta know how to build a business and that is to say also like there are two kinds of business there's lots of kinds of businesses but two there's like lifestyle business it's like hey i make a million dollars a year doing this or i can make half a million dollars you're doing this and or i can make two million dollars you're doing this that's just fine with me the problem with that is is from bearing deals and adsense and like selling like merge and a couple little things here and there the problem is is once you stop like your revenue goes away you're you're just a freelancer you yeah exactly you you've built something that you can't exit and for some people that's okay and like it it's not like a what's better or what's worse but like if you're gonna spend five years building your audience build them into something that you can like transact into and you can add value to them by cool new tools or like great ethically think sourced meat or like cool color tones for your bedroom or you know anything that kind of like adds value to your audience is there a medium or a platform that matters so you've we've talked about tiktok instagram and youtube those are all video one thing that i've predicted i i wrote this or did we did the podcast on this where i'm like there hasn't been like a billion dollar twitter creator but i think there will be and there might be actually some now i said this like three or four years ago do you think that it has to be video and audio or video and we know podcasting works too so video and audio i think video and audio are the are are the examples that i've seen where people have been able to build kind of like lifestyle plus slash venture scale businesses i think the audio is a great way to connect with your audience like consistently and you can really like own the relationship and and build like a cadence of trust with them it's a very intimate platform where if you love something you listen to it weekly i think video video is the same way and building an ecosystem around the video the video first platforms is for me it it has more signal alright instead of a commercial break i'm gonna tell you a quick little story so a few years ago i got really into crypto bitcoin ethereum i was all about it and i wanted to be at the center of the action i didn't want just wanna buy the coins i actually wanted to be you know on the edge i wanted to be a part of the community that was actually building this thing and look i'm not a genius i don't know not how to build a blockchain but i did realize that i could create a newsletter that would keep people up to date on what was going on in the world of crypto that's what i had wanted i wanted to know what's new what's interesting what should i pay attention to and i had friends that had sold their newsletter our companies like sam had built the hustle austin had built morning brew and they had sold their newsletters for tens of millions of dollars so i thought how hard could it be i launched a new newsletter called the milk crowd it was a daily crypto newsletter and it grew like wildfire we grew it from zero to over quarter million subscribers in a year partly because the content was good but partly because people were crazy about crypto and that was a good time to be doing this but the reality is that we wouldn't have been able to do that and build that business that we ended up selling a year later for millions of dollars had we not had bee bee was the reason we could do it in a year because if we didn't have that we would have had to build all sorts of custom stuff or pay expensive consultant do things or use five different tools and try to stitch them together bee hyped just did it all for us it was it is the best way to start and grow a newsletter and email newsletters was this little secret of the business world because they're free to send a free to grow and you could build this incredible relationship between you and the readers so check it out b is actually offering thirty percent off your first three months if you use the code m m thirty so go to b hive dot com and then use the code m m thirty to get the deal today there's a link of the description i was gonna ask you what niches you think like someone should exploit you said that was you you gave me the energy that was hard to answer but i'm gonna so i'm gonna like tease you up push me yeah i'm i'm definitely gonna push you but we're gonna ease push me push me listen yeah yeah so i'm sure that you have a list of like creators that have one to five thousand people and you see them and you're like oh they're they got something here and and and who is on that list is there anyone like that or a category like that i am i'm gonna preface this by saying like a lot of the companies that we've talked about here are very dude focused and so i i i wanna like also say that there's there's lots of categories that i'm i'm still i'm learning and getting better at and but one is everyday carry i think is a really interesting category everyday carry being handgun or does that include like mason knives and everything i think like knives i mean obviously we've seen what's going on with ridge wallet but like a creator that owns that like what you keep what you keep in your in your in your pocket every day so yeah got it wallet watch key chain pens writing tables there's there's some creators out there that do it there's a really cool scaled company that sells knives called blade hq it's also a a company that's in that's in utah and they started creating content because they couldn't advertise because they were selling what is considered by the internet weapons and i think the the every the everyday carry creator there are some of them that are really kinda of popping up they haven't some of them haven't reached the scale you know what i i completely agree with that and if i was listening to this so i think that there can be a h key so h was a watch blog that eventually i was on the board of holding we we we invested in a churn and i don't know it did the outcome wasn't as expected but it that doesn't that's right but i don't think that meant the business itself was bad i i don't know anything about with the company but i've had to guess maybe it was like they just grew too fast or something like that and you could correct me if i'm wrong but i think there's to be a h for fountain pens or a h for fancy pens i agree that's i mean i think those are the kind of things when we see those were like whoa you know like chest creators really interesting people who play chest passionate you know that's interesting yeah fountain pens any of the everyday carry stuff is great i also think two eight creators like second amendment right creators who are teaching who kind of do reviews on different guns and different vinyl and different h and things like that have a massive audience i obviously we've seen what happen with black rifle coffee yeah but the ones who are actually teaching about tactics and safety and different weapons and scope and and vinyl to to kind of carry it like those have massive audiences and have and some of them have built scale businesses and i think that that that those that's an interesting category as well that's the guy named mom i actually this is like the first time i ever said this word out loud just one of those words that i i read it and i know it but i'm afraid it so i don't know if it's hitchcock or hi okay forty five i thought maybe i meant like he's in oklahoma and he's like a redneck and he was born in nineteen forty five right and right he's this old man that you would only understand this if you live in the south or you live in the midwest like i am from and we all had grandfather like this they like war like overalls or wrangler jeans and like a fl will and they're pretty nice and stoic and you like to be around him well that's what this guy is except his passion is like every type of gun on earth and so he'll do like a machine gun and they'll say like oh this is a cute little machine gun let's see what he's about or he'll be like like a revolutionary and i don't know anything about guns but i just like watching yeah but it'll be like a revolutionary war canon or like the type of gun in a civil war where they like you know put the thing down on them than they load the black i i don't know anything about this shit or like a silence sir on a gun like what's that sound like and this guy have you ever seen this guy he's got eight million subscribers on youtube no i haven't seen oh my god it's like look looks like forms he's the bob ross of guns is what he is that's the best way to put it so that's awesome yeah there's and there's some newer cats on the scene like check out this t rex arms it was started by a couple brothers one one of them name was luke lucas bak and he's actually since broken off from t rex arms but it's like tactical second amendment cons creators massive firearms accessory business you know does some advertising but there's a lot of restrictions on that sells their own tactical gear has a total cult like loyalty and they're running a really scaled business now what cra is is is lucas is part of brothers and lucas and the brothers have split and lucas is now starting his own thing so i'm actually interested to see what lucas builds on his own and if if if t rex continues to grow but that's that's a properly scaled business alright so everyday carrie what else i mentioned chess i think that's interesting people are really passionate about that we've seen some really cool scale businesses come out of chess what's a chest business that's scaled chest dot com i mean that's a multi billion dollar company that's right that's right ji ji too yeah we we know that that's a really great category have you seen brazilian j ji two genetics yeah i live in texas mandate i feel like if you you you like everyone did that shit yeah look look up the brazilian j fan fan website this is a two sided marketplace started by a ji champion and a guy who kind of did commute like continuing education this is the scale of course guy is this is yeah the famous coach right right but what do you do it's a two sided marketplace so two instructors can upload their videos and then people can sort it through like i wanna learn how to do a you know rear naked choke or i wanna learn how to sp better or whatever they can pick coaches that they like the site can help kind of id coaches that you might be interested in and this total web one point o this is crazy and i can't say how much they're doing but it's a it's a good business what about you being the creator no i mean this is like the hardest thing i do and talking talking like seeing myself on the internet is like my least favorite thing i'm very excited to talk to you i think this what you wanna talk about is great but man i will never watch this because i just cannot watch myself i cannot be a no one watches myself like i i never seen them in my life and it's one of these things where you just you you have to have tough skin but like the the mormon family that i mentioned yeah they have a whole subreddit dedicated to mocking them and i met them and these people with the most people in the world were the it was the most loving family they took us in i felt like i barely knew them and i was their cousins were like the most loving family and people mocked them like crazy and then on our pod someone will be like you know you you look fat or skin than i thought or you look older they're are young and like we get mocked constantly no i think it's a very hard thing to do is like putting it out there and and and building their audience around things that they're really passionate about talking about and and yeah i love the idea of getting involved in a crater led business but right right now i really love the the thesis that we have at slow kind of like building out supporting them and matching capital to creators who are entrepreneurs who are really wanting to build build things at scale let's say someone said you gotta a quit slow right now and you have to go and join we'll give you like a draft like you get three you get three pissed of traders that you're like i wanna oh actual creators i wanna join that company and i want like a little stake in it from are three that you think are going to the moon you know we have the things called sarah's list sarah's is was my wife because she joined we like planned where she could join airbnb at a time where she could still have a very comfy gig like a forty hours you're not totally grinding and you get a lot of salary but your stock it's still ten x you know if there was a if there was a a a billy list for you and traders that you like what would the top three or four be oh my gosh i love what kevin and doug are doing at epic gardening and cars and bits like those are both humans that i like and would like to work with which which is kind of like my most important which if you asked me if i hypothetically would go and work with the creator like i would need to like love them as a human and love the category and those are both categories i can really get behind i just sold my car on cars and beds oh you did what car two thousand twenty amg e sixty three station wagon nice we happy with the price yeah i got what i wanted i hit my reserve oh good yeah i think that's awesome i only own old cars so now that doug is selling old cars as well i can sell my scout if i if i'm if i'm ready to move on it but i i that's great yeah yeah it's it's a good it can be a really good about buying experience for everybody okay you should follow sarah mca cali sarah mca acosta has a company called go clean go right now sarah is just like the queen of clean and people have been following her since like the pandemic and she's been building she's got a couple million subscribers on instagram i think two point four and i think she's got a real shot to build a a really awesome business so i think she's really cool but does she own house work dot com that's the that's what it i remember exactly what it is but yeah so she has people that love they dress up for her of halloween when she is a bad ass and she is really cool so i really like that business does she sell anything yet or is it just it looks like she doesn't even have like her own product so there is still like it looks like it's she's still a predominantly a media company she mostly makes revenue through yeah affiliate links and brand deals and stuff like that at the moment oh this is that's a good one i think she's great the queen of clean that's a good one i i don't know if that's what anybody calls her but i i just made i just said that dude this lady comes out with a a laundry detergent like that's gonna be the greatest thing ever forget it yeah i really like her i also really like this creator named go con so when he was like thirteen fourteen or maybe even younger he started making like minecraft youtube videos right and he built this massive audience and then he kind of like put it down focused on school got into mit and when he was in mit it was during covid so he started making videos about going it going to an ivy right like going to mit you know i think he has you you tell me i have it in front me was he have six million youtube subscribers yeah more oh my god i'm looking at his numbers how so is he in his teens so so he launched this no no he's post college and he's launched this thing called next admit which helps students write college entrance exams just teaches them how to who's chat no it teaches them like teaches them how to not right he has people that like read through them who have also been in the iv he reads through them and he basically like you know at i don't know eighty bucks a pop or something he helps you kind like do that but he's also kinda gives you a lot of information about how to think about the big story you're gonna tell when you wanna get into college about the thing you did in high school and now he's starting like sat prep courses and he just knows his audience and he knows that young first generation kid who wants to get into that iv not not bumps like you and i were in high school and he really has an opportunity to build a really scaled service business that really understands what kids are thinking and kids want when they're are trying to get into iv and they're trying to get it that's awesome so i like him a lot those are two really interesting you want and i'll and i'll wrap up by rec kit i'll give you my too okay good yeah yeah yeah please do have youtube should made first bro i sure while you were talking so the first one i mentioned this guy got a harder path to build a business business because clothes are harder but it's called the iron snail alright so the iron snail i started following this guy a while ago his background is that he went to film school and sean and i talked about this on a previous podcast that the creators nowadays the younger folks when you know when i was well still but even though i was younger and youtube was just getting started it was all about being authentic which meant like kinda scrappy and just thrown together now they're way more well produced and so this guy tells you both the history of clothing like why why jamaican are obsessed with clark shoes apparently there's some like some history behind that oh yeah but then he'll also do like here's the highest quality lowest price clothing ranked he'll say why are the why do japanese makes the best jeans on earth down right and so he'll like break down and do these really interesting and you know what's funny is like the the reason why he he's gonna win is because you can be a woman this is mostly men's clothes close it could be a woman cannot give a shit about clothing you cannot give a shit about history but you watch his videos because they're so well produced and because he's so funny he's hilarious that you're engaged and you're bought in right he is currently in the process of launching his own clothing line and so he's like doc he's documenting it clothing is like the hardest thing ever so it's gonna be a our business but and the second one it's project air so look project air it's this young guy named james who's in the uk and it originally started out with him building model airplanes so what started as just like a model plane turned into like an rc plane which then turned into i'm gonna build the world's fastest rc jet or i'm gonna build the world's largest rc jet or i'm gonna set the land speed record for an rc car and he's even done things like i'm gonna send a like a spacex i'm gonna send a rocket it up and i'm gonna have it land right back down just like spacex does except i'm gonna do it like in my garage so it's like became like hacker engineering stuff to where the stuff that he does is actually incredibly challenging math problems like he's yeah a proper engineer he's got one video where he built an rc battleship and he was like gonna have him fight and sink each other and so good i see this guy and i what do you think his bottom of the funnel is selling rc kits it's very similar to mark what's mark robe crunch labs yeah it's very similar where it's educational stuff and if i had to guess a large percentage of fathers like me who want my children to like i think it's cool but like i don't wanna build an rc plane and take it somewhere i'm gonna look like a pe file going and do in this shit would be weird but if i get my kid into it i all you know like how fun do this shit you know what be like you like like buy rc card take it to us how old you how'd your how old your a little one thing we got them ways to go when you're ways but you just gonna bring them along in the in the pre yeah i'm be like yeah yeah look my kid's just a prop basically so i can give you a school yard with a with a really fast rc c car awesome and so yeah and so i think there's a bottom of the funnel for that to like build like model kits i will check him out yeah robe is done it right like that's i mean that business has exploded those guys have done a great job building out those that subscription kits and there's this entire there's this one guy his name's rem i think r e m i and this will be my last one type of rem rc c plane so check this out this is so strange so it's r a m i r c is well million followers tell me what the first video that you see can you can you tell me what that says rem rc plane world's biggest rc twenty nine million views on this one building an airbus this guy is building a freaking airbus so he's building remote control airplanes there that are the size of a of a olympic sized pool like these that's basically a fucking plane is what he's building and there's a really weird part about the story so they never truly call this out i think maybe they do occasionally okay but you're gonna see them on like an air like an airs strip and you're gonna see him take take off from a house and you're like does this guy is rem just a rich guy with a with a where what is going on right it's tyler perry house so tyler perry yeah his hobby is he loves rc planes and so he is this guy's patron and so this guy rem i don't know if he lives there or if he just spends some time there but tyler perry he him he just puts him in a para and takes some of the park he i don't know what he does but tyler perry has this massive hanger at his house except i bet you he has a hanger with real planes to be honest he's so wealthy but yeah he also has one dedicated to rc planes and you'll see it's so funny tyler makes cameo like you'll see them like basically i i know that tyler's paying for it because tyler's is always the one flying the plane and so these guys rem will like build the jets and just hand it to this like guy who they barely talk about or mention and it's tyler flying the jet because they like don't wanna wreck you know it probably caused a hundred grand for this jet yeah and this guy it's it's such a oh i guess they do call it out so flying planes with tyler perry but that's like basically it like they barely talk about it the fact that it's just this like got i think it's from dubai bro that's the end cool it's so this guy has a million followers and i think that's like another interesting thing so the the those are the picks yeah that's good this isn't a pick that that like my anyway you should check this one out have you seen hacks smith what's hacks smith dude these guys just dropped something called the smith blade oh these guys gonna tell it dude seven they just did seven million dollars on kickstarter in like a week thirteen well it says thirteen days ago i think i think they dropped it this time last week that's what i wanna say seven million dollars and it's just a box cutter it's a no it's a multi tool a multi school is like a swiss army knife right it's got like five different kinds of knives on it and like you know a swiss army knife is gonna have your toothpick in your tweezers and a couple different kinds of knives that have different edges and blades on it and this one is built with the kind of intention of everything that you would like these guys also sell lightsabers like you gotta check out their their youtube page oh my god and they have fifteen million subscribers yeah they they sell like lightsabers and and and all kinds of like what's lightsaber such as a flashlight a lightsaber have you seen star wars i i know what it is but i don't know how you know make you haven't seen light just know star wars you haven't seen star wars no i was like playing sports and stuff and going on out i was at i also played sports and i know and i know what star wars is i don't know what it is but i don't know how is it a flame it's a little it's a mini light saver bro check it out i mean they call those what's comes out of the metal part a piece of plastic light but that's just a flashlight no these are yeah they're bad flashlight you could call it that but they're you know they're hundred and fifty dollar canadian or they're three hundred and fifty dollars or they're five hundred dollars they're like back i bought a five hundred dollar laser pointer or the other day because apparently if i could try it on a piece of paper it's gonna light it on fire so i'm not saying like i'm above this y no no no no one's above this this is cool i'm i'm into it i'll tell you no no one's above it these guys just sold seven million dollars and multi tools in like a week so i really lives are still willing to have sex with us by the end of this episode billy man you're you're cool i'm really thankful that you came on and and and hopeful hopefully we'll stay friends but you're the man yeah man thanks for having me on i love what you're doing and you know happy hunting thank you that's it that's the pod i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a day's off on a goal travel never looking back my friends if you like m then you're gonna like the following podcast it's called a billion dollar moves and of course it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the number one audio destination for business professionals billion dollar moves it's hosted by sarah chen spelling sarah is a venture capitalist and strategist and with billion dollar moves she wants to look at unicorn founders and fund and she looks for what she calls the unexpected leader many of them were underestimated long before they became huge and successful and iconic she does it with unfiltered conversations about success failure for your courage and all that great stuff so again if you like my first million check out billion dollar moves it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network again billion dollar moves

and so it's like damn you have written off the most obvious growth channel with this internal narrative of we tried that it didn't work it didn't work is a sentence i'm very skeptical of now i feel like i could rule to work to know why i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on a road less travel never here's what i got for today in this podcast i have a story about two kinda like blue collar founders but who just got their business off the ground and i met up with them and they asked me these questions and it was like it it was a set of mistakes that i think everybody makes and so i think it's worth talking about so i wanna talk about what the three things these guys said and i wanna tell you about this business that's really fascinating because that's a small business then there's a huge business that's fascinating me right now it's so new and interesting that like i just kinda wanna talk about it with you and the last is i have like a a marketing principle of a little framework that i saw a a great example that i saw and i wanna share that as well so i got three things for you alright i have a couple things for you as well maybe we'll go back and forth you wanna start with your favorite one yeah alright so went to utah last week to do a podcast with this guy ryan smith he owns the utah jazz and he's like he started q tricks and so anyways that's gonna come out it's good good it's a good episode he's a crazy dude while i was there then one of the reasons that happened was ryan plays pick basketball at six in the morning and there's a guy who's in his regular run he's been doing that for like sixteen years with the same group of guys in utah very like honestly aspirational thing i i was like oh man i want that that sounds kinda great to have one of the guys in the run had dm me like two years ago and he was like hey i play could pick a basketball it's guy smith i told him the podcast is great and he should come on and he's like if you guys come to morning basketball i'll do the podcast and we're like done we'll be there we we play basketball we do the podcast i'll just tell you he tours us around the stadium and all this crazy stuff we're just hanging out we're just getting like a meal before we head to the airport and so i invite those guys who the guy who put in the good word i was like hey you know we should come hang out you know you kinda made this whole thing happen in a way like he probably wouldn't have done it had you not you know told him hey this is this is something worth doing come hang out and so he comes and he he starts to tell me about his business he's got this business called mobile emissions so the idea is like you know how you have to get like your smog check you have to get like emissions check for your car every year they do it at your house they'll come to you that's the idea okay great so normally you go to some like dump of a mechanic place and you wait in line or whatever your book appointment you go these guys will come to you for like fifty or sixty bucks okay cool and instead of like how's the business going he tells me how it's going it's going great you know blah blah and then he could he he's he basically says three things that like i just thought were such such typical traps that every founder falls into myself included that's you know if you spot it you got it that's how i even noticed oh that's that trap i've been in there before i got some scars on my ankles from stepping into that one so the first one is you know he's asking about growth and naturally sam when somebody asks you like you know what do you think we should do to grow this thing what's your first question i'm just curious if you have the same first question do what have you tried what's worked what's like the one thing that's actually going well and what's like the ten things that you've tried that aren't going well and stop doing them and start doing the the one thing exactly so it was big basically it's like where are the customers coming from today let's start with that okay so how you get customers today and then they said all you know google search results and i was like oh so google ads and they goes know like just google search results i oh like why aren't you doing google ads for when somebody searches like smog check near me or whatever right emissions testing near me and he's like oh we tried that it didn't work now so we're really thinking about feel yeah we're thinking about this and this and this is like fancy new cool and you're like well tell me about the try exactly so i'm like tell me like and i was like it it's interesting it didn't work what what what part didn't work tell me more what was the data and then suddenly cats got the tongue don't know that don't know the data don't know what happened oh it turns out actually would the what it actually had happened was google gives you like a couple hundred bucks of free google ad credits yeah yeah they spent it they didn't have tracking set up and then like anecdotally they were like oh i think we like lower quality leads like some people were like the price is too expensive so you it didn't really work what was the ro as on it i don't really know we you know we didn't have it set up properly and so it's like damn you have written off what's probably the most obvious growth channel with this internal narrative of we tried that it didn't work and then it didn't work is like i'm a sentence i'm very skeptical of now i think because i think so few people truly try things to the point where they got a definitive answer and the answer was clear and they actually had iterate reiterated on it and tried it enough times to really know that that was like let's i trap number one looking for the new fancy whatever thing when the obvious thing hasn't been done properly yet i make that mistake all the time i i i've made it previously like with the hustle we grew via facebook ads and i got really lucky the very first so so the hustle was my daily newsletter in year one it was a zero to a hundred thousand year two was a hundred thousand a five hundred thousand year three was like five hundred two million and at at the end of the year one we had a little bit of a plateau and i said let's try facebook ads we know how much we make per subscriber let's just spend a little bit of money and the first ad that i made on facebook we ended up spending collectively something like eight or ten million dollars over the lifetime of the company and that trained my brain that i i i still struggle to break it which is if it doesn't work in the first couple of tries it just it won't work and the reality is and i've since i have i have examples of where this is true you really need to do like potentially fifty do a hundred reps if you're talking about an ad it could literally be your hud ad that like changes everything because this one ad that we ran it converted i think we acquired a customer for a dollar fifty everything else was three dollars it was really two times better which is the big deal it changes the the the business so i understand exactly what you're saying and by the way there's a fix for this trap of thinking which is you you also can't just stubborn do things forever either so that's not the answer write everything down so when you write down what actually happened you'll realize how flimsy of a grasp you have or how flimsy the attempt was because and the way i do it is almost like the soc method like i by by the way i literally do this is not a it's not like a metaphor i open up google doc and then it's basically me and then there's like smarter wide wiser older me right as smarter wiser they're older me basically ask a question i put that in bold and then my answer i un unfold and i just type right underneath and i just advise myself because i have the full context i'm sitting right here i have infinite time to do this for myself so let me go ahead and ask myself the question so i'll be like what's already working cool can you do more of that what would it mean if you did more of that is there a way to double doing just the same like you know without finding a new thing could you do you think you could double with just that or okay what's the next most likely thing to work and then you answer maybe it's google ads cool did you try them did like yeah we did was it a real try what happened and then you sort of have to write it down and you go look up the data and you have to do and you basically writing is sort of like an it's like an exposing function writing forces clear thinking it forces clear thinking and it just highlights sloppy thinking because you can't fill in the gaps you can't just say like it didn't really work if you just sit there you're like well if i read this i'd be like what does that mean is you know like just provide the actual answer instead of this like hand waving way of saying it and so anyways that's the the fourth is that's trap number one trap number two i like okay so what's next for you guys which by the way was a trick question because already we'd already figured out like what's next for them is to do google as properly alright so a lot of people will talk about how you need a million dollars and three years of experience to start a business nonsense if you listen to at least one episode on this podcast you know that it's completely not true my last company the hustle we grew it to something like seventeen dollars or eighteen million dollars in revenue i started it with like three hundred dollars my current company hampton does over ten million in revenue started it with actually no money maybe twenty nine dollars or something like that nothing and so you don't actually need investors to start a company you don't need a fancy business plan but what you do need is systems that actually work and so my old company the hustle they put together five proven business models that you could start right now today with under a thousand dollars these are models that if you do it correctly it can make money this week you can get it right now you can scan the qr code or click the link in the description now back to the show second trap was not dog footing your own product so one of the great like simple tests with everybody when you through me a founder you could spend like forty five minutes talking about the business but the better way to do is take out your phone or your laptop right then and just mystery shop the product and so i just i was like yeah like i was yeah you you google ads i was just checking does anyone run google ads for that same search nobody was running it and then i was like guys you said all your traffic comes from organic you're not even on the first like you're not even in the top section of google like you're like you know in the middle and i was like but this top section it's not seo it's like you know like the google like business results like where it's like a usually like a map and a phone number to call of like yeah business that things you're trying to see them there i see them there and i was like but they were like you know even there they were like lower and they didn't have as many like reviews i was like also like it seems like your value prop is that like say people a bunch of time you don't really write that there and i was like then i go to your website and then i see this and i was like you gotta walk through your product from the eyes of a user and face the pain and we used to use user testing dot com for this but there's different ways to user test user testing document basically pay i don't know know what it is but like let's say it was like ten to twenty bucks a test and basically it just sends a user to the user goes to your site and it screen records what they're doing and they're talk they have to talk out loud while using it then your mom do that for a long time and they gave her stock in the company when i went public yeah that's my hundred grand off this company because she she started as a tester and then became a like a monitor of the testers like a quality control and like she got like a stock grant and the company ended up going public that's awesome like kind of amazing that was like you know i got my parents i got my mom on that and i got my dad to airbnb house and like that's become their like last fifteen years of retirement it's just doing that's awesome you know that's i love that story so anyways face the pain i think most entrepreneurs don't actually face the pain they think the problem is elsewhere like the problem is most likely right there on your site in your core flow that users are going through where you're just not clear enough or you're not compelling enough or you're not visible enough and it's like one of those three problems if you just say how do be become more visible how do i make my proposition more compelling like more juicy and then how to i make it more clear and so i just thought like that was like thing thing to and think three was and they were like should we expand we're only in two counties right now should we expand to like a third or if we can get into this one or should we like focus on like fixing the funnel like the core first right and i think this is like the constant debate that people have and my you know obviously my vice was like fix like make the system work and then replicate it is like always gonna work better than spread yourself out make your system more complex and not really while it's not really working very efficiently i think it's like typically it but i would say there are so many of these fork in the road decisions of like do we go left or right in entrepreneurship and i think there's a simple heuristic which is which one seems easier to you like meaning like which one is a a lower perceived pain or difficulty because if you think there's two equal options but one one feels like it's less pain it's actually a worse option it's just being boosted by the fact that you're trying to avoid pain a little bit and and so therefore it's like it's become a fifty fifty but it's not truly a fifty fifty one of my favorite quotes that i i heard when or when charlie mu died i went and researched a bunch of his stuff and he had a quote that i i actually think about almost all the time which is a smart man does first what a dumb man does last and i've made that decision incorrectly so many times which is i'll do it this easy time this one time and then eventually i'll do this or like i can't start this way because you need scale you need this you need that so like an example would be like had i known what i know now about hampton i only would have done new york in real life and then very slowly scaled from city to city to citi but that's not fun that's not fun because i can't scale quickly that that's very slow and there's just been so many examples of where i've taken i i mean everyone does well i've taken the easy route first when i should have taken the hard route first one of my favorite books when i was in high school i ran cross country track and field and i and i ran in college i was and i was pretty decent and there was a book that changed my life it was called train hard when easy that's the same phrase where i think about that all the time train hard when easy yes yeah exactly i think you know most people will realize that your judgment ultimate your your personal judgment the judge in your head with the ga who's deciding go left or go right go up or go down stark or continue to start or stop all those micro decisions are obviously become your destiny and the question is how do you make that decision making function better and i don't think most people will invest in making their decision making function better they'll invest in a lot of other things but they don't invest a lot in that and i think there's a cuff a few like kinda of shortlist list of tools that you should be doing regularly exercises you be doing regularly to work out that decision making muscle and you know one of them is basically the the thing we type about earlier writing another one is understanding your biases so like i bias towards things that sound easy or sound fun or sound cool to others and so therefore those are getting like overweight in my in my decision making versus these other things so there's just a few few ways you can make better decisions decision another one by the way if you can can't tell a little bit under the weather or have been sick for about a week now and dude making decisions when you're sick just my entire thought process when i'm sick is probably i don't know five times worse than my thought process when i'm healthy and i'm feeling active and energized and like anything is possible and i'm the same guy i didn't read any new books i didn't like nothing changed except for my actual energy levels by fatigue levels and i'm a totally different so i literally abs sustained from making like any decisions to like when you can't you can't text your ex when you're drunk exactly that's like i can't make any decisions while i'm sick i read all the fatigue makes coward of us all is like the you know what they're saying in like you know in in fighting i i think there's that i i think and and that's another one where i the realization i was like man okay today i'm on the extreme end of the spectrum was a very obvious right like if i'm this sick i already my mind my my mood my mindset is in such a shitty state that like this is not a good time to be making good decisions decision this is not a time where i'm gonna make good decisions it's not a time when i'm gonna have be like super creative or productive or any of those things okay that's extreme but on a day to day basis like i don't really do as good of a job as i should of first getting into a gate great state of mind before then going and trying to perform whatever the performance is whether it's being a good dad or being a good ceo or being good anything and i was like and i'm in probably the top point one percent of people who think about this most of people don't even have the word state in their vocabulary and i'd like have practiced this for years with the tony robbins and stuff like that sort of think for me i still am i'm like i don't know pretty average at it no i don't think you're average at it i definitely don't think you're having i think you're great at it there's a book called the triple package and the author claims to have analyzed incredibly successful groups of people ultra successful people and she narrows it down to three reasons as to what or three things they all have in common the first is a superiority complex so they feel that they are born to be better you know you there's a lot of people listening to those podcasts and you look around at your job that you hate and you think i i was destined to do something greater than this i i i i have it inside of me i'm special i can do it that's trait one the second trait is conversely or very interestingly in in inferior complex in the sense of i am not good enough i'm not where i need to be i am shit i need to improve and that creates urgency and that creates like a fear which is actually quite good of like i have to work to be better in order to get to where i think i'm destined to go and the third one impulse control can you control your urges in your impulse and an example of this is like when you wake up at six am and you said you're gonna go to the gym it's like your i think the store you have to tell yourself is like my emotions don't dictate whether i go or not the alarm the alarm clock dictates whether i go or not and it's the same thing with making business i've have made so many decisions impulsive it sounds like you're trying to prevent yourself from making a decision while being emotion emotional and that ability to put the gas pedal on and off and control your impulses a bit is incredibly valuable i would agree with all three of those and i i would just say like even i don't know the bigger picture takeaway for me is man this seems like a under invested area for myself but jet generally at large is one of the most important things that it doesn't seem like is talked or taught anywhere yeah just a reflection i think chris bare what what's chris spa spoiling yeah smiling he said something to you at what you told me which was amazing which is someone was selling him a story and he's like well but at least i i learned x y and z about my company going out of business and chris looks at them very stern and goes are you sure that's the right lesson that you should take away from this situation did you learn the right thing and so constantly what did i learn what's the right thing that i learned here is actually so much okay would you learn what what well it's like oh well that didn't seem like you've actually had any clarity of your thought around that and then and in a lot of times the things they learned is like i learned you you really can't trust people it's like whoa that's the takeaway you had or this whole thing like yeah that's the wrong thing table i was like how many times to be about actually have the right takeaway becoming very skeptical of this thing that we all nod and agree with like yeah well you learn you know it's like no you probably didn't learn actually actually in my experience most people who think that they learned at the end of thing didn't really learn or if they learned they learned some you know the wrong the wrong lesson that's probably not even gonna help them they do not actually have the right takeaway from the situation once you realize that it's sort of like you know like a a red pill moment can i tell you a couple businesses that are fascinating to me right now and i think i think you're gonna get a kick out of the first one alright let's go so i'm interested so you actually posted something you said i don't like running i don't care about running don't follow running but there's a story right here in this picture that i wanna talk about and what was it it was cameron haynes his son cater true true it is a beast right now he basically is running marathons at a wicked fast pace like two hours and thirty minutes which for anyone who runs a marathon i thought that that's he's that's a that's fast b he's like two hundred and twenty pounds he's like huge and c he's doing it in blue jeans is that right that's exactly right there's a guy who's running long races marathons ultra marathons he's running fast and he's running them wearing like jeans not shorts not about jean shorts like full jeans and so the re and you're like that right there is a purple cow and purple cow is a book by seth gordon and it's one of many books that basically say the same thing which is like in order to stand out you have to have it's better to be different than it is better and i've been thinking about that a lot lately i've been thinking about about that lot later lately because we had a guest on and he said something like if you split test everything you're just gonna have porn and it was basically i think was george mack and it was like this idea that i even know he said that but that's great i think i i he either treated it or he said us the if if if you just start ab b testing your website and you just run an infinite number of ab ab b test you end up with porn up that that's gotta be it actually that's so true yeah if you split us to everything it just adds up important but and at and at one at at some point you need to take a stand and you wanna be different and you have to stand out and it doesn't make sense why you're doing that but it's just cool and the market tends to adjust and like recognize that that is bad ass you know there's a billion examples that we could go on what that means but let me give you true that interests me right now the first so you're familiar with the onion right the the comedy news website oh yeah yeah of course okay so the onion was founded the nineteen eighty eight and it's kinda funny it's gone through so many different owners i think it was started at university of wisconsin as just like a newsletter so it was originally founded as a funny newsletter that made fun of like campus life and over the years it's become like a popular magazine and then now a digital magazine owners where they make fun shit and it's hilarious and very like it's kind of interesting that it's been owned by like a variety of people i think in like two thousand and three some rich fund hedge fund guy bought it and then they were sold and bought again in two thousand and thirteen i think if you remember like geo media it was called they own like ga like a bull crap media company bought it and it wasn't working out and then eventually in two thousand twenty four jeff lawson the founder of twilio bought it so it's kinda of been like one of these things where like wealthy people feel like they need to be like the patron and like steward if like you know like it'd be the steward of like making fun of stuff that deserves to be made fun of and then that's pretty cool but last year they did something very interesting very p cali they brought back the the print magazine and they went really hard on the print magazine and within a year they already have fifty three thousand paying subscribers i think it cost ten dollars a month and they're expecting from that something like six million dollars in revenue this year last year they did less than two million dollars in revenue so a print magazine three x of their revenue and i think that is so cool i think i've talked about magazines on this podcast a couple times but i think magazines are incredibly interesting have you subscribe to any you know i've been playing with this so there's a a couple people that are doing this so i currently have a arena subscription colossus so awesome patrick o's awesome who has a podcast basically sort of like expanding his media empire whatever whatever you wanna call it with long form journalism like old school print magazine you know really good it's your story on this person and it's like beautiful photography really long form stuff and it's good like i i i like the quality of the product on that side but i i don't subscribe to the physical thing i i think they have one yes they do it's new i think it's only on edition number three but it's but it's new so you just subscribe to two is that right you anymore bobby that's a lot two two is way over the oh the vegas over line of what they thought i had here for magazine subscription i subscribed it to actually pope magazine which is a japanese magazine actually and it's called it's like i think the tech the tagline does it it's kind of a gay translation it's a city boy life but it's like it's sort of like g q for japan would they talk about like clothing and coffee and like urban culture gotcha which i love and interestingly i don't know if all japanese magazines are like this but it it it reads backwards so it doesn't like you don't fold it like this it's like upside down so you like go to the left and that's and that's kind of interesting and then the second one is t magazine which is like a skateboard thing that i had when i was kid that i love but i just think that magazines are so interesting so can tell you what i would do i thought about doing this i read the biography of jfk junior that was john kennedy of song and that he actually had a magazine in the eighties and i went and bought the first edition this is what sydney crawford it was a very it's a very famous magazine cupboards with sydney crawford dress george washington and it was cool and everything but what i would do i would call a newsletter not on a magazine and i would literally do it on white paper that is staple together with like ten or twenty sheets and put into an envelope and i think that i can do something i've thought about doing this i think someone could create some type of wealth or like for high net worth people or for tech companies and sell it for around a thousand dollars a year and only do four to eight additions per year and if i did it on wealthy people it would all be getting like tips and tactics and strategies and stories on what high net worth people are are doing or if i did it on tech companies i would sell it to the tech company and i would list as many names of the tech companies and explaining what they're doing in a particular industry as like a roundup sort of like a high school newspaper yeah that's interesting so you're just saying physical sort of takes you into a new category physical so yeah so i guess i didn't like round that out but like the purple cow here is no no digital only physical i think nostalgia is like a thing i think you and i have talked about our own habits about how we're getting sick of digital i think everyone is experiencing that and i think that someone could actually build a great business i think what a lot of people do though is they tend to go flashy shiny premium and i would argue you should go the opposite you should go like homemade mom and pop almost like a punk rock what it used to be exactly what you're pulling out right there if you put it in a folder like that so this i i i think i've shared you this before but like diego basically delivers me these i don't know if you can see there's like tabs on the side right so he basically prints out this thing and it's a collection of like the best things to read so it might be like oh yeah howard marx put out a new memo this week it's like we should read that we should really digest so we just slow down and read that don't make it just chrome tab number you know ninety three oh that's open alongside twitter and a bunch of other dopamine you know fast food dispense you know like chrome is basically like you know that coca cola a freestyle machine that's what is like my internet browser but that's when my phone unlimited options it's unlimited options of syrup and water you know like syrup water bubbles and that's not really what i wanna be having and this is like when somebody gets a coconut and they just chop off the top they give put a straw in it and then i here you go and you're drinking out of a coconut and so he delivers these to me based in like once a month so like you know for example in the last one it was brent sure had wrote an annual letter about his private equity fund and it was basically like the performance of the fund so he knew i'd find that interesting like oh what if they invested in and how how is that fund actually doing is you know are they doing really well is it okay what's what's going on and then he also has like he's like you know he gets his like warren buffett on in that where he like very philosophical about life or the markets or whatever you know in there like he knows i enjoy reading that i think you can charge a lot for that he'll put in like a a science thing so it'll be like oh yeah these guys are working on there's a lot of people out there they're trying to study the the genes for for short sleep so there's some people like trump and i think clinton before this like people who genetically only need five to six hours of sleep and what an advantage basically to to you know have three extra hours a day but still be at full energy and that there's people actually trying to figure out like the way we did oz and we were able to limit your need for food they make you not need more food could we make you not need as much sleep if we study this like oh that's fascinating so i'm reading you know there's like a science thing in there a briefing it's a brief and and like if i just product that thing that he's already giving me it's basically what you're talking about right it's all the curation right it's like you have i it would have to be somebody who is like i trust or knows my taste or know like is is genuinely because if the first thing i open if it's like meh i'm out i'm out on this altogether you know but you can tell a story to why something should be important so for example like the the the sleep thing that's not like inherently important but you think it's important because of x y and z and you tell that story about why it's important and what i would do is in the first page i would put directions on how to read which is if you have children it's after your kids go to bed at at eight pm what don't turn the tv on and sit there and read this in your living room if you don't have kids like this don't go out and on a thursday read this for one hour and your life will be better like you give like these like really intimate instructions to make someone feel good and i think that this could be a hit i sent you a link to my friend i think i've talked about this before but ne box so my friend neville he did this thing years ago where he sent people three boxes and he called them three important copyright copywriting lessons that you need to know and it was literally just a ups box with three envelopes in there the had paper like printed paper and it was awesome so should we should we just do this as m mfa like basically being you curate like you know two to three things each that we think is whatever with our little editorial note on top of why you know the sticky you out of like why i think this is worth paying attention to it could be awesome so you know if if the thousand fans you're willing to pay a thousand dollars a year to have like proper info diet right you know like i pay a lot of money to have a proper diet of what food goes in my body and i know people that go to an extreme they'll go straight farm to table they have their favorite ranches that they source meat from and they'll get vegetables from certain areas at certain seasons and like people have realized like it it matters what you put in changes whatever you know what's gonna happen inside your body but our minds were just like no go ahead pour like social media sludge right on right on top yeah go ahead just top top me off it's okay if it overflows i'll just and there's all these good analog for how to sell it like there's a lot of like ammo here to like sell this oh no i don't know this would actually be kinda fun to do you know i think this would be little fun yeah you know i this is only i like i get these binder every month like this one of the best things in my life is getting that and so i guess like why would i not just share a version of that with other people it doesn't hurt me to share that with other people in fact it would help me i think because i think these are cool ideas of are cool cool things worth sharing so let me tell you the second one you're the son of immigrants so i don't know if this is gonna hit if this experience is gonna hit the same but in the midwest in missouri where what i was raised one of the greatest things like that that i got to experience as a kid was getting milk delivered to my home once a week and a glass bottle did you ever experience this as a kid never never okay so there's this company called ob weiss it was called weiss dairy so ob wise was started as a dairy farm in nineteen fifteen i think in missouri or indiana but it was very midwestern and they eventually started they sold their own milk to like their little small town and it expanded expanded and expanded and it's mostly regional in missouri and illinois so i think they have them in chicago and saint louis but as a kid this is where we would get our milk we would also get our lemonade from there and our ice cream and that was like their their thing and it felt amazing well this company kept growing and growing and growing started in nineteen fifteen it was now on its fourth generation of family ownership and peak revenue i think in two thousand twenty or twenty one was a hundred and twenty million in revenue so it was good top line revenue but it's a hard business it's it's low margin and because of a bunch of silly decisions that the management had made in two thousand twenty four it went bankrupt for and a guy who we talked about in the podcast his name was hoffman and in fact one of the early was pre pandemic back and when we were in the office he ended up buying the company and i think he bought the company for twenty one million dollars plus i think he said he was gonna invest another fifteen million dollars into it who's hoffman who's this guy dave david hoffman maybe is it david yeah i think it's david he started a recruitment agency that after twenty years was making so much money that he started buying businesses he bought like a boat cruise business which is basically like one are those like things in san francisco that are like swan like if you know what are they called were they like boat cruise it's not like a real cruise it's like a like a tour in the bay type of like like and then he bought like blue collar businesses like that i believe and he eventually weiss which david hoffman he's based in saint louis so for all saint louis folks this is like an interesting brand but i saw that they went bankrupt up and i saw that he bought it and i thought it was very fascinating i the reason i think it's fascinating is i think over white milk delivery i think that could be a thing i think that you could do you could absolutely make this a wonderful business that people are age so in our thirties and and forties people who have children grew up with something like this and it's not part of the experience that you and i have at all anymore you know we probably just go to costco or get something like insta discarded or something like that but i actually think that oat milk almond milk because i think those non dairy milk i actually think those are like turning downward right now and dairy is up which it like took a hit over the last decade and glass and nostalgia and i would have an entire campaign around something like making it now like it used to be made way back when when it was made better like i would lean super hard into that and i then i would up upsell with better eggs better for you all types of products eggs whatever hopefully higher margin things but i think i think the milk delivery business and when i was thinking of like nostalgic things i think that could be really fascinating where's that land with you less good partially because i'm like because when i'm looking at their thing they have like they have the dairy delivery but then they're like breakfast and snacks and dinner and desserts and juice those outside that's not what you do that's expanded into everything but i can see why you would need to right like what how much money could you really make just delivering only milk right our only like core dairy dip milk and eggs like it's just doesn't seem doesn't seem like it's big enough it doesn't seem like there's enough you know average order value basically to make the whole like logistics worth it i do think that just building a premier dairy brand so not like the home delivery part but being like y okay all of you guys went anti dairy got it cool but if you like rich good dairy we got you and so like you know when i go to the grocery store there's these brands like don't even know if they do anything differently right like alexander is they're like oh we have like six percent milk come i'm like i don't know what six percent is but like give me that what is that the eight times better than two percent and then they put in a different shape bottle and then there's like what's the other ones like strauss farms or whatever like there's these hey just you know like like every category packaging but like i think just tripling down on like rich dairy and like actual high quality dairy i just feel the grocery store is like there's still shelves that need that sort of that that need that sort of stuff and but the the trick is if you're actually are operating a farm it's very different than the kinda like d c d rep of stuff you know what i mean and so if you actually have a story about your you know your farm and where you're at and why it's better and like all that stuff whether it's for for beef whether it's for chicken i think some somebody came out the podcast it pisses this for chicken like you should just make the the world needs like a better chicken brand and like what is the what's the like snake river farms for chicken type of thing i think there's there's that for dairy and for chicken and for b for all these staples you know did you see what cracker barrel did so they changed their logo right is that the more than that more than that they made the inside look like a chipotle so you're night or they've been doing that for a long time and people just start paying attention you know i haven't been to a cracker barrel in a very long time but honestly like i didn't even he's a cracker barrel or a arrest i thought it might be like home it's like it's no you can make cracker barrel it's like my when we take it's our road trip dustin it's like when we take road trips it's where we stop but it's basically a so it's a huge chain it's publicly traded billions of dollars and it's a it's a restaurant that has like chicken and dumplings there's like their famous thing but it's definitely like disgusting chicken and dumplings like asian dumplings or what are you chicken me dumplings brother no it's like like what like bi quit you know bit remember bi quick like it's like you're looking basically biscuits and gravy sort of it's sort of like biscuits and gravy yeah and they but then they have like a huge store where you can buy like crap you don't need and just junk so you can buy like parts store part restaurant yeah it's like half more like gift shop it's like it's like borderline gift shop on the edge of store but but like and restaurant yeah that's it's like the idea is like they always have a weight because they're crowded and you just go in there and you buy like cha keys basically like the optics of it i'm not saying what the reality is the optics are that this young like forty something thirty year old woman who's down the ceo she appears as though she's like a y new yorker which is the exact opposite of who the client sell is of cracker barrel it looks like she just kinda came in and like behave in such a way where she's out of touch with the average cracker barrel the average crack app she's out of touch with the average cracker who goes a account us yeah yeah it's a lot of barrel no cracker yeah she does not own like one pair of overalls so like it it it i'm not again i don't know the reality i'm just saying that's what it looks like and there the the stock just like crashed after she made this announcement and but there is something about that where it's like dude don't don't fix this stuff it's supposed to look disgusting that's a feature that's not a bug it's supposed to look like a filthy restaurant right right we're the better here alright what do you got alright so before this podcast i spent probably the last hour reading a profile on alpha school and what's name joe lam dude we were on that early but we didn't have a lot of information on them and and they explained why joe lam hadn't done an interview in twenty five years so there's more info out now about alpha so so well i basically this isn't like this is we're now tread in the waters of the unknown a little bit because it's a little bit mysterious plus there's just it's new plus you haven't been there in person plus who well say who joe is alright so joe is basically like a software entrepreneur who's super super successful like ten billion dollar network worth type of type situation he dropped out of college a senior year at stanford i believe he starts trilogy software trilogy software was basically like a enterprise sales system of some kind i still don't entirely know what they did after all by yeah it's like before my time it's like alright cool like like the analogy that i think i heard is like if you're an airplane company and you need to buy lots of parts to build your airplane it would help you decide which components to purchase that that's that's the best i i could tell but it it became huge and he it was basically like him in microsoft were like recruiting the best talent him microsoft and dell they were he was a type of he was when he was like twenty eight he was on the forbes list of richest americans exactly so he was the youngest guy on the forbes list forbes four hundred he's was worth like five hundred million dollars at that stage he then also creates private equity firm called i think es capital or simply like that and basically starts buying small small software companies that are cash flow we type of companies and then similar to constellation software basically bought like hundreds of these companies and then you know that's now a big deal which i think what i think i think he's he has a lot of mystery because allegedly one of the tactics is that he would buy dying software companies fire everyone outsourced to india and just acknowledge that it was dying and not invest in it in hire the cheapest people which right is not inherently wrong but it's not maybe the thing that you wanna brag about all the time we got hospice yeah so okay so so so whatever he he's he's obviously mega mega successful again we're sort of like tens of billions hours one of the richest guys in the world he recently his thing that he got obsessed with is called alpha school so the story here is that from what i could understand there's a woman who used to work for trilogy software she and her husband i think her name's is mackenzie price they create a school first for their own kids and they kind of are like it's are they're kinda of motivated because of the following problem which i agree with the the problem statement entirely so you know if you look at the world's greatest you know the greatest people that that that have accomplished things in the world so whether it's like you know mo art beethoven they're composing symphony at age five right or it's alexander the great he like conquered most of the world by the time he was twenty two started at sixteen there's many many many examples of people who had a very young age were capable of a do of doing a lot and so you know there was a central question of like why don't we have more alexander's not like conqueror per s but people who had a young age are able to do a lot if you look at einstein and you look at alexander you look at like marcus aurelius one of the things about a lot of these sort of great achieve is that the way they learned was not in a traditional school but was through direct one on one tutoring from a sort of wise mentor so like socrates plato doh you know that that's sort of that that lineage of one on one tutoring like a like a like a print apprenticeship a little bit like a but they're not working for the person they're just daily study daily tutoring one on one with a master and there's all these studies that have happened over the years of what is the best way to teach you know like i think we would all agree we would love education to be more effective we'd all love to improve education like super high leverage if you can educate people better you know the world prosper so how do you do it and for a long time there's been this thing called the two sigma problem i've you seen this blooms two sigma problem according to wikipedia it's the two sigma problem this one on one mentorship about ninety percent of tutor tutor students attained a level of achievement reach by only the highest twenty percent so basically you are almost guaranteed to be in the top twenty percent if you use this one on one tutoring methodology correct and so for a long time it's been the case alright now what's changed ai has changed so now with ai the idea is any kid with a tablet an ipad or whatever can have a tutor that is fully designing custom lessons plans on the fly for each student perfectly tailored to their current current levels of equity so there's other there's other parts of learning science you know for example you wanna not pass people until they have mastery of a concept because otherwise they don't have a they have a shaky foundation so the problem with traditional school is you passed if you get a c a c is about you know seventy percent or better well what they've shown is that you if you get a person to seventy percent or seventy two percent basically their rate of learning as they progress will always like decrease because seventy percent was actually a bit of a shaky foundation they didn't actually understand it so when they tried to learn the next thing and the next thing it was too wobbly of a foundation and it collapses whereas if you get them to ninety percent mastery of subject they'll do really well so one thing is like classrooms today it's taught to get everybody to seven you know at least seventy to move forward but the problem is you actually want people at ninety to move forward in terms of percentage the second part is like you know you want people to be tested at a level that is you know not so easy that it's boring it's too not challenging enough but not so challenging that it's too hard i don't even understand i'm drowning right and so finding that like you know that peak middle zone where i'm being tested enough but not push so far that i'm gonna you know go over the cliff that would be great but you can't do that in a classroom because every kids at a different spot so you know you just sort of you you sort of keep everybody comfortable now that means that the smartest kids are not challenged and it means that the kids that are furthest back are just utterly confused so you're kind of going for this like average you you teach those sort of the average of lowe's comm denominator i'm just like overs simplifying everything but this is the this is the complaint of normal school okay so what is alpha school doing basically it's a school in austin where k through eight you go and you do two hours on an ipad and the idea is that your two hours on an ipad with your ai tutor will teach you not only everything you needed to know as a for whatever grade level you're in but you'll learn double that so you basically are doing you learn double but in only two hours okay so that's the that's the promise and then what do you do the rest of the day they basically just have like random life skill workshops so go rock climbing hey build a piece of ikea furniture so they say life skill means public speaking entrepreneurship outdoor education these experiences build grit creativity and adaptability yeah and so like for example they they did this thing well where and they they call the teacher's guides the guides were like they had a a group of second graders and they go alright let's come up with five impossible things impossible for a second grader to do so the first one was to run a five k so in under thirty five minutes i think it was so it's like i'll run a five k under another thirty five minutes so it's was like can your second grader even run a five k like most second graders could not even run a five k if a that's pretty long run for a second grader second grader you know is seven year old and so they ask all the students do you think you could do it nobody raised their hand that's asked all the parents do you think they can your kid could do it and nobody raised their hand and so that became one of the missions one of the workshops one of the impossible missions we're gonna train like a seven a seven year old had to run out five k that was it so what they did was the first day they just walked the five k they said alright you've you've completed it you've you at least know that you can go the distance the distance is is a manageable distance and so they did that for like a couple days then they then they just said aren't cool we're gonna we're gonna try to run the first quarter mile or for the first quarter of it and then we're gonna walk the rest great they did that for a couple of then they then they did half half of it running walked the rest set three quarters of it running then walk the rest until they could run the whole thing by the end of the like couple months not only did one second grader to do it every single second grader did it and some of them did in under thirty minutes and they were basically they were like here's you know so they had these like five impossible you know like challenges they they made them wanna do it and the reason they're able to do this is because they're doing all their learning in just a two hour window so they could spend the rest of their time doing things that are you know interesting life life type stuff for themselves well and they're teaching them how to like break down a problem thirty five minutes so we'll start small and build up confidence yeah i mean see i i that's amazing i totally see the value seems kind of amazing right here's some more just things that are just fascinating about this so joe lam pulled out a billion dollars i saw in his companies to invest in alpha school he then said this is the best product i've ever built by far better than anything i did at trilogy better than anything i've ever done since this is so much and it's this app that he's building called time back and so it it's basically like a custom ai tool that basically you are on your your ipad you're learning or your your little your tablet laptop you're learning and it is doing two things one there's a little waste meter in the corner so just because the camera's watching you and recording the screen at all times so it sees if the kid just leaves just like do point just what he use at his companies he's what he used that trilogy right like that is a or when he would like buy these companies he was known for having like pretty extreme like he like monitoring productivity monitoring stuff like controversial extreme right that's awesome this is so cool i didn't realize i saw the article and i started reading about as i wanted to know about the business stuff and the article was like joe's not gonna talk you about business stuff he he doesn't wanna talk about trilogy ew aws he doesn't i wanna talk about any of that but he will talk about alpha school and i was like well shit that's like what i wanna know and so when it started getting the school stuff i i was like i don't know how wanna read that but this sounds so much cooler than i thought i didn't realize how big this was going to be on i'm on their website and my kid isn't school age yet but i'm thinking i would absolutely want them to go to this would you send them yours dude i wish this was around us because so i'll just give you like my little side side stories here alright just like personal personal all life experiences so my kids were home this summer and is our first summer break like my daughter is she just did what they call tk k like pre k so she just finished that she's gonna be a kindergarten this year and my son was about to be a pre pre case student and then we have a baby use it's small but i had this mission i was like okay three things i'm gonna do this summer we're gonna take two epic trips with their cousins because i was like that was always like core memory for me yeah i'm gonna teach them to swim because they love they love to do it in summer anyways plus it's like a good life skill to have and you know i i haven't like taken the time to like actually teach them in the swim but i can do that and then i'm a teacher to read because this i'd noticed i was like all of the like schools we send them to like school is a very generous word for what's actually happening right like it's a it's by and large babysitting take care and i think this is true you know for generally for most schools like you know even to high school college like there's a lot that's a big aspect of what school is but when they're little it's very much that like you know i would ask them kinda like what they've learned is it's like well they mostly like played and then they'll learn like one thing but like you know they kept your bath or they can't read and i'm like are they teaching me that they're like no no they're just doing letters i'm you know the letters you know all the letters you could write already and they're like yeah but you know they're just teaching at that pace if i want you to learn anything i'm gonna have to do it outside of this so i discover this app called men ta men go go to men dot com now this is the learning app that was so expensive i was just actually offended by the price when i saw it i don't know if you've ever like downloaded app ipad for kids stuff but it's usually like i don't know five dollars to unlock the thing maybe it's like a seven dollars a month you know if it's like really good like you know oh my gosh i just saw this is a five hundred dollar a month per kid size something a thousand dollars a month for this app and with this but this app has a very simple promise which is we could teach any three to five year old to read if they just spend i don't know fifteen minutes a day doing this thing for a couple months to talk about value pricing your old boss em here he's a investor emmett you gotta ask for the discount code so i was like wow this is incredibly expensive but i'm incredibly intrigued so i i get my kids on it they've been doing it all summer and sure enough it actually is pretty effective and like i would say the app itself is incredibly jan it's like the polish is jan the animations are jan like everything's is jan it's not like the best app but the core idea which is like it's a simple value problem i can teach your kids how to read if they do this thing for like ten to fifteen minutes a day and like they just broke down reading because if you think about what is reading i think there's like forty five different like sounds you need to be able to make so it's like forty five sound combinations which is like you know you have to learn that like you know a is a and b as b and then you have to learn that like ck k is together you have to learn like those sound first the first they teach them all the building blocks and then they show them how they they work when they're put together in words and like sure enough both of my kids are starting to i'm just like you can't don't get cartoons or anything else tell you do you're reading today right really very simple train and they like doing it it's kind of a game and they they enjoy doing it and by the way the investors if you go to their investor page it's like like literally everyone who's been on this pilot like every investor has been on our podcast yeah i know it's five hundred dollars because he's comparing i don't know they wanted it to be is the real answer it doesn't need to be five hundred dollars but they're comparing it to like tutoring human tutoring so they're like oh okay five times cheaper than a a human tutor i was like okay cool but it's also five hundred times more than you know a normal learning app on the ipad which is my frame of reference coming into this but i i've now seen the value of this type of like personalized learning because let's say they're they're playing this game if they don't understand that you know s h is sound if they fail like if they get they get it wrong three times they lose that little game level it knows that okay you just don't understand s h so don't you don't just replay that level you hop back three levels and i'll re teach you that building block to make sure that you understand it and i'm gonna get you to repeat it you know in these full i'm gonna use five different games as space repetition to teach you these same you know same few few concepts but it makes me nervous to have my kid on an ipad not i i can even be sure maybe that's a personal personal thing but do my kids are on device all time i've i've that i've let go of that rope that that rope is like you know what is that like that horse is out of the barn already so now just a question of like how bad is it you know well what what are you doing with your time there and so what okay bring it back to alpha school what are you saying i believe that they're gonna be able to do this i believe that they're gonna be able to if somebody actually with like the guy took a billion dollars out and he has i think the three hundred person like ai lab that he's building his own little open ai that he's building to basically like custom train these models build applications on top of them and i think this is an insane thing that's gonna happen and i think it's gonna take over is my my like my un hedge about hunt un hedge true belief is that something like this is gonna exist and this is the best bet i've seen so far i don't think it's gonna take over i think it's gonna make a massive success i see like so many reasons why someone would protest this which like there's what we've talked about going the opposite of ai and technology there's a massive contingency of people that will go to that category one of our good friends sends there's their kids to a new thing that never heard of called nature school i've heard of nature school my sister runs on nature school and i don't entirely know what it means other than you're outside and it involves nature i i guess that's it but there's but there's like an entire contingency of people that wanna go that route but i do think that alpha school will be a massive hit and i am interested in like when i was reading it just while we've been talking i'm like i'm am open to this this sounds very intriguing does it help you get into college or do are they like anti college or they didn't get to that point yet no it does they're high school they have a high they go all the way through high school and they're like yep our high school students like crush the sat and act compared to like basically they use these like pretty standardized metrics called map about like basically how much you learned so let's say it's like you do a test and it's let's say the average third graders is at like a one hundred score in math well by the end of a normal semester of school they would have gone up seven points but without a school they go up fifteen points well then of well but of course that compounds because they did that in you know short amount of time plus then when they into the next level they'll grow again so they're growing like by a bigger amount and at a faster rate and so you know obviously that compounds the longer you would do it dude do you know how like you don't i don't know if this is true but the story is like magic johnson became a billionaire not the basketball but through like franchising make mcdonald's you said you wanna to open up a school like you could be the biggest franchise well i don't even know if you have to franchise i think you just literally licensed the technology yeah similar yeah it's just do i wanna do it for young kids versus like college you know like i'm more in college but because young kids have their own set of problems you know it's really complicated yeah but it i mean like that's super rewarding running my company hampton it gives me the chance to meet with hundreds of different businesses and i'm always surprised by how many of them still use spreadsheets emails and clunky tools that do not talk to each other it's like watching someone build a house with duct tape so here's my take custom software that actually fits your needs isn't just convenient it's a competitive advantage to transform the way you do business and that's why you need to know about a no code platform called bubble with bubble you can build powerful web and mobile apps by literally dragging and dropping different elements out of screen no coding required by the way i use bubble on a ton of different apps including hampton and if you want help building something complex on bubble you have to bring in zero code they're the top bubble agency out there and literally the biggest plugging creator for the platform they can build anything custom portals saas products and they do it about ten times faster and cheaper than traditional development zero code is also all about ai business automation transforming manual and slow processes into efficient automated ones so stop cobb together different tools and solutions and head to zero code dot com that's zero code as in the word zero and then code q o d e again code is with a q and tell them that sam sent i feel like you and i so we're both in our mid thirties it sort of feels like one of the last eras in which high school was the same way that it was for like the trailing fifty years and that now the current highs it's radically different so i remember when i remember i think i was a sophomore in high school when an iphone came out and if you the teachers didn't even know to ban it because no one no one even had one and i think facebook came out when i was i think in high school or maybe like an eighth grade and so none of these problems were particularly like problems like online bullying wasn't a thing and it when i see what high schoolers are like now i do not envy them the the the way that children are going to be raised from like five to eighteen years old it's significantly different than how the trailing let's say probably sixty or seventy years were raised and i think that we don't give them enough credit because i think that the systems that they have to go through now is significantly more difficult and i'm very eager to see how like some rat like if you told me about the school twelve years ago we would said you're insane what are you talking about like you know what i mean and so i'm very eager to see how parents are gonna deal with not being able to empathize with what their children are going through do you what mean like we all had the same thing going to high school parent let me have well being in an immigrant maybe it was slightly different but it was like your parents could kinda guide you on what to how to act but now it's way different i think for me what already was different know my parents had an arranged marriage right so like imagine like their to like the dating scene in high school pro you know like do they do they understand any of that stuff like not really right do they understand like you know they grew up in india so it's like everything was different for how we were growing up so i guess like that is just sort of the immigrant experience i don't know you just sort of do your best to hang on check out these two pictures i just text you i wanna tell you about one more example of this like alternative schooling okay so you just sent me a photo of it looks like a warehouse someone's building something and then it's a bunch of kids just hanging on the field right yeah so the first picture of the warehouse out so this is basically my brother law since who was on the podcast recently when i went to visit him in vegas this summer i'm like okay and he's been in just commercial real estate for a long time and he's a builder and he's been doing that it was tremendously successful and he's like yeah you know i did something that's kinda crazy and i go what he goes so i just bought this building in downtown las vegas like a ten million dollar building and i'm gonna he goes basically he had this experience with his oldest son where he was like you know my son he's really smart but he's bored at school because again like he already knows the stuff they're teaching and is so he just he just dis disengaged because it's like not that interesting and he really loves baseball he's on like the national he got picked for like the national team of his age and he's like but because he's at school for you know like eight hours a day by the time he gets off school and a time for baseball practice he he's like kinda tired he just does it for an hour or two and then he like comes home and he wants to just chill eat play video games to go to sleep and so he's like we are gonna homeschool him this year but he's like instead of homeschooling where he's just sitting at our house you know he's rolls out of bed and he's like hey i'm at school now whatever and like we're busy parents what are we gonna teach hey how do we do this he basically created like a we work for kids to home school so check this out so what he's doing is called the grind academy or something las vegas it's basically a sports prep school where you home you're said the kids who work with kids are homeschooling so they go to this they go to the idea would be that they would go to the school they'd spend i don't know two to four hours a day on like the education all using like alpha school type of software right so there's they're all doing that they're all doing their their curriculum you know on their computer or their ipad there's a teacher sitting there there to help in case you don't understand something there's like a tutor available that will help you unplug this get un stuck and then when you're done with your work or like you know but when you start your day you go there you do like a morning condition like a morning workout so you get like a a morning workout in then you do your school stuff you you grab your smoothie your protein shake you go upstairs you do your school stuff and then you have your afternoon skill specific sports specific training you you're getting like two day stuff you got like pro coaches and like top level like strength conditioning coaches to come in and be like that's crazy doing this for kids it's like i g is that was called yeah so he's basically building i g but just as a private school for like you know middle schoolers like youth sport you know youth athletes and i was like this is a crazy move he's like i would he i i i would never do this because you'd had actually been in the gym business he had built a eighty two store chain so he's already been in the gym business for and he's like done well in that but also knows all the pains of scaling a gym he's like you know i didn't just wanna like create a gym for kids or create a gym at all he's like you know for my kids he's like i just got tired of like the stuff they're learning in school was too slow too boring and too not relevant to like what's going on in the world today he's like you know i would rather than come in here they would learn their math or reading their writing and then take like a workshop on starting a youtube channel or our podcast or you know learn like you know what's going on with ai like what what's going on with drone tech how do you do what is that stuff how do you how do you learn about like where the future is going like marketing classes business classes like open up a lemonade stand he's like i know there's other ways you can learn outside of just this you know like the traditional sort of school model and so he's like dude i think that model is dead and so he's created his own private school and the two photos i sent you that's in thirty days so i went there and i was like oh wow this is like a kind of a raw building and he's like yeah opening up in thirty days i was like what did he have any anyone who's enrolled you guys so forty kids are enrolled right now how much does it cost it's i don't know how much it cost exactly i think the first cohort is like i you know whatever like more like five to seven grand a year but it'll get up to like you know when when he wants he has the full school built out rolling and he's like kind proven his model it'll be closer like a twenty thousand dollar a year you know basically prep program this is crazy this is crazy is that is that insane my kids aren't there yet this is overwhelming like this whole idea of like guides i've heard this so many time ramon sent his kid to a school where they had a guide right and i found it very i'm at open to things very easily but there could be better way because like her way is a great it's very this is this is a very scary thing because it's it's your it's your children and it's a very overwhelming to like learn about all this and i don't know what the right way is but there doesn't to be a better way to learn visibly stressed out right now yeah i'm stressed out about or does this stress you out because i'm so care about this boy but like your a b test it you should send one kid one way and one could to the other way it just it just tested layers mh but but it yes it's an it's like a super important thing but first of all like none of these things are permanent right like our friend who sent their kid to like one of these alternatives you just took about like after a semester if he didn't like he didn't feel like it was working for right it's it's yeah it's not the end of the world yeah one we have a kid we have a buddy who went to one of these schools and i asked them and like hey are you he was in eighth grade grader gonna ask girls out and he's like they're all nine non binary so they're not it i was like oh my god man i'm so happy i don't have to deal with this this is a very stressful a very stressful special situation i found a very stressful was like oh well i don't have any advice i'm sorry i i like i i don't know what to sell you dude the the bar so low once you realize like the like once you just go sit in the the current like status quo you're like okay what's my real risk here like my real risk is so low because this current experience you know it's not like i'm trading something that's really good for something that might be better it's something that is pretty satisfying and it's like well do you wanna try something that could be better that sort of logically makes more sense dude i went to do have you you have you ever been around catholic stuff have you like hung out with a nun if i known dude fuck i went i went to catholic something my michael you have to not like catholic i went to cable well you like see you don't even see him anymore they're like rare i went to catholic school i had nuns teaching me and like they were the con and like it was sister mary teresa yeah they're all like sister mary is a teresa sister or catherine and they would hit me if i mis and it's that's a pretty that's a much more radical experiment it's like that's not radical that's just how it's been done it's it's it's not radical and it says that it's not new yeah it's not that it's new i guess what i'm saying is like dude i loved it i would even always boys acceptable then i think this should be acceptable you i went oh i agree i went to all boys college prep school like a high school catholic school it sounds fancier than it this it was it was like very blue collar was it or something like that no no no called saint louis university high school it was an all boy school and it was fantastic i loved it i can't say enough good things i enjoyed my experience so much and i would have i was a jerk i was a jerk in high school and i would have a teacher it kinda get my face and yell at me if i did something wrong and it was exactly what i needed i loved that strict disciplinary experience and it and it had a big impact on me so i my the reason i don't have too much empathy for wanting to change is because i enjoyed my experience had i go to a public school i think it would have been a lot different i can't imagine a public school with five or six thousand kids that i feel like i would i'm so intimidated of that of the idea of that right i mean i went for i went to a high school in houston texas that was like that four thousand kids i remember like if you just walked into the bathroom there was like ear piercing parlor basically what's there they were just good piercing in the bathroom this was insane dude it sounds like prison there was like yeah there was scheduled fights of like which like they just scheduled fights it's like oh these guys are gonna fight these guys today and was like i was just like pretty weak it's like seat two hundred two zero two it's like alright it's happening this week did my experience is still harmonious halfway through high school my parents should be off to china and we all moved to beijing and i finished high school in the international school of beijing and now i'm gonna hundred fifty person ex expat only international school the the so i could have like two totally different experiences you know second one good oh it was amazing best thing that happened to him it was to have that yeah why well first i needed it was china it was chinese kids or or americans no it was mostly like it was a mix because like you you you had to have a foreign passport to attend got it it couldn't be a chinese local an attend no matter how much money had you you had have enough money where you had dual you had a passport of singapore or somewhere else to come so a lot of kids were asian because it maybe was like korea japan whatever a lot of you know australians you know europeans americans whatever and it was i mean it was great for me only because like a change of environment even if the environment is not better is great just because it gives you a blanket like a clean probably study know to to just be like okay cool like socially i was like this before but now i could be different you know like sports wise here's what i doing before here's what i'm doing you know whatever you could you could do it all there plus i don't know like it was just a better school overall like there was just no like i don't know i don't know how don't i explain it was just like a higher quality everything the food was higher quality the teachers were higher quality the classes were higher quality oh yeah you're much it was a rich kid it was a risk kid school like what do you what do you want it's gonna be it's gonna be that you know and and all the companies pay for so the parents don't usually pay for it like when the company moves you they're like alright we're taking your kids out of like you know american public school or whatever we'll have to give you an equivalent of an english schooling experience over there so the companies pay for it that's pretty sick i would i've i've dreamed of like moving away for a year or two with my with my children i think that'd be awesome that's pretty bad ass i would highly highly highly recommend it i think it's one the best things anybody could do is go mine is not on the list china's down on the list china's down the that's not on the list but you know like paris is pretty dope or okay something like that what it's got gallo said america is the best place to make money europe the best place to spend it yeah so that that that sounds pretty good alright that's it that's it alright that was a great pod someone in the comments said sam sean we're so we like these gas and all that stuff but we just want brainstorming we just want old school ideas old tool episodes that's what this episode was hope you enjoyed it alright that's a pod i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a day's off on a road less travel never look back my friends if you like m then you're gonna like the following podcast it's called billion dollar moves and of course it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the number one audio destination for business professionals billion dollar moves it's hosted by sarah chen spelling sarah is a venture capitalist and strategist and with billion dollar moves she wants to look at unicorn founders and fund and she looks for what she calls the un expected leader many of them were underestimated long before they became huge and successful and iconic she does it with unfiltered conversations about success failure fear courage and all that great stuff so again if you like my first million check out billion dollar moves it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network again billion dollar moves

one of the best parts about this is there's so many levels to this so when i tweeted this quote out da who's this you know c cofounder of a twenty thirty billion dollar company retweeted says this is exactly what i needed to hear today i feel like got rude where to know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a day's off on a road less travel every back bad am so excited to talk to you i've read all your books and i've always thought that instead of whatever they're teaching at universities i was like man i wish i just do a four year degree on like four or six of these rubber green books because they're amazing wow and in particular mastery it absolutely changed my life i rather go when i was twenty twenty two years old about twelve years ago eleven years ago totally changed my life it changed my life because i thought that being a generalist was the way to go but according to the book mastery it it was not yeah well you know we live in these fantastic times with so much technological power it's just almost incredible you know i mean yesterday i was working on my new book and i had a question and i just did it an ai surgeon and it's just insane what it can do for you but the problem is the human brain is what it is it isn't a piece of technology that that somebody developed recently it's something that has hundreds of thousands of years of development and it has a certain way that it operates in a certain grain to it and you wanna go with that grain and you wanna be excited by learning and you wanna make connections in the brain between different things and you wanna be able to focus so deeply on something i like to think of the brain as this kind of landscape and it can be rich and it can be one where all these different plants are emerging or it can be like a wasteland and if you learn different things and you focus very deeply and you're excited by what you're learning then all of these connections will start happening in the brain and so if you go through that apprenticeship focused and developing real skills in whatever that is by the time you finish your apprentice apprenticeship let's say you're thirty years old you'll be set and you'll be able to create your own business you'll be very creative you will laid groundwork for something really important to happen but if you're distracted if you're focusing on a hundred different things that's not how the human brain functions we function when we go deep into something when we bore deep deep deep deep deep into a subject i know when i'm writing a book which i'm doing right now the first attempt that i make at something is very superficial not interesting you wouldn't believe how bad my writing is on the first go but i go deep deep deep into what i'm thinking i cross it out i do something else i edited by the tenth time i go into it something interesting is happening so when you focus deeply on something ideas will come to you and sometimes those ideas will be brilliant how many books do you read to write one book so for mastery how many books did you consume to write that one or four eight laws of power it's hard to estimate but it's somewhere around three hundred some could be upwards of that and you know sometimes if a book is is bad and believe me i could i read a lot of bad books i kind of skim them you know oh this passage is really sucked so this chapter meaningless are kind of float through it but if a book is really good and you know i could there are some books that are incredible i'd say maybe about a fifth of them reached that level i'll focus very deep i'll even re reread it several times it's probably why my health suffered and why i had a stroke is because i read too many books i do too much research but i wanna get at the reality of what i'm writing about i don't wanna be superficial because so many books out there at least for me don't really go deep enough into the subject to kind of skimming along the surfaces so sam was talking about mastery and you have this concept of people finding their life life task their life's task and i think that's great but i know a lot of people who are maybe in the thirties or forties who don't know that that is and maybe they feel like it's too late or they're stuck or don't know where to start can you you know what's the sort of pocket book guidance you have for somebody like that who's looking for who who's trying to figure out what that is and what tools that could use to figure out that life's task well it's a question i get all the time and it's an extremely important question the idea that i have is that when you were born your your dna there's something completely unique about you genetically there's never gonna be anyone in the past or the future who be like you your parents who raised you there also unique so you are a unique individual you were so at birth right and when you were very young two three four years old you attracted to certain things naturally i call them primal inclination things that you loved very deep with you were drawn to that you were attracted to i tell the story in the book of steve jobs he's seven years old he's walking with his father in sunny california where he grew up and he passes by an electronic shop and he's just fascinated by these objects in the window the design of them and how beautiful they are and it was at that moment that he could fell in love with technology not just as technology as as a machine but as the design of it because he was a brilliant designer so i'm saying you had those moments when you were five or six years old but your problem is when you were eighteen or nineteen or twenty you took a wrong path you listened to other people you didn't listen to yourself you listen to your parents who said robert you should go to law school and this is what you know some of what my own parents told me you need to go to business school you need to go become a doctor you need to get something practical and make a living and you're alienate from that deep deep love of something that you had when you were four or five years old or six or although or whatever it is and then you go down a wrong path so the way is to get back onto that path and the way is to reconnect with who you are with what you truly love on what your interests are and there's a process for that and i can go into it and i've consulted with many people on this thing but the problem is you're so in tune with what other people are telling you you're not listening to yourself if you don't know what makes you unique and if you look at all of the really successful people in this world people the great entrepreneurs or in any field they're one of a kind right there's nobody else like it a a kobe bryant out there you know god has sold my favorite basketball player they're one of a kind okay so you lost that somehow and when you're in your thirties it you can get back to it but what you need to do is you need to be practical in life you can't just suddenly start all over and go i've been learning these skills i went into law school and and i'm not happy with it you can't now turn around and say well i'm gonna be a poet or i'm gonna be a rock star you've already learned skills you have to build on what you have and take it in a direction towards something that you really really love right you need to be practical and you may have to compromise a little bit but when you're in your thirties you can still do it and because you're you're young enough in your mind is flexible as you get older you get rigid you get set in your ways and it comes harder and harder and harder to do this process when you're in your forties it's still possible but get it's it's getting harder when your fifties it's getting almost very very difficult so the real lesson for people out there is if you're twenty years old do not go on that wrong path because it gets very difficult later in life to adjust but if you're in your thirties you have to reassess yourself you have to get a journal and every day you have to write down things about what really excites you in life what it was when you opened a book and you read about something and you go wow that just attracts me i know personally whenever i see an article or a story about early humans and how we develop thirty forty sixty thousand years ago i i can't believe it i'm so excited i can't we were actually like that and look who we are now you have subjects like that but you just become alienate from yourself you're not listening to yourself you're not listening to that voice in your head and you need to find your way back alright i read a ton i would say almost a book a week and the reason i read so much is because my philosophy towards reading is i wanna see what works for the winners that i love and what strategies they use and then i wanna see what mistakes were did they all make where were the common flaws that they all had and i just wanna avoid that and so hubspot asked me to put together a list of the books that have changed my life so far in two thousand twenty five and i did that and so i listed out seven books that made a meaningful difference in my life and i explained what the difference that they had on me or what actions i took because of the book and then also i listed out my very particular ways of reading because i'm pretty strategic about how i read and how i read so much and how i remember what i read and things like that and so i put this together in a very simple guide it's seven books that had a huge impact on my life and you can scan the qr code below if you wanna read it or there's a link guys know what to do there's a link in the description just go ahead and click it and you'll see the guy that i made so it's the seven books that had a massive change in my life this year so far and then also how i'm able to read so much so check it out below you know i i'm only saying this to give you context robert but millions of people listen to this podcast and sometimes they look up to sean and i because we've done some interesting things in the business world yes and i don't they look down on us too yeah sometimes they look up to us a lot of times they looked out at us no they and and i can't speak for sean but even you know we're fortunate to have people look up to us and even i am sometimes like i still don't know what my life's task is i still have doubts and i think that you said something here you're like you have to listen to yourself and like maybe yourself is yelling at you but so is everything else and so it's kind of hard to hear can you actually walk me through you said you consult with people and the interesting thing about being a historian like you is like very billionaire i imagine they're like be my oracle tell me what to do what questions do you ask to journal or what is like your seven day exercises that you do with someone who's is hiring you to help you find or you know hiring you to give them their life's task or help them find it okay well you know as a as you as you point out the problem is in this era of social media we have so much information coming at us that we're confused and we're distracted right this all this noise the static going on in your brain you're hearing what people are having for lunch you're hearing about this outrage this problem you don't have a you know not able to focus so the main thing here is you gotta really really go into yourself you gotta cut out all that crap you're taking it seriously because a lot of people who come to me i can tell right away they're not serious about it they kind of fuck well i'm not really happy maybe robert can help me figure it out no damn you have to figure it out it's not up to me you're not taking it seriously you're playing a game you kind of have dreams and you wish i'm know you gotta take this seriously your life is at stake time is short you know you could die tomorrow life is shorter than you think so you don't have time to waste so take this thing seriously that's the number one thing i tell people and what take it seriously means is it requires time alright you're gonna carve out let's say a week of real focus and i think you could do it longer than that but let's just say in in your scenario a week of clear focus alright you're gonna get a journal a book or compute if you do it like computer i recommend an actual book because the brain and the hand there's a there's a process as a magic goes on when you hand write something i'm gonna ask you to hand right everything but in this case writing in a journal is the best idea i think okay so you're gonna start writing in a journal you can even sometimes voice recorder because i do that too as well if that's something you prefer but i don't want you to be on the screen all the time okay i want you to be really listening to yourself deeply okay so you're writing things down you're gonna start writing you're gonna begin by saying these are the things that i love and these the things that i hate and you can put you can put it in and you can divide the page in half and and do that if you want so to give you an example things that you hate and dislike are a very important part of figuring out your life's task now personally i didn't figure out what i was really meant to do which is writing these books until i was about thirty eight years old okay i was kind of lost and i was kind of wandering but the one thing i knew and and i've known at a very early age is i hate working for other people i hate working for other people i hate the politics i hate the egos i'm i like to control things so i need i need to be somebody who works for myself right i can't work for other people i'm really bad at it i never held a job for longer than ten or eleven months in my entire life i was always dissatisfied quid in whatever okay so knowing what you hate is very important for knowing what you love alright so you cut things out you cut all the stuff out that you don't wanna do you you're not interested in math you're don't interested in numbers you're more of an id person i don't know what it is but you're gonna write down the things that you love the things that you hate in the present moment alright and you're gonna what this is really about sam you're connecting with yourself right because you're not connected to yourself and that's the number one problem people have in this world they're listening to other people they're i imitate other people oh this is a cool person i wanna be like him or her no you gotta be yourself you're not connected to yourself so this journal process is gonna take you through several days of reconnecting with who you are the other thing that you need to do is you need to go into your child into your early years so we begin by looking at the present moment i hate working for other people i love this kind of subject or this kind of thing in in the world now i want you to go deep into your childhood i compare it to being like an archaeologist you're making a dig right it's you're not going back millions of years you're going back to when you were four or five years old and i want you to because in those early years you were open to the world you were really open was we get older we get really closed certain things excited you in a way that you can't even recall it's not the same to you now right it didn't have to do with words it had to do with feelings so i tell the story i told you like steve jobs there's the story of tiger woods with his father in the garage she's like two years old i don't know something like that his father is hitting golf balls in the garage you know there's one of those little plastic balls against the against the wall and tiger is sitting there in his baby chair and he's getting so excited he's kicking his legs oh my god is incredible right then in there he had discovered his life's task basically it wasn't like an intellectual process it wasn't well i'm two years old golf is really interesting and i'm gonna study it it was in his heart it was something deep you can't put it into words right you had that moment it's almost pre verbal but something really really excited you for me when i was a child it was language and words i was obsessed with with words and books and and just the magic of a word itself it like bog my mind how credible you had those moments whatever it was so we're going back into your child and we're digging and we're digging and we're digging you also have to cut out all of the other voices part of the journal is i listened to what my friends were telling me i listen to what my parents were telling me cut all that shit out and listen to yourself that's pretty great i do have one kind of follow or i don't know clarifying a question on it so i have a five year old today and i think about like what i observe and her but i would guess that you know most of the things that she really loves are pretty common like she like since she's in a baby like if music comes on she loves it dance my one year old is the same way my four year old is the same way does that mean she's gonna be a dancer like they love to play video games on the ipad does that mean they're gonna be a gamer or a game designer like there's some things that are just so common everyone loves they love cookies they love ice cream does that mean they're gonna be ben in jerry's like is there another angle to it which is like you know you're sort of uniquely into it or maybe to others or not you have to look for the things that others are not into you know i guess like how do you differentiate just like common dopamine things we all like versus my life's task well it's a great question i like to refer people to this book by howard gardner are called five frames of intelligence i think i'm sorry i might not have the title exactly right but the point of this book is that there are five kinds of intelligence and some of it has to do with math and patterns some of it has to do with words some of it is kinetic it's just the body and moving the body some of it is social okay as some of it involves music and or or visual things he studied this very deeply and he assert that every human being has one of these intelligences that stands out that kind of dominates their brain so it's not a it's not a trivial thing of you know i like to play video games or i like to eat cookies it's something more deep it's something more primal it's about a certain direction that your brain heads in so with your young daughter it's is she into sort of just physical things or does she have some kind of intellectual interest that draws her that's very exciting okay so you know all children like to move around and jump around and run around etcetera that doesn't mean that they're gonna be an athlete i understand your question but some people are like that some people that use their dominant interest right and you can see that as i said by looking at the negative they're not into they're not into math they're not into words they're just into moving around and maybe at four it's hard to see that but by the time there's seven or eight it becomes very clear but what of their mind their brain attracted to okay and the problem with parenting is you're projecting onto your child what you like what your interests are who you are not understand that they're in the individual your daughter is unique she's something she's not you she has your genetics but she's a girl she's different gender she has a different experience from you right she also has the genes of her mother you're projecting onto her so imagine that you're in her skin and seeing her the world of her point of view and you can see the things that she doesn't like that she hates but what is her mind drawn to i'm pretty sure that if you focused on it deeply you could see some the outlines of what that is but the main thing you wanna to do is you wanna let your child discover that for yourself you don't want to push them in a direction that you think is better for them you want to let them discover it for themselves and when you see it which you will with your daughter maybe it'll happen soon or maybe in a couple years you wanna encourage them right even if it's something that you think isn't good for them that oh you can't make a living at that you wanna encourage them because you want children to be excited by learning if you turn your your five year old off from learning for whatever reason man you're a bad parent i'm sorry to say that's the number one thing they've got to be excited by something what is that thing that they're drawn to i believe they're you if you went deeply into it you can almost figure it out right now you know we can even talk about it but i think that's right that would be my answer it reminds me of one thing sam i wanna hear your question about the maybe one of his other concepts or books but just reminds me of warren buffett has said the best thing his dad ever taught him was the was the importance of an inner scorecard so he says most people live with an outer scorecard and the thought experiment he gives is like you know would you rather be the you know whether his the funny example he gives is would you rather be the world's best lover but everybody thinks you're the worst or the world's worst lover but everybody thinks you're the best and that the your answer to that he says the same thing about investing which should i be the bet if i was the best investor but everybody thought i was the worst would that be better or if i was the worst investment but everybody thought i was the best would that be better what's the answer well he's he's like the you know for him he attributes the most of his success to the fact that he has a very strong inner scorecard i see that like he's not immune to the idea of an outer scorecard that like other you know caring what other people think of him however he listens to himself first and foremost and he carries an inner scorecard and he marks his actions and his choices in his life on what he thought would be the right choice of what he thinks is a good life for him which is totally different than other people have but he's he says that that's the importance of having any a strong inner scorecard yeah i mean this is a rocket science this is like very basic stuff it's very basic human psychology hey let's take a quick break you know hubspot helped tumblr solve a big problem tumblr needed to move fast they were trying to produce trending content but their marketing department was stuck waiting on engineers to code every single email campaign but now they use hubspot customer platform to email real time trending content to millions of users in just seconds and the result was huge three times more engagement and double the content creation if you wanna move faster like tumblr visit hubspot dot com alright back to the show i wanna ask you about silence you're i think there's two reasons why i love your book or all of your books i think the first takeaway is that it's about human nature and human nature generally doesn't change that's the point of it and so you kinda like give a blue blueprint for that but the second thing is that particularly with the forty eight laws of power the most important thing is self control which is quite challenging and in particular you write a lot and you talk a lot about silence and you're like it's actually better to save as least as possible because when you talk too much you make your yourself yourself look stupid or you reveal your true intentions which you don't always want to do with social media and like particularly sean in nice job it's like very easy to talk too much or to talk a lot is there any examples of you think that someone who's popular or someone who's doing a really good job of sort of a master class on how do you silence to their advantage i think of of various musicians like a michael jackson or beyonce i mean michael jackson sort of before the ear obviously social media but he was somebody who knew that occasionally had to withdraw completely from the public eye and the thing about michael jackson was he was very clever and very kind of savvy about things and he actually had the forty eight laws of power and when he died his estate had the book and they auction did somebody bought it for three hundred thousand dollars but if you look on it he annotated everything in there right he wrote on the margins etcetera but the thing that michael jackson understood before he even read the book was the importance of disappearing so he understood the public very well in the magic of attention right because attention is the whole game when you're a celebrity and he understood that when you too present them people know you too well they take you for granted so he would disappear for several years in between albums nobody knew what he was doing and it made everybody talk about made everybody fantasize about him but everybody wonder what's the next trick that milo action gonna perform beyonce will do the same thing you know i was once asked by by a famous female over rapper named so she we were having dinner and she asked me the same question like i i'm social media how do i disappear if i disappear well it's not a matter that like you you've gone for for several months but you don't have to post every day you have create some mystery around you and even if you do post you're not so obvious you're not to say exactly who you are exactly what you had for breakfast exactly the clothes that you're wearing you create some mystery around you that is a form of silence that is a form of disappearing because the whole point is if people know exactly who you are there's no fantasy element in anymore and they're gonna get bored with you and they're gonna turn their attention to somebody else who seems interesting for the moment right so you can be too present you can be too in in in people's face they know everything about you and they start to take you for granted you're too familiar so if you're in the public eye you have to shake things up people have to go i thought that your like is sam but now i'm getting this idea that maybe i didn't know who you are you can do that by disappearing for a week or so and then people are wondering what happened to sam why any he posting or you can do it by putting things on social media the kind of scramble people's expectations if you scramble what people think of you i know in in in my line of work if i wrote the same book if i did the forty eight loss power part two for my second book it would probably have some success people be interested in it but it starts to get predictable right so i make sure every new book that i do is different goes off in a different direction so people can't take me for granted so people don't know what i'm gonna do next keeping them guessing as to what the next subject is going off in a new direction and challenging them is part of the game so if you become too predictable people are gonna tune you out and they're gonna move on to somebody else and so changing the scrambling their expectations is a form of silence is creating mystery because that's what this is all about sean do you ever think about this stuff i thought of it when sam said something kind of amazing to me he said you know we're doing this podcast and not long ago a couple years ago we were in a group chat where a bunch of us who had ten thousand followers were like know we wanna get to a hundred thousand let's make it and we called it the hundred thousand club but we we all start posting and and we got there and he said something like my goal is by the time i'm forty to be off the internet like like just to just to sort of disappear from the internet i really never i've only ever heard of people saying i want to get become more famous yeah not and and more more digital and have a bigger platform and a bigger audience and more followers and i was the first time i'd heard somebody again my friend group say the exact opposite like the goal is to push delete when i turned forty i almost didn't believe it in fact i still only half believe it and and but i loved it yeah and and i think sam also does a good job of the scramble he'll you know on one hand he's he'll be a ceo of a media company and then he'll post a video of himself skateboarding and like or dunking i'm like you i didn't even know you're athletic and you in many times on this podcast in the last five years of podcast he's come on and be like i've decided him i'm a fitness influencer now and then he comes back and changes it and he's like i'm all about fashion and style and i'm like dude no offense but you're not the first guy i think of when it comes to fashion but this idea and and he'll annoying quote you robert he'll be like whatever rule number seven reinvent yourself yeah i told him i was picking up the piano this year he's like i love it reinvent yourself and i was like that's a much you know grander or you know frame for what i'm doing but i appreciate that i like that i like i do like going back to the bottom of the mountain and so when you're saying this about silence about disappearing you know i don't think there's a lot of that which makes it i think even more valuable yeah the rare more different but also it comes with a season like you need a almost a season of loudness to get people to care if you just if you're nobody and you disappear then you never were anybody right like but if you have a season of loudness and it's followed by season of silence that seems more optimal that's what i wrote in my i'm as you can see i'm taking notes while we do this that's what i wrote on there is this this is seasonal and i think i have been one track minded about too many things where it's like this is good therefore always do this and actually you do need different seasons and how you're how you're gonna operate and that combination is what's more powerful yeah no i couldn't agree with you more yeah so so what does sam i'm gonna do when he turns forty then that's a great question but the reason i said that was but how old are you now i'm thirty six i just turned thirty six the reason i said that was because i think that i i do believe in reinventing yourself like i i'm not you know blowing and smoke i like your your work has had a profound impact on me but i i believe in reinventing yourself but i also believe that wherever your life ends and wherever you are like the goal is to file you know find your life's purpose and go after it but there's like these weird pivot to get there it's at a straight line and i believe in like these forcing forcing functions to make you pivot to kinda of find where you're supposed to be so so where will that pivot lead you when you get off the internet you don't know you can discover when it happens you're open to it you just know that at some point you want something else yeah i i i don't know but i think that like i think that i'm a i'm a greg person i talk a lot and i actually think that i think that i think that for the last twenty years since the internet has been around you know you you hear the hayward word authenticity thrown thrown around a lot yeah and i actually think that based off of your works and about in ring history being authentic but is like that's actually kind of a new thing like people that's a relatively new idea to be authentic because now you could just film yourself on a camera and you've been told to be authentic but people the most powerful people on earth they they're not really authentic they wear mask and they're acting and i think that like an interesting takeaway from your book is to understand what outcome you want in which masks you need to wear and i actually think that being authentic is over glam and actually is actually ineffective when you want your my particular goal and i actually think that it's for some reason it may think being authentic is good and and i don't know if i agree with that i think of of too often we humans get trapped in in kind of words and things that are black and white earth of this or that so you can create the v near the appearance of authenticity right which is very important is the very important quality in the public eye it doesn't mean that you're completely faking it it just means that there is something about you that's natural that you that is very powerful about you but you're conscious of it you're not just operating you know without thinking about it you're conscious of what makes you look authentic and you kind of up it and you kind of lean into it and you kind of create it okay and then maybe in four or five years it's a different mask or a different form of authenticity that you have but it doesn't mean that it's completely fake so i think it's important for a politician for an entertain for anybody in the public eye to create the appearance of authenticity that they're not somebody fake that they're not saying things just for attention that they actually believe it but you have to be aware that that's the game that you're playing people who aren't aware of the game that they are playing have no control over themselves they will say stupid things they will be authentic when it's no when they're when their authentic character is no longer interesting right because tastes change and maybe right now kind of saying what you think about certain things is cool but in three years it won't be cool and you'll look stupid so you have to be aware of who you are and you have to adapt to the times and you have to kind of play a middle game where you know the importance of appearing authentic and and playing that game but you're also aware of it and you could consciously control it yeah you have a few of these quotes that are so good i just want you to unpack them so i kinda wanna read you something that stood out to me that resonated and just hear you kinda r on it and maybe where that comes from or where you think that that needs to be applied or like if you could shake somebody get them to sort of hear this message you know what what's that because one of them i tweeted out today it was great it was you talked about how being timid is very dangerous and you basically said you know don't take action when you have hesitation or doubt it infects your execution and the quote was timid is dangerous be better to enter with bold any mistakes that you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity everyone admire the bold no one honors the timid it's a very important quote for me because timid humidity is is to me one of the worst sins that i think people have right and it's what is causing you to not be successful in life right bold is the most important quality that you can develop it and first of all get rid of this misconception that some people are born bold and others are born timid when we're a child were bold as hell all children are born bold right they know what they want they scream they yell they get their parents to do things the parents of their slaves essentially children are born bold you become timid it becomes a habit you become afraid you become differential you're always saying yes you're always trying to please people it becomes your face just becomes like that and you lose a sense of that bolus that you once had and the the the main thing around that idea is that people are assessing you in these kind of nonverbal ways they're reading your body language and when they sense that you don't have confidence that you're doubtful that you're hesitant they don't wanna join you they don't wanna be part of your team they don't wanna listen to you they tune you out they don't respect you okay so if you start something a project of business you're not quite sure of it that kind of radiates outward that spirit of your hesitation people can feel it and it has a equality that that rep repulsive people you don't wanna join you but if you show bold and confidence even if it's not real you fake it even if you make yourself believe that you're confident in bold it excites people we wanna be around people like that i know when i wrote the fiftieth law and i first made fifty cent i was amazed by how confident this guy was and it made me feel ashamed that i'm not as as confident it's he that i was even a little bit timid it excited me and it excited everyone around him they wanted to be part of his team they won because it fed off of a we all wanna be infected by the energy of someone who's bold who knows what they want right so that's the main thing is your first impressions are critical and if people see was timid differential and all closed and not so certain they're gonna run away from you they're unconsciously they're not gonna wanna be part of your team well like one of the best parts about this is there's so many levels to this so when i tweeted this quote out da who's this you know c cofounder of a twenty thirty billion dollar company retweeted says this is exactly what i needed to hear today yeah been crazy saw that i thought that was we just did a podcast with this guy hayes barn he's probably i don't know one of the top thousand wealthiest people in the world and we it we wanna do this podcast and most people where they come on the podcast they might agree to do it and then we sort of badger them to be like hey would you know can we get on a call maybe talk a little beforehand or hey we've got some ideas but what we might talk about you know you you've published so much work that it's we know where we know where your thoughts are already but for people who don't publish like you kinda wanna find what are your big ideas and most people put in you very little effort he was the exact this guy was the exact opposite he takes a ton of actually calls he's got his own brainstorm he's decided if i'm going to enter this if i'm gonna do this it doesn't matter if it's just a two hour podcast recording like i'm gonna try to do this as best as this can be done and so he was like one full force and he said come out and hang out with me for the day come to my morning routine let's hang out all day and then he's like look he's like i do this thing in the middle of lake tahoe i go i do a breath work i jump in the ocean i jump in the lake it's cold i watched the sunrise and he goes i'm on such a high i'm in such a peak mental state he's like i think if we do the podcast right after that it'll be the best podcast we could we could possibly do so i go out there and i do i spend all day of this guy and he's so bold meaning the way he just approaches his life is super bold even after we do the breath work and stuff he's like you know what every day i heard just the a great quote do something new every day it marks the day it keeps you growing keeps you fresh keeps you alive you know what i've never done i've never swam to those rocks out there let's try to swim to those rocks and so we jump in the water we try swim the rocks and i'm just around this guy and i asked him about elon musk because he worked with elon for about ten years and he talks about elon the way i talk about him he goes i go tell me you know describe elon in a word he goes the ultimate alpha and he because elon i would say is probably the biggest example of bold and and like the solution to making a mistake through audacity is more audacity i think he is the the number one on earth out of eight billion people at doing that and seeing that this guy was around him and had the same impression of like he thought he was timid once he saw you know the the level that elon played at i just want there's so many levels to this yeah i mean we're infected by the energy of the people around us right and we can we pick up things we're we're too tune to words and and and we don't realize that we're actually there's an animal part of our nature and that animal part of our nature is picking up the energy the signs that we can read and and how people in the tone and their voice in how they stand in their posture and when we when we feel somebody who's confident it kind of rubs off on us we wanna be rounding we want more of it right i have a chapter in the forty eight loss of power called infection and the opposite happens where people who are overly dramatic or kind of drama queens who always have some terrible thing happening to them they're always a victim and they just you know and they they sort of sucked you into their drama and they can destroy your life we're infected by the energy of the people around us that's the most important takeaway that i would give here when you're seeing what's going on right now on social media or whatever it's it's kinda fun after reading your books because i'm like oh that's interesting there's that thing there's that thing is there anyone out there who you not exactly look up to you but you're like oh they are playing the power game like textbook perfect it's a good question but i don't really think i can answer it because the problem is that you do need time to just to see what people are truly like you know so i remember some twenty five years ago or twenty four years ago i met a man named dove char who ended up becoming the founder of the company american apparel i met him when he was just starting out a man that guy was charisma in a ball he was insane with level of confidence right he was incredible and he built this factory this vertically organized factory in los angeles he created an an empire american apparel and i thought he was brilliant and he got me to join the board of directors and i was on the board of directors for american apparel for several years until it ended but then over the time we realized this guy has incredible flaws right he's doesn't have self control he seems confident but in the end he was making some really bad decisions because he wasn't inflexible so you know i could say you know certain artists who are able to serve stay on top of their game seemed to me to be kind of power players because they know how to mix things up but i mentioned someone like beyonce i say somebody like fifty cent i'd say people like jay z these are people who understand the attention game how to play it and that's a very important part of the forty eight laws of power appearances is how you appear but with politicians i will not go anywhere near that because we have no way of knowing we have no way of seeing in the present moment i see i see saw many stupid people out there who immediately react to something in the news and make their judgment about this was great that was stupid i'm sorry you have no idea in two years we will know if it was great or if it was stupid and twenty years will even have a better idea and in two hundred years we'll even know for certain right so i can't even go near judging about political figures entertainer i can see i think we have some some value there metrics and in sports obviously we do but who who are some of those folks well you know i'm being a little bit selfish here but i'm friends with a head coach of the nba mark dag who's the coach of the oklahoma city thunder and they just won the nba championship i knew him eight years ago when he was the coach of the gee league team of the oklahoma city thunder and this guy is absolutely brilliant at the game of power and and it's not like he's machiavelli and not at all he's a great leader but he understands there's nothing there's no more difficult job in the world that being an nba coach you have twelve or fifteen people with these incredible egos who all think they're the greatest right and you have to build them into a team into a spirit that's one that's unified that wants to play the game right he understands perfectly human nature and psychology and he built himself from the ground up as as a coach of the gee league and then he started off as the coach of the thunder and they were very bad at the first couple of years but he was very patient had a goal in mind i tell people you know we're so distracted we're so confused in the social media world that we can't think let alone three months ahead but even try to think a year or five years ahead like a plan right my god i can't think that far ahead but it's powerful when you have a plan that goes two years three years down the road it gives you a sense of control like this is what i want is what's important this feeds my overall goal this is irrelevant it doesn't mean you're inflexible it just means that you have a direction and people don't have direction these days this man had direction he had a plan he knew exactly how he was gonna lead his team to a championship and of course he couldn't predict everything clear draft etcetera but to me the way he ate man he manufactured this recent championship is one of the most brilliant examples of the forty eight loss power i'm not gonna take credit for it by any means but he's a figure on there who's gonna be a coach to reckon with for the next ten twenty years he's the phil jackson of our era he's somebody i would point out and phil jackson with somebody that i greatly admired who was definitely amount of power because he understood human nature and psychology alright listen the two most beautiful words in the english language are email subscribers you need more email subscribers i guarantee and i don't care how many you have you need more of them i need more of them you need more of them we all need more email subscribers because email is an amazing way to build your business to build an audience and to build a direct relationship that's not dependent on the tiktok algorithm the instagram algorithm it's how you get people to engage directly with you so you can get them to trust you to like you click products check them out check out your stuff that's how you build a relationship with people and 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hundred thousand people and that's what i use and so for listeners with my first million i should do in a special code so if you're thinking about hey i should have a newsletter i should have subscribers i kinda wanna build an audience that way we'll check it out they'll give you thirty percent off use the code m m thirty go to b lehigh dot com that's b e e h i i v dot com and use the code m m thirty i'll put the link in the description to make it easy for you start scaling your content today i wanna ask you about fifty cent because when somebody yeah you wrote a book with fifty cent i hadn't actually i haven't read the fifty fiftieth law so i don't know that book literally i learned about that book today it's awesome it looks like it's got like gold pages it looks like a beautiful bought like the the faux leather cover one is just and i'm like excited to get it but the funny thing is you and fifty cent i mean i couldn't think of two more opposite people culturally it's like you know like i look at your room and i look at where you are and i'm just like okay that you're basically like what i think of when i think of an author and then fifty cent has this incredible story you know coming up from the streets and getting shot becoming a hip hop icon and then like a business guy and whatever so i'm just curious like hey how did that come about and be you said he was incredibly charismatic can you tell any these specific stories about like either one of two things your impressions when you met them and like what stood out to you about this guy because you you know you said infected by the energy the people around you like tell me i would love a specific story or where you think most people don't actually really appreciate fifties story or you know what what actually he's done you know people have a very surface level of understanding of him as is like oh he's just some rapper guy well i mean first of all you have to understand his his story a little bit let me know a lot of people know it but you know he was his mother died when he was like eight or nine years old she was a hustle herself and so he was raised by his grandparents he grew up on the streets of south side queens and he was a drug dealer was a hustle he drove crack and he talks about it and his his really great auto from pieces to wait i highly recommend that book okay but how many people from that background ended up being who he was being this successful this multi millionaire maybe i don't underneath if he's not a billionaire but incredibly successful right nobody so something about him is different something about him is very exciting and very interesting okay so that alone tells you something is unique about about fifty and so when i met him you know i was a little bit intimidated because i'm if you reach out to you are you to head yes his his literary agent reached out to me and set up a meeting in new york in in the back room of a steak on madison avenue right he's like a scene out of the godfather or something and so you know you can see on this kind of thin slightly nerdy white guy and you know he's surrounded with his boss said he's kind of he's buff that he's a little bit intimidated i was kind of intimidated but then i learned later on that he was sort of intimidated by me because he thought this he was meeting the forty eight laws of power guy that sort of henry kissing type and he was a little bit intimidated as well but what impressed me most about him was that he was very calm is very calm energy so people think of him as being really out there angry thug but that's not who he is he's a very calm person he's always seeking to be in control of a situation he wants power and you don't get power by being out there being yelling and being angry and being thug so i was very impressed by how kind of thoughtful he was he's very he's actually a very interesting thinker and so in america everything is so divided everything is just so conventional and boring just drives me crazy like a book between a a nerdy white guy jewish white guy from los angeles and this rapper from south side queens that that's that's that's a really odd mix that's exactly why you do something like that to bring two people who are strange were very weird it's not a normal combination bring them together something interesting can happen so yeah i was with him for about six months and i witnessed some some very interesting things i remember he was on a phone call in in in one of his offices and doors were close just him and i but he was on a call with a a a female celebrity whose name i will not mention i was going man this guy is a seduce he is really good at it right you know his voice and what he was saying to her and how he was making her laugh he was me it was incredible right this guy got skills in the art of s deduction i could see that right away i remember once it was in like august i can't remember what year like two thousand six or so he was about to drop a a record and they they dropped a single that he had done with robin thick we're going way back here and it got leaked onto the internet and chris lei who was his manager at the time was furious because they had a whole marketing plan laid out for the rollout of the song and then it got leaked to the internet just completely ruined their whole kidding everybody was freaking out they were so upset and angry what do we do we're gonna take a lawsuit we're gonna bring them to court we're gonna get them to take it off the internet i was in there and the room when fifty got the news once again he was so calm he was like buddha and he goes no man this is the best thing that ever happened to us here's what we're gonna do we're gonna go with it we're not gonna fight it we're gonna create a story they created their own story we're not gonna try and and rep replace it we're gonna create our own version of what happened and here's what i'm gonna do we're gonna create the story that fifty said freaked out and was so angry up soap said he took the big creek tv off the off the wall and he broke it on the ground he was so angry he took his cell phone and he threw it at somebody she said blood gonna roll he gonna roll this is what we're gonna do right it was total theatrical he never none of it ever happened he got his team to take the big screen tv off the tv off the wall in and smash it and they would film it you know as if he had done this and that was the story now instead of fifty reacting and getting all upset which made him look weak he turned it around and made it about him and his anger and that's what only the only thing people could talk about in the internet though that was brilliant right instead of freaking out he was calm he thought of the internet is all about attention all about creating stories i'm gonna take control of this and i'm gonna create my own story and i was i was absolutely amazed you know that that that to me was the forty eight laws of power in action i mean i had so many stories with him you know it was one of the most fun elements in my life you know going to parties with him going to the award ceremony in vegas meeting floyd made whether junior going to his house in connecticut it was a it was like a drug trip it was amazing i have lots of stories but that gives you your life's so fascinating because like you know tu o'clock was interested in machiavelli and then you forty eight laws of power cable along and that it's like the new version of machiavelli valley i originally saw forty eight laws of power because i don't even know if it was true but there was like a rumor i saw on the internet that there's this book that is banned in prisons because it's so powerful and all the prison and then i was like i don't i don't know if that's true but like you i hooked i'm in well if it's bad for prison it must be the best and then you're huge in the hip hop community and black community and i was like this is i'm i'm i'm and again i love this i wanna read what these guys are all about and so it you must have had a really exciting life because you are not a person who i would think would be buddies with fifty or whoever else you're friends with and yet you have the best type of fame where like these guys who normal people admire there those guys admire you even the billionaires the athletes all the successful people admire you so you you must have met so many awesome people i've met a lot of awesome people and you know i must say i'm i'm very very grateful for my life it's been a blessing because i struggled for so many years i know what it's like to struggle in life i know what it's like to have no success it came very late for me so having it at my age when i was basically thirty nine forty almost was very meaningful so i don't take any of it for granted and i remember i i was when i wrote the forty eight laws of power i was living in this crappy one bedroom apartment in santa monica i mean it was nearby the ocean so you can't complain but it was a really kind of small cramped little apartment because i as i said i had no success i wrote the forty eight laws of power in that apartment and then suddenly you know i'm i'm on television things are happening okay it's a little bit weird but then i was invited to italy in early like four or five months after it came out because it came out in italian you know the land of machiavelli and i'm invited to go give this kind of conference and suddenly this guy is whisk me around to meet all these celebrities and we're on the island of capri and paparazzi are following me and taking pictures of me and i get to meet the ex prime minister of of italy who's a very famous person there named andre ot since passed away the most machiavelli italian politician of the modern era i'm sitting in his office i'm interview you know my life right now just five months ago it was nothing and now i'm doing this it was almost too hard to believe so i take none of it for granted it's it's been it's been an incredible ride and i'm i'm i'm very grateful what triggered the transformation in you most people don't have this sort of career renaissance where you figure it out you put it together and you start suddenly you go from a a sort of non des script you know situation to to suddenly you're in the guy's office in italy in in the island of capri you know what triggered the transformation in you at age thirty seven thirty eight well a bit of luck so i you know i had spent all of these years i wasn't a loser i worked at es esquire magazine in new york i had jobs in journalism i lived in new york for several years i worked you know i had jobs i lived in europe and i wandered around i you know but i was always writing and trying to figure life out i never gave up on myself i learned different skills at writing i also had lots of shit jobs with very bad bosses so when i was thirty five years old i was in italy on a project that i won't even discuss it was so stupid i met a man there who's there for the same project who was a book package and we were both really unhappy with what we were doing there and we were walking in venice italy and he's dutch and he asked me if i had an idea for a book and that was the turning point in my life to put it down into one like second of time that exact moment in italy in july of nineteen ninety five he asked me that question and everything clicked i i improvised what would turn into the forty eight laws of power all of my bad jobs all of my horrible bosses with their egos and their political games all the crap that i dealt with in hollywood because i'd had worked in hollywood for years just came flowing out of me almost like i was vomiting and i said you know power the book about power how timeless it is in the time of louie the fourteenth if you made a mistake you were put in prison and you were executed now if you make a mistake the same mistake you're fired it's the same game you just not as bloody right and i told him a story about louie the fourteenth and his finance mister the opening story of the forty eight laws of power he got very excited and he goes this will be a great book i will pay you to write a treatment for it and then we'll try and sell it and i was so desperate i was so hungry i was so depressed that i came back to los angeles i actually borrowed money from my parents so i could act i could afford to try and write this dream because he's was actually offering money once he had the treatment i was so desperate and so depressed that i put every goddamn ounce of energy i had into it all of my bad experiences life everything that i had been through all the skills i developed i just poured into that treatment it was literally get richer die trying at that moment and i wrote a great treatment he loved it and the rest of history so part of it was luck if i hadn't met this man i wouldn't be here talking with you but part of it was i never gave up and i had spent those sixteen eighteen years in the wilderness is developing skills so that's what helped turn it around that's so awesome and i i think i've read that i don't know how many books you've sold in general of all of your books of your seven or eight books but i think i read that the forty eight dollars a power came out in two thousand and or ninety eight i think it's accelerated right so isn't it selling more this year or last year than it did early on i'd say twenty twenty four was best year we've ever had was insane it's accelerated yeah and i think we're now close to ten million copies sold in the united states alone oh my god it's pretty crazy to have like a life's work right i mean that's like like i don't know if you meant to do this but like you've it it's a timeless thing that can be readable and awesome for fifty or a hundred years yeah i mean you know you never know when you write a book like that it's a very weird book and that could be good or it could be bad it looks strange you know the design of it with the things on the side and everything broken up it has all these stories from history for better or for worse i can say nobody else has written a book that looks like that or reads like that right and it could have easily failed that could have easily bombed i you know i remember god am i gonna have to go back to to working at some crap job after this book is a disaster yeah maybe maybe you'll have to like go back to doing temp work or something so it could have easily been a disaster but it didn't and so it's one of those strange things it's very a lot of its luck but all of it also it's how much effort i put into the work to make it kind of this timeless thing so so yeah it's it's it's insane because you never know in life what's gonna be successful or what's not i wanna ask you about daily application of of the ideas from forty to eight laws of power because it's one thing to read a book to not along maybe even under underline it and then you close the book and you go back to being an exactly the person who you are which would be i think a pretty disappointing outcome and i think about these day to day situations i get in i'm in my car in traffic i'm in a grocery store i'm at up coffee shop i'm having a a just yet another meeting at work whatever it is i'm curious what's one law that you think is easily applicable to people's day to day life to their normal routines of their life that they could kind of mark in their mind like oh he mentioned that situation let me approach it differently using what he's using one of robert's sort of laws of human nature and laws of of of of power okay well the the try this is to get out of the moment and to be observing us the situation that's in front of you so so often you're just reacting to things you're just in the moment you're just listening to what people are saying you're just in your own head your own thoughts your own ideas that circle around and round and round your own emotions which what you're having to you in the morning you're not listening and i want you to turn around and pay deep attention and not to listen to yourself at all to cut that all completely and to absorb your your interest your mind your spirit in the people you're dealing with this pertains to power this pertains to s deduction this pertains to strategy this pertains to war and to human nature to all of my books right you're two self absorbed so even when you go to starbucks and you're getting your coffee you're thinking about your own problems you're thinking about how much prices for coffee is going up okay now what you do is you look at that barista and you go what does it like to be him or her what is their world like you know it's kind of weird that you know probably let's say it's a it's a guy it's probably this is not his life task he's got some other interests what's going on in his mind in this moment try and read his body language and go into this almost like fan story in your head of what he's like what his apartment looks like what his girlfriend looks like what his dog looks like and think about it get out of yourself okay do that again and again and again and again in every situation it will calm you down it will be a form of therapy for you it will also make you a superior observer of people don't make you a superior observer of human nature it will make you understand that people say that they love your ideas but their body language actually reveals that they're not interested in all you'll become a superior reader of people and you won't be so self absorbed right that is the number one skill you can develop is to get outside of yourself and to be in a a supreme acute observer of people fame you ever done anything like that i think i'm a very emotional person and i get upset but like for example the other day i got a ticket like a parking ticket and i caught the guy giving me the ticket and so i had like this interaction and like i was like i wanna yell at you i wanna do this i wanna do that and i was like hold on i gotta think about i gotta reflect what what does this guy wanna be doing with this time right now and how do i use my insight into his perspective to get out of the situation as opposed to saying you suck your this is go solve a real crime whatever and so but i think but related to that the the thing before you have to do that this is to control your emotions which i work hard and i fail at all the time but that that's what it's kinda rooted and i think right that that's like the foundational like step which is like don't react reflect to the side of it is that the guy who's giving you your parking ticket you know he's got his own life he's got his own world yes it's annoying as hell he feel so helps so stupid while you have you're ride there but he's still gonna write the ticket you know why couldn't you wait like three minutes oh no it's already written he can't you can't go back but the people you deal with are interesting they're weird they're different they have their own life they have that he's he's this porsche who's got this miserable job everybody hates him like you do he's gotta receive all of this hate and negative energy from people then he has to go back to his apartment somewhere in queens and you know and and other people are kind of you know yelling at him he's got all this internalized anguish and anxiety get into the story of other people because they're interesting there i know i'm making this up i never met this guy give you the ticket off of the woman but it's fun to think about it it's fun to get out of it it's fun to imagine what they're like and then you slowly start developing this muscle where you start thinking about other people and not yourself and getting into their stories and figuring out what makes them tick so if you need to seduce them if you need to get this guy giving you a ticket to not give you a ticket you have the way to do it because you understand who he is you understand how much negative attention this guy gets every single day he's out on his job and your first reaction will be man must be a terrible job i'm so sorry for you say something that kind of disarm him well maybe now you have the power to get him to stop riding that ticket where as opposed to your aggressive energy fuck man i idea with that every single person gives that to me i'm not gonna still i'm gonna still write your ticket just despite you you a hole no you diffuse the situation by coming up to him was like man you must have a horrible but i'm really sorry that you i don't know whatever it is you know that's the approach well have you ever read a chris os book never split the difference like if there was any takeaway it's basically so chris was like a fbi negotiator and he teaches people how to negotiate and like the main thing that he teaches is exactly what you said which is don't react to what you hear put yourself in their shoes and actually verbal and label how they feel and that's an immediate disarming thing to get what you want basically and sean i don't know you know like me and sean have both talked about the book the game which i i i assume you'd you know all about neil strauss and for a fourteen year old boy that was like the greatest thing ever because we like desperately wanted to meet girls and it was like a very pop pop pop way of like learning about it it like easy to learn and read about but you have a book i is it i have to remember the numbers thirty three rules of s selection is that no it's called the art deduction art of s thirty three laws of war i yeah i'm i'm getting on a bunch i'm getting confused but you have a whole book on s deduction which like i wish i would have read this when i was younger because like you outlined like all these interesting ways basically deduction not meaning just sleep with people but like to do someone into like basically doing what you want them to do and it gives like actually may it gives like your books sean robert's books are pretty great they like tell you the history but then they also the history of like a person who's a story of this rule but then you outline like the tactics and strategy which is like the best format and so that was that was another winner and it taught all these like tactics on like people or getting them to be buy into your whatever you want them to be up by yeah i mean i i know neil strauss and i you know he talked he quotes the art of s deduction in the game but the our deduction is different it's not a book for pickup artists it's a book for making people fall in love with you it's a book for making people interested in you it makes a book it's a book for people who who you want to like fund your project or who you want to hire you it also is something that you may want us to seduce a woman or a man for for sex or whatever yes but s deduction is something that you do every single day of your life right you're always bad at it or you're good at it but you're always constantly having to make people like you in some way or other so i wanted to come up with the ultimate psychology of what it makes peep what draws people to you and what rep repulsive people from you so sort of that's what the art deduction is about did it make you more likable were you were were you were pre and post yeah was pre and post robert different i i got interested in s deduction in the eighties when i well obviously i was a young man you know and i was living in paris i was twenty two i was working in a hotel in paris where all the models stayed for the for the fashion weeks or whatever the most beautiful women in the world were staying at this hotel at twenty two years old you know and come was insane and there was this guy who would come by it was like shooting fish fishing a barrel he knew that these were all these incredibly beautiful women were he was this tall good looking brazilian guy he was so good at the s deduction game i was fascinated by it how come he could get all of these women to go out with the on dates and i couldn't do anything i couldn't get anywhere i kind of got interested in it and then i started reading books literature about it and i kind of got fascinated by the whole phenomena of s deduction and i went through my twenties what i would call my years as a rake where i was you know i was fairly successful at meeting and introducing women not on his level not on fifty cents level but on my own level i was pretty good at the game and so i was fascinated by years before i wrote the book and then when i have the chance to write it you know all of my all of that knowledge and experience came into into writing the book so of my own failures some of my own successes so it's been something that had been on my mind for many many years in general how self actual do you feel like you are in these different book categories power s deduction etcetera like are you if a ten is kind of like what you think is somebody who's sort of maximally doing these things maybe the best examples of people you've you've met or or or have read about where do you put yourself and and is writing an effective way to move up that ladder you know what i mean does did the study in the process of writing it actually help well a a writer is a writer i'm not out there i mean for political office i'm not you know on a stage entertaining people i'm a writer okay so you judge me by that barometer and not by other things and i talk about i think about like machiavelli himself he was this mid level diplomat in in florence in at the early part of the sixteenth century he was not successful he was not powerful he came from the middle classes and then he aligned himself with the republic of florence and then when the medici came back into power he was in disgrace and he was in he was prison briefly and he went off into the countryside and to get himself back in power he wrote a book called the prince right this was going to ing differentiate himself with the medici medici and maybe get him so he could come back and be a diplomat diplomatic again okay that one book that he wrote some hundred pages long can you you cannot quantify the influence that that one book has had right it's insane i mean maybe next to the bible you can't think of another book that has had greater impact all of the historical figures since machiavelli who read the prince who internalize the lessons who loved him or hated him reacted against him or for him if you had to measure that power it's insane it's off the charts and yet he never made any money from it and he never realized that power but that is true power true influence in the world so we can look at all the people around us who would we imagine is having power with all their money and their billions but ideas are the most powerful thing in this world okay you can put all you want price tags on on on material things but something completely immaterial an idea is what is most powerful in this world so when somebody has an idea for a great business where steve jobs has an idea for a new ipod it's in his head it's in his brain he's thinking and then it becomes reality that is power the power of thinking of ideas is greater than all the other nonsense in this world so i can't dunk a basketball unlike sam i i can't dance very well at all i can't sing i have a strokes and my body kind of messed up right now but on the level of ideas i have tremendous amount of power and influence and i and i know it because the people writing to me i'm not bragging at all is just very real so on that barometer i have actual it it's not whether i can go out there and command an army or become present because that's not my game my game is ideas and on that level i have actual myself i have realized my life's task and my power and after i die i'm not gonna be like machiavelli with his six hundred years of influence but i will have some influence over people after i die that is power that is ideas ideas shape this world and i people have lost that kind of lesson they're so into material things that they don't understand the spiritual intellectual power of thinking which can change this world that's a good ass answer no i love had a great man that's a great you do you have your one liner of your life's task i'm just curious yeah to change to change people to change how they think and to change how people are that's always been my my goal here you know there's too much kind of stupidity this too much kind of people who don't understand themselves who don't understand power i'm not saying i'm superior in that game because believe me i've made many many mistakes never outs shine the master i violated that law at least two times maybe even three times i'm a flawed human being so i'm not the epitome of the forty eight laws of power but i've witnessed people being so stupid being so single minded being so inflexible so unable to adapt that it initiates me that they don't understand how to actually operate in this world so i'm trying my books my life's task is to enlighten people on that front are you a happy person like because when i whenever i read your books it's a very serious topic and you spend your life reading and writing about very serious things does are you able to find joy that and be happy well you know happiness is is is just a word and you know we live in our bodies and ourselves and our emotions and you know at some hour in the morning i'll be very happy and excited and then two hours later something will be frustrating it'll so we all go up and down and up and down but i'd like to talk about fulfillment as opposed to happiness a sense that i fulfilled you know i have a sense of fulfillment that i accomplished something and i have a very high sense of fulfillment so right now i'm writing a book it's very frustrating i can't type because i had a stroke i can't take hikes my life is very limited right now but i get to write this book and it involves so much td and so much difficulty but then i pull back and go wow man what a privilege this is and this is a book i hope that's gonna change people on a very deep level so on the micro level of happiness i have a lot of frustration i have a lot of tv i have a lot of things that i wish were otherwise but on the level of happy a fulfillment when you pull back over course of months or years it's off the charts i i have an incredible sense of accomplishment particularly this book here the book on supply but we're gonna for six years you have no idea the things i've had to overcome to write this book right physically the challenges have been insane as i said i can't type i have to hand everything i have to edit in hand handwriting it's a mess and then i have to dictate it in the computer then i have to edit it with one hand i can't take a hike to clear my mind i've just trapped in my body in my office and yet i've written the book and so i'm gonna feel so proud of that what i had to overcome that to me that's more important than happiness you know that sense because it's very it's something where happiness comes and goes but a sense of fulfillment it just sort of stays with you for a long time you've had a such a huge impact on me you know when i was in my twenties and to the stay so you've had a really big impact on me so i'm personally very like honored and thankful be able to talk to you but the predominantly the people who listen to this are are young men in their twenties and i hope that we've kind of been the gateway drug for that because we have a lot of awesome people on here but not everyone is necessarily wise or intentional which i think you have that in space i think that's kinda your thing which is you you're you seem very intentional very wise and very calm and i find that to be in it kind of infects me a little bit and and rubs off on me so we appreciate you doing this you're you're awesome hopefully you know i think you you said your goal was to change people you've changed me and hopefully this is a gateway drug to introduce you to even more people who you can possibly i appreciate that you know i i i don't take it for granted being invited to these podcasts i know sometimes i can be a little bit difficult because my schedule is a little bit full but i i'm very grateful to have audiences like this you know so thank you so much for for allowing me to do this for allowing me to to just blow hot air for an hour and a half i mean look at this this is ear in the business of ideas and info i mean this is okay i'm on the podcast i'm i'm supposed to be talking i'm supposed paying attention and i'm sitting here furiously writing notes to myself of small nuggets of wisdom little little golden nuggets that you were dropping so thank you for coming on thank you so much for having me thank you that's it that's a pod i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a days off on a goal travel never looking back my friends if you like m then you're gonna like the following podcast it's called a billion dollar moves and of course it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the number one audio destination for business professionals billion dollar moves it's hosted by sarah chen spelling sarah is a venture capitalist and strategist and with billion dollar moves she wants to look at unicorn founders and fund and she looks for what she calls the unexpected leader many of them were underestimated long before they became huge and successful and iconic she does it with unfiltered conversations about success failure for your courage and all that great stuff so again if you like my first million check out billion dollar moves it's brought to you by the hotspot hubspot podcast network again billion dollar moves alright back to the episode

think the theme of this episode today is basically anti digital anti tech anti ai ideas i feel like i could rule the world i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on a road less travel never i have an idea you by the way what alright so hampton you've got this community of ceos in different cities and it's great and you're doing great and it's mostly a started off online i'm so glad you shifted to like in person which sure was hard but like painful but but necessary change i've just been thinking about some of these like ai proof ideas i think it's just an interesting lens to be like what doesn't really make sense for ai to like improve or or disrupt and we joined a country club and wait wait wait wait got thought i could just keep me the all on i just keep kelly i didn't think the tsa agent would would ask me for for my basketball there who's we you like you and your wife your family or like okay you and your wife like a golf like a golf cup a golf country club even though i don't play golf currently okay like the the stereotype of my head of like a golf course and like chicken tenders i think it's a lot of that there's a great pool okay it's great amenities tennis corn pickle a ball etcetera okay look i don't wanna talk you what country them one i'm trying to say from a business perspective i'm pretty fast you have to interview did you have to interview did go have the interview scheduled in a few days yeah oh my god the the hardest part by the way if there's a dress code oh it's under armour on it are you allowed to wear i was like okay i get full tank but i have about a muscle tank you guys get to that that's actually how i showed up for the for the first tour anyways yeah i'm little fish out the what are they gonna ask you at the interview i think get like are you gonna you should you cat can't telling you host a podcast called my first million i it's so ta honest reject me don't be honest what are you insane you have to lie look my wife really wants it she knows a lot a lot of the moms from the school go there whatever alright so yeah let me get to my point here yes yes to everything you're thinking insane alright i just agree let's just agree on all of those things that are i ever thought in your head right now how much is it gonna cost what's your monthly what's the when membership fees are something like you pay seventy five hundred dollars so seven thousand five hundred dollars just to like initiate just to like get your foot in the door okay that's not even the dues that's like an app well there's a five hundred dollar application fee then it's like a seven seven thousand five hundred dollar like in initial join the club fee and then you pay something like i don't know seven hundred a thousand dollars a month as a member and that's to not even get to play golf that's like p member but you don't get to play golf if you play tennis you gotta like use your left hand or something i don't know it's not you don't even get everything so we're joining as like the basic member but i was looking at the numbers i was like okay so they're basically probably close to two thousand members at this club and so two thousand members times let's call it ten grand a year average membership fee which again doesn't even include the golf is a twenty million dollar annual recurring revenue business to then have the right to go pay for food darren drinks to just the right to go shop there and so everything else i think mostly operates breakeven i think they do events like weddings and and and birthday parties and stuff like that that makes some money too but i'm pretty sure this country club is pulling in something like twenty to twenty five million a year in recurring revenue not including the all of the like you know whatever margin they have on food beverage golf etcetera which might be closer to like ten percent or something and i just thought man this is incredible business and i've seen a few of these doubts so i saw that one when i first moved to san francisco the guy i was working with michael birch he created the battery in san francisco which was like san francisco didn't have a soho house so he created the battery and was that good was that a good business well i think he under charges dramatically you know he didn't need the money per you know he sold his company for like eight hundred million dollars so you know he wasn't doing it for the he's doing it for the social and i think he didn't wanna like make it like an only rich tech guy thing so he priced it initially like twenty five hundred dollars a year like two hundred bucks a month it's like that's literally less than e or something you know now i think it's three thousand dollars is it pretty pretty low still one time i went there i think with you and i'm not exaggerating i this is the the this i swear to god this is the truth there was a booth that had a pretty blonde hair lady snoop dogg and a monk wearing an orange like shaw sitting at the same booth like it looked like the dolly lam snoop dogg and a hop couch and they and they were like sitting like this like leaning in having a conversation i don't know what it was about but it it could've have been like a world peace but it was i that it it was crazy i saw that in real life and i was like this is the craziest thing i've ever seen yeah it's crazy i i've seen elon there seen jay z there it's crazy so i saw that that that model and so house i don't if you saw i just went private private equity group just came in basically took a private at two point seven billion and they think that in twenty twenty five it'll do something like a hundred fifty million of eb but it's a little confusing to said not profitable currently but the twenty twenty five forecast is a hundred is a you know like a hundred fifty million dollars in and so i started thinking about these clubs and i was like why doesn't it sam do get into this business with hampton right like why not in your core one two three cities get some real estate create a physical space and top up on the members and then anytime a member traveling to new york la chicago whatever austin wherever you wanna put your wherever your hubs are they have a physical place to go work to heat to meet to do whatever so i have an answer so for for one it's operationally i think that it's silly for me to my main business is creating wonderful core groups for people talk and then this business that you are talking about is hospitality in real estate i think the answer is there's a world or we will do it but it needs to be its own business you you you shouldn't mix them so a company i was inspired by called chief it's it's what we're doing but mainly for women executives they had a lot of real estate and it dragged down it dragged them down significantly but let me tell you something so there's this weird surge going on particularly in new york where there's this and over the last year or so there's been something like fifteen or twenty new social clubs or c working spaces that have popped up and so have you heard of like zero bond yeah so that's an example of one and there are so many of these social clubs amongst like young like like twenty something gen z this is a phenomenon that is just absolutely killing it and it's not new social clubs have been on for forever since the gil age people have been doing like social club since it's been franklin doing jun toe where he would like meet up with his friends but what i'm noticing is that there's a whole niche of c working spaces that combine this social club kind of aesthetic so look let me give you a few examples google the mall in so it's the word the and then m a l i n before i had my office here i rented a space here and this is like a very niche c working space absolutely beautiful on the inside with three locations and whenever i was there it was like a buzzing and like the the target demographic for these guys are like good looking freelancers like like everyone who worked there was like a hot freelancer like good news and bad news good news we like to share a freelance designer bad news is one other requirement yeah i didn't fit the ic but they still let me in but like they let just see why it's gonna why you don't belong yeah they let me hang out there's another guy in my core group his name is james street so go to this website called the lighthouse dot com so the lighthouse dot com my friend owns this agency called whale and it's a huge nine figure year digital agency and it's based in la so it's like all hip and cool and everything and they created a little project called the lighthouse so the lighthouse dot com and it's i think they call a creators campus in other words it's basically a c working space for creators yep meaning instead of like just normal desk they have like cool studios kinda like the one i'm recording and where like someone can just like record and in the first year of business they've done eight figures in revenue with one location and i'm seeing this pop up like over and over and over and then another one is new house have you heard of new house no go click new house and tell and so they they call themselves the work and social home for creative and so these guys are selling everyone that just named they're basically just taking a sliver of what like we work is and who it's for and then what you're talking about of social clothes and they're combining it because scaling cool is very challenging that's what soho struggled with you can't scale x really well unless you own a variety of brands like you're louis vuitton and you own like hermes and louis vuitton and this and that and so each one it's okay if they're like don't grow aggressively but scaling utility works wonderfully and that's where positioning it as a c working space works really well but in new york in particular but i'm seeing this in in a lot of other places these social club slash c working spaces are thriving and we were told that we work and all these other businesses like that are kinda silly they're not the economics can be great it's not gonna be like right an eighty billion dollar company or whatever we we work raise that but it could still be an amazing company alright so a lot of people will talk about how you need a million dollars and three years of experience to start of business nonsense if you listen to at least one episode on this podcast you know that it's completely not true my last company the hustle we grew it to something like seventeen dollars or eighteen million dollars in revenue i started it with like three hundred dollars my current company hampton does over ten million dollars in revenue started it with actually no money maybe twenty nine dollars or something like that nothing and so you don't actually need investors to start a company you don't need a fancy business plan but what you do need is systems that actually work and so my old company the hustle they put together five proven business models that you could start right now today with under a thousand dollars these are models that if you do it correctly it can make money this week you can get it right now you can scan the qr code or click the link in the description now back to the show there's two other interesting ones i wanna show you one is slightly related so what one is a soho house for families with kids so i think it's called beginning club house dude it's in it's in it's in new york right yep dumb where what what is dumb is that brooklyn yeah brooklyn it's like this is where like yu parents who wear car heart exactly so they're opening this up there which is a soho house but that's kid friendly me because you all these private clubs tend to be only for like sort like either single you know young people or like people whose kids are grown up and it's like a you know family's not welcome but as somebody with like you know four or five year old kids my entire life based and the reason we got you know our membership for this thing is like just need a place to take kids as like a reliable spot where they're gonna have some fun and i can like have them fence in you know what i mean like they they they have some stuff to it i i can just chill and like take care of you know whatever oh you need food we have food you wanna swim you get swim you know like you wanna just chill you wanna play some games we could do that too like whatever whatever you need so thought this kinda of interesting the other one i thought it was interesting the guy who started wag dot com has a new business have you seen this he's starting this new thing in denver that when i first heard it i kinda laughed think his name is jason metz he's basically building multi family housing so just like a place to rent to live but it's called like i figure i was calling like live pet play here's something live pet work and basically it's like what he realized was you know in denver there's more pet owners than than parents with kids and he's like they're and i think this is true nationwide i believe that there's more people with pets than there are people with kids and for those people housing often is like very limited so like a lot of places that don't let you have a pet if they do have a pet it's like this inconvenience where like nothing about it is built for life as a pet owner in a city whereas what these guys are doing they're like cool you know dog grooming you know you basically you rent your plate or you rent your unit it's like the unit has like a doggy door there's like grass areas at the bottom and on the rooftop to take your your dog out there's dog walkers in the building so you get like you know twenty dog walks a month you get two doc two nights of dog sitting and targeting specifically this lights sort demographic of person i thought that's pretty interesting it's basically like take normal multi multi family but how do you charge like an extra thirty to forty percent of rent every month well if you make it like a plus for somebody who's like dog obsessed and you know dog owners you see i think they spend something like six six thousand dollars a year just on their pet alone and the inconvenience of living in a place that's like not pet friendly is a daily you know a daily nuisance so i think there might be actually be something to this that's interesting because all all real estate is just a question of can you buy it where everybody thinks it's worth x right you buy it because everything everybody thinks it's gonna generate x dollars of net income but you know you can you can do one point three x or one point two x and if you do that you know and you buy a twenty million dollar building you've increased the value of the building maybe by ten million dollars or twelve twelve billion dollars if you're able to do that well and so i just think this was smart because normally the way they do these value ads is you've have to build more units it's like that's how you're gonna generate more income is i'm gonna have to spend a much money you build more units this was like no i'm just gonna like position it as being great for this type of customer and i know that that type of customer is willing to pay a little more for these additional perks and services and spaces how much one did they this guy is i saw he's raising for the building itself not for like the head code like it's a real estate play right so he's like we're buying this building already it generates this we're gonna add these things and then it's gonna you know it'll generate this when when once we have rented it we we have confidence it's gonna be rented because you know here's all the demographic trends in our favor i always get nervous when tech people go into real estate that that always freaks me out i tried to do the same by the way i had an internet company and i tried to like i i tip toe into it and i and i bought some real estate and i just wanna like i could put this on the record my hit rate for anything that i've done on my own real estate wise it's i'm o for three i have lost money on every single one of them yeah well operating yourself is is always different right like you you tried to be the real estate developer right you tried to do the execute project plan yourself and so you're just at the beginning of the learning curve like i i probably the last twelve months my best investment across everything and i you know like i all the ai stocks and all that my best investment by far has been my real estate investments but i'm not the one off yes investing in other people i'm like when i'm just an investor in someone else's work it's been wonderful i i agree that it's wonderful any anytime that i have tried to operate it over for three i've lost in every single one of them at every single time i think what am i doing i can make a website for zero dollars and i can make money more money than i've just made off of investing seven figures and having to work really hard and stress over making significantly less or no money yeah have you seen any other of these like social clubs that interests you no but i just think it's gonna be more and more popular like all of the trends seem to play in this favor right so it's like if you have remote work which was like pretty niche before then it became everybody and now it it sending some new normal but it's still way bigger than it was before so you have remote work you have ai that's disrupting other types of businesses you have like generational declines in like number of young men dating number of people who are like married number of virgins you know people with social anxiety and depression like all of those numbers are just like going in the wrong direction and so things like whether it's run clubs or social clubs like it just seems like the core desires they tap into are not being met and like those problems are are being really easy like i'm not surprised at some of the examples you had in some of the numbers like i think it's really impressive but i'm not entirely surprised because i think people do need this now if i'm a young person listening to this and i wanted to get into this i've been playing around with like copywriting and an idea for this it just doesn't work for hampton it's a little too aggressive but i was reading this book called bowling alone and it's all about in america up until roughly the sixties the average america american was a member of a variety of clubs like the pt rotary club which must be the only even know what that i don't even know what that is i've but i've heard it like the elk club like all these clubs that like we've heard the name but we're not entirely sure what they were the average american was part of like one point eight of them voter turnout for the kennedy election was an all time high i think it was like seventy eight percent and the trust that the average american had in a random other american was also at an all time high and since then there's been the slow decline where club affiliation is really low pt is a is a good like kinda litmus test that it has very low participation voter turnout is low and the the amount that we trust one another is low and there's all types of hypothesis as to why this is the case one strong hypothesis is the suburbs so when you are out in the suburbs where or you don't live in an urban environment you have less interaction with your neighbor and you don't really get to know them as much and it's a little bit more like this is my land this is my territory everyone else stay out and let me worry about me that type of energy versus if you live in a building or an urban environment you sort of kind of have to understand we're in this together right and that's one of the theories and i was thinking if i was wanting to start a club in this space my tagline would be join or die and this idea that as ai and digital gets more popular you a young person crave human and interaction more than ever and that you will literally live longer if you have a community of other people who you interact with on a regular basis right and so i've i was thinking that like this line joiner or die has sat been sitting with me for like three or four weeks where you can do all types of campaigns around this idea of like you owe it to yourself to be part of a community and you have to get out from behind the screen and i think that like the average twenty two year old is yearning for this so badly i have a few notes on your tagline but we'll do that offline you're not a fan of joiner or die didn't do it for me but i'm sure there's others who will like it to just imagine like some like pretty lady named kale who's like serving chicken tenders and she likes surging and says thanks sean enjoy your tenders and fries join her i enjoy her to it's a greeting i think brian johnson got don't die you're you're almost infringing there so look gotta be be a little careful hey let's take a quick break you know hubspot helped help tumblr solve a big problem tumblr needed to move fast they were trying to produce trending content but their marketing department was stuck waiting on engineers to code every single email campaign but now they use hubspot customer platform to email real time trending content to millions of users in just seconds and the result was huge three times more engagement and double the content creation if you wanna move faster like tumblr visit hubspot dot com alright back to the ship okay i have another idea that's i think the theme of this episode today is basically anti digital anti tech anti ai ideas okay and so here's another one that our friend t was tweeting about did you see this thing that he was tweeting about y no what's the y alright so check this out have you ever been to a like maybe a stand up comedy show or a music festival yeah and they put your phone into a pouch yes si our buddy he used to date a girl like ten years ago who worked at this company do you remember this actually like told us all about this company and i was like that's the stupidest thing i've ever heard of and now it's you you're crushing so according to trunk which i couldn't verify elsewhere according to tron down like three hundred million this year in revenue just putting people's phones and pouches and you know is this great example of one of my frameworks which is like anytime the pendulum swings too far in one direction it creates the demand for the opposite right like you know newton's physics it's like you know every force or whatever has like an equal every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction so it's like every trend creates an equal and opposite trend and i think as we all have just become completely addicted to our phones you know six to eight hours a day of screen time i don't know how many times i open my phone but it's gotta be like you know three hundred plus times a day or something something just really embarrassing this has become a huge business and i started off so the story here is this guy started this in san francisco and he's a former soccer player and i guess the way the story goes is which you never know what these start origin stories how much is was made up but he was out of music festival and somebody was taking pictures of somebody else who was intoxicated having a good time but like you know share without their consent or whatever and he was just like man it's like messed up there's just like phones everywhere now and he's like we should be able to go to a concert like this and feel like you know be present feel free eat blah blah blah so he goes to his like in a lab he starts sewing he thinks about like should i do lockers should i do you know bags and he comes up with this idea of a magnetic pouch so it's a small pouch about the size of a phone and it can only be un has a magnet seal and it okay can only be unlocked by this like base you know you have to tap it on the base to get the thing off it's sort like when you shop at a store and they have the like anti theft thing on it and the the cashier ass still take that off so you don't like you know spray yourself with the inc or whatever it's basically that for phones and he starts hustling it and he's like alright who needs this the most he's trying to do music festival he's go in door to door and in san francisco and then he finds out that dave chappell has been talking about how he just hates that people are like you know on their phone and recording his his sets where he's working out material and his business is to have the specials but the whole thing would get leaked on youtube and so he asked a comedy booker in in san francisco he's like can you connect me with dave's team and he goes and he demos it to dave and dave's like i'll try this he tries it at one show he loves it people are way more present they're not on their phones and his stuff doesn't get leaked so dave starts choosing other music which huge that was a huge deal i remember when that happened in san francisco dave chappell is get making everyone lock their phones in a back sounds like got a lot of friends and it's sounds extreme yeah and anytime an idea sounds extreme it's what seth good and call remarkable meaning worth remark it's a unusual thing and so it continues to grow there but that was gonna be a small business right because a comedy stand comedy shows are there how much how much these comedian even make okay can you charge and then the big break came with schools and now seventy percent of their revenue comes from schools so like a minnesota school district pays five hundred thousand dollars to get these for all the schools so that schools become a cell phone free zone where students come they they have to lock up their phone to enter or leave it in their car and then you know now they're focused during the day now they don't have that distraction they don't not text each other that i'm boarding in class doing that stuff and the stats bear this out like kids are happier their grades go up and the teachers are happier they have a better environment and so they started doing this you know schools all around the world they're and so isn't this crazy that this little business putting your cell phone at a pouch is now this three hundred million dollar juggernaut like how cool is that it's for for for one like i i would have i would have thought this would never in a million years work now it seems obvious but back then i like it's one of these ideas where it's dude maybe you should go get a job and like now enough around with like sewing these bags two have you used one yeah because at comedy shows they always make us do it i hate it but you know what what emotion do you feel rage and anxiety rage and anxiety it to my phone reap like i remember one time when my wife was pregnant i went to a dave chappell show and the lady handed me one and i was like look lady my wife's is like three weeks pregnant i'm not giving you my phone and i tried to hide it and speak and she me down and she goes here we five dude or sorry three weeks away from from giving birth and i was like i'm not i have to have my phone and she goes and she turns sideways she goes yeah me too and she was super pregnant and she was like and she was really pregnant the lady worker at the couch she goes i'm pregnant too put the phone in the bag and i was like i was like yes ma'am but yes ma'am but i felt extreme anxiety which which means i need to use it more than i thought yeah exactly i in in my school district where i was living before they were gonna they the board i was paying attention they were gonna vote whether they should use this and you wanna know something crazy it lost most parents wanted of their kids to have their first right yeah yeah there's like a argument of about whether it's safety or like personal property there's arguments against it but i i mean it seems like the market reaction is that it's working overall of obviously yeah and i just think it's such a such a simple idea also i was watching something the other day and ed sheeran was like i haven't had a phone for five years isn't that crazy he was like what does that mean he was just like i don't own a phone he's was like when i had a phone people was just like calling me or texting me all the time i was just using social media all the time he's like it was really hard to like make music so i just got rid in my phone he's like if someone needs to reach me you know i have a manager that'll will combine me if you really gotta get to me but i haven't had a phone of five years i was like wow that might be like you know what when you really read like david gag is like pull up record i thought like the edge sheeran and not having a phone for five years it's like up there with any sort of like ultra race or or pull up record can i propose an m i'm challenge last oh shit yeah listen last summer we did what do we call it what do we do that my first half summer ba my first muscle i have to think of a of a of a good name for this but the challenge is we're gonna we got we saturday or sunday or just one week we could do it you have to go on a twelve hour walk and you can't bring your phone or have a conversation with someone twenty four hours twenty four hour phone fast no a twelve hour twelve dude i'm these things dude i promise you it's not easy i would bet so much walk florida go you you have to be outside of the house and your phone has to be in your bedroom or whatever and you can't be with your wife you gotta be by yourself you have to be by yourself you can't have a conversation you can't talk to a stranger you just have to be outside by yourself walking around wherever you live it doesn't matter just go sit in a park but you have to be by yourself for twelve hours i would bet my life that you can't do that i'm not trying to kill you doug but i think i could do that i don't think you could i i i you had cheat yeah there's one hundred percent i believe with dude you cannot go and just walk around and not have a conversation with someone without your phone for don't understand my kids are on my phone at least half the day because i use it to like s them and like subdue them like a tranquil dark so my kids are already on my phone all the time i don't have my phone with me most of the time but i a challenge accepted i think we should do this the phone fast it's i think i mean twelve hours just sounds like child's child's me but i you i i you can't have a conversation so you can oh you by the way you can't use your like laptop no screen yeah you no device and no conversations conversation you gotta be you gotta be by yourself so another as i'm scrolling tiktok later at night i see this other video of this guy who knows he went six weeks i think without looking at a screen so no computer no tv no phone six weeks this guy did and he he was you know normally you'd be like what do people say they're just like oh i felt so much better or present you're like yeah yeah yeah i know i know know but whatever this guy one other interesting thing which he goes i tested my memory before and after and he goes i was fiftieth percentile roughly in memory memo i'm now ninety ninth percentile he goes and i did it's not like i practiced memory he's like i was just like not looking at not distracted all the time and i've blur to be more present and now my memory is ninety ninth percentile i had a i had to write a bunch of copy and so like basically from like after dinner so like nine pm to like midnight i basically like you put your headphones on you plug in you just have to like write and get the work done and it's a really fun way to get in the flow and i hadn't done that in years and it is incredible how hard it is to focus when's was the last time that you focus and you shut out all the distractions you turn off slack you turned off of it's really really really rare that i do that rare and when i was in college i would do that every single night and it was awesome like that's when i would do my homework like my paper writing or whatever like from you know monday to thursday like eight pm to one am that was like work time and it was a very rewarding experience to do it what was the what was the gpa dude i swear to god i graduated college with a four point o did really i got a d in entrepreneurship class because i missed like a presentation but i got i got virtually a's in one hundred percent of everything i took cut that's all serious that's amazing in high school i yeah i worked really i went to a bad school i went to belmont university val like you never already even heard of that but in high school i graduated with a two point three and then and when i got to college i was like i'm gonna take this seriously and my nighttime work sessions were holy for me it was like i felt i it felt marvelous and i never experienced that anymore do you ever experience that but that absolute focus phone focus yes so what i started doing and i would say my hit rate right now is maybe one out of every three days i do this legit like totally legit which is i wake up and i do it first thing in the morning so i go no input so i don't look at my phone i don't open up my computer i grab a pencil and a pad and i'll do one of two things either i go for a walk first so i'll take me if my dog's like up i'll take my dog for a walk and come back and then do this or i'll just sit at this chair over here in this room and i just write my it's like morning pages right like and so i'll try to create something pre input and i'll do different things so it doesn't matter what i create what i write it's yeah i stole this from tim ferris you told me something about like said something like a creative gym session just like the way you'll go to the gym and like if go to the gym i don't use my phone most of the time like i'm i'm off my phone for the majority of it and you're just doing something for hour right doing that at at a creative level and so i've done it where i write jokes like because i learned this this how seinfeld started his day for forty five years and so i was like okay did that i'll sometimes just write my food plan for the today like what am i gonna eat when gonna work out just kinda get that make that front center sometimes write like a blog post or i'll just write you know stuff that i'm like thinking about like little loose ends about each of the businesses about like oh you know i should probably do that or you know what we're being stupid about the way we're doing this or you know wait this is working we're not doubling down on that what i did have a conversation right and so i'll i'll try to do that but the biggest thing for me isn't just a focus it's being pre input to any slack twitter whatever email nothing text what what time in the morning it usually starts at seven now that school came back on i go at eight and do a drop off and then like ride my bike drop them off come back so that's you that's kind of cut it now where it's like basically only one hour instead of the ninety minutes yeah i think we should do the m m challenge needs to either be the walk thing or morning pages i think that's quite helpful alright so in the youtube comments settle the debate twelve hours or twenty four just write twelve or twenty four of a no phone a phone fast just like people do juice cleanse they they do others other you know like silent meditation retreats whatever ours is just a phone fast and then sam has this requirement that somewhere in that window you gotta go be by yourself what's what's the the famous was quote like yeah all of your problems all of man's problems are because he can't sit in a room by himself for thirty minutes that's what i'm suggesting but twelve hours who who's said name it after them i don't know abe lincoln pascal this is the new pascal wage bla pascal on this so the new pascal wage is can you do this i think just sitting for thirty minutes though and writing on with pen with a pen and paper is probably even more beneficial i think that like you have mentioned wanting to write a book and in my head i'm like man running a book that would require like three hours a day of just not talking to anyone and being zoned out that is what is that is what is holding me or i mean don't really wanna to write a book but like if i were to write a book that is what's holding me back is not in a good idea not can i write it's but that requires three hours a day of silence right and i think that that's pretty messed up that that is the reason why people can't do their best work i met up with tim urban in austin and you know big fan of his blog and he was writing a book at the time and i was asking when he goes he's made it sound so simple he goes all i do he he said the same thing i wake up and for two hours all i do is write i don't need a perfect day i don't need eight hours a day he goes i need two hours that's it and in those two hours i might write two paragraphs two sentences or two me pages but if i just do that every single day for the year it just stacks right you you do that for three hundred straight days you've written a six hundred page book and he's like i can just sit down and write the equivalent of two pages right it's not even like a you know like a book page is even smaller than like a you know google doc page and he's like two hours like if you on two hours like then you're not serious about this and that that really stuck with me so i started that's you know part of the inspiration running my company hampton it gives me the chance to meet with hundreds of different businesses and i'm always surprised by how many of them still use spreadsheets emails and clunky tools that do not talk to each other it's like watching someone build a house with duct tape so here's my take custom software that actually fits your needs isn't just convenient it's a competitive advantage should transform the way you do business and that's why you need to know about a no code platform called bubble with bubble you can build powerful web and mobile apps by literally dragging and dropping different elements out of the screen no coding required by the way i use bubble on a ton of different apps including hampton and if you want help building something complex on bubble you have to bring in zero code they're the top bubble agency out there and literally the biggest plug creator for the platform they can build anything custom portals saas products and they do about ten times faster and cheaper than traditional development zero code is also all about ai business automation transforming manual and slow processes into efficient automated ones so stop cobb together different tools and solutions and head to zero code dot com that's zero code as in the word zero and then code q o d e again code is with a q and tell them that's sam sent do you know who robert carl is yeah what did he write so robert carr i think he originally was a journalist and then his first big piece of writing was a three book series on lyndon johnson the president after jfk and each book was like eight hundred pages but then his big world famous bit of writing was called the power broker and it was on a new york politician called robert moses and obama has since written like the forward for the most recent addition of the power broker just to give it an idea of how influential this book is many people regard the power broker as the greatest biography of all time it doesn't matter if you're interested in robert moses the guy or not the fact that this man packed every single sentence with like the best research for like i think it's fourteen hundred pages that's it's like it's like a modern marvel that's what like that's like the cloud of this book and he did like a funny things like he would go to like if he's riding about a location he would go there and count the amount of people coming in and out of the location so when he wrote about it he'd be like fifty eight people came that day you know like he was he's like a very specific but anyway there's a museum exhibit that i went to this past weekend and where it was a whole exhibit written about or or on robert carl writing the book the power broker and one of the main parts of the the exhibit was his process for writing and what he said that he did was he had you know how like a lot of our parents or teachers used to have a desk calendar where it's a big calendar where it has all thirty days on a piece of paper and so his goal was he goes all i need to do is write one thousand words every single day they don't have to be good words they i can throw them away but what i have to do no matter what and write to write this book over the next three years one thousand words every single day and i will achieve my mission and they have the original notepad his like calendar in the museum exhibit and he writes on it he says twelve hundred forty three words today thirteen hundred this many word and he writes it and you see a big x on it right and when it's like an x on the on the block and then how many words and the they showed august and it was like he missed one because he was like had flu or something like that but it was like it looks like a chain of like you know ex which i think jerry seinfeld the one's reference and it was incredibly inspiring that greatness this book being the great thing which it's one of the best biographies i've ever read but greatness comes from my very simple process of one thousand words every single day of course he's a genius and there's all this amazing amazing stuff this but that was probably the cornerstone of actually going from idea to a great work with sticking to that thousand words per day and that is a very attainable thing it's hard to do but that is a very bite sized way of looking at an epic project it was which i found very inspirational i love that there's a another great one that is is like that have you heard the steve martin ban jo story no what's that okay so the steve mark band he crush he crush the bit this says steve martin tells the story i got like a coach or a teacher or tutor and the teacher or tutor was sort of like honest with him and was like yeah you don't have like a ton of natural bench down just so you know right like he was pretty frustrated with his progress and what he did was he's zoomed out and i just thought this like so such a powerful simple mental trick where he just goes alright look i suck today and i'm probably gonna suck tomorrow i'm probably gonna suck for the next three months at six months or whatever he goes but here's the thing i really wanna play the ban joe he goes what if instead i just committed to playing the ban for forty years because if you anybody who plays the ban for forty years you can't suck and it just took all the pressure of being good off his shoulders and let him just be like yeah i'm just committed i'm just gonna do this for forty years and of i'll get good no like you know then i don't have to have these like daily doubts or questions or hesitation or moments where i wanna you know give up because i reset my expectations and i love that story and by the way he like wins a grammy for a song where he he's playing the manager like you know five or seven years later so you and like obviously he worked out really well but i love that kind of forty year mindset because it applies to basically everything like i felt this with like diet or fitness it's like easy to get frustrated on you know i was doing well then i sort of traveled and fell off the wagon for two days or whatever and it's like two two zoom outs have helped me i was like look it took me thirty seven years to get in this shape like it's okay if it takes a couple for me to fix it you know what i like it's alright and then the zoom out being like instead of just doubting like can i do it will it happens it's like so i'm just gonna keep trying this for the next decade do i really think it's not gonna happen if i just keep like giving this by all for a decade like no course it's gonna happen of course i'm gonna fix all these habits i'm gonna get this good workout routine i'm gonna do all the things that i know i need to do and i think it's very helpful because most people will quit early but they don't quit early because they're weak they're quit early because they're beating themselves up and they have the wrong expectation of how long something takes or how easy it'll be or how like you know whether they deserve it or not whether it it'll happen for them or not right like if you knew it was gonna happen when your uber says it's nine minutes away you don't get panicked that it's nine minutes away you just sort of accept as nine minutes away you see it coming towards you versus if you're doing some project if you have no idea if it is it even is gonna happen right like then every day you have this sort of i or am i out doubts i think that like there's like a list of people so this is like a business show so we talk about business and money a lot but there's like a list of people who i learn more from that have nothing to do with any of that and i think like a steve martin type is one of those people i think that when when i hear that story so like i have a a few like bad habits which are strength and weaknesses one of them being i put time limits on goals and so i have a milestone for where i wanna be like every five years and that helps me stay focused but also i feel immense pressure of like i have to hurry up and i gotta get it and so it's cool to hear a story like this of something where you're like you change the frame to where i'm gonna do this down for forty years instead of five because if you do something for five years that like change i could break five years down quarterly and then if i could break it down quarterly i could break down monthly if i could break down monthly then i break it down daily and that is where both structure and anxiety comes into play well i think i i used to be like well which one is because i know the deadlines and the time rates help me but i know they also feel bad and i know when i go over them or i don't have the results in time feels bad man what do i do and then then neville quote kinda cleared it up for me which is in patients with action patients with results so the forty year story isn't i want this to take forty years and i'm gonna spread my workout over forty years it's the result is inevitable over a forty your span now the day to day actions i'm gonna be quite impatient about i'm not gonna let myself be super patient about taking steps and moving forward and trying you know so you have to be able to hold both those polar ideas in your head at the same time and this is so common almost everything you have in life like all the sort of best things come when you have to hold two truths that are polar opposites in your head at the same time and so i i think this is one them i i i think i heard you say that on a podcast recently i learned that from joe lo i forgot nobody he calls it like dialect or something like atlanta and maybe that's like sci but he that's not a little too i think that is a that sounds a little too philosophical like a philosophy class stuff for me but i think i'd prefer the sean away let me let me read this thing here because i i learned this when i was researching for joe's podcast so he goes i'm not by any means of philosopher but i've worked worked through some talented people who who you know are in that discipline there's an idea of opposing truths at extremes it's a powerful concept that i've learned appreciate by twenties so he goes my personality sometimes i'm called a little intense and when i spent a lot of time reading discussing or thinking about an area i'll often appreciate why a strong viewpoint is true it come to very firm conclusions then later i'm exposed to an opposite strong view and i find this counter view also very persuasive and i found this confusing how could both extreme contradictory victory viewpoints to be true and then this great thinker g w f hi said truth exists at different extremes and the actual truth is a complex interaction between the two so like you know it he goes most people are sloppy thinkers and opt for a middle of the road when they're face the two two opposing extremes that compromise is less accurate than if you just picked one of the extreme polls that were that were quite persuasive but the wisest stance will incorporate both of the opposites within itself do you have an example of like of like two opposites that you you tend to buy into the example we just gave of like patience versus imp like oh it served me so well to be impatient and like i don't know any successful people that consider themselves super patient but then at the same time you go talk to those people and they're like yeah i was working on this for nine years before we you know had a breakthrough it's like damn these people take pretty long term time horizons also so how is it true how can they be impatient and have a very long term time horizon it's because both things are true just in slightly different ways what's another example yeah i've got a couple of them one of them is capitalism so like i'm super pro capitalism like i love making money i think building businesses is great i think kinda a little bit everyone on their own is awesome and then other times in my private life i'm like i wanna be like a socialist i just wanna share with everyone like i feel bad that my i don't want my cleaning lady to wanna go without i wanna make sure that she is paid above and beyond even if it's not with the market demands and i get angry at capitalism and i i feel like this kind of like this polar like one i'm like so pro capitalism and two it's like man i just want everyone to like she get paid more than they do and to to be wealthy in those but you can't have both of those do you ever experience that yeah yeah totally you know you have the the sort of head in the heart and you know differences in that in that way another another one that he gives us an example that that's true for me is like the difference between depth and width so it's like do you be a generalist and you're able to like kinda go pretty broad or do you go for depth you know and it's like well there's no one answer and there's obviously virtue to either path and you wanna do both but you can't do both at the same time it wouldn't be like it wouldn't be true you wouldn't be sort of defining physics if you're gonna try to do that do both those at the same time and so you could see the value in either end of the extreme what you probably don't wanna do is in the middle where you only have a handful of subject andrew not very deep in any of them here's one that i think you probably struggle with as well i struggle with this all the time which is creating legacy so like if i go to a museum and i see someone's name on the museum like wall or someone who has a business that's lasted for two hundred years i think i want that legacy i wanna do something great that everyone knows my name and on the other end nothing matters you're gonna die you'll be forgotten and like i would say fifty percent of the time i think this is all irrelevant all that's matters that is that i hang out with my children and spend time with them because i'm gonna die very soon and no one will remember me on the other end create something that matters do something that's great you know what like do you feel that way i think every entrepreneur by the way even no matter how successful they are even like the billionaires we've had on i bet a nice chunk of the time they think f this like i'm at right also it's like if you go down that road and you're like alright you know either none of it matters or this matters the most you get you you're sort you're the most persuasive person you know and so you know exactly how to convince yourself of either one of those arguments at the time that it justifies doing whatever it is that you wanna do you know so you can't trust yourself in that way either yeah it's like being hungry at the grocery feel it's like well i'm feeling down today therefore nothing crazy so therefore i've got let it put right exactly but like that that is like the dichotomy that i face probably the i i i i am i am more often than not on i more often than not do i feel uncertainty around those two than i do feel certainty by the way can i also just give you some props i think your robert carr museum visit that you did your you know these these clubs these housing things did you you have a crazy by bag of knowledge and interest that's just like really insane to me like you that's really i don't know inspiring and interesting like i just can't believe like i don't know what is your filter for what you get like interested in but the result of it fa me know which is why we've been able to do whatever seven hundred episodes of the podcast well and by the way the the props go both ways when i hear like you tell a story i'm like how do you know this can but basically when it comes down like i i i i tend to find something that interests me and then i'll create a semester around it so where i'm like this interest me i'm gonna follow my nose and i will like pretty systematically read about it from like nine to ten and i just follow what interests me right now i'm oddly interested in like beauty and art and so i can give you an example i i live in new york city now in the upper west side and i purposely moved into a building from the gil age because that's my favorite era and my neighborhood is it's very weird there there's a little bit of the ti coming out but i am in awe of all these buildings that were built between like eighteen ninety five and nineteen twenty and so i have been using chat gb and i've been going from building to building to building like i'll just walk around at night and like learn about the building and asked the doorman i'm like tell me everything about this building i wanna know all about the architecture i find it so fascinating and the other day i started watching this guy come in say this in a crude way and if he makes it to him i just wanna say guy i'm sorry but i i'm gonna say it this way but do you know the indian guy from mean girls his name's raj do you remember the maybe yeah kind of yeah first of all i wanna say i'm a huge fan of his i'm only saying a crude way because this is how what most people were oh the rapper the rapper guy yeah yes as james g so r a j i v he has a youtube channel right now that i love he's basically like bob ross but he's been talking about pottery and calligraphy and like kind of beautiful things things that don't typically do well on youtube things that are really fast or the opposite of fast so it's not fast paced it's very slow and he's been talking about architecture now that's like one of his latest things buildings and i realized in one of the videos that he lives down the street from where i now live and last week or on sunday i was at a coffee shop and i saw him and i go hey are you raj received i just wanna let you know i love your youtube channel it is so good what are you doing because i'm just getting coffee i was like well i have a seat right here me and my daughter are are gonna have a coffee would you like to hang out with me and so i sat with an hour with this guy and he told me all about the neighborhood and all about the beauty of like the architecture and that is like where i'll learn and like get stories is i'll just go up and like talk to him or find another person who i love and it's it's been a blast like following my nose of like what interesting that's hilarious that's amazing hey i i spent an hour with this guy i have an extra baby seat here you wanna no well i had there was like i had the best seat in the house it and i do you wanna sit down and just like talk and hang out with me and it's was like oh great maybe didn't work like that up with me but anyway i've been that that's usually what i what do to like learn is i like that usually what i do i meet a former actor turned like cultural expert at the coffee of that's not what you usually do right no immense myself like i get interested in like a topic and i'll immense myself and then i go out and i talk to people about it so i do field trips this was a lucky field trip but i would do field trips all the time whereas like i'll hear about a museum doing a thing or i'll fly somewhere that that's why i like to learn that's cool yeah you should publish more of that i think that's great well that's cool i guess i should i never really thought of it as particularly unique how do you when you read a book or a topic what do you do yeah i'm like kind of a similar thing just a little less structured as in like i think my attention spans a little shorter meaning like once i once the idea clicks i get this extreme high of feeling like i just learned something cool or know something now and then i wanna go do it and i don't wanna keep researching and then also and also it'll lead me to the next thing which is totally unrelated you know like i had this old phase on the creative process which was reading about seinfeld filled in the band story and all this stuff like super super into that and then it'll be like old school marketers and then it'll be you know the posterior chain and like why my hamstrings are so tight what what should posture actually be and how do i fix that you know like it just be like random stuff like that where i'll get you know a similar season but i think mine are shorter because i am less diligent about doing it yeah i i my preferred way of doing is if i think i'm gonna be interested in topic i try to research like roughly three to six books on the topic and i commit to going deep on right because i don't want to be persuaded when it gets look like i don't i wanna make my decision in advance that i'm going to consume instead because otherwise you have the problem i have which is like anytime you hit a lull where you just like are not getting like amazing feedback loop of learning new things or you know finding something interesting it's easy to eject because this was a voluntary thing anyways it wasn't like for a specific outcome or result whereas i think i would be better served if i did it your way where i like pre commit the time and it's like look i can't do anything else during this i'm just gonna keep keep wandering around here because i bet i'm giving up at the first lull but there's still like a lot more gold to find if i just carry on you know if i if i just want to keep wandering for a little bit longer and oftentimes is what people tend to do is they think that researching what to research next or researching what to do next is actually productivity when it's not productivity is actually doing anything thing but yeah brent hey renaissance sam what can i say the rem sounds alright that's it go ahead hit him with line that's it that's a fun i feel like i could rude to where i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a day's off on a less travel never looking back my friends if you like m then you're gonna like the following podcast called a billion dollar moves and of course it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the number one audio destination for business professionals billion dollar moves it's hosted by sarah chen spelling sarah is a venture capitalist and strategist and with billion dollar moves she wants to look at unicorn founders and fund and she looks for what she calls the unexpected leader many of them were underestimated long before they became huge and successful and iconic she does it with unfiltered conversations about success failure fear courage and all that great stuff so again if you like my first million check out billion dollar moves it's brought to you by the hotspot hubspot podcast network again billion dollar moves alright back to the episode

alright here's what i said i said describe howard marx in two hundred eighty characters here's what it gave you howard marx as a legendary investor and c cofounder of oak capital known for sharp memos contra concurrent thinking and risk focused approach he made billions zig when others zag especially in crisis when he writes wall street listens pretty flattering pretty pretty good yeah i feel like i could rule word i know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a days off on a road less travel never look me okay well i i think the best place to start is that kinda z while others zag so i wanna ask about the s and p because you don't know much about us but the the short version of of the guy you see across from me there sam is sam's entrepreneur sam builds his company he sold his company and he took the money that he made and he said look i worked hard for this money now i want this money to work hard for me but i needed to be safe and so sam went into a a mostly you know best practice low cost index funds in the s sap p five hundred and time i sam i'm about his strategy or i tell him dude you gotta buy bitcoin in ethereum if you gotta buy this get put some money over here because i'm i'm like you know if sam is vanilla i don't even know what i am some flavor off in the side that's how about strange two f fruity yeah two fruity over here and i i'll keep trying to pull it over here but he says no i like vanilla and so he he basically just says the long term average asp p five hundred is ten percent if i just hold this for fifty years i'm gonna double you know this many times i'm good very very boring very boring yeah he repeats that like on loop like he's he's one of my kids toys you push the butt they just keep saying the same line but you know i do get a little wary when anything seems too safe for two two certain i guess two taken for granted that this ten percent number over the long term will be the be what it'll be i guess what would your message be the sam as sam just you know is he right is he wrong would you give them a caution of warning if if he was your nephew he looks like he might be in your nephew if he was your nephew what would you be telling him well on the one hand sam you're right because if if you have more money than you need to eat the first person first purpose of your money should be to make you comfortable it doesn't make any sense buffet says don't risk what you have a need to get what you don't have and don't need it does makes no sense for somebody with a surplus of money to make their daily life less pleasant by going to investments that put them under pressure but there's gonna be a butt on your statement it sounds like but on the other hand the risk is thing in the world is the belief that there's no risk the risk in the markets does not come from the companies the securities or the institutions like the exchanges the risk in the markets comes from the behavior of people and it's that for that reason that buffet says when others are imp you should be prudent when other people are care free you should be terrified because their behavior un undo raises prices and makes them precarious when other people are terrified you should be aggressive because their their behavior suppress prices to the point where everything's a giveaway so i don't i mean look in the long run you're right about the s and p and over the over the coming years american companies on balance are going to produce prosperity what what's that defined as long term in this well i would say a twenty or more is is is the is the real long term and i'll tell you in in a minute how i get there but my favorite cartoon i have a file of cartoons from over the years my favorite one there's a guy he's got his is a car pulled over to the side of the road the guy's in a phone booth so you know it's an old cartoon because there on no more phone booths and there's a as a factory going up in the background and he's screaming into telephone i don't give a damn about prudent diversification sell my ph chemical in other words prudent diversification calls for certain investment positions and a variety of them in a certain composition reality says i see fe chemicals burning to the ground get me out and you have you can't ignore reality now what what's reality in this case for you reality is recognizing where things stand and jp p jpmorgan published the chart around the end of twenty four and it was a scattered diagram showing over the years if you bought the relationship between the s and p five hundred ad purchase and the return of the annual return over the next ten years and it looked like this on this axis we had return and on this axis we had pe ratio and it was a it was a a negative correlation which means the higher the pe ratio you pay to lower the return you should expect makes perfect sense and it showed there was a number here twenty three on the pe ratio axis and it showed and which is what the pe ratio on the s and p was at the time and it showed that historically if you bought the s and p when the pe ratio is twenty three in every case there were no exceptions in every case your annual return of the next ten years was between two and minus two so all you have to know and what what are we today what what is it today twenty three twenty four twenty four twenty five because why because the prices have risen now maybe the outlook has risen so maybe it's still twenty three but i think let's say i think twenty four so you can say the s and p has returned ten percent a year on average for a hundred years i i'm happy with ten i'm in or you can say it doesn't always return ten by the way one of the most interesting things about the s and p if you do the research and i did it for a memo on average it has returned ten percent a year for a hundred years but do you know that the annual return is almost never between eight and twelve it it kills it or it does floyd yeah think about what that means the the the the norm is not the average but the the issue for someone like me so a lot of our listeners of i'm one of them you know i i was fortunate i had a business i i made a relatively large in the money at a very young age but i'm at an investor yeah like i don't know anything about public markets and so when i hear you say that i think i don't have an alternative well you you do have an alternative you could figure out an algorithm to rebalance your position based on relative price and you could put it on autopilot i don't recommend you know making judgments about the future and the appropriate of today's price for the future you perceive but you can do that and and there are ways to do these things even if you just use common sense what what would you be rebalancing into so let's say s and p p is high what would be the second best for the sort of non full time active impact okay so i i've tried to suppress my tendency to talk my book until now but but i i think an alternative is is bonds you know and in nineteen i joined citi bank in the investment research department in nineteen sixty nine as an equity analyst and the bank did so horribly that in seventy eight i was banished to the bond department and the bond department was the equivalent of siberia the good news is that at that time american corporations pretty much gave lifetime employment so i didn't get sacked but i'm in the bond department and i get a phone call from the head of the bond department saying that there's some guy in in california name something like milk and he he invest in something called high bonds can you figure out what that means and i said yes and i became a high bond investor and and you know what when you buy a bond there's a contract that says the borrower will pay you interest every six months and give you money back at the end and you can figure out the return that is implied by that contract and if they if the borrower doesn't keep that contract over general overs simplifying the creditors get the company through the bankruptcy process so the borrower has a lot of incentive to pay you and they almost always pay i've been involved in high yield bonds for forty seven years and i can tell you they've almost all paid so today you can buy high yield bonds whether it be the us or europe or variations on that theme what we call low grade credit and you can buy buy it to get yields of seven to eight now seven to eight is pretty close to ten so that's yeah that's a good thing the bad thing is you have to pay tax every year on the on the income that's a bad thing but for those of us who are cautious like you and me we might say i'll take you know eight which in the long run will give me four after tax as opposed to ten which after capital gains taxation will give me seven or maybe i'll mix them maybe i'll own a little less s and p and a little more debt because that's what i do now yeah because i'm worried it's not all or nothing then that's why i when i'm on tv shows and they say well is this a sell or buy is this risk on or risk off i resist that formulation because it's never one or the other it's it's a mix and the only question this relevant is what mix i think the way when you manage your portfolio the the operative continuum to think about is the continuum that runs from aggressive to defensive and i think about a a speed predominantly in the car so zero is no risk a hundred is max risk hundred percent aggressive you should have a sense for your appropriate normal posture and it sounds to me like sam you're little conservative guy you've made so much money you can't believe it but you don't wanna give it back so so i would say that you're you're a sixty five and especially given your youth with you may be a fifty five for your cohort so i and and i think you should figure out every every listener every investor should figure out the right place for them and try to stay there most of the time we need to get a couch here and you could just yeah i'll call you doctor mark and my know what i run i once wrote a memo called on the couch because i think that once in a while the market needs a trip to the shrink hey let's take a quick break you know hubspot helped tumblr solve a big problem tumblr needed to move fast they were trying to produce trending content but their marketing department was stuck waiting on engineers to code every single email campaign but now they use hubspot customer platform to email real time trending content to millions of users in just seconds and the result was huge three times more engagement and double the content creation if you wanna move faster like tumblr visit hubspot dot com alright back to the show i went back and i read a bunch of your old memos and the one that stood out to me was the bubble dot com one so you wrote this back in two thousand and i i actually have a few of these where i feel like there's been moments in time maybe two thousand two thousand eight twenty twelve twenty twenty where it seemed like consensus was going one way maybe it was max greed and you went the other way or as max fear and panic and then you you were actually very aggressive you did the thing where buffett says be fearful when others greedy and greedy when others are fearful it's cool to say but it's hard to actually do and i thought it'd be fun if you could kinda walk us through a couple of those moments and i don't know like yeah not to go too far down memory memory lay but just you know take us back to you know the the one in two thousand what you see what you do how did you know how did that play would you learn from that take us through a couple of those because i think that's your superpower first of all what one of my sayings is we never know where we're going but we sure as hell to know where we are and at oak tree we loudly pro claim our inability to make macro forecasts and our non reliance on macro forecasts but if we wanna do the right thing vis a vis the macro we should be able to figure out what's going on at the present time and what that implies for the future yeah it may not happen the thing you think it implies but it probably has a higher chance of happening than not happening if you're logical and and understand history and patterns and i wrote a book called the mastering the market cycle which was published in eighteen and i i always say it's a cheesy title but it wasn't my idea the publisher wanted that title because they thought it would sell more books but i like the subtitle and the subtitle says getting the odds on your side and i believe that where we stand in the cycle determines what probably is gonna happen and how likely it is and understanding that can improve your odds it can't make you a short winner but it can improve your odds and that's the best we can do in an uncertain world be set by randomness this so you know i i don't know if you know that i started writing the memos in nineteen ninety bubble dot com on the first day of two thousand was the first one that ever garnered a response i went ten years not only did nobody say hey hey that was good nobody even said i got it and and and and so one of the mysteries is why i can who who are you sending them to to our clients how many crickets well you know in nineteen ninety a hundred okay you know and by mail of course i wrote bubble dot com january the second of two thousand and it had two virtue it was right and it was right fast if you're right slow it it doesn't look like you were right one of the great sayings in our businesses is that being too far ahead of your time is indistinguishable from being wrong so the the the answer is i was not too far ahead in in the fall of ninety nine i read a book called devil take the behind most it's a it's a history of financial speculation were you looking for books about that because you had a hunch or you just randomly read this no i i don't remember why i read it the idea comes first not my books my memos are not research based they're based on ideas that resonate with me and so i'm reading this book oh i am interested in financial speculation i'm interested in cycles i'm interested in in the extremes of financial behavior so that's probably why i read it but i'm reading this book and it talks about all these crazy things that people did especially in something called the south sea bubble britain had this big national debt and they concluded that they could pay it off by starting a company called the south sea company and they granted them a license to trade with the south sea by which they meant not samoa but brazil and and they would charge them a a license fee and that would pay off the debt and it was one of the one of the great bubbles and so i'm reading in the book about what people were doing in seventeen twenty and you know people were quitting their day jobs and hanging out in ale houses to trade the shares of the south company etcetera etcetera and i said that's what's going on now in the tech bubble people you may recall that people were quitting their jobs becoming day traders people with no money could trade stocks as long as they didn't carry any balance overnight and and and young people were quitting mba programs because they had an idea and if they're waited until they graduated somebody else would take it so so it just resonated and one of the quotes i used the most now is from mark twain who said history does not repeat but it does rhyme there are certain themes that rhyme from generations generation and cycle to cycle because they are embedded in human nature and so they recur and so and when you when you get older in our business you know obviously one of the things i has to point out is there is no such thing as knowing something about the future and if you don't know about the future and you wanna figure out the future there's no such thing as analyzing the future it doesn't exist and the only thing you can do to get a handle on the future is look at the past and look for the repetition of patterns as twain said and try to figure out if they apply today so this was very easy so i wrote this memo bubble dot com and it said what they were doing people are doing today and i point tried to point out the fo of what i saw going on companies with no profits and no revenues we're being highly valued maybe no product just an idea and that is the epitome of a bubble so i wrote the memo as i say january the second sometime around mid year the detect bubble started to collapse so as i said in the introduction to one of my books after ten years i became an overnight success did you actually bet against it or did you just preserve capital by not funneling into to every know tech company basically like what what was the what was the win of that for you first of all we're not involved who were basically not involved in the us stock market and we're not involved at all in technology so we wouldn't have a chance to apply that but i think what we did is we recognize recognized that and and by the way things don't happen in isolation uniquely so when you when you see something like i described in the tech bubble you should realize that maybe there are ramifications in other world parts of the world and we figured out that people are engaging in optimism not pessimism greed not fear cr not skepticism risk tolerance not risk aversion and when as buffet says about prudence when nobody's afraid un otherwise deals can get done easily simple as that and the people who buy that stuff it usually ends badly the way that you explain it i think everything makes sense and i totally buy into it but that's actually quite challenging to understand this like macro environment and to say this is where we are yeah well you have to be clinical you have to observe and and without emotion understand what's going on and what the what the implications are and of course the what we call what i call emotion is part of what's called human nature if you succumb to human nature it tends to get you to do the wrong thing at the wrong time i came across a great quote within the last year from a guy who's a retired trader when the time comes to buy you won't want to and and that that that that encapsulated encapsulates so much wisdom because what is it that causes the great moments to buy it's probably the point of lowest consensus of when most people don't believe would be the time that the price is gonna be the lowest right it's the time with either the most uncertainty or the most pessimism or the most fear most conservatism so you also wanna be all those things what causes those things you're talking about you're talking about the manifestation what's the cause bad news i don't know about bad news bad events bad news news either either exogenous or geopolitical or or in the economy fa corporate fortunes declining stock prices widespread losses and a proliferation of articles about how terrible the future looks so the point that's why you don't wanna buy at the low who would wanna buy under those circumstances right and so you you talk before in your introduction about zig when others zag the only thing i'm sure of is that if you zig when they zig you're not gonna outperform alright this episode is brought to you by mercury they are the finance platform of choice for over two hundred thousand companies shouldn't be surprised because i use it myself for not one not two but i have eight different mercury accounts i have seven for different companies that i'm part of and then i have my own personal account because now they have personal banking which is really cool feature i highly highly recommend it like i said i use it myself the reason why is because the way that mercury works is beautiful it's very intuitive and you could tell that it's actually made by a starter founder an entrepreneur you could tell it's made by somebody who used other banking products in the past and didn't like all the different rough edges and and annoy and decided to you know actually fix it himself and really any type of entrepreneur you are let's say you're an agency well one of the things every agency has to do is be able to send invoices easily create them send them to customers and stay current on your balances with all your customers you can do that inside mercury and so i think that mercury is great highly recommend you check it out and thank you for sponsoring the show for more in nation check out mercury dot com mercury is a financial technology company not a bank check show notes for details do you still feel that fear you know the of you like when you know you're supposed to buy do you still feel fearful or do you feel like nice hello my old friend i love this emotion this is what i'm supposed to right yeah i mean it's not easy but you have to know we you have to do it you have to know that if that that what what makes buying opportunities and if you think about it the fortunes of companies and the outlook for companies doesn't change much what and i'm i'm writing a memo about this that'll come out one of these days and what changes is how people think about what's going on and think about the future and c so what changes is the relationship of price to what all call value sometimes they hate them sometimes they love them when they love them too much you should expect them to probably go down that sounds like a bull market or a bubble and when they hate them too much you should expect them to go up that sounds like a bear market or a crash and so you have to do the opposite and and the the same developments in the environment that that affect everybody else will affect you you're subject to them you'll feel them you read about them you hear about them everybody tells you how dire the outlook is and you know it's hard to ignore them but you have to do the right thing in the face of them nineteen ninety eight we had the russian rub devaluation the debt crisis in in southeast asia and the meltdown of long term capital management and one of our portfolio managers who who was young came to me and he said i think this is it i think we're gonna melt down i think it's all over i'm terribly pessimistic i said tell me why he went through his reasoning i said okay now go back to your desk do your job a a a battlefield hero and i don't wanna compare what we do to being a battlefield hero but a battlefield hero is not somebody who's una afraid it's somebody who does it anyway and that's that's the way you have to be can i i can i ask let me ask you about that because so it's funny interesting enough even though i'm the conservative one i'm actually way more emotional sean's like a more mostly is is is a pretty stable guy emotionally i go up and down which i think is actually closer to the average for average folks you said something really you said a bunch of stuff about emotion in the past i think you said to be a good investor you better be able to invest without emotion or at least act as if you don't have a lot of emotion has there ever been anything like a mindset shift or a practice or something that you've had to use in order to learn to be less emotional when investing no these things are not intentional on my part you think you're born like i i was born on emotional by the way and and i wanna point out here because my wife's downstairs is having lunch that that i i wrote in my book that it's really important to be on emotional and investing not so good to be une emotional in life in in arenas like marriage so there it's not an advantage but no for me it came naturally i don't have to i don't have to say oh there i go again i'm getting emotional i have to rest train that blah blah blah it and and and my partner bruce ka who who's been my partner successfully for thirty seven years he's pretty much the same so that makes it easy i don't have to rest train him we we've guessed you up about some of your your best moves what's the worst mistake you made due to an emotional mistake where you you didn't control your temperament properly and you made a mistake my worst mistake is not and i know you're talking about a point in time my worst mistake is that i have always been too conservative my parents were traumatized by the depression i always say the question is not whether your parents were alive during the depression but whether they were adults my parents were adults they were born in the nineteen arts and so in the depression they were in their thirties and they were they you know and depression was really traumatic nobody knows what it was like and it ground on for over ten years and and so you when you grow up with parents of the depression they say things like don't put all oil your eggs in one basket safe for rainy any day you know that kind of stuff and i ended up too conservative and if i if it wasn't conservative i'd be richer today i'm not sure i'd be happier because what's an example what do mean you were too conservative like i i guess like what what makes you say that what would you have done differently had that not had that wiring not been done in you well i mean i i don't know i might i might have gone to an into an a more aggressive asset class than credit like equities i might have become a venture capitalist or you know like my son andrew or a private or a leveraged buyout investor but you know the reason i was talking about the appropriate of credit for sam is because while the returns are a little lower there's much less uncertainty and downside so i i would say that if i i've been in this business fifty six years if i would've spent those fifty six years in less conservative asset classes i would've have made more money having said that it happens that i went into things like high yield bonds in seventy eight and distressed that in eighty eight and if i had not been a conservative person i probably wouldn't have had any clients because they would have been scared off by the risk so it served me well in in pioneering in those businesses but that was my i i mean i we never had a mistake like we were too defensive at a in a crisis or too aggressive in a bubble we just i just was too conservative all my life and that kinda makes sense because you i don't think you start oak tree until you're late forties right just short of my forty ninth birthday yeah and so well i i guess leading up to it were you already financially successful were were you a success leading up to that yeah and and so was it a big risk to start oak i was secure i i wasn't rich by today's standards and i may not have been rich by the standards at the time but i had i had a lot i had good money and i lived well so i started him running money in seventy eight i joined my oak founder partners in eighty five is eighty six eighty seven eighty eight we did a great job through a a variety of environments and we weren't worried about the ability to do a good job and we had enough money to eat so it it wasn't i mean but it it it i had to overcome my innate caution my wife had to give me a kick in the ass which he happily did i i may not have done it without her probably wouldn't have you you said you're you're too conservative but there's has been times when you've been very aggressive oh yeah yeah you know i think the sort of o seven zero eight financial crisis i read something that as the crisis happens you go raise ten billion dollars because you see the opportunity and you started deploying something like six hundred million dollars a week which is it just sounds bad badass as to be honest it's not doing maybe that's maybe that's not not not as crazy in the financial but it sounds crazy to me well it your your facts set is inaccurate in one regard we did not raise ten billion after the crisis hit because remember what i said about the guy who said when the time comes to investment want to you can't raise money in a crisis you if you went to people you say that world melting down we're gonna buy all this stuff we're it's gonna be a bona we're gonna get rich nobody give you money why because the same factors that influence the world influence the people you talk to and know everybody else stick their our hands their pockets and say maybe later after the after the dust settles and and light and a lot of people say you know we're not sure gonna try to catch a falling knife and i believe that you you make the big money catching falling knives carefully so what happened is we like i described about the tech bubble in two thousand we detected in o five six that the world was behaving in a in a care free manner and and i i would wear out the carpet between my office and bruce's with the wall street journal i'd say look at this look at this piece of junk that got issued yesterday there's something wrong if a deal like this can get done the world is exercising inadequate prudence specifically on mortgage is or just know bad mortgages mortgage i never heard a mortgage i never heard a sub i i don't think i ever heard the word subprime i don't think i ever knew what a mortgage backed security was it just seemed that the world was operating in a pro risk fashion and when people are pro risk they they they permit bad deals and they pay prices higher than they should so what happened was on on the first day of o seven we went out to our clients and we said we think there's an opportunity we didn't i don't think we raised funds in o five or six for his distressed that area but on the first day of o seven we went out we said we think there's a great opportunity coming and we'd like to have three billion the at that time the biggest distressed debt fund in history was our zero one fund which preceded the en run meltdown and so forth and it was two and five billion and so two and a half yeah around there so we went other clients we said we'd like to have three that would be the biggest distressed fund in history so within a month we had eight and we said you know we can't do anything with eight billion it's it's it exceeds our ability to invest it wisely so we're gonna take three and a half billion and we're gonna close the fund but we would like to have the remainder of your interest in a standby fund that will implement if the stuff hits the fan so the first fund was seven and it was three and five billion and the next fund was seven b and by the time we finished raising money for it a year later it was eleven billion and with and we and fund seven got fully invested so we started investing gradually investing seven b in june of o eight it's sitting there on the shelf and by september eighteenth fifteenth it was no eighteenth it was twelve percent invested so just over billion and le brothers declares bankruptcy and so the question which you implied was do you invest it or not you sitting there were all that money but the it looks like the world's gonna melt down do you invest it very simple and this as you say i think this was one of our best moments because i reached a very simple conclusion if we invest it and the world melts down it doesn't matter what we did but if i don't invest it and the world doesn't melt down then we didn't do our job q you have to move forward i also wrote that it's hard to predict the end of the world it's hard to assign a high probability to it it's hard to know what to do if the world is gonna melt down if you do those things and the world doesn't melt down it's probably its disaster and most of the world time the world doesn't melt down that was the that was the sum of our analysis because there was nothing to analyze there had never been a global financial crisis before the the meltdown of the financial sector had not been anticipated since the a great depression and there were there was there were no past patterns to extrapolate so you have to resort to logic that was the logic so as you say we invested four hundred and fifty million a week for the next fifteen weeks in that fund which was seven billion and oak overall invested an average of six hundred and fifty million a week for the next fifty fifteen weeks how did that turn out so that's what you put in how did what was the sort of result of that that investing during that time well it was great except for i mean we got good buys and we made good money but the fed mobilized very astute cutting interest rates to zero for the first time in history at the beginning of o nine and introducing q and those two things saved the economy so we didn't get the meltdown that everybody was afraid of and there were relatively few bankruptcies especially outside the financial sector that resulted from the global financial crisis so we had we've had some barn burner funds in crises this was very good but not a barn burner you've you you've you've done something that i love which is you well you you've quoted a ton of different people you've quoted mark twain a bunch of times you you've have all these quotes which like clearly shows that you retain information that you read and i imagine you read a lot can i you about your reading habits how do you pick what books do you read i i've never read any books about how to be an investor like you know multiply this by that and add this and subtract that and the books i've found most interesting have always been the ones about investor behavior and i mentioned devil take the high most nineteen nine one of the greatest books i ever read was before that john kenneth gal book called the short history of financial euphoria that was really pivotal for me and since i'm slow reader i like the fact that it was only about a hundred pages and then you know back in back in seventy four i think charlie ellis wrote an article winning the losers game where he said that because you can't predict the future active investment doesn't work he was a believer in the efficient market so rather than try to hit winners like the tennis player you should try to avoid hitting losers and keep the ball in play and that has always defined my investing style in fact i wrote a memo in the summer of twenty four and twenty three called fewer winners fewer losers or more winners and that's the basic choice of investing style there's a great luck i think like sort of math paradox that you've pointed out which is a you know a fund i don't know if it was your fund but any find it could be you know never a but never in the top ten percent but sort of never in the bottom fifty percent and there's a strategy of just consistently being above average will place you right in the top five percent right it'll it'll place you in the top percent can you unpack that idea a little bit i just i just sort of put you to in nineteen ninety i wrote a memo called the root to performance and i had dinner in minneapolis with my client dave van ben and ran the general mills pension fund and he dave explained to me that he had run the fund for fourteen years and in fourteen years the the equities general mills equity portfolio was never above the twenty seventh percentile or below the forty seventh percentile so fourteen years in a row solidly in the second quartile now if you said to the normal person not in the investment business so this thing fluctuate between the twenty seventh and the forty seventh where do you think it was for the whole period they would say well let me think probably around thirty seven the answer is fourth so if you if you can do well for fourteen years in a row and avoid the tendency to shoot yourself in the foot in a bad year you can pop up to the top at the same time another investment management firm had a terrible year because they were deep value investors and they were heavy in the banks and the bank suffered terribly so they were at the bottom so the president comes out and of course things people in the invest business are great rationalize and communicators and he says the answer is simple if you wanna be in the top five percent of money managers you have to be willing to be in the bottom well that makes great sense except that my clients don't care if i'm ever in the top five and they absolutely don't wanna see me in the bottom five so my reaction is the first guy's approach is the right one for me so that's why at oak tree we go for fewer losers not more winners yeah i love that because it's one of the un sexy ideas like i think any idea you can't you know make a movie out or won't make you sound really cool are generally undervalued ideas when they when they actually logically map out the way the way that one does and so i i sort of that was one that stuck out to me like nobody's gonna was gonna give you a motivational video about being consistently above average and just never shooting yourself in the foot right it's all about heroic greatness and huge risks you can take and you know being willing to do it and so you know that's all you hear but but you know the financial times of london every saturday they they have an article called the lunch with the f feet and they take somebody to lunch and they write an article about the person the restaurant and the food and they did that with me in late twenty two and i took the reporter to my favorite italian restaurant near the office in new york where i go a hundred percent at the time if i have a lunch and i and i said to her eating in this restaurant is like investing at oak always good sometimes great that terrible now that to to me that sounds like a modest boast but if you can do that for forty or fifty years i think it'll compound to great results if you never shoot yourself in the foot and i think it's i i don't know if the sec is listening but i think it's descriptive of what of what we've accomplished there's like this class of investor that's like kinda become like full hero you know like warren buffett an obvious one where the like a full hero sort of their high integrity that they make greatness seem achievable and relatable which is like a the whole skill in itself and and you've become one of these like full heroes you know and a lot of them they have in common where they like write a lot they write well they've got wonderful sayings they make challenging things easy to understand did you purposely try to become like this public figure well first of all you can ask somebody who did whether they did because they'll say no nobody will admit that nobody will say my my public persona is a facade with me and sam joking before this we were saying it's cool how it's interesting how i think when you started as an investor there was like no celebrity investors there's no like famous person who was doing what you were doing and then now you have whether it's buffett or mu there's like the investment guys are now like the philosophers yeah the tech ceo nerds are now like the power players of the world right podcast comedian are now like the new trusted media it's like this very strange shift on all fronts where you know influence has sort of shifted but i i find like investment crossover life philosopher to be just like one of the really wholesome some ones that i i personally really like you know right well you know i i hesitate to put myself is the same category but i think warren has always tried to just educate people and share his knowledge and and people say well why do you give away your secrets aren't afraid that other people will emulate you and and and catch up with you but i i don't think so because you know we can tell them all day long what what you should do but it's hard to do like we said at the beginning of the podcast friend of mine richard oil in london wrote a book once entitled simple but not easy i think the things we have to do are simple they're just not easy to do i think buffett makes investing seem simple because he boils it down to the essential ingredients by the way you said there were no favors investors i but i think buffett started around fifty three if that was mistaken he just wasn't famous yeah but and and there were a few people who were famous in the investment business but i don't think anybody was would was famous in the in the what wider world oh it's interesting for like the normal guys like me and and sean is like we learn from you about how to live life and you just and you and and that's kind of cool and it's just like investing is just your way of like testing if you're way of living is true right boom investing is a lot like life but but and and by the way i'm working on a book along those lines sam what's the call i don't know yet but but if you wait it a few years i think it'll be out well we appreciate you coming i i do wanna leave you with what it's a question for for you so we've asked you a bunch of questions but i i actually think it'd be interesting what question do you think people who listen to this should ask themselves what's a what's a useful question that you think people could ask themselves as a as a final final note here well i would think in terms of the mistakes that investors made and i would ask yourself whether you make them so what are the big mistakes investors make i i can think of three number one do you think you do you think you understand what the future holds and and do you reasonably think that's accurate number two i think the biggest single mistake that investors make is that they think the world will remain the way it is that the things that are working today will continue to work the things that aren't working will continue not to work that the trends are emotion will continue and that there won't be any new trends so do you do are are you part of that and then number three is do your emotions rise and fall and get you to do what they want as opposed to what you should do so i think you just have to have a checklist you know in my first book the most important thing i had a thing in there called the poor man's guide to market assessment and and it says on the left a bunch of things and on the right there's a bunch of things and and and it was half tongue cheek or maybe more than half but i mean it says you know are is the market rising or falling or are the tv shows about investing popular or on unpopular if an investor goes to a cocktail party is he mobs or shunned or or the deals get done easily or hard the people rate our our deals overs subscribed or left begging you know that kind of thing and you can tell you can figure out from that checklist whether the market is overheated and too popular or f and and and two shunned and this can tell you a lot of what to do if you're methodical and clinical well sean and i have have read your stuff forever we've listened to so many of your podcast podcasts it's been an honor we really appreciate you doing this that i think the best part of our best part of our job is we have an excuse to hang out with amazing people who are way out of our leagues and this is this is one of those occasions so thank you so much well thank you sam thank you sean i've enjoyed two questions and let's do it again sometime alright you're the best we appreciate you bye bye i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a day's off on a road less travel never looking my friends if you like m then you're gonna like the following podcast it's called a billion dollar moves and of course it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the number one audio destination for biz professionals billion dollar moves it's hosted by sarah chen spelling sarah is a venture capitalist and strategist and with billion dollar moves she wants to look at unicorn founders and fund and she looks for what she calls the unexpected leader many of them were underestimated long before they became huge and successful and iconic she does it with unfiltered conversations about success failure for your courage and all that great stuff so again if you like my first million check out billion dollar moves it's brought to you by the hotspot hubspot podcast network again billion dollar moves alright back to the episode

can you build a billion dollar company in only eighteen months today's guest his name is erica ay he's a buddy of mine who started a company called ramp and him and his cofounder they asked themselves this question before they started the company they wanted to get to a billion dollar valuation in only eighteen months and they reverse engineered it and i'd heard him tell this story before but he didn't really like give a lot of details on it and i thought it was amazing the fact that they were this bold and then they actually pulled it off so the company is worth something like twenty billion dollars now and they're only i think six years old and so give us episode to listen let me know what you think again erica alignment of ramp is on today's episode of my first million i feel like i could rule the world and know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a day's off on a go less travel never looked you said something that was like pretty crazy it was i wanna i wanna build a billion dollar company in eighteen in eighteen months yeah and that was kind of shocking because that's like great i mean that's crazy fast is that really what happened you guys had that conversation yeah that's real conversation that you guys didn't have you and cream were go on the same page we we wanna go fast for sure you know i think like the world is moving fast and ever we had already sold their first company and we were definitely like neither of us came for a whole lot we were comfortable and you know i think even at the time had already proven a a couple things out and you know in some sense had left like i was i was a twenty six year old you know senior director or of capital one i think it's like the youngest person at that that age like we left very good setups and so we knew that if we wanted to leave we wanted to go and make this company big and either make it huge quickly or fail really quickly and so yeah kareem really did have that conversation i think he had with calvin who you know later it he cracked me up i i think when we finally did become a billion dollar company and it did occur quickly in in twenty twenty one and so it was less than two years from incorporation of the of the company no shit by two years after incorporation yeah that's insane yeah who's was crazy you know a lot a lot of magical things happened in twenty twenty one but it it really did happen i know calvin said you know look something it's best not to know the odds you know if i looked it up and known and i would have seen that there was no company in new york's york history ever that was worth billion dollars within eighteen months or two years or three but yeah your revenue when you when you did that i mean in twenty twenty one jeez that was you know don't remember this was like peak excitement in the market i think we started that year maybe around ten million in in revenue probably less so which was six months into the company you're at a ten million run rate so let let me back up yeah we incorporated the company in march of twenty nineteen and we launched it publicly in february of twenty twenty the pandemic hit things slowed down then ramped just started really accelerating i think that year revenue grew something like seventy times year over year to the point where any a small denominator there but we had hit it was it was approaching ten million a year before the company was out for even a year and by the end of twenty twenty one again i think the multiples really hadn't changed too much but the company ended with an eight point one billion dollar valuation and we were coming up to but hadn't me crossed a hundred million a year revenue it was a crazier year so how many years until how many months until a hundred million run rate we were one of the fastest ever i mean so if you go back to it we i think announced it i wanna say in march of twenty twenty two i think is when pac mccormick it's covered the company deeply become a very good friend i think we're wrote the article talking about it as well as the eight point one billion dollar valuation i believe that was in march of of twenty two we launched in feb of twenty twenty i think we hit her first you know million run rates sometime in the spring maybe by early summer and so if you look at the traditional charts there's it's now become a bit of a meme of like time from a million to a hundred million in revenue our charts actually wrong and that's for like time from incorporation i wanna say like fifteen to seventeen months from a million to hundred million it was explosive that's it insane and like i don't even know i don't know anything about the finance industry or or i don't even know anything about your guys business model other than i use it like i know everything about personal finance apps i'm huge nerd in that but i don't even know how like i you you you take a percentage of of spend i imagine but i don't even understand explain to me how that works you know i didn't know anything about it either until i sold yeah last company to capital one and and and learn the business model and so in in in services there's it is particularly in the the card space there's two basic business model cards the credit cards the the two basic ways that they that they tend to make money number one is a transaction based model where there's this thing called interchange every time a card is swipe there's a series of payments the merchant rightfully so gets the the lion's share and then folks involved in moving the money take a little bit a little bit goes to let's say the merchant processor the people who accept the cards route it and deal with all the an example of that company it'll would be like a skype or square maybe a shopify they take a huge percentage right so they collect it but they don't keep a huge percentage got it so you might see headline on some of these sites you know two point nine percent plus forty cents or something like that at the very end of the day they might keep you know it varies anywhere from like point one to point five percent is ultimately their net take but the gross is much higher because they're collecting they've also paid the networks well we'll save have a few folks involved they have the the merchant bank so you as a customer have banks that's the you know it's deposited to some bank which maybe keep it there or you move it to your your business's bank account they'll keep a little bit maybe ten cents visa or a mastercard they'll keep a little bit too call it like point one to point four percent and then the remainder keep tends to go to the issuer and the issuer processor that's generally the people that you think of as like people's name is on your card it could be like a chase or it could be like a ramp or something like that or a capital one if you have a capital one card or wells fargo if you have that kind of a card and so the issuer in interchange is traditionally keeping most of that interchange and and the reason actually make sense when you think about it you know especially in credit they're taking on the risk they're saying that merchant we will pay you you know even if our customer doesn't pay us back when you accept this payment you were getting you were getting paid for it and if the customer later defaults that's on us and so they're generally taking the credit risk they have the operational cost of standing up the card programs and actually classically if you if you look historically these rate used to be very high a lot of these came from like the old department stores in the early nineteen hundreds where you'd have like a bank setup shop actually in the department stores and interchange could be high as five or six percent eighteen months saying at a hundred million in revenue how many employees did you have somewhere between a hundred and two hundred maybe two hundred dude so i don't that's just like bog my mind because my company is i think two years old and we're small or it's a bootstrap company be on the whole thing and so i think we have fifteen or eighteen people but when you're doing everything yourself as a bootstrap company just like getting one or two hires a month is hard i'm sure at para you're feeling the same thing where yeah just like the logistics of getting that many people yes just the day to day like does everyone have a computer that's incredibly challenging so that's ten people a month that you need to do that yeah it's kind of challenging to understand how how fast that is i mean now we're over eleven hundred people there can be single you know two week periods when we have forty to fifty people that start you know as i i totally agree with you you definitely need great software and you know even to the point that you had said earlier like you use rampant it don't don't totally understand exactly how it we're how all this stuff works i think there is in any business so much complexity in going and starting a company and operating and scaling it and i think there's an entire class of tool tools that tend to be great business models and some of the fastest growing companies in the last few years have actually been that you know you can look at like a ramp in the card space is what just doing so allowing you to scale up and down with full control full visibility all your expenses manage your accounting managed don you don't need to think about it in hr and payroll rip is a great example where you know i think that they're eight years old i think they're last round really rip you know in age eight years old they're at years old they started in this i was one of the first customers i mean maybe twenty sixteen maybe nine but you know they're they're they're not that old and i think they're last round i wanna say was at seventeen billion i it saying right yeah there's a lot of these tools hubspot you know you you you mentioned them like they're an incredible company that takes what used to be there's lots of little paper cuts that generally need to deal with as a business owner and extract those away and so i i think kind of these boring business models can actually be very good i think i've been able to grow into some of like my success a bit because it happens a little bit slower yeah when you're thirty two years old or whatever and you have two hundred people or you have this valuation or whatever like that it's a little bit overnight feeling did you have like weird feelings of like a self actual centralization of like oh my god all i what i wanted is actually here this fast and i don't know if i'm actually ready to step into that position of or have this responsibility no there's always like impostor syndrome and you know you know i and i would say so so there a couple things i mean we from early on design the company explicitly around velocity if you kinda step back and and sort of look at the the the particular industry that we're playing in not a joke most of the founders of the companies that we compete with actually wore top hats you know they they you looked in the you know what what it means you know like james pier morgan yeah henry wells like you know you you you look at the people who started am city chase you know nothing wrong with with these these businesses in fact there's a lot to love about them they're enormous businesses but you know a lot of their fundamental edges were in long time enduring brands unbelievable distribution risk and underwriting the benefits of scale and of time but all of them move very slowly and i think in analogy i like to use sometimes is like you know imagine that you wake up one day and you have to use like the computer or like the cell phone technology or like the tools that your parents used when they were your age it'd be very like you couldn't do this podcast it'd be very hard to run your business in that way if you woke up and you had to use their bank account or their credit card or or debit card you probably could you know not too bad and and i think it's sort of proof of like not too much innovation has happened and the products haven't fundamentally evolved over the past thirty forty years is you know wrote from you know no phones to flip phones to computers that can think and so a lot of our view was early on we needed to count the days and move an incredible velocity and simply be designed to ship things faster and so today we're two thousand three hundred and ten days old were six years yeah that's it insane by the way you you just said that yeah so you know the day i mean that's just like a a radical thing it's you know i and i remember in the early days when you go back to that eighteen months you were we were talking about at the beginning you know we were like hell bent on okay within forty five days we wanna be approved by the network within sixty we wanna be approved by bank within seventy we wanna be you know funding our first transactions we wanna get this product in front of customers as fast as possible and so a lot of what we were trying to do is just move very quickly we could set goals if we wanted to grow the company ten percent a week you know once you got the scale twenty percent of month we people out it's very intense you don't have this typical personality types like usually people who succeed as fast as you have are very very high on the disagreeable scale yeah you seem pretty easy to get along and you're very calm i don't understand like how that personality type has like i've been able to grow this my view is like i i don't i'm not trying to find folks who are you know low cost you know push them to an extreme burn them out i would rather find people who like just find extreme joy in their craft and just set them up where they can be doing just that as much as possible all the time but i think that you have to if you wanna move quickly you can't do everything there's only one or two things you can pick and you try to have like extreme focus as a company on that and just having an every day trying to just ask like what are the things we can do to optimize just this one function alright so i've built a few companies that have made a few million dollars a year and i've built two companies that have made tens of millions of dollars a year and so i have a little bit of experience launching building creating new things and i actually don't come up with a lot of original ideas instead what i'm really really good at what my skill set is is researching different ideas different gaps in the market in reverse engineering companies and i did invent this by the way we this guy brad jacobs we talked him about him on the podcast he started like four or five different publicly traded companies where tens of billions of dollars each he actually is the one who i learned how to do this from and so with the team at hubspot we put together all of my research tactics frameworks techniques on spotting different opportunities in the market reverse engineering companies and figuring out exactly where opportunities are versus just coming up with a random silly idea and throwing it against the wall and hoping that it sticks and so if you wanna see my framework you can check it out the link is below in the youtube description what business is bringing gonna start instead of ramp so you had just sold pair is it pair airbus yeah have you ever said how much money did you make off that we didn't i mean talked about it publicly but it was mid figures you eat walked away with that no that was the total deal the total but we hadn't raised very much i mean we had there's three of y'all it it was it was really kurt k and i you know then and but we had raised something like two million dollars at at the time and so there were some investors but most of it went to founders and in place so it was enough that you're like i'm good potentially good for forever depending on how i live but i've enough so you're sitting around and you're like at capital one doing your thing what was your list of ideas that you guys were like scheming on where you're like it could be this it could be this what if it was this in this angle like what was that list so i think everyone has a list you go exactly you go through all these different phases so the first year we were just dead set on these people just changed it lives we wanna make sure that they feel incredibly good actually about this deal so the first year we actually didn't spend too much time at all you know we wanted to go and make sure there wasn't failure to launch like we didn't get crushed kinda by the weight of winning this fifty thousand person company and that so you're just being a good seller yeah which i i think is good but but sort of like underrated kind of the value of like integrity relationships or you know you know that was important to me when i sold to a hundred percent i was like winning i remember thinking i think they got the better of the deal this for that but i was like you know i'm happy but i'm also i kind of want to have a reputation as someone who yeah it was a we all won we all win exactly right and i i am i'm more flag like for folks are like young and you know the value of like a great reference of people saying like the world small man it's so small and so that was that was the first year i i think the second we start saying okay this is interesting but folks you know i missed the speed yeah you know i feel like i'm about a cruise ship versus a small speed boat of of kind of going and starting a company and so i i think i did what a lot of entrepreneurs do which is i started trying to come up with you know ideas in the abstract and you know the i i think we went on a journey of like bad ideas until eventually it was you know came back to good ones and so i think at the time you i was looking at i think similar to or talk before this we were you know looking at places in new and they're all kinda of bad and we're wondering why are they bad and we should you know cars are manufactured planes are manufactured all these products that are low cost affordable but wonder that anyone can afford or or manufactured wired aren't homes are manufactured so you're gonna you're you're interested in manufactured like like when i was a kid like a bunch of my poor friends like in my grandparents they lived in we just call the like mobile homes yeah like just many i guess that's what they're called in i mean the nice ways manufactured houses they're were manufactured house i mean there was also you know like one of the places that like is extremely populous it's the like biggest city in the world and yet housing isn't so crazy una affordable is like tokyo are you go to japan and it's because they actually most of the home builders are how manufacturers and things are very standard the cost of a new home build is like not that expensive and you know i think there's all sorts of issues in the states related to this and we thought wow we should look in into like manufacturing homes and i still buy them and and i think that they're i've invested in a few of them yeah they're they're very hard it was very popular right around when you were starting in ramp yeah and i invested in two or three yeah that space interested me none of them have like completely taken off in ultimately we decided not to do this for a couple of reasons so hard one actually had no business in doing it and i rented an apartment in new york i never owned home i've manufactured anything and you know there was no connecting story to it but then the more you read about it the constraint in the bottleneck was not around manufacturing at all it was all the zoning and was that you could manufacture a house that was zoned to go nowhere unless you could go and see it to there was a lot of complex problems and and while i hope someone solves a lot of this i i think that there's you think that's still interesting i think it's still interesting on my view is it's like the the manufacturing is part it but the zoning question is very real it's how do you actually get and you can open in all these funny ways of like which weight does the house space you know how far back does it have to be set what are the proportions joe is doing something in this space i think if people crack this i think it is an enormous opportunity but it is like a big s and like this is one of those businesses where you you're not gonna ten x for a while you're gonna be ten percent twenty percent compound but there's a great business i do you think to be built there okay it's just too expensive so that was on the list of like tractor trailer or i don't know what you call it dude like my friends like their home or like my grandparents they lived in a place where like their home was delivered on like a truck yeah yeah and so okay so that's the interesting space yeah what else was on the list so that was on the list we there was various like random crypto things we were you know we cri and i've been interested in the stuff i going back to like twenty twelve and routine so we spent a little bit of time on that space you know we spent some time you know helping out different friends starting businesses we're close to z at rogue who started of the the direct to consumer kind of health care business folks at candidates and so we spent some time on that kind of world and then i i think we're got interesting again as we came back to the things that we actually knew in a bit of our our roots and so there was almost two variants of what eventually became ramp variant number one is what turned into ramp and we can come back to that at some point the other was this view of you know in the in the card space which is it feels almost voodoo from the outside it's unclear how you start these things to the business model work but we we knew this because we had spent a bunch of years inside of capital one study the the models really deeply knew the history well and and had some credibility in the space we're also very interested in the partnership business and the cobra brand business so let's say that you were you go to best buy and at the very end instances would you like to open a a best buy credit card someone is doing that there's people powering those businesses who who are they it's a big one you know sync is a is is a really big name in at capital one you know had a large cobra brand business am max i mean all the large banks and those are huge tens of billions of dollars company barclays biggest sync under b tens tens of millions of dollars i've haven't looked up their their in revenue you know that is as well certainly in market cap under huge businesses in in the basic premise of that is like look is is we out of side of our business at para where we work very closely with the retailers you know all of these these stores have strong customer loyalty and the and and credit cards are great products but they're very hard to sell and so the basic business model was if you could as added you know if you're a store you had customer loyalty if you could convert even a tiny percentage of these customers to just take on a new credit card and that was it you would make a little bit of interchange you would kind of lower your cost when they were shopping with you but also you could make a little bit back at all the other places that customers went in shopped and so the whole question was could you build the product that was standard enough simple modi quantifiable enough that you could convince lots different stores and as this was going on the online boom was happening shopify was you know opening up new retailers and stores everywhere creators were getting big you know and we thought there was a chance to have a modern card for businesses and creators and you know mba and a was a big company i mean they they figured out when you look at university credit cards that's like a huge business da murphy is here in new york his business is doing really really well imprint i've heard of the print they're doing very well these take a long time even in the cases where we're like they're the fastest ever you're gonna be building these businesses for many many years and you have to ask yourself it's like do i wanna be working on this for decades i thought that it was crazy that the largest credit card companies on the planet were working really hard to get customers spend a little bit more than they thought and then once they do they would work really hard to convince people that the points they got were worth a lot and then dev value them the background hey let's take a quick break you know hubspot help tumblr solve a big problem tumblr needed to move fast they were trying to produce trending content but their marketing department was stuck waiting on engineers to code every single email campaign but now they use hubspot customer platform to email real time trending content to millions of users in just seconds and the result was huge three times more engagement and double the content creation if you wanna move faster like tumblr visit hubspot dot com alright back to the show it was pretty funny you said i i read so many books on the baking industry yeah and you're like i spent weeks doing it i'm like oh i would've thought you would've have spent like five years like if you must have read a shit load of books in a very short amount of time did you learn about any of the weird or shady stuff that the baking industry does for consumers or like the history of credit cards and things like that like i i remember reading about i think it was bank of america was that what was that the first credit card yeah and how i believe what they did well first of all like what i'm start is like a dining club card yeah but then another one what they did was i think they just handed out credit cards to farmers in central california something crazy like that right so the history is it started i named ap gia i think it was bank bank the america the italia it was basically bank of italy started by a very poor italian immigrant is functionally how it got started and his first big opportunity really was in like the i think it was like the earthquake of nineteen o six in san francisco were effectively you know he was working in kind of supporting and lending to like grocer immigrants farmers folks who would come into s f and and trade after the earthquake there were fires everywhere a huge portion of san francisco burned down and he was one of the only people that supposedly the the story goes he set up a table out in the middle of bond markets street and he started making loans then and there on the spot and he went from this like tiny bank to effectively like started going everywhere and and his history is pretty interesting he he so was was kind of this bank to to merchants and then eventually to consumers to in i think in the early nineteen hundreds woodrow wilson was trying to supposedly encourage lots of different banks to go and lend to small businesses in the emerging middle class right this is the things you hear about like americans are buying their first car the first washing machine all that kind of stuff and he were very big on it and so he's he was he i think was famous for setting up franchise banking where there was like little branches and branch banking in all sorts of little cities and they sort of took over what used to be like and this is relevant when you get into the history of credit cards one of the the most common places that people would take loans would be in a department store so if you wanted to buy you know you may know that sears was the parent company to discover yeah or bank of america would actually go instead of branches in like the top you know somewhere in like a macy's so instead of macy's giving you a loan so if you wanted to buy a washing machine for you know a dollar you know you would walk out of it after making a ten cent down payment and you pay them back they said we'll take over that macy's you don't need to under write each customer we as the bank can do that for you and that was the start of it what would they do if you didn't pay no it was a loan and so it was whatever banks normally do you know maybe it could go and take the good but it just was credit bureaus exist then this is before credit bureaus so what do you do if someone them pay i think that was why they had the local bankers you know they would go and work i think they would try to collect for a lot of years but that was like is this like early nineteen hundreds banking the the part where you're getting to was by the time i think bank of america was the biggest certainly the biggest bank in the us it might have been the biggest bank in the world it was just enormous enormous scale and i think the town i wanna say it was fremont yeah and so this was in the fifties and i think that it was something like sixty percent or seventy percent of everybody who lived in this town where customers of bank of america and you know if you were going to a department store they had this this branch that you could go and go to but you know if you were going to like you know any random you know hard good store you couldn't get a loan for it and so they took this bet and they said let's just get the rest of the town let's get everybody and we're gonna send you cards and i think they mailed everybody in the town i was like a four or five digit card and you could go use this and you could say put it on my card and you would go and pay the bank back later and it just exploded suddenly you know they almost everyone in the town became customers and people were using it all the time people once they got access to credit started being able to afford more things and it was good for merchants too you know merchants who couldn't access and couldn't get a branch to come in could start to compete with the the you know large department stores that could and it it gave rise to you know the bank of america card and so the initial credit card was bank of america card once they showed a successful went to their competitor banks or regional banks and saying i will run this program for you we can issue bank america cards for the commerce bank of seattle you know you can issue it to your your customers and we will deal with the operations paying you know collecting from the stores paying you know doing the underwriting all that kind of stuff so it was a franchise model it wasn't the model that it was today was that is credit like a uniquely american thing it you know i think there's a good argument to say yes you know in and and some of it comes back to that early nineteen hundreds kind of lineage whereas this was going on you saw the birth of the american consumer where it of department stores cars automobiles and you saw financing for the emerging middle class i would say in europe even to this day you see this very different behavior where yeah like for example they don't they put way more down when they buy a home and this is exactly it i are very accepting a borrowing in debt you know and i think that's the that's the per way to say it i think the non polite way to say it is like you know in europe if you're rich you can borrow and if you're not paying cash that's all you can do and i think it's actually much harder for people who aren't in the middle class who are rapport you know to borrow in the us people you know it's this view of you can kinda pick pick yourself up by your own boost strings you know you can go and you know borrow for that car or for that farm equipment or the laundry machine so you can go and build your business and go into it and so i think there's a lot of good that comes with it obviously sometimes there's there's some bad people can get into credit issues but i think on net you know most businesses it take it's the startup up costs are real but once you get going you can build an extraordinary business i listen to founders all the time like i was listening to the lizard lasagna episode and i'm really fascinated with building a company that can last for fifty a hundred two hundred years like something where god willing i hope this is true but my children wanna get involved in some capacity and it could last beyond me typically those i think those businesses that do that are not the fastest growing companies i i i actually agree like the basic physics of what i think david and the founder podcast studies and and and what you're getting at to of of like i think if you to get down to the core of what makes great businesses it's not like who grew a hundred percent or two hundred or whatever this year it's that which businesses can grow thirty percent for thirty years and if you do that you will be a giant business that's not what you did our our view is that we can and like the the crazy part is like we have grown extraordinarily quickly we're still just about doubling each year at enormous scale i think we are one and a half percent ish of the corporate and small business card market in the us and so if you just look at the physics of it even if we were to massively decelerate and start growing thirty percent for decades it's physically possible the market is so big you're sort of like hanging out with like the illuminati a little bit where it's like these old money families because that's what a lot of the banking industry is made up of yeah because they've been around for two hundred a years they've been dealing with money forever have you noticed or found anything that you are shocked by where you're like if the consumer knew that this is how this setup is they would be infuriated it's a there's a lot there and in in what you're asking so so one these families like i think that they're focused on doing simple things well and doing it for a very very very long time and consistently and a lot of these families just like don't sell that's the biggest takeaway wave from the founders podcast is don't sell don't fight or interrupt the power of compounding you wanna find a business where you can just compound for a long time and so i i would say when when you're just starting out or if you're building like you're terrified of like losing money or things going sideways you have real cost families friends things to take care of and so you don't interrupt the debt you you you wanna when things get risky you sell but i think a lot of these families just stayed in for a long time when there was huge i mean classically you'd see a significant recession in the us every seven to eleven years consistently a lot of people will sell out at the bottom because they can't take any more pain or they can't take the risk of it going even further and i think the difference to a lot of these families is they would figure out how could you avoid it how could you go and stay in you know i obviously i've never of my family had anything like this since i i also too i think as a kid was very skeptical of people who grew up with a lot of money running my company hampton it gives me the chance to meet with hundreds of different businesses and i'm always surprised by how many of them still use spreadsheets emails and clunky tools that do not talk to each other it's like watching someone build a house with duct tape so here's my take custom software that actually fits your needs isn't just convenient of it's a competitive advantage to transform the way you do business and that's why you need to know about a no code platform called bubble with bubble you can build powerful web and mobile apps by literally dragging and dropping different elements out of the screen no coding required by the way i use bubble on a ton of different apps including hampton and if you want help building something complex on bubble you have to bring in zero code they're the top bubble agency out there and literally the biggest plug creator for the platform they can build anything custom portals saas products and they do about ten times faster and cheaper than traditional development zero code is also all about ai business automation transforming manual and slow processes into efficient automated ones so stop cobb together different tools and solutions and head to zero code dot com that's zero code as in the word zero and then code q o d e again code is with a q and tell them that sam sent one of my favorite biographies is titan by john ra or about john rockefeller yeah and david cher who's the author he wrote one on jpmorgan which i'm gonna get to yeah and it's fun it's fun reading about these old banking families because they're full stories and they're typically nutty yeah you are gonna be an old baking family in that you know that's kinda like crazy to think about it's you know does that mess with you i think that a lot of the families of the past is done a great job of being like involved civic i i think that a lot of them have been more outstanding i wouldn't say all of them happen been but i i do think that you know like i'm in my mid thirties i i i don't know what i thought so far ahead in on like a legacy perspective but yes ramp is a company is getting very valuable but like all my stock is in ramp it's just a certificate yeah and it's only become valuable because we've built something that makes a lot of people a lot better off my whole obsession is like how do we keep doing that for a very long time and you know maybe the money comes with it but like that's not why i do it what what was the reason why you did it so the the first company we started was definitely around like you know i i remember when our we we're down to like one month of or like a few weeks of savings and like that's it and like the worst too it's the worst like a lot of it is usually but you probably felt that way the whole time yeah like that burden i remember i thought that burden for four years ian you're just working your ass off the worst every weekend and like it's hard to relate to i like feel like it's like i remember in college i had this girlfriend who cheated on me and i remember like here like but sorry to do yeah yeah i remember like and she's like go to that i icon it was horrible and like she would go out and i'm like i had this like anxiety all the time i like like bothers me and then when i like started to business i would remember like checking the bank account all the time yeah and i'm like that's same anxiety like i wanna look i don't wanna go or that i just wanna bury my head i don't wanna know i don't wanna be part of this yeah i felt that way for four years i'm curious if it changed for youtube but like after the sale check like suddenly you have security right like your your bank account looks a little more more flush you move it out of the student checking account to something more security you know you're good and then at some point you know it's i don't he on add adaptation you get used to it it's just like a number and account and then you have like your same anxieties you're same you have the same shit the same stuff all that kind stuff it's better though it's better it's better it's better but you have as similar anxieties but it's not existential you are it is sort of existential but it's not like the baseline happiness of knowing that you're not gonna be on the street is makes like you the baseline that goes up i agree with all this half the time i listen to founders and i'm like well every time listen to founders i think i'm gonna i'm gonna own this for fifty or a hundred years yeah and then during the day when i'm having a pain in the ass like issue come up i'm like we're gonna set this up so we could flip this thing like it always changes right like your mood yeah your emotions are powerful and do you think you'll run this or have equity in it fifty years from now or would you sell in five or ten years if it was like a no brainer deal i was this is the last company i ever work on you know i will yeah really you know i your partnership that way yes yeah you know and it's it's one of these things too we're like you know i i remember even in the early days of of going through like there is deep pain right if you're if you're growing this quickly you know what certainly got you here won't get you there and i i think that some of what cream is saying is like look if i'm gonna go through all this pain like he has does doesn't seem like you went through that much pain if i'm like looking at you guys from the outside of course it's always much challenge way more harder than it looks but like when i'm like i don't know a hundred million in revenue in in eighteen months like that like yeah like even though it's hard you're still winning and that momentum like that it's really all about dopamine meat that makes you feel good i i agree you to some of it was like not planning for downside and not something problems until they hit us in our first business so in our first business we had a a day when we lost seventy five percent of our revenue overnight vaporize there were risks that we knew about that we didn't properly manage and one of the things in ramp that we resolve to do is like cream and eye and and others are gonna just gonna beat the shit out of each other all the time worrying about problems that are three to six months to a year out in the future and so it's true if you look at kind of ramps trajectory it has been kind of nonstop growth you know fairly consistently up into the right in terms of like the the revenue the cash flow profitability all these kind of metrics has been consistently good but it's because inside of it there is so much like agony that we spend over like this metric that's gonna affect how we perform in three months from now is not going the wrong way is not going the right way what are we doing about it and so it's a lot of internally beating each other up like i often you know when when you look at like like a i i think the analogy is like an athlete you know you you look at like it was just wimbledon in over the weekend and know sin and a like each of them look like they're playing effortlessly can pull off these shots you don't imagine it's because there's been years and years and years of when you're not looking they're just ob practicing trying these shots so when it counts they're able to do it and so i think there's a lot of similarities they're and and what i would say is like i is is you know for cream it was amplified he he had you know he's three kids now he he got started or earlier than than i did and he's like look the these are some of the most valuable you know hours all ever have and if we're gonna go through this like it's gonna be because we're gonna the ambition is gonna be real and if we have a problem we're gonna can confront it right away what do you like to read i i like to read part of my white me i like the founders podcast so much like biographies and other founders i i like reading about like you know design yeah are your designer i really like it so the the first company para i had design and product reported to me and so i i just spent a lot of years kind of like thinking about like you know the principles of it what makes products great and and so i i i love it i would probably get booted off of our design team i don't think i have quite the level of of of talent and crafting but i i definitely spend a lot of time thinking about it bio in terms of favorites or what am i reading now favorite i mean my you know it's i think i've probably read you know fifteen biographies of of steve jobs you know it's i i think is as great as people think he is i think he's still underrated for what he was able to do and how consistently he was able to to do it and i also think that he changed a lot over the years i think he gets tight kinda tight cast at this like brilliant asshole which like i think he was at the start of his career but i think he got much more interesting cared about people in a much deeper way than i think comes across and some of that is like i think people like conflicts and people like controversy but kind of forget to look at his career as he softened over the years and i think ultimately i think that's when he built apple into the the powerhouse that it is today i've been struggling to find biographies where i admire their whole life yeah have you read i mean just on steve jobs have you ever becoming steve jobs i don't remember and i read about two or three of them i i forget the titles i know i did the walter isaac in one that one is good but i think that one is more kind of like pop culture steve jobs it was not when i remember read that i'm like i don't wanna be this person you know don't like him yeah he was very un uncomfortable yeah in that book but what what was becoming steve jobs it so the central question of it was exam examining like who he was over the course of his life and so effectively as were journalist people who covered him for like forty years and knew him from when he was like the twenty year old kinda wonder to you know kind of like end of his life it came out around the time i think a few months after the isaac in and i think that they felt similarly that so much of we was portrayed out was was like this brilliant jerk and has said we're trying to focus of like how did he change over the course of his life and i think it's an amazing amazing read because i think it focuses much more on like him or or the lessons or the things that shaped and changed the style and i i would say like i'm super i really highly recommend that book there's other great great ones too on other aspects like i love insanely simple i love insanely great steve levi that's like a a lesser read but wonderful book just about just like fifteen of them yeah wow yeah so chat gb has become my life coach yeah and there's like a prompt where it's like i forget exactly what it was but it's like everything you know about the boil it down to one word okay and i think i phrase it where i'm like tell me like my issue or my flaw so it was like it's gonna be negative and it i think i said two words and the first one was jealousy and the second one was fear yeah which are very similar emotions actually i think but it was like rooted in like comparing yourself to other people yeah in new york city it's like so easy to do that yeah and it's like dialed up to attend you're strange to me because you seem like such a you are so successful at a such young age and also you seem emotionally stable those things typically are safe the so you what mean little little out there yeah you wanna be yeah and and i find that unique and interesting about you look i i i will like compete very aggressively and in things that i believe it believe and don't time to be wrong but like you look back and you're having like a shit day and you're like alright had a bad morning what does this affect my afternoon at all you know i've got a half a day left do i wanna make a counter or not and i just think the ability to just like stop catch yourself and reset is really important and is increasingly hard as you kinda get older but it's super important and i think some of it was like early experiences is like you know my older brother had grown up and have like these really strong mood swings and all kinds of things would go on and he had different kind of like you know learning difficulties and stuff and in a he would take medicine and it would like radically change his mood and i was i i remember as a kid like that was so jarring and and weird someone could be like you know feel a certain way and then suddenly you know feel differently with strange to see and then you know i i think as a kid i i don't think i'd fully processed the thought but i remember you know i i'd get really mad too are be going to sleep i angry about something i like oh my why am i mad maybe i could not be mad just being mad help me or not that's a that's an interesting very very intros philosophical question to ask like well why do i feel this way and do i have to yeah yeah you know and i you know i i think you know my brother and i getting all sorts of fight suit and i remember one he like feel like a fork and went in my leg and stuff like that and you know we have three boys in in a house like they're they're probably not as fun as as as little girls they they do more interesting things and i think my our parents would my mom was really good it's like alright like i'm gonna sit both me down you're gonna have to go and explain like you're gonna listen to your brother as he says why he was mad and and you get like pissed and and you'd wanna go whatever and you'd be like you know you have to go say and you to say it back to him and then you're gonna say your side and then he's gonna say it back to you it's a super intentional thing to do i think it was really in my parents and never would they would been like you guys just shut up yeah it drove me off the goddamn wall but after long enough is your mom like a was she like a hippie like that's strange like that no that's stuff with it like that stuff's popular now with yeah would but that's probably how that's how i'm gonna parent my kid yeah but that's like some gentle parenting like hippie dip shit which i buy into i mean it was which she what was her job teacher therapist or something no i she sold like telecom like that's interesting telecom forward play to parent good parenting i guess but it teaches you to consider the other side a little bit and into to calm down you see the complexity of things and then you know later on when you see something chemically change other people it's hard to do it but you know it it forced you to start wondering like is it me or is it the you know something going on in my head that's making me feel this way and and look like i i think sometimes stress is good other times it's not and i i think you know ramp is a big company there's a lot of pressures and and stuff that are natural and you know i think if you step back and you're like alright how i act and how i you how you feel can really impact how you think about things you know i i think i i now it's it's much more trained but you spend a lot of time to just be tape what is the heads space i i don't regularly how are you this small balanced you read different books to you i mean it it's now a little more more tri but like it's funny i like ryan holiday stuff when he wrote kinda trust me lying but then you vi the s s kind of philosophy to read like meditations and stuff like that and so i think you picked some of that up i try to up a day where i just like hang out just i don't know go run two different things usually to clear my head yeah okay usually saturday yeah you're usually then and then sunday i'll pick step back up but i also think too during your week like i think especially with other founders as life goes on you were probably really good at something and you did it a lot and that's what allowed you to build this company then suddenly you're running the company and you don't have time to do the thing that you really liked anymore yeah and i think that a lot of people lose control over their own week and they don't actually audit like am i spending the time on things and i'm good at or not to be or or wanna be spending the time on so and i it pretty regularly try to go and like blow up my calendar and be like alright i actually love doing this thing am i spending any time on it no and because i promise if you you just spend your too many weeks in a row doing something you hate you're gonna be miserable you're gonna be stressed out inside redesign my weeks or month pretty regularly i that helps a question i've been asking myself a lot is like where's my weakness now yeah and like what do i need to really work on yeah it's actually whenever i do reference checks when people one of my little tricks is i'll be like what's this person one out of ten and they're always gonna say like eight or nine yeah everyone says that and i'm like cool what makes them and at nine or whatever okay now to get that extra point what do they need to work on i like this question that's where you hear like weaknesses that's the only polite way i've been able to get someone to like talk shit on someone yeah is important i you're like yeah and then like a lot of those weaknesses that they have i'm like i put up at that yeah whatever like if someone's like well they're really not patient like hope okay that sounds gonna be whatever what flaws or weaknesses you have now that you think you have to overcome to get to where you wanna be in a decade or two so all all slightly critique the the question which is like if you're like a one person company this is exactly the right question of like how can i change in order to get better but if you're like a ten person or a thousand person company or whatever you are in it you're on a team you can change or you can change how the team is constructed is i think the more interesting way to think about it and what what i'll you like one of my big flaws which is probably very surprising for you know ramp scale is like i don't know if there's like a hundred things to do that are very important to get done the way my mind works is like i'll start with a blank sheet of paper and i'll be like what are the top five for ten things and i'll like write them down and then i'll forget forget about the rest and don't do them and like that's fine early on when things there's like one or two things that matter but like we'll blow up the company if you're just consistently not dealing with ninety percent of issues and one of the things that i do in order to cope with that and compensate for that is i surround myself with people who are operationally unbelievable who were incredibly good at tri and cascading and getting things done and making things move and what i would say is like it's actually totally fine to have huge flaws and you could decide to fix them or you can say i'm actually gonna design you know my life or the company or what to be performant in that context and so i think that's okay and and and i i i guess what i what i would say is like a lot of the way that we've built ramp and you know i think about building companies is a lot of folks kind of look for you know what are things they're good at what are the things they're bad at and how do i you know identify all the problems and it's good to know about i i what i'm referring to do is like like for example yeah i'm a very emotional person yeah and like i like a trick that i've been learning is like it don't make it's like don't go to go to store and you're hungry yeah don't make a big decision when i'm feeling pissed off about something or you know or really happy about something like don't make decisions there so you got i i have to wait or when someone tells me something i don't like don't react yeah just say okay let me think about it and so my big thing is just like it's it's all about emotional regulation in in impulse control that's like that's what i have to that's my big flaw and i think i you i have to improve that to be a better person yeah now and i'm not even referring to just business yeah but that will impact it positively as well yeah i totally agree you thanks too that's a pod thanks a lot i feel like i could rule world to know i could be what i want to from at all in it like a day so gonna a go less travel never looking back my friends if you like m then you're gonna like the following podcast it's called a billion dollar moves and of course it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network the number one audio destination for business professionals billion dollar moves it's hosted by sarah chen spelling sarah is a venture capitalist and strategist and with billion dollar moves she wants to look at unicorn founders and fund and she looks for what she calls the unexpected leader many of them were underestimated long before they became huge and successful and iconic she does it with unfiltered conversations about success failure fear courage and all that great stuff so again if you like my first million check out billion dollar moves it's brought to you by the hubspot podcast network again billion dollar moves alright back to the episode