Life Hacks From The King of Introverts + 7 Business Ideas | ft. Nick Gray

0:00:01 – All right, Nick, are you ready?
0:00:04 – Well, I’m late ’cause I had to go to Party City.
0:00:05 – You are Party City, dude.
0:00:07 You’re the human Party City.
0:00:09 – No, but the funny thing is I went out there
0:00:12 because I wanted to get some cool stuff for you guys.
0:00:17 For Sam, I got a hot dog hat thing.
0:00:23 ‘Cause Sam likes hot dogs and for Sean, you know,
0:00:27 I got the big basketball ’cause Sean loves basketball.
0:00:29 And I got these balloons.
0:00:32 And as I’m leaving, this lady sees me with the balloons
0:00:34 and the basketball and she’s like,
0:00:38 “Oh, are you planning a birthday for your son?”
0:00:41 I was like, “First, that’s sexist.”
0:00:44 And second, no, I’m going on a podcast.
0:00:48 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:00:51 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:00:53 ♪ I put my all in it like the days of ♪
0:00:55 ♪ On a road let’s travel ♪
0:00:56 – All right, so let me introduce Nick
0:00:58 and I’ll introduce him with a little bit of a story.
0:01:00 I don’t remember exactly how we came
0:01:02 into contact with each other,
0:01:05 but basically I was in New York maybe eight years ago.
0:01:08 Somehow Nick contacts me and he goes,
0:01:10 “Hey, do you want to go to Washington Square Park
0:01:12 “and play frisbee?”
0:01:14 And I was like, “I guess, yeah, okay.”
0:01:18 So Sarah and I go and we meet him at Washington Square Park
0:01:20 and he goes, “Hey, let’s just like walk.
0:01:22 “I’ll give you guys a tour.”
0:01:23 So he gives us a tour.
0:01:25 He goes, “This is the guy that’s always here selling weed.
0:01:26 “Hey, weed guy, how are you?
0:01:28 “This is my friend Sam and Sarah.”
0:01:29 And then he’s like, “These are the people
0:01:30 “who are always tightrope big.
0:01:32 “Hey, tightrope people.”
0:01:33 And then we go in and we sit down
0:01:34 and he brings out a blanket and he goes,
0:01:36 “All right, now it’s time to play frisbee.
0:01:39 “Nick is just a crazy person, okay?”
0:01:42 Like we met him and you’ll go out to dinner with him
0:01:43 and he’ll be like, “All right, for the next five minutes
0:01:45 “I want to talk about my dating life.”
0:01:47 And then from minutes seven to 13,
0:01:48 we’re going to talk about your work.
0:01:50 And then from 13 to 27,
0:01:52 we want to talk about philosophy on life.
0:01:54 – Nick, do you actually do this?
0:01:56 Do you show up to lunches like this?
0:01:57 – With agendas.
0:01:59 – 100% with agendas
0:02:02 and sometimes even my own keynote presentations.
0:02:05 – And let me, hold on, hold on, hold on.
0:02:06 I had to give this quick summary.
0:02:10 So Nick’s summary is basically he made money.
0:02:12 Nick started a business, he sold it, he made money.
0:02:15 He put all of his money in Tesla stock
0:02:17 and got incredibly wealthy.
0:02:19 And now he is single in Austin
0:02:22 and he just lives life to have fun.
0:02:24 And he does crazy stuff.
0:02:27 Like he just recently did a blind date to Tokyo
0:02:31 or he’ll, he just wrote a book on having a cocktail party
0:02:32 because that’s what he cares about.
0:02:35 And he just does everything to, that’s fun.
0:02:36 Is that right, Nick?
0:02:37 – Yeah, that is directionally correct.
0:02:39 I love to have fun.
0:02:43 And I didn’t put all my money into Tesla and,
0:02:45 but yes, I did make a lot of money a couple of times
0:02:47 in my life and now we get to have fun.
0:02:51 And I get to, I think I’m like the end game
0:02:54 that a lot of people are thinking about
0:02:57 how to get to and they want to make a business
0:03:00 and they want to be successful, but for what?
0:03:03 And so there’s a lot of talk about when is enough.
0:03:06 And I think I found enough and this is what happens
0:03:07 when you get there.
0:03:11 – All right, I want to tell you about a really cool feature
0:03:13 in HubSpot that I don’t think most people know about.
0:03:16 It’s called the marketing and content hub.
0:03:17 All right, so here’s how it works.
0:03:19 You’re doing content marketing.
0:03:20 That’s what I do, that’s how many brands do.
0:03:21 It works really, really well,
0:03:23 but it can be very time consuming.
0:03:25 So what they do is they have tools like content remix,
0:03:27 which will take one piece of content
0:03:29 and immediately turn it into a bunch of pieces
0:03:31 for all the different platforms in one click.
0:03:34 Or they have leads query, which will basically shine a light
0:03:37 on which leads that you have or most likely to purchase.
0:03:38 And then they have the analytics suite.
0:03:41 So you get reports, KPIs and all kinds of AI powered insights
0:03:42 that you can share with your team
0:03:44 and not be flying blind anymore.
0:03:46 So if you’re doing content marketing,
0:03:47 highly recommend you check out the content hub
0:03:49 and marketing hub for HubSpot.
0:03:52 You can visit hubspot.com to get started for free
0:03:54 back to this episode.
0:03:55 – How did you figure that out?
0:03:58 Because that is something that not a lot of people
0:03:59 have been able to figure out.
0:04:01 So how did you figure out what’s enough for you
0:04:03 and how did you actually execute that?
0:04:04 How did you figure out what you wanted,
0:04:06 what was enough and then do it?
0:04:08 – You know, one year I was doing my taxes
0:04:12 and I had busted my butt in my business.
0:04:14 An absolutely incredible amount.
0:04:16 It was just one of the hardest years.
0:04:20 And I think maybe we netted out like $350,000 profit.
0:04:24 And it was one of the hardest years of my life honestly
0:04:26 for a variety of staffing reasons and other things.
0:04:30 And as I was doing my taxes, my accountant said like,
0:04:32 “Oh wow, do you realize you made like so much more money
0:04:35 “from your investments than you did from your business?”
0:04:37 And I never thought about my investments.
0:04:40 I don’t even think I just buy it, set it and forget it.
0:04:42 And at that moment I was like, wow,
0:04:46 I’m like destroying my health and my sanity
0:04:48 for this amount of money
0:04:51 that’s not even as much as I’m making off the investments.
0:04:53 There were a few moments like that
0:04:55 that I’ve had over the last 10 years
0:04:58 that have just made me reconsider how I spend my time.
0:05:00 – And you wrote a blog post
0:05:03 ’cause I went knee deep into the blog last night.
0:05:05 And you have this blog post you wrote a long time ago
0:05:09 which was, what would I do if I had $10 million?
0:05:10 I don’t know when you wrote this,
0:05:12 but I found it somewhere in the archive.
0:05:13 And you basically said, you know,
0:05:16 I really want to have like $10 million.
0:05:19 And you know, it kind of made me think
0:05:20 like what would I actually do if I had it?
0:05:22 What would I do today if I already had it?
0:05:25 And you put photos on there.
0:05:26 We should show this on YouTube.
0:05:30 There’s like index cards and you wrote like swim more, right?
0:05:33 You wrote like write a book about hosting a cocktail party
0:05:35 which you actually ended up doing.
0:05:36 And you wrote all these things
0:05:38 and it sounded like the takeaway was,
0:05:41 first of all, we should do this exercise
0:05:42 ’cause like money is a tool to improve your life.
0:05:44 But if you don’t really know how much you need
0:05:45 and what you’re trying to improve,
0:05:47 like it’s sort of crazy like going to Home Depot
0:05:49 for a house renovation project,
0:05:50 but you didn’t know which part of your house
0:05:52 you wanted to renovate or what budget actually was
0:05:54 and what materials you needed.
0:05:56 But that’s how we treat our careers.
0:06:00 And then you got clarity on it and you actually implemented.
0:06:02 Can you talk about that exercise you did?
0:06:05 ‘Cause I did it last night too after you, after reading that.
0:06:05 – Oh, you did it?
0:06:08 So I hope to give actionable takeaways for your listeners.
0:06:11 Listeners, this is an actual takeaway for you
0:06:14 in that you can do this with your friends,
0:06:16 with your spouse, with your loved ones
0:06:20 to ask them if you had $10 million,
0:06:25 how would you live your life differently and get specific?
0:06:26 Don’t just say I wanna eat better.
0:06:28 What does that exactly mean?
0:06:29 Now, Sean may know this.
0:06:31 This is a Tony Robbins exercise
0:06:35 that he’s done either at Business Mastery or UPW.
0:06:39 And the gist I’ll forward you to the end
0:06:42 is that the vast majority of things we say
0:06:44 that we would do differently at $10 million
0:06:48 actually you only need a million dollars to get there.
0:06:49 The vast majority, if you think,
0:06:51 oh, if my life was a billionaire,
0:06:52 this is what I would do,
0:06:56 you actually maybe only need 10, 20, $50 million.
0:06:58 And I say, actually, that’s still a lot of money.
0:07:00 But it helps you to realize that, for example,
0:07:03 for a lot of people, oh, if I had a billion dollars,
0:07:06 of course I would have a private chef.
0:07:08 So they say, okay, well, let’s track that out.
0:07:11 What does that exactly mean for you to have a private chef?
0:07:14 You wanna have meals that are set up in your fridge.
0:07:16 You wanna have a full-time person, et cetera.
0:07:19 And it was a very helpful exercise to me
0:07:23 to think that in the past, if I wanted $500 million,
0:07:24 well, actually the vast majority of the things
0:07:27 that I wanted, I could do for much less
0:07:32 without sacrificing all that time, money, energy
0:07:34 to get to that level.
0:07:37 – Yeah, Sam, have you heard this Morgan Hounsell quote
0:07:38 about money?
0:07:41 He says, there’s two ways to use money.
0:07:44 The first is as a tool to improve the quality of your life.
0:07:46 And the second is as a measuring stick
0:07:48 to measure the quality of your life.
0:07:51 And basically the people who are happy use money as a tool
0:07:54 and the people who are, you know, the bitter rich,
0:07:56 the stressed rich are the ones who are trying to use money
0:07:57 as a measuring stick.
0:08:01 – Yeah, the problem with that is like, on my list,
0:08:05 it’s like influence politicians, overthrow governments,
0:08:08 you know, like bribe officials,
0:08:09 and you need a lot more money
0:08:11 than just $10 million for that.
0:08:13 – Well, for those of you that are listening, by the way,
0:08:17 that are thinking, that’s not enough.
0:08:18 He has given up.
0:08:21 Money is the measuring stick in the yard
0:08:23 and the success of life.
0:08:24 I am totally with you.
0:08:28 And I lived that way for so much of my adult life.
0:08:30 There is, money is just a measuring stick, right?
0:08:32 We don’t spend it, we just keep it,
0:08:35 and that shows how good we are.
0:08:38 And so I still respect and sympathize with those people
0:08:42 who, like Sam, want more money to influence politicians
0:08:44 to buy private jets.
0:08:46 – I’m joking, joking.
0:08:48 Okay, but go ahead.
0:08:50 – You’re on the record as a lobbyist, okay.
0:08:54 – Say, what would you even lobby for?
0:08:57 – Praise in for all.
0:08:58 I don’t…
0:08:59 – Okay, we have a proposal here
0:09:03 for like larger serving size of bubblegum, I guess, sure.
0:09:05 It’s all good.
0:09:09 That’s ridiculous.
0:09:11 But Nick, but all right, so you’re like,
0:09:14 you used to be a measuring stick guy for money,
0:09:16 but in this blog post, by the way, you say,
0:09:18 at the very bottom, you say,
0:09:19 I would do all of these things,
0:09:21 which by the way, like Sean didn’t say,
0:09:24 but you have a list of like, you want to go bowling.
0:09:25 You want to play laser tag.
0:09:27 You want to go go carding.
0:09:29 That’s literally on your blog post.
0:09:30 But at the end, it says,
0:09:33 I would also like to work on entrepreneurial pursuits
0:09:34 to get the 50 million.
0:09:37 – Yeah, yeah, something like that.
0:09:38 I don’t want to get into the gist of this.
0:09:41 I want to say that this is an activity
0:09:42 that’s helpful for listeners to do
0:09:44 because it helped me realize
0:09:46 that the things that truly make me happy,
0:09:48 playing tennis, writing go cards,
0:09:50 eating more healthy, going to the beach,
0:09:53 those things don’t have to cost $50 million.
0:09:57 And I keep a very low burn in my life right now
0:10:01 so that it feels like I have $100 million.
0:10:04 – Sean, something that you probably don’t know about Nick.
0:10:07 So he lived in New York City for a long time
0:10:09 and he’s been like a blogger.
0:10:10 A lot of people don’t know this,
0:10:13 that Nick met Noah Kagan and Neville Medora,
0:10:16 my good buddies, and Ramit via blogging.
0:10:18 Nick was like one of these early bloggers.
0:10:20 What are you, you’re 40, let’s say now, Nick,
0:10:22 you started blogging when you were what, like in your 20s.
0:10:25 – Gosh, I had a website since 1996, yeah, yeah.
0:10:29 – And because of that, he’s actually met like a lot
0:10:31 of these guys that are kind of like luminaries now.
0:10:34 So for example, he’s buddies with Matt Mullenwag,
0:10:37 the founder of WordPress, or he grew up,
0:10:41 kind of grew up in New York with the founders of Vimeo
0:10:42 and College Humor.
0:10:44 And a bunch of these like interesting people
0:10:46 that sort of shaped the internet that we know,
0:10:49 and you were around them when you guys were all like
0:10:51 up and coming and doing your own thing.
0:10:54 What was that like kind of like seeing some of these guys
0:10:56 who were your peers become like these like people
0:10:59 who are kind of controlling the internet
0:11:03 or impacting the culture of the internet?
0:11:04 – Well, Sam, I’m glad you mentioned that
0:11:06 (bell rings)
0:11:08 because this brings me into the second lesson
0:11:10 and I’ll be using this little lesson harmonica
0:11:12 throughout today’s podcast.
0:11:16 – I love it.
0:11:18 – The lesson is, you know, about 15 years ago
0:11:21 when people were using Twitter a lot
0:11:23 and there were a lot of startup founders that I knew,
0:11:25 like Dennis Crowley of Foursquare
0:11:28 and Zach Klein of Vimeo and other people.
0:11:32 And I had absolutely no name on the public internet.
0:11:35 I was a blogger, but I didn’t have followers.
0:11:37 I was just known amongst a certain crowd.
0:11:41 Somebody figured out that all of these famous people
0:11:45 or famous and successful people in New York all followed me.
0:11:47 I think this was when there was a list of kind of like
0:11:50 the public follows were more available.
0:11:54 And they were like, dude, why do all these people follow you?
0:11:56 And I was actually waiting to get a message like that.
0:11:58 I think there’s actionable data
0:12:03 that you can get from finding and looking
0:12:06 who else famous and successful people follow.
0:12:08 Now follower lists are still available on Instagram
0:12:10 so you can see the bulk of it.
0:12:12 I think on X they’ve throttled it back
0:12:15 so you don’t have the full follow lists available.
0:12:17 But if you are looking to make contact
0:12:19 with some of these ultra successful people,
0:12:20 there’s no way that you will.
0:12:23 They have pretty much too much inbound.
0:12:26 But you can befriend their friends
0:12:28 and that can be your foot in the door.
0:12:32 That is a lesson that is an aggressive networking example.
0:12:33 You have to lead with value.
0:12:34 You have to have something good.
0:12:36 You can’t just do it to take.
0:12:39 But I think there is Sigma, there is Alpha
0:12:43 in looking to see who all of the major people follow
0:12:44 ’cause there’s reason for that.
0:12:46 – Why do they follow you?
0:12:48 – I think people followed me in New York City
0:12:49 ’cause I hosted events.
0:12:50 Oh my God, I hosted events.
0:12:53 That was my way to become interesting.
0:12:55 It was my way to be relevant.
0:12:58 And I just started hosting all these house parties.
0:13:03 – So I wanna tie up the shift from killing yourself,
0:13:05 kind of working really, really hard
0:13:07 to make money to be successful,
0:13:09 which is where I’ve been, Sam’s been,
0:13:10 a lot of the listeners will have been.
0:13:12 So that’s a relatable struggle.
0:13:16 To then, the next thing you do, you did life shift
0:13:20 where you sort of prioritized experiences, adventure, fun,
0:13:21 which I think a lot of us want to do
0:13:24 but are sort of afraid to do fully.
0:13:26 It’s hard to get off that money train.
0:13:29 So can we just do the speed run of like,
0:13:31 what did you actually do in your career?
0:13:32 How did you actually make it?
0:13:33 What did you try?
0:13:35 What did you actually do that worked?
0:13:37 – Yes, speed run of my career.
0:13:39 In middle school and high school,
0:13:40 I started to design websites.
0:13:42 I was not a popular kid, I had friends,
0:13:44 but I wasn’t in the popular crowd.
0:13:46 And I was really into computers.
0:13:48 And when I was in about ninth grade,
0:13:52 I made a web hosting company that just so happened
0:13:53 to get lucky.
0:13:56 If you searched on Yahoo for the phrase cheap web hosting,
0:13:57 then you would find my website.
0:14:01 You can see that at vs3.net.
0:14:03 – Did you do anything to be the discovered one
0:14:05 or literally was it lucky?
0:14:06 – Dude, it was just dumb luck.
0:14:08 We didn’t even know about SEO then.
0:14:10 It wasn’t like trying to optimize.
0:14:13 It just so happened that when I wrote my description,
0:14:14 that’s how it worked out.
0:14:15 – So you’re in high school
0:14:17 and that helped pay for college, as I understand.
0:14:20 So what would you kind of roughly make on that business?
0:14:22 – Not a lot of money, maybe.
0:14:26 So the web hosting was $15 a month per client.
0:14:31 It cost me $5 per month per client.
0:14:34 And at the most, I probably had 200 customers.
0:14:37 It more average was throttled out
0:14:40 to about 120 customers per month.
0:14:41 That helped pay for college,
0:14:45 but then I also got a scholarship for entrepreneurship,
0:14:48 which is very rare merit-based scholarship
0:14:49 that allowed me to go to a nice college.
0:14:52 So web hosting business, I did some other stuff.
0:14:54 I sell these like alphanumeric pagers
0:14:56 that was never a huge success,
0:14:58 but I had all these little hustles.
0:15:00 When I got to Wake, by the way,
0:15:02 I started to sell speakers for laptops
0:15:05 and I named the business wakespeakers.com
0:15:06 and I’m going around door to door.
0:15:08 I’m like, oh, you bought your kids this laptop?
0:15:11 They need speakers to listen to Shazam or whatever.
0:15:14 And then the school lawyers called me up,
0:15:16 like you can’t call this wakespeakers.
0:15:18 That’s like the name of our school.
0:15:20 Meanwhile, I’m like dropshipping pallets,
0:15:22 like onto the quad of the campus.
0:15:24 When I was in college,
0:15:26 I tried to start a software company
0:15:29 that was massively popular on campus,
0:15:31 but made absolutely zero money.
0:15:34 I tried to move to India to start a software company
0:15:35 and hire people because I thought
0:15:38 that I could bootstrap it farther there.
0:15:40 It was a terrible success.
0:15:41 I hired two people.
0:15:43 One of them was in Boston.
0:15:45 The story’s hilarious.
0:15:46 I’ve heard him say this before.
0:15:47 He’s like, I moved to India
0:15:49 ’cause I was like, I’m gonna bootstrap this
0:15:50 so I need cheap talent.
0:15:51 So he moves to India to start a software company,
0:15:53 hires two people.
0:15:55 One guy’s in Poland and one guy’s in Boston
0:15:55 and he’s in India.
0:15:58 (laughing)
0:16:02 – You got that equation wrong.
0:16:05 (laughing)
0:16:06 You answered yourself and like,
0:16:08 if it’s like X plus Y,
0:16:12 you put yourself in the wrong variable.
0:16:14 I know I outsourced myself to the wrong thing.
0:16:15 (laughing)
0:16:17 I did though develop a really nice relationship
0:16:19 with the people and the country
0:16:21 and it was just a wild experience.
0:16:22 – Well, let me ask one question there,
0:16:24 which is nobody cares about this, but I do,
0:16:26 which is even though that was kind of a failure, right?
0:16:28 You moved to India.
0:16:30 You hire a guy in Poland, a Boston software company.
0:16:31 Nobody knows the name of this.
0:16:32 It didn’t work out.
0:16:33 But there’s something,
0:16:35 if somebody told me that somebody did that today,
0:16:37 I’d be like, this person’s gonna be a winner.
0:16:38 This is probably gonna be the failure,
0:16:41 but that person is gonna be a winner.
0:16:43 What made you even wanna do that in the first place?
0:16:45 ‘Cause that’s a pretty radical step.
0:16:46 Most people I went to college with
0:16:48 did not just graduate and like move to India
0:16:51 with the idea of bootstrapping a software company.
0:16:54 – It did seem like the craziest thing to do at the time.
0:16:56 And I think that’s why I was attracted to it.
0:16:59 – Harmonica lesson, you think?
0:16:59 – I think so.
0:17:01 Thank you so much.
0:17:03 (laughing)
0:17:07 So I use this harmonica at all my events
0:17:09 as a crowd control device.
0:17:12 And I think if my legacy has anything,
0:17:14 it’s that the harmonica can be
0:17:16 a helpful crowd control device.
0:17:18 And that you can get people’s attention
0:17:21 in a calm, cool manner without a whistle
0:17:23 or like a bam, bam, bam.
0:17:24 – Right.
0:17:25 – So consider that.
0:17:26 There’s a tip within a tip.
0:17:27 Why did I move to India?
0:17:30 Yeah, just at the time it seemed like the future.
0:17:32 It did seem like a piece of the future.
0:17:35 There was all this news about BPO and outsourcing
0:17:38 and everything Y-Pro moving over to India.
0:17:40 – You had said your college roommates
0:17:43 were the guys who created College Humor and Vimeo.
0:17:45 Were you involved in that?
0:17:46 Or are you just kind of sitting by
0:17:47 and they were doing it right next to you?
0:17:48 What was that like?
0:17:51 – I was very happy to not be involved in that
0:17:53 and to be their friends and a sound board.
0:17:56 I was the first non-employee user of Vimeo.
0:17:58 I, Jake, the guy who started Vimeo,
0:18:01 famously said that our thinking helped him think
0:18:04 about vlogging and stuff like that.
0:18:08 But they were absolutely an inspiration to me
0:18:11 and it was so cool to be in that world of people,
0:18:13 really, really great guys.
0:18:15 – And then if you fast forward,
0:18:17 I think you’re like the first time that you kind of,
0:18:20 you said you’ve made money like two or three times.
0:18:22 The first time was after that India trip
0:18:25 with you and your father, right?
0:18:28 – Yeah, he started a business in the basement of our house.
0:18:32 I didn’t end up seeing that money till much, much later
0:18:35 and still lived very frugally.
0:18:38 Probably, I still live very frugally, actually,
0:18:42 but I guess I didn’t really have money, per se,
0:18:46 until maybe 10 or 15 years after that.
0:18:48 But yeah, my dad started in the basement of our house.
0:18:49 This was my next big adventure.
0:18:53 I came home from India, not sure what to do next.
0:18:55 My dad had been working on this business in our house
0:18:59 that did in-flight entertainment equipment for small jets.
0:19:02 – Sam, I was on a plane with Nick.
0:19:04 It’s just the two of us on his plane and Nick is like,
0:19:06 we get on and instead of just like sitting down,
0:19:08 putting his bag away, relaxing,
0:19:09 he’s like immediately fiddling
0:19:11 with all the gadgets on the plane.
0:19:14 He’s like trying to like pull off the in-screen monitor,
0:19:16 like where the map is of the plane.
0:19:18 – They made them.
0:19:19 – I’m like, is there something behind that?
0:19:20 What are you trying to do here?
0:19:22 And he’s like, I just want to see which one they have.
0:19:24 Like this is what, and he’s like, did you know this?
0:19:25 And he’s like, give me all these facts.
0:19:27 And five minutes later, he finally tells me,
0:19:29 oh yeah, this was the business that my dad and I worked on,
0:19:32 which was like, they sold these little parts,
0:19:35 electronic parts to planes in order to like,
0:19:37 hey, you see how your tray table comes out
0:19:39 and how there’s this little thing here?
0:19:40 That’s what we did.
0:19:42 – And it was like a, like I’ve talked to,
0:19:46 in his mom, it was his mom and dad and then Nick,
0:19:48 and I’ve talked to them about it.
0:19:50 And it was like a smashing success.
0:19:52 You know, it took a while to like work,
0:19:55 but it was like, it was a home run in terms of like,
0:19:56 they were working on it together.
0:19:58 It turned out to be financially fruitful.
0:20:01 And his parents are like the cutest parents
0:20:03 you’ll ever talk to.
0:20:05 And it was literally like a mom and pop shop.
0:20:08 It was like, you know, where it’s like Nick Gray and son,
0:20:10 like to have a business, like the name is,
0:20:11 that’s really what it was.
0:20:12 And it sounded awesome.
0:20:14 It was a very wholesome business.
0:20:16 – Were there any great stories from that chapter
0:20:19 where either unlock, you guys figured out
0:20:22 that made things work or a moment you thought it was,
0:20:24 you were screwed, but then you figured something out.
0:20:26 Is there any good stories from that?
0:20:27 – One thing I can tell you is that
0:20:30 even in those early days search engine optimization
0:20:33 played a huge role within the business
0:20:37 and searching for FAA certified in-flight monitors.
0:20:39 What a niche thing.
0:20:40 And yet all we needed was one
0:20:45 and we really got a million dollar deal from the SEO
0:20:47 because I bought every domain name.
0:20:49 I was creating fake blogs.
0:20:52 I had everything pointing back to our company
0:20:54 that we dominated not just the first three results,
0:20:57 but like the first page of results.
0:20:59 Because this was 2009-ish
0:21:02 when there was a lot less SEO stuff.
0:21:04 But even now it’s such a niche industry.
0:21:06 One major lesson that I think I could say
0:21:10 was that I was lucky to come up under this
0:21:14 salt of the earth sales guy who ran our sales team.
0:21:17 And he was the type of guy you see in movies.
0:21:19 Today he’s got no social media, he has nothing.
0:21:22 This was an Air Force guy who, you know,
0:21:26 would pick up the phone at the shortest instance.
0:21:28 Would cold call people.
0:21:30 There’s a vivid memory that I have
0:21:32 being at the trade show of somebody’s badge
0:21:34 being flipped around and they walked up
0:21:35 and tried to talk to him.
0:21:38 And he just looks at them, looks down at them,
0:21:41 grabs like, like gets in their space, grabs their badge,
0:21:46 turns it around and says, oh, Dan McNormick, you asshole.
0:21:51 And just like that, that like good old boy type of attitude
0:21:54 that I got to come up under.
0:21:56 And so there’s so many people out there
0:21:58 that are trying to solopreneur,
0:22:01 that are trying to bootstrap, that are trying to hustle,
0:22:03 that just don’t have any experience,
0:22:05 that have never learned those lessons
0:22:08 that I’m so thankful that I got to learn through him.
0:22:10 And so that was one of those experiences.
0:22:11 His name was Jay Healy.
0:22:14 He was a huge influence on how I think about phone calls
0:22:17 and sales and outbound and things like that.
0:22:19 Oh, wait, wait a second, I had a business idea.
0:22:21 So someone told me, Jack Smith said,
0:22:24 this crowd loves business ideas.
0:22:26 And so I have a business idea for your listeners.
0:22:28 I have a couple of business ideas,
0:22:29 but one of them is this.
0:22:34 You need to create a white label enterprise sales team.
0:22:37 Quit trying to hire programmers, whatever.
0:22:38 I want you going out there,
0:22:42 recruiting the guys selling cut-co-knives.
0:22:43 I want you going to the mall,
0:22:48 finding the most hustler guys selling that shoe soap stuff.
0:22:50 And I want you to start building them
0:22:54 and training them on how to sell B2B SaaS.
0:22:57 If you are looking for an aqua hire,
0:23:00 sales people are in high demand.
0:23:03 If you have guys that can sell and girls that can sell,
0:23:05 this company will get bought.
0:23:07 I don’t care what you’re selling,
0:23:10 but start collecting sales people and build a sales team.
0:23:11 You’ll either get bought out,
0:23:13 you can build a SaaS around it,
0:23:15 or you’ll just get aqua hired in.
0:23:17 This is a good business idea.
0:23:19 – Nick, what makes you special?
0:23:22 And Sean experienced it ’cause you guys hung out.
0:23:25 And I don’t think that he fully understood it.
0:23:28 Like this is the type of stuff that Nick Ray does.
0:23:30 It’s the weirdest, corkiest stuff.
0:23:32 But when he decides to be quirky and weird,
0:23:33 it’s pretty authentic to him.
0:23:36 And he goes like a 10 out of 10.
0:23:37 – Sam is exactly right.
0:23:41 And it’s the same idea of why I’m getting,
0:23:45 you know, things like the hot dog cat for Sam
0:23:49 or the basketball thing for Sean.
0:23:52 Or like, why do we just do little things
0:23:55 to just make it interesting?
0:23:58 Because I think that it’s just different.
0:24:01 We can live life a little bit differently.
0:24:04 And I like to have fun.
0:24:06 – Yeah, dude, your crayon box has like four extra colors
0:24:08 that I don’t have that I need to pick up.
0:24:10 I need to go find these colors.
0:24:12 When I was doing the research last night,
0:24:13 I made a note, I go,
0:24:16 I think that Nick has chugged the biggest glass
0:24:17 of be yourself juice.
0:24:21 And now he’s just belching the remainder out
0:24:22 for the rest of the world.
0:24:23 And you had this great quote.
0:24:24 You said, you tweeted this out.
0:24:26 It didn’t go viral, but I loved it.
0:24:28 You said, quit playing it cool.
0:24:29 Life is too short.
0:24:31 Be intense and passionate and mildly insane.
0:24:34 Now, whoever’s left hanging is your friend.
0:24:38 – Yeah, yeah.
0:24:41 The lesson that I would have for listeners
0:24:44 is that I can live that way now.
0:24:49 I think because I grinded it out, ground out.
0:24:52 I grounded it out.
0:24:53 I think that I can live that way now
0:24:54 because I achieved some success
0:24:56 and I did some truly great things.
0:24:59 This is not your carte blanche permission
0:25:01 to go be an insane person.
0:25:03 That’s not what I’m telling you.
0:25:07 And there’s a fine line between genius and insanity.
0:25:08 I’m not saying that I’m genius.
0:25:12 I’m probably more insane, but I am 42 years old.
0:25:13 I have had some successful business.
0:25:16 I’ve been playing the game of business
0:25:18 for way more than half my life.
0:25:20 And I feel that I have the confidence today
0:25:22 to be who I want to be
0:25:24 because I have achieved some of that success.
0:25:25 – Do you get lonely?
0:25:27 – Probably.
0:25:30 I don’t exactly know what it would be not to be lonely,
0:25:31 but I have a lot of friends.
0:25:33 – You have a lot of friends.
0:25:34 And you have a lot of friends that are like,
0:25:36 I consider us to be very close.
0:25:38 We’re like, you’re family to me.
0:25:41 But sometimes I think to myself,
0:25:43 I want a nine to five just because people throughout the day
0:25:45 can’t hang out with me.
0:25:48 Or I want like a routine just so I could have a family.
0:25:49 Do you know what I mean?
0:25:52 But then other times I see you just jetting off to Japan
0:25:55 on a blind date and I’m like, oh, that adventure seems fun.
0:25:58 But it’s hard to have both the stability of like
0:26:03 a family sometimes and the eccentric like excitement
0:26:05 that you get to have.
0:26:08 So do you ever get lonely leaning into one of those sides
0:26:10 versus the other side?
0:26:13 – The largest and most valid critique of me and my lifestyle
0:26:18 would be that I am 42 and single and no kids.
0:26:21 And that people will say that that will be one
0:26:24 of the greatest fallacies that I’ve waited so long
0:26:27 to begin my life and my family.
0:26:30 And that no happiness can come from the happiness
0:26:33 of a parent loving their child.
0:26:37 And I think that that is 100% valid.
0:26:41 I also do not agree with the critiques that say
0:26:45 just get married as soon as you can, business will follow.
0:26:49 Get married first above all else, make that your priority.
0:26:54 I lived my life thus far through at least my late 30s
0:26:57 making business, success, financial freedom
0:27:00 my number one priority, my number one.
0:27:02 In fact, I hired a matchmaker for a little while
0:27:05 when I was in New York and she set me up
0:27:06 with like 20 or 30 dates.
0:27:09 And at the end of it, she was like, Nick, you know what?
0:27:12 I don’t think you even want a girlfriend.
0:27:15 She said, I think you just want to go on dates.
0:27:16 She said, with your business right now
0:27:19 you have no room in your life.
0:27:22 You would never make a woman your number one priority.
0:27:24 And I said, that’s exactly right.
0:27:26 Yeah, we should have talked about this beforehand.
0:27:29 There’s like, there’s no chance.
0:27:30 Like my business is my number one.
0:27:31 – Is the retainer the fundable?
0:27:32 – Yeah, yeah.
0:27:38 And I said, like, this is my number one priority
0:27:39 is my business.
0:27:42 It’s all that I think about, it’s all that I do.
0:27:46 I would wake up, I had this girlfriend in New York
0:27:49 who was a poet and we would wake up in the morning
0:27:53 and she would want to, you know, color and drink coffee
0:27:55 and hang out and I’m like, babe, I got a grind.
0:27:56 Like…
0:27:59 – I don’t have time to color.
0:28:01 There’s no time to color.
0:28:02 We can’t color today.
0:28:05 – You can color me impressed with this plan.
0:28:06 – Yeah, yeah.
0:28:07 No time.
0:28:12 It’s like, babe, you gotta go and I’m not here to hang out.
0:28:14 And that was a different time in my life
0:28:16 when I was so focused on that.
0:28:19 So this leads me to my next business idea.
0:28:23 I am going to do potentially,
0:28:25 if enough people ask me for this,
0:28:30 the first seven figure millionaire matchmaker
0:28:34 that is only based on a contingency fee.
0:28:35 So I’m gonna have no cost.
0:28:37 I’m only gonna take the top of the top clients.
0:28:41 We’re talking people like, I’m not gonna name names,
0:28:43 but folks that have a minimum,
0:28:44 probably 50 million net worth,
0:28:46 five million social followers.
0:28:49 I’m going to be matchmaking for these people.
0:28:51 And if they get married only success,
0:28:53 gentlemen’s agreement, handshake,
0:28:57 million dollar minimum success fee.
0:28:59 I think that that’s interesting for a few reasons.
0:29:02 Number one, because think about all the cool people
0:29:03 that I’m gonna get to meet.
0:29:05 If I have this little roster of close friends
0:29:08 and incredible people that I get to go up an approach
0:29:12 and I’m like, oh, I’m matchmaking for such and such.
0:29:14 Number two is most matchmakers
0:29:17 will never work on a contingency basis.
0:29:20 They only work on a retainer, but I don’t need the money.
0:29:22 Like I have plenty of time.
0:29:24 Like I’m happy to let this play out over five years.
0:29:26 – Can you explain how a traditional matchmaker works?
0:29:27 I don’t think most people know.
0:29:30 How much is a good matchmaker in New York cost?
0:29:32 And what do they give you?
0:29:35 – I think there’s a variety of different matchmakers
0:29:36 and it’s not just in New York city.
0:29:38 You can find these in Dallas, Texas.
0:29:41 You can find them in San Francisco and Chicago.
0:29:44 Matchmakers, by the way, gosh, let’s talk about this.
0:29:45 – There’s a huge range.
0:29:46 – There’s a huge range.
0:29:49 And actually PE companies do like to buy these businesses.
0:29:51 I’ve heard of two of them.
0:29:53 Brent B. Shor’s company has bought one
0:29:54 and someone else we both know
0:29:57 looked at acquiring one of them.
0:30:01 But matchmaking services can go from $5,000
0:30:03 all the way up to $100,000.
0:30:04 And the ones that I have heard of,
0:30:09 it’s roughly $5,000 a date and they set you up
0:30:15 and they extensively prescreen these women.
0:30:17 – Yeah, and in advance you get like a PDF.
0:30:19 Like I’ve helped some of my buddies like review some of them.
0:30:23 You get like a PDF of like five different people.
0:30:24 And it’s crazy.
0:30:26 It says like lives in Jackson Hole,
0:30:30 but willing to relocate that it like does a profile on them
0:30:32 and you kind of pick and choose.
0:30:35 – And how much better is this PDF than just a,
0:30:36 if I went to somebody’s Tinder profile
0:30:38 and right-click, save as PDF,
0:30:40 what would I be getting that’s different in this?
0:30:41 – Oh my God.
0:30:44 Well, the next piece of advice for listeners
0:30:46 is you need to delete your dating apps.
0:30:49 You guys need to get off of the dating apps
0:30:52 because you are not gonna be able to make a difference.
0:30:53 Nobody cares about you.
0:30:57 Unless you’re above six foot, you’re devilishly attractive.
0:31:00 The vast majority of men need to delete their dating apps.
0:31:01 Please, and I’ll give you one tip.
0:31:03 You need to join a sports club.
0:31:06 Specifically, consider joining a kickball league.
0:31:08 Now why kickball?
0:31:11 Kickball has the largest number of teams.
0:31:15 So the team size is larger than any other sport.
0:31:18 And generally both teams go out for drinks afterwards.
0:31:20 Now you’ve heard other things like join a run club,
0:31:22 go to yoga classes, things like that.
0:31:24 If you do those things,
0:31:28 you basically can talk to two people at each one.
0:31:30 You can talk to somebody before
0:31:32 and you can talk to somebody afterwards.
0:31:34 But if you’re trying to ping pong around this run club
0:31:37 to get numbers, it’s gonna be very, very low signal
0:31:39 and you’re not gonna look good.
0:31:40 Think about that, start a matchmaker.
0:31:41 – You gotta answer Sean’s question.
0:31:43 – And you have to run, which sucks.
0:31:44 Okay.
0:31:46 – Sean’s question was how much more details
0:31:48 do you get from a matchmaker?
0:31:50 The one that I worked was a different way
0:31:53 and so I would not get these detailed advanced prep sheets
0:31:55 for the $5,000 a date ones.
0:31:57 They are checking to make sure that the things
0:32:01 that are important to you are important to them as well.
0:32:04 – And sometimes they do background checks on everyone.
0:32:05 – Yes, they do.
0:32:06 – Do five grand a date?
0:32:08 I don’t know if this is like the Indian DNA in me,
0:32:11 but it’s like, that sounds insane.
0:32:13 $5,000 a date sounds insane.
0:32:15 And obviously, even if you’re wealthy,
0:32:17 I get the rationality of why it would make sense,
0:32:18 but that sounds crazy,
0:32:20 especially when you have a low hit rate
0:32:22 or low success rate with it.
0:32:23 – But if you asked me today,
0:32:26 how much would you pay if I could introduce you
0:32:27 to your perfect person?
0:32:29 – That, I’m a believer in.
0:32:31 If you said, and I’ve actually told–
0:32:32 – Seven figures, eight figures.
0:32:34 – Multi-francis, I’m like, you should set up a bounty,
0:32:36 which is that if you introduce me to somebody
0:32:40 that I fall in love with or get engaged or get married to,
0:32:42 like why would you not put up a million dollars,
0:32:43 two million dollars for that?
0:32:46 For them, it would make such a huge difference in their life.
0:32:48 It’s the best thing money could buy for those people.
0:32:50 – And that is why I’m retitling myself
0:32:53 to be Nick Gray, Babe Bounty Hunter.
0:32:54 And if you are listening to this
0:32:57 and you are interested in putting up a seven figure bounty
0:33:00 to find your person, give me a call.
0:33:02 – Dude, Babe the Bounty Hunter?
0:33:03 (laughing)
0:33:04 That’s a good moniker.
0:33:06 You can have your own TV show with us.
0:33:08 Sam, Nick is so funny, ’cause when we hung out,
0:33:10 he was the only person I’ve ever met in my life
0:33:13 who calls people babes, but not like–
0:33:15 – Dude, he calls them all turbo babes.
0:33:18 – Yeah, he’s just like, I was hanging out with these two babes
0:33:20 and I was laughing, I was like,
0:33:22 I’ve just never heard someone say that.
0:33:25 He’s like, yeah, they were, it was cool.
0:33:27 Okay, so you’re a Babe the Bounty Hunter,
0:33:30 million dollar contingency fee, sell it a private equity.
0:33:31 I kind of love this idea.
0:33:33 You know, I don’t know if you’re raising for this,
0:33:35 but I’m interested, we can get you some distribution
0:33:37 on the pod, we can do some special episodes once a month.
0:33:40 We talk about our suitor here.
0:33:42 – I’m super stoked.
0:33:45 I’m excited, I’ll cut you guys in easy.
0:33:47 It’s a, yeah, yeah, it’s a good deal.
0:33:48 Look, here’s the thing.
0:33:52 It’s very, very hard for extremely successful people,
0:33:54 whether it’s men or women,
0:33:57 to sell and to market themselves appropriately.
0:33:58 And I don’t necessarily believe
0:34:00 that having money is a bad thing.
0:34:03 I think it is something to be proud of,
0:34:05 but there’s no good way to say that about yourself.
0:34:06 Anyhow.
0:34:08 – Do you know a lot of single, wealthy men, Sean?
0:34:10 – Yeah, I know so many of them.
0:34:11 I call them Peter Pan’s.
0:34:16 – Yeah, I’ve got, yeah, sorry Nick, you’re a Peter Pan.
0:34:22 And what’s crazy to me is Nick’s not one of these guys.
0:34:23 Typically I would’ve thought you’d be good
0:34:24 at some type of public speaking,
0:34:26 whether even if you just have a team of 10 people,
0:34:28 like you could talk to them in front of them.
0:34:31 There’s a lot of attributes that you would think
0:34:32 would translate to women.
0:34:34 Not the case.
0:34:36 Not the case with a lot of friends.
0:34:38 And that has always boggled my mind.
0:34:39 You know what I mean?
0:34:40 Do you have friends like that, Sean?
0:34:43 Doesn’t that seem kind of crazy?
0:34:44 – Yeah, I mean, the crazier part honestly
0:34:48 is that you’ll talk to them and it’s basically like,
0:34:50 yeah, this is the one thing I really want.
0:34:52 That’s the area of my life that I wanna invest in.
0:34:54 I want to grow, to bloom.
0:34:56 That’s the part of my garden I want to bloom.
0:34:58 And then you talk to them, they say that to you,
0:35:00 but then the next four weeks, they’re like,
0:35:02 I’m on the road, I’m doing sales calls,
0:35:03 I’m going to this pitch.
0:35:07 It’s like, dude, you took 49 pitches in the last two months,
0:35:09 but one day.
0:35:11 And it’s like the priorities don’t match the calendar,
0:35:12 but I get it.
0:35:13 It’s because there’s a human tendency,
0:35:17 which is that whatever is not going well for you,
0:35:18 wherever you’re struggling in,
0:35:21 it’s easy to just avoid that and gravitate towards things
0:35:23 that are giving you that immediate dopamine hit
0:35:27 of success, of progress, of being great at something.
0:35:28 And I wish that they wouldn’t do that.
0:35:31 The ones I respect the most are the ones who like,
0:35:33 fight against that grain.
0:35:35 And they’re like, dude, the incremental dollar
0:35:36 does nothing for me at this point.
0:35:39 But meeting my life partner would be an amazing thing
0:35:42 for my life and really match their calendar
0:35:43 with their priorities.
0:35:45 – Dude, I have, listen to this, Nick.
0:35:48 I hung out with my friend last week.
0:35:49 He’s worth probably $200 million.
0:35:51 Sold the company fabulously wealthy.
0:35:52 He’s six, four.
0:35:54 He’s polite, nice.
0:35:54 He’s awesome.
0:35:56 He’s just an awesome guy.
0:35:59 And I met with him and my wife and I met,
0:36:00 like we hung out with him and he was like,
0:36:03 Hey, I met this girl on hinge and we matched.
0:36:05 I don’t know what to say to her.
0:36:07 Can you guys like, can I like run some idea?
0:36:09 I’m like, are you kidding me?
0:36:13 You’re nervous to have this text based conversation.
0:36:15 I’m like, dude, you’re the catch here.
0:36:17 Like you’re like, you’re like perfect.
0:36:18 What are you talking about?
0:36:19 And he was nervous.
0:36:21 And we had to like go through each line.
0:36:22 He’s like, does that sound weird?
0:36:23 Does it sound weird if I say this?
0:36:26 And I think there’s a shockingly large amount of men
0:36:29 that are like that, which is, which is insane to me.
0:36:30 – The dating thing is interesting.
0:36:32 I, Sean, I put my hands up when you were doing this
0:36:35 cause I was like, yes, the calendar doesn’t lie.
0:36:38 If this is important to you, but you know what?
0:36:41 I’ll say something that folks are saying online.
0:36:43 If you’re listening to this podcast
0:36:45 because you want to be financially successful,
0:36:49 I think you need to have priorities in life.
0:36:52 And it is very hard to run and be laser focused
0:36:55 on your business when you’re trying to build a relationship.
0:36:57 Dare I say it’s almost impossible.
0:37:00 – Just a bunch of dudes playing with harmonicas,
0:37:03 with balloons talking about how to get chicks.
0:37:05 (laughing)
0:37:08 – Yeah.
0:37:09 Oh, what are you doing over there, Johnny?
0:37:11 Oh, I’m listening to this guy in the harmonica
0:37:12 talking about how to find your life partner.
0:37:14 Oh, he must be very successful.
0:37:16 Is he married?
0:37:17 – No, he’s single.
0:37:22 – Well, what was your other idea?
0:37:23 – Do you have another idea?
0:37:25 – Okay, I got another business idea.
0:37:28 I think we should bring back web hosting companies,
0:37:32 specifically services agencies to help local small businesses
0:37:36 build very basic WordPress websites.
0:37:38 We poo-poo these simple ideas.
0:37:39 Notice what the focus is.
0:37:41 The focus there is sales.
0:37:43 Can you sell it to them?
0:37:44 But you go to somebody and you say,
0:37:46 “Look, for 50 bucks a month, I’m gonna host your site.
0:37:48 “I’ll make sure it doesn’t get hacked.
0:37:50 “I’ll keep it lightly updated.
0:37:51 “You can buy an additional thing
0:37:53 “if you want to make updates.”
0:37:55 But this is a SaaS business.
0:37:57 You are now creating websites
0:37:59 where you are selling them this service,
0:38:01 hacker, web hosting, whatever.
0:38:03 You’re just doing the basic stuff.
0:38:07 I think that we have to come up with this new AI stuff.
0:38:08 Go back to the basics.
0:38:11 Start making webpages for restaurants in town
0:38:13 and start at the basics.
0:38:15 I think we need to bring back web hosting companies.
0:38:17 – I got a cool twist on this,
0:38:21 which is the why now or what you could do differently now.
0:38:22 I have a friend who’s doing this right now.
0:38:24 They took, I won’t give away the category
0:38:25 ’cause I don’t want them to feel like
0:38:27 I invited competition for them.
0:38:28 But they found a specific category.
0:38:30 So a specific type of business.
0:38:32 It’s not pest control,
0:38:34 but let’s just pretend it was pest control for a second.
0:38:36 So they picked a category and then they were like,
0:38:40 “Cool, if I hired a fancy New York design agency
0:38:43 “to make an awesome website for this company.”
0:38:45 Doesn’t have to look super, super slick,
0:38:47 but much slicker than what they have by default
0:38:50 and checks all the boxes of what a company like that needs.
0:38:52 Oh, they need to immediately be able to request a quote.
0:38:54 They need to be able to do XYZ.
0:38:55 Cool, got the requirements.
0:38:58 Got five design templates made.
0:38:59 And then what they did was they were like,
0:39:01 “Cool, you know, AI is actually amazing at this.”
0:39:02 So they told the AI, they were like,
0:39:05 “AI, go find every…”
0:39:06 Let’s just use pest control as an example.
0:39:09 “Every pest control business in New York right now
0:39:12 “that you can find on the online.
0:39:14 “Easy to do, it crawls, it gives you a spreadsheet
0:39:17 “of all the names of the companies and their URLs.”
0:39:18 This is great.
0:39:20 Then it created another AI agent that said,
0:39:23 “Take their existing website, pull out the info,
0:39:26 “and then apply it to one of these five templates.”
0:39:27 And it did that.
0:39:29 And then it said, and then he said,
0:39:31 “Another AI agent was draft a cold email
0:39:34 “to this list of prospects and include an mock-up,
0:39:36 “an attachment that was made by agent two
0:39:39 “that redid their website.”
0:39:40 And so they’re getting this crazy response rate
0:39:42 because they’re going to these businesses
0:39:44 and they’re saying, “Hey, I was checking out your site.
0:39:46 “Just so you know, I’m a web developer.
0:39:47 “I help companies like you.
0:39:51 “I actually made a mock-up of your website,
0:39:53 “like of what I think I could do with it.”
0:39:54 If you think this looks cool,
0:39:57 I’d be happy to do it for you for this monthly fee.
0:39:58 And they’re doing lead gen,
0:39:59 they’re getting amazing lead gen
0:40:02 because they’re coming with a hyper-personalized offer,
0:40:04 which is not just, “Hey, do you need a website?”
0:40:06 Or, “Hey, I make websites for companies like you,
0:40:08 “but hey, I looked at your site.
0:40:10 “I thought I could improve it.
0:40:11 “Here’s what it looks like improved.
0:40:12 “Do you want it?”
0:40:17 And that makeover can now be automated with AI,
0:40:18 which again, I don’t think you’d need
0:40:19 to make your idea successful,
0:40:21 but it does add a turbo juice
0:40:24 that didn’t exist before that now can work.
0:40:26 – What do you use for that?
0:40:29 I mean, that outbound seems amazing for everything.
0:40:30 – It is amazing.
0:40:33 It’s the AI sort of go-to-market idea,
0:40:34 which I think right now,
0:40:36 the people who are gonna make the most money AI
0:40:38 are the AI tool providers,
0:40:40 but then the second one is gonna be
0:40:42 people who can string together AI tools
0:40:44 to like turbo-charge sales.
0:40:45 – I wanna use them.
0:40:46 Do you know what they are?
0:40:48 – Yeah, I mean, it’s three different things, right?
0:40:50 So there’s like, let’s say for the automated emails,
0:40:51 there’s a certain tool called Clay
0:40:52 that’s really good at that.
0:40:54 Clay sends personalized emails.
0:40:56 It basically gives you a prospect list.
0:40:58 It’ll enrich the prospect list.
0:41:00 So it’ll say, cool, give me all the companies
0:41:01 who fit this criteria, it’ll give it to you.
0:41:04 Then it’ll say, add in how many employees they have,
0:41:05 roughly their revenue range,
0:41:07 who is their CEO, and what’s their phone number.
0:41:09 And it’ll fill that whole table out for you automatically.
0:41:10 And then you can say, cool,
0:41:14 draft some email scripts for me to email these people,
0:41:15 and it’ll basically create templates
0:41:17 that then can be sent, hyper-personalized templates.
0:41:19 But before that, let’s say you need the other piece.
0:41:21 Well, you might use Claude or something like that,
0:41:23 where you’re gonna say, build a tool,
0:41:26 build a little tool for me where I can basically input this
0:41:28 and I can get out a website in this format.
0:41:30 So you maybe use Claude with artifacts to do that,
0:41:32 or some custom work around that.
0:41:34 And then the first piece, which was just the prospecting,
0:41:35 that’s pretty easy.
0:41:37 There’s a lot of tools that can do just the prospecting side.
0:41:38 – Oh, that’s crazy.
0:41:39 That is crazy.
0:41:42 God damn.
0:41:43 – Help me think about this, guys.
0:41:47 Is there something here that I wanna riff on,
0:41:49 which is that Sean just had this great idea.
0:41:54 Notice that my idea was, go to local restaurants
0:41:59 and try to sell them a new website.
0:42:01 Sean took it to the nth degree.
0:42:06 No, write a script, so now you can do 5,000 a day.
0:42:09 And blah, blah, blah.
0:42:13 And I wanna pull listeners back to my side of the aisle.
0:42:15 (laughing)
0:42:18 – Yes, I think I mid-wit-meamed it for you.
0:42:24 Which is to say, there is beauty in the simplicity
0:42:28 of getting started and calling and hand-coding
0:42:29 and building your business.
0:42:31 And that has shown up for me
0:42:33 when I did my museum tour business.
0:42:36 I was a tour guide, you guys.
0:42:38 I built a multi-million dollar business
0:42:39 out of being a tour guide.
0:42:41 Every Friday and Saturday night,
0:42:44 I was literally leading people at the museum.
0:42:46 And I did that for two years
0:42:48 before I even hired my first person.
0:42:51 How much money are you making, just you, doing that?
0:42:54 – During the tour guide, each ticket was like $80.
0:42:59 I would tour for 10 to 20 people a night
0:43:01 and doing it every Friday, Saturday night,
0:43:03 so you can do that math.
0:43:06 – Dude, Sean, my, so Nick had this company
0:43:09 called Museum Hack, where like, was it MoMA,
0:43:10 or what museum do you use?
0:43:11 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
0:43:12 the best museum in the whole world.
0:43:13 That’s where we started.
0:43:14 – He just hijacked it.
0:43:17 So like, he didn’t ask them permission
0:43:18 if he could give tours there.
0:43:20 – You called it Renegade Museum Tours, right?
0:43:24 So it’s not part of their offering.
0:43:27 – And so, he built that business, sold it, whatever.
0:43:30 Sarah, my wife, and Nick are close friends,
0:43:33 and she was like, hey, Nick, can you give my mom
0:43:36 and I like a private tour of MoMA, or the Met,
0:43:37 something like that?
0:43:38 And he’s like, yeah, I got you.
0:43:40 So apparently, my mother-in-law was like,
0:43:41 oh, you know, I like Nick,
0:43:43 but I kind of felt dangerous being around him
0:43:45 because like, the security guard would be like,
0:43:47 hey, you can’t go through that elevator.
0:43:50 And Nick would be like, oh, no, no, trust me, it’s okay.
0:43:53 And he would just like, walk on the elevator.
0:43:57 Like, he would tell them like, no, you’re wrong.
0:43:58 It’s okay, trust me.
0:44:00 And he would just go and do whatever he wanted to do.
0:44:04 And that’s, is that how you ran your business?
0:44:06 – Yeah, I like to think that some of those guarded off areas
0:44:09 are more suggestions rather than rules.
0:44:11 And that as long as you’re being respectful–
0:44:12 – Right, this is a rope, not a fence.
0:44:14 – Yeah, exactly.
0:44:16 – Exactly, whoa, can’t go under it, watch me.
0:44:19 No, no, no.
0:44:22 I have a lot of respect for these museums and for the art,
0:44:25 but we would do different non-traditional things.
0:44:27 We would lay down on the floor to look at the ceiling.
0:44:30 We would sit down to talk about the art.
0:44:32 We would talk about how much the paintings cost,
0:44:35 which is a very taboo thing in the art world.
0:44:38 And we would do all these non-traditional things
0:44:42 in a museum space to really do museum tours
0:44:44 for people who didn’t like museums.
0:44:45 And I wanna just say that again,
0:44:48 I did tours myself as a side hustle
0:44:49 while I was still in the family business.
0:44:52 This was my thing to build up enough money
0:44:54 so I could quit the family job
0:44:57 and start my own every Friday, Saturday night.
0:44:59 Like that is why I had no dating life
0:45:02 because I was running this business,
0:45:07 which brings me to my next business idea, Airbnb experiences.
0:45:10 If you are interested in starting a new side hustle,
0:45:12 you can sign up on Airbnb experiences
0:45:17 to lead a tour in your town and charge people for it.
0:45:20 This is a way for you to immediately start to get money
0:45:22 from people searching for cool things to do.
0:45:24 Now, this only works in major towns
0:45:26 where they’ve launched Airbnb experiences,
0:45:29 but it’s generally tier one and tier two cities.
0:45:32 Find your favorite stuff, do tours for locals,
0:45:34 show them around to some of your great stuff,
0:45:36 provide a great experience,
0:45:39 beg for five-star reviews,
0:45:41 and you can literally create a side hustle
0:45:43 on Airbnb experiences.
0:45:44 Dude, I love Airbnb experiences.
0:45:47 I’ve done probably 15 of them.
0:45:48 I freaking love them.
0:45:49 You ever do those, Sean?
0:45:51 – I’ve never done one, but I’ve looked at it a bunch.
0:45:52 I liked Nick’s framing of this,
0:45:55 which is like, I’ve been thinking about this a lot,
0:45:56 like starter businesses.
0:46:00 ‘Cause I wrote this blog post, this essay last week
0:46:02 that was about my kind of like first two years
0:46:05 out of college, this like really,
0:46:07 I called it being strategically broke.
0:46:08 I like just avoided getting a job.
0:46:10 I said, I’m not gonna get a job.
0:46:11 I wanna have max freedom.
0:46:14 And so I calculated instead of how do I make the most money,
0:46:15 how do I make like,
0:46:18 what is the minimum money I need to have max freedom?
0:46:21 And that shift, what everybody else that I graduated with
0:46:23 was just like, how do I get the best job,
0:46:24 make the most money,
0:46:26 which you don’t even make that much money anyways,
0:46:26 it’s an entry-level job.
0:46:27 They all suck.
0:46:30 And so I think skipping that level of the game altogether
0:46:32 was a great choice.
0:46:33 But at the time, it looked really bad.
0:46:34 Like my apartment looked like shit.
0:46:35 I lived super scrappy.
0:46:38 We slept on air mattresses, like all of that stuff.
0:46:40 You know, we couldn’t afford a dog’s, we got a mouse.
0:46:42 Like, you know, we did a bunch of like random things like that.
0:46:46 But then we did little things that were starter businesses.
0:46:48 Like I had a little tutoring company.
0:46:49 And then I started doing like a basketball camp once,
0:46:51 you know, during the summer.
0:46:53 And then we did this like thing where we sold wristbands
0:46:55 to like sororities and fraternities
0:46:56 who needed like just like a themed thing.
0:46:58 Like they wanted their name written on some shit.
0:47:00 And that taught me how to make a website
0:47:01 and go to Alibaba.
0:47:04 And like none of these were like businesses
0:47:07 that were super lucrative or that most made no money.
0:47:08 Some made a little bit of money.
0:47:10 Nothing you do impressed by.
0:47:12 But they were amazing starter businesses
0:47:14 that get you your first dollar,
0:47:16 which is like a very addictive feeling.
0:47:19 And it gets you out of theory and into reality.
0:47:20 And it gets you moving.
0:47:23 And it teaches you a bunch of the core tools and skills
0:47:25 that you need, like sales and marketing,
0:47:26 that you’re gonna have to figure out
0:47:28 when you’re ready for a bigger business.
0:47:30 And Airbnb experiences, I love this idea
0:47:32 because it doesn’t even sound like a business.
0:47:34 It’s that much of a starter business.
0:47:35 Anybody could do this.
0:47:37 This is literally now just a question of like,
0:47:38 are you willing to actually do something
0:47:40 or are you just gonna talk about it
0:47:41 for the rest of your life?
0:47:43 And anybody could sign up to do one of these.
0:47:47 Like can you walk in the area where you already live
0:47:48 and can you point your finger at things?
0:47:51 If you can do that, you could host an Airbnb experience.
0:47:53 And I think it removes all excuses
0:47:54 and it gets the ball rolling for people.
0:47:56 I love these starter businesses.
0:47:57 – Love what Sean said,
0:48:00 that it takes you out of theory and into practice.
0:48:01 My first million listeners,
0:48:04 some of y’all have never run a lemonade stand
0:48:06 and it shows, okay?
0:48:07 (laughing)
0:48:08 And so we’re gonna give you some ideas.
0:48:10 – Big old store, got ’em.
0:48:13 – Here’s the next one, it’s a similar one
0:48:15 ’cause you may not like doing tours.
0:48:17 Like I’m not a tour guide.
0:48:21 Geek Squad type neighborhood computer service.
0:48:23 I’ll give you one that is a genius.
0:48:24 I was hanging out with a friend yesterday.
0:48:27 Her laptop was disgusting.
0:48:29 The screen is all smudged up.
0:48:32 There’s cookie crumbs in the keyboard.
0:48:33 There’s all this stuff.
0:48:37 And I’ve had this fantasy of dressing up
0:48:40 and just going door to door to help fix people’s stuff.
0:48:42 I’m talking boosting their wifi,
0:48:44 cleaning their computer,
0:48:47 helping them with some basic tech support stuff,
0:48:48 measuring the power.
0:48:49 Another pet peeve of mine is a lot of people
0:48:53 have really bad cell phone chargers and cables.
0:48:57 They’re not charging with USB-C with the full max power.
0:48:58 New business idea.
0:49:01 It’s Geek Squad as a service where you go door to door,
0:49:03 maybe even just to clean up their laptops and phones.
0:49:07 I found this gunk online that’s this like gel sludge
0:49:08 that you put into keyboards
0:49:11 to suck up all the dust and the dirt.
0:49:14 You can walk around with a little toolkit
0:49:18 and for $100 make some massive improvements for people.
0:49:20 All you need for that is about $100 worth of supplies.
0:49:23 You need a little bit of knowledge on the tech side
0:49:26 and you need to dress up nice and look respectable.
0:49:27 But thinking about these things
0:49:30 that don’t necessarily scale.
0:49:32 Do those things, start there.
0:49:34 You need to get your hands dirty
0:49:35 in these type of environments.
0:49:36 That’s my suggestion.
0:49:38 – Did you see Sean when Nick travels?
0:49:42 Did he show you all the gadgets he keeps in his bags?
0:49:43 – Yeah, well, I didn’t see it too.
0:49:45 He had a pillow.
0:49:47 He had like an Apple Vision Pro.
0:49:48 I don’t know what else.
0:49:49 He had like some juggling balls.
0:49:51 He had like the essentials.
0:49:56 – Dude, he’s so funny when he travels.
0:49:59 Like he researches stuff like crazy.
0:50:01 Like he’ll have like the best charger.
0:50:04 But he also is, he knows how he wants to live.
0:50:05 He lives that way.
0:50:06 So for example, apparently,
0:50:07 I don’t even know what Buckwheat is,
0:50:09 but there’s a Buckwheat pillow that he loves.
0:50:12 And whenever he goes to a hotel,
0:50:14 he buys that $50 or $100 pillow
0:50:17 and he has it shipped to the hotel room.
0:50:21 ‘Cause he’s like, I have to have this Buckwheat pillow.
0:50:22 – Nick, what’s up with the pillow?
0:50:25 – Think how wild this is that we will spend three, four,
0:50:27 sometimes $500 a night for a hotel.
0:50:29 Even $200 a night.
0:50:31 And yet your sleep can be ruined
0:50:33 by some of the smallest things.
0:50:35 The pillow was the one variable
0:50:36 that as I traveled the world,
0:50:39 I realized that I could control.
0:50:40 And someone once said to me,
0:50:42 “Strange pillows equals strange dreams.”
0:50:45 And I realized that I might not be able to control
0:50:48 the mattress, but I can at least control the pillow.
0:50:50 And so I learned about these Japanese Buckwheat pillows
0:50:52 when I was over in Tokyo.
0:50:56 You kind of even love them or you absolutely hate them.
0:50:58 – Dude, I got one, it’s hard as a brick.
0:50:59 Have you ever had one of these?
0:51:00 I think I might’ve done it wrong.
0:51:02 It’s, mine is so hard.
0:51:05 – Yeah, you need to remove half of the holes, okay?
0:51:06 So if that’s a complaint that you have
0:51:09 that it’s too hard, then just dump out half of the holes.
0:51:10 And the good news is it’s Buckwheat,
0:51:11 so you can have it for dinner.
0:51:14 – I guess what I appreciate about you is,
0:51:16 so like, I think Sean’s the same way as me
0:51:19 where I will see something or something disappoints me
0:51:21 and I’m like, oh, fuck it, I’ll live with it.
0:51:26 You don’t have to be like, oh, you brought me pesto pizza?
0:51:28 I ordered a steak, man, fuck it, whatever.
0:51:30 Like, I don’t even like pesto,
0:51:32 but like I’m just gonna deal with it, whatever.
0:51:36 Or my haircut’s bad and I don’t want to complain.
0:51:37 It’ll grow back, fuck it.
0:51:38 You are not that person.
0:51:40 – Yeah, when the barber asks you,
0:51:43 do you want it rounded or squared, you have an opinion.
0:51:46 Whereas I’m just like, whatever, it’s fine.
0:51:47 You don’t have to do it.
0:51:49 Just, I feel like even now, do you want the money?
0:51:53 And it’s like, fuck me, right?
0:52:00 You have an opinion about stuff and I appreciate that.
0:52:02 – Thank you, thanks.
0:52:04 – And you like put in the effort to like have life your way.
0:52:06 I don’t really do that as much.
0:52:08 – Is there some story about like a billionaire
0:52:10 who does the same thing, Nick, but not with a pillow?
0:52:13 – Peter Teal does that with a mattress, right?
0:52:15 – Yeah, what’s the story?
0:52:17 – I don’t want to comment on it.
0:52:20 I have heard that somebody does, has positioned
0:52:22 a couple dozen mattresses around the world
0:52:23 in major metropolitan areas.
0:52:27 And so that when he goes to the hotel,
0:52:31 his advanced team moves the mattress into the hotel room.
0:52:34 So he has the same exact sleep anywhere,
0:52:38 just to remove any number of variables possible.
0:52:41 – Sam, what does your advanced team do?
0:52:43 (laughing)
0:52:49 – I’m gonna do it out of reply to that, my advanced team.
0:52:50 – I’m your advanced team.
0:52:52 I love being Sam’s advanced team at events.
0:52:54 I love to get himself clear.
0:52:55 – What’s the name for that where you-
0:52:56 – Nick is my body guy.
0:52:58 So sometimes I like, for example,
0:53:00 sometimes I’ll get invited to speak someplace
0:53:02 and I’ll be like, I’m only gonna go,
0:53:04 like for example, we had one and I was like,
0:53:06 I’m only gonna go if Neville and Nick will go with me
0:53:07 ’cause I don’t want to go alone.
0:53:08 And I’m like, Nick, you want to come with me?
0:53:10 He’s like, yeah, gotta be your body guy.
0:53:12 And I was like, well, I just want you to come with my friend.
0:53:15 He’s like, well, but can I be your body guy?
0:53:16 I’m like, I don’t know what a body guy is,
0:53:19 but yeah, I guess, like, as long as, yeah, sure.
0:53:21 As long as like, it’s nothing that will make my wife angry.
0:53:22 – I’m not usually into that.
0:53:24 (laughing)
0:53:26 – And so he’s my body guy.
0:53:27 And he like, he goes, all right, Sam.
0:53:30 So what that means is like, so on Wednesday,
0:53:32 your schedule is this, this, and this.
0:53:33 We’re gonna go here, here, here, and here.
0:53:34 And like, I go to this talk
0:53:37 and there’s like 10 people in the crowd, like no one came.
0:53:38 And he’s like, all right,
0:53:41 we’re gonna do autographs and photographs over here.
0:53:43 So Nick, Sam, come with me and like, I’m like,
0:53:45 I’m gonna do Nick, like this, like you’re not,
0:53:46 no one wants to do any of this stuff.
0:53:48 He’s like, no, no, no, we’re gonna do this.
0:53:50 And then, and then he’ll be like,
0:53:52 he’ll see someone walking by and he’ll grab them
0:53:54 and be like, hey, so is it true that
0:53:56 you want to take a picture with Sam?
0:53:57 And he’s like.
0:53:59 (laughing)
0:54:02 And he’s like, I’m like, is that what a body guy means?
0:54:04 – A body guy is like the opposite of a body guard.
0:54:04 Body guard keeps people away.
0:54:06 A body guy brings people to you.
0:54:07 That’s great.
0:54:08 I love it.
0:54:09 – He like, created this hype.
0:54:10 He’s like a hype man.
0:54:11 And it was so funny.
0:54:13 I had the funniest embarrassing interaction the other day.
0:54:16 So I was, when I went to that trip in San Diego,
0:54:18 I was wearing this hat, this hat right here.
0:54:21 And so I was standing, waiting for like my tacos
0:54:23 at the taco shack.
0:54:25 And this guy goes, hey, I don’t want to bother you,
0:54:27 but like, do you mind if I take a picture?
0:54:30 And I was like, sure, man, that’s cool.
0:54:32 You know, you’ve been listening for a while.
0:54:35 He’s like, no, no, I just like, I like your hat.
0:54:37 My friend has a company called West
0:54:39 and I just wanted him to see this.
0:54:44 And I was like, oh, yeah, I just assumed that you wanted me.
0:54:46 All right, you know what?
0:54:47 Are you getting tacos?
0:54:48 Do you want my tacos?
0:54:51 (laughing)
0:54:53 I had no way out of that moment.
0:54:55 (laughing)
0:54:58 – By the way, Nick, Qtherharmonica,
0:55:01 I got a riff on your idea, your geek squad thing.
0:55:03 I think it’s a simpler version of it,
0:55:06 which is every parent I know that’s like,
0:55:10 kind of like my parents age has this box in their house
0:55:12 of just old home videos.
0:55:13 And so I think an even easier one
0:55:14 versus like, can I help you with your stuff?
0:55:18 Is just to say, hey, do you guys have any like home videos
0:55:19 from your kids?
0:55:22 Because I can convert them into stuff that you can have,
0:55:24 you know, on your computer and the internet.
0:55:26 So you’ll never lose them to live forever.
0:55:28 Can’t even find a VHS player anymore.
0:55:29 So I could take, if you just have that box,
0:55:31 I’ll just take the box and I’ll do it for you.
0:55:33 And then you basically drive it to like, you know,
0:55:35 CVS or Costco and they do this shit for you.
0:55:38 But like, there’s a gap there where most people don’t,
0:55:39 they’re not really aware of the problem
0:55:40 or it’s on their to-do list, they’ll never do it.
0:55:42 But if a kid showed up at their door,
0:55:45 dressed nice, a million dollar smile and said,
0:55:46 I’d love to take care of that for you.
0:55:48 I’m doing that for people in the neighborhood.
0:55:49 I could take it from you right now.
0:55:51 Just show me the closet where it is and I’ll go grab it.
0:55:52 I think that you can make, you know,
0:55:56 an easy few thousand dollars, you know,
0:55:58 in a couple of months of effort there,
0:55:59 which sounds like not that much,
0:56:01 but you know, at different phases of your life,
0:56:03 a few thousand dollars is all the money.
0:56:04 It’s all you need, right?
0:56:06 And it gets you going.
0:56:09 – Knock, knock, ma’am, can I ask you a question?
0:56:11 How much are your memories worth?
0:56:12 Boom.
0:56:14 (laughing)
0:56:16 Boom, keep your memories safe.
0:56:19 Yeah, it’s an easy, it’s an easy sell.
0:56:21 – Use the Wolf of Wall Street, fair enough.
0:56:22 Close.
0:56:24 It’s just like, you watch all the YouTube videos
0:56:27 about sales and you over, you’re a complete overkill
0:56:28 going door to door.
0:56:30 (laughing)
0:56:32 It’s like, Sam, have you seen that company
0:56:35 that’s doing these nap bands?
0:56:36 Me and Nick were talking about this on the plane.
0:56:38 There’s like, you haven’t seen this on Twitter, Sam?
0:56:40 It’s this complete– – What’s a nap band?
0:56:43 – We have this like device that’s like,
0:56:45 you gotta find, it’s called Element or something like that.
0:56:46 It’s to put you to sleep.
0:56:49 – LMI and to send me my free unit shipping.
0:56:50 – I know, I’ve been begging these guys to try it
0:56:52 ’cause I’m a prolific napper.
0:56:54 And napping is like part of my brand.
0:56:56 And I really want– – So, how do you spell it?
0:56:58 – E-L-E-M-I-N-D.
0:57:00 And Sean and I can act out the skit that we’re gonna do
0:57:02 at the promo video for you if you want.
0:57:04 – Sean, please. – I’m Deepak Chopra
0:57:06 or a billionaire, this is what they’re doing right now.
0:57:07 It’s a pre-release product,
0:57:09 but they’re building insane hype on Twitter
0:57:10 ’cause they’ll go to a famous person.
0:57:12 So, Nick, I’m the billionaire
0:57:14 and you’re the founder of Elamine.
0:57:18 – Okay, Deepak, I’m gonna give you the new Elamine.
0:57:19 Why don’t you put this on
0:57:22 and see if it’ll set you to sleep?
0:57:24 – Just like this, okay, that’s it.
0:57:26 – Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
0:57:27 (laughing)
0:57:28 – What’s up, everybody?
0:57:29 I’m Suzy, CEO of Elamine.
0:57:30 This is Deepak Chopra.
0:57:32 Look at that little bitch.
0:57:33 Fell asleep in five minutes.
0:57:35 He’s out like a light.
0:57:37 Bitches, you can’t even hear me.
0:57:38 What’s up, Deepak?
0:57:40 Little bitch.
0:57:41 Three orders, open now.
0:57:47 – This is a special strategy right now.
0:57:49 They take a famous person
0:57:51 and they just knock them out so fast,
0:57:53 but almost to the point where they’re just drooling
0:57:55 and it’s like, yo.
0:57:58 – She literally puts a picture of them sleeping.
0:58:00 It’s like my worst nightmare.
0:58:01 – It’s like punked.
0:58:02 – It’s like a mix of Eat Sleep
0:58:04 and Ashton Kutcher coming out the van.
0:58:05 It’s amazing.
0:58:07 It’s the best part of the campaign I’ve seen in a while.
0:58:08 – She does have that attitude.
0:58:10 She’s like, Deepak Chopra, got ’em.
0:58:13 – Is this the leader of the free world right now?
0:58:14 But watch this.
0:58:17 Boom, out like a light bitch.
0:58:19 – Yeah, oh, sleeping like a little baby.
0:58:22 Little CEO needs nap time.
0:58:24 (laughing)
0:58:27 – Is this legit at all?
0:58:28 – I think it is legit.
0:58:29 I think it’s cool.
0:58:30 I would pay for this thing.
0:58:31 – I want it.
0:58:31 I want it.
0:58:32 Yeah.
0:58:35 – This is insane.
0:58:37 There’s no way this works, right?
0:58:38 – No, I think it works.
0:58:39 I’m a believer.
0:58:42 – Well, speaking of unique marketing strategies,
0:58:44 can I talk about what I did on Google reviews
0:58:46 with my Google Maps photos?
0:58:48 – Well, and by the way,
0:58:50 the Equinox lady came up on this element,
0:58:51 element thing.
0:58:52 I wanna hear the Equinox story.
0:58:53 – Tell the Equinox story first
0:58:55 ’cause I hadn’t heard that before
0:58:56 until you texted me last night,
0:58:58 but I have only heard what you texted me.
0:58:59 So I don’t know the story.
0:59:00 – Great.
0:59:01 So first of all,
0:59:02 the moral of this story,
0:59:02 I’m just gonna cut to it,
0:59:04 is that listeners,
0:59:06 next experiment that you need to be doing,
0:59:07 (horn honking)
0:59:09 bring back blogging.
0:59:11 You need to fill the AIs
0:59:14 and the AIs need to have data
0:59:16 from the public web to scrape.
0:59:18 – I’ve been saying this for a long time.
0:59:20 Blogging needs to make a comeback.
0:59:22 – Take some of your best tweets,
0:59:23 put them into your blogs if you need to.
0:59:25 You don’t have to create new content,
0:59:27 but just put the stuff you’re sharing elsewhere
0:59:28 into blogs.
0:59:31 A great example of that is my own monthly recaps.
0:59:33 If you go to nickgraynews.com,
0:59:33 you go to the blog,
0:59:35 you click the monthly recaps.
0:59:37 I take some of my best posts
0:59:38 and I put it there on the blog,
0:59:39 on the public internet,
0:59:41 in order to scrape.
0:59:43 And you need to do this for a few reasons,
0:59:47 but one of the reasons is for nefarious purposes.
0:59:51 I wanted to find a list of all of the Equinox gyms
0:59:53 in New York City that had swimming pools,
0:59:54 very hard lists to find.
0:59:58 And so I made my own list of all the Equinox gyms
0:59:59 with swimming pools.
1:00:00 It started to rank pretty quickly
1:00:02 as the number one search result
1:00:04 for other people searching for the same thing.
1:00:08 Unfortunately, my gyms started to get very crowded
1:00:11 and I would have to wait for the lanes to swim
1:00:13 at my gym.
1:00:17 And I’m getting 50, 100 visitors a day to this page.
1:00:21 And so I closed my gym swimming pool
1:00:24 according to my blog for maintenance for a year
1:00:27 so that I would have to wait for less people
1:00:30 and people would say, hey, they’d go there.
1:00:31 They’d say, hey, guys, sorry,
1:00:32 this pool’s closed for a year.
1:00:34 We’re resurfacing the bottom pavement,
1:00:36 but these are some other nearby pools.
1:00:39 And yeah, so that’s how we go into jail.
1:00:44 – Sean, listen, Sean, Google, like Nickray Equinox.
1:00:46 He has a PDF on his website.
1:00:52 Download my full list of Equinox gyms with pools.
1:00:55 And if you sign up, we’ll send you the pool links
1:00:58 for each of the New York City Equinox pools.
1:00:59 – You know, I got that lead magnet
1:01:01 for the Friends News editor, brother.
1:01:01 I’m out of here.
1:01:02 – Hands of downloads on the lead magnet.
1:01:06 – Yeah, you’re gonna have just dozens
1:01:09 of pool fans in New York who worship you.
1:01:11 – Wait, literally, that’s my life.
1:01:13 A dozen here, a dozen there.
1:01:15 – All right, so you SEO hacked your way
1:01:18 into having your own pool time for free
1:01:20 because you told everybody the pool’s closed.
1:01:22 That’s on them for not having better SEO, cool.
1:01:25 – Yes, yeah, I have a couple other stories like that.
1:01:26 – Okay, yeah, give us a couple other.
1:01:31 I like these gray area, oh, the gray area.
1:01:33 Perfect theme with your last name.
1:01:34 All right, keep going.
1:01:36 – Gray area, I like it.
1:01:38 All right, here’s another reason that you should be blogging
1:01:40 and writing about interesting things.
1:01:43 I noticed that that movie about Herbalife,
1:01:46 the Bill Ackman movie, was produced
1:01:49 by this hedge fund guy named John Fitchthorne.
1:01:51 And I couldn’t really find a lot about him
1:01:53 and he wasn’t ranking for a lot
1:01:54 ’cause some of these guys are–
1:01:56 – And the story is basically that John
1:01:58 must have been pro-Herbalife
1:02:00 and Ackman was anti-Herbalife
1:02:03 and so they were having like a PR fight.
1:02:07 – John was anti as well and was funding this movie
1:02:10 to show Bill’s sort of anti-story.
1:02:12 Some reason or another John got involved.
1:02:13 I don’t remember the gist of it,
1:02:17 but he was a hedge fund guy who was a producer of this movie.
1:02:19 And there wasn’t a lot about him.
1:02:21 So I wrote an article about all the stuff
1:02:23 I could find about him, various news articles,
1:02:26 whatever I scraped it, I put it all into a thing.
1:02:30 And literally like six months ago, he called me up.
1:02:32 He’s like, “Hey, is this Nick Gray?”
1:02:32 I was like, “Yeah, he’s like,
1:02:35 “This is John Fitchthorne, you wrote an article about me?”
1:02:37 I was like, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.
1:02:38 Like, do you want me to remove it?”
1:02:40 He’s like, “No, I just want to fix some things.
1:02:42 Can you change some of these things that you got wrong?”
1:02:44 And we ended up having like a 30 minute phone call.
1:02:47 He told me about his new strategies and ideas
1:02:48 and all the things he’s doing.
1:02:53 Super cool connection that he doesn’t know me from anybody,
1:02:54 but because I ranked for him,
1:02:57 he reached out and he wanted to help out.
1:02:58 That’s one reason.
1:02:59 I’ve done this in other times.
1:03:03 If there’s this art thing called the Normandy panels, okay?
1:03:06 The SS Normandy was a French cruise ship
1:03:09 that traveled the world in the 1930s
1:03:12 basically to proclaim to the world that France is awesome.
1:03:15 And it had some of the most amazing art deco interiors.
1:03:18 I became captivated with the story of the ship.
1:03:23 World War II broke out, the ship was changed into a military
1:03:26 craft and all the guts were ripped out
1:03:29 and now show up in private collections around the world.
1:03:30 I love this stuff.
1:03:32 Nobody was really tracking these panels.
1:03:35 And so now I am the de facto resource
1:03:37 for these panels on the internet
1:03:40 just as a hobby project that I’ve maintained on my blog.
1:03:42 Last week, I literally got a call
1:03:46 from a conservation expert at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
1:03:48 asking me for advice about who they can talk to
1:03:50 as they’re thinking about these panels
1:03:53 and how they’re gonna show and display them.
1:03:56 All of this is through publishing
1:03:58 and living your life online.
1:04:00 These are little moments of when I’ve done that
1:04:03 that have paid off for me in the long game.
1:04:05 It’s important to know this didn’t happen overnight.
1:04:07 This is a long-term investment.
1:04:09 (upbeat music)
1:04:10 – So here’s the deal.
1:04:14 I made most of my money from a newsletter business.
1:04:15 It was called The Hustle.
1:04:16 And it was a daily newsletter at scale
1:04:18 to millions of subscribers.
1:04:20 And it was the greatest business on earth.
1:04:24 The problem with it was that I had close to 40 employees
1:04:26 and only three of them were actually doing any writing.
1:04:29 The other employees were growing the newsletter,
1:04:31 building out the tech for the platform and selling ads.
1:04:34 And honestly, it was a huge pain in the butt.
1:04:37 Today’s episode is brought to you by Beehive.
1:04:40 They are a platform that is built exactly for this.
1:04:41 If you wanna grow your newsletter,
1:04:43 if you wanna monetize a newsletter,
1:04:44 they do all of the stuff
1:04:47 that I had to hire dozens of employees to do.
1:04:49 So check it out, beehive.com.
1:04:53 That’s B-E-E-H-I-I-V.com.
1:04:55 (upbeat music)
1:04:57 – Nick, there was a guy who I did a podcast
1:04:59 with a couple days ago, Sam couldn’t make it.
1:05:01 And it’s a guy named Guy Spear.
1:05:05 And he’s a kind of well-known value investor.
1:05:08 He’s a disciple of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger.
1:05:11 He ended up meeting Warren Buffett and all this stuff.
1:05:12 And one of the things that came out of it
1:05:16 that I didn’t realize is he read the book,
1:05:19 Persuasion by Robert Gildini or whatever.
1:05:20 I forgot what the exact title is.
1:05:21 I think it’s Persuasion. – Influence.
1:05:22 – Influence, sorry.
1:05:26 And I guess the context is he had a fund
1:05:27 and he was investing kind of friends and family money.
1:05:29 He’s like, dude, I’ll never get beyond friends
1:05:31 and family money if like I don’t learn
1:05:32 how to do sales and marketing.
1:05:34 I have no idea how to do that.
1:05:36 But like, let me go try to read a couple books.
1:05:37 So he reads this book and he reads about the guy
1:05:40 who was the number one car salesman in the world.
1:05:42 And he says, this guy broke the Guinness Book of World Records,
1:05:44 sold the most cars more than anybody else.
1:05:45 And they went and they studied him
1:05:47 and they said, what are you doing differently?
1:05:47 What is your influence?
1:05:49 What is your persuasion technique?
1:05:54 And he used to send out thousands of handwritten notes
1:05:55 to anybody he would meet.
1:05:58 He would send a letter and the letter was very simple.
1:06:00 He would write their name and he would write, I like you.
1:06:04 And he’s like, you know, people like to be liked.
1:06:04 – That’s it.
1:06:07 It just said, dear Sean, I like you from car sales.
1:06:09 – I don’t know the exact, that’s what the book says.
1:06:10 I don’t know if there was more to it.
1:06:14 Now he reads this and he’s like, I don’t know much.
1:06:15 He’s like, I’m not great at many things.
1:06:16 He’s like, but when I do hear something
1:06:19 that like might help me, he’s like, I’m desperate enough
1:06:21 where I just throw my all into it.
1:06:23 The one good thing about me is I don’t have to go in.
1:06:24 So he’s like, I decided, all right,
1:06:26 I’m not leaving work any day
1:06:28 until I’ve written at least three notes.
1:06:30 He’s like, first one he wrote was like, you know, Sam,
1:06:31 I like you.
1:06:32 He’s like, oh my God, I can’t send this.
1:06:33 This feels so weird.
1:06:35 So he’s like, okay, I’ll change that to thank you.
1:06:36 He’s like, I can always say thank you.
1:06:38 He’s like, thank you for blah, blah, blah.
1:06:40 He’s like, I can always find something to thank them for.
1:06:42 And so he started writing three thank you notes a day.
1:06:45 And he started writing that and he started upping the volume.
1:06:48 And then he tells a story about how that led to ultimately
1:06:50 him actually meeting Warren Buffett.
1:06:53 And he’s like, you know, it’s not that everything you know,
1:06:54 turned into some transactional things,
1:06:55 but I didn’t even want that.
1:06:58 He’s like, it’s not even that I actually genuinely felt it
1:06:59 in the moment.
1:07:01 He’s like, I forced myself to do it,
1:07:03 but then I started to kind of feel it like as I went
1:07:05 because I’d have to think, what am I thankful for?
1:07:06 And if you keep asking yourself,
1:07:07 what am I thankful for in this person,
1:07:09 you’ll start to actually appreciate them more.
1:07:11 It started to work.
1:07:14 And what happened was he went to the annual meeting
1:07:15 of this guy, Monish Pabrai.
1:07:17 And Monish was a famous investor.
1:07:18 He’s been on the pod.
1:07:21 He wrote him a letter afterwards that just said,
1:07:23 thank you for having me at the event.
1:07:24 And by the way, he didn’t invite him.
1:07:26 He just said, thank you for having me at the event.
1:07:27 Had a great time.
1:07:28 And that was it.
1:07:30 And Monish called him the next day.
1:07:32 And he goes, hey, I don’t know.
1:07:33 He’s like, I’m Monish.
1:07:34 He’s like, oh, wow, how’d you get my number?
1:07:36 He’s like, well, I looked you up because you’re,
1:07:38 you know, I’ve been having these meetings for years.
1:07:40 And you’re the only guy who’s ever
1:07:41 wrote me a thank you note afterwards.
1:07:43 So I just, I just had to get to know you.
1:07:44 Would you like to get lunch tomorrow?
1:07:46 So they get the lunch and at the lunch he says,
1:07:47 you know, this lunch is great.
1:07:49 Warren Buffett has a charity lunch.
1:07:51 And I think we should bid on it.
1:07:52 Would you come in with me?
1:07:53 Like, you know, whatever amount you’re comfortable with,
1:07:54 I’ll cover the rest.
1:07:56 I’ll cover, you know, four fifths of it, three fourths of it.
1:07:58 You cover whatever your share is,
1:08:00 but I want to go to it with you.
1:08:04 – Oh, so Guy Spear was more up and coming with than Monish.
1:08:05 – Yes, exactly.
1:08:07 Monish had like a, he had like a, at the time,
1:08:08 like an $80 million net worth.
1:08:11 Guy was much smaller than a single digit millions.
1:08:14 And so Guy was like, I think I could put in like 150K,
1:08:17 200K, 250K max, please.
1:08:19 And so they bid on it and they won.
1:08:20 And then they ended up meeting Warren Buffett.
1:08:22 Now the story comes full circle.
1:08:24 While we’re doing the podcast, he reaches back
1:08:25 and he goes, is this on video?
1:08:28 And he pulls out a letter that Warren Buffett sent him
1:08:31 just saying, Guy, thanks for coming to the event.
1:08:33 You know, you know, blah, blah, blah.
1:08:36 And he’s like, Warren, he’s like with his assistant,
1:08:38 sends out these holiday cards every year
1:08:39 to thousands, thousands of people.
1:08:42 And he’s like, he’s like, Warren gets this principle
1:08:45 of basically everything you publish out there,
1:08:46 whether it’s a directed thank you note
1:08:48 or a Nick in your case, these blog posts that you know,
1:08:52 but publishing to the world is a invitation for serendipity.
1:08:54 You don’t really know what’s going to come out of it.
1:08:56 But if you do enough of it in the longterm,
1:08:58 like you will far out kick your coverage.
1:09:01 You will get a huge return on this investment.
1:09:03 Plus it just feels good to everybody involved doing it.
1:09:04 You’ll feel good doing it.
1:09:04 They feel good receiving it.
1:09:06 – That’s such a good story.
1:09:07 – That’s a great story.
1:09:09 – The surface area of serendipity.
1:09:12 And they talk about that in a lot of different things, right?
1:09:16 That’s why we, we, you don’t get lucky.
1:09:19 You put yourself in the opportunity to become lucky.
1:09:21 – Right.
1:09:25 – You want to hear another fun fact about Nick?
1:09:28 I, he’s the only person who has host parties
1:09:30 and literally five of his ex-girlfriends
1:09:32 will be there at the same time.
1:09:33 And they all love each other
1:09:34 and they get along perfectly.
1:09:37 – I want to host a girlfriend conference.
1:09:39 I want to host a conference for all my ex-girlfriends
1:09:42 because I really do think that they would get along
1:09:46 and they’re such incredible, amazing people.
1:09:48 It might be the worst idea ever, but, but I do think-
1:09:50 – No, I think you should a hundred percent do that.
1:09:51 Just for the-
1:09:54 – I think there’s no doubt that’s this idea.
1:09:55 – I see no potential issues.
1:09:59 – Yeah, I think this is, this is going to go wonderfully.
1:10:01 I think that’s, I think that’s perfect.
1:10:04 I think you nailed it over on-
1:10:07 – Can you talk, can you give us the five minute crash course
1:10:10 on how to throw a party?
1:10:12 You know, what is the, I haven’t read your book yet.
1:10:14 I’m sorry, I bought it, but I haven’t read it yet.
1:10:17 – How many copies have you sold by the way?
1:10:20 – 20,000, maybe 21,000.
1:10:22 It’s pretty good.
1:10:23 – That’s great.
1:10:24 – Pretty good, right, each one.
1:10:25 Here’s the thing about a party book, by the way.
1:10:27 Nobody wakes up and says, you know what I need today
1:10:29 is a book about how to host a party.
1:10:31 They want books about how to get rich.
1:10:33 They want books how to lose money, how to blah, blah, blah.
1:10:35 Nobody says they want a party book.
1:10:37 And so that’s been an uphill battle.
1:10:41 So I’m very, very proud of that self published sales figure.
1:10:43 – And, but I understand you have something called
1:10:44 the Nick method.
1:10:45 I don’t know what the Nick method is.
1:10:47 What is the Nick method for hosting a party?
1:10:51 – So the Nick method to host a party will absolutely level up.
1:10:53 I’m going to do a harmonic on this.
1:10:56 Because if you do this one thing,
1:10:59 you will level up your events to be so much better.
1:11:02 And the reason is that the bar is so low
1:11:03 for a successful event.
1:11:06 Think when somebody invites you to like a company happy hour.
1:11:09 You’re just people standing around at an open bar.
1:11:10 It’s like bad.
1:11:13 That’s the old way and the future can change
1:11:17 if we bend our will to make it do that.
1:11:19 You can do that with the Nick method when you host events.
1:11:21 N-I-C-K, like my name.
1:11:24 The N stands for name tags.
1:11:25 Fill out the name tags.
1:11:26 First name only, big block letters.
1:11:29 The name tags I like are the Qualfect 300s.
1:11:32 I also like the Avery 5424s.
1:11:35 – The Qualfect 300s come in six different colors.
1:11:36 And you guys may know those.
1:11:39 They discontinued the 5426s, which was really sad.
1:11:42 – Yeah, it’s the vintage.
1:11:45 – You should completely make up the model numbers, by the way.
1:11:48 And just see if anyone ever finds out and be like,
1:11:49 I’ve been waiting.
1:11:51 I have an envelope for the, it’s a golden ticket.
1:11:52 It’s like for the first person that realized
1:11:54 that I was completely making up the model numbers
1:11:55 of these name tags.
1:11:56 You are my fellow nerd.
1:11:58 – I may have got those model numbers wrong.
1:11:59 – Why do the name tags matter?
1:12:01 ‘Cause I went to a party of yours.
1:12:03 And at first I was like, okay, this is second grade.
1:12:04 This is cheesy.
1:12:06 But then it was kind of useful, obviously,
1:12:08 ’cause I don’t remember a lot of people’s names.
1:12:10 But it seems like there’s more to it than that.
1:12:13 What is the, like, what’s the why behind the why?
1:12:15 – The why behind the why is it’s like a sports jersey
1:12:17 to show everybody that we’re on the same team.
1:12:19 Have you ever walked into an event?
1:12:21 It’s the first time you’ve gone to something
1:12:24 and you figure that it’s me walking into something else.
1:12:26 Everybody else must know each other.
1:12:28 They must all be friends already.
1:12:29 I am the outsider.
1:12:30 When you have name tags,
1:12:33 you show that you are all on the same team.
1:12:34 This is not a party of clicks.
1:12:35 We’re all here together.
1:12:38 By the way, if you host meetups,
1:12:40 you absolutely have to do name tags
1:12:43 when you host at a bar or another public spot
1:12:44 so you know who is there for the meetup.
1:12:45 Have you ever gone to a meetup
1:12:48 and it’s at like a beer garden?
1:12:49 And you’re like, well, who’s here for the meetup?
1:12:51 It’s like, oh, these people, it’s like great.
1:12:55 I guess I’ll just figure it out on my own amateur hour.
1:12:56 – All right, and name tags.
1:12:57 I’m in, I buy.
1:12:59 – Yeah, and his name tags.
1:13:01 I stands for intros or icebreakers.
1:13:03 When I wrote the book, I called them icebreakers,
1:13:05 but there’s such a cringe reaction
1:13:07 to the idea of icebreakers on that word.
1:13:09 So now I call them intros.
1:13:11 And this can be in small groups.
1:13:12 It can be your whole group together.
1:13:14 But what’s the first thing
1:13:15 that everybody asks when they meet you?
1:13:15 What’s your name?
1:13:16 What do you do for work?
1:13:18 We’re gonna get that out of the way
1:13:20 by having everybody say it real quick.
1:13:22 I think it is important, by the way,
1:13:23 to say what people do,
1:13:24 especially for listeners of this pod,
1:13:26 because you never know who’s looking for a job
1:13:29 who wants to network, who’s working on growing their business.
1:13:32 But those rounds of intros give you an excuse.
1:13:34 It’s a conversational crutch for your guests
1:13:37 to go up and start new conversations.
1:13:38 Your role as the host–
1:13:39 – And what’s the Nick Gray way to do that?
1:13:41 Like, is there a better and worse way
1:13:43 to do those intros or icebreakers?
1:13:45 – My man, of course there.
1:13:47 Dude, I’ve done more icebreakers.
1:13:49 I live and breathe icebreakers.
1:13:52 You have come to the right spot.
1:13:56 Welcome to Nick Gray’s party icebreaker therapy.
1:13:59 Because I’ve spent a lot of my life doing icebreakers.
1:14:01 Here’s the deal.
1:14:02 There’s two different–
1:14:05 – Dude, do you know Stefan from SNL’s weekend update?
1:14:06 – Yes.
1:14:08 – You are Stefan right now.
1:14:09 That is you.
1:14:11 That is you.
1:14:14 – I’m so passionate about icebreakers
1:14:15 ’cause I’ve seen so many bad ones.
1:14:16 You know an example of a bad one is,
1:14:17 all right, everybody, team meeting.
1:14:20 Let’s go around and say one fun fact about yourself.
1:14:22 That’s a terrible icebreaker.
1:14:25 So much of my work involves making people
1:14:28 that have social anxiety or consider themselves introverts
1:14:30 to feel more welcome.
1:14:31 And I know that some of them
1:14:33 are gonna hate this idea of intros,
1:14:35 but ideally what they like is to be able to know
1:14:38 what to expect and minimal surprises.
1:14:41 And so a green level icebreaker or intro
1:14:42 at the beginning of an event,
1:14:44 when there’s no social rapport,
1:14:47 when people are new and a little uncomfortable,
1:14:50 is just an easy one that doesn’t take time.
1:14:53 The exact question that I have most people do is,
1:14:55 “Hey everybody, real quick, let’s just do a round of intros.”
1:14:56 You gotta say the why.
1:14:58 The why is that there’s a lot of interesting people here
1:15:00 and I really want you to go meet somebody new.
1:15:02 So we’re gonna have you say your name,
1:15:04 say what you do for work or how you spend your day,
1:15:06 and then tell me one of your favorite things,
1:15:10 one of your go-to things that you like to eat for breakfast.
1:15:11 Now that’s a bit of a red herring
1:15:13 ’cause I actually don’t wanna know their breakfast.
1:15:15 I wanna know what they do for work,
1:15:16 but we take away the attention,
1:15:18 we make them think about the breakfast.
1:15:20 The breakfast one works because it’s easy,
1:15:23 it’s subjective, people don’t judge you for it,
1:15:27 and it’s not hard, you don’t get locked up in your head.
1:15:29 A bad example would be,
1:15:30 “Hey everybody, let’s go around, name,
1:15:31 “what do you do for work?”
1:15:33 And tell me your favorite business book.
1:15:36 Favorite is definitive, it is your absolute favorite.
1:15:38 People are gonna judge me, “Oh my God, favorite,
1:15:40 “what’s my favorite, what’s my favorite?”
1:15:43 So we start with a very easy one.
1:15:44 So you could do the breakfast,
1:15:46 if you wanna make it a little edgier,
1:15:48 you could ask people and say your favorite vice,
1:15:51 or say what was one of your first online screen names
1:15:52 and why did you choose it,
1:15:54 or what was one of your first jobs
1:15:56 that you ever got paid cash money for.
1:15:59 Now those are beginner level ones.
1:16:00 I wanna tell you an advanced one,
1:16:02 but I wanna check with you guys, can I keep going?
1:16:04 – Yes, yes, keep going.
1:16:06 – As you continue the event, about an hour later,
1:16:09 you wanna do one more advanced round of intros,
1:16:14 and this is what I call a value additive intro.
1:16:16 Value additive means that everybody’s answer
1:16:19 adds to the benefit of the room.
1:16:23 And so for Sam, for example, who lives in Connecticut now,
1:16:26 say that he was hosting this in Westchester,
1:16:28 you would say, hey everybody,
1:16:30 we’re gonna do our last round of icebreakers,
1:16:31 your question is gonna be,
1:16:35 what is one of your Westchester pro tips
1:16:38 or life hacks or little secrets?
1:16:39 What’s a small business you support,
1:16:42 a dog park you like, a hiking trail you enjoy,
1:16:45 what’s the best coffee shop in town?
1:16:47 Tell us one great thing in town
1:16:49 that you like and wanna shine a light on, okay?
1:16:51 So that’s one example.
1:16:53 One more example, if you don’t wanna focus on your town,
1:16:55 would be, hey everybody,
1:16:57 we’re gonna do a last round of intros,
1:17:00 and I want you to share a great piece of media
1:17:02 that you have consumed recently.
1:17:04 What’s a movie you watched, a documentary,
1:17:06 a podcast like My First Million?
1:17:09 Like and subscribe, gentlemen’s agreement.
1:17:11 What are some of those things
1:17:14 that you liked and you wanna share, okay?
1:17:16 And then you go around the room and you do that.
1:17:17 Why does this work?
1:17:20 It works because every answer gives somebody value.
1:17:23 Oh, I’ve been meaning to go to that restaurant.
1:17:25 Oh, My First Million, I love those guys.
1:17:28 Oh, I heard about that book, I wanna check it out.
1:17:30 And you do it towards the end of your event.
1:17:33 So at the end, people get all these new ideas,
1:17:35 they’ve met all these new people
1:17:37 and they leave with a feeling of value.
1:17:39 They leave feeling that they’re better
1:17:40 than when they showed up.
1:17:42 That’s what a good party is.
1:17:44 You did something at a party I went to of yours
1:17:47 where I don’t know, you were like lurking around
1:17:48 or you were hopping from combo to combo,
1:17:50 but then when you brought everybody back together,
1:17:52 you go, James, will you tell people
1:17:56 that amazing email trick that you did
1:17:58 that really improved your open rates?
1:18:01 And the guy said something that was like so useful to me
1:18:03 that I was like, that one thing alone
1:18:04 made this party worth going to
1:18:08 because it’s like you had eyes and ears around the room
1:18:12 so you could pluck the best kind of like pro tip
1:18:15 that you heard and you had two or three people go
1:18:16 and you just had them share with the whole group
1:18:17 in that moment.
1:18:19 I thought that was pretty awesome.
1:18:21 – That’s an advanced tip.
1:18:23 And the main thing I want your listeners to know
1:18:27 is that I found that interesting people
1:18:30 want to meet people that are doing interesting things.
1:18:33 And the fastest way to become interesting
1:18:36 was for me to host my own events.
1:18:38 So we talked before about those business ideas
1:18:41 that you don’t need a lot of capital for.
1:18:42 Hosting events is kind of the same way.
1:18:44 You can do it with very little money.
1:18:47 Each party should cost you less than $100.
1:18:50 These strategies start from beginner to advanced
1:18:52 and I’ve helped hundreds of people to host
1:18:55 their very first party using this method.
1:18:57 You should be going through life
1:19:00 collecting the interesting people that you meet.
1:19:01 And why is this helpful?
1:19:04 Well, it helped me launch a multi-million dollar business
1:19:06 called Museum Hack that was launched
1:19:08 on the back of the network that I built up
1:19:11 from hosting all of these events.
1:19:12 I hear from a lot of people,
1:19:14 oh my God, I’m gonna do a startup party.
1:19:15 I’m gonna do a launch party for my new app.
1:19:17 I was like, awesome, perfect.
1:19:18 How many events have you hosted?
1:19:20 Or when was the last event you hosted?
1:19:23 Ugh, ugh, I’ve never hosted anything.
1:19:24 I’m like, bro, you have a cold list.
1:19:26 Like nobody knows you, like no offense,
1:19:28 but like in real life, nobody knows you.
1:19:29 Nobody cared.
1:19:31 This is not gonna be a successful launch party.
1:19:33 You need to start building up
1:19:34 and hosting these little events.
1:19:37 By the way, the perfect size for a happy hour,
1:19:40 in my opinion, is about 15 to 22 people.
1:19:43 I could talk forever about this, but a small plug.
1:19:46 I wrote a book called The Two-Hour Cocktail Party
1:19:48 that is really more like a workbook
1:19:52 or a step-by-step guide that helps you actually do it.
1:19:54 And by the way, if you wanna go through a cohort
1:19:56 or something, you’ll give me $100.
1:19:57 At the end of hosting the party,
1:19:59 I’ll give you the $100 back.
1:20:01 That’s how it works, but hosting party,
1:20:02 it might change your life.
1:20:05 – The book made you like the king of the introverts
1:20:08 because I had so many introverted friends
1:20:09 who like read the book
1:20:11 and they started hosting Nick Gray parties.
1:20:15 And I would be like walking around Austin
1:20:16 at like seven o’clock at night
1:20:19 and in Austin, all the bars are outdoor bars.
1:20:21 And I would see, I swear to God,
1:20:24 there was this one mile walk through East Austin
1:20:26 of like where all the bars are.
1:20:29 And I would see multiple Nick Gray parties happening.
1:20:31 – Harmonica is all throughout downtown Austin.
1:20:33 – No, it is in the night.
1:20:35 They would be in a circle and they would,
1:20:37 I call them, we would call them name tag Nick.
1:20:40 So they always had Nick’s name tags
1:20:41 and they would be in a circle
1:20:43 and I could see the person in the middle pointing
1:20:46 exactly like he tells you to do in the book.
1:20:47 I swear to God, on one one mile walk,
1:20:50 I saw three, I saw one at Lazarus,
1:20:52 one at Whistler’s and one at the Southern Bar.
1:20:54 It was three Nick Gray parties.
1:20:55 It was insane.
1:20:58 It’s like, you’re the introverts king
1:21:01 for a handful of months when I would, in Austin.
1:21:03 So many of you were doing it.
1:21:05 The reason we’re doing this is that people are hungry
1:21:07 for in-person events.
1:21:09 We’re all digitally saturated.
1:21:11 We want that human connection.
1:21:15 And I found that you can add value to people
1:21:18 by introducing them to other interesting people.
1:21:20 If you’re looking for a business idea,
1:21:23 if you’re looking to raise your status in the world,
1:21:25 you have to start by adding value
1:21:28 and hosting a party, introducing the interesting people.
1:21:31 You know, that is a way that you can add value.
1:21:32 – Dude, you have so many stories.
1:21:33 We probably should wrap up in a minute,
1:21:35 but you got like so many fricking stories.
1:21:38 I just want to, I want you to just like rattle off stories.
1:21:40 I just like hearing all the most interesting things
1:21:41 that have happened.
1:21:42 – Even without explaining for the completionist,
1:21:44 can you just say what the C and the K stand for
1:21:45 in the Nick method?
1:21:49 – The Nick method, N-I-C-K, N is named tax, I is intros.
1:21:53 C stands for cocktails or mocktails only.
1:21:54 Do not do a dinner party.
1:21:57 I talk about why dinner parties are a recipe for failure
1:21:59 for new first time hosts.
1:22:02 And K stands for kick ’em out at the end.
1:22:04 This is only a two hour gathering.
1:22:06 You want to keep it tight.
1:22:09 You want people to leave when they’re wanting more.
1:22:10 Leave when they’re wanting more.
1:22:12 End it when it’s going great.
1:22:13 Just like this podcast.
1:22:14 Thanks for watching, bye-bye.
1:22:17 (laughing)
1:22:20 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
1:22:23 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
1:22:25 ♪ I put my all in it like no days off ♪
1:22:28 ♪ On the road let’s travel never looking back ♪
1:22:29 – Bye.
1:22:31 (upbeat music)
1:22:36 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
1:22:41 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪