3 Underdog Stories That’ll Get You Inspired This Week

0:00:06 in most areas of life, you shouldn’t be hoping for like the miraculous save, right? The one thing
0:00:10 that’s going to turn your business around or the person who’s going to meet you and just give you
0:00:13 that opportunity, just hand it to you. But there is an exception.
0:00:27 All right, Sean, I want to make you feel good. I want to make the world feel good. I saw an
0:00:31 inspirational story this weekend, and I want to share it with you. And it’s going to involve
0:00:37 some audio and involves pop culture, which you don’t know anything about. So I think that some
0:00:40 of our listeners might know about the story, but I think it’ll be particularly cool for you.
0:00:45 All right, so there’s this singer-songwriter guy I love. His name’s Noah Kahn. Have you
0:00:53 heard of Noah Kahn? Noah Kahn. I can’t say I have. He describes himself as the Jewish Ed Sheeran.
0:00:58 So he’s like a good songwriter. He’s a great singer, but he’s got a little folk in his sound,
0:01:04 almost like Mumford and Sons meets Ed Sheeran, but based out of Vermont. Like, do you know anything
0:01:08 about like, do you know anything about like New England, like folk music? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m
0:01:13 into that kind of music, actually. So he graduated high school, decided not to go to college and was
0:01:19 able to get a small record deal. The record deal, it was only okay. That sounds like a big deal,
0:01:23 but it’s like you just kind of barely get by and they’re almost like buying an option on you
0:01:28 that you’re going to be like a big deal. He has a couple songs that are kind of hits. I think one
0:01:32 time he got to go on the Stephen Colbert show and play one of his songs. I mean, that’s a,
0:01:35 that’s pretty awesome. But if that’s all you’re known for is doing it one time, you’re still kind
0:01:40 of like, oh, shit, like I got to go get a job. I’m not sure if this is going to work. So the pandemic
0:01:44 hits. He’s living in LA at the time, trying to make a big, but he’s like, shit, what am I going
0:01:49 to do? I guess I’ll just go back home to Vermont where my parents live and I have a little bit more
0:01:54 space. And he kind of like gets depressed where he’s like eating bad food and smoking weed all
0:01:57 day. And he’s like, what the hell do I am I going to do with my career? I can’t go out and play.
0:02:03 Like I’m a nobody right now. What am I going to do? So he’s like, well, TikTok, I guess seems kind
0:02:08 of neat. Let’s try that. And so he starts posting some of his songs on TikTok and a few of them do
0:02:15 okay. I think he gets like 50,000 followers or something like that. So again, it’s like a mediocre
0:02:21 success. But then one night he comes up, it took some 20 minutes and he writes a verse to a song
0:02:26 and the song is called stick season. And he plays this one verse on TikTok.
0:02:55 All right. So this is just a 20 second video
0:03:02 that he posts on TikTok. It’s good, but he posts it and like two or three hours later, like no one
0:03:06 replies. He’s like, this sucks. I’m just going to delete this thing. But let me finish kind of
0:03:10 getting high because he was said he was eating edible when he posted this. He’s like, let me finish
0:03:14 getting high. He ends up passing out and sleeps through the night and he wakes up and this video
0:03:21 gets like 200,000 likes and like 100,000 comments. And he’s like, shit, I better finish this song
0:03:25 and actually complete this song because it sounds like people like this verse. Now he plays the rest
0:03:28 of the song and you could actually see the full song that he plays.
0:04:01 All right. So this all happened in about 2021. So he finishes that song. It blows up. Now,
0:04:07 this guy’s from New England, last week he sold out Fenway Park, the stadium for like, you know,
0:04:33 whatever, 50,000 people. So he writes that song. He puts it out. It blows up. It goes viral. The guy,
0:04:38 a matter of three years, goes from just a dude in his parents house playing on TikTok,
0:04:43 posting a verse of a song. And what’s funny is that in 2019, right when he was doing this,
0:04:47 he tweeted out, he goes, I’m probably not going to ever sell out Madison Square Garden. In fact,
0:04:51 I’m probably not even going to sell all the shows that I have for this tour. But as long as you’ll
0:04:55 have me, I’ll keep writing some songs. And he played Fenway Park and sold it out. And actually,
0:05:00 a few days ago, he sold out Madison Square Garden three nights in a row. And I wanted to share this
0:05:07 story with you because it makes me feel awesome. It also shows that if you put your shit out there,
0:05:10 this is what the internet’s for. If you put your stuff out there, even if it’s incomplete,
0:05:12 people love seeing progress.
0:05:17 All right. I want to tell you about a really cool feature in HubSpot that I don’t think
0:05:22 most people know about. It’s called the marketing and content hub. All right. So here’s how it works.
0:05:26 You’re doing content marketing. That’s what I do. That’s how many brands do. It works really,
0:05:30 really well, but it could be very time consuming. So what they do is they have tools like content
0:05:34 remix, which will take one piece of content and immediately turn it into a bunch of pieces for
0:05:38 all the different platforms in one click. Or they have lead scoring, which will basically shine a
0:05:43 light on which leads that you have or most likely to purchase. And then they have the analytics
0:05:47 suite. So you get reports, KPIs, and all kinds of AI-powered insights that you can share with
0:05:51 your team and not be flying blind anymore. So if you’re doing content marketing, highly recommend
0:05:56 you check out the content hub and marketing hub for HubSpot. You can visit hubspot.com to get
0:06:01 started or free back to this episode. Dude, that’s right up my alley. So I have two or three things
0:06:06 that that reminds me about. The first is, I forgot who it was we were talking to recently, but
0:06:13 I was having a discussion and the idea came up that in most areas of life, you shouldn’t be hoping
0:06:19 for the miraculous save, right? The one thing that’s going to turn your business around or the
0:06:22 person who’s going to meet you and just give you that opportunity, just hand it to you.
0:06:28 But there is in content an exception, which is that in content, you’re really one hit away.
0:06:34 And just because your earlier stuff hasn’t taken off, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad. So you
0:06:39 get a lot of false negatives. But then sometimes you get these breakout positives. And this is an
0:06:44 example of that where, you know, the guy goes to sleep with no comment. You know, he’s basically
0:06:48 planning to just delete the video, thinks it was a bust. And he was just one hit away from his
0:06:52 entire life changing. And there’s something that’s pretty magical about that when it comes to
0:06:58 only a few areas of life. Like I think this is true in all the arts, so movies, music,
0:07:04 content, but also even games. When we had Dan Porter on, he was talking about his company and
0:07:08 his company was failing. And he’s basically had a few weeks left. And he’s like, let’s make one
0:07:13 last game. And I’ll make it this time, even though I’m not a game designer. And he just made draw
0:07:18 something that’s like stupid, simple app that just took off like wildfire. And so being one,
0:07:23 being one hit away, it’s sort of a last bullet in the chamber that you can, that you can think
0:07:28 about and sort of continue to operate with some, with some hope on. I think that’s pretty powerful.
0:07:32 Which, which implies, by the way, that you’re taking lots of shots.
0:07:36 Dude, so my most viral Twitter thread was that Clubhouse thread when Clubhouse was like, you
0:07:42 know, all the rage and I came out and I posted this like really long thread, like 30, 40 tweets long
0:07:45 about how I thought, you know, everybody thinks Clubhouse is going to take off or is the next
0:07:50 big thing, but I don’t think it’s going to work. And the very first comment was this guy who worked
0:07:54 at Facebook. And when we were getting acquired by Facebook, he was like the principal engineer who
0:08:01 was like vetting all of our team. And I post this thread and you know, when you, you know, you push
0:08:05 stand, it’s like that MailChimp GIF where the finger is shaking right above the button and you’re
0:08:11 like, you know, you’re putting yourself out there a little bit. And his first thing is like, dude,
0:08:16 this is way too long. Like nobody’s going to read this. This is too much. And he said it in a way
0:08:20 that wasn’t even like a hater. He was just like concerned, like, what are you thinking, man? Like
0:08:24 this is ridiculous. And I was, I was straight up about to just delete the whole thing. And I just
0:08:30 decided, let me just let it ride for like a couple more minutes. And then it started to just like
0:08:34 immediately get a bunch of other positive replies. But I was very close to just deleting the thing
0:08:38 right there. And that was a thread that went so viral that all of a sudden Malcolm Gladwell
0:08:43 is following me. And there’s all these crazy things going on in the next, you know, three days of my
0:08:48 life because that 10, 20 million people read that. And so it’s just a reminder of don’t count yourself
0:08:53 out too early if it doesn’t have the initial success. That’s the first thing. Second thing,
0:09:01 you found my fetish. I am a sucker for amateur singing talent. I have entire folders on YouTube
0:09:06 and TikTok. I don’t want to see like famous people on stage polished. I like, you know,
0:09:10 when it’s like the seventh grade boy and he just starts singing and like the rest of the
0:09:15 class is like, what Jacob, what you could sing. And like, there’s all these clips on TikTok that
0:09:20 are like that. And I’m a sucker for that stuff. And you know who has a moment like that? Justin
0:09:25 Bieber, you know, right? Get discovered on YouTube. You know who else got discovered a very funny way
0:09:29 like that? You said this guy is the Jewish Ed Sheeran Ed Sheeran himself. Have you heard the
0:09:33 story about Ed Sheeran? No, I didn’t, I didn’t know he was discovered. I know that he’s been famous
0:09:37 since he was like 16. So I guess it must have been when he was young. So there’s a couple interesting
0:09:41 things. We should play this clip, but there’s a clip of Ed Sheeran on a talk show. And he’s like,
0:09:46 everyone’s like, oh, Ed, you’re so talented, blah, blah, blah. He goes, listen to me when I was 14.
0:09:51 He’s like, I kind of started to blow up in my like, you know, 17, 18, 19 age range I got discovered.
0:09:57 But here’s me 13, 14. And he plays an audio clip on his phone of him singing. And it is awful.
0:10:01 I mean, it sounds like if I pick up a guitar right now, and I genuinely tried to sing,
0:10:05 it sounded that bad. He’s like, yeah, I just, he’s like, that’s how I started. He’s like,
0:10:09 it was really bad. And he’s like, I kept practicing. So what, what ended up happening with Ed Sheeran
0:10:15 is he knows he wants to make it. And he has like a little bit of a small following because he’s from
0:10:20 the UK. So he comes to LA and he’s like, I’m going to, I’m going to just come to the mecca and just
0:10:24 try to figure out how to make it in this scene here. And he does, he gets a couple of fortunate
0:10:31 breaks. So he’s, he goes to like an open mic night type of thing. And he performs on stage. And
0:10:35 you never know who’s in the crowd. In the crowd is Jamie Foxx’s like business manager.
0:10:41 And he sees him and he’s like, oh, this white boy is good. He’s like, he’s like intrigued by him.
0:10:45 So he tells Jamie the next day, he goes, Jamie on your, Jamie was doing a radio show in the morning.
0:10:49 He’s hosting it. He goes, I have a guest for you. I want you to have this guy come on five minutes.
0:10:54 So Ed Sheeran comes on Jamie Foxx’s radio show. He plays his like, you know, five minute bit.
0:10:59 And Jamie Foxx is like, all right, I’m interested. So he’s like, what’s your deal, man? Who are you?
0:11:03 You signed with, what’s your situation? He’s like, no, I mean, I’m not only may not sign,
0:11:06 I’m homeless. I just came out here to LA. I don’t have money. I don’t have anything.
0:11:13 So Jamie’s like, come sleep on my couch. Yeah. And Jamie Foxx has actually done this with many
0:11:18 artists that have, have gone on to make it. But he would just, he’s like, if you have talent,
0:11:21 you got something, he would just be like, just come stay at my house. I got tons of extra rooms,
0:11:25 just come stay here. And Jamie Foxx is notorious for throwing epic parties. He’s like, he’s like,
0:11:29 he’s like one of the most connected guys in Hollywood because he’s a movie star. He’s a
0:11:34 musician. He’s just, he’s, he’s a comedian. He’s very funny. And so he would throw these almost
0:11:39 like salons where he’d get people from movies, from music, from comedy, all come hang out at his,
0:11:44 at his house. Neville Medora and Noah Kagan went to one of them and they told me all about it.
0:11:49 What did they say? They said he has a piano there and the, in the other room and like,
0:11:53 people just slowly work their way towards the piano and it’s almost like an open mic night.
0:11:57 He’ll just start performing, right? Yeah. And like he’ll, Jamie starts and someone like raises
0:12:01 their hands and someone else pops in and like, it’s oddly, a salons a great way to describe it.
0:12:06 It’s like a place to discover one another. Exactly. And so he, Ed Sheeran’s there and he’s,
0:12:09 I think he does that. He like plays at one of the parties at night and people are like, oh,
0:12:13 this is kind of cool. So the next night, Jamie’s like, all right, I’m going to test this guy.
0:12:20 So he takes him to some club. That’s basically like a all black club. And every artist on stage
0:12:28 is like either slam poetry, rap, R&B, hip hop. And then here you have this like redhead, freckled,
0:12:34 teenage boy holding a ukulele and they’re like, Ed Sheeran and Ed Sheeran comes up on the stage
0:12:38 and he’s literally with a ukulele and, and literally Jamie Foxx is like, I was in the crowd.
0:12:42 He’s like, and the, my guy was like, and Jamie, come on, why you got to fuck up the vibe? Like,
0:12:47 who’s this guy? Why you got to put this guy on the stage? And so he improvises and he starts off
0:12:52 doing his own song. And then he’s like, all right, read the room a little bit. So he transitions
0:12:58 into a freestyle version of 50 cents in the club. And while he’s on his ukulele basically,
0:13:04 and he plays like a Ed Sheeran version of a 50 cents rap. And literally during his performance,
0:13:09 people get so hyped that the, the MC who was like pretty skeptical, which gets on stage with him,
0:13:13 starts performing. This girl gets up on stage, starts performing with him. And it just turns
0:13:16 into this kind of thing. And Jamie goes, that’s what I knew. If he can win over this crowd,
0:13:20 he’s going to win. And then he made introductions and ended up getting him signed.
0:13:23 Dude, I love those stories. Doesn’t that make you feel good? Yeah.
0:13:28 That makes me feel so good. I love those stories. You have another inspirational story
0:13:34 about my favorite thing on earth, the Olympics. Yeah. So the Olympics is going on right now,
0:13:39 the opening ceremony just happened. And I saw this story that I hadn’t heard before. You,
0:13:42 you might know it because you’re an Olympics guy. Have you ever heard of Eric the eel?
0:13:48 No, I haven’t heard this one. Okay. So there’s this guy, Eric, and Eric is from
0:13:54 the Equatorial Guinea, which is, I guess, a country. And at the 2000 Olympics, it’s happening in
0:13:58 Sydney. There’s this footage. So I, let me just work for, I don’t know who this guy is. I just
0:14:03 see this footage. The footage is this. It’s the Olympic swimming like trial. And you see a guy,
0:14:07 a black dude, he’s got goggles on, trunks, and he’s just feeling nervous. And there’s two people
0:14:12 next to him. And it’s about, they’re at the starting blocks. And they’re about to say go.
0:14:16 And the two other guys fall start. They just jump in too early. This guy doesn’t move.
0:14:21 And so now this is the qualifying heat and his two competitors are disqualified.
0:14:26 And so you’re like, Oh, this guy gets a free run. But what you don’t know is that this guy,
0:14:30 Eric, who’s about to, about to have a free pass into the thing, it’s not a free pass because
0:14:37 this guy basically doesn’t know how to swim. Yeah. Yeah. And like some background, basically,
0:14:41 in most cases to qualify the Olympics for the running or anything that’s timed,
0:14:46 there’s a qualifier. So you have to hit a certain time. But for some countries, I don’t know how
0:14:51 they decide who they just get to have like, it’s just a wild card draw. So it’s like a lottery
0:14:57 raffle. Yeah. And then they go to the country, they go, just send us your best. And so he wins
0:15:01 this thing. And he has eight months now to prepare for the Olympic games. Can you just imagine that?
0:15:05 You randomly win this draw. And in eight months, you’re going to be swimming in front of the
0:15:10 whole world. This is a guy who’s never left his home country. He’s never swam before.
0:15:16 And so he gets at, he’s given access to a hotel. And in the hotel, there’s a pool that he could
0:15:21 swim in for an hour a day, five a.m. to six a.m. The pool is 13 meters long. He’s swimming in the
0:15:26 hundred meter freestyle. So he’s training in a 13 meter pool. He’s going to have to swim 10 times
0:15:31 this distance in the thing in the real Olympics. And he has one hour a day to train for eight months.
0:15:35 Now pretty quickly, Eric realizes, all right, one hour a day, not going to be enough.
0:15:40 So he starts just going to like rivers, oceans. He’s just trying to learn to swim. He doesn’t
0:15:44 actually know how he doesn’t have a coach. And so when he’s swimming in these rivers, there’s
0:15:48 literally fishermen who are watching him. They’re like, son, you got to use your legs. What are
0:15:53 you doing? And they’re trying to teach him how to coordinate his body on a float. And this is
0:15:57 what’s happening. So fast forward eight months, it’s go time. He shows up at the Sydney Olympics,
0:16:02 take some three days to travel there. He’s never flown before. He gets the Olympic facilities,
0:16:09 jaw drops. He sees the pool size. He’s like, oh my God, I’ve never swam in a pool this large.
0:16:12 And so he’s preparing for the event. And basically the other coaches and swimmers are like,
0:16:16 why is this guy so nervous during the practice? He’s not even going in the water. He doesn’t
0:16:20 know what to do. And so the South African coast starts helping him. These other guys start helping
0:16:24 him. And they’re like, do you need goggles? And he’s like, yes. And then they give him goggles.
0:16:28 And they’re trying to show, trying to teach him like in the day before the event, he’s cramming
0:16:32 for the exam, cramming for the exam for a language that you just learned two weeks ago.
0:16:36 And everyone in the world is watching you take the exam. And if you fail the exam, you drown.
0:16:42 And so that’s the problem because when the other two guys fall, start, he’s going to get a free pass.
0:16:47 All he has to do is finish, but he’s never swam 100 meters consecutively. He’s trained in a 13 meter
0:16:54 pool. And so he jumps in and he starts okay. And he’s going, he’s going, and he starts getting
0:16:59 really tired before he even hits the turn, the 50 meter turn. And he finally gets to the turn and
0:17:04 at the turn he stays under for so long. There’s literally like gasps in the crowd. They think
0:17:08 he’s drowned. Like he’s just caught in like a riptide basically. It looks like finally he comes
0:17:16 up and he’s going so slow. It looks like he can’t make it. He is so exhausted. And the crowd just
0:17:21 starts going nuts. They’re like, go, go, go. They don’t know why this guy’s going so slow.
0:17:24 Why is this Olympic? They don’t know at this point, but they know something’s wrong.
0:17:29 And they just want to like get on his side. It’s like a Jamaican bobsled moment.
0:17:36 Exactly. He finishes in a minute and 52 seconds, which is like an extra minute past what it should
0:17:40 have been, which is a very long time for something like this. These races are decided by tenths of
0:17:48 a second. And so he qualifies. And so he gets into the actual Olympic trial. He obviously then loses.
0:17:54 But this guy embodies that Olympic spirit that anyone anywhere in the world can do something
0:18:00 amazing. Crowd goes nuts. He ends up becoming the national coach for his country decades later.
0:18:07 And that’s the story of Eric the eel. Did they ever produce any legit swimmers?
0:18:13 Well, let’s keep the story inspirational. So I’m going to no comment that one. I don’t know
0:18:19 if there’s ever been a medalist from Equatorial Guinea. That’s awesome. No, I remember watching
0:18:24 this years ago and it is inspirational. Do you want to do your sleep at thing or do you want
0:18:30 me to tell you about a car thing? Let’s do your car thing. All right. So I want to buy a new car
0:18:33 and I want to tell you about two interesting things that I’ve discovered. We’ll start with
0:18:38 courage. So it’s a pretty genius business idea. And these guys have been quietly building up a
0:18:44 pretty epic business. So the story of this business is that it was started by a father and son duo.
0:18:50 The father’s name is Ray. The son is Zach. The father, he basically managed car dealerships for
0:18:56 years. And he was like, Oh, there’s like, I know the ins and outs and his son, I think was 24 or
0:19:01 25 at the time. And his son always wanted to start an internet business. And he also liked
0:19:06 YouTube. And he was like, Hey, dad, what if I just asked you some questions on YouTube about like,
0:19:11 you know, how do you properly negotiate at the car dealership or how much a profit car dealerships
0:19:16 make? So we know better what to ask for, you know, things like that. Love it. Gonna work. Yeah. And
0:19:22 within, I think something like eight weeks, they got 13,000 followers on this YouTube page. And
0:19:25 they were like, you know, we’re going to buy all these fancy cameras, but then we just got like
0:19:29 our iPhone and made it kind of janky. And it just people kind of liked it. And it was during the
0:19:34 pandemic. So people were watching a lot of that stuff. And so they parlay that into starting a
0:19:38 business called courage. And so if you go to courage.com, what’s it said? You see the headline?
0:19:44 Yeah, it says your personal car shopper is here. No hassle, always fair prices. So basically,
0:19:49 they will help you buy a car. So the way it works is there’s this thing called an auto broker or a
0:19:55 car broker. I think you got your car now from a friend of ours who’s a car broker. The industry is
0:20:01 typically like mom and pop. And a lot of times if you Google like car broker, New York City,
0:20:05 you’re going to go to like kind of a mom and pop website. And you get on the phone or send an email
0:20:09 to this person, you tell them what type of car you want. And they have relationships with tons
0:20:15 of dealers. So they know, they know the ins and outs of the car business. You pay them a fee $500
0:20:20 to $2,000. And they typically will go and buy the car for you. But the savings that you get in the
0:20:24 price of the car is typically better than the fee that you pay them. And so it’s no big deal. And
0:20:29 they do all the negotiating for you. So it’s not uncomfortable for you. Whatever, cool. What these
0:20:34 guys did is they took like kind of a startupy internet vibe, and they created a nice website
0:20:39 for it where you go to their website, and they you can you can search different cars and they
0:20:43 will rather they have a variety of products. So like one, they have got this thing, it’s I think
0:20:47 it’s like 80 bucks a month or 50 bucks a month, and they will just like give you tons of information
0:20:51 like a database on what the profit margin is on different cars. So you can go negotiate
0:20:56 themselves. Or you can spend $1,000 and tell them the car that you want, and they go and buy it
0:21:01 for you. And they’ll even organize it so it gets shipped to you. And they do all the organization
0:21:06 and all that work. And if you don’t save at least $1,000, you just get your money back.
0:21:10 And they built this massive business because if you go to their YouTube page, I think they
0:21:15 now have 600,000 subscribers on their page. And it’s this really cute dynamic between a father
0:21:20 and son. All the pictures on the site, by the way, are like the dad giving the son a noogie.
0:21:27 It’s like just just wholesome, just so wholesome. And that father and son like dynamic for the brand,
0:21:32 it makes you like them a lot. And they they’re like, you know, there are a bunch of car podcasts,
0:21:35 but we basically what they described what they wanted to do is they probably have no idea who
0:21:39 we are. But it’s what you and I do have just kind of like riffing a little bit less professional.
0:21:45 You’re the father? I would assume. Am I? You’re older than me. You know how there was this big viral
0:21:50 thing where it was like, you know, PewDiePie versus T-Series, like who can have the most
0:21:54 subscribers on YouTube? Yeah. So these guys currently have 533,000 subscribers.
0:22:01 Your boys have 529,000. We are 4,000 subscribers behind CarEdge.
0:22:07 I’m just going to leave that there for our loyal army, who doesn’t want to see us lose to this
0:22:13 father son car buying duo. Go to YouTube and subscribe. All right. Yeah. Back to the subject.
0:22:21 This business is now doing so he has a video where he breaks down the revenue. So he pulls up
0:22:24 their QuickBooks and you can see it, but he blurs out the numbers and I messaged him and I was like,
0:22:29 “Hey, I have this thing, this podcast.” And he goes, “Yeah, you know, I’ve heard of it.”
0:22:33 I go, “Just can you tell me the numbers and I can talk about it?” And so he did.
0:22:38 And so this business is now doing roughly $10 million a year in revenue. I think it’s only
0:22:43 two years old or so. And it seems like a great business. These things could be really cool,
0:22:47 I think. Honestly, I thought it’d be almost bigger because looking at the traffic, they get almost
0:22:53 like 2 million visitors a month to their site. And so that is a huge amount of traffic to your
0:22:57 website for this thing. So I’m extremely impressed. This is only two years old.
0:23:00 Ish. Yeah, it could be three, but yeah, something like that.
0:23:03 Is this something you normally do when you buy cars? You use car brokers?
0:23:07 I haven’t, but I’ve heard of them. We actually talked about it years ago of people who,
0:23:10 you know, we brought this up in one of the early episodes. I’ve never actually used it,
0:23:14 but I remember last time I bought my car, I was in the dealership for like four hours,
0:23:18 like signing paperwork, wiring the money. It took forever. And I was like,
0:23:22 “I’m never doing this again.” And so I just started googling car brokers. I was like,
0:23:24 “I want to try one.” And that’s how I found these guys.
0:23:26 And were they YouTube first? So it was an audience first play?
0:23:28 YouTube first. Yeah, YouTube first.
0:23:32 Did they even plan to launch this as a service or did it start as just let’s make a YouTube channel?
0:23:38 The kid, Zach, has a blog where he’s been blogging since he was 22. And previously, he ran
0:23:43 some small information business that was doing like $150,000 in revenue. And it’s cool. You could
0:23:46 see him blogging as he goes. And he’s like, “I’ve always wanted to learn how to make money on the
0:23:51 internet and start an internet company.” And so you could see like he had like two or three businesses
0:23:57 that weren’t huge or anything, but it was very promising for a 21-year-old. And I have a feeling
0:24:01 I kind of like clicked their LinkedIn and looked around. I think the mother passed away from cancer.
0:24:05 And so I think there was like a feeling of like Zach, the kid was like, “You know,
0:24:08 I want to be with my father more. Let’s see if we can do something together.”
0:24:12 Yeah, he’s got some cool blog posts. So you’re getting your first customers is really hard.
0:24:15 And he talks about the getting their early customers for this. And then another one is
0:24:19 from 10,000 to 14,000 subscribers in three weeks. Here’s what we learned. Here’s what happened.
0:24:21 And here’s what I learned. And then I haven’t read these yet, but I’m just looking at the
0:24:23 titles. These are cool. I’m going to check these out.
0:24:28 Yeah. This is a cool kid. I think now, I think he’s only 25. I think he’s young.
0:24:33 And it’s just a really promising business. And on some of the blog posts, he talks about how he’s
0:24:39 now I have to project financials so we can decide when to hire people. And so you’re actually
0:24:44 seeing him do this in real time, but he’s not in you and I’s world. And so it’s a really fun business
0:24:47 to pay attention to and see what this guy, what is he going to build?
0:24:52 Isn’t how cool is his father, son businesses? Like, or just like, you know, parent kid, but
0:24:58 in not in a succession, you know, hand me down type of way. So a couple examples of this.
0:25:04 We had Al Done come on and talk about Missouri star that the biggest quilting store on the internet.
0:25:11 And it’s Al and his mom. And he’s like, you know, Alan, I think his name is Debbie. I don’t know.
0:25:16 He’s like, yeah, like, same thing, YouTube channel where she makes content and she’s the star.
0:25:21 And Al was the like, cool, I’ll figure out the internet and like e-commerce part of this.
0:25:26 And let’s make this a thing. And this is a nine figure business that sells quilt supplies
0:25:32 to other moms across the country. It’s amazing. And it’s the best mom that do that, that business
0:25:38 together or an Al does a thing that I love when he refers to his mother. He doesn’t say my mom.
0:25:42 He goes, yeah, I was just hanging out and mom wanted to like quilt, you know, like when they
0:25:48 use, when they use mom as like, as a proper down, I love, I’m like, whatever I hear someone do that,
0:25:52 that like when they just refer to them as mom, not my mom, it’s very cute.
0:25:56 So it’s Al and Jenny, they basically created and she and her YouTube videos are great,
0:26:00 by the way. I’ve like randomly watched, even though I have no, I have no interest in quilting,
0:26:04 but I’m interested in her videos because she’s so wholesome and she’s so good on camera.
0:26:09 So I think that’s a great example. We had the guys from Farm Con and Ag Swag. Same thing,
0:26:15 father and son doing business together, but not in a legacy, you know, you could take over my
0:26:18 business, but they started new businesses together. And I just think that’s so cool.
0:26:20 You know, if my kids want to do something like that, that’ll be a blast.
0:26:25 I would love that more than anything. I think if I had to bet more often than not,
0:26:30 it turns negative. But if you get the right, if you get the right parent child relationship,
0:26:32 it’s like magical. It seems like the greatest thing on earth.
0:26:35 Yeah, but they, they say that about everything, like doing business, doing a business with your
0:26:40 friends, like, oh, don’t mix business and friends or family. Like I’ve done both. I’ve done business
0:26:43 with my wife, with my sister-in-law, with my best friends. Like I’ve done businesses with all of
0:26:45 them and- But it’s high risk, high reward.
0:26:49 When it works, it feels like a cheat code because the trust is there, the fun is there.
0:26:52 And it’s like, why wouldn’t I want to do life with these people? Of course.
0:26:56 And when it goes wrong, you’re like, what the hell was I thinking?
0:26:59 Well, do you know who Coco Goff is? She’s the tennis player who was the flag bearer in the
0:27:03 Olympics. I was reading about her last night because she’s, she’s been inspirational lately.
0:27:09 And her father was like, man, when she was like nine, we’re like, wow, this, our little girl is
0:27:15 like very promising. So both the mom and dad quit their job, moved to Florida where their extended
0:27:20 family was to help care for their, their kids. And they went all in on trying to teach her tennis.
0:27:23 And so the father who was, I think a college football player, didn’t know anything about
0:27:27 tennis, learned about tennis, became her coach. And she would say, yeah, it was really challenging
0:27:32 that relationship, but we came up with a really good solution. The center of the court was Switzerland.
0:27:36 And if him and I had an argument, we would come to the middle and then mom would come
0:27:40 and be the third party and decide who was right and who was wrong and would help us like figure
0:27:43 things out. And so like, they built like a good system where they could communicate effectively
0:27:46 for the last, you know, 20 years, however long they’ve been coaching together.
0:27:48 All right, let me tell you one last thing about this car stuff that I found.
0:27:54 So there’s this hilarious TikTok series created by car dealership.
0:27:55 This is Mohawk Chevrolet.
0:28:01 Yes, it’s called Mohawk Chevrolet. It’s just a normal like Chevy truck dealer.
0:28:03 Dude, is this like the office? Like what’s happening?
0:28:10 Listen to this. They hired this young woman to be a social media person. She’s 23 from Kentucky
0:28:15 or what do you university of Kentucky, something like that. And within six months in the job,
0:28:22 she films a video where they place or she put a bunch of random ducks like rubber ducks all over
0:28:26 the dealership. And everyone’s trying to figure out who put the ducks there because it’s kind of
0:28:34 annoying. And she films this office like series of her interviewing people and then showing like
0:28:41 cutaways of what’s going on. And it hits on TikTok. And so eventually she creates a 10 episode series
0:28:46 about the dealership where it’s all they’re all improving, but it is like, you know, like an
0:28:50 Emmy award winning like series. Wow, dude, this is such a good find. This is so cool.
0:28:55 So people. So I think they’ve got millions and millions of views. And the young woman who did
0:29:02 it is like I said, 23 and Chevy and Geico and all these huge brands are commenting and making jokes
0:29:07 on the TikToks. And so many people are like, for real, this should be on Netflix. Like, I want to
0:29:14 watch this. And some Twitter person, I guess, I think a substacker, her name’s Rachel Carton,
0:29:19 I want to give her a shout out. She discovered this and interviewed Grace on substack, on her
0:29:23 substack. And she did a really cool interview where she talks about the process and she’s like,
0:29:27 well, me and Ben, my partner, we just come up with interesting ideas. We don’t write scripts.
0:29:32 I just go into the corner of this, like as if she’s Pam, she’s like, I sit there like Pam,
0:29:36 and I just kind of babble. And we like find like a few minutes of like gold and we build a story
0:29:42 off that. And then we go and make episodes every week. And she is wonderful. This is the greatest
0:29:47 thing I’ve seen where people are like, Hey, what’s going to happen next episode? And the characters
0:29:51 are just other people in the dealerships, like the mechanics or whatever. The episodes will be like,
0:29:58 today, my boss, Jim, the owner of the dealership wants me to make a video about electric
0:30:02 Chevy’s because no one wants to buy them because they’re afraid of them. I don’t know what I’m
0:30:07 going to do. And it’s like the episode is like her trying to figure that out. It is so good.
0:30:12 That’s amazing. Yeah, I want to check this out. And also, Grace, you said her name is?
0:30:17 Is that her name? Grace Kerber. Yeah. I haven’t even seen a single video yet. I just heard about
0:30:23 this literally a minute and a half ago. Grace, I’d like to make you a job offer. Whatever you’re
0:30:30 making currently at the dealership, we’re tripling it. Come work for us. You got to do this at a
0:30:35 different scale than the local car dealership. But that is so impressive. This is amazing.
0:30:39 He’s a really good actress. Like she like leans into it. Yeah, you can just see from the thumbnail
0:30:45 here. It’s like so good. And the most impressive part is imagine a 23-year-old coming into a truck
0:30:49 dealership, which is probably all dudes, particularly like frat bros. And she’s like,
0:30:53 “Yeah, we’re going to do it this way. Let’s just do it.” It’s so beautiful because they’re probably
0:30:58 like, “We’re not even doing TikTok. We have nothing to lose.” When you have nothing to lose,
0:31:04 you can try something new here. You could never do this at the corporate account for Cadillac or
0:31:09 whatever. Someone on Twitter was looking at the search traffic for Mohawk Chevrolet. And as expected,
0:31:14 it’s through the roof. So I guess it’s working. So those are my two car stories.
0:31:18 That was great. Great segment. Good finds. Okay, I have a cool find for you.
0:31:24 I want to tell you about a wellness and health app that’s doing over a hundred million a year.
0:31:31 You might think, “Is this healthcare? Is it AI? Is it biotech?” No, no. I’m talking about Pokemon
0:31:38 Sleep. Have you ever heard of Pokemon Sleep? No. Just check this out. Pokemon, the Pokemon
0:31:43 company, has created a sleep tracking app where you just take your phone and put it on your pillow
0:31:47 right next to you while you sleep. And depending on how well you sleep and how long you sleep,
0:31:53 you catch Pokemon in your sleep and you wake up in the morning and it’s a sleep tracker that catches
0:31:59 Pokemon based on how well or how poorly you slept. A gamified sleep tracking. Now,
0:32:05 this app is blowing up. It is huge in Japan right now. I think like 40% of their users are all in
0:32:11 Japan. And they’ve done over a hundred million in revenue on this app already. Isn’t this insane?
0:32:16 What? How? Well, this in-app purchase is basically.
0:32:19 What do you buy? Go look on Reddit. So if you go look on Reddit,
0:32:23 you can find people talking about it. So I’m just going to read you a couple of Reddit posts.
0:32:26 It says, “To be honest, my true intent with Pokemon Sleep is just to have a consistent bed
0:32:30 time.” And it definitely helps with that. I was never the type to lay in bed on my phone playing
0:32:35 games, but this does help me just put away my phone, put it on the pillow. And even though it’s
0:32:39 not super accurate, it is helping me. Another one is like, “I did move my bed time from 2am
0:32:43 to 10pm daily because I was getting frustrated at having to wake up with so little sleep.
0:32:47 I tried so many things. They all failed. Pokemon Sleep managed to make a lifestyle change that
0:32:52 $2,000 in therapy has not. I’m even willing to spend money on occasionally buying bundles in
0:32:56 the app because it’s actually cheaper than what I was paying to try to improve my sleep before this.”
0:33:01 Oh my God. This is insane. Is this owned by Nintendo or whoever?
0:33:04 Yeah, it’s owned by Pokemon. Like if you go to the sites, Pokemon Company International,
0:33:10 it’s like corporate.Pokemon.com is like the thing behind it. But it’s got 10 million users,
0:33:15 only 17% are in the US. So I think there’s an opportunity to basically what they’re obviously
0:33:18 going to try to grow in the US. But I think there’s an opportunity to just replicate the same idea,
0:33:25 which is I’ve had this thought, which is health tracking right now is all quantitative and nobody
0:33:30 really just does a remix of it. That’s fun. Step tracking is a super common thing. Everybody
0:33:35 likes step tracking, but step tracking has just been the same. So everybody just looks at, “Oh,
0:33:40 did I get my 10,000 steps today?” And it’s just me versus me really, and it’s step tracking. And
0:33:44 even the ones that try to make it social where you might be able to add friends and whatever,
0:33:48 it’s not really a social thing to do. And I had this idea years ago of like,
0:33:51 why don’t they just make it look like Mario Kart where it’s me and my eight friends at the
0:33:55 starting line each day. And then as we’re taking steps, we each have our little car that’s ahead
0:33:59 or behind the other person, and it’ll tell you if you get passed by somebody during the day.
0:34:03 Like, “Oh, Sam just passed you.” And then you look at the map and you’re like, “Oh,
0:34:06 shit, Sam’s like a thousand steps ahead. I’m going to actually go get some more steps in.”
0:34:11 And you would have your car that you could buy your skins or whatever, make it look however.
0:34:16 It’s like, take the same idea, but just make it more, do the fun variants, do the social and fun
0:34:23 variant versus the hardcore data tracking version. Me and four friends a few years ago,
0:34:27 we did it a couple of years in a row where I think it was every January. We would wear,
0:34:34 was it a whoop band? And we would… The person who burned the most energy for the entire month,
0:34:40 won. And so it becomes like this crazy competition where it’s like, “Shit, I can’t go to sleep right
0:34:44 now because John is beat.” I got to go burns of calories like John’s winning. And it’s just who
0:34:50 can exert the most energy in January. And it’s exhausting. It is so exhausting.
0:34:52 I think Joe Rogan does that with his friends, right?
0:34:56 Yeah, we definitely stole that idea from him. What does he call it? Sober October.
0:34:58 Sober October, yeah.
0:35:02 Yes. But when he started it, the bands didn’t really exist. And so once they came out,
0:35:05 we took the bands and we did the same thing.
0:35:13 So here’s the deal. I made most of my money from a newsletter business. It was called The Hustle.
0:35:18 And it was a daily newsletter at scale to millions of subscribers. And it was the greatest business
0:35:24 on earth. The problem with it was that I had close to 40 employees and only three of them
0:35:27 were actually doing any writing. The other employees were growing the newsletter,
0:35:33 building out the tech for the platform and selling ads. And honestly, it was a huge pain in the butt.
0:35:39 Today’s episode is brought to you by Beehive. They are a platform that is built exactly for this.
0:35:42 If you want to grow your newsletter, if you want to monetize a newsletter,
0:35:46 they do all of the stuff that I had to hire dozens of employees to do. So check it out,
0:35:57 Beehive.com. That’s B-E-E-H-I-I-V.com. Those competitions, 100% work. There’s a guy
0:36:04 I follow on Twitter who walks 30,000 steps a day. And then everyone else will post their steps,
0:36:11 like their step counts, that night, just to compare. It 100% makes you want to walk more.
0:36:15 Right. So actually, I had an interesting conversation at this event. I was at with
0:36:21 Nick Gray. So Nick Gray, who said, “No, I’d be my favorite person.” He’s a treasurer.
0:36:25 He was talking about, he’s like, “Dude, the my first muscle challenge you guys did was so wholesome.”
0:36:28 He’s like, “It was so fun. I did it with my friends.” He’s like, “My buddy who I did it with,
0:36:33 who didn’t even listen to the pod before that, started listening.” He’s like, “Now,
0:36:36 if he’s just like traveling and needs a quick workout, what can I do in 15, 20 minutes?”
0:36:39 He’s like, “He just does that again.” And he texts me every time he does it.
0:36:46 So I think Nick created a version of that called Done, which I loved. He’s like,
0:36:48 “You should steal this.” He’s like, “You guys should do this.” He’s like,
0:36:51 “Keep the momentum of the my first muscle challenge.” So he has a thing called Done.
0:36:55 It’s like a group of people that all agree we’re going to do X every day. And I forget what X is.
0:37:00 It might be a walk a certain amount of steps, might be cold plunge, might be whatever it was.
0:37:04 Let’s assume you set the bar. And what he did was he made a WhatsApp group.
0:37:10 And in the WhatsApp group, you only can send one word, Done. And that’s it. Every day,
0:37:14 people just say Done whenever they did the thing. And you can’t say anything else,
0:37:17 but you get the momentum from other people saying Done. You’re like, “Shit, I got to get mine in.”
0:37:21 And then he has his assistants. He’s got his assistants of the Philippines who will go in.
0:37:23 And if you haven’t said Done for like three or four days, they’ll DM you,
0:37:27 they’ll nudge you. And they’ll be like, “Come on, man. You can do this. Stay at it.”
0:37:32 And I just thought that was great. And he’s like, “You should definitely keep that alive
0:37:37 in some ways. Do the Done group. It’s amazing.” And so I think we should come up with a new
0:37:42 challenge like that and just do it the way Nick did with one word, keep it super simple, Done.
0:37:46 I think what we need to do is do the My First Muscle Challenge again,
0:37:50 except, well, tell people when it’s happening. I think people… I mean, I know I would train
0:37:55 to get… Because if you don’t work that energy system, it’s quite hard. I would train for it.
0:37:59 Did you… You were with Nick this weekend. Did you meet any other people at this event?
0:38:06 I met a ton of people. What would you like to know? So here’s a fun way we can maybe do this.
0:38:12 So I came home and I brain-dumped all of my notes into this doc. But I did it almost like a Twitter
0:38:20 thread where I… It’s not like a long blog post with one coherent message. I just bullet pointed
0:38:25 like 30 bullet points. So I want you to just pick a number. Let’s do three of them. I won’t
0:38:30 do too many of them. Pick three of them. Just pick random numbers. And between one and 30,
0:38:32 and I’m just going to read you whatever that bullet was. And these are notes to myself,
0:38:36 so I’ll have to add some context. But… Well, I can’t see them. That’s all right.
0:38:44 Yeah, you can’t see them. Just say the number. Well, one. Okay, one. The best advice is free
0:38:49 by definition. Okay, so what does this mean? At this event, there’s lots of talk,
0:38:53 speakers on stage, that sort of thing. Are you going to say what the event is? We didn’t actually
0:38:58 say… Oh, yeah, sorry. So Andrew Wilkinson, our buddy, Andrew, host an event called Interesting
0:39:03 People. And this is the second year he’s done it. So he invites a bunch of people out to where he
0:39:07 lives in Victoria, Canada, and is supposed to just be a mixing of interesting people that either he
0:39:11 knows really well, like some people he grew up with, some people he knows from the internet,
0:39:14 and some people he doesn’t know, but they sounded interesting when they applied. It’s probably 80,
0:39:20 90 people, super well-run event, had a blast. So while I was there, I was thinking about
0:39:26 conferences in general, and I realized the best advice is free by definition. And what I mean by
0:39:34 this is this. Advice that is truly great is actually incredibly simple advice. If it would
0:39:40 apply to you almost in a generic way, it’s going to be simple and almost like hilariously uncomplicated.
0:39:44 Like if I said, Sam, you know nothing about me, but you know that I want to get in shape,
0:39:48 tell me what to do. You have like, you know, 15 seconds, go ahead, tell me what to do.
0:39:54 One gram of protein per pound, lift weights three days a week, walk 10,000 steps a day.
0:40:00 Great. Now if I said, if you wanted to create a course around that, maybe you could, but you’d
0:40:04 have to make it complicated. You’d have to add a whole bunch of other things. Like the best advice
0:40:09 in the world tends to be incredibly simple, so simple that you couldn’t charge for it.
0:40:14 So the best advice is free because either the great advice is so simple, you couldn’t possibly
0:40:18 charge for it. It would be laughable to charge for something like that, to say, well, yeah,
0:40:22 eat whole foods, you know, try to get enough protein, walk and get good sleep, right? Or
0:40:26 whatever, right? Exercise three times a week, do weight lift. These are such simple things,
0:40:30 you can’t create a whole course or program around it in that simple way.
0:40:36 And the other side is advice that is non-obvious like that, the non-common sense advice,
0:40:43 is like hard one, like wisdom usually comes from people who are so successful that they’d be willing
0:40:48 to give it away for free. So the advice from the real winners of life, they’re not charging you
0:40:54 for it because they’ve won, they’re fully abundant, and they’re happy to pass on what worked for them.
0:40:57 And so I realize that the best advice comes at either end of that barbell.
0:41:01 It either comes from people who are so successful that they wouldn’t think to charge for it because
0:41:05 that’d be beneath them. Or it’s so simple that you couldn’t possibly charge for it because it
0:41:09 takes a minute to tell you the answer. And after that, it’s about you following it.
0:41:13 And so I think that that is a general way that I’m now thinking of advice. Anything that falls in
0:41:19 the middle is the mid-wit. It’s basically advice that is overly complicated. You’re paying for it.
0:41:24 And ultimately, you haven’t actually found the most useful version of the advice.
0:41:28 Were there any people who you met who were shockingly amazing or interesting?
0:41:35 Nick Gray. Greg Eisenberg. So Greg, a lot of people know Greg because he’s on Twitter or
0:41:41 whatever. Greg is 10 times more fun in person than he is online. You might even like his online
0:41:46 content, but I’m saying he’s that much better in person. He’s just like a walking vibe.
0:41:53 Whenever I’m around him, it’s just fun. I’m laughing. And it’s very interesting what’s
0:41:58 going on. And I guess the way I approach these events is I’m just looking for two or three people
0:42:05 that I think are amazing. And I’m looking for people who just have a certain energy about them,
0:42:11 a certain way of being that is good to interact with because I already have a day-to-day life,
0:42:16 a routine. If I’m getting out of my routine to go to something, I don’t want to spend it with…
0:42:22 I don’t want to spend my time out of my routine doing the same things I would do in my routine.
0:42:25 So I try to make an effort to hang out with people who are maybe people I don’t hang out
0:42:31 with all the time or hang out in a way that is not just my normal zone that I’m in.
0:42:36 – Was there anyone else that fell into that category or any insight that you got?
0:42:40 – Okay. I’ll give you one note here. Not necessarily something that changed my mind,
0:42:46 but something that I thought was pretty insightful. So Patrick Campbell did a breakout session.
0:42:50 And Patrick’s talk was basically like after he sold his company, and Patrick’s been on the pod
0:42:56 before talking about how he sold his company for like $250 million and what happened after that.
0:42:59 And he said something that I really liked. The question I asked him, I go,
0:43:05 if your brother sold his company now, you can give him some advice on what to do in the year
0:43:09 after you sell. I just sold, how should I think now? Knowing what you just went through,
0:43:15 what would you advise him? He said, well, first thing, probably don’t make any major moves
0:43:20 for like six to nine months. No major purchases. I think you did this too, right? No major purchases
0:43:24 for six to nine months. He said it well. He goes, don’t worry, you have the rest of your life to
0:43:30 spend this money. So you don’t have to be in a rush. The money’s there. The next thing he said was
0:43:38 he hired a guy, this coach, Jack Skeen, and he helped them do kind of like a life 360, kind of
0:43:42 like a, you know, people do these like 360 reviews where they interview like 10 people around you.
0:43:46 Andrew’s done this, Patrick’s done this with the same guy. And they’re basically this guy who
0:43:50 interrogates people. When this guy stood up to do his intro during the event, he goes,
0:43:58 he said, my name’s Jack. And when I was 30 years old, I found the thing that I could do
0:44:03 better than anybody I’d ever met. And I realized that that’s the thing I should be doing with my
0:44:07 life. He’s like, you’re not going to ask me the thing? And we’re like, what’s the thing? And he
0:44:14 goes, I look into people’s eyes and I can see their soul. He’s like, basically I can meet people,
0:44:17 I can talk to them, I can ask them questions, I can figure out who they really are, what they’re
0:44:22 really all about. So Patrick said, he’s like, you know, he asked me a bunch of questions and he’s
0:44:25 like, he really interrogates you and the people around you to try to figure out who is this guy,
0:44:29 what’s he all about? What does he love? When is he at his best? When is he at his worst?
0:44:33 That sort of thing. And what Patrick said was, he took a very intentional approach to this
0:44:38 introspection. He’s like, he’s like, me and my wife did an offsite. He’s like, we did an offsite and
0:44:42 at the offsite, you know, we talk kind of like, what do we want out of life, you know, the material
0:44:46 part of our life, the emotional part of our life, the lifestyle. He’s like, and we made a list and
0:44:50 then we kind of talked about it together. And he’s like, we compared, we said three things. He goes,
0:44:57 I would share something that I wanted out of life. And either it would be cool, go for it,
0:45:03 like, you know, you do you, or it would be cool, I want to do it with you, let’s do that together.
0:45:08 Or I’m not down with that. Like, I don’t think that’s congruent with what I want.
0:45:12 And he also said that he made a scorecard for himself. And he said one thing on the scorecard
0:45:17 that I really liked. So on a scorecard, he was like, you know, I check in every six months or
0:45:21 so, whatever. And I think about, you know, accomplishments, I’m proud of my wins. Things
0:45:26 that I’m bad at that I’ve accepted that I’m bad at. So like, things I’m bad at that I’m not working
0:45:32 on improving, but I’m at peace with the way they are. Then it’s things that I’m working on. And
0:45:38 the last one is like losses I will no longer live with. And he’s like, this is L’s that I’m no longer
0:45:43 willing to take. So things that are not okay in my life that I need to make a change, but I’m not
0:45:49 already making that change. And I thought it was very useful to do this bucketing because
0:45:53 when he said these, none of them sounded that surprising, but I had never really asked myself
0:45:57 those questions. You know, what are the, you know, all four of those, what are the wins? What are
0:46:00 the things I’m bad at that I’m accepting? What are the things that are bad at that I’m not accepting
0:46:05 I’m working on? And what are the areas of my life I’m no longer willing to tolerate? The losses I’m
0:46:11 no longer willing to tolerate. And what I like about these is it normalizes having kind of these
0:46:16 highs and lows in your life. And I know that most people try to bury things like, you know, here’s
0:46:20 some areas of my life I don’t feel great about, but I don’t really want to address them because when
0:46:25 I do, I just feel like ashamed and kind of guilty. And I feel like bad about myself when I do. So
0:46:30 because I feel bad about myself when I address these, I don’t address them. I just stash them.
0:46:35 And I thought it was a very useful way of thinking because it brings it all to light and says, well,
0:46:40 yeah, of course there’s these buckets. And it would be silly of me to not have anything in one of
0:46:43 these buckets. Like, of course, I’ve got to have some wins. I’ve got to have some things I’m bad at.
0:46:46 I’ve got to have some things that I want to change. I’ve got to have some things that I feel like I’m
0:46:50 making progress on. Like, and every bucket should have something in it. And that’s nothing to feel
0:46:55 bad about. I thought that was just a very useful exercise that I think more people could benefit
0:47:01 from. I think a takeaway that I’ve had of hanging out with people like Patrick and other people who
0:47:06 maybe people earlier in their career look up to, of which Patrick should be that type of person,
0:47:14 you think that when you quote make it, you don’t have doubts and you don’t spend money on foo-foo
0:47:21 shit like a life 360. You spend even more on that type of stuff because it’s still incredibly
0:47:26 necessary. Do you know what I mean? Like I’m more necessary than ever. I’m reading this Jack Skeen
0:47:30 website and this is something that previously I would look it back out on and be like, who needs
0:47:34 that? Like, if you’re going to kick ass, you’re going to kick ass. Now I’m reading it and I’m like,
0:47:40 I want this. I need answers. I have no answers. This man has the answers. I mean, the headline says,
0:47:45 “Discover your true life purpose and direction with the roadmap.” Right? You know, if I hit that
0:47:49 normally, I’m bouncing. But when you hear about it in the context of a story and your friends have
0:47:53 done it and you’re at a certain time of your life, it makes total sense to invest in things like this.
0:47:58 This is awesome. Well, that’s good. It was a good trip. It was a lot of fun. It’s also, I mean,
0:48:03 it was cool because I would say 60, 70, 80% of the people there like listen to MFM, which is great.
0:48:09 You’re popular? Well, yeah, but like more than that, I mean, a lot of people had cool stories
0:48:13 of stuff that we’ve talked about that they could, they would come up and share. They’d be like, oh,
0:48:18 dude, like whether it was just like, oh, I hit my first million. And I’m like, yeah, cool. I’m
0:48:21 like a genie. I appear when you hit your first million. That’s it. You just say the words and
0:48:27 it happens. Or there’s people who are like, yeah, you guys talked about this. And I went and did all
0:48:31 these things. And here’s what’s happened since. And normally you don’t get that feedback loop,
0:48:34 right? When we get on here, people don’t realize like, I just treat this like I’m just hanging out
0:48:38 with you. And I’m trying to tell you interesting things. You’re telling me interesting things that
0:48:43 I get excited. And then we get off and like, that’s kind of it. Only now we’re starting to be involved
0:48:47 even with like the thumbnails and the titles to be like, Hey, guys, like, can we just like,
0:48:51 I don’t care if it gets less clicks, just make us look less stupid, please.
0:48:57 You know, like that’s kind of like our level of involvement post post episode. But we definitely
0:49:01 don’t really get as much feedback as there is. So that was, I would say the most fun part was
0:49:05 people coming up and having stories that were that branched off of something that we talk about.
0:49:09 One time, you and I talked about this World War II book that I was reading about.
0:49:16 And we talked about Hitler because he was part of the book. And like the headline that we had
0:49:24 used or somebody picked for the video was like leadership lessons from the third right. And I
0:49:30 was like, Oh my God, no, do not do that. Delete, delete, delete. That is not what I meant. Oh,
0:49:34 dude, I also had a lesson learned. So I gave a, I gave two talks at this event. I had one good talk.
0:49:40 And I had one dog shit talk. And that was a great lesson to learn of just eating shit
0:49:45 and realizing five minutes into the talk. Oh, I’ve made a huge mistake. So the first one was
0:49:49 just a breakout session. And she was like, well, you could just do whatever you want. And I was
0:49:54 like, cool, I’m not even going to have a topic going in. I’m going to talk to the people there.
0:49:57 And we’re going to, we’re going to like, figure out what do people want to talk about? And then
0:50:03 we’ll improvise, we’ll riff. So I’ll tell you about the good one and then the bad one. So the,
0:50:07 I actually talked about the bad one first. So here’s what went wrong with the bad one. These
0:50:12 are lessons learned in public speaking. So I, I get up on the stage and I grab the microphone.
0:50:18 And I can’t help myself, but try something that I’ve never done before that I have not
0:50:23 prepared for, but I just want to see what happens. So I go for that, which was actually that part
0:50:28 was okay. So they had Matthew Dix, the storytelling guy, give like the opening talk at the event. So
0:50:32 he, he was like the nine a.m. And I was like the four p.m. So at the nine a.m. thing, he gets on
0:50:36 there and he tells a great story and he’s got, he’s like a, he does these speeches everywhere.
0:50:42 So like he’s ready to tell us how in business storytelling can be super valuable. So I’m writing
0:50:47 a ton of notes and I’m inspired. I’m already a believer in storytelling. So you’re preaching to
0:50:51 the choir, right? It’s like the Kool-Aid man burst through the wall and I already had my cup ready,
0:50:57 pour it on in. And so he convinces us to how important storytelling is. But the next 10s,
0:51:00 you know, five speakers or whatever, they already knew what they were going to say. So
0:51:06 they get on stage and they don’t really tell a story. And I’m like, dude, we all heard that,
0:51:09 right? Storytelling is the shit. So I was like, I’m going to try to tell a Matthew Dix story
0:51:14 at the start of my talk. And so 15 minutes before I’m supposed to go on, there’s like a little
0:51:19 break and I decided to like try to write a story that I’m going to tell, which is probably not
0:51:22 enough time to do that. But whenever I gave it a shot, I was like, I’m here, I’m going to get my
0:51:28 reps in. So I got my rep it. I tried to give the talk, I would say, okay, at least I get credit
0:51:33 for trying something new. And everybody understood why my story was like not so great was because
0:51:39 I just obviously made it up like, you know, a few minutes before. Now, after that, I decided,
0:51:44 I’m like, you know what? Conferences are these, usually it’s like, you get on stage and you’re
0:51:47 supposed to have the answer. Like, here’s how you do it, right? Here’s how you do X. And you’re
0:51:51 supposed to be the know it all genius who like, you know, that’s what the guy on stage is doing.
0:51:56 So I decided, you know what, I’m going to be different. And being different, the thing that
0:52:01 I’ll tell you about being different is when it works, awesome. When it doesn’t work, you’re just
0:52:06 fucking weird. And so I decided to go on stage and tell people about all the ways that I have failed
0:52:13 and lost money. So specifically, the decisions I’ve made that have been the worst for me in terms
0:52:17 of success and finance, how I’ve lost, you know, $100 million to these seven or eight
0:52:22 really poor decisions. And I get on stage and I start giving the talk and what I realized is,
0:52:29 this is a downer. This is an absolute downer. And even though my information might be good,
0:52:34 and the principles in this might be good, I am basically making everybody in this room state
0:52:40 change downward. I should be leaving them on a high note. It’s the end of the event. We should be
0:52:45 like, you know, lighthearted, everyone’s done a full day. They’re tired. They’re not looking for
0:52:51 something heavy. And I came in like a weighted blanket on that crowd. And so five minutes and I
0:52:56 was like, Oh, this is a bad idea. I shouldn’t have done this. And I didn’t have the skills to,
0:53:02 you know, pull out of that nosedive and change my topic. And I’m sure to them it was fine. But I
0:53:06 know in my head what a good talk feels like when I give it, it could be electric, you know, like
0:53:11 people are laughing and they’re writing notes furiously and they’re feeling good and afterwards
0:53:16 they’re buzzing. They want to run through a wall afterwards. This was like the wall ran through them.
0:53:22 And so I feel like that was a big mistake on my part there. What was the winning one?
0:53:26 The winning one was basically the opposite of that. So I, as soon as the talk happened or as
0:53:29 soon as they’re like, all right, getting a breakout session, everybody and mine was in the main room.
0:53:33 So they were like, people just like stayed in their seat. It was like a five minute break. So
0:53:36 everyone just like stays in their seat. They’re like kind of on their phone checking their email.
0:53:40 But and I was like, Oh, no, no, I got to, I got to shift the energy first and foremost. It doesn’t
0:53:44 matter what I’m going to say. I got to shift the energy. So I had the, the insight at that point
0:53:49 to do it. I just didn’t have it at the other talk. And so I, I immediately was like, all right,
0:53:52 everybody come over here to this side of the room, bring a chair. Let’s make a circle.
0:53:55 Like circles have a different energy in general than somebody on stage and everybody sitting
0:54:00 in a crowd facing them, not seeing each other. And I had to move, bring their chair, come over here,
0:54:05 quickly make a circle. And then I did a little bit of crowd work, almost like a comedian. There
0:54:11 was a guy in the group who, who I had known and had a funny encounter with before this. He used
0:54:15 to be in like a mastermind group of mine before this. And I kicked him out because I was like,
0:54:19 it was like four straight meetings where he would say the same thing and be stuck at the same plateau.
0:54:24 And I kicked him out. I was like, dude, Alex, like, honestly, I think the best thing I could do
0:54:29 for you is not even let you come here and say this same story again, because you’re just like
0:54:36 getting into a rut. Don’t come back here till you’ve doubled revenue. I just like kicked him out.
0:54:39 And actually he’s like eight X since then, and they’re like three years since then. And so he’s
0:54:45 done incredibly well. And so I was like, I haven’t seen you in a while. Like, how are things going?
0:54:51 Any attention here? No, dude, it was great. I’m a next. It’s all good. And so anyways, and I had,
0:54:55 I did this thing where people were like, how do you do X? Whatever. And I had us do like a,
0:54:59 like a pushup thing to like change the energy, like in that, in that moment, like let’s get the
0:55:04 blood flowing. Because one of my principles is good decisions come from good energy. So if you
0:55:08 are trying to figure something out, you’re trying to make a decision, or you’re trying to rally
0:55:14 your team, if you’re doing it from a state where everybody’s tired or stressed or afraid of what’s
0:55:19 going on or just literally like half paying attention, that is not where great ideas or
0:55:24 great decisions come from. And so the first thing you do is you shift your state and then you make
0:55:27 your decision. Then you try to ask yourself the question of how are we going to make this happen?
0:55:31 And so I showed people like how quickly you can change your energy, like watch this, like 15
0:55:36 seconds, 20 seconds, you’ll be feeling different than you are right now. And so that was a much
0:55:40 better thing where it didn’t really matter what I said, but crowd work in order to make it more
0:55:44 interactive keeps everybody on their toes because they don’t know when I’m going to talk to them.
0:55:51 And then shifting the energy first and worrying about information later was the smart move there.
0:55:56 So it was a good trip then. I mean, I, it looked awesome. I saw the list of people going.
0:55:58 Yeah, it was cool. Tons of great people.
0:56:13 All right, that’s the part.