0:00:04 Did you save like 30,000 subscribers at $600 a year?
0:00:07 Yeah, probably in the 30,000 to 40,000 range on paid subscribers.
0:00:09 You’ve got to tell me everything here.
0:00:11 I feel like I can rule the world.
0:00:14 I know I could be what I want to.
0:00:17 I put my all in it like days off on the road.
0:00:19 All right, Kevin, what’s going on, man?
0:00:20 We’re here.
0:00:23 So I have I’ve got to do a quick story on how we met.
0:00:26 So about four years ago, I think we’re in Scottsdale,
0:00:28 Arizona at the Design Pickle Conference.
0:00:32 I just get done doing this talk about how the hustle is like doing pretty good.
0:00:33 We’re at a million subscribers, whatever.
0:00:36 At the end of the talk, I just walk backstage or I walk in the back of the crowd.
0:00:41 You’re wearing a Ramon t-shirt and like shorts.
0:00:43 And you walk up to me and you’re like, hey, nice little talk you did there.
0:00:45 And I was like, oh, thank you.
0:00:47 And you’ve got this you’ve got this confidence about you.
0:00:50 And you’re like, so how many subscribers do you have?
0:00:53 And I was like, I think a million or something like that.
0:00:55 And you go, well, you know, that’s pretty nice.
0:00:57 I got a little newsletter myself.
0:00:58 We’re doing OK.
0:01:00 We got about 30,000 subscribers.
0:01:02 And I was like, oh, that’s that’s a good start.
0:01:05 And you said, well, how much do you charge people to read the hustle?
0:01:06 And I’m like, it’s free.
0:01:07 I make money to get advertising.
0:01:10 And you’re like, oh, you don’t charge.
0:01:11 And I was like, you do.
0:01:14 And you go, yeah, we charge about six hundred dollars.
0:01:16 And it takes about 10 seconds.
0:01:17 And I’m like doing the math.
0:01:22 And I’m like, wait, did you save 30,000 subscribers at six hundred dollars a year?
0:01:24 And you’re like, yeah, what do you expect?
0:01:28 And turns out you’ve got this massive newsletter business.
0:01:29 And I was like, what’s the newsletter about?
0:01:31 And you’re like, oh, we talked to farmers.
0:01:33 It’s all about farming and agriculture.
0:01:37 And I’m like, wait, hold on, man, you’ve got to tell me everything here.
0:01:38 And that’s when my mind was blown.
0:01:40 And I was like, we got to get you on.
0:01:43 And it took about four years, but finally we made it happen.
0:01:44 I appreciate it.
0:01:47 All right, let’s take a quick break
0:01:49 because I want to talk to you about some new stuff that HubSpot has.
0:01:51 Now, they let me freestyle this ad here.
0:01:54 So I’m going to actually tell you what I think is interesting.
0:01:57 So they have this thing called the fall spotlight showing all the new features
0:01:59 that they released in the last few months.
0:02:02 And the ones that stood out to me were Breeze Intelligence.
0:02:04 I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but if you’re in HubSpot
0:02:06 and you have, let’s say, a customer there,
0:02:09 you can just basically add intelligence to that customer.
0:02:11 They estimate a revenue for that company.
0:02:14 How many employees it has, maybe their email address or their location
0:02:16 if they’ve ever visited your page or not.
0:02:20 And so you can enrich all of your data automatically with one click
0:02:22 using this thing called Breeze Intelligence.
0:02:24 They actually acquired a really cool company called Clearbit
0:02:27 and it’s become Breeze, which is great because now it’s built in.
0:02:29 I always hated using two different tools to try to do this.
0:02:30 Now it’s all in one place.
0:02:34 And so all the data you had about your customers now just got smarter.
0:02:35 So check it out.
0:02:37 You can actually see all the stuff they released.
0:02:38 It’s a really cool website.
0:02:42 Go to hubspot.com/spotlight to see them all and get the demos yourself.
0:02:44 Back to this episode.
0:02:47 Sean, what did you think when you met the Van Trumps
0:02:50 and got it got around his people?
0:02:54 Man, I would just call it a series of amazement and confusion.
0:02:57 I showed up and first of all, it’s called FarmCon.
0:03:01 So I think the conference is going to be a bunch of farmers.
0:03:04 By the way, at this point in my life, I don’t think I’d ever met a farmer.
0:03:06 I had grown up overseas.
0:03:08 I live on the coast.
0:03:10 I had never really met a farmer.
0:03:12 So I thought it’s going to be about farming and whatnot.
0:03:16 And instead, it’s actually about investing.
0:03:18 So that was the first part where I was amazed and confused about was
0:03:23 I walk in and it’s a talk going on about options, trading corn futures.
0:03:26 And and it was so far over my head.
0:03:29 And I was like, wow, wait, these guys are actually talking about
0:03:31 crazy Wall Street stuff. What’s going on here?
0:03:33 And then over time, I met a bunch of people.
0:03:35 The conference was amazing.
0:03:37 And they were like, well, what are you doing here?
0:03:38 And I was like, I don’t know.
0:03:42 I I don’t farm and I don’t trade commodities.
0:03:43 So I’m not really sure.
0:03:45 But I’m here to talk.
0:03:48 I have a talk schedule tomorrow and I’m here to just be out of my comfort zone,
0:03:51 be out of my bubble because I had only been going to tech conferences.
0:03:53 When I was doing my research for this pod,
0:03:55 I learned that you actually kind of did a similar thing,
0:03:59 which was that there was a period of your life where you wanted to shake things up
0:04:02 and you started just going to different conferences or trade shows
0:04:06 that were totally unrelated to what you were doing and what you were familiar with.
0:04:10 You kind of intentionally put yourself in that to just shake up your world view.
0:04:11 Is that right? Can you talk a little bit about that?
0:04:13 Yeah, for sure. That’s I meant Sam.
0:04:15 I mean, we were at this, I don’t even know what the hell it was.
0:04:19 My son had called and said, let’s just make it where we make ourselves go to different things,
0:04:22 make ourselves uncomfortable, get out of our comfort zone.
0:04:24 He called me and said, hey, there’s this conference in Phoenix.
0:04:28 Mom wanted to go to Phoenix and out there and I said, what is it?
0:04:30 And he said, design pickle. I said, what the hell are we?
0:04:33 They had people speaking out. We’re doing like hair.
0:04:36 You know, they’re a hair drying business and they had all kinds of crazy stuff.
0:04:38 I said, OK, I’ll go.
0:04:41 Shit. Next thing I find myself walking around the courtyard of this place,
0:04:45 holding another guy’s hand, like, you know, shit, I never do here in the Midwest.
0:04:48 I said, right, what the hell is going on?
0:04:52 You know, they had us doing some weird stuff and and that’s where I’m at Sam.
0:04:55 And so yeah, each year we try to go to different things, just to get different
0:04:59 perspective, different views. You know, we just believe in in trading and investing.
0:05:03 It’s all about perspective and, you know, you can get blindsided a million different ways.
0:05:08 And so I like to be around the younger people to help broaden my perspective
0:05:09 because, you know, we always say in our business,
0:05:12 it’s the old bear and the young bull.
0:05:16 As we get older, we tend to get more bearish just because we don’t we don’t
0:05:19 understand as much as we did when we were younger.
0:05:22 You know, when we were younger, we were aggressive and we knew the latest,
0:05:26 greatest things. And now that we get older, most of my older hedge fund
0:05:29 friends and traders were more cynical and bearish just by nature.
0:05:32 It seems like we just don’t understand a lot of the newer stuff.
0:05:34 Well, I’ll give you two things that came out of it.
0:05:38 Number one, after FarmCon, me and Ben in the lobby of the hotel,
0:05:41 while one of the talks is going on, there’s another corn futures talk
0:05:44 that was going over my head. I said, hey, let’s just hang out in the lobby real quick.
0:05:44 I just got to get out of here.
0:05:46 I don’t understand what the hell these guys are talking about.
0:05:51 Anyways, so we go to the lobby and we had talked to you about your newsletter business
0:05:53 and we go, you know what?
0:05:56 We should create a newsletter business around what we’re we’re interested in.
0:05:58 And we were very interested in crypto at the time.
0:06:01 We had been kicking around this idea, but we hadn’t really had the momentum,
0:06:04 the energy to just like create it from scratch to birth that baby.
0:06:07 And so only in the lobby of the hotel where we like,
0:06:10 let’s do this, and we named it Milk Road,
0:06:12 which was kind of like a farmy sort of name.
0:06:14 Anyways, it all came together in the lobby.
0:06:17 And then a year later, we sold that business for millions of dollars.
0:06:21 And so I got to credit you in a way because we had had a conversation with you
0:06:24 the night before and you told us, you’re like, I guess I got to go back to my room.
0:06:25 I got to write the newsletter.
0:06:27 And we were like, you still write the newsletter?
0:06:30 Like, surely you’ve hired a team of people here.
0:06:33 Like, no, I write the newsletter myself.
0:06:34 I’ve written it.
0:06:38 I think you had written it for like some absurd number, like 18 straight years
0:06:43 or 20 straight years, you hadn’t missed it, and it was you writing it every single day.
0:06:44 Is that right?
0:06:46 I have a girl eastward from the Kansas State Board of Trade.
0:06:47 It stays great.
0:06:52 She’s out in LA and she helps me with a lot of the content and a lot of the thing.
0:06:53 I write corn beans, weed.
0:06:55 I write the up top comments.
0:06:56 She she helps with those.
0:06:58 And then I write the stories down below.
0:07:02 So it’s her and I usually tag team in the whole thing to give her credit.
0:07:03 And she’s been she’s been awesome.
0:07:05 Let’s explain, though, a little bit.
0:07:07 So your main thing is the Van Trump Report.
0:07:09 So VanTrumpReport.com.
0:07:13 It’s a daily newsletter that is it’s a great read.
0:07:18 I actually have read it for a while and it’s talks about I call it for farmers,
0:07:20 but it’s way beyond that.
0:07:23 So it’s agricultural based information, but for farmers,
0:07:25 but also for people who are trading commodities.
0:07:29 And you have said that politicians read it to understand a little bit
0:07:31 about what’s going on in that world.
0:07:34 And you’ve told me I don’t remember exactly what you said.
0:07:38 You told me that it was doing something like 30,000 people
0:07:40 paying something like six hundred dollars a year.
0:07:43 And it’s basically just you writing it, which if you did that math, that’s true.
0:07:46 That’s like 18 million dollars a year in revenue from a newsletter.
0:07:48 Is that right?
0:07:50 Yeah, it’s just myself.
0:07:54 There’s about four of us on our staff here, a friend of mine that used to be
0:07:58 a golf bro, a buddy that I went school with, Stacey out in California
0:08:00 and my son, Jordan, on this side of the fence.
0:08:03 My wife does bookkeeping with accounting team.
0:08:04 But that’s really it.
0:08:08 And like you said, yeah, I did the newsletter and just, you know,
0:08:12 wanted to write about what I was interested in and everything that kind of interests me.
0:08:15 And so, you know, that’s that’s really what we do and what we put out.
0:08:19 Yeah, we’ve got several congressmen, senators, a lot of big trading groups,
0:08:20 hedge fund people.
0:08:26 Yeah, about 35 or probably in the 30 to 40,000 range on paid subscribers.
0:08:30 It’s also got like five pages of memes in it, which I love because I was like,
0:08:30 I would read it.
0:08:33 And the first part was cool is commentary on where you think the market’s headed.
0:08:36 And it’s written the way you talk is very informal.
0:08:39 It’s it’s a straight shooter type of vibe, which makes it fun to read,
0:08:40 even if it’s not your stick.
0:08:42 And then it’s got a bunch of memes, which made me laugh.
0:08:46 And I was like, this is hilarious that you chose that was the product we see today.
0:08:47 Is that basically how you started it?
0:08:48 Is that what it was at the beginning?
0:08:50 And how did you get it off the ground?
0:08:52 What was the how’d you get the initial momentum with that?
0:08:53 Yeah, pretty much.
0:08:57 So I my very my high school sweetheart, we were both from a small rural town
0:09:01 near Missouri, I got to work for a group that was contract with the NFL,
0:09:02 do camps, combines clinics.
0:09:04 So I’m traveling all around the country.
0:09:06 Got a really cool job making no money.
0:09:09 My wife kind of lands her dream job in Chicago.
0:09:12 And, you know, we had to come for me, but neither one of our parents or anything.
0:09:15 We didn’t have any money really, so to speak, when we were younger.
0:09:16 So my wife gets this job.
0:09:19 She was going to run the Eddie Bauer out on Michigan Avenue.
0:09:21 They was going to be their premier store and all this.
0:09:23 So we thought, man, this is going to be great.
0:09:25 You know, we go up there and I didn’t know anything.
0:09:28 And some of my friends in the NFL are like, you got to get in the trading business.
0:09:30 Shit, I didn’t know anything about trading.
0:09:34 And I said, I was a small, rural town farm kid, played last sports all my life.
0:09:35 And they said, well, we’ll give you this interview.
0:09:37 I go, get an interview of this guy.
0:09:41 And the guy just kind of looks at me like, damn, you’re a big, tall guy.
0:09:43 And I was probably about six, four, three, 50 at the time.
0:09:46 And they’re like, you like to fight?
0:09:48 And I’m, what the hell kind of interview question is it?
0:09:50 You know, I’m like, what?
0:09:51 And I said, yeah, sure, shit.
0:09:54 I go out every weekend, you know, I’m getting a rumble or two at the bars.
0:09:56 And they’re like, yeah, you’re great.
0:09:57 We’re your iron.
0:09:58 And I said, well, what am I doing?
0:09:59 I don’t even know what the hell I’m doing.
0:10:01 And they’re like, oh, everybody will see you on the floor.
0:10:03 It’ll give us a little edge and advantage.
0:10:05 So, you know, I started to bury at bottom.
0:10:09 They wanted me to be a phone clerk, you know, and then moved where I was in for
0:10:10 getting orders off.
0:10:11 So I meet a few people.
0:10:12 They start me off.
0:10:15 I go over and I’m trading Swiss banks, D marks and foreign currencies over at the
0:10:18 Merc and then I flip back over to the board.
0:10:19 I was trading treasuries.
0:10:23 So wait, Kevin, this was back when you used to have to kind of push and shove
0:10:25 your way with the papers, getting your trade off.
0:10:28 And they were like, your size was actually an asset.
0:10:30 Yeah, big dig time.
0:10:32 You know, they’d hire a basketball guy’s ex-football guy.
0:10:35 There’d be fights break out all the time on the floor.
0:10:38 And so then we got off the floor where we were arbing minis.
0:10:40 E-minis first came out.
0:10:42 We were arbing minis against bigger S&Ps.
0:10:48 And then really my strong suit became really more people got interested in
0:10:52 grains, corn, because they started using corn as ethanol and things like that.
0:10:55 So a lot of our big energy traders and friends, they didn’t know anything
0:10:58 about the Midwest, you know, and so it was all just foreign language to them.
0:11:01 So they would keep asking me questions.
0:11:05 And then I would go back home to my small rural town where the farmers
0:11:08 were playing dominoes in the morning, you know, up and getting breakfast or caught.
0:11:11 And, you know, they’d be like, hey, city slicker, you know, tell us what’s
0:11:14 happening here in the corn bean or wheat market or cattle market.
0:11:18 And I would do like you said, shut up, I would just dumb it down to my, you know,
0:11:22 my back home speaking in more of a blue collar and just tell them, Hey,
0:11:24 here’s what they’re really meaning or saying.
0:11:29 And so in ’07, I just does before that a little bit when the government
0:11:32 came out with the RFS, that’s where they turned corn and ethanol.
0:11:36 I started writing a newsletter kind of just for myself and journal.
0:11:39 I said, Hey, I’m going to be a better trader and better investor.
0:11:41 I’ve listened to a lot of people.
0:11:46 I’ve been broke twice on a couple of deals and it’s like, let’s do it the right way.
0:11:50 So I started journaling and I said, Hey, I’m going to send my notes out to friends.
0:11:53 And then it started circulating back to me.
0:11:56 It was coming from guys at Goldman and different trading firms.
0:12:00 It was circling back to me and I told my wife, I said, Shit, we were
0:12:03 investing trying to do some, uh, oh, storage units at the time.
0:12:06 So I thought, I’ll send it out for 40 bucks a month.
0:12:07 It’ll be like a storage unit deal.
0:12:10 Let’s just see if people will buy or pay.
0:12:12 And it just kind of took off and went nuts from there.
0:12:15 And we’d never advertised and we’re about 45 countries now.
0:12:17 And all the growth was organic then.
0:12:20 Oh, yeah, we’ve never advertised one touch.
0:12:21 I love it.
0:12:23 And then you have the conference, the thing that I went to.
0:12:25 And I think it was originally called the van Trump conference.
0:12:26 You renamed it to farm con.
0:12:30 And for those who don’t know, you are like a God at this thing.
0:12:35 It was really inspiring to see because you weren’t trying to be,
0:12:37 you know, the front and center of it.
0:12:40 But you could just tell you had so much respect from the community.
0:12:42 People really appreciated this gathering
0:12:44 because they were getting a lot of value out of it.
0:12:48 And you ran it like a family affair and you got your son there
0:12:49 and he’s got his swag business.
0:12:52 And so how did the farm con thing come about?
0:12:54 And is that like a big part of the business?
0:12:56 Why do you do it?
0:13:01 Yeah, you know, it kind of, well, it started off just myself and probably 30
0:13:04 or 40 friends, traders, investors.
0:13:05 We’d get together once a year,
0:13:08 drink some beers and tell each other what our favorite trades or favorite
0:13:09 investments were.
0:13:11 And they loved coming to Kansas City because it was kind of an anomaly,
0:13:14 you know, where you used to be on the coast of New York or California.
0:13:17 So they’d come here and it would be kind of fun.
0:13:19 And so they would start to invite their friends.
0:13:23 And we all had investments in land, bigger land investments and different.
0:13:27 But next thing they had a lot of hunting and fishing guys were coming.
0:13:31 And just people at own big farms, they were flying their private planes in.
0:13:34 And so, yeah, then we just kind of blew up and they started selling
0:13:35 more and more of their friends.
0:13:39 And next thing we started selling out, most everywhere will have that.
0:13:41 You know, it’s really cool.
0:13:42 You know, fun time.
0:13:47 Can we talk a little bit about kind of like your empire and what it is now?
0:13:49 So you’ve got the publishing business, the newsletter.
0:13:55 And then you have this thing called Ag Swag, which is a merch company.
0:13:57 Is that right?
0:13:59 Yeah, really back up to be quick.
0:14:01 You know, some of the people grandfathered in.
0:14:04 We started charging $40 about 400 a year or 40 bucks.
0:14:07 Then we went about eight years ago to 660.
0:14:10 And we have some people that white label the report and send it to their
0:14:13 their businesses and their staff and things like that.
0:14:14 So that’s all in the mix.
0:14:17 But yeah, so I had a friend, Dave Krumholz.
0:14:18 He recently passed away.
0:14:20 He was a CEO of Payless Cashways.
0:14:22 And Dave came back here to Kansas City.
0:14:24 He started a business consulting company.
0:14:28 And then he got hired at a place called American Identity.
0:14:32 And I said, Dave, what the hell are you doing in coming to American Identity?
0:14:35 I said, don’t they just sell like hats and Chachki stuff?
0:14:37 And he’s like, yeah, a private equity company.
0:14:38 He bought them and they’re going to dress it up.
0:14:40 They want to have a, you know, big executive team.
0:14:41 So they’re bringing me in as a CEO.
0:14:43 And he’s like, I think we’ll have a good exit.
0:14:45 Well, about three or I think it was three or four years.
0:14:46 They sold the staples.
0:14:49 I believe it was undisclosed, but the thing was close to eight billion dollars.
0:14:51 They sold the staples.
0:14:52 And I said, holy shit.
0:14:55 I said, what would you guys do over there in American Identity?
0:14:58 And they said, you know, made hats, shirts and Chachki set.
0:14:59 And I said, well, who the hell are your biggest clients?
0:15:03 And he’s like John Deere, ADM, Cargill.
0:15:05 I’m like, oh, I said, I know all those people.
0:15:08 I know all the, you know, all the farming ag people.
0:15:11 And he says, well, I tell you, you know, if you ever get where you guys are
0:15:15 going to start somewhere, want something just under the radar, non-intrusive business,
0:15:17 you know, this, this would be a great way to get something rolling.
0:15:21 So I told my son, Jordan, when he got out of college or he’s about out.
0:15:24 I said, hey, if you ever, if you want to try something on your own, I got an idea.
0:15:26 I said, I’ve come up with a name, Ag Swagg.
0:15:31 And I said, you know, we could probably spin this off and take care of a lot of our clients
0:15:35 and just provide a lot better service and be a lot, you know, more fun
0:15:38 and friendly and give people some great fresh ideas.
0:15:39 And so we launched Ag Swagg.
0:15:43 And it’s, you know, just a swag company that provides hats, things of that nature
0:15:46 to people really specifically in the ag world.
0:15:50 We do other things, but that’s really our Jordan sports.
0:15:52 And now he’s running that he’s hired an art team.
0:15:54 He’s got about four or five artists.
0:15:56 My daughter came back to help him.
0:15:58 He’s got a team of logistics people.
0:15:59 And I think they’re going to do.
0:16:02 He said somewhere between 25 and 30 million this year.
0:16:05 So, you know, they’re they’re growing like crazy.
0:16:07 And, you know, every day, if we want to pull up on a slide,
0:16:09 I can walk you guys through a little bit of the business.
0:16:11 Well done, dad. Yeah, let’s do it.
0:16:14 You know, this is just a simple example.
0:16:17 You draw, you know, you have your your scale of uniqueness on the left
0:16:19 and your scale of total value on the right.
0:16:25 And so if you go to your far right, you have high value and low uniqueness, right?
0:16:27 And you’re asking, what the hell would that be?
0:16:29 And that’s like a tire business.
0:16:31 I always use an example like, you know,
0:16:34 people have to have it so it’s not unique.
0:16:37 But there’s high value because everyone
0:16:39 doesn’t know what’s killed their family and any damn tires on the car.
0:16:40 So they want it to be good.
0:16:44 That if you see your business in that aspect,
0:16:46 you know, you’re in a low gross business model.
0:16:49 Meaning you’re going to have to be a low cost provider.
0:16:50 You’re going to have to do volume.
0:16:53 And, you know, that’s going to be your play.
0:16:55 If you get up into the upper right quadrant,
0:16:57 it just keeps me out of a lot of bad business deals.
0:17:01 Here you have low value, but high uniqueness.
0:17:05 You know, you start to ask yourself, what, you know, what is that?
0:17:08 Remember when Snap or Google came out with the glasses,
0:17:12 those glasses or I would sell them back in my day like a laser disc.
0:17:17 You know, you know, you’re going to be cost a lot of money to educate the masses.
0:17:19 It’s going to cost a lot to get it to market.
0:17:21 And there might not be any longevity in it.
0:17:25 So you got to be careful in, you know, not a lot of value
0:17:27 and high uniqueness. That’s a tough spot to play in.
0:17:30 Now you get over to where Apple likes to play or some of the others.
0:17:32 You go high value, high uniqueness.
0:17:36 That’s something like an iPod, 10,000 songs in your pocket.
0:17:37 You know, that was their main stick.
0:17:40 And it’s like, that’s where you can create high gross.
0:17:42 That’s where you can create high margin.
0:17:44 And that’s where you can make a lot of great things happen.
0:17:48 Obviously, lower left corner, you’re you’re an idiot if you’re so worried.
0:17:51 No value, no uniqueness.
0:17:53 No bad idea, you know.
0:17:55 And I always say on there, people buy value, not price.
0:17:57 And this was a hard one to understand for a lot of people.
0:18:02 Because if I went into Walmart and I put a whole bin of laser disk in there
0:18:07 and I put them for sale for five cents, I mean, bag it.
0:18:11 No, he’s gonna buy them just because there’s no value to, you know, what I’m saying.
0:18:14 Now maybe there is a little now because people are looking to sell some of those types of item.
0:18:20 But I’m just saying you have to be aware of people by price, people by value, not price.
0:18:22 And so you make the price as low as you want to go.
0:18:25 And it was just not good. It’s not good.
0:18:27 And I see people get trapped in that a lot in real estate and some other things.
0:18:33 So, you know, this is where we try to we try to categorize the business deals
0:18:36 when they come down the pipe, where this is at and how this is going to play out.
0:18:39 Because it’s never the soldiers I send in at first, right?
0:18:42 It’s never the first money we send in on the deal.
0:18:45 It’s how many more soldiers are going to get called into duty
0:18:50 and maybe never come back home into my bank account or come back, you know, missing limbs and arms.
0:18:55 And so it’s like, you have to be careful, I think, in that aspect.
0:18:58 You know, it’s that because I’m my wife all the time is like,
0:19:00 my gosh, we’re writing more capital call check.
0:19:05 But we kind of know when if we can categorize in this way, we know what we’re getting into.
0:19:11 Where we went with AgSwag, what’s critically important, we believe is knowing your funnel.
0:19:16 So your light users, there’s obviously you’re going to be able to get more market share on your light users.
0:19:19 As you move down the customer continuum, that would be your heavy user.
0:19:24 So as Sean pointed out, that would be John Deere or that would be a cargo.
0:19:29 Now, we what you have to understand in all businesses, you’re always going to be pulled to the right.
0:19:34 So you’re always going to be pulled to the high user and low gross.
0:19:35 They’re going to try to get you over there.
0:19:39 If people like what you have, they like what you’re doing.
0:19:42 They’re going to take you over there more to the right and, you know,
0:19:47 try to beat you up on your price, try to beat you up on gross because they say they’re a heavy user.
0:19:51 That’s why it’s really imperative for most people, you don’t want to get an order from wall.
0:19:57 You know, you don’t want to go that way because it’s next to impossible to get your business back to the left.
0:20:02 And to the left is where you’re going to see a lot more profitability, a lot more high gross.
0:20:07 And so we tried to position AgSwag in the middle away from the John Deere’s and ADM.
0:20:13 So we’ve had calls from them wanting their play is for us to, you know, store all of their merch for the year.
0:20:16 We ship it out. It becomes a logistics business.
0:20:17 The gross shrinks up to nothing.
0:20:24 And we’ve got a, you know, a real, you know, you know, we’re running a real people business where we’ve got a lot of hands and a lot of touches.
0:20:31 So we’ve tried to stay out of that space as much as possible early on so we can create and build more smaller accounts,
0:20:35 smaller business owners and people like that where there’s more fragmentation for us.
0:20:37 So you have these other slides that I really like.
0:20:41 So you had this poker versus chess one that I loved.
0:20:44 Can you talk about this one?
0:20:50 Yeah, you know, I just think, you know, they talk a lot about life being like chess or a lot of times you’ll hear people talk about those things.
0:20:56 You know, you know, I say life’s more like poker than chess just because the cards are faced down and a lot of luck’s involved a lot of times.
0:20:59 So, you know, you can be the greatest, have the greatest skill in the world.
0:21:06 And I’ve met some of the most brilliant, brilliant people, but if they don’t catch any breaks or don’t catch any luck and, you know, it becomes tough.
0:21:11 So I think you have to remind yourself and that’s what we were kind of talking about earlier.
0:21:17 If you think you’re a genius and you’re you’re just smarter than everyone else, I think you run into a ton of problems and a ton of roadblock.
0:21:24 That’s where I think, you know, you have to look at it more like poker, like you’re going to get lucky every now and then to get on a run and get a little heater.
0:21:30 And sometimes, you know, that’s when you really have to push and go all in is when when you’re when your luck’s going your way.
0:21:36 When when you feel like some of those things aren’t going your way, you got to pull way back, you know, that’s not when you double triple down.
0:21:39 That’s when you kind of hunker down and let the storm clouds pass.
0:21:42 And then hopefully your luck will shift and turn around a little bit.
0:21:44 Well, it seems like there’s three three parts to the poker thing, right?
0:21:47 There’s the cards are face down.
0:21:51 So there’s a lot of unknowns, unlike chess, then you’re talking about luck and variance.
0:21:52 That’s the second part.
0:21:56 But then the third part was you said that the amateur players just play too many hands.
0:22:01 A pro only plays, you know, 15 to 20 percent of their hands, but an amateur is playing half the hands.
0:22:08 And so the trick is actually just to pass on the average opportunity to save room for the huge opportunity.
0:22:12 And that’s that’s the other one, and I think Warren Buffett calls this waiting for the fat pitch.
0:22:14 He’s like, there’s no called strikes.
0:22:17 You can let 50 opportunities go by and just pass on them.
0:22:19 Even if there were some good ones in there, it’s OK.
0:22:23 As long as you just when you do swing, you swing at the right ones.
0:22:24 100 percent, I 100 percent agree.
0:22:26 I mean, you know, we use that analogy.
0:22:28 We use the Ted Williams thing all the time.
0:22:31 There’s Ted Williams as a batting chart and Ted Williams was one of the first
0:22:35 persons to go and document all of his where he would hit balls and where he could, you know,
0:22:38 what his percentage was, if it was high and outside, low and inside.
0:22:41 And he figured out where his sweet spot was.
0:22:44 And then Williams would just sit and wait for his bitch.
0:22:46 And when he got it, he don’t knock shit out of it.
0:22:49 So it’s similar to what you’re so you talk about luck.
0:22:53 And you say passing on the average opportunity to save room for the huge opportunity.
0:22:58 And with your trading, what have been opportunities that you’ve thought were huge,
0:23:02 that you pounced on, as well as maybe some that you didn’t because you thought they were average.
0:23:05 Yeah, tons. I could go through those by crazy.
0:23:08 And, you know, but I agree with that.
0:23:11 And we’ve we’ve talked about this myself and a lot of my trading friends.
0:23:13 It’s that as we’ve gotten older, we’ve we’ve learned.
0:23:17 We can look back through all of our document, tag docs and everything.
0:23:21 I mean, the more trades we made, the worse year we had.
0:23:25 It seemed like the fewer trades, by far, the better of the year.
0:23:28 And, you know, now we’re trading even less and less and less.
0:23:31 And I know I think some of our readers got to probably get these.
0:23:35 They want the action and everything, but, you know, it’s like wrestling, you know,
0:23:39 as a great wrestler, a high school college wrestler, they’re super patient.
0:23:43 They wait for the the market, in this case, to make a mistake late for the market
0:23:47 to get out of out of a line or over leveraged or overtilted.
0:23:50 And then you come in and you try to make a play.
0:23:52 You know, most all your money is made.
0:23:55 The greatest traders will say all your money is made sitting, you know, sitting and waiting.
0:24:00 And it’s incredibly hard to do the decision to do nothing is a decision.
0:24:05 And in our world, a lot of times it can be the best decision you could possibly make.
0:24:08 So, you know, and as far as, like Sam said, you know, we, like I said,
0:24:10 we were early with Declan, we were early with Tesla.
0:24:16 I was trading when Amazon first came out and we had 30,000 shares of Amazon,
0:24:18 like right out of the hole.
0:24:19 And I went negative on it.
0:24:20 I’d never forget story.
0:24:23 My wife and I, shit, we didn’t have enough money to pay attention at the time.
0:24:27 And we were sitting there and they I had this position on.
0:24:28 It wouldn’t guess me.
0:24:31 And I said, man, if this thing just gets back to even in Amazon,
0:24:32 I’d trade like three or four bucks a time.
0:24:34 It got back to even and I blew out.
0:24:37 And I mean, it would have been like, you know, the craziest trade of all times
0:24:38 if I’d have stuck with it.
0:24:41 But I wouldn’t have stuck with it, probably, you know, I’m a trader.
0:24:44 So it’s like, you can’t, you can’t beat yourself up saying, man,
0:24:47 if I would have just stayed in that or not stuck with it.
0:24:50 And I think a lot of people do that to themselves, you know, it’s a psychological game.
0:24:54 And you just want to try not to beat yourself up and not get down on yourself
0:24:57 because then it then it gets hard to fail and recover.
0:25:01 So what’s the case for being a trader versus a investor?
0:25:03 Because if you read about all the investing greats,
0:25:06 they all kind of poo poo traders a little bit.
0:25:07 They’re like, oh, you don’t want to be a trader.
0:25:10 You want to be, you know, a buy and hold guy.
0:25:13 You want to buy, find a great asset and then sit on it for a long time.
0:25:17 Am I just only reading the advice from the investors and that’s why?
0:25:18 Or is there something to what they’re saying?
0:25:19 No, you’re absolutely right.
0:25:22 I mean, there’s plenty of trades I’ve been in that I’ve become an investor
0:25:27 because they went against me and we just kept holding and holding and holding.
0:25:30 Right. But it was meant to be a short term trade, but turned into a long term,
0:25:32 you know, just ass kicking.
0:25:34 So it’s like, no, I agree.
0:25:35 My job, though, I was a trader.
0:25:38 So, you know, I was at the floor, I was at the exchange,
0:25:42 I was at the Kansas City Board Trade, you know, and so my whole job
0:25:45 revolved around trading and fairly quick movements in the market.
0:25:48 I was never I did own a day trading firmer one time.
0:25:51 And you should have seen, you know, the success rate on people.
0:25:53 They trade was just a miserable business.
0:25:54 So we don’t day trade, so to speak.
0:25:58 We’ll be more swing trading will be multi days in a trade.
0:26:01 You know, the commodity markets are a little different for every buyer.
0:26:03 There’s a loser and they’re a little different than stocks.
0:26:05 And there’s expirations on the contract.
0:26:09 So, you know, we’re more short term oriented, but we’re also longer term investors.
0:26:13 Like you would say, Sean, I do think I advise my kids, my own kids.
0:26:17 Exactly what you’re saying, you know, no, unless you’re going to be full time
0:26:21 and you really want the belly aches, I wouldn’t advise probably, you know,
0:26:26 trading or trying to time market movements, like said, I’m more with Buffett.
0:26:29 You know, I think, you know, everybody’s trying to beat the indexes.
0:26:31 I mean, everybody’s trying to beat the SBA here in a second.
0:26:34 And you’re in and you’re out that stuff to do.
0:26:36 And, you know, so I think, you know, as a passive investor,
0:26:41 long term hold is probably a good plot for the majority of most people.
0:26:44 And that’s the way to build wealth.
0:26:46 How many years have you beat the index?
0:26:48 How long have you been doing this 20 or 30 years?
0:26:50 Do you think that you’ve beat the index?
0:26:52 You know, I mean, the years that we beat it, we beat it by a mile
0:26:56 because we get lucky in some certain position or some certain stock.
0:26:58 And like this year, I’m trailing.
0:27:02 I have decent amount put over into, you know, we’re still in a lot of CDs
0:27:04 at five and a quarter or five percent.
0:27:07 And, you know, a lot of our wealth building has come from real estate.
0:27:10 That’s just buying land, farmland, or what are you buying?
0:27:14 Buying real estate, you know, we have everything from commercial properties
0:27:18 to single families that we’ve turned into various Airbnbs.
0:27:23 Yeah, land, farmland, regular land, those have been our biggest winners.
0:27:28 Has the majority of your net worth come from the income
0:27:30 that the newsletter has produced or has it been from trading?
0:27:33 So I think there’s two ways you can do with your business.
0:27:36 You know, when you’re breaking money, you can either take the money
0:27:39 and reinvest it back in your business, which we didn’t do.
0:27:40 That was kind of my play.
0:27:42 I’m like, I’m not going to do that.
0:27:45 I’m going to take my money and then I’m going to put it out and see
0:27:47 and try and invest in other people’s businesses.
0:27:52 And, you know, and we’ve we’re we’re partners with a firm
0:27:54 private firm called ISELEC.
0:27:57 So we’re early investors in ag tech startups and some biotech.
0:28:02 And so we’ve had a ton of losers, but they’ve all led to meeting new people,
0:28:04 learning new things.
0:28:07 And then that in turn comes to something else today that so, you know,
0:28:10 we try to grow our revenue and then take that revenue
0:28:14 and invest it in various other vehicles and other sources.
0:28:17 What’s the like sentiment like amongst the people that
0:28:20 are reading the newsletter or would come to the conference?
0:28:22 You know, are people bullish right now?
0:28:23 Are they optimistic?
0:28:24 Are the big headwinds or tailwinds?
0:28:28 What’s going on in the food producer world?
0:28:32 Yeah, you know, it’s it’s pretty dark right now over in our world, so to speak.
0:28:37 The big jump in rates was obviously a kind of a real pinch for a lot of our
0:28:40 ag tech startups and a lot of the people just in agriculture in general.
0:28:44 So you’ve had a big jump in rates and then we also have, you know,
0:28:46 a little bit of a glut right now.
0:28:50 We have a free burdensome supply of corn over 2 billion bushel supply of corn.
0:28:54 You know, we got about 500 million bushel supply of beans coming down the pipe.
0:28:57 And sorry, that that means that last season overproduced.
0:29:00 Yeah, you know, we had a good year last year.
0:29:03 South America is coming off a pretty good year.
0:29:06 Argentina, like, for example, Argentine production doubled
0:29:07 from what they had.
0:29:10 They had a big drought last year and some production problems.
0:29:12 Brazil’s got a little bit of they’re down from a little bit.
0:29:15 But China, like so China right now hasn’t been a buyer of U.S.
0:29:19 new crop beans, haven’t booked any any cargoes, which is unusual.
0:29:22 So we’re worried we got this election coming up.
0:29:26 If anything can happen, we’re not sure how China is going to play it with
0:29:28 Trump coming back into the mix.
0:29:30 Are we going to have a bigger hit on tariffs?
0:29:34 So when Trump was in office, we had bean prices go break pretty considerably
0:29:36 because we got into a pissing match with China.
0:29:39 And, you know, they’re the number one buyer of beans in the world.
0:29:42 So it’s we’re kind of trying to weigh this thing out here
0:29:44 and see how things are going to shake out.
0:29:45 But we do have some new things on the front.
0:29:47 We got sustainable aviation fuel.
0:29:50 So soybeans are now going to be used to make sustainable
0:29:52 aviation fuel, which is going to be a big one.
0:29:56 We’re trying to push to get corn to where the corn production is going to
0:29:59 also be used to make sustainable aviation fuel.
0:30:02 There’s a few pipeline issues that need to be addressed and some things like that.
0:30:08 But we’re moving for more food for fuel is becoming more little more prevalent.
0:30:12 So we’re seeing more countries move to that for cleaner energy sources.
0:30:16 So we’re seeing more utilities and more usage for traditional crops.
0:30:19 And we’re seeing more utility and more usage for land.
0:30:23 We were just seeing a ton more buyers and bidders come in for land.
0:30:29 People wanting to put in solar, you know, solar fields to create energy, windfields.
0:30:33 There’s just a lot more utilities being used now for data centers.
0:30:37 We’re seeing a big push through the Midwest on companies wanting to build
0:30:41 these massive data centers really through the glut of the Midwest.
0:30:45 And we think it’s kind of like Cushing’s, Oklahoma, where we store our oil.
0:30:48 Now we think data is going to be kind of the new oil.
0:30:52 And so we’re going to try and store our data here in the US centrally into the Midwest.
0:30:56 So we’re seeing a big push in some farmground being gobbled up for big data.
0:30:59 My father is a produce broker.
0:31:04 So he owns a small brokerage where, like, let’s say that over the course of 20 years,
0:31:08 he’s sold a hundred million dollars worth of onions, you know, over the course of 20 years.
0:31:11 The the the margin is like five percent.
0:31:14 Like, so he’ll make five million dollars over 20 years or whatever if you sell
0:31:16 a hundred million dollars worth of onions.
0:31:17 So it’s a huge quantity.
0:31:20 But in that space, he’s a small dog, you know, really tiny.
0:31:25 But I remember during a week, like I remember I was only 17 or 18.
0:31:27 I was watching the news and I was like, you know, dad,
0:31:31 why do you seem like you’re making more money now than than before,
0:31:32 where everyone else seems to be going broke.
0:31:35 And he was like, well, look at the corner of our kitchen.
0:31:37 There’s onions and potatoes there.
0:31:40 Like, people are still going to buy this stuff no matter what.
0:31:43 And then when the economy is going well, like, you’re going to go out to eat
0:31:44 and I’ll crush it then, too.
0:31:46 So it was like, I’m in a good business.
0:31:51 And I remember thinking, like, as I got older, I kind of forgot about farming
0:31:54 and I forgot about food and agriculture.
0:31:56 And I just I didn’t really think about it.
0:32:02 But what I’ve learned is that over the years that America is really good at two or three things.
0:32:03 One of them being culture.
0:32:05 So we export culture like amazingly well.
0:32:09 So Hollywood is like our biggest export, I would say, or culture.
0:32:13 The second thing that we do really well, we are so fucking good at growing corn.
0:32:16 America is so good at growing corn.
0:32:23 And I forget how important agriculture is to our to our way of life in America.
0:32:26 So when you’re talking about some of these things about what China is doing,
0:32:28 what Brazil is doing, if China is buying stuff from us.
0:32:32 How big is like this entire industry that you’re associated?
0:32:37 I mean, what percentage of the GDP or economic value is it creating in America
0:32:39 compared to other things?
0:32:40 So massive.
0:32:43 I mean, it’s, you know, one of the and we’re seeing more and more of the wealthy
0:32:45 get into agriculture.
0:32:47 And that’s why I’m saying it’s a really hot area.
0:32:49 And you’re seeing the Gates Foundation Buffett’s group.
0:32:53 Well, Warren, son, Howard, he used to be a big farmer.
0:32:58 And he had just recently gotten out and still on the ground.
0:33:00 But they’re having some other people farmer and do some things like that.
0:33:03 But yeah, seeing a big, big push and more and more people being interested in
0:33:06 ag and interested in food and where it’s coming from.
0:33:09 We’re seeing Sean LaRosa say is more people going direct to the farmers.
0:33:14 Just recently in the last few weeks, we’ve seen more ranches come online,
0:33:15 kind of form a little coalition.
0:33:18 There’s a group of about seven, eight good ranches down in Texas
0:33:20 that are now selling direct to the public.
0:33:24 You know, they were getting maybe they were getting minimal for their beef.
0:33:27 You know, and now that they’re selling direct, they’re really doing well
0:33:29 and people like buying direct.
0:33:32 And so did you just buy off their website or or the there’s some startup
0:33:34 that’s doing this? Yeah, they have an auction.
0:33:36 I think it’s called bid for beef.
0:33:38 I thought that was a dating site.
0:33:41 Yeah, yeah, you know, so they could be whatever you’re into.
0:33:46 Yeah, but, you know, they’re starting to make more traction.
0:33:48 And we’re seeing that across the board with other plays.
0:33:52 What’s going on with like farms that are kids don’t want to take it over?
0:33:54 What is the succession plan look like?
0:33:56 And is somebody solving that problem?
0:33:57 That’s a huge issue.
0:34:01 And that’s being discussed heavily and in the ag world that, you know,
0:34:05 so you have this this big succession
0:34:08 roll over, I think I don’t know what the number I can remember off time.
0:34:11 I think it’s OK 80 percent of the farms are owned by people over 60, you know,
0:34:13 and it’s it’s a really aging demographic.
0:34:16 And a lot of the the kids, you know,
0:34:19 I have other jobs or went off to great colleges and great schools
0:34:20 and they don’t necessarily want to come back.
0:34:23 So yes, there is there is a big issue.
0:34:25 And a lot of the people in the farming world
0:34:27 keep their cards really close to their chest.
0:34:30 And they don’t really talk a lot openly with their kids
0:34:33 or they don’t have a lot of great succession planning in place.
0:34:34 And we’re seeing that a lot.
0:34:37 I think, you know, we’ve tried to be super open with our kids
0:34:40 and discuss everything and show them everything and say, hey,
0:34:41 here’s where everything’s at.
0:34:42 Here’s where you need to know.
0:34:44 Here’s where you need to be.
0:34:49 And, you know, hopefully you only tell our other friends to similar type things.
0:34:51 So yes, the session planning is very important.
0:34:54 And I think it’s something that we all have to address as we own businesses.
0:34:56 So what do you think is going to happen?
0:34:59 Like, if 80 percent of these are owned by people over 60
0:35:02 and a lot of the kids are going like, is this just going to be private equity
0:35:05 owns all the farms? Like, what happens here?
0:35:07 We are going to see a lot of rollover, a lot of turnover.
0:35:10 So in the farming space or when you’re buying acreage,
0:35:13 there’s there’s two bidders that are going to come against you.
0:35:15 The person who’s farmed butts up against you.
0:35:17 They’re going to be willing to pay a big premium
0:35:20 because the land may only come available once in their lifetime.
0:35:22 And so they’re going to be bid and have one.
0:35:25 So whoever’s in close proximity, because, as you know,
0:35:28 driving the combines or driving the hard, it makes a lot of says
0:35:30 to get a continuing piece of ground.
0:35:34 And now you’re also having like California teachers
0:35:36 benching, fun bidding against you.
0:35:39 You have other high profile, fun people bidding against you.
0:35:41 So yes, who runs it?
0:35:43 They just play somebody to go live on the farm and what?
0:35:46 Sean, have you ever been on a farm?
0:35:49 No, so I don’t know where I would go to find a farm.
0:35:50 Where do you go?
0:35:51 Without a map somewhere.
0:35:55 My my aunts and uncles and cousins are farmers in Oklahoma.
0:35:57 And they have like two or three thousand acres.
0:35:59 And they are, I guess they’re ranchers.
0:36:02 And so they own like fifteen hundred cattle, I believe.
0:36:06 And a bunch of their cattle are Sean, you’ve probably never heard this term.
0:36:08 They’re bucking bulls. Have you heard of?
0:36:10 You know what a bucking bull is? I do not.
0:36:13 So what they do is they the PDR,
0:36:15 which is the professional rodeo association.
0:36:20 They if you get a good bull, a good bull can be worth, I don’t know,
0:36:23 Kevin, what like 50 grand all the way up to a million dollars.
0:36:24 And yeah, more than that.
0:36:28 Some of these good bulls you get, you make money in two ways.
0:36:32 You make money because at the rodeo, the rider gets paid.
0:36:36 So if you stay on a bull for a certain amount of time, you win and you get paid.
0:36:39 But the bull that bucks the hardest also gets paid.
0:36:41 And that’s like like a rating system.
0:36:45 And so there’s like famous bulls that are known as like really hard bucking bulls.
0:36:47 Who’s the Michael Jordan of bulls?
0:36:51 It’s Bushwacker. Bushwacker Bushwacker has been the best for a long time.
0:36:55 No, Bushwacker is a famous bull, the guy who like dominated Bushwacker.
0:36:58 What’s his name? J.R. or something he like just retired, I believe, right?
0:36:59 What was that guy saying?
0:37:02 My son played football a couple of kids who were PBR bull riders.
0:37:04 They’re insane.
0:37:07 So my cousin and the family, this is what they do.
0:37:09 And so I went and stayed with them every once in a while.
0:37:14 And we get up at like eight and starting at like 10,
0:37:18 you go to the feed store and you buy a huge amount of feed.
0:37:19 You bring the feed back.
0:37:21 You call the bulls and you throw it all over.
0:37:25 Like you scatter it out throughout the area and they come up and they eat it.
0:37:31 And then on the weekends, they drive these bulls from Oklahoma to Texas,
0:37:32 which is like 12 hours.
0:37:35 And these bulls, when you put them into the truck,
0:37:37 you would think a bull that you birthed and raised,
0:37:39 like they will literally be there when they birth this bull.
0:37:42 But once the bull hits puberty, I guess, or it has balls,
0:37:45 it wants to fucking kill you no matter what.
0:37:48 It doesn’t matter if you raised or birthed this bull.
0:37:51 This bull wants to murder you every chance it gets.
0:37:53 And so just to get the bull on to the truck,
0:37:55 it’s like a life or death situation every once in a while.
0:37:59 Like this it’s a fifteen hundred pound thing that you got to get into this truck.
0:38:02 And they would drive these bulls all around the country
0:38:07 and they get paid, I think, four grand just as an appearance fee or something like that
0:38:11 to show up on the PBR and then the other the cows, the females.
0:38:15 And so they make their money by raising the cows that they sell for beef.
0:38:18 And then the bulls, they either sell them to get bread
0:38:24 or they make money directly from the rodeo and it’s like a huge cash business.
0:38:28 So my cousins and aunts and uncles, they’ll always have a lot of cash
0:38:31 because they’ll go to the auction and it’s just like a really heavy cash business.
0:38:35 They get, let’s say, 10 grand for selling 10, 10 cows.
0:38:39 They take that 10 grand and they spend eight of it like that day on more cow feed.
0:38:43 And so it’s like a really heavy, I’m probably getting some numbers wrong,
0:38:47 but it’s a really heavy cash business and it’s fucking hard.
0:38:51 My cousin Sam would drive around and he’d be drinking like natural light
0:38:54 while he’s driving his truck, checking on all the like on all the cows.
0:38:59 Dude, it’s a hard living and it’s really fun.
0:39:00 I’ve like spent time on there.
0:39:04 It’s been it’s fun for me as a visitor, but it is a hard job to do this shit.
0:39:07 You are working and walking constantly.
0:39:08 Yeah, you’re right.
0:39:11 And, you know, I lost I lost a good joke, not a big joke,
0:39:14 but I did when you said somebody’s mind getting said,
0:39:18 hey, let’s start raising these bulls to be PBR bulls, you know, rodeo bulls.
0:39:20 Shit. I don’t think I ever cashed one check.
0:39:22 I think it just it was a lot of fun.
0:39:24 Like you said, a lot of drinking thatty light and driving around
0:39:27 the pickup, checking on them and, you know, yeah, like it’s like fun,
0:39:33 but it’s fucking hard and it’s a very capital intensive business.
0:39:34 Hey, I’ll give you one.
0:39:36 I’ll give you one that was a big miss.
0:39:38 Now, a guy came to me and say I’m going to kick out.
0:39:42 I came to the house probably 20 years ago and 50, you know,
0:39:43 the other guy was just getting going.
0:39:45 He said, man, I got this great idea.
0:39:48 And the guy came in and he was all suited and I said, well,
0:39:50 he’s an English major and all that.
0:39:53 He says, what I’m going to do is I’m going to build his websites
0:39:56 and I’m going to hire a couple other English majors and we’re going to write
0:40:01 really eloquent descriptions of these cattle and these bulls and their stems,
0:40:04 the stem that they call the sperm, you know, and he’s like,
0:40:07 then I’m going to sell this sperm all over in Japan, all over the world.
0:40:10 I said, dude, it’s this shit ain’t gonna work.
0:40:12 You know, this was early on up to the blue it up.
0:40:13 He blew it up.
0:40:16 How do you eloquently describe the sperm of a bull?
0:40:18 What’s it? What’s your website?
0:40:20 You know, the background, the lineage.
0:40:22 I don’t know. I have not followed him for a number of years,
0:40:24 but I remember he came back through and some people were like, man,
0:40:26 this guy just, hey, I’ll tell you one.
0:40:27 We were at the Louisville farm show.
0:40:31 They had me come down there to speak as US’s world largest indoor
0:40:33 fiery show and so I go down there to be the keynote speaker.
0:40:35 And there’s this little boost set up next to this.
0:40:39 They got all these Polaroids on this little 10 by 10 booth tent.
0:40:41 And I go to talk to you guys. So what the hell is this thing?
0:40:44 He’s like, it’s called farmers only.com.
0:40:46 And you guys are seeing all of the ads.
0:40:47 But I’m not shitting you, Sean.
0:40:48 We’re like all making fun of him.
0:40:52 And then the next year he comes and he has like a 20 by 20 booth.
0:40:56 And then the next year he’s there and shit, his booth, damn it.
0:40:57 Biggest John Deere. I mean, his booth is massive.
0:41:00 And we’re like, the hell then he’s got Super Bowl ads.
0:41:03 It’s just only.com.
0:41:05 You’re looking to marry a farmer, you know, that thing just blew up.
0:41:08 And he, shit, he turned that into a great deal.
0:41:11 When you, so let’s say I wanted to become a gentleman farmer,
0:41:14 and I wanted to go buy a farm, walk me through that.
0:41:15 So first, where would I find a farm?
0:41:19 Do is this like sold like on Zillow or is this a brokers only?
0:41:22 How do people find farms to buy?
0:41:24 You know, some people are now investing fractively through.
0:41:28 I mean, I’m invested in a company, AcreTrader, AcreTrader.com.
0:41:29 So we buy farms.
0:41:31 We even have farms out near the neck of the woods, Sean.
0:41:36 Out in, we have nut farms out in California.
0:41:39 We have regular other row crop production farms
0:41:41 through Bakersfield in that area through there.
0:41:44 You know, and all over the United States,
0:41:46 you have various farms grow very similar products.
0:41:49 So a farmer is selling a fraction of their of their farm.
0:41:51 What happens at AcreTrader?
0:41:52 We go in and actually buy the entire farm
0:41:56 from a family, say they’re one now or this is a session planning.
0:41:58 And they will. So we’ll buy the entire farm.
0:42:00 And most of the time we’ll have a farmer in that area
0:42:03 that has called us about the farm and said,
0:42:05 hey, we don’t have the money, but if you guys
0:42:07 want to put up the money, we’d be happy to farm it for you
0:42:11 and do revenue sharing, crop sharing or some type of, you know,
0:42:13 split into the revenue.
0:42:15 We’re looking to just hold the ground for appreciation
0:42:16 over 10, 12 year period.
0:42:19 The years you have good years, you have some really good years.
0:42:21 Some years, though, you’re going to have some some losing years.
0:42:24 But over the course of time, 10, 15, 20 years,
0:42:26 your appreciation on the land is going to be
0:42:28 that’s really going to carry you forward.
0:42:30 And that’s what the that’s what a lot of hedge funds are looking for.
0:42:32 A lot of funds are looking for that longer term appreciation.
0:42:34 Well, what are these trade for?
0:42:37 Like if I go buy a farm, what is the multiple you pay on a farm?
0:42:41 Typically, or would it be just price per acre price per acre?
0:42:42 And it’s gone nuts lately.
0:42:46 I mean, my buddy just sold his mom left him a chunk of ground
0:42:47 that they had in the family.
0:42:49 And he said, hey, what do you think?
0:42:51 And I said, I don’t know, man, it’s a great time.
0:42:52 This was about seven, eight months ago.
0:42:55 I said, you know, farmers are flush with some cash.
0:42:57 Maybe it was about a year ago.
0:43:00 And he ended up getting 20,000 an acre down here outside of Missouri.
0:43:02 Now, that’s pretty rare off the books.
0:43:08 You know, acreage around here typically go for five to 12 to 15.
0:43:11 But if someone needs the ground or wants the ground
0:43:13 and it’s a continuing piece of track to their farm,
0:43:15 you can see guys get the bidding war.
0:43:16 And so you get bidding wars.
0:43:18 Yeah, you can go out anywhere, look up farm grounds.
0:43:21 You want to, you know, there’s a lot of things you want to look for.
0:43:23 Like in Kansas, you can’t drill any wells in him.
0:43:25 You can’t drill new wells.
0:43:29 And so Kansas and Nebraska, there’s a lot going on with the underground aquifer.
0:43:32 And there’s a lot of problems with with water use.
0:43:37 And so, you know, we believe, though, we like C and B grade ground.
0:43:39 We like ground that’s maybe in a flood plain.
0:43:42 Or we like ground that’s watered to fish it
0:43:46 because we believe that all the technology and the money from Gates Foundation or Buffett,
0:43:51 they’re they’re really putting their money into new technology
0:43:54 that will help grow crops in third world countries that have really poor soil.
0:43:56 So, you know, Iowa has the best soil.
0:43:59 Iowa and Illinois, they’ll argue with each other, who’s got the richest soil.
0:44:03 And they’ve got great soil and great farms that you really don’t have to do a lot to.
0:44:06 You get to some of these peripheral areas, though.
0:44:10 You know, these guys, you get a biker jacket, but you got no bike, right?
0:44:12 That’s that’s more of my my my land.
0:44:14 So I just needed to I’m asking questions just so I have the lingo
0:44:18 in case I ever get pressed so that I can sound like I know what I’m talking about
0:44:20 without actually knowing anything.
0:44:24 Yeah, you’re you have to get some land to match that car heart coat that you want to get.
0:44:25 I get that.
0:44:30 So here’s the deal.
0:44:33 I made most of my money from a newsletter business.
0:44:34 It was called The Hustle.
0:44:37 And it was a daily newsletter at scale to millions of subscribers.
0:44:39 And it was the greatest business on earth.
0:44:44 The problem with it was that I had close to 40 employees and only three of them
0:44:46 were actually doing any writing.
0:44:49 The other employees were growing the newsletter, building out the tech
0:44:51 for the platform and selling ads.
0:44:53 And honestly, it was a huge pain in the butt.
0:44:56 Today’s episode is brought to you by Beehive.
0:45:00 They are a platform that is built exactly for this.
0:45:02 If you want to grow your newsletter, if you want to monetize a newsletter,
0:45:06 they do all of the stuff that I had to hire dozens of employees to do.
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0:45:12 That’s B E E H I I V dot com.
0:45:16 Well, what about the other tech?
0:45:19 So like I’ve seen people do these like Fitbit for cows, where they’re like,
0:45:22 you know, like cows, valuable, you know, asset.
0:45:25 And you don’t know if it’s sick, you know, keep driving around, keep checking on it.
0:45:28 What if you could know before it’s too late, what tech is working?
0:45:30 Yeah, it is.
0:45:32 And we’re invested in a few companies to do that.
0:45:34 And they’ll tag them, they’ll tag the cattle, you know,
0:45:38 because there is a push to have less antibiotics, less, you know,
0:45:42 less, you know, shots and things into into our food supply.
0:45:45 So if you’re able to identify when they have a fever earlier,
0:45:47 you can get them segregated from the herd, get them away from the herd,
0:45:51 give them the give them the medicine that they need in a more timely fashion.
0:45:54 So, yeah, all those are great, you know, zoetis, the publicly traded company.
0:45:57 They’re a leader really, probably in the animal health space.
0:46:00 If you’re looking for some of the longer term play, we’re invested in zoetis.
0:46:04 I have a business on that my friend’s working on that my interest too, Kevin.
0:46:12 So basically he’s putting he’s put RFT, RFD, RFID, RFID, sorry, tags on chickens and cows.
0:46:18 And you know how like a chicken will like when you buy eggs, it says free range.
0:46:22 And you just kind of trust like, I guess that means a chicken was just like out walking around,
0:46:24 which is better for me because it’s somehow healthier.
0:46:26 And it’s also like if you’re if you care about animals, you’re like, all right,
0:46:29 at least I know it had like a better life and whatever.
0:46:33 But free range, I think that’s a technical term, actually,
0:46:34 where it has to have a certain amount of space.
0:46:37 But I don’t think that it’s actually necessarily always followed.
0:46:42 And so what he did was he’s putting these these tags on the cows and chickens.
0:46:45 And so, you know, the beef that you bought, the tag number,
0:46:50 and you could actually go and see how much did it walk around and where did it go?
0:46:53 Which sounds a little morbid and weird, but it’s actually supposed to be
0:46:58 like reassuring where it like, look, my farm is now you can hold my farm accountable
0:47:02 to know that this meat was actually raised in the way that I promised it was going to be.
0:47:06 And that’s like an interesting idea because I think, Sean, you said this,
0:47:10 I think you said in like some period of time, 20 or 50 or 60 years,
0:47:12 we’re going to look back at the way that we treated cows.
0:47:13 And we’re going to be like, that was pretty unfortunate.
0:47:15 Like this, it shouldn’t have been done that way.
0:47:18 We’re an animal is just born in a pen and never leaves.
0:47:20 And then we eat them and I actually agree with that.
0:47:23 I agree with that sentiment where like the way that we treat certain animals,
0:47:27 I’m cool to eat them, but it’s better to better them have a certain life.
0:47:29 And so this idea is kind of interesting to me.
0:47:32 Yeah, we think that that’s going to be prevalent throughout.
0:47:35 We think you’re going to blockchain the farm is what we’re calling in our world.
0:47:36 You know, you’re going to blockchain the farm,
0:47:40 meaning the fertilizer companies and the input companies are going to have to report
0:47:45 all that and you’re going to know what was put on whatever it is you’re eating
0:47:48 or, you know, and the reason they want to blockchain it is just like,
0:47:51 remember when Spolta was having those issues several years back, you know,
0:47:54 with some things they want to be able to go right to the field, right to the spot
0:47:58 and know exactly what happened and what was put on and what time and where it was at.
0:47:59 And so, yeah, I agree with you, Sam.
0:48:01 I think that’s definitely where the world’s headed.
0:48:05 And, and, you know, I think we’re seeing farmers make that transition more and more.
0:48:08 They’re a lot more tech savvy than people give them credit.
0:48:10 Ops in the world, they’re very tech savvy, as a matter of fact.
0:48:12 And nobody treats their animals.
0:48:16 I mean, my I think I have never been on a farm in my entire life
0:48:19 that I seen any abuse to animals.
0:48:23 I mean, nobody treats their animals better just because it’s generally
0:48:26 what typically the way they make their own living, the way they make their their money
0:48:28 and they teach their kids to take care of the, you know, they love them
0:48:31 and show them at four H’s and go all around.
0:48:34 It’s sad that they do get it such a bad rap in the media
0:48:37 when I’ve personally never come across it.
0:48:43 And what’s your take on the alternative meat movement thing where
0:48:46 in Silicon Valley, there’s a bunch of startups that are trying to grow
0:48:49 beef from cells so that you won’t have to farm the animal.
0:48:53 You won’t have to harm the animal to be able to have the same genetic meat.
0:48:56 It should be virtually identical, genetically identical.
0:48:58 What’s your take on that movement?
0:49:00 And is that where you think things are going?
0:49:04 I think there will be a segment of the space that continues to grow.
0:49:06 And I think you’re going to see it continue to gain market share.
0:49:12 I think as as population shifts and moves out, you know, as the baby boomers
0:49:14 continue to age and move on, we get more people.
0:49:19 I think you’re going to see alternative types of pro protein be developed.
0:49:23 And I think as they get more money in the labs,
0:49:27 they’re getting better at reducing the cost and creating better flavor.
0:49:29 And I think as those two things continue to move forward,
0:49:34 just like with Tesla and Elon Musk, you know, it’s it’s only a matter of time.
0:49:37 How’s everything happened gradually that all at once?
0:49:39 And, you know, it’s like the electric vehicle.
0:49:41 I think you have a lot fewer moving parts.
0:49:43 It’s a lot better than the combustion engine.
0:49:47 I think you’re going to see things, you know, gradually gain more and more market share.
0:49:52 We’ll have farmers taken to like, I always read the comments of like in Texas,
0:49:53 message boards and things like that.
0:49:56 They it doesn’t it seems like it’s 50 50.
0:50:00 If like the rural community thinks that electric vehicles are worth it.
0:50:04 Yeah, right now at the time, no, because just the distance traveled.
0:50:07 You know, a lot of folks have traveled massive distances out in rural America.
0:50:10 And so it doesn’t make a lot of sense to them at the moment.
0:50:14 I think eventually, yes, I think they’ll see it have better torque,
0:50:17 you know, better low end, get up and go out of the hole.
0:50:19 And I think you’ll see a lot more transition.
0:50:21 I like anything though.
0:50:25 Nobody wants to, I guess, let go of their heritage and their roots.
0:50:27 And, you know, it’s same with the fake meat.
0:50:29 You know, a lot of farmers just bash it and want to go nuts about it.
0:50:32 I think there’s definitely going to be a place for it.
0:50:35 And I think there’s it’s going to be able to gain and grow some market share.
0:50:38 You know, probably, you know, as they get cost lower and lower,
0:50:41 I think it’ll be, you know, a way that we see things up.
0:50:45 If you were twenty four years old again
0:50:48 and you had the entrepreneurial energy to go do something,
0:50:49 what would you be?
0:50:53 What would you advise that 24 year old to go to go do in this space?
0:50:55 Where do you think the opportunity is?
0:50:59 I think there’s going to be a big push with air quality or, you know,
0:51:02 just the quality of air from this whole virus,
0:51:05 just the testing for the viruses.
0:51:07 And we’re seeing a lot more testing take place in general
0:51:10 just over the entire space.
0:51:13 So I think there’s going to be a big push in things to do with air
0:51:14 and creating good air quality.
0:51:17 We’re seeing a lot more kids that have asthma or asthma related problems.
0:51:20 And I think, you know, not just here in the United States,
0:51:22 but I’m talking globally and taking.
0:51:23 What’s an example solution?
0:51:27 What’s an example solution of that from an agricultural perspective?
0:51:32 Well, you know, we’re big right now into the carbon market.
0:51:35 So, you know, we’re trying to reduce carbon footprints
0:51:39 and no one really reduces it much more than the giant cornfield.
0:51:43 Cornfield plants, you know, things of that nature.
0:51:47 And so, you know, yeah, I think there’s a big play and a big push into the carbon.
0:51:51 Trying to reduce, like I said, trying to reduce the footprint.
0:51:57 Anything that’ll help save energy, improve our water usage, improve water purity.
0:51:59 You know, I think anything to do with the natural resources
0:52:02 that are just to become more heavily relied upon.
0:52:04 If we transition all this to electric,
0:52:06 I mean, the rare earth minerals are going to be hard.
0:52:07 They’re going to be scary.
0:52:10 I mean, there’s going to be a lot of plays in, you know,
0:52:13 what we see on the on that whole side and that whole front.
0:52:17 So I think, you know, natural resources, things to do with natural resources,
0:52:20 things to do with air, water, like I said, food quality.
0:52:22 You know, we really love the blue collar space.
0:52:25 I mean, I think we love, you know, like what Cody Sanchez has
0:52:29 going on or some of the other things we like the thought of buying blue collar
0:52:33 businesses, rolling them up and, you know, kind of packaging them up and selling them.
0:52:34 Why do you like that?
0:52:37 Because they’re they’re retiring.
0:52:38 I think they’re retiring.
0:52:42 I think we didn’t see near as many kids go into the trades as we had in the past.
0:52:46 You know, my dad and my wife, I mean, everybody was in trade back then.
0:52:48 That was everyone’s goal to go to college.
0:52:52 So, you know, you just had a big lull or a big, I guess, you know,
0:52:56 where they’re just a short supply of good skilled people.
0:52:58 And now we think you can go into that space.
0:53:02 And we’ve tried it a couple of times and, you know, where we can build out some things.
0:53:06 And I think you provide people with good quality service and an onboarding
0:53:10 process that, you know, you can cut your customer retention rate down to a
0:53:12 feasible level.
0:53:15 I think there’s just the sky’s the limit on growth.
0:53:17 You know, do you use Kevin, do you use TikTok?
0:53:19 But I’m on it.
0:53:20 Yeah, I see it.
0:53:24 Have you guys seen the popularity amongst young people and the trades?
0:53:28 Like, it’s it like glamorize it in a in a in a cool way.
0:53:32 And I think in an accurate way, which is like, I’m making over one hundred and
0:53:34 fifty or one hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
0:53:35 I just want to trade it for two years.
0:53:38 It goes so well on TikTok because it’s like a novelty.
0:53:39 It’s like going to the zoo.
0:53:40 It’s like, wow, you made that.
0:53:42 You know how to do things with your hands.
0:53:46 And that’s what a carrot looks like when it when it comes out like that’s incredible.
0:53:47 Swipe. All right.
0:53:49 On to the next one. That was easy.
0:53:52 But but I actually think that some of these young people are actually being
0:53:56 influenced by this because they’re like, shit, I graduated with a hundred and fifty
0:54:00 or two hundred grand in debt and I don’t make anything remotely like that amount
0:54:02 of money and I’m sitting on my computer all day.
0:54:05 Like this might be a little bit more intriguing and I don’t have any data.
0:54:09 But it does seem like young people are more open minded to the trades than at
0:54:12 least Sean and I’s like graduating classes.
0:54:14 Yeah, I’m seeing that as well.
0:54:17 We’re hearing that from some of the younger kids that are often not to go to
0:54:21 college and they’re going in to be a pipe fitter or going into pipe fitters union
0:54:22 or the plumbing union or electrical union.
0:54:27 So yeah, we’re we’re definitely because AI ain’t going to replace plumbers
0:54:29 or or electricians or HVAC people.
0:54:32 It may be one day, but but no time soon.
0:54:35 And like I do think that’s getting more popular.
0:54:37 And I think that’s really cool and fascinating.
0:54:40 There’s like it’s also like ripped buff, dude.
0:54:43 So it’s always like chicks like commenting.
0:54:46 You’re like about like, have you seen that guy, Sean, who just cuts wood?
0:54:48 Yeah, the lumberjack guy, he’s incredible.
0:54:49 I love that.
0:54:50 It’s not just chicks.
0:54:52 I’ll sit there and I’ll watch that video twice.
0:54:54 It’s just an incredible video.
0:54:58 It’s this guy that uses an axe and he’s sometimes shirtless, sometimes not.
0:55:01 And he’s just like, you know, obviously a 10 out of 10.
0:55:05 And he’s just chopping wood and like everyone’s like, I need this in my life.
0:55:06 They’re puny.
0:55:08 Have you been a part of any rollups?
0:55:11 I always find rollups to be a really interesting business strategy.
0:55:14 It seems like there’s a lot of money to be made in a successful rollup.
0:55:15 I’m curious if you’ve been a part of anything.
0:55:17 I have not personally.
0:55:21 No, I usually their exit ahead of time or, you know, get a little nervous.
0:55:25 So it blames out that I have a couple of friends that, yeah, that’s their whole
0:55:27 their whole way they’ve created all their wealth.
0:55:29 You got one of the gentlemen I’m speaking of right now.
0:55:31 He’s doing it with cranes.
0:55:36 He’s buying small crane companies that’ll have two or three cranes
0:55:38 and he’s buying them and he’s putting them all together.
0:55:42 And, you know, he’s going to sell that and he’s done it with several other things,
0:55:44 whether it’s restaurants or different things in the past.
0:55:47 So, yeah, I thought it was interesting on the crane play, you know,
0:55:49 he came to me about an investment and we just didn’t do it.
0:55:52 But I’m sure he’ll hit a huge home run with it.
0:55:55 Dude, Sean, I think the shit that Kevin’s doing is way more exciting
0:55:58 than the shit that our friends are doing.
0:56:00 You’re going to quit and go do it?
0:56:02 No, I don’t know about that.
0:56:03 It sounds like a lot of work.
0:56:06 It sounds like a lot of a lot of words, then, if you’re not going to go do it.
0:56:11 No, what it means is I like hanging out with these types of people sometimes.
0:56:13 That’s what it means.
0:56:15 Yeah, it gives you guys that, you know, I think it gives both of us.
0:56:18 I like hanging out with your group of people because I think it gives me
0:56:21 different perspective and learn different things that you guys have gone on that I
0:56:23 can make applicable to my world as well.
0:56:26 And so, you know, yeah, there’s a good synergy there between all.
0:56:27 And how do you do that practically?
0:56:31 Because I think you do a good job of getting yourself into positions
0:56:34 like we talked about going to random conferences that are totally outside your
0:56:37 industry that you didn’t need to go to, but you wanted to go to to shift your
0:56:41 lens a little bit or hanging out with younger people who may be demographically
0:56:44 just doing different things, culturally doing different things than the guy
0:56:46 who made it and is at a country club now might might be disconnected
0:56:49 from whatever the culture shifts are.
0:56:51 How do you tactically go about doing that?
0:56:52 How do you put yourself in those positions?
0:56:54 What questions do you ask?
0:56:55 Honestly, I just make myself.
0:56:58 I always yelled at the kids and we were growing up.
0:57:01 So I played sports at a high level and had several friends of one World Series
0:57:03 and, you know, Super Bowls.
0:57:05 We always talk, you know, we get a bad coach.
0:57:08 You know, everybody get a bad coach or things like that.
0:57:11 And it’s like, look, man, you got to be able to steal something from the guy.
0:57:12 The guy was great player.
0:57:15 He was, you know, you got to go in there with an open mind and you got to be
0:57:18 able to take away some things that they’ve done well and that they’ve done
0:57:20 positive and then use those and put those errors in your quiver.
0:57:25 So I just always had the kids looking for new, crazy, weird conferences or things
0:57:28 to go to. And and from there, I’d make myself go the last couple of years.
0:57:33 I didn’t want to go. And I’m like, but each time I went, I, I, I took away
0:57:37 several little gold nuggets that we implemented into our business models.
0:57:39 And hell, we’ve made big returns on them, each one of them.
0:57:42 And, you know, I didn’t think I’d get anything out of going to the car.
0:57:43 And I just like, this is going to be a waste.
0:57:45 But I just sucked it up and did it.
0:57:47 You know, it’s like going to work out or you got a rudder.
0:57:50 So it’s like, ah, shit, I guess I just got to go do it.
0:57:53 Yeah, we had a friend when we were going to FarmCon who was supposed to come
0:57:54 with us. It was me, Ben and our buddy.
0:57:57 And the morning of we were like, hey, we’ll meet you in the lobby.
0:58:01 You know, your flight was you landed like an hour ago, right?
0:58:04 And he basically woke up, looked at and he said, Kansas City.
0:58:08 He looked at the flight time, then he’s like, ah, you know what?
0:58:11 He just bailed. And I was like, man.
0:58:14 But of course, I felt that everybody feels that in the moment.
0:58:17 Like, do I really want to go do this thing that I don’t have to do?
0:58:19 That is unknown, right?
0:58:22 It’s back to your thing about, are you willing to sprint for an unknown distance?
0:58:25 And we didn’t know what value we would get out of it.
0:58:28 That was the hard part. That was the challenge.
0:58:31 And doing it when we didn’t know what would come out of it was really, really valuable.
0:58:38 And it’s ironic, because that same friend, he he gave me a great analogy one time.
0:58:39 We were talking to a younger friend.
0:58:41 This guy was the youngest VC in Silicon Valley.
0:58:46 So 19, 20 years old, he was investing, I don’t know, ten million dollars into the things.
0:58:49 He was like, he got written up as the youngest VC in Silicon Valley.
0:58:52 So we were meeting with this guy, but now five years have gone by.
0:58:57 And it was like, you hadn’t seen him really progressing at that same rate
0:59:00 that you would expect somebody who definitely had that sort of phenom type
0:59:04 of upbringing, where it seemed like he had all the potential in the world.
0:59:07 And I was like, man, what do you think he’s doing wrong?
0:59:09 Well, what would you do differently?
0:59:12 He goes, oh, it’s it’s like windows and doors.
0:59:14 He goes, he’s only willing to do something if it’s a window.
0:59:18 If he can immediately see through and see the what’s on the other side of it, then he’ll do it.
0:59:22 But anytime there’s a door and it’s opaque and you don’t know what’s on the other side of it,
0:59:26 he’s not willing to knock on a door and open it up and see what might be inside.
0:59:28 He’s only looking at doors and windows.
0:59:30 He’s never willing to go through a door.
0:59:33 And if once he starts going through doors, this guy’s career is going to take off.
0:59:36 And I remember hearing that and really taking that to heart
0:59:38 because I thought that was very, very wise.
0:59:39 That’s a great analogy.
0:59:41 Yeah, I never heard that for so I’ve heard a lot.
0:59:43 That’s a yeah, that’s a great one there for sure.
0:59:46 So Sean, the reason why you like a lot of these folks in the Midwest
0:59:50 and some folks in the South is because you love phrases.
0:59:53 You love phrases like windows and doors.
0:59:55 You love cool sayings.
0:59:56 And you know what?
0:59:57 I love them too.
0:59:59 And that’s why I’m happy I’m friends with both of you guys.
1:00:00 We were at a dinner.
1:00:03 So at FarmCon, you invited us to like a private dinner at the end.
1:00:04 It’s like 10 people.
1:00:07 This guy stands up and he delivers two of the coldest lines I’ve ever heard.
1:00:12 So he stands up and we’re doing our intros like a and so I stand up
1:00:14 and I give some super vanilla intro.
1:00:14 Hi, I’m Sean.
1:00:19 I live in San Francisco and I’m a tech founder and an investor.
1:00:20 All right, sit down.
1:00:22 Forgittable this guy stands up.
1:00:25 He’s got a big presence and he goes up.
1:00:29 I don’t remember what his name was exactly, what he said.
1:00:33 He goes, you know, I don’t know a lot of things.
1:00:35 I don’t know. I don’t know the score of the game right now.
1:00:36 There’s a big game going on.
1:00:38 He says, I don’t know the score of the game right now.
1:00:41 I don’t know anything about this.
1:00:44 And he goes, he goes, hell, I don’t know where the remote is in my house
1:00:47 half the time, but I know deals and I made a lot of deals.
1:00:50 He’s like, I’m a private equity guy and he starts talking about his dealmaking.
1:00:52 I was like, wow, he goes, I’ve been around for a long time.
1:00:53 You cut me open.
1:00:55 You can see a lot of rings in the middle.
1:00:57 I was like, wow, it’s one way of saying it.
1:00:58 He’s just on fire.
1:01:00 And he goes, somebody goes, somebody asked him.
1:01:02 They go, what if, well, what if they don’t, what if they don’t go for it on this deal?
1:01:06 Sounds like you really need them to say, yes, what if, what if they say no,
1:01:08 what if you get rejected?
1:01:10 He goes, I’m not afraid of rejection.
1:01:11 And he’s a big, big old dude.
1:01:14 And he goes, I’ve stood in front of women in my life naked before.
1:01:17 I’ve heard no, no, no, no, no, I’m okay with it.
1:01:23 I was like, wow, this guy is like half comedian, half businessman.
1:01:24 And I loved it.
1:01:27 But it was just, it was just another day at the office for him.
1:01:31 But for me coming from, from our world, that was like the charisma levels.
1:01:35 And the, the, the, the gift of the gab was so, was so incredible to see.
1:01:35 I loved it.
1:01:39 Yeah, it’s definitely wild dubs.
1:01:40 Yeah.
1:01:41 And you got that too.
1:01:44 A little bit that I like just hearing what you have to say, Kevin.
1:01:48 And for the people listening, maybe, maybe we’ll get you some new subscribers.
1:01:50 It’s the VanTrump.com.
1:01:52 I like your, you always, you do something cool.
1:01:55 But you’ll just like have a selfie with you and your wife.
1:01:57 And you’re like, say, today we’re on vacation.
1:01:57 Here’s what we’re doing.
1:01:59 And you’ll say something kind of funny and cute.
1:02:01 And I love it.
1:02:04 But we should just get like a group of 20 of our, of our listeners,
1:02:06 a select small group to go to farm con.
1:02:09 And we’ll go all go together as a field trip next, next time you guys do it.
1:02:10 When is it?
1:02:13 First week in January, January 8th and 9th this year coming up.
1:02:14 How much is the ticket?
1:02:17 I think this year we’re like 1200 bucks or something.
1:02:19 And you sell a lot of them too, right?
1:02:22 Yeah, we’ll sell out whatever they give us, you know, our capacity.
1:02:25 We sell out the hotel every year and yeah.
1:02:26 We appreciate you doing this.
1:02:27 You’re the man.
1:02:27 Thank you.
1:02:30 And thank you for years of being a cool dude.
1:02:32 You’ve always been a great guy to me.
1:02:32 So thank you.
1:02:33 Yeah, I appreciate it.
1:02:35 Good luck to both of you guys and your families and that’s the pod.
1:02:36 Thank you very much.
1:02:38 I feel like I can rule the world.
1:02:44 I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like the days on the road.
1:02:46 Let’s travel never looking back.
1:02:49 (upbeat music)

0:00:03 All right, we’re live Sean. I’ve got a story for you and this story
0:00:05 I’m gonna take a weird take on this
0:00:12 I have a weird take on this and I’m gonna appeal to all the young single men out there. All right. This is your specialty
0:00:29 All right, listen the story is about Ed Thorpe. Have you ever heard that name Ed Thorpe? Sounds like a swimmer now
0:00:33 It does sound like a swimmer, but he’s not so Ed Thorpe
0:00:38 I’m reading his biography called man for all markets. So Ed Thorpe today. He’s 91
0:00:41 So what does that mean? He’s born in the 1940s 1930s
0:00:45 Ed Thorpe he grew up as a math whiz kid
0:00:50 He was like a prodigy at a young age grew up in a very poor household didn’t have a lot of money
0:00:53 But as a young kid when he was like 12 and 13 years old
0:00:59 he got moved up a bunch of grades and he took a bunch of standardized tests and at the time when he lived in California
0:01:05 He got something like the highest scores in California for high schoolers when he was like 13 years old and at the time
0:01:06 They didn’t have calculators
0:01:11 But they had like little counting devices and he would take these tests without these counting devices because he couldn’t afford them
0:01:14 And he still crushed it. He killed it
0:01:21 so eventually Ed Thorpe he gets a scholarship to Berkeley and then he goes to UCLA where he gets his PhD in mathematics and
0:01:28 He becomes a professor and he starts going down this track where he’s in his 30s and he’s this brilliant professor and whatever
0:01:31 But then he does something interesting
0:01:38 He gets interested in applying his theories to real life situations because he’s like reading these academic papers
0:01:44 And he’s like this is cool and all but we got to apply this stuff and his specialty was probability and statistics
0:01:51 And he got super interested in how he could use his theories to beat blackjack. Oh, this is the gambling guy
0:01:53 I saw this guy on Tim Ferriss
0:01:58 This guy’s interesting is because he’s done so much more than just these few little stories. I’m gonna tell
0:02:05 But basically you could actually verify this blackjack is what 51% chance the house is gonna win
0:02:10 Is that right? Is it like 51/49? 51/52 something like that. Yeah, so it’s a small margin
0:02:13 But back in the 60s when he was kind of getting going
0:02:18 He had this theory where he thought that if he saw the the cards on the table
0:02:23 He could have a higher probability of getting 21 because he basically could count cards
0:02:26 changing the ratio of 51% in the
0:02:28 users
0:02:33 Perspective so he was 51% chance of winning the house was 49% chance
0:02:39 So he creates this paper where he explains all of this and inevitably people are like, man, this is just some academic theory
0:02:41 there’s no way that you’re gonna be able to do this and
0:02:46 So Thorpe is is a fun guy and he’s like we got to prove it
0:02:53 So he builds out this blackjack table at his house and he gets his wife to smoke cigarettes and blows cigarette smoke into his face
0:02:58 while she’s talking to him and like annoying him and then he has friends come over who like are drinking alcohol and like yelling in
0:03:04 His face as if he’s at a casino to distract him and he spends a handful of months doing this and it starts working
0:03:11 He’s like, I think this actually can work. I think I can do this and he publishes this paper and all these people reach out
0:03:12 He gets hundreds of letters
0:03:16 But eventually he gets those one letter from this guy named Manny and Manny
0:03:18 He doesn’t really know it at the time
0:03:22 But after a while Ed kind of realizes that Manny is basically in the mob
0:03:27 He helped make bootlegging a thing in the 20s when alcohol was illegal and Manny goes. Hey Ed
0:03:32 Let’s see if you can actually pull this off. I’m gonna front you 10 grand and we’re gonna split the winnings
0:03:36 10 grand at the time the 60s is something like 80 grand
0:03:42 So it was a lot of money particularly for a professor who’s making the equivalent of a hundred hundred fifty thousand dollars back then
0:03:47 And so they go and they spend this week this weekend at a casino in Las Vegas
0:03:52 And they make a eleven thousand dollars in profit and Ed’s like holy moly this thing works
0:03:55 But he doesn’t really want to become like totally a professional gambler
0:04:01 But he’s really interested in proving his theories and he eventually he writes a book on this
0:04:05 And if you Google Ed Thorpe blackjack book, he wrote this book at the 60s. That was a massive hit and
0:04:13 To head to Ed this was all just a big like fun game a way to like prove that his research wasn’t just academic
0:04:16 But it could actually be used and this book was a massive hit
0:04:20 And it was one of the first times that academic research was like used in real life
0:04:23 And it went straight to the masses as opposed to him publishing more papers
0:04:29 But this meant now that he was known in the casino world in the casino world back then
0:04:35 Vegas was just getting going and so it was small enough that they all the casinos could know what Ed looked like and all the
0:04:40 Dealers would know what he looks like and what his name is and so he eventually goes back at every handful of weekends
0:04:45 And he has to wear disguise and he’s but he still sends up ends up cleaning them all out and
0:04:50 Next he goes well blackjack was cool. Let’s see if I can do this with roulette
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0:05:31 So he goes, you know roulette is a little bit unlike blackjack where I don’t even know if there is necessarily at least it doesn’t appear
0:05:35 So there’s a lot of skill because it’s all like where the ball lands on this spinning wheel
0:05:42 But he asked this weird theory that if he can see if he can like quickly count how fast the wheel is going and where the ball
0:05:47 Starts and where it hits the wheel somehow. He’s able to calculate
0:05:54 51% in his odds where the ball is going to land and this sounds like a crazy idea, right? I mean that just sounds
0:05:59 Impossible to me as somebody who has spent a lot of time at roulette wheel
0:06:07 Being able to figure out well while the wheel is turning where the ball is going to land and it I mean when the ball hits
0:06:13 It bounces like in a random direction based on the spin and the speed and everything like somebody do that in their head would be
0:06:16 I’d have to see that to believe that it sounds impossible, right?
0:06:22 And that’s what interested him is is he was a math nerd and he was really fascinated with the game of proving his theories correctly
0:06:25 And so what he did was he took a small
0:06:30 Computer and he basically assembled a small computer and the way it worked is he would have a two-person team
0:06:35 And so he would be at the table placing the bet and he had up two people on the side
0:06:39 And they had these little small computers and they had little buttons in their shoes
0:06:44 And they would calculate where they thought the ball was going to roll to and they would tap their feet in
0:06:50 order to keep the cadence of the wheel and it would help him predict where the ball was going to go and that music the
0:06:56 Taps it kind of sounded like music would go into his his earpiece that he was wearing and he would make a bet
0:07:02 And this was actually the world’s first wearable, you know like an iPhone or like an eye watch is a wearable
0:07:06 This was the world’s first wearable and it worked and he killed it
0:07:09 He made a lot of money and he wrote a book on this he did it again
0:07:15 But now we’re gonna fast forward to him ten years doing these experiments. He’s got some money
0:07:20 Something like a hundred thousand dollars at the time, which was a lot of money for a professor
0:07:24 And he needs to invest his money because he just doesn’t want it sitting there
0:07:28 And so he spends a few months learning everything he can about investing basically just reading books
0:07:33 he just read lots of books and as he said he wanted to understand the math behind all of this and
0:07:38 So he starts investing in publicly traded companies and he loses a lot of money at first
0:07:42 He said I had to pay my tuition to mr. Money market because it gets a lot of it wrong
0:07:49 But then he discovered discovers options and this part is a bit out of my expertise to explain how he does this
0:07:53 But it involves both shorting a company and buying the company’s actual stock
0:07:57 So predicting the company’s stock is going to go down while buying the stock
0:08:04 But in doing that he studied the the option that he was going to purchase as well as the current stock price
0:08:08 And in doing that he was able to hedge it so he would only lose a little bit amount of money
0:08:10 But make a whole bunch of money and for him
0:08:15 He actually didn’t look at any of the stock information as in what the company was selling
0:08:18 So you know you have guys who like you value investing and they’re like well
0:08:20 I think that this brand is undervalued that wasn’t him
0:08:22 It was all just a math game to him
0:08:26 But after a year or two it starts working and he starts making a little bit of money
0:08:32 And so now we’re in the 70s and there’s another professor at his university who starts hearing that Ed is now investing in stocks
0:08:35 And he’s doing quite well. He tells some of his coworkers. He’s like I
0:08:40 Might make more of my more than my salary this year investing. It’s going quite well
0:08:48 And so one of his professors has invested his money the professors money in the small little fund called Buffett
0:08:54 Associates and of course it was run by this guy Warren Buffett out of Omaha and this professor was like hey
0:08:58 This guy who I invested in Warren, he’s gonna wind down his fund
0:09:00 He’s crushed it for me
0:09:03 But he just wrote this letter saying he can’t find any more good deals
0:09:07 Which in the 70s Buffett actually paused investing for like five years
0:09:10 He didn’t want to invest because he’s like I can’t find any good deals right now. I’m just gonna sit and do nothing
0:09:13 I’m gonna wind down my fund and the professor goes. Hey look
0:09:16 This guy’s running down his fund
0:09:19 Why don’t you you know, he’s got some free time. I’m friendly with him
0:09:20 I’m gonna invite him over to my house
0:09:25 I’ll invite you over and we’ll just shoot the shit and maybe you’ll have a new friend in the investing industry cuz you don’t really know
0:09:29 Anyone else doing this. I’ll help make the introduction
0:09:35 Buffett comes over for dinner and Ed Thorpe and him get along beautifully hand-in-hand like pots and pans
0:09:43 They’re they’re really close. They become great friends and they love hanging out that day and a few weeks after the dinner
0:09:46 The professor goes. Hey look Ed. I was kind of testing you
0:09:49 I kind of wanted Warren to like sit like kind of see what’s up with you
0:09:51 He gave he gave a thumbs up
0:09:54 He said you’re really smart and that your ideas are good
0:09:59 Can I take this money that I got back from Warren Buffett and give it to you to invest and it’s like
0:10:04 Taking other people’s money. That’s not really what I’ve been doing. I’ve just been doing this for my own
0:10:11 You guess I’ll try it and so he teams up with another guy and they raise something like five million dollars over the course of six months
0:10:19 And they have Buffett’s stamp of approval and so they start basically one of the very first hedge funds ever and particularly a he’s a
0:10:24 Quant which is common nowadays, but Ed Thorpe was the first quant where he didn’t really look at the companies
0:10:27 He just looked at the numbers and he killed it
0:10:33 So over the course of 30 years, he made something like 20 to 25 percent per year, which is massive
0:10:38 I don’t know what his Buffett made. You know probably something like that, but over the course of if it’s just like 20
0:10:42 Yeah, it’s like 20, but over the course of like 60 years. Yeah for a lot longer
0:10:49 And so Ed Thorpe basically invented counting cards with Blackjack and then made a book on it
0:10:56 He invented this roulette game and the world’s first wearable, which all these things by the way eventually became illegal
0:10:59 They weren’t illegal or I don’t know if it’s illegal or against the rules
0:11:05 But they basically are banned in casinos because of him and he parlays all this
0:11:11 Learning and all this experience into creating the world’s first hedge fund and becoming one of the first quants and he knocks it out
0:11:16 The park the guy kills that I think he made something like 800 million dollars and then eventually fast forward to today
0:11:24 More like 2005 he shuts down his fun because he’s like I have enough. I don’t need anymore. This has been fun
0:11:29 While it lasted I’m out. He’s one of the few guys to just be winning and he just says that’s enough. I’m done
0:11:35 So he completely shuts it down. So now he’s 92 years old. He still does push-ups and pull-ups
0:11:39 He’s really into fitness. He does not look 90. I saw him on the Tim Ferriss podcast
0:11:46 I kind of been that long ago. He was 89 then on that Tim Ferriss podcast like a he looks honestly like somebody’s early 60s
0:11:50 He looks great. Yeah, and here’s the part where I promise
0:11:54 I’m gonna try and weave this into advice to the young man
0:12:01 Ed Thorpe is so fascinating to me and the reason he’s fascinating to me is because I don’t know if you’ll admit to this
0:12:04 You probably will if you did it. Did you ever read that book the game?
0:12:08 Did you ever read like books on like how to meet women? Not only did I read the game?
0:12:14 Not only did my girlfriend in high school buy the game for me before I went to college as a goodbye gift
0:12:17 Was that her breakup gift?
0:12:20 We’re not a stay together, but let me help you out here
0:12:23 Not only do those two things happen
0:12:27 Two nights ago. I reread the game and I’m a married man
0:12:31 I reread the game cuz I was like that book was amazing back then. I wanted to learn the style of it
0:12:35 I was like, what was great about that books? I went back and I reread it two nights ago. So it’s crazy. You brought it up
0:12:41 So that’s a great book. So anyone most men in their in their 30s. Nowadays probably read that when they’re 14
0:12:46 It was like the Bible because all of us nerds are like I just really want to be loved
0:12:49 How do I be loved whatever and there was a lot of bullshit in that book brother number of times?
0:12:53 I use the Cube test like there’s not a woman on Duke campus that didn’t get the Cube test for me
0:12:55 Which one was the Cube test?
0:12:59 It’s like a cold read where you’re like, I want you to close your eyes. Imagine the Cube
0:13:04 It’s it’s floating in the desert. How big is the Cube if they say it’s big they’re self-confident if they say it’s small
0:13:09 They have no ego is the Cube see-through is a colored. Oh, it’s it’s kind of see-through
0:13:15 Well, you’d you don’t let people in easily, but when you do you really do connect with people at a deep level
0:13:19 That’s so me and then you just go on so on and so forth about their relationships and about their their way
0:13:22 They view the world and by the end of it. They’re like this guy
0:13:25 This guy’s gonna be in the friend zone is really what happened to me
0:13:28 But I think for better looking people who probably work better than that
0:13:34 They are like a cat and you’re just holding a string just like trying to entertain them and they’re like, yeah, I’m done with you
0:13:38 That’s another thing cat string theory. That’s actually another principle. They have well
0:13:39 And this is where it gets really nerdy
0:13:44 But one of the parts of that book and that whole movement there was a lot of bullshit in that book and in that movement
0:13:50 But one of the parts that I always took the heart was the best way to attract others both men and women
0:13:52 It’s to be an interesting person
0:13:54 and what that means is basically
0:14:01 people like ambitious people and being passionate about hobbies is under that umbrella of being ambitious and
0:14:05 I remember as a kid. I love that because I’m like wait
0:14:07 You’re telling me I could just like work on myself and I’ll attract others
0:14:11 That sounds like the greatest thing ever and and and I believe it to be true as
0:14:17 I’ve gotten older. I’ve noticed I’ve gotten less interesting and the reason I’ve gotten less interesting
0:14:23 There’s a few reasons there. The first is that I’ve developed higher expectations towards most things that I do
0:14:27 Or rather I’ve just developed expectations as opposed to just doing something just for fun
0:14:32 Like you do think as a kid just because you’re intrigued, you know, like, I don’t know where this is gonna go
0:14:34 But I’m just gonna I’m just gonna follow it
0:14:41 Whereas now there’s expectations for everything that I do and I want to have I’m a little bit more interested in the outcome
0:14:49 The other thing that I’ve noticed lately about me and why I’ve become less interesting is because I’ve been distracted with social media
0:14:51 Just like how you’re typing right now as I’m talking to you
0:14:57 It’s so much easier to be distracted nowadays with Twitter and Slack and email and text
0:15:03 I find myself getting so distracted and so I don’t have a significant amount of like deep thought or like going deep on something
0:15:07 It’s more so like I’m being on the defense where people throw information at me
0:15:13 And I react to it as opposed to like spending time pursuing something that interests me just because it interests me and so
0:15:20 The reason why I thought the reason why I like reading about him and particularly for young men listening is
0:15:26 He’s kind of inspired me to just pursue more hobbies just for the sake of learning and here’s an example
0:15:29 When he was developing his roulette game
0:15:34 He basically went and bought old roulette table at an auction for like $500
0:15:38 And he just sat at home in the evening with his wife and they’re like hey
0:15:43 Let’s just see if we can like count this game. It was almost like what’s that one game board game called settlers of Catan?
0:15:46 Yeah, you know how like people just like get into that random stuff and they’re like
0:15:47 Let’s just see if we can master this game
0:15:52 It sounds fun and that’s exactly how it started with him a lot of these things that became massive outcomes for him
0:15:56 They were just like interesting little hobbies for him and they started very rudimentary
0:16:00 Have you ever read about dr. Richard Feynman? Of course
0:16:05 So Feynman was one of the guys who was important for a variety of reasons including
0:16:09 Helping make the atomic bomb and all these things and he had little like weird things about him where it’s like
0:16:14 Why can dogs smell so good? He’s like well, I asked myself that and then I just
0:16:19 Put my head close to the floor and I noticed I can smell things on the floor and like that’s like I like it’s like
0:16:24 Really simple ways to like prove or disprove a theory where you start out like very basic principles
0:16:28 And you’re like let’s just see if this works, you know Justin Kahn used to call himself
0:16:30 He had some tagline for himself when he was making content
0:16:33 He used to say hey, it’s me Justin your favorite founders favorite founder
0:16:39 And I was like how you always talked about your favorite founders favorite founder, and I feel like Feynman is kind of that
0:16:43 It’s like your favorite gurus favorite guru or your favorite thinkers favorite thinker
0:16:48 It’s like everybody who you love their thoughts. They love Feynman and the Feynman technique
0:16:53 They love all the Feynman’s books and his writings. Oh everybody you respect respects Feynman. Yeah
0:16:57 I think Tim Ferriss’s holding company is called Feynman Inc or something like that
0:17:02 Dude, that’s actually genius to just be like that’s Feynman and Ferriss associates. Yeah with them
0:17:06 Just like ah, yes, this is the Puri and Musk consultancy. Well, how can I help you?
0:17:09 Yeah, just like borrow from their credibility
0:17:13 But there’s guys like Feynman and Ed Thorpe is now in that a sphere
0:17:21 Where they just get interested in some things that seem so silly and they do it at a very rudimentary level and it goes
0:17:26 From level to level to level to level, but it starts at level one, you know, it’s exactly like this Jack Smith
0:17:29 Jack Smith is like that. Yeah, Jack Smith is what he’s one of these guys
0:17:32 Jack is a buddy of ours. You’re really good friends with them
0:17:35 I think you’ve known him for a lot longer than than I have but he is such an interesting guy
0:17:42 He built companies he said built a company called Vungal sold it his whole origin story was one of the very first podcasts on this
0:17:47 Fit feed so if you go back Jack was in there and he talked about you know when he was a high school or what he was doing flipping things
0:17:52 On eBay and then how he hacked his way into an accelerator then once he was in the accelerator how he figured out this ad tech company
0:17:58 How the experts told him there’s no way son. You don’t understand how the ad business works. He’s like, yeah, that’s my strength
0:17:59 I don’t understand how this works
0:18:04 So when I approach it it’s I’m gonna approach it differently and what he did was the whole the way the whole ad industry work
0:18:09 It was all based on CPM impressions. So it’s a billboard. How many people are gonna see this billboard?
0:18:12 That’s how I charge you and he’s like, well, that’s kind of stupid if I was advertising
0:18:16 I don’t want people to see it. I want people to buy from me or I want people to download my app
0:18:21 I want the action. So what if we just paid for the action and it became CPA instead of CPM?
0:18:26 And so he reinvented in a way. That’s a little bit generous. I would say there’s other people doing this
0:18:29 But Jack and his co-founder created Vongol sold it for 700 million dollars
0:18:32 And it was really based around this mobile gaming ad network
0:18:35 That was gonna do things a little differently the way other people were doing them
0:18:39 He sold it for 750 million when he was 29 years old
0:18:43 Crazy stuff and for example, like in thinking from first principle
0:18:47 So like what should the ad be everybody else did video ads and so you would be playing a game
0:18:51 It would stop a video would take over the screen and it would be a video commercial
0:18:54 And then you’d be like when when can I click the X so I can get back to playing a game
0:19:00 And what Jack realized was he’s like well the best way to advertise a game is actually just play the game for a second
0:19:02 Oh, it’s it’s about shooting the ball into this hoop
0:19:04 Well, like let him try to shoot a couple times
0:19:07 They miss and they want to make it and they make it and then now they got a sample
0:19:12 So they created an ad unit that was just a mini version of the game that worked way better than the video ad
0:19:15 And it was again many times over of just thinking from first principles
0:19:19 How could I do this but now since selling the company he had his Thorpe enough?
0:19:24 Moment where he did not need to go create another company and instead got really into other things
0:19:28 He’s like, you know, I need to buy an office chair. He goes and he looks kind of uninspired. He’s like well, certainly
0:19:30 There’s been some studies on the best way to sit
0:19:34 So what is the best way to sit and he’ll go and he’ll read research papers about the rest way to sit
0:19:41 He’ll test chairs and he ultimately ends up building this crazy ergonomic chair himself in his garage over the period about six or eight months
0:19:43 Did you see the chair? It looks like a dentist chair
0:19:46 He’s laying down in this crazy position and it’s like a work chair
0:19:49 But anytime if you ask him like hey, Jack, what do you have two nowadays?
0:19:51 he felt zero pressure or at least
0:19:58 Caved to zero of the pressure of having some important sounding answer because he just did what was important to him
0:20:03 Rather than what sounded important to others. So he’d be like, uh, just you know, just messing around
0:20:05 You’re like, no, what does that mean? Like what do you do every day? Jack?
0:20:07 He’s like, well, I’m really working on trying to build a chair
0:20:11 You know, I got really interesting chairs and you know sitting I sit for six hours a day
0:20:15 And I just thought well, why don’t I sit in a better chair and so I can start researching chairs
0:20:19 So I’ve bought 52 chairs and I’ve been testing them and then I’ve decided to you to build my own
0:20:20 That’s the best of each of these
0:20:25 That’s what he’ll do for one year and then actually he’ll do something completely different just off of his curiosity
0:20:30 And the cake one year for his birthday the cake that his wife made for him at his party
0:20:36 Was shaped like an amazon box because he’d orders so many chairs or so many whatever things that he’s interested in
0:20:40 That that he had a room in his home just dedicated to all the boxes
0:20:44 Yeah, he had a small like fba fulfilled by amazon facility in his in his pantry
0:20:47 Just to test out every single product and at one point they banned him on amazon
0:20:52 They banned him on amazon for returning too much stuff because he would buy all this stuff to test it out
0:20:54 But yeah, jack is perfectly like that
0:21:01 But does this resonate with you where you’re like, I need to just pursue more things without having a big outcome
0:21:03 in mind
0:21:06 We haven’t been talking at all, but that’s become the theme of my
0:21:08 I don’t know the last
0:21:09 12 15 months or so
0:21:11 I heard this quote
0:21:13 I’ve all said this thing on some podcast and he goes
0:21:17 Too many of us live where we’re doing things today for some future
0:21:21 Reward some future payoff. I’m not doing what I want to be doing now
0:21:26 But I’m putting in the time I’m putting in the work I’m putting in there for some future payoff
0:21:28 He goes that’s understandable. We all start there
0:21:33 He’s like but the day you start doing things where the the thing you’re doing in and of itself is the reward
0:21:39 That’s the day you’ve retired people think retirement is when you stop working you go sit down you chill you do nothing
0:21:40 It’s not that you do nothing
0:21:44 It’s that you do the things you want to do because the act of doing them
0:21:50 Itself is the payoff and you’re not sure there might be some upside in the future, but that’s not why you did it
0:21:51 and
0:21:52 when I heard that
0:21:54 I was like
0:21:55 Okay, that’s what I need to be doing
0:21:57 I don’t know how I’m going to get there
0:22:02 And I’ve many times had little detours off of that where I start to do something opportunistic because oh, it’s going to pay off in the
0:22:03 future
0:22:06 But I’ve just continued to bring myself back to that that moment which was
0:22:11 I want this next chapter of my life to be all about I’m doing things where the only criteria is
0:22:15 The act of doing it has to be rewarding enough for it to have been worth it
0:22:20 And that one criteria eliminates like 98 percent of the possible things I want to do
0:22:25 Because if I’m honest with myself and I say well, why do I want to do this? It’s because it might
0:22:28 Make a bunch of money or it might pay off in this thing later
0:22:31 It doesn’t it might could be business related it could be relationships related
0:22:35 It could be a why do I want to meet this person or go to this event? Oh because it might lead to something
0:22:38 No, no, no, I’m only going to this event if the event itself is the payoff
0:22:43 I’m only hanging out with this person if the hangout is the payoff not because it’s going to lead to something else
0:22:46 It can be but did you determine what that is do you determine?
0:22:52 Have you that’s actually really hard is figuring out what the play is what I realize is it’s less of a thing
0:22:56 So I thought like you’re just asking me this question. I thought it’s a thing
0:23:01 I got to find my thing my new thing that’s the thing. I just love to do and I’m doing it for the sake of doing it
0:23:05 What I realized is it’s fundamentally different. It’s not a thing. It’s a approach and it’s a filter
0:23:09 And so actually it’s a question that I ask at the beginning of any
0:23:16 Anything I’m going to do that day, which is am I doing this for some deferred payoff some deferred benefits
0:23:22 Or am I doing this because I actually enjoy doing this and so it changed the way I did everything
0:23:25 So for example with my workouts, there was a version of workouts that I did because
0:23:31 Whatever just just bite bite the bullet just do this and you’re gonna it’ll pay off later when you get fit versus
0:23:35 Well, why don’t I just do workouts that the workout itself is so satisfying?
0:23:38 Of course, if I do that I’m going to do it more often
0:23:41 I’m going to do it with my full effort and I’m going to still get the reward in the end
0:23:45 So I started working with this like boxing coach or playing basketball different things that I wasn’t doing before
0:23:48 because I was willing to settle for
0:23:52 Doing something that today kind of sucks, but in the future
0:23:54 Maybe it’s going to turn out great
0:23:58 And I realized I had lived basically like 35 years of my life with the this kind of sucks now
0:24:02 But oh, it’s going to it’s all going to pay off in the end. I realize it’s a false choice. You don’t have to do that
0:24:06 You can just filter every activity on is the act of doing this going to be worth it
0:24:09 Even if it’s challenging, it doesn’t mean everything is so happy
0:24:12 But is the act of doing this the reward or am I doing this only for some future pay off?
0:24:18 So it became a a filtering criteria and not a one thing. So for example, I told you I was reading the book the game the other day
0:24:21 Why did I do that? I was reading a book in the middle of the day
0:24:24 Especially an old book that I’d already read before that had no relevance to me
0:24:27 Because I’m not trying to be a pick-up artist or hit on women anymore, right?
0:24:28 That’s not what I was doing
0:24:30 But it was the thing I was most interested in that moment
0:24:33 And so I did it because the act of doing it was the reward because I was most interested in it
0:24:37 And I’ve done that with other hobbies like picked up playing the piano and I started doing other things
0:24:42 That are all falling into this bucket and I’ve never been so you can hear it in my voice
0:24:46 I’ve never been so switched on after making this sort of shift in the way I
0:24:51 Chose what to work on and that’s a very I’m going to say the p word
0:24:53 That’s a very privileged way to go about it
0:24:57 Which is if you hit the lottery like maybe we have or I mean we’ve worked hard
0:25:01 But we’ve got lucky as well where that’s a very privileged way to go about it
0:25:06 And so I do think you have to eat shit for a certain period of time and also get some luck, but
0:25:13 Yeah, I’m very drawn to this way of living. I’m not sure that that’s true. It’s 100% true. The reason I say that is
0:25:17 First whenever somebody calls me privileged, I’m like that’s a compliment
0:25:21 I think they they mean it as an insult they people use it as an egg not you in this case
0:25:24 But I’m saying most people if you call someone privileged you’re trying to tear them down
0:25:29 I want my life to be described as one of privilege. That’s the point. You’re giving me a compliment
0:25:32 That’s like saying wow, you’re really good at this or this comes effortlessly to you or whatever
0:25:35 I want my life to be described that way that is a goal of mine
0:25:41 And I just mean that because most people will treat that as a negative and that they try to make themselves smaller
0:25:43 Right. So a little bit of like the tall poppy syndrome where
0:25:45 If you have the freedom to do something
0:25:51 And you are not doing it because you’re worried about how it looks or how it sounds or how it others don’t have that privilege
0:25:55 You’re wasting your privilege. I think that’s a it’s a bad thing. Let me answer the other part which is
0:25:58 I would say that the most successful project I’ve ever done
0:26:05 More than any of the companies ever built or any job I ever had has been this this podcast this podcast from a
0:26:11 Usage like people listen to this they like it. So customers are happiest financially
0:26:13 It’s a very lucrative product out for it’s a very good lifestyle
0:26:18 But also just the my enjoyment of it the act of doing it. I don’t do this episode
0:26:21 For some future payoff. I do this episode because it’s going to be fun to do
0:26:24 I enjoy this conversation this conversation up by the time we click stop
0:26:27 I’ve got my payoff
0:26:29 And when I started the podcast
0:26:32 I literally wrote down that I’m going to lose money doing this
0:26:39 That I expect that nobody will listen to this and I’m going to do it anyways because it’ll be so fun to record these episodes talking to
0:26:43 Interesting people and learning that it will make it worth it and I wrote down I have this google doc
0:26:47 I’ll share it it says my forecast as I will lose $10,000 a year doing this
0:26:51 My forecast is that really nobody but my mom is going to listen to this thing and it’s still worth doing
0:26:57 What were the other predictions? So I got into this position because I made a choice like that four years ago
0:26:59 right like
0:27:04 That that and so I don’t think I also thought well you got to eat shit for a while before you get to go do the fun things
0:27:08 I don’t believe that that’s actually true. I know a lot. That’s 100 true. Think about it
0:27:11 Let’s say you’re a 40 year old landscaper with three kids
0:27:13 It is one way to do things
0:27:17 I know a bunch of engineers who work on projects that they are personally interested in they build
0:27:21 Personal projects and one goes kind of nowhere two goes kind of nowhere, but it doesn’t matter
0:27:23 they’re building up their skills they’re having fun doing it and
0:27:30 Sure enough by the third the fourth the fifth either they’ve built up skills where they’re a highly valuable person that gets brought into a project
0:27:35 That’s already working and they get paid handsomely for it or they’re one of their projects takes off
0:27:38 But the whole time they were just doing the thing that they really like to do
0:27:41 I think that there is one way to win which is grind and eat shit
0:27:47 And pay your dues work up the ladder pick whichever cliche you want and that that is a way to win
0:27:52 I know several people that from the beginning they were driven by working on the things that were interesting to them
0:27:55 Like any adult type of guy, right?
0:28:01 And when they when they’re working on things that were interesting it led to good outcomes because when you work on things that are interesting
0:28:05 You work on it longer harder than than a person who’s just doing it for a reward
0:28:08 You get better at it and when you get really good at something that’s when the payoffs tend to come
0:28:16 Well, I believe that can be true and also it can be true that it’s more challenging logistically for certain people for example
0:28:21 You’re a blue collar laborer with three kids at 40 years old
0:28:28 You work from 6 a.m. To 7 p.m. And you’re like there’s just no time and I just got to pay the bills
0:28:29 I do think that
0:28:33 It’s just more challenging for many of the people listening right now. I believe you are
0:28:40 Totally right, which is we probably have a lot of college educated particularly college age kids who don’t have
0:28:42 too much responsibility
0:28:47 And they should lean into this this thing and I completely believe that to be true
0:28:50 And I believe it also to be true that as you grow
0:28:55 This type of mindset gets stamped out of you the world wants you to be vanilla
0:29:00 Yeah, absolutely. Let me ask a different question of the people we know that are successful. Just give me a rough number
0:29:03 What percentage do you think got there?
0:29:05 through the
0:29:07 grind do shit they didn’t like
0:29:13 That paid off in an unsexy way and then now they work on things that are more interesting pleasurable that they’re driven by curiosity
0:29:16 They’re driven by fashion. They’re driven by whatever versus people that
0:29:22 Made it by following things. They were curious about maybe it was a bit of a lonely road for a bit
0:29:25 Maybe other people maybe it wasn’t a hot market, but it became hot
0:29:28 But they were there already right that happens a lot. What percentage would you say in each?
0:29:33 I’m just curious roughly how you would think about it. Is it like only five percent
0:29:38 Got successful through following their own their own interests fundamentally
0:29:44 Or do you think that it’s 50 50 they got it got successful following their interest versus following what was more proven
0:29:45 If I had to guess
0:29:49 60 to 70 percent of the people who we know who we would consider
0:29:55 Wealthy enough that money doesn’t really matter probably made money in a way that looking back
0:29:59 They were like that was really hard and miserable and I don’t think I can do that again
0:30:02 And then a large percentage of them now
0:30:09 I would say only 50 percent of them then go and pursue something that truly interests them and the other 50 percent
0:30:14 Just do the playbook again and are miserable while earning a great living
0:30:18 Yeah, so roughly let’s say 20 25 percent. You think maybe we’re in the
0:30:22 The bucket that I’m talking about which is they were just doing what’s interesting to them
0:30:26 And that happened to become something that was very successful versus people who chose things that were
0:30:32 Not as interesting or not as fun for them, but they thought we’re gonna have a payoff and it did and here’s why
0:30:38 Why combinator is like the stereotypical silicon valley like story
0:30:43 You go to white combinator. How long is white combinator eight or 12 weeks three months? Three months. Yeah
0:30:49 Okay, so you go with one idea and you only have 12 weeks to decide if this is going to work or not
0:30:53 And by week six they say dude, this sucks
0:30:55 You should pivot this amazing idea you had to do
0:31:01 Credit card processing or to do something else that people want to give you money for and so they just go
0:31:04 Ah, fuck it. Whatever. I gotta go down that path
0:31:07 But that path that they’re signing up for is a 10-year journey or more
0:31:11 And so there wasn’t too much thought with it and so they’re just like man
0:31:17 I just got to get a win however way I can and I only have another six weeks until I’ve got to go do demo day
0:31:20 So I’ve got to just settle on something and move forward and do it
0:31:26 And I think that that mentality is often what a lot of internet based businesses are built on
0:31:31 So I think that’s a little unfair to yc because for example if I think that does happen
0:31:33 but
0:31:37 one of the things that happens in those pivots because I’ve invested a lot of yc companies that pivot
0:31:43 And also if you read a programs essay one of these program advises heavily against is the what he calls playing startup
0:31:49 It’s like playing house where you sort of just try to manufacture a startup idea that you think might work or think might be good
0:31:52 He’s like the best way to figure out a startup idea is to scratch your own edge
0:31:58 And to look at your own life and figure out in what place am I already living in some future that other people aren’t
0:32:01 But I could build a product that would help them get there or what’s a pain point?
0:32:03 We’ve discovered along the way of doing this that we could solve
0:32:06 So yes, they pivot quickly and they pivot in the middle of yc
0:32:11 But usually the advice is that you should pivot to something the product the it’s that you want scratched
0:32:16 The problem that you are currently having or the thing you you uniquely understand because of the way you live your life
0:32:22 Versus uh, what other people do and the biggest success is out of yc have typically been that right?
0:32:25 I agree that that the air bnb guys renting out their own apartment to make
0:32:32 Hey or brian armstrong doing coinbase because he lived in argentina and dealt with the currency issues and was interested in bitcoin
0:32:38 These are not ideas that fundamentally sounded good. The biggest successes. I think are done that way
0:32:41 Yeah, but not the average success. I think that’s exactly right
0:32:43 I think the most successful people will work that way
0:32:48 But the average or the majority are not that way and I think that’s probably the true statement
0:32:54 I I’d have to go look through a white commenter companies, but there’s not that many 23 year olds that know anything about payroll
0:32:57 processing software, but there’s a lot of
0:33:02 25 year olds or whatever who have created something really cool like that our friend jack
0:33:08 Why did he do vongole? I think he was curious of solving problems, but he didn’t have a problem wanted success more than he wanted
0:33:13 He was like this just seems like intriguing. I guess like yeah, let’s just he’s somebody made a shift
0:33:17 I would also say something there’s a confounding factor, which is that for a lot of the people who are our friends
0:33:20 The thing that they are interested in is the game
0:33:27 So it’s not the industry that they that was the passionate thing the passionate thing was playing the game of business
0:33:30 Can I give you two related things that came up for me?
0:33:34 I don’t know if you remember this but when the open ai drama was going on when they fired sam altman
0:33:37 One of the things that came out was
0:33:41 Maybe they have agi internally and everyone’s like no they probably don’t have agi internal
0:33:44 But maybe there was some breakthrough because he had gone at some conference and said
0:33:47 There are these moments with open ai where you’re sitting in a room and you get to see a demo
0:33:52 And your mind gets blown you’ve seen the future the world is not the same because of what you just saw
0:33:56 He goes that just happened about three weeks ago and people didn’t know what it was
0:34:00 But he was kind of just like teasing a little bit and just he wasn’t even trying to make a hype thing
0:34:01 He was just
0:34:03 Trying to say like what it’s like to work there
0:34:06 He was trying to use it for some other reason but people took that and they’re like man
0:34:09 They must have something sam altman said that or an employee said that sam altman had said that
0:34:12 And so people started speculating. What is it?
0:34:17 And then these leaks happened they start talking about this thing called q-star. Do you remember this?
0:34:18 Do you remember this q-star thing?
0:34:20 Yeah, I don’t know what it is though. So q-stars
0:34:27 I I’m not a ai phd researcher. So I don’t know exactly but the idea is like there are different algorithms or different methods
0:34:31 You can use to do something and q-star is a certain technique
0:34:36 And so people were like oh q-star does that mean they’re using the either the q technique or the star technique or whatever?
0:34:37 That’s not what people are using today
0:34:40 But maybe there’s something there and so this thing leaks
0:34:44 It’s not been confirmed yet whether that’s was or wasn’t a thing
0:34:50 But what ended up happening was there was a whole bunch of smart people that suddenly started sniffing around that technique
0:34:54 and just recently a bunch of research papers got published
0:34:59 Saying that they’re seeing amazing performance using this technique
0:35:04 And so this guy came on and he talked about that this is actually a phenomenon that happens frequently
0:35:08 So, uh, I’ll just tie this together. This guy Robert Kwanzey was tweeted this
0:35:10 I don’t know this guy but he tweeted this little story that I liked
0:35:13 And he said claud shannon once told me that as a kid
0:35:15 He remember being stuck on a jigsaw puzzle
0:35:18 And his brother was passing by and said, you know
0:35:20 I could tell you something that would help you with this puzzle
0:35:23 But now I’m not going to do it
0:35:24 That’s all the brother said
0:35:27 But that was enough of a hint for claud to solve the puzzle
0:35:29 The great thing about the hint is that you can always give this to yourself
0:35:33 So basically there’s this this phenomenon that happens in human behavior, which is that
0:35:36 If you knew that there might be a win
0:35:42 You don’t even need to know what the thing is that alone will increase your probability of success
0:35:45 Do you know one I don’t know what else claud shannon did?
0:35:50 Do you remember how I told you ed Thorpe went to the roulette table and it required two people to be in the crowd?
0:35:51 He was his buddy
0:35:52 That was the other guy
0:35:57 So in fact, if you look it up the there’s like it’s called I think it’s like the Thorpe shannon principle
0:36:00 And it’s like the theory of so claud shannon who this guy was referencing
0:36:05 He was the guy who was tapping his foot to tell ed Thorpe’s which is pretty funny
0:36:09 So the second story that’s the same principle is about Kaggle
0:36:14 So Kaggle’s this online competitive place for solving, you know problems riddles puddles puzzles whatever it is
0:36:16 I think I don’t know if it’s all coding or if it’s just math puzzles
0:36:19 So this guy replied in the thing he goes
0:36:25 One of my favorite Kaggle facts is that anytime that the leaderboard gets stagnant for a while in any competition
0:36:27 If one team suddenly makes a jump
0:36:35 That will automatically cause multiple independent teams to quickly reproduce the same breakthrough with no knowledge of how the first team made the breakthrough
0:36:39 And isn’t that kind of amazing how it’s like it’s the four minute mile, right?
0:36:44 What’s the guy’s name around Roger so when prior Roger banister running four minute miles
0:36:50 People were only like three seconds like 403 404 which is quite a long distance away from four minutes
0:36:53 But basically when Roger banister did it roughly
0:36:59 Four other runners also broke four minute miles within like three months of Roger banister doing it
0:37:00 Right
0:37:03 So the same thing just happened to me in one of my businesses
0:37:06 So in one of my businesses we had there was a marketing tactic or channel
0:37:12 That we had looked at we had even kind of dabbled with but we didn’t didn’t exactly know how to do it
0:37:15 It kind of seemed like a puzzle. We didn’t know how to solve so we put it on a shelf for a while
0:37:16 and
0:37:18 Then I heard a whisper that somebody else
0:37:21 Was just crushing it using that channel
0:37:27 Now I don’t know what they’re doing. I don’t know the technique that they’re doing. I don’t know how much they’re crushing it
0:37:30 I just heard enough to know that they are crushing it
0:37:33 and immediately
0:37:37 We mobilized and that same channel that looked kind of like a dead thing before to us
0:37:39 We didn’t really know how to make any progress
0:37:40 We still didn’t have any technique
0:37:46 Nobody gave us a tool of how to make progress just the knowledge that somebody else was making progress in that same channel
0:37:50 Fired us up got us going and we immediately found a breakthrough and over the weekend
0:37:52 We did like 30 grand in revenue on this one channel
0:37:56 and it reminded me of the same principle of
0:37:58 Just the knowledge that there is a solution
0:38:02 Actually increases your probability of getting to a solution
0:38:07 Just the knowledge that somebody else has found a solution without telling you how at all will increase your probability
0:38:11 And I think that’s one of the things about this podcast that should help people
0:38:13 That’s one of the ways to use this podcast
0:38:17 Is that you’re not going to do exactly what any of the stories we tell in this podcast do but
0:38:19 Just hearing
0:38:24 Other people’s success just hearing other people ran a four minute mile will make you run a four minute mile
0:38:26 We’ve had this with our friends too people who are saying
0:38:30 Within um, you know, I’m going to make x amount of money in y months
0:38:33 All right, we had a friend that was like I’m going to try to make a million dollars in three months
0:38:36 And just hearing that question
0:38:40 I didn’t have that question before just hearing that question got me to start thinking about ways you could do it
0:38:43 Then hearing that somebody did it
0:38:47 Immediately made me want to figure out how and even though I was not going to do any of the things that they did
0:38:50 It allowed me to figure out a solution that would be able to do that
0:38:55 I think that’s one of the most underrated learning techniques you can have or like success techniques you could have
0:39:01 What’s that called the mfm paradox that you can become more successful following somebody else
0:39:03 Even though you don’t know what they did just the fact that they did it
0:39:07 This and this is like way less cool than
0:39:14 Artificial intelligence, but similarly when morning brew and the hustle were first getting going with the newsletter business
0:39:19 We had the exact same thing happen multiple times where eventually I became one time
0:39:23 Austin came over after we had both sold and I was like, hey, you want to see something cool?
0:39:29 And I go pull up your computer. I’ll pull up mine. I know you got a document that shows everything that you guys were doing per month
0:39:31 Let me show you mine and you show me yours
0:39:33 And it was the exact same thing by the way
0:39:38 It was we were we were seeing little inklings of what the other person was doing as it was happening
0:39:42 And we kind of replicated each other’s success and it absolutely happened the same way
0:39:46 All right, if you’re listening to this pod, I already know something about you
0:39:49 You my friend are nosy
0:39:55 You want to know the numbers behind all of these things that we’re talking about how much money people make how much money people spend
0:39:59 How much money businesses make you want to know all of this people’s net worth all of it?
0:40:04 Well, I’ve got good news for you. So my company Hampton. We’re a private community for CEOs
0:40:08 We do this thing where we survey our members and we ask them all types of information
0:40:10 Like how much money they’re paying themselves
0:40:16 How much money they’re paying a lot of their employees what their team my bonuses are what their net worth is what their portfolio looks like
0:40:22 We ask all these questions, but we do it anonymously and so people are willing to reveal all types of amazing information
0:40:26 So if you really cannot google you can’t find anywhere else and you could check it out at joinhampton.com
0:40:31 Click the report section on the menu. Click the salary and compensation report
0:40:36 It’s going to blow your mind. You’re going to love this stuff. Check it out now back to the pod
0:40:42 Before we started this podcast you said what topics do you have it? I’m feeling a little uninspired and I have to say
0:40:47 You win a blue ribbon today because you have completely
0:40:52 Put a beautiful bow tie on this thing that I brought you you brought so many good
0:40:57 Interesting tidbits to add to the story of edthorp. That was pretty good
0:41:00 Well, can I can I leave you with one framework? I have one story
0:41:04 So the framework is you know when edthorp was beating blackjack or beating roulette
0:41:08 What’s the first step that he had to do before he beats the house?
0:41:13 What is step absolute step zero before he even figured out how to beat the house?
0:41:15 I don’t know just how to do it at home
0:41:17 Believing that it could be done. Yeah, right
0:41:21 Believing that it could be done and this is cheesy, but it is very true
0:41:27 And by the way things that are cheesy but true are underrated because smart people
0:41:32 Write off cheesy things because they’re cheesy because they’ve heard them before but they haven’t actually acted on it
0:41:38 So they’re underpriced assets are things that are cheesy and true because they’re ignored by other smart ambitious people
0:41:41 I remember when I went to this tony robbins event on the second day
0:41:43 There’s another guy who who hosts it
0:41:47 So the other guy he starts off with a game of simon says to kind of warm up the audience
0:41:50 And you just think this is a warm up because they want you to be engaged as an audience
0:41:53 They want you to be active do something interactive a little crowd work to start
0:41:57 So he starts with simon says we’re gonna play simon says now. This is a room of about 6,000 people
0:42:02 So there’s 6,000 people we’re gonna play simon says and he’s like the winner gets to come on stage
0:42:06 Or like that the yeah the winner gets to come on stage and you’re gonna get this thing
0:42:11 I forgot what it was some some good prize, but again, there’s 6,000 people. So, you know, whatever good luck
0:42:18 So he starts and he says simon says blah blah blah and then like he immediately gets like half the people in the first one
0:42:21 So for example, he goes all right. You guys ready to play stand up
0:42:24 And everybody stands up. He says he didn’t say simon says stand up
0:42:26 So you only do the thing what he says simon says
0:42:30 But if he just says an instruction and you do it without saying simon says you’re out
0:42:32 This guy clearly read the book the game
0:42:36 Exactly. So he’s got us on the cat string theory. We are just obeying his commands
0:42:41 So the game starts half people get out on the first round. It whittles it down within five minutes
0:42:45 He’s down to the winner winner gets up on stage blah blah blah and he had the final 10 people
0:42:49 he said stay standing you don’t get to come on stage just stay standing and
0:42:53 Um, then he called on somebody. He’s like the guy who’s standing you got to the final 10
0:42:57 The guy next to you. When did you get out? He’s like, I got out on like the second round
0:43:00 He goes, let me ask you something
0:43:02 Did you believe you were gonna win?
0:43:07 And the guy was like, no, I mean so many people. It’s a silly game. I don’t know. I didn’t even think about it
0:43:11 He goes, that’s interesting. That’s nice. Did you believe you were gonna win?
0:43:13 No, he goes
0:43:17 So raise your hand if you when we started the game you believed that you could win
0:43:23 Only like five percent of the audience raised their hand. He goes, so all of you thought you were competing with 6 000 people
0:43:26 The only competition was amongst these 50 people
0:43:31 Who actually believed that there was a way to win and he’s like, I’m gonna leave you with two two ideas
0:43:34 Number one, if you’re gonna play the game decide to win. That’s so funny
0:43:36 He’s like, you don’t have to win every game
0:43:40 But if you decide to play you should decide to win and he goes the second thing is that
0:43:44 In life, you believe you’re competing with a much bigger pool of people than you actually are
0:43:48 Because the majority of people aren’t even playing the game and other people who play in the game
0:43:50 Most of them don’t even believe that they can win
0:43:53 You’re only competing with the people who actually believe that there is a way to win
0:43:58 And so similarly with this guy cracking blackjack cracking roulette. That’s a game. I thought was impossible to crack
0:44:02 Until I read the book. I think it’s called bringing down the house or something like that
0:44:08 That’s the other blackjack card counting book and immediately my mind shifted into a blackjack is a beatable game
0:44:13 If we could beat this game and suddenly I started to learn things suddenly I started to understand
0:44:15 How do you actually beat the game of blackjack and it compelled me into action?
0:44:17 All right, let’s pause real quick
0:44:19 I got to do the thrill of the shill where I’m going to give you a thrill here
0:44:23 I’m going to teach you something that I think is a very important principle that any founder should know
0:44:27 And I’m going to tell you about a company that’s doing it well. All right, so the thrill of the shill is
0:44:35 Have you ever heard of the law of category? You familiar with this? I’ve not I think it’s from the book the 22 immutable laws of marketing
0:44:38 And in that book it’s talking about marketing. How do you actually stand out?
0:44:39 How do you
0:44:43 Do the hard thing in business which is stand out get your brand out there get customers
0:44:47 And get them coming to you versus you just chasing them down and hunting them one by one
0:44:51 How do you get market pull and the law of category is a very simple principle
0:44:56 Which is that you’d rather own a category than participate in one if you can’t be the first in a category
0:44:58 you’d rather create a new category altogether
0:45:05 And that is something that many people have done. So for example, I’ll give you I’ll give you one in the podcasting space
0:45:08 So we’re we’re a podcast and this podcast started off very
0:45:15 Undifferentiated we started off just as interviews with successful people. Just what that’s what every business podcast is interviews with successful people
0:45:19 How did you do it? It’s all past past facing. How did you do it?
0:45:22 We started to stand out when me and you got on here
0:45:24 We started going a little future facing which is
0:45:30 Hey, what trends what opportunities do you see what’s going on right now in the market that you think somebody could be capitalizing on
0:45:35 So suddenly we were in a new category. So how many podcasts were there that we’re talking about?
0:45:40 Stuff that you know opportunities and trends that you could be capitalizing on for the next 12 months versus
0:45:45 What did you do 15 years ago successful person and even when we invited guests on we said you got to bring some ideas
0:45:49 What opportunities do you see today now? We’re not just going to ask about the thing you did in the past
0:45:55 Even further than that is you ever seen hot ones that show where the guy interviews celebrities
0:45:59 But instead of just interviewing them they’re eating hot wings while they’re doing it escalating and in hotness
0:46:04 It’s the law of category that show became super popular gets millions of views on youtube
0:46:09 And he gets the best guess because he’s the only podcast that does that he’s the only show doing that
0:46:14 He created his own category and now if you came in and you try to do a show like that guess what they would say
0:46:17 Oh, it’s kind of like hot ones. They own that category
0:46:21 They own that that niche and so the law of category is a very small principle
0:46:26 Which is that without taking more effort if you simply just define a new category
0:46:32 You now have a reason to buy an rtb a reason for a customer to come use your product come use your service
0:46:37 Well the company that sponsors today’s podcast wander is a great example of exactly that
0:46:41 These guys basically said well, you have luxury hotels. You got the four seasons
0:46:44 You got what’s that fancy one a man that everybody’s going to nowadays
0:46:46 You got the luxury fancy hotels
0:46:50 And then you have stay in a house like arabian b where you get the home
0:46:53 You know you get to stay in a home multiple rooms in a kitchen and all that
0:46:59 But it’s not as luxury and turnkey and just a beautiful everything’s taking care of your experience
0:47:02 So they created a new category which is
0:47:08 Hotelified homes so luxury homes that are on par with the nicest luxury hotels
0:47:11 But it’s a house instead of being in a building in the skyscraper
0:47:16 You get a you get a backyard a pool a sauna you get a kitchen
0:47:20 You get everything you want in a home, but you get the guarantee that it’s going to be luxury
0:47:23 Unlike an airbnb. So I think that they’ve done a great job
0:47:25 As why they’ve grown so fast
0:47:30 They did I think like 12 million and bookings in the last 12 months because they created their own category
0:47:36 There isn’t anybody else who’s really in that category where they actually manage the property and therefore can guarantee a certain quality of service
0:47:40 Great thrill pretty good show. I love the show
0:47:46 Improve my show, please. No, I think your show was great. So if you want to use them wonder it got wonder dot com
0:47:52 Slash mfm. What do they get? I think they get $300 off the first day if you go to wander dot com slash mfm
0:47:54 So that’s our personal code. That’s just for listeners of this pod
0:47:58 You download the app if you do that you get 300 bucks off a stay
0:48:04 So you get 300 bucks off and you’re entered into a giveaway that’s going to be they’re giving away a free wander stay
0:48:08 So if you’re one of the people who are doing this and remember the principle that’s in this podcast
0:48:10 If you enter you got to believe that you can win
0:48:15 Go ahead and enter and you might win the free wander travel thing. So check it out wander dot com slash mfm
0:48:19 I think you said last time I go, you know, I’m not sure how many people are going to do this
0:48:23 So if you’re one of the people that actually does it you’ve got a pretty good chance of actually winning exactly
0:48:29 So that’s w a n d e r dot com slash mfm. All right back to the episode
0:48:32 So I have a funny story that I’ll tie it up with this which is that
0:48:38 People have heard of a vicious cycle. Oh, that’s a vicious cycle and they’ll say it’s you know
0:48:44 Poverty is a vicious cycle. You don’t have money. So therefore you don’t um, you can’t buy the best food or or
0:48:51 Education and therefore you end up staying, you know, you don’t get the best opportunities and therefore you stay poor vicious cycle, right?
0:48:53 We’ve all heard a vicious cycle
0:48:56 Well a good thought experiment is what is the opposite of a vicious cycle?
0:49:03 A virtuous cycle what’s a virtuous cycle and a virtuous cycle a virtuous cycle is again a tony robinson is basically
0:49:07 If you believe so if you have high conviction that something can happen
0:49:11 We’ve all had moments in our life where we are like I am convinced that I can do this or that it can happen
0:49:14 Then you’ll take a different level of action
0:49:17 So belief drives action the amount of belief drives the amount of action
0:49:21 So little belief will drive little action which drives a little result
0:49:27 A lot of belief takes you to drive take a lot of action which drives a bigger result and guess what once you see that result
0:49:29 It reinforces the belief
0:49:32 So if you start with a little belief you take a little action get a little result
0:49:35 You’ll be like I knew it. I knew the shit wasn’t going to work
0:49:38 It lowers your belief even more takes even lower action lower result
0:49:42 And the opposite happens where if you’re a heavy believer you take a shit ton of action
0:49:46 Shit ton of action will start to yield a result and your belief will say I knew it. I knew we could do this
0:49:51 I knew we’d get progress you take even more action and it just becomes a virtual cycle
0:49:53 and so that is one of the things that I think is
0:49:58 Most important if you are stuck or if you’re at a plateau or you’re not exactly where you want to be
0:50:00 step zero is you have to somehow
0:50:04 Trick yourself into raising your level belief that it is possible
0:50:08 One way is to read books about other people who have already done it or talk to other people who’ve done it
0:50:13 Imagine yourself doing it whatever ask yourself questions until you are worked up into a fever
0:50:18 That this this is going to work because that’s the only chance you have of taking enough action to actually get a result
0:50:22 I want to hear from the listener
0:50:25 The people who have made it this far
0:50:29 If they feel like I feel right now, which is like I want to run through a fucking wall
0:50:33 You’ve just like you’re like a guy you’re like a pastor right now
0:50:37 You know, you’re like one of these like black churches where you’re like dancing and screaming and shit
0:50:41 And I’m just like in the crowd like dancing as well. I feel good
0:50:45 Yeah, so now let me tell you a quick blackjack story of this
0:50:49 So I read this book and I become convinced that we could do this. I tell my buddy trevor. I said trevor
0:50:54 We could do this. We could bring down the house. We can count cards. We can get rich a blackjack
0:50:59 He says say no more trevor’s trevor’s a believer. He’s down. What hate are you perfect part? Perfect trait in the partner being down
0:51:04 We’re I don’t 21 years old and we’re seeing in college. Did you read the whole book?
0:51:06 Read the whole book
0:51:11 All right, but again because we have a ton of belief we find a way to take action. I’m living in north carolina
0:51:13 There’s no casino in north carolina. What am I going to do fly to vegas?
0:51:18 No, no, no the belief drives action. The belief causes me to find a way
0:51:22 I’ve realized hey in south carolina, there’s a river boat and that boat will
0:51:27 Like boat out into international waters and then you can gamble because it’s international waters
0:51:30 That’s the beauty of the world. It’s got international waters anything goes
0:51:33 So we drive down the south carolina. We get on this river boat
0:51:36 And we drive out but before we do that we spend three weeks practicing
0:51:39 And the same it’s the same system. You have a counter
0:51:42 Who’s going to be keeping count?
0:51:47 You have the signaler who’s going to signal in the whale. So trevor’s the counter
0:51:50 trevor’s got the focus on the communicator on the signal guy
0:51:56 And our buddy dan is going to be the whale and what was your signal the whale’s job is to
0:52:01 Come over he’s ag. He’s a gregarious character because the trick when you count cards is
0:52:05 You need to wait till the deck is stacked in your favor where there’s more let’s say aces and bad
0:52:09 The low cards are out so the count is high and then you need to vary your bet size
0:52:13 So that’s actually how you win is you bet more when the deck is hot you bet less when it’s not but if the
0:52:16 Casino sees you varying your bet like that they kick you out
0:52:20 So that’s why you need two players you know one guy who’s counting and the guy who comes in to make the bet
0:52:23 He needs to start with a big bet so he only comes in when the deck is hot
0:52:27 And so he comes in and we’re like dan you’ve got to act like a drunken idiot
0:52:29 And you’re just plopping down your whole
0:52:31 stack on this one hand
0:52:34 And then you’re just going to and then you’re going to double oh screw it
0:52:38 We went play it again as long as the deck is hot and when the deck is not hot we’re going to signal you to leave
0:52:40 What’s your signals to them?
0:52:44 So we have two signals you have the signal where you’re supposed to come over
0:52:48 Which is basically it was me with my arm like you know kind of like like this is where I’ve won
0:52:51 I’m holding my arm like this, but I’m behind it’s like standing behind me
0:52:56 It’s hard to do I’m sitting down but just a standing posture. So I’m standing behind trevor trevor’s counting trevor has a verbal signal to me
0:52:59 So you create a word for every number?
0:53:03 So let’s say, you know the deck is if the count is one, which is a very bad count
0:53:08 He would just say um, he’s just like all right. All right. Uno mas uno mas like one more hand
0:53:11 But that just signals me the count is one one if there was two he’d be like
0:53:17 I’d be like ah shit balls balls. We got two balls. That’s why there’s two and then he’d be like three
0:53:22 And he uh, he’d be like, you know, he’d have to think for three and we use like basketball player names or whatever and like
0:53:26 We had and you want to get the guy in on the counts like 10 11 12
0:53:29 Something like that and he’d be like dude. I’ve had a dozen chances now
0:53:33 And so we practice for weeks on this and we’re in our dorm room
0:53:38 We’re skipping class and we’re just practicing practicing practices signals boom boom boom bets and we’re running simulation
0:53:42 So we have our friend this girl like who was our friend. She was the dealer and she would deal it out
0:53:47 We were like every time we’re cleaning up this shit works. And so we drive down to South Carolina
0:53:49 We get on the riverboat we go
0:53:55 Dan’s got his drunken drunken tourist costume on trevers the the the guy who’s just bored. He’s just sitting there
0:53:59 He’s betting the minimum, but he’s counting and I’m the signaler. I’m trevers, buddy
0:54:02 And so and so what ends up happening is
0:54:07 Count gets hot we get to 10 and um, I signal
0:54:12 But in the real world conditions are a little different Dan’s not as they’re a lot different
0:54:15 Because he’s so busy being in his drunkid character that he’s actually
0:54:18 Acting like an idiot. He’s not paying attention to anything that we’re doing
0:54:20 So he’s actually getting a drink so he misses 10
0:54:25 Count starts to drop but but it’s at eight. I’m like, okay, whatever still eight still good enough
0:54:27 Let’s signal. I might go back to 10
0:54:29 So I say you know, Dan sees the signal. He starts coming over
0:54:33 Now our dorm room was kind of small. He’s at the he’s farther away
0:54:36 So it takes a little bit of time by the time Dan gets the table and he tries to cash in his
0:54:40 He tries to put down the bet when the count’s like, you know, six or something like that
0:54:44 And he puts his money down. They’re like, well, we have to color it up first
0:54:46 We have to exchange your cash for chips. No bet on this one
0:54:51 So the hand gets dealt out it nukes the count back down to two
0:54:54 Dan’s hand is visibly shaking
0:54:59 He cashes in like a thousand dollars or the chips. This is like big money for us
0:55:02 He takes a thousand dollars with the chips. He’s ready to bet big
0:55:07 But the count is now two and Trevor’s like balls, man, there’s balls, dude
0:55:11 And and Dan he’s supposed to take balls and he’s supposed to leave
0:55:16 Dan is in he’s blacked out at this point. He’s not drunk and blacked out
0:55:21 But he’s just got tunnel vision like he’s so locked into his character and the stupid things that he’s saying to the dealer
0:55:23 He’s completely ignoring the signal
0:55:27 And so he just puts the thousand dollars on and we’re both like balls balls balls balls
0:55:30 What’s happening? Why are you betting? This is the worst time to bet
0:55:33 And we just get wiped out
0:55:38 And you lost all your money lost all of our money and we were like
0:55:43 The book made it seem a lot easier than this because in the book it immediately works
0:55:47 and it starts a series of events that just escalates into them being ballers and um
0:55:51 Yeah, that was it’s sort of like the game. It’s kind of the same thing with the game
0:55:56 Okay, so we go back home. We’re licking our wounds. We’re like, damn. What the hell man?
0:55:59 And he’s like, I’m sorry. It was harder in real life. We’re like, all right, whatever. It’s all good, man
0:56:03 We got to the belief was still high that hey, there’s a way to use blackjack to make a lot of money
0:56:05 So we said, you know what?
0:56:11 Screw it. What if we’re the house and so we decide to create an underground blackjack club at school where we’ll just be the house
0:56:17 These movies go one or two ways now you’re on you’re on option b for a great movie
0:56:20 Exactly. So we we try to become the house now. We’re playing molly’s game basically so we
0:56:26 Again start running these simulations. We’re like, this is great. Like the house has an edge. We’re winning. This is like it’s a no-brainer
0:56:29 so we
0:56:32 And our friend the whole time was just like you guys are idiots
0:56:36 Like you’ve already wasted, you know one month of time on the stupid plan number one
0:56:39 Now you’re on stupid plan number two. He’s like, this is an even dumber plan
0:56:41 We’re like, dude, what are you talking about? We’re the house. You ever heard about the house’s edge?
0:56:44 Like we can’t lose or the house and he’s like
0:56:50 Okay, uh, so we’re like again two weeks into our like every night. We’re simulating this. We’re trying to run like
0:56:54 We’re like typing excel like how much money we’re waiting so you’re losing
0:57:00 You’re not gonna cheat. You’re just gonna. No, we’re gonna be the house. That’s it. And um, so he’s like, okay
0:57:07 Watch this so our friend comes in and just like owns us. He walks in and he’s like, all right. Yeah, I want to bet
0:57:09 He bets he loses
0:57:11 I bet more
0:57:15 Loses and we’re like see told you told you this can work. He’s like cool
0:57:18 And he’s like, hey, give me all my fucking money back
0:57:20 We’re like, no, dude
0:57:23 he’s just like you’re gonna give me all my money back right now or
0:57:27 And we’re like, what are you gonna beat us up? He’s like, no, I’m just gonna call the cops
0:57:30 Tell me you’re running a blackjack ring in your room right now. That’s actually like a like a you know
0:57:32 That’s like a serious crime
0:57:35 And you’re gonna get kicked out of school or you’re gonna give him my $800 back
0:57:39 And we were like, oh, uh, yeah
0:57:41 Kind of the $800 back and we’re like dammit
0:57:47 Yeah, you didn’t see the part of the scene in Molly’s game where she gets beat up for doing this
0:57:53 And this guy just instantly pointed out the fatal flaw, which is basically, you know, this is a crime
0:57:56 They could at any time just bust us. Uh, we would have to move the game every week
0:57:58 And like somehow know that this guy’s not gonna screw us over
0:58:01 But any player who loses money would always have the ultimate leverage
0:58:05 So that’s what I learned about leverage and I learned that leverage is more important than an edge
0:58:08 You should have went back to the casino
0:58:13 It sounds like this stupid idea actually could have maybe worked if your buddy Dan got a shit together
0:58:15 the reality is that
0:58:19 Casinos and I don’t know why people don’t I mean, I guess people do talk about this
0:58:23 But casinos use six decks and they use auto shufflers now
0:58:25 And so the ability for the deck to get really hot
0:58:28 It’s been cut down dramatically
0:58:32 And so, you know, they basically use six decks which will smoothen out the variants
0:58:35 And then they auto shuffle and they shuffle before you get through the whole shoe
0:58:39 So the whole point was like you need to get where a lot of the cards have been used
0:58:43 There’s only a small number of cards left and that that small number of cards is going to have a higher proportion
0:58:48 Of a face cards for you, but that just doesn’t really happen anymore. So I don’t really know where the edge is
0:58:50 I don’t think there’s an edge
0:58:52 This has been a roller coaster
0:58:57 I feel like I I’ve got my money’s worth after listening to this episode
0:58:59 And I should have just been learning how to code the whole time in college
0:59:03 I should have just been learning how to code and I would have made a lot more money than all of my
0:59:06 Hairbrained schemes to to make money or playing league of legends
0:59:08 One of the two
0:59:12 This was very good. This was a good episode. Um, is that the pod?
0:59:15 All right, that’s the pod
0:59:19 I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to
0:59:24 I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let’s travel never looking back
0:59:25 – Bye.
0:59:33 [BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00:02 Kelly, what’s the problem with ozempic?
0:00:06 Drugs like ozempic and ozempic, drug ozempic.
0:00:09 The topic ozempic, what exactly is ozempic?
0:00:13 Ozempic actually represents, to me, the biggest issue in the country,
0:00:17 which is that we’re basically being poisoned and then drugged for profit.
0:00:20 Can you explain how ozempic actually works?
0:00:23 Essentially, it is liquefied anorexia.
0:00:27 And the problem with recommending it for a long term is that…
0:00:30 Do doctors even have to go to a nutrition class?
0:00:34 The first day of Stanford Med School, my sister brought up that somebody with migraines
0:00:37 might need to have a dietary intervention, her attending surgeon said,
0:00:40 “Stop being a pussy.” We didn’t go to nutrition school.
0:00:43 Is this going to be the most lucrative drug ever made?
0:00:46 It’s the 12th most valuable company in the world.
0:00:49 This Danish company, they are the largest funder of politicians,
0:00:50 five times more than the oil industry.
0:00:55 They’re 50% of TV news spending, so they’re not only able to influence us,
0:00:57 they’re actually able to buy the news itself.
0:01:03 When I hear “Stanford Med School Professor” or “The Dean of Harvard Med School,”
0:01:06 are those people that you trust?
0:01:07 Absolutely not.
0:01:09 The problem is that we’re listening to experts.
0:01:12 Remember the food pyramid? Let’s eat our cereals.
0:01:15 It’s the base. It’s the foundation of your food.
0:01:19 At my house, I think goger was the biggest part of the pyramid.
0:01:21 If you don’t eat your goger, you’re not going to get to go play.
0:01:24 The food pyramid was propped by the Sugar Research Council,
0:01:25 still owned by a cigarette company.
0:01:28 We don’t even realize this craft is still owned by Philip Morris.
0:01:29 We are poising our population.
0:01:34 I just want to do the 80/20, so I feel good and my family is safe and feels good.
0:01:35 It’s like, “What can I do?”
0:01:39 The biggest lie in healthcare is that the reasons we’re getting sick are complicated,
0:01:43 and the second biggest lie is that these things can’t be changed quickly. They can.
0:01:54 Alright, let’s rock.
0:01:57 Kelly, what’s the problem with Osempic?
0:01:59 Starting out firing, I like it.
0:02:01 I came on to talk to Sam about this.
0:02:04 I’ve got some bones to pick with some of his takes here.
0:02:07 There’s really, I think there’s a huge problem with Osempic,
0:02:11 which is that there’s a shortage and they’re not making enough of it.
0:02:14 Alright, well, I’m glad we’re getting right out of the gates here, guys.
0:02:17 So here’s the fundamental point.
0:02:21 I’m not concerned with the 350-pound obese diabetic person.
0:02:24 Like, that’s between them and their doctor.
0:02:29 Osempic actually represents, to me, the biggest issue in the country,
0:02:33 which is that we’re basically being poisoned and then drugged for profit,
0:02:36 the largest and fastest growing industry in the country.
0:02:40 And again, largest and fastest growing is the healthcare industry,
0:02:45 and 95% of those dollars are around drugging
0:02:48 and managing disease of people that are already sick.
0:02:52 So we’ve had this explosion of chronic disease, kind of siloed treatments,
0:02:55 and every single one of them relates to more of the disease.
0:02:57 So Stan’s more heart disease.
0:03:01 Metformin, which 30% of people over 40 are on.
0:03:04 I mean, it’s one of the most widely prescribed drugs, right?
0:03:08 Diabetes goes up. SSRIs, now 25% of women are in SSRIs.
0:03:09 Depression and suicide,
0:03:11 a skyrocketing as more SSRIs are prescribed.
0:03:14 Literally every single drug, you go on the list of every chronic addition,
0:03:16 the more prescribed, the more it goes up.
0:03:18 So the biggest of them all, obesity.
0:03:19 And you can’t even wrap your head around this.
0:03:23 It’s a unique problem in America, but 50% of teens overweight or obese.
0:03:25 I mean, that’s a moral stain on our country.
0:03:28 The childhood obesity rate in Japan is 3%.
0:03:31 So we have something unique going on where 50% of teens are overweight or obese
0:03:33 and then 80% of American adults are overweight or obese.
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0:04:09 What’s the definition of obese?
0:04:12 Is there like a celebrity that you can name that like is like,
0:04:15 that’s like, that’s like the threshold?
0:04:17 Do I need to stand up and take my shirt off?
0:04:20 And then we just let you establish some sort of benchmark here?
0:04:23 Like is Andy Dwyer in Parks and Rec?
0:04:25 Is that considered obese?
0:04:28 Sometimes it’s actually based on a lot of your
0:04:29 is what my sister and I talk a lot about.
0:04:31 It’s based on your personalized biomarkers.
0:04:36 I mean, oftentimes you can be obese and not particularly look that fat.
0:04:41 A lot of us have brewing metabolic dysfunction, 94 percent of us.
0:04:46 And the actual definition of obesity isn’t even entirely tied to how we look.
0:04:52 The general definition of which goes into metabolic dysfunction
0:04:55 of something you should be worried about is 35 inch waste
0:04:58 for women and 40 inch waste for men, though. All right.
0:05:04 So on Ozympic, fundamentally, we’ve got this dirty fish tank.
0:05:07 We’ve got 80 percent of American adults, right?
0:05:10 You look at those pictures for the 1960s and look at the pictures.
0:05:11 They go to a public space.
0:05:15 There’s clearly something happening and it’s uniquely happening in America.
0:05:20 So my my bone to pick with Ozympic is in the midst of this catastrophe, right?
0:05:23 And it’s missed clearly something happening with our food.
0:05:25 And I think it really relates to the fact that 70 percent
0:05:28 of our diet is ultra processed food in Europe and Japan and other countries.
0:05:29 That’s not the case.
0:05:31 We’re clearly doing something.
0:05:34 And then this system is telling us that the answer to that,
0:05:39 instead of fixing the root cause, is a weekly jab for a wife.
0:05:41 And the instructions for Ozympic is a lifetime drug.
0:05:46 And the most alarming part about it is the American Academy of Pediatrics
0:05:50 recently said this is a fully funded subsidiary of Pharma.
0:05:54 They said that a 12 year old, if you’re a 12 year old, is not only obese,
0:05:58 but a little bit overweight, that Ozympic should be the first line defense.
0:06:03 So this is just a representation of, I think, the biggest issue in the country,
0:06:06 which is that we have this explosion of chronic conditions
0:06:10 all basically tied to the same thing, which is simple diet or lifestyle things.
0:06:15 And we keep lunging for an injection, keep lunging for a pill.
0:06:18 And my point just decidedly, I actually think it’s a big economic opportunity.
0:06:20 It’s like we are on an unsustainable trajectory.
0:06:25 Like, like it’s going to be 40 percent of a GDP health care costs in the next 20 years.
0:06:30 We’re becoming truly like a fat and fertile, sick, depressed population.
0:06:32 We’re destroying our human capital.
0:06:36 So if we’re not going to take the obesity crisis, the fact that you go into a classroom,
0:06:39 I’ve got a almost three year old, you go into a daycare
0:06:41 and most kids are clearly having big issues.
0:06:44 If we’re not going to take this moment with obesity, actually ask, what’s the root cause?
0:06:46 That’s a huge problem.
0:06:50 And I think the economic opportunity and I think the one one thing
0:06:55 investors and entrepreneurs don’t quite see is that if this is an unsustainable situation,
0:06:59 we’re going to have to shift more that $4.5 trillion to we can we can fix our food system.
0:07:02 We can incentivize pay, lower income people to exercise.
0:07:05 We can actually do things that incentivize the right things.
0:07:08 I don’t think American the American people are trying to be fat.
0:07:09 They’re not trying to be depressed.
0:07:10 They’re not trying to be unhealthy.
0:07:14 We actually incentivize them to be and can change those incentives
0:07:15 instead of jabbing them with those epic.
0:07:18 So that’s why I think this heavy tried it.
0:07:20 No, I have not tried it.
0:07:23 So so let’s let’s let’s unpack that.
0:07:26 So you basically gave us a gift basket of hot takes there.
0:07:30 And I just want to open up the ribbon and say, oh, chocolate cover pretzels.
0:07:33 Wonderful. OK, so so let’s unpack those one by one.
0:07:38 You said something just now you said the fish tank.
0:07:40 My understanding is you have this analogy where you have a fish tank
0:07:45 and the fish are getting sick, but you can see that the water is dirty.
0:07:46 The fish tank is not clean.
0:07:50 And I think your point is we should clean the tank, not drug the fish.
0:07:54 Is that the is that the core analogy that you like to use with this?
0:07:58 Yeah, I mean, let’s just go over the stats of that tank.
0:08:03 Right. And I go to kids because I’m a personal responsibility guy.
0:08:06 I’m really resonant with those arguments that it’s it’s people’s choice.
0:08:09 But it’s not personal responsibility for kids.
0:08:10 So something’s happening.
0:08:13 And thirty three percent of young adults have prediabetes right now.
0:08:17 Twenty percent of young adults have fatty liver disease, right?
0:08:21 Forty percent of high schoolers qualified as having a mental health disorder.
0:08:24 Like a doctor 40 years ago,
0:08:27 would would would kids have prediabetes and fatty liver?
0:08:31 A doctor would not see one case of a child having diabetes 40 years ago.
0:08:35 It is it is order of magnitude increase.
0:08:39 This is an absolute unprecedented step function increase
0:08:43 in metabolic health disorders among children.
0:08:45 A hundred years ago, my sister said it’s a hundred years ago.
0:08:50 If you were obese, if you were visibly very fat, you were in the circus.
0:08:52 Then there’s literally in a textbook.
0:08:54 It was so rare for an American.
0:08:55 They’re not that big either.
0:08:59 Yeah, like the the the fat man in the in the free shows.
0:09:02 They’re not they’re not that fat compared to what I what you see on a regular basis.
0:09:06 Right. So literally, it was so rare for an adult to be obese.
0:09:10 A hundred years ago, they literally their job then was to be in a circus.
0:09:12 The explosion.
0:09:16 Dr. Robert Lustig is one of my heroes who led hormone issues
0:09:18 and diabetes research at UCSF.
0:09:22 He said early in his career, you know, 30, 40 years ago, didn’t see one child.
0:09:25 One child walk in with diabetes.
0:09:29 Again, right now, it’s thirty three percent of young adults have prediabetes.
0:09:31 So we’ve we’ve done something to ourselves, right?
0:09:36 And what’s happened there is my sister graduating from Stanford Med School,
0:09:39 you choose between forty two specialties, like every doctor.
0:09:43 She did head and neck, and then you do a fellowship, focus even more in that space.
0:09:46 You know, there’s cardiology, neurology.
0:09:48 We segmented the body.
0:09:51 That’s very profitable because I’m kid, right?
0:09:56 I kid with prediabetes when we segment it, when we say, oh, that’s a metformin.
0:09:58 Right. Then they never really have high cholesterol.
0:10:00 It’s a separate doctor, the cardiologist.
0:10:03 That’s a statin. They never really have some mental health issues, SSRI.
0:10:05 They have high blood pressure, ACE inhibitor.
0:10:07 They have fertility issues inevitably,
0:10:10 shove them into IVF and invasive procedures, infertility, skyrocketing,
0:10:12 which is highly related to this.
0:10:17 So they go in this treadmill and they’ve been lied to that everything segmented.
0:10:21 The biggest mistake we’ve made since World War Two
0:10:25 is that we’ve segmented these chronic lifestyle conditions when they’re really
0:10:27 the same thing.
0:10:29 Didn’t that segmentation come from Rockefeller?
0:10:32 Yeah. Isn’t that one of your one of your research points?
0:10:37 Yeah. So in this gets to like kind of the business angle is that all of these things
0:10:41 were in this game when it comes to our health, which is highly meditated.
0:10:45 The way medicine exists today,
0:10:49 the guiding law in Congress is called the Flexner Report,
0:10:53 which actually mandates that we can’t look at disease holistically.
0:10:56 We have to look at things in silos, evidence-based.
0:11:00 We need to name a condition and then treat it with either a surgery or a pill.
0:11:01 This is enshrined in law.
0:11:03 What was there?
0:11:05 I mean, maybe there was a good reason why they did that.
0:11:08 Like if you had to make the argument for why that was a good reason,
0:11:10 if you if you could, what was their reason?
0:11:14 Well, Flexner, who wrote that report in 1909,
0:11:19 so it’s still the guiding law today, was a paid lawyer of Rockefeller,
0:11:24 who invented the pharmaceutical industry as byproducts of oil production.
0:11:27 He figured he could make them into certain pharmaceutical cures.
0:11:30 So he is the father of the modern pharmaceutical industry
0:11:34 and the funder of our top med schools like Johns Hopkins.
0:11:37 And he did see economic opportunity
0:11:42 in basically professionalizing medicine, siloing conditions
0:11:45 and making money by by treating.
0:11:48 I think there’s a way you could spend that in a positive way.
0:11:52 I mean, it was the Wild West and a lot of which doctors out there.
0:11:54 And I think in their minds, they were trying to make it more professionalized.
0:12:01 But there was a clear economic opportunity to name and silo conditions
0:12:06 and then profit from the intervention, not from making people healthy.
0:12:11 And there was a very clear, you know, you look at Johns Hopkins,
0:12:14 the guy that started that school, William Halstead.
0:12:18 He denigrated nutrition, denigrated any type of holistic thinking
0:12:22 to this day in medical education when my sister brought up
0:12:25 that somebody with migraines might need to have a dietary intervention.
0:12:27 Her attending surgeon said, stop being a pussy.
0:12:29 We didn’t go to nutrition school.
0:12:33 This kind of idea of delegitimizing any exploration.
0:12:39 First day of Stanford med school, Casey was told by her professors
0:12:43 that the American patients are not going to stop eating their Big Macs.
0:12:45 They’re that they’re going to be sedentary
0:12:49 and that the best thing we can do is stand with serious medicine,
0:12:51 with the prescription pad, you know, with the scalpel
0:12:55 and treat these conditions as they pop up.
0:13:00 That is like so viscerally ingrained into the medical system.
0:13:01 And and that’s a lie.
0:13:04 Do doctors even have to get go to a nutrition class?
0:13:08 Like, isn’t it isn’t it like like they studied that very minimally?
0:13:10 90 percent of medical 90 percent of doctors graduate
0:13:13 without taking one nutrition class to this this day.
0:13:18 I was pre-med for four years of pre-med zero nutrition, zero in exercise.
0:13:21 And I remember asking my teacher, because I was like, this is a little strange.
0:13:24 Like, we took an anatomy class, right?
0:13:26 You take a ton of chemistry, organic chemistry, all this stuff,
0:13:30 but you never take anything on nutrition or exercise.
0:13:32 And I remember asking about that.
0:13:34 And I was like, does this happen later?
0:13:35 Like, did I miss it?
0:13:37 Well, what’s going on here?
0:13:39 And they were like, no, it’s just not part of the curriculum.
0:13:41 And your teacher was also like, don’t be a pussy, Sean.
0:13:46 Yeah, that’s just like you gave me the look.
0:13:48 He’s like, this is your pre-med and not med.
0:13:52 All right. So I just want to read some of these these stories
0:13:53 I pulled from your your blog here.
0:13:57 So it said that in 19 and 1909, this is what you’re talking about.
0:13:58 Medicine was the wild wild west.
0:14:02 At the time, the fourth most prescribed drug in the country was.
0:14:08 Probably heroin, right? Or cocaine, heroin, heroin.
0:14:10 It was it was made by Bayer or Bayer.
0:14:11 I don’t know how you say it.
0:14:15 And it was it was a cure for finicky behavior in infants.
0:14:16 So that’s good.
0:14:18 Then it says that Rockefeller helped start
0:14:20 the modern pharmaceutical industry by using oil byproducts.
0:14:23 So John D Rockefeller, obviously oil in a magnet.
0:14:26 He then needed a byproduct for his oil
0:14:30 and said, OK, how are we going to sell pharmaceuticals?
0:14:32 Well, if we fund modern, modern educational systems,
0:14:35 I didn’t realize that John Johns Hopkins is named after him.
0:14:38 Yeah, he used a father of modern medicine education. Yeah.
0:14:42 Yeah, he also founded the University of Chicago.
0:14:43 That’s right.
0:14:47 And so it was a radical concept at the time to silo different diseases
0:14:50 into different categories that the doctors could prescribe drugs for each of those
0:14:53 those diseases.
0:14:57 And is it true that seed oils were also from from Rockefeller?
0:15:01 Yeah, I mean, you really these these systems is by design.
0:15:05 And another thing he did is he had this
0:15:08 basically oil lubricant, you know, cheaply made from
0:15:10 from byproducts of seeds.
0:15:14 And he saw that he could actually lobby the USDA
0:15:16 and get those approved for human consumption.
0:15:20 They’re much cheaper than the natural fats that we’re,
0:15:22 you know, genetically biologically made to eat.
0:15:26 And now by basically rigging the regulatory system,
0:15:29 having his lawyers literally on the regulatory panels,
0:15:32 it’s the top source of American calories is is literally
0:15:37 it’s just as a statement of fact, a byproduct of oil production, these these seed oils.
0:15:40 And we’re wondering what’s going on to our health.
0:15:43 The three key pillars of the American diet
0:15:47 were foods that didn’t exist 120 years ago.
0:15:50 You know, processed sugar, refined sugar, wasn’t really a thing
0:15:54 that really came out of the scene about 100 years ago.
0:15:57 We now eat 100 times more sugar than we did 100 years ago.
0:16:00 It’s truly weaponized our food.
0:16:04 Seed oils, the top source of American calories were a byproduct
0:16:07 from John D Rockefeller, new invention and then processed grains.
0:16:09 The processing really took off after World War Two
0:16:11 to make the grain shelf stable.
0:16:16 But the processing, taking that fiber off makes most of the grains we eat, right?
0:16:19 It’s basically a hidden sugar.
0:16:21 It’s very little nutritional value, which the fiber has,
0:16:24 and actually turns into sugar in our bloodstream, makes it more addictive.
0:16:27 Those are the pillars of the American diet
0:16:31 that were just fundamentally aren’t biologically made to eat.
0:16:34 And you know, one thing to add to the conspiracy had to the story,
0:16:38 but it’s true is cigarette companies invented the processed food industry.
0:16:41 So you have John D Rockefeller kind of starting it.
0:16:45 But then in the 1980s, the cigarette smoking started going down.
0:16:48 Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds became the two largest food companies
0:16:49 in the United States.
0:16:53 And in 1990, two of the three largest M&A deals in American history
0:16:55 were cigarette companies buying food companies.
0:16:59 So every single processed food companies we can actually point to
0:17:01 is either still owned by a cigarette company.
0:17:04 We don’t even realize this craft is still owned by Philip Morris.
0:17:08 So these cigarette companies actually still own or has been spot off
0:17:12 once the doctors and the scientists from the cigarette companies
0:17:15 went to the food companies and actually use these ingredients,
0:17:18 use the rig system to actually make our food more addictive.
0:17:20 So this isn’t just an accident that we’re getting sick.
0:17:23 And and Sam, you know, maybe we’re talking at different levels
0:17:26 because, you know, on the micro level, you know, Ozympic,
0:17:27 there’s there’s good stories and bad stories.
0:17:32 But on the high level, and we’re we’re really, you know,
0:17:36 kind of the purpose of my life is to argue this is we have
0:17:41 $1800 per month that taxpayers are going to pay for Ozympic
0:17:43 for an 80 percent of U.S. adult target market.
0:17:46 What if we actually just took the issue of obesity
0:17:52 and just from first principles asked, how do we actually solve that problem?
0:17:55 You’d never say, wait for people to get sick
0:17:57 and then jab 80 percent of the American people.
0:18:01 We were so in this box of just as an inevitability
0:18:03 that we’re going to get sick, even though we get much sicker
0:18:06 than other countries and then drug people were so in that box.
0:18:10 It’s like heuristic even question that we’re going to do that.
0:18:14 And we should give the listener and Sean background.
0:18:18 Basically, we had a discussion on Twitter, Callie and I about Ozympic.
0:18:22 I actually don’t remember what I said, but I think how convenient.
0:18:26 Well, it was something I was like pro Ozympic.
0:18:30 But for people who were incredibly obese
0:18:34 because I think that like I just think that when people say
0:18:37 that something is always bad, I’m like, well, that’s not true.
0:18:39 Like it could be good in some cases.
0:18:45 Now, I think that drugs are mostly not the answer, but occasionally are.
0:18:50 I tested Ozympic because I’m a guinea pig and I love testing weird things.
0:18:54 I think that like some of the things for morbidly obese people is interesting.
0:18:56 I think it’s particularly interesting for alcoholics.
0:18:59 But for the average Joe, no, I think it’s silly.
0:19:02 And I imagine you and I are in huge agreement on that.
0:19:04 How long did you take it for, Sam?
0:19:07 I took it. I tested it for three months.
0:19:10 When it was like like when I saw that it was like the coolest
0:19:13 when I saw that I read an article saying like everyone in the Hamptons
0:19:14 or the rich and famous are taking this.
0:19:16 I think I told you about it, Sean, in 2021.
0:19:18 And I was like, what is this drug?
0:19:20 It limits like your blood glucose stuff.
0:19:21 Like that’s interesting.
0:19:25 So I tried it and it was it kind of makes you sick at first.
0:19:27 But it’s a spectacular drug.
0:19:28 But if you don’t need it,
0:19:31 it’s definitely not something that you should take a diet and exercise is way better.
0:19:33 Can you explain? I don’t know how much you know.
0:19:36 But can you explain how Ozympic actually works?
0:19:39 What does it do that lets you that that causes the weight loss?
0:19:41 What is the function?
0:19:43 What is like the pathway that it uses?
0:19:48 Yeah, I mean, so the truth is we don’t fully actually know all the mechanisms.
0:19:54 But GLP one is a our body actually produces it and it gives us the feeling of satiety.
0:19:57 So it actually is basically just a supplement
0:20:00 that’s jamming our body with more of this peptide.
0:20:04 It’s like taking a bunch of vitamin D or taking another supplement.
0:20:06 You’re basically taking a supplement of a peptide
0:20:11 that our body naturally produces to trick our body into feeling full.
0:20:17 So, you know, again, that that’s not really solving the root cause.
0:20:19 A couple quick points to what Sam says.
0:20:20 I think we’re in full agreement.
0:20:22 I think the drug should be available.
0:20:25 I think people should be able to hack with it.
0:20:27 You know, but Scott Galloway was recently talking to you guys.
0:20:28 I think I think you mentioned this.
0:20:32 He said this is the biggest a bigger economic opportunity for the country than AI.
0:20:34 He said that the vast majority of the American people should be on this.
0:20:36 That’s the stance of the medical community.
0:20:41 The stance of the various medical associations and the FDA is that this drug
0:20:44 should be prescribed to the median American.
0:20:48 Basically, that it’s so hopeless that we’re so addicted to ultra process food
0:20:51 that we need to stimulate ourselves with the peptide in order to trick ourselves
0:20:53 into feeling full.
0:20:56 Essentially, it is liquefied anorexia.
0:20:58 I mean, truly, truly, that’s what it is.
0:21:01 It’s it’s it’s making you not want to eat.
0:21:02 It’s a crash diet.
0:21:07 And the problem with recommending it for a long term is that if you if you could
0:21:11 prove perfectly that this thing works, the rest of your life with zero side effects
0:21:14 is totally OK for every American to take for the rest of their lives.
0:21:17 Maybe there’d be a conversation, but that’s actually not true.
0:21:20 People are getting off this at high rates because the side effects
0:21:22 there’s very little long term information.
0:21:26 There was a 68 week study to approve it for kids for life, actually.
0:21:27 But we don’t know the long term effects.
0:21:31 You mentioned not wanting to drink, Sam.
0:21:34 I mean, there is increasing information coming out.
0:21:38 And this is a key point writ large with the health care system is that,
0:21:42 you know, why is it not making people want to do anything they enjoy doing?
0:21:45 It’s if they say it’s actually making people not want to have sex,
0:21:47 not want to gamble, not want to drink.
0:21:51 Obviously, this drug affects your dopamine and serotonin pathways.
0:21:56 And it’s actually increasingly showing that it’s highly tied to
0:21:58 suicidalization and depression.
0:22:01 What are the problems with the siloing of health care?
0:22:05 This again, I want to be really clear with chronic conditions.
0:22:10 The acute innovations of the medical system, if we have an infection,
0:22:13 gunshot wound, burst appendix, complicate childbirth, that’s great.
0:22:16 But that’s five to seven percent of overall spending.
0:22:19 The vast majority of the medical system is basically
0:22:23 peeling and putting band-aids on chronic conditions.
0:22:26 And people should be able to hack this.
0:22:27 I think it’s great.
0:22:29 Sam took a lot of my friends are taking it.
0:22:31 But the problem is it’s going to be
0:22:36 $1,800 of government funding per person per month.
0:22:39 That’s rigged to the $1,800.
0:22:41 It’s 15 times cheaper in Europe.
0:22:46 The drug is 15 times cheaper in its home country and throughout Europe.
0:22:49 Through totally dysfunctional rigged policies,
0:22:54 we’re actually literally paying 15 times more as taxpayers for that drug.
0:22:56 So so that’s why I think it’s kind of the Rosetta Stone
0:22:59 understanding why we’re kind of losing our way.
0:23:01 Sam, have you ever done the napkin math on this drug?
0:23:04 So I kind of was doing this this morning about this $1,800 a month.
0:23:06 Well, do you know how you know how much it cost, Sean?
0:23:08 Like when I bought it just like for fun.
0:23:10 Yeah, I did it for fun.
0:23:14 It was like 800 bucks a month, I think.
0:23:17 Just real quick on that, they give rebates to individuals.
0:23:20 But the system is so rigged that the sticker price is 16 to 1800,
0:23:23 which Medicare and Medicaid will pay.
0:23:25 So the government’s actually going to pay a lot more.
0:23:26 Taxpayers are actually pay a lot more.
0:23:29 And then they give rebates to individuals paying out of pocket.
0:23:35 But so if you just use 20,000 a year as the the cost to take this thing,
0:23:37 because it’s a long term drug, you’re supposed to take it continuously.
0:23:41 And then it’s 80 percent, I believe of adults are,
0:23:46 you know, in that sort of like qualified, you know, that’s the term basically for this.
0:23:49 So you take, you know, you take the U.S.
0:23:52 population times 80 percent times 20 grand a year.
0:23:55 And then you’re like, well, you’re supposed to continue to take this thing.
0:23:57 So even if you do like, you know, so just that alone
0:24:00 is something like two or three trillion dollars a year.
0:24:01 It’s the same.
0:24:02 And then then you say, great.
0:24:05 And then they’re going to take this for 20, 30 years.
0:24:06 Oh, interesting.
0:24:09 So this is a 50 trillion dollar drug.
0:24:13 A Cali, is this going to be the most lucrative drug ever made?
0:24:15 Well, right now that’s priced into the stock.
0:24:18 So I think it’s the the 12th most valuable company in the world.
0:24:22 And Nova Nordic is the company that makes it just past LVMH,
0:24:25 you know, the iconic fashion designer as the most valuable company in Europe.
0:24:29 You know how like Safeway or Kroger has like a CVS where you can get your
0:24:31 your drugs in the in the grocery store?
0:24:35 That’s kind of like what Louis Vuitton does now, I think, like at the front desk,
0:24:36 they like upsell you on like a shot.
0:24:38 Exactly. They’re tied together.
0:24:42 But but yeah, shot, it’s certainly priced in with the stock.
0:24:44 I mean, this thing is a phenomenon.
0:24:46 It’s one of the most valuable companies in the world.
0:24:50 What’s interesting when you look into the I’ve actually dug into the J.P.
0:24:55 Morgan analyst reports that actually underlie the assumptions for why the stock is so valuable.
0:25:01 About 80 to 90 percent of the profits expected are not from its home continent, Europe.
0:25:04 It’s it’s almost all from the United States.
0:25:09 So this is not the standard of care in Europe.
0:25:12 If you’re a pre-iobetic and in Denmark where this drug is made,
0:25:14 they actually prescribe a keto diet.
0:25:18 They actually pay you to exercise, which makes sense.
0:25:23 This isn’t just gold out like candy from the medical system in Europe.
0:25:25 People can pay out of pocket.
0:25:29 So all the profit expectations are coming from the United States.
0:25:32 This Danish company is one of the 10 largest
0:25:39 lobbyists of U.S. politicians and one of the 10 largest spenders on TV news.
0:25:44 So literally what you have is pharma companies, just as a statement of fact,
0:25:47 not conspiratorial, they are the largest funder of politicians.
0:25:50 They fund politicians directly five times more than the oil industry.
0:25:53 They’re 50 percent of TV news spending.
0:25:57 So they’re not only able to influence us, they’re actually able to buy the news itself.
0:26:00 They’re actually able to dictate what we hear on the news, which is why 60 minutes
0:26:04 literally ran a segment saying obesity is a genetic condition
0:26:07 that is not tied to eating or not tied to exercise
0:26:11 and that it’s an urgent priority to jab a bunch of kids.
0:26:14 That’s literally what 60 Minutes said, relatively unquestioned.
0:26:17 And they’re the largest funder of med schools and academic research.
0:26:20 I mean, getting back to the nutrition point in med schools,
0:26:22 Casey kind of unwound why that was.
0:26:24 Stanford Med School, 50 percent of our budget touches pharma.
0:26:27 Pharma is the number one funder of research.
0:26:31 Pharma is the number one funder of the actual regulatory agencies.
0:26:35 50, excuse me, 75 percent of the FDA is actually not funded by taxpayers.
0:26:38 It’s funded by pharma itself and bureaucracies are built to grow.
0:26:43 It’s a revolving toward when I hear Stanford Med School professor
0:26:46 or the Dean of Harvard Med School.
0:26:50 That just feels like trustworthy to me.
0:26:54 Just me as a layman person, I feel like, well, who else am I going to trust?
0:26:58 If not the Dean of Harvard Med or this Stanford professor,
0:27:00 are those people that you trust?
0:27:01 Absolutely not.
0:27:04 I think around the country in various levels,
0:27:08 we’re all losing trust or institutions in various ways.
0:27:11 The military education, health care, I think is number one.
0:27:14 And I think this is a really positive thing,
0:27:17 because we’re the only animals with experts telling us what to eat
0:27:19 and how to manage chronic conditions.
0:27:21 We’re the only animals that have rampant levels
0:27:23 of metabolic dysfunction, obesity, diabetes.
0:27:24 You don’t have those among giraffes.
0:27:26 Like the problem is that we’re listening to experts.
0:27:30 So let me just let me just take it really specific on Stanford Med School Dean.
0:27:31 You’re right.
0:27:34 Nobody more trusted in the country
0:27:38 and working for the pharmaceutical industry in 2009, 2010.
0:27:39 We knew that.
0:27:40 Well, can you just explain that?
0:27:42 You were you were a consultant, right?
0:27:45 You you went to Stanford, then you became a consultant and you consulted for companies.
0:27:47 Can you just explain that background?
0:27:48 I went to Stanford.
0:27:49 My sister was my best friend.
0:27:49 She was much smarter.
0:27:52 She was pre-med at the top of her Stanford Med School class.
0:27:54 I did economics and got into politics.
0:27:56 And then right after doing some campaigns,
0:27:59 realized, you know, everyone that after the campaign works,
0:28:02 the two largest spenders in DC, the food industry and the pharma industry,
0:28:05 worked for them and did consulting for a couple of years.
0:28:07 Didn’t like it.
0:28:09 Got went to business school and then starting companies for the past 10 years.
0:28:11 Did you know getting into it?
0:28:13 Were you like, this is slimy.
0:28:16 So I grew up in Washington, DC, good young conservative, you know,
0:28:18 entered at the White House, entered at the Heritage Foundation.
0:28:21 I was the annoying conservative guy in class at Stanford,
0:28:25 pissing it off and, you know, really considered myself ideological.
0:28:28 And I considered being conservative, supporting American industry.
0:28:33 So I worked on some campaigns and then I was very proud to be working
0:28:35 for the pharmaceutical industry and working for the food industry.
0:28:37 These industries leading the country.
0:28:41 And the issue in front of us was which ties the Stanford Med School dean was opioids.
0:28:43 So you get in a room.
0:28:49 I’m a junior employee and it’s like there’s unnecessary regulation on opioids.
0:28:53 These incredible innovations that are solving this scourge of the American
0:28:54 people, which is pain.
0:28:56 And we have to fight back against this.
0:28:57 What are we going to do?
0:29:00 And I had a list of doctors in front of me.
0:29:02 And we’re like, how do we get these doctors money?
0:29:03 Let’s get them some research grants.
0:29:08 So we reached out to the dean of Stanford Med School, who is a pain specialist.
0:29:14 And we funded him directly with consulting payments and then made a donation
0:29:17 to Stanford, to his lab for four million dollars from opioid companies
0:29:20 to study ethics and pain management.
0:29:26 Then we worked with our allies at the NIH, which is totally just a swamp
0:29:28 with pharmaceutical interests funded by Farm.
0:29:29 It’s a total roving door.
0:29:31 And we helped set up a panel.
0:29:35 So the NIH in 2011 did a panel to make recommendations on opioids.
0:29:38 Who’s the most trusted person you could possibly have in a panel
0:29:39 to make a medical recommendation?
0:29:40 The dean of Stanford Med School.
0:29:43 So the dean of Stanford Med School, who just took a bunch of money
0:29:47 from opioid companies was appointed in 2011 to the blue ribbon panel
0:29:49 on opioid recommendations.
0:29:52 He shows 19 other elite academics.
0:29:57 15 of the 19 had direct payments from opioid companies that we very
0:29:58 strategically steered to them.
0:30:03 And that panel in 2000, I believe it’s 2011, recommended basically
0:30:05 that this was overblown about the addiction.
0:30:08 They basically said, you know, stayed a course, pain is a huge problem.
0:30:11 And then opioid prescriptions continued to go up.
0:30:13 That’s how it works.
0:30:16 And I could just tell you, I think this is something people are waking up to.
0:30:19 I think you see this in the political climate right now where there’s, I think
0:30:22 the defining issue of our time is distrust of our institutions.
0:30:28 These lobbyists, these consultants, they know how to rig the debate, right?
0:30:30 They know people trust a study from Stanford.
0:30:33 They know people trust, you know, what civil rights groups say that if you
0:30:35 call someone racist, that’s going to shut down the debate.
0:30:38 So that’s why corporations that are basically poisoning the American
0:30:40 people are the biggest funder of civil rights organizations.
0:30:44 It’s just look who people trust and funnel the money to.
0:30:49 So let me ask you, when you when you funded the research for, let’s say
0:30:54 that Stanford professor or dean or whatever it was, and then they
0:30:56 and you funded 15 of the 19 people that were on that panel.
0:31:00 Now, I want to get really specific.
0:31:01 Do you think what do you believe?
0:31:06 Do you believe that they genuinely believed the opioid like that?
0:31:07 That was their conclusion.
0:31:10 There were genuine conclusion after doing the research in the study was
0:31:14 that the opioid thing is overblown and we should pay more opiates for Americans,
0:31:17 right? Do you believe that they felt like a little conflicted?
0:31:19 Like, hey, my gravy train shuts off if this goes down.
0:31:21 So let’s find some middle ground.
0:31:26 Do you feel like they are intentionally misleading or that that’s genuinely
0:31:28 what they believe? Very, very good question.
0:31:32 I think the reason maybe a lot of listeners and I used to have trouble
0:31:34 believing this is because how can this be so evil?
0:31:37 So let me break this down.
0:31:42 The genius of the health care system is that it takes very good people
0:31:45 and puts them into a system with plausible deniability.
0:31:49 So the problem is that nobody actually has full responsibility for why
0:31:52 the outcome that the health care system should be solving for,
0:31:55 which is people getting sick, why that’s exploding as everyone’s making money.
0:31:58 You know, the doctors can say it’s the food company’s fault.
0:32:00 The food companies can say it’s personal responsibility.
0:32:03 The med schools can say we can’t control what Americans do.
0:32:05 We’re just going to keep growing and making money.
0:32:07 The pharma companies, you know, rally about, you know,
0:32:10 making stands and curing the sick patients in front of them.
0:32:15 So everyone, the systemic design of the health care industry is actually genius
0:32:19 because it can allow people actually almost a virtue signal
0:32:23 about doing the right thing while producing not necessarily evil.
0:32:26 It’s evil, but it’s producing what the system is designed to do, which is growth.
0:32:29 So that’s one dynamic with the health care system.
0:32:31 If you go down to your question, Sean,
0:32:33 and I’ve really, Casey’s been exploring this.
0:32:35 We talk about this in our book.
0:32:38 I have to put some culpability on people in the system.
0:32:42 And I think it’s breaking through one statistic that’s alarming.
0:32:46 Doctors have the highest suicide rate and highest rate of burnout of any profession in America.
0:32:49 I think what’s happening is you get a lot of well-meaning people.
0:32:53 There’s easier ways to make a buck, you know, than the nine years of training you have to do.
0:32:55 You know, people, we actually are a magnet
0:32:57 for the best and brightest end of the medical system.
0:33:00 And then they eventually realize, and if they’re not,
0:33:02 they don’t realize this, they’re just not paying attention
0:33:06 that they’re complicit in a system that is profiting from people being sick
0:33:07 and they’re not making people better.
0:33:10 So you actually have a dynamic where a lot of people feel trapped.
0:33:14 My sister, after leaving, kind of bravely leaving the medical system
0:33:19 after a decade of training, got people senior at Stanford, senior at Harvard.
0:33:22 See your medical leaders kind of talking to her off the record,
0:33:23 saying you are much braver than me.
0:33:27 Everyone knows the system is going to run the country off a cliff.
0:33:28 So there is a knowledge.
0:33:33 And I think what leads to this depression, suicide, burnout among doctors is
0:33:35 they don’t quite know what to do.
0:33:40 They feel really trapped in this system with really perverse incentives.
0:33:43 But we all know people that work at Pharma, that are doctors.
0:33:44 You know, a lot of my friends from Harvard Business School,
0:33:48 like they go into work at Pepsi, work at Pharma, work at these companies.
0:33:50 It takes good people.
0:33:55 But more and more, I do, you know, think we need the kind of Elon Musk energy.
0:33:58 You know, he said, fuck it, I don’t care if I lose money,
0:33:59 I’m going to do what’s right.
0:34:01 We need more that leadership from the health care system
0:34:05 because we’re truly creating and I’m not even joking, right?
0:34:07 A fat, depressed, infertile population.
0:34:10 I mean, infertility is skyrocketing right now.
0:34:13 There’s our bodies are screaming out for help. Right.
0:34:17 Well, before we go to infertility, I want to just tie back to the history thing.
0:34:20 So you had said something, I think, in one of your blog posts that the first
0:34:23 chronic condition that pharmaceutical ever that became a pharmaceutical
0:34:25 product was birth control.
0:34:27 I think this is in the 1950s.
0:34:30 And you said this is the first pill in American history that people just didn’t
0:34:31 stop taking. Right.
0:34:35 And, you know, if you’re a company and you see this is a beautiful business model.
0:34:37 Here’s a pill they’re going to take every single month,
0:34:39 you know, on an ongoing basis.
0:34:41 And it’s not, you know, it’s not a cure.
0:34:43 It’s a treatment.
0:34:45 It’s a chronic thing that you’re going to continue to do.
0:34:49 And I think there’s some documentaries now on the Sackler family and all this.
0:34:52 But, you know, basically they work for Pfizer.
0:34:55 They started thinking, you know, how can we create more chronic issues?
0:34:58 And is it true that they also owned the medical journals at the time?
0:34:59 Yes.
0:35:02 So let me, yeah, let me try to take that to today
0:35:04 and what kind of the business problem and the business opportunity is.
0:35:07 So you’re right.
0:35:12 The medical system was at its height of trust after World War Two.
0:35:17 The invention of antibiotics was credited as a chief reason we won the war.
0:35:20 You know, but the antibiotics were founded by, you know,
0:35:24 basically somebody digging in dirt and doing some like very rudimentary
0:35:26 experiments that cost no money.
0:35:29 Right. It’s like, this wasn’t actually a huge industry.
0:35:35 And literally the Sackler family, they said, OK, this is very strategic.
0:35:38 Let’s take the trust engendered post World War Two.
0:35:41 Let’s learn the lesson from the birth control pill
0:35:45 and let’s get Americans on more and more pills.
0:35:48 So they actually, with owning the medical journals,
0:35:52 they actually created new diagnosis codes and created this idea of anxiety
0:35:55 and created new mental health code categories.
0:36:00 And their first big blockbuster, one of them was Valium, a benzos,
0:36:02 very addictive, very harmful.
0:36:07 And the time magazine cover, you know, late 1960s, early 1970s was Valium Nation.
0:36:10 Thirty percent of women were on this drug, very addictive.
0:36:14 They were called Mommy’s Little Helper, and that was their advertising.
0:36:16 And then you just go down the list.
0:36:22 The entire thrust of medicine has then been to take that flexor report,
0:36:26 take what Rockefeller set up and put on hyperdrive, segment the body,
0:36:29 segment medical specialties deeper, deeper, deeper.
0:36:34 And then create pills just for biomarkers, right?
0:36:36 Stand for cholesterol, right?
0:36:38 The metformin for blood sugar.
0:36:42 We’ve been we’ve been pilling ourselves on all these little biomarkers
0:36:46 that we can kind of manipulate with one pill, completely ignoring
0:36:49 that everyone’s getting sick or at the same time.
0:36:52 That is by the design, right?
0:36:56 It’s very profitable, you know, I think we talked about this on Twitter.
0:37:00 Just as a statement of economic fact, there’s nothing more profitable
0:37:03 than a child that gets sick early and gets on these drugs
0:37:08 and doesn’t learn metabolically healthy habits, doesn’t learn the basics
0:37:11 of why their blood sugar is high, why their cholesterol is high.
0:37:14 They’re told to save you a pill and they’re inevitably going to get
0:37:16 more and more and more and more comorbidities.
0:37:20 The genius of chronic disease, which the sacroids understood,
0:37:23 is that those patients suffer, those kids suffer, right?
0:37:26 You’re four times more likely to be suicidal
0:37:29 or depressive if you have diabetes as a kid, right?
0:37:32 You’re going to have a lot more issues like infertility,
0:37:34 but you don’t die right away.
0:37:38 You’re a patient who goes in the system, often paid for by taxpayers.
0:37:40 So this was understood.
0:37:44 This is directly understood when the Sacklers
0:37:46 and another ally saw the birth control pill.
0:37:52 And that takes us to the day where I’ll call out, you know,
0:37:56 even the entrepreneurial community and venture capitalist, right?
0:38:01 Investment and good business opportunities in the system
0:38:04 still are predicated on this existing model.
0:38:07 You know, I talked to a lot of esteemed health care VCs
0:38:11 and they think innovation is putting a millennial pink package on Viagra
0:38:14 and shipping it to people more conveniently.
0:38:18 They think that innovation is like better UX on medical records.
0:38:21 You know, you look down the list on these thought leaders of visual capital
0:38:24 talking about, you know, medical innovation.
0:38:27 It’s all just better wrappers on the same existing system.
0:38:29 There’s very little disruption.
0:38:32 Now, that’s a moral problem, but I actually think it’s an economic problem
0:38:34 because I don’t think people fully understand.
0:38:39 I’ve talked to a lot of the wise people in the health space.
0:38:43 If we have an unsustainable situation, if we truly do believe that,
0:38:47 if we truly do believe we’re on a bad path with our mental health,
0:38:50 with our physical health, with our BC rates, we’re not going to drug
0:38:51 our way out of that problem.
0:38:54 Like we’re not going to be doing more and more the same to solve that problem.
0:38:55 I think that’s self-evident.
0:38:58 And I think there’s an economic opportunity there for people who realize it
0:39:01 because we’re going to have to to shift the incentives of the system.
0:39:06 Hey, so I don’t I don’t want to change the world when it comes to food.
0:39:08 That’s up to you guys like you.
0:39:12 I just want to do like the 80, 20, where I mostly do things great.
0:39:15 So I feel good and I look good and my family is safe and feels good as well.
0:39:22 Can you tell me what you eat and where you get your food on a daily basis?
0:39:25 And just what that 80, 20 is like, what can I do?
0:39:27 What can our listeners do?
0:39:30 What can Sean do to just be mostly great?
0:39:34 Yeah, the core thesis of this book I wrote with my sister
0:39:37 is that things are more complicated by design.
0:39:41 The biggest lie in health care is that the reasons
0:39:42 we’re getting sick are complicated.
0:39:45 And the second biggest lie is that these things can’t be changed quickly.
0:39:50 They can. So when it comes to food, I believe we should fire
0:39:54 every single person in the government and academia who works in nutrition.
0:39:57 We should replace it with this one rule, which is which answers your question.
0:40:01 And one principle, reduce ultra process food consumption.
0:40:03 We are 70 percent.
0:40:08 If you look at what your kids are eating or what we’re eating, it’s ultra process food.
0:40:12 So what did you what did you eat for breakfast and what are you going to eat for lunch?
0:40:15 No matter what dietary philosophy you are, I try to eat whole foods.
0:40:16 I had eggs, right?
0:40:18 Pasture raised to look at look into the quality.
0:40:21 And so the first step is to reduce ultra food consumption.
0:40:24 That’s the thing I’d say first and foremost, that is what most people are not doing.
0:40:28 Even if you don’t get into the type of types of food you’re eating, that’s the first step.
0:40:32 I guarantee you, if you are on the hunt to rid your
0:40:37 fridge of ultra process food, being on the hunt for those three,
0:40:41 those unholy trinity of three ingredients, added sugar, processed grains and seed oils,
0:40:43 you’re going to get to the next level of the quality of the food.
0:40:46 The first thing to do is all to process food.
0:40:54 So which basically just means mostly plants and animals that are not processed a ton.
0:40:57 If we simply made that our nutrition policy, we’d be a transformed human capital.
0:41:01 The second thing is, as you alluded to, is if you get there and most people are
0:41:05 not there is to get into the quality of food to really understand and be curious
0:41:08 and be in that path of what’s being done to our food.
0:41:14 The genetic makeup of a grass fed cow versus a grain fed cow is entirely different.
0:41:17 It’s a reversed ratio of omega three or omega six.
0:41:21 The grain fed, which cows are not made to eat, which is totally a new phenomenon,
0:41:25 are predominantly omega six fatty acids, which are inflammatory,
0:41:27 which which which causes inflammation or body.
0:41:30 A grass fed cow, which is how they’ve been raised forever,
0:41:34 which is now a luxury, is omega three anti-inflammatory.
0:41:37 So if you just hunt for animals,
0:41:42 hunt for vegetables that were made in the way
0:41:46 we’re biologically made to eat them, that’s that’s the second bar.
0:41:48 Well, all right, so I’m hungry.
0:41:53 Do you go to like a chain grocery store ever or do you only go to butchers?
0:41:55 Where do you shop for groceries?
0:41:56 I go to Sprouts.
0:41:59 I go to Whole Foods.
0:42:05 I look for deliveries of meat that’s pasture raised of farmers that I trust.
0:42:11 But truly, just going to your supermarket
0:42:15 and not getting older processed food and looking with the eggs,
0:42:19 pasture raised with the meat, ideally grass fed, pasture raised
0:42:23 with the vegetables organic, not spray with a bunch of glyphosate and pesticides.
0:42:26 Like it’s simple. It’s the things we all talk about.
0:42:31 But if you truly just follow that and we incentivize that as a country more,
0:42:34 we’ll be on a much better path.
0:42:35 What are your vices?
0:42:37 When’s the last time you had a Dorito?
0:42:41 Yeah, or like just like, like, do you have a bowl of ice cream once a week?
0:42:44 I got I am like everyone that knows me.
0:42:49 I am like I’ve been on a journey here, guys, like, you know, two years ago.
0:42:52 I mean, I was running a wedding dress company with my wife,
0:42:54 a direct consumer wedding dress company during covid.
0:42:56 We we raised venture money.
0:42:58 We had a large team and struggled a bit during covid.
0:43:00 It’s called anomaly.
0:43:01 So we make custom dresses.
0:43:03 We had a really innovative supply chain.
0:43:07 But, you know, I’ve been running, you know, startups, direct consumer companies,
0:43:10 you know, for the past decade.
0:43:13 And I wasn’t the earliest person.
0:43:17 And during covid, a couple of things happened.
0:43:19 One is my sister, Casey, means who I wrote the book with.
0:43:22 As I mentioned a bunch, she started Levels Health.
0:43:23 She left the medical system.
0:43:25 She’s become a big advocate.
0:43:28 I thought she was an idiot when she left medical school or left residency.
0:43:34 I’m I, you know, as I said, grew up trusting the medical system thinking
0:43:38 it was just crazy that she would leave this path she’s on of all these credentials.
0:43:40 Right. That’s how we were raised.
0:43:43 It’s like, get the best schools, get go up the traditional systems.
0:43:48 So I thought she was crazy, but she really radicalized me with these ideas
0:43:51 that the answers are much simpler than they seem.
0:43:55 In twenty twenty one, as we were selling our direct consumer company,
0:44:01 my mom had a pain in her stomach and and went into get a scan
0:44:03 at Stanford Hospital.
0:44:05 And she was perfectly healthy, we thought.
0:44:07 But they told her it was stage four, pancreatic cancer.
0:44:11 And she called us, said it was going to she’s going to die
0:44:13 in a couple of weeks and we rushed to her side.
0:44:16 With that experience for me, so this is relatively new.
0:44:17 This is twenty twenty one.
0:44:22 What that experience to me showed is really a microcosm of how the system is broken,
0:44:25 because my mom was on five medications over 40 years.
0:44:29 She, you know, 30 years ago had high cholesterol, statin, that’s normal.
0:44:32 High blood sugar met form and that’s normal.
0:44:34 So she was the typical American patient.
0:44:37 She was 70 and actually told by our doctor a couple weeks before
0:44:40 that she was actually healthy because she was on less medications than an average
0:44:44 70 year old because those issues that most Americans deal with
0:44:48 weren’t identified as a core, you know, metabolic issue.
0:44:49 Just take a pill.
0:44:54 She wasn’t set on that path of exploring her food of understanding
0:44:56 how sedentary life can can eventually give you cancer down the road.
0:45:00 That led to her getting cancer this year.
0:45:01 Cancer rates are at an all time high.
0:45:03 They’re particularly at an all time higher around kids.
0:45:07 Every single chronic disease you can name is at an all time high this year.
0:45:10 It’s because we’re ignoring the warning signs.
0:45:12 We ignored those with my mom.
0:45:17 So she abruptly died and that kind of radicalized
0:45:21 me to my previous experience working for the food and farm industry.
0:45:24 Right around that time, I took a blood test and the doctor said,
0:45:26 oh, your blood is fine, you know, you’re fine.
0:45:30 I showed my sister, she’s like, no, no, this is this represents metabolic dysfunction.
0:45:32 I asked the doctor again, what happened?
0:45:33 They’re like, no, no, no, you’re not treatable yet.
0:45:35 You’re not quite at the standard rate.
0:45:36 But yeah, yeah, that’s it’s not good.
0:45:38 But, you know, we don’t have anything to do for you yet.
0:45:43 So that’s that kind of these experiences.
0:45:46 It doesn’t come from a passion for nutrition.
0:45:49 It comes from a passion really for American competitors.
0:45:55 We are poising our population and the average American is on a path like by mom,
0:45:58 kind of the system hand waving these small things.
0:46:00 And then they eventually lead to a big thing.
0:46:04 So that led me, I mean, I’m not a model in any way.
0:46:07 And frankly, I don’t have any interest in lecturing anyone listening.
0:46:11 I think we a lot of people listening are on probably a path right now.
0:46:15 My main passion and what Justin and I are really working on,
0:46:21 Justin Mears, my partner at TrueMab, is I think I think a lot of your
0:46:22 listeners are on this path.
0:46:24 I think they’re like looking at past race beef.
0:46:25 I think they’re trying.
0:46:29 What I’m saying and where my experience comes in from working for these industries
0:46:32 is that we can’t lie to ourselves, though.
0:46:35 We are not going to get out of this if the largest industry in the country
0:46:37 is incentivized for us to be sick.
0:46:42 And I think startups, companies, very other people, we need to actually talk
0:46:43 about the top down incentives too.
0:46:46 So, you know, I’m absolutely on a path.
0:46:48 We’ve written about tactical tips in our book.
0:46:51 But where I’m spending most of my time is like, how do we change the incentives?
0:46:57 Because I don’t think the Japanese kids are, you know, just much less lazy
0:46:59 and less suicidal than Americans at a 3 percent.
0:47:00 You know, they have a 3 percent obesity rate.
0:47:03 We have a kid titled an obesity rate like 25 percent.
0:47:05 There’s something happening with the incentives.
0:47:07 What is the answer there?
0:47:12 What is the leading theory on why in Japan, you look at this chart, we’re at 40 percent.
0:47:15 Yeah, America, we’re number one, 40 percent obesity rate.
0:47:18 And then Japan’s at the bottom, 4 percent.
0:47:19 Well, what are they doing differently?
0:47:22 What is it? You know, genetic might be a hypothesis.
0:47:23 What are the real hypothesis?
0:47:27 No, did anyone that said genetics, they say our obesity crisis is genetics
0:47:30 when it’s just exploded in the past 40 years and was not an issue at all.
0:47:36 They say they say that diabetes is genetics when you didn’t have kids as diabetic 40 years ago.
0:47:38 Sean, it is so simple.
0:47:40 It is follow the money.
0:47:41 It is that simple.
0:47:43 It is I’m just going to say this again.
0:47:48 Our most prominent industry makes money when we’re sick and loses money when we’re healthy.
0:47:49 What does Japan do?
0:47:53 Yeah, so they spend three times less per capita on health care
0:47:57 and double the amount mostly on food.
0:48:00 So per capita.
0:48:04 So so they actually put food into their health care budget.
0:48:07 So I’ll say that again, they spend two times work of capital on food.
0:48:12 We spend almost like on all developed countries per capita.
0:48:15 We spend the least amount on food and three times more than the average.
0:48:18 Are you saying the government spends two times more as a country and a lot
0:48:22 of the health care budget actually goes to incentivizing the food system and food interventions.
0:48:26 Nine out of ten killers of Americans are foodborne illnesses.
0:48:27 I mean, we can dance around.
0:48:29 It’s just that simple.
0:48:32 Like you would wipe out heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease,
0:48:35 respiratory illness, COVID deaths, even if you got our country
0:48:39 metabolically more healthy, which is many factors, but food is the number one.
0:48:43 Other countries understand that and they dramatically reign in the
0:48:48 Senate incentives that pay doctors more when you get sicker for a longer period of time.
0:48:49 Fundamentally, the structure.
0:48:52 Now, a lot of these countries, I don’t even have systems we fully agree with.
0:48:55 But you know, socialism would whatever have you in the U.S.
0:48:57 We have much worse than socialism.
0:49:02 We have a kleptocracy where the system has just totally been rigged at every
0:49:07 single impulse is for people to get sick, be fed into the system and then stay sick to be treated.
0:49:09 That’s every single impulse in the system.
0:49:15 Sean, have you have you ever you I don’t think you’ve been to Europe recently.
0:49:17 But when you go to Europe, it’s pretty crazy.
0:49:23 I you like I went down this little path where I remember going to Europe
0:49:26 and I felt like I ate poorly, like I was on vacation.
0:49:30 And I pretty bad, but I was walking a lot, but I felt awesome.
0:49:34 And I went to the store and I bought a pack of Skittles.
0:49:36 And just I wanted to look at the ingredients.
0:49:41 And then when you compare the amount of ingredients that are in a Skittle or a Kit Kat
0:49:46 or like normal junk food compared to American food, it’s like the list of ingredients.
0:49:48 It’s like two or three times as long.
0:49:51 I’ve seen Twitter, right? Same brand of bread or whatever it is.
0:49:53 Same brand of cracker.
0:49:55 But then in Europe, there’s three ingredients and in the US,
0:49:57 there’s 17 ingredients that you don’t recognize the names.
0:49:58 That’s what you’re talking about.
0:50:01 Yeah. And there’s this other thing where if you look at McDonald’s,
0:50:06 so McDonald’s up until like 1985 or 1990, they used beef fat, I believe.
0:50:08 How old to be tall, yeah, tallow.
0:50:12 And it was I think it was just salt and a potato for a long time.
0:50:16 Now, if you look at the ingredients of a French fry, it’s a McDonald’s French fry.
0:50:18 It’s it’s got like 10 other things.
0:50:23 Is there and I think that someone said said it best where they said in Europe,
0:50:29 the rules around food are it’s a default to we say no to everything.
0:50:33 Here’s the ingredients we allow you to put in, whereas in America, it was like,
0:50:35 here’s the here’s the handful of things we don’t allow.
0:50:37 Callie, you’re rolling your eyes.
0:50:38 Is that an act to look at it?
0:50:42 Because I’ve noticed that when I go overseas, I often times I feel better,
0:50:43 but I don’t think I’m eating better.
0:50:45 No, no, I think you’re hitting it on this test, Sam.
0:50:48 I’m just anticipating what I would be thinking a couple of years ago,
0:50:51 what some people might be thinking is there’s this argument when you talk
0:50:53 about this in the US, that it’s overregulation.
0:50:55 And again, I’m like a free market guy.
0:50:56 I don’t like regulation.
0:51:00 And as a working for these companies, whenever anyone mentioned
0:51:03 about changing food degrees to the US, it’s like the US food system is great.
0:51:05 Let’s not have the nanny state.
0:51:10 The problem is that the nanny state is the fact that food companies have lobbied
0:51:14 and rigged the system to have thousands, we literally thousands of ingredients
0:51:17 that aren’t legal in Europe are allowed in the United States.
0:51:21 The USD Nutrition Guidelines Committee, which basically approves and recommends
0:51:28 various foods, 95 percent of it is funded by 95 percent of the panels
0:51:31 are directly funded by food companies or farmer companies.
0:51:37 So this idea that we allow these ingredients isn’t under regulation.
0:51:40 It’s actually completely and utterly rigged.
0:51:45 You know, Justin Mears and I, we have a company that is trying to change
0:51:48 these incentives, but because we’ve been pounding this mission,
0:51:50 we’ve been looped into a number of advocacy efforts.
0:51:53 One thing we’re doing, we’re working with a guy named Jason Karp
0:51:56 and a bunch of health leaders.
0:52:00 We’ve done a legal action against Kellogg’s, you know, Kellogg’s is a stark example.
0:52:04 But their ingredient list, they change completely
0:52:07 for the American kids versus just across the border in Canada.
0:52:11 It has addictive ingredients.
0:52:14 It has the colorings that make it really bright, that are linked to ADHD.
0:52:20 And other developmental issues, we’re literally through a rigged system.
0:52:25 You know, our free formulating ingredients for American kids.
0:52:27 That’s what Europe, frankly, realizes more.
0:52:30 I mean, what Europe and other countries are doing is it’s not really
0:52:32 even health care policy.
0:52:35 It’s let’s not poison our population as much policy.
0:52:39 All right, if you’re listening to this pod, I already know something about you.
0:52:42 You, my friend, are nosy.
0:52:45 You want to know the numbers behind all of these things that we’re talking about.
0:52:49 How much money people make, how much money people spend, how much money
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0:53:31 Kelly, I want to shift gears real quick.
0:53:35 You we ask people before they come on the pod, we say, you know, what were some
0:53:40 of the big, you know, either philosophies, turning points in your life.
0:53:44 Things that really shaped you and shaped the way you think about the world.
0:53:48 You said something that the most formative experience was a HBS class.
0:53:51 So Harvard Business School class where a professor said that the most
0:53:56 depressed group of people he ever studied was HBS people 10 years after graduation.
0:54:01 What is that story and why would Harvard Business School grads 10 years
0:54:03 later be the most depressed group of people?
0:54:06 Yeah, it kind of made me think about the Scott Galloway interview you guys did
0:54:08 where he’s like, you know, don’t chase your passions.
0:54:11 I just I really don’t think that’s the right advice.
0:54:14 I don’t think we have an epidemic of people, you know, not, you know,
0:54:17 fully I don’t think we have an epidemic of people chasing their passions too much.
0:54:24 You know, what I’ve generally seen is a lot of our trauma and expectations
0:54:29 for society, you know, throwing really good human capital into suboptimal roads.
0:54:35 And yeah, so the HBS and it’s just one microcosm, you know, but just something
0:54:40 I saw everyone writes their application essay about, you know, transforming
0:54:44 and disrupting the world, disrupting health care, disrupting, you know,
0:54:46 energy, big industries, having a big impact.
0:54:51 And then like many things, you get into that room of, you know, of a thousand
0:54:56 people of kind of a type people and it’s a conformity factory.
0:55:02 So 85 to 90 percent of people by the end of the two years end up going
0:55:05 into traditional industries into finance and energy.
0:55:08 You know, my friend personally wrote an essay about transforming
0:55:11 health care went to McKinsey and, you know, I was on the team
0:55:15 that helped prescribe more opioids on their side that recently had to settle
0:55:17 lost it. So so you have this dynamic.
0:55:21 I think this happens at many layers throughout the country where based
0:55:25 on, you know, various fears that are ingrained in us by society, I think,
0:55:29 frankly, the gears of one of the negative gears of capitalism to just kind
0:55:32 of, you know, as John D. Rockefeller said, we need workers.
0:55:37 We don’t need thinkers, you know, that’s what a lot of our institutions do.
0:55:44 And this study, this professor, he surveyed white blue collar workers,
0:55:48 different socioeconomic classes, you know, every different professions,
0:55:51 you know, like like 30 different cohorts.
0:55:54 The most depressed group was these graduates 10 years out.
0:55:57 And again, the reason is because they go in with dreams.
0:56:00 They end up conforming and settling.
0:56:03 Their lifestyle gets to the point where they don’t have really flexibility
0:56:06 to take that stab, to take that dream.
0:56:09 They feel professionally unfulfilled, but trapped.
0:56:12 And then, you know, 10 years out, they really have a lot of regrets,
0:56:16 at least professionally, but that maybe bleeds into other areas.
0:56:22 And, you know, I generally feel like like grateful, honestly.
0:56:25 Like, like, in a weird way, my mom’s death was always what I’d feared
0:56:29 most in life, that happening, and in a way kind of cementing
0:56:34 the finiteness of life and and a mission into my head.
0:56:36 I feel really like grateful for.
0:56:40 And yeah, I think people not chasing their passions,
0:56:43 not fully self-actualizing themselves is a much bigger problem
0:56:46 than than too many people fall in their passions.
0:56:51 You also said that taking mushrooms was like one of the most impactful things.
0:56:54 Did you tell Cali your almost mushrooms story?
0:56:57 Yeah, listen to this.
0:57:01 So, you know, I have issues that I’m always working out.
0:57:02 I had some I had some trauma.
0:57:05 I was working out and I and I went to this.
0:57:10 I went to this meeting of this woman who she called herself a shaman,
0:57:14 was going to lead me along with my wife through a MDMA
0:57:17 or something like that therapy session.
0:57:20 I go to the dinner and the meet and greet and she starts saying things
0:57:23 like we need to give this medicine for free to everyone.
0:57:25 And I was like, yeah, but I’m paying like five grand to do this.
0:57:27 Can I have it for free?
0:57:28 She didn’t like that.
0:57:30 And then she was like she asked where I was from.
0:57:31 I said, Missouri.
0:57:34 And she goes, oh, fly over country.
0:57:37 And I was like, all right, that’s strike two.
0:57:40 And then I start asking her a little bit more.
0:57:41 And she starts talking about capitalism
0:57:45 and how it’s ruined medicine and capitalism is horrible and all this stuff.
0:57:47 I’m like, well, lady, again, I’m paying you five grand to be here.
0:57:50 And I was like, so what were you doing before this?
0:57:52 She goes, I used to work at Lehman Brothers.
0:57:55 And when it collapsed, I left and started doing this.
0:57:57 And I was like, I’m out, lady, I’m out.
0:57:59 And she and she texted me.
0:58:02 She texted me and she was like, I don’t think this is a good fit.
0:58:03 And I was like, I agree.
0:58:07 This is this is a round pig at a square hole.
0:58:08 This is not a good fit.
0:58:10 Didn’t you tell her you’re like, I can’t do drugs with you?
0:58:14 Yeah, I was like, look, I was already on the on the fence about taking drugs.
0:58:16 And if I’m going to take drugs and it could be with you.
0:58:20 And you said that taking psilocybin was was awesome.
0:58:22 Sean, have you ever done this stuff, by the way?
0:58:22 And would you ever do it?
0:58:25 I’ve only done it like recreationally, like 15 years ago.
0:58:27 I have never done it.
0:58:30 I don’t want to say I would never do it, but it’s never been something that’s called me.
0:58:33 But, you know, I hear these stories and I want to hear your story, Kelly,
0:58:38 because the people who advocate for are people I like for people I respect.
0:58:41 And there are people who they advocate for in such a strong way
0:58:46 that it does make me curious, like, wow, what a one of the things I’ve learned
0:58:48 in life is that some of the most valuable things are the things
0:58:51 you don’t know how to value, meaning you’ve never traveled.
0:58:53 So you don’t get the big deal about travel.
0:58:54 You’ve never done this.
0:58:56 You don’t understand what you’re missing out on.
0:58:58 And those are some of the most valuable things.
0:59:01 And when somebody is is stuck in all those mindsets, you just want to shake them.
0:59:04 And like, dude, you don’t know, trust me, like, whatever.
0:59:06 I don’t know if this is one of those things, but I’ve heard about it enough
0:59:08 where it’s made me curious.
0:59:09 Yeah, yeah.
0:59:11 So first, Sam, I think you made the right decision.
0:59:13 Set and setting is very important.
0:59:21 I think that encouragement of therapeutic psilocybin use
0:59:25 for anyone that feels called, Sean, I think you make a great for anyone
0:59:30 that feels called is the most important single thing we can do in America.
0:59:33 Period. I actually believe that.
0:59:37 I think we are truly losing our minds a bit in the country
0:59:40 through the all this change that’s happening.
0:59:44 The highest leverage area we can do work on is our brains.
0:59:48 And this isn’t everything,
0:59:54 but it is a blunt force, extremely powerful tool to help rewire our brains.
0:59:56 Yeah, let me let me let me give my experience.
0:59:58 So my mom dies.
1:00:01 I’m kind of at an existential moment on kind of thinking about, you know,
1:00:02 what I want to do.
1:00:04 Our company was cranking before COVID.
1:00:08 You had 100 employees was with struggling because the whole market was cut off.
1:00:12 And I, again, a conservative guy, never super stigmatized
1:00:15 if you never thought about these things.
1:00:17 Yeah, can you imagine you know, like 12 year old
1:00:20 you were in your Brooks Brothers case being like one day
1:00:21 you’re going to be advocating for psychedelics.
1:00:23 I still got the Brooks. No, I could have never.
1:00:25 I still got the sports coach, still got the Brooks Brothers.
1:00:28 I try to wear that when I talk about this,
1:00:30 because I think it’s a very important thing actually across the aisle.
1:00:31 Everyone needs to wake up to.
1:00:34 But and I do talk to a lot of Republicans about this or waking up.
1:00:39 But yeah, so a friend who is a scientist said,
1:00:45 let’s do this therapeutic session, blindfold, high dose music,
1:00:48 four hours, introspective alone.
1:00:53 And I’ll give a couple examples of what I saw.
1:00:55 So it’s really hard to describe, but I was working with my wife.
1:00:59 And, you know, we were running a startup stressful.
1:01:01 You know, we would quibble a lot.
1:01:04 And I saw myself kind of getting angry at her.
1:01:09 And then my brain like zoomed up and I saw the expanse of the whole like world.
1:01:10 Like it like zoomed out of the whole galaxy.
1:01:14 And I’m like, it just put this simple inside of my head.
1:01:19 Like, I’m so fucking stupid to get mad at my amazing wife about these stupid things
1:01:21 in the expanse of like how lucky I am.
1:01:22 It’s a simple insight.
1:01:25 We can all say that, like to be grateful that you shouldn’t throw at the small stuff.
1:01:30 I’ve I’m not perfect by any means, but I think about that like every hour,
1:01:34 like with her, like it’s totally it’s like a car crash,
1:01:37 like submitted to my head of how grateful and lucky I am with her.
1:01:40 How stupid it is to get like angry over small things.
1:01:43 Completely transformed my thought on that.
1:01:47 I saw my mom and she gave me a hug.
1:01:50 And I like had this idea that she still lived within me and that I could carry
1:01:54 her legacy forward by like working with my sister on the book and various,
1:01:59 you know, this mission to kind of try to carry her story forward.
1:02:02 I truly like have that imprinted in my head.
1:02:03 I’ve never been upset about my mom dying.
1:02:07 And I truly feel like viscerally that she lives inside us and lives inside this
1:02:10 mission and lives inside the book we wrote. Again, it’s a simple.
1:02:12 The best way to describe it is the neuroplasticity.
1:02:15 You can talk about a car crash or you can get in a car crash.
1:02:18 And it’s like when something really traumatic happens,
1:02:21 your brain like wires and it’s like deep rooted in your brain.
1:02:25 What it does is it it helps you kind of get out of the
1:02:30 trauma and thought processes and fears that we’re inevitably ingrained with
1:02:35 and helps cement in a really solid way.
1:02:40 Some of these potentially new frameworks that that sound
1:02:45 right, but are like have the seriousness of a long term thing.
1:02:47 And then the other thing I’d say, and I think a lot of people talk about this.
1:02:50 And again, Sean, it’s only I just share my story.
1:02:54 It’s only, you know, as you’re called, I think it is important to hear these stories.
1:02:58 I think it’s really dumb and kind of not correct to talk about as some kind of
1:03:03 like corporate or executive hack, because it’s much deeper than that.
1:03:07 But for me, it’s the most profound and important professional thing I’ve ever done.
1:03:11 I mean, like the whole kind of growing up at DC, trying to chase up the ladder,
1:03:15 go to the good schools, the HBS, you know, conformity, it definitely is like,
1:03:18 you know, definitely, I think consistently gives you this kind of like,
1:03:22 you know, idea of how these stupid games are playing just don’t matter.
1:03:27 And definitely solidified in my head, like hopefully some fearlessness
1:03:33 on like pushing, you know, a mission forward and it led to what I’m doing now.
1:03:36 And, you know, I’d like to think that’s ingrained in the company.
1:03:40 I, you know, from my perspective, having a mission that’s sincere,
1:03:44 that Justin and I have, and it’s been a differentiator in recruiting like-minded
1:03:46 people and customers and merchants.
1:03:48 It’s not a panacea for everything.
1:03:52 I think a lot of people get to this place through prayer, through meditation,
1:03:52 through other routes.
1:03:57 It’s not like a shortcut, but it definitely is a way brute force to get out
1:04:00 of your traps that are holding you back.
1:04:02 That’s pretty damn convincing, Sean.
1:04:06 Yeah, I think you, like to make an appointment.
1:04:09 Yeah, I think you’re going to have your busy next weekend.
1:04:11 I think you’re going to have to mark some time off, I don’t know, man.
1:04:15 That sounds, when I hear that, I think blindfolded with headphones on.
1:04:17 I find that to be incredibly intimidating.
1:04:20 I find I want the, I want the result.
1:04:21 I don’t know if I can go through that.
1:04:23 Did you do it one time or have you done it more since?
1:04:25 Is it like a regular thing?
1:04:29 Yeah, I think it’s like giving childbirth that, you know, it was a
1:04:31 profound experience, so I want to do right away again.
1:04:35 It’s a really, but I’ve done it a couple more times.
1:04:41 I mean, to be totally honest, Sam, it’s all about, I will promise you this.
1:04:46 And frankly, this is my perspective, but if anyone feels called, if you are
1:04:50 called and you’re doing it in a good setting without, you know,
1:04:54 somebody ranting about politics to you before and where you feel safe and you
1:04:58 walk towards the, and this is what the clinical research says, quite frankly,
1:05:02 but if you walk towards your fears, if you go into it a way to explore and
1:05:07 walk towards, you know, your, your, your issues, whatever that means to you.
1:05:11 It’s going to be, I’ve never personally met someone that’s done it in a
1:05:13 responsible therapeutic way, who hasn’t said it’s been the most impactful
1:05:14 experience of their lives.
1:05:17 I actually don’t know anyone that hasn’t said that.
1:05:20 It’s not like a club or anything, but it truly is.
1:05:21 If you’re called to do it.
1:05:23 I would say this to people.
1:05:26 If this resonates, I would try to do it like urgently.
1:05:31 Like, like, I think your life is really like many people I know.
1:05:33 And for me, it’s like kind of before and after.
1:05:36 Is this legal?
1:05:39 Like, can you Google like, like Silicillum Retreat near me?
1:05:40 Yeah, yeah.
1:05:46 So I, I, I did it in a, this legal in some countries.
1:05:52 There’s a phase three FDA approval in the United States to make it legal,
1:05:54 which we’re just, I’m actually advocating a lot on too.
1:05:56 I think it fits into the whole root cause health thing that we’re trying to
1:05:59 push forward their surreligious exemptions.
1:06:03 There’s a state by state, um, a decriminalization.
1:06:04 So I’m not going to give legal advice.
1:06:11 I would, I would urge people to find a responsible legal, uh, way, uh, to do it
1:06:14 therapeutically in a, in a trusted safe setting.
1:06:21 Um, and, um, yeah, in Sam, it’s, it’s just, it’s just about what, when
1:06:25 ever you, you feel called, but, uh, but it’s four hours.
1:06:29 It’s exploring your, you know, your, uh, it was holding us all back.
1:06:29 Right.
1:06:31 There’s different narratives and stuff.
1:06:33 I mean, I think you guys are amazing how openly you can talk about
1:06:35 kind of your mental models and stuff.
1:06:37 It’s just a way to like zoom out and re-explore those.
1:06:39 Yeah.
1:06:40 I think it’s awesome.
1:06:41 I’m totally in favor of it.
1:06:44 I just, it’s not, I’m, I’m a little intimidated still.
1:06:48 Well, one of my favorite phrases is, uh, when the student is ready, the
1:06:50 teacher appears and I think, you know, you’re saying when you’re called to
1:06:54 something, I’ve always felt this way, which is that, um, things happen
1:06:58 at the right time and you, you know, intuitively you’ll, you’ll know when
1:07:01 the right time is for certain things or if it’s for you, there’s a great
1:07:05 YouTube video I watched of Tim Ferriss talking about, um, psychedelics.
1:07:08 Tim Ferriss is a big advocate for psychedelics.
1:07:11 I think he has a nonprofit that he started that’s funding research.
1:07:15 But what I liked about his video was that he wasn’t trying to convince you
1:07:15 at all to do it.
1:07:18 In fact, he started by essentially convincing you all the reasons you
1:07:24 shouldn’t do it, um, and was very measured and responsible in the way
1:07:24 that he talked about it.
1:07:28 So if anybody’s curious, if this made you curious, I would watch that video
1:07:30 because I thought that was very helpful in framing it.
1:07:32 I won’t try to summarize his points because I thought he did a good job,
1:07:35 but just try to Google or YouTube for, uh, for Tim Ferriss talking about it.
1:07:36 It’s like a five minute clip or something.
1:07:38 I completely agree with that.
1:07:41 It’s not like an endorsement, but it is criminal.
1:07:44 And I think one of the biggest issues in the country that we don’t make
1:07:45 this tool available.
1:07:49 Just last week, uh, the FDA actually threw a wrench into the
1:07:51 approval process for MDMA.
1:07:55 Um, again, like Justin and I see Trumette as an advocacy organization.
1:07:58 We’re, we’re lobbying and recover relationships with a hundred members of
1:07:59 Congress, both sides of the aisle.
1:08:02 We’re actually working with presidential candidates too.
1:08:05 And, and, and, uh, members of Congress to brief them about this issue.
1:08:11 The FDA does not like these treatments because instead of long term kind
1:08:15 of numbing your symptoms, it actually does help you get into, you know,
1:08:18 the cause and unpacking the trauma that we all have and the mental
1:08:19 models that we all have.
1:08:22 So actually, like, you know, this gets into what we were talking about earlier.
1:08:25 Like these type of, I consider this a root cause treatment, right?
1:08:29 Anything that gets to the root with mental health, it’s obviously the,
1:08:32 the mental models holding us back with metabolic conditions.
1:08:34 It’s, it’s food and lifestyle habits.
1:08:37 What’s interesting is, is, you know, when you first started talking about this,
1:08:40 I was almost chuckling a little bit to myself, like, oh, uh, you know,
1:08:43 first he was kind of railing against prescribing a drug to solve the problem.
1:08:45 And then here he’s saying the drug solves the problem for me.
1:08:47 Or it, it was a great intervention.
1:08:50 But what actually what you’re saying is that in both cases,
1:08:51 it’s the cleaning of the fish tank.
1:08:54 So in the first case that the cleaning, the thing that was making
1:08:55 you sick was the food.
1:08:57 And the second case, the thing that was making you sick in the head was
1:09:00 your own story and perspective on things.
1:09:04 And this was a way to change the narrative in your head, the perspective
1:09:05 in the story that you were telling yourself every day.
1:09:08 So I think in both cases, you’re actually advocating for cleaning the tank.
1:09:09 Yeah.
1:09:12 It is my wife and Justin and people that know me will tell you, I have a long,
1:09:14 I have a long way to go.
1:09:16 Am I the biggest room in my house is the room for improvement.
1:09:20 But like, for me, this, you know, what I did, what a bumper.
1:09:21 I love that.
1:09:24 What I did this a couple of times and I haven’t done it a long time,
1:09:30 Sean, because it just, it jams for me of like, it’s the basics.
1:09:35 It’s like, be a good person, try to exercise, eat healthy, meditate, you know,
1:09:38 like, like, like the key to life is that like, that was a big thing for me.
1:09:43 It’s just like having the Nirvana experience of what the world is with this is one thing.
1:09:48 But like the implementation for me is like, so that was my message from it.
1:09:50 And I think it’s like, it was a good message for me.
1:09:53 It’s like, I think that’s what most people that do this in a therapeutic way get.
1:09:55 It’s like, I need to be a better person.
1:09:56 Things are connected.
1:10:00 So yeah, it’s not like, like you take it and it’s a panacea.
1:10:01 It’s like, it’s like a tool.
1:10:07 It is a like nuclear weapon, like blood force instrument to like jam some truths.
1:10:12 And it is, you know, not to get too trippy, but it is a natural substance.
1:10:17 You know, the oldest living organism that we basically derived from this fungus.
1:10:20 So, you know, yeah, that’s a good question.
1:10:26 But it’s not to me, it’s not anti pharma, pro pharma.
1:10:29 It’s what is a root cause cure?
1:10:34 What actually helps us, you know, get to the get to the problem.
1:10:41 And I think most modalities that help us actually cure things are are pushed back
1:10:47 against and and drugs that are basically help numb and are recurring are incentivized.
1:10:53 Do you ever take it like just have fun, like recreationally or only medicinally?
1:10:55 I mean, I’ve taken it recreationally.
1:10:56 I thought it was awesome.
1:10:58 Yeah, I didn’t high, high level.
1:11:02 I’d say like it’s impossible to even like articulate.
1:11:07 And like, I don’t have the English words to articulate how different like a like taking
1:11:10 something at a concert is versus the therapeutic experience.
1:11:11 It’s like it’s like a different stratosphere.
1:11:15 Like I truly think if people are called for and do it a therapeutic high dose way,
1:11:19 it’s going to be one of the most impactful experiences of their lives.
1:11:24 So it’s I just say it’s very, very, very different, the set and setting and dose.
1:11:31 But high level, I think when you just compare the science on things like alcohol
1:11:35 and other drugs that we take versus versus what these drugs do,
1:11:38 which are actually brain regenerative in many ways and very low side effects.
1:11:43 I think even how we think about recreational drug use is, you know, our government,
1:11:47 you know, we prescribe 15 percent of high schoolers, basically meth, you know,
1:11:50 Adderall, which is which is literally like one molecule away from meth.
1:11:54 We, you know, caffeine is pretty powerful, alcohol is very harmful.
1:11:58 You know, I think we totally have a backwards on what’s appropriate
1:12:00 for recreational use and I think it’s I think it’s just fine.
1:12:03 Personally, just from a medical perspective,
1:12:06 from a scientific leadership perspective, even from like a spiritual perspective,
1:12:10 it’s like, you know, people taking low doses of psychedelics and talking about
1:12:11 their feelings, talking about their lives, getting deep.
1:12:16 I mean, it’s kind of like, where did this like deep?
1:12:19 Where did like I was watching this thing from the 80s
1:12:22 where they were talking about MDMA and it’s like, too many people are going
1:12:25 dancing and feeling together and loving to each other.
1:12:29 It’s like, it’s like, it’s like, it’s like, watch like that fear.
1:12:32 My brain gets like, is that a bad thing?
1:12:34 Like, and then there’s like very little side effects.
1:12:37 So on the end, you make frog commercials.
1:12:40 This is like, this is your brain on drugs and it’s just a flower.
1:12:41 It’s nice.
1:12:43 It’s there’s no problem with it.
1:12:45 You know, I wanted to say thank you for coming on.
1:12:49 I appreciate your kind of your openness and I don’t know,
1:12:51 your contrarian opinions, because I’ll be honest with you.
1:12:54 A lot of times when you were talking, I was thinking,
1:12:58 is this a conspiracy theory or is this a fact?
1:13:01 At the same time, I was thinking, he sounds crazy,
1:13:05 but my eyes verify what he’s saying.
1:13:09 Meaning I look at the food where we eat and we’re sold.
1:13:11 I look at the people around me.
1:13:15 I look at the health conditions and you’re not wrong about that.
1:13:17 And so I thought this is one of the more interesting episodes.
1:13:21 It’s one of the few episodes I would say is an important episode.
1:13:24 Like we do a lot of fun episodes, interesting episodes,
1:13:26 but this is one of the few that I could say is important.
1:13:29 And yeah, I just appreciate you coming on, man.
1:13:30 This is this is a good time.
1:13:31 I appreciate you guys so much.
1:13:34 And my big pitch in anyone listening that resonates,
1:13:36 there’s a lot of economic opportunity
1:13:38 if you agree with this thesis, because it has to change.
1:13:40 And we need more entrepreneurs,
1:13:42 need more people thinking about changing health perspectives,
1:13:44 because it has to move in that direction.
1:13:46 I appreciate you guys so much.
1:13:50 List of the podcast every episode and just awesome to talk shop with you guys.
1:13:52 You’re the man. We appreciate you. Thank you.
1:13:53 All right. That’s the pod.
1:13:56 I feel like I can rule the world.
1:14:02 I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like the days on the road.
1:14:04 Let’s travel never looking back.
1:14:05 – Bye.

0:00:03 So what I would do if I was in this niche is I would say,
0:00:06 “Hey, just tell me the date that we can hold the funeral
0:00:08 for all the money that’s being murdered from you doing this.”
0:00:12 So instead, what I’m going to do for you is.
0:00:14 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:00:17 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:00:19 ♪ I put my all in it like the days off ♪
0:00:20 ♪ On the road let’s travel ♪
0:00:22 – Today I’m talking to Sabri Subi.
0:00:24 He is kind of like the Australian Gary Vee.
0:00:25 He’s got a marketing agency.
0:00:27 He’s on Shark Tank Australia.
0:00:28 He’s a fun guy.
0:00:29 I wanted a brainstorm with him.
0:00:31 Businesses that he would start today.
0:00:35 So next 18 months, where is the opportunity that he sees?
0:00:37 If you’re starting from scratch, you got no resources,
0:00:39 maybe no experience or capital to start with,
0:00:41 how would he still make it?
0:00:43 ‘Cause this is a guy who took his laptop
0:00:44 and basically built one of Australia’s biggest
0:00:47 growth agencies and I wanted to hear what he would do today.
0:00:49 So we brainstormed ideas and then at the end,
0:00:51 we talked about some of his sales philosophies
0:00:53 ’cause he’s a very good sales guy
0:00:55 and also some of his life philosophies.
0:00:58 How he lives his life a little bit differently than most.
0:01:01 So enjoy this episode with Sabri Subi.
0:01:03 What are some ideas or business ideas
0:01:04 that you are excited about right now?
0:01:07 So trends that you’re seeing, opportunities that you see,
0:01:09 if you weren’t doing what you’re doing right now,
0:01:11 what things would you be interested in?
0:01:13 What businesses would you go create?
0:01:17 – So I’ve got a few and I’ll start from like,
0:01:18 I’ll lead up to the best one
0:01:21 when I think the best opportunities are, right?
0:01:23 So I would say that the first thing
0:01:26 that would be a very, very compelling offer
0:01:29 is when you’re running a business
0:01:31 and you start with one traffic channel, right?
0:01:33 And you kind of start with one traffic channel,
0:01:35 you make an offer, you get something working.
0:01:38 It might be Google ads, it might be Twitter ads,
0:01:41 it might be, TikTok, it doesn’t matter what it is.
0:01:44 You run with one channel, you see some success
0:01:46 and then you’ve got sales coming in,
0:01:49 customers are coming in and like a lot of businesses,
0:01:51 there’s always so much more opportunities
0:01:54 that are flying by you and it seems like the bigger
0:01:56 that you get and the more success that you have,
0:01:59 the more illustrious that these opportunities are.
0:02:03 And the challenge is that focus is the main thing
0:02:05 when what I have found when running businesses
0:02:08 because I had shiny object syndrome really, really badly
0:02:10 in the beginning of my career
0:02:12 and that’s where I had these ups and downs
0:02:14 and I made money and then I lost all my money
0:02:15 and then I had to do everything again.
0:02:17 And it was all because I lacked focus
0:02:20 and I was just looking for the next new sexy sales channel,
0:02:22 the next new business model.
0:02:25 And so that’s something that I see for a lot of businesses
0:02:27 and they know that they need to focus on one thing.
0:02:30 So they focus on one traffic channel
0:02:31 but as a result of that,
0:02:34 they also then say no to a lot of opportunities.
0:02:38 So I think that a very good opportunity right now
0:02:41 is to reach out to businesses
0:02:44 that are running ads on a platform,
0:02:45 whether it be Google and say,
0:02:47 “Hey, you got your funnel here, it’s all dialed in,
0:02:48 it’s obviously working,
0:02:51 but I noticed that you’re not running any Facebook ads.”
0:02:51 Right?
0:02:54 And that’s always because they need a team,
0:02:56 they need expertise, they need to do something
0:02:58 or they tried it and it didn’t work
0:03:00 ’cause they tried to use the same funnel
0:03:02 they were using on Google ads, on Facebook,
0:03:04 from hot traffic to cold traffic and it didn’t work.
0:03:07 And you just say, “Look, I’m gonna do everything for you,
0:03:10 don’t pay me a cent, I’m gonna build the funnel,
0:03:13 I’m gonna run the ads, I’m gonna show you that this works
0:03:16 and I just want a percentage of the sales.”
0:03:16 Right?
0:03:17 From this traffic channel.
0:03:20 There’s no risk and it’s only gonna result
0:03:22 in something that’s actually proven.
0:03:25 And I think there’s so many platforms that you can do that with,
0:03:27 there’s a lot of people that are like really all-in
0:03:29 on Facebook ads right now, right?
0:03:30 And Meta ads.
0:03:32 And they’re kind of waiting to see
0:03:34 what happens with TikTok and the ban
0:03:35 and they’re not really running that yet,
0:03:38 where you can come to those people and be like,
0:03:40 “Awesome, what we’re gonna do is,
0:03:43 we are going to run TikTok as a platform for you, right?
0:03:44 We’re gonna build the funnel
0:03:46 ’cause what a lot of people don’t understand
0:03:48 is there’s different compliance for TikTok and Facebook.
0:03:50 So we’re gonna build all of that for you,
0:03:51 we’re gonna run the ads, we’re gonna do everything,
0:03:53 you’re not doing it right now.
0:03:56 And we just want 10% overwrite and we’ll do everything.
0:03:57 – Nice.
0:03:59 And so what do you think, what do you call that,
0:04:04 that pitch where it’s not, like it’s like a reverse sell,
0:04:06 basically, or you’re, it’s a killer offer
0:04:07 where you’re offering them something
0:04:10 that they’d be a fool to say no to, right?
0:04:11 It’s a no-brainer.
0:04:12 Do you have a phrase for that?
0:04:13 ‘Cause I know you’re good with coining-
0:04:15 – Yeah, I call it the Godfather offer, right?
0:04:17 So it’s like making like, you know,
0:04:20 your prospects an offer that they simply can’t refuse.
0:04:24 And when I think back now to like all of the roles
0:04:26 that I had, that, you know,
0:04:27 the companies were crushing it,
0:04:29 they were growing very, very quickly,
0:04:32 they were all had a very, very strong offer.
0:04:35 Like that was the one thing that was the throughput
0:04:36 to all of that.
0:04:39 – Marketing used to be fun.
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0:04:42 the leads were easier to capture.
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0:04:48 and next level results.
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0:05:08 So put the fun back in your marketing funnel with HubSpot.
0:05:11 Visit hubspot.com to get started for free.
0:05:15 – We had the same thing happen in e-commerce.
0:05:18 A lot of stores are on Shopify that are not on Amazon.
0:05:21 And what you can do is you can go to every Shopify store
0:05:23 that’s not on Amazon and a very simple pitch,
0:05:26 a very kind of rinse and repeat pitch.
0:05:29 You basically would search for a Shopify store
0:05:31 above X in traffic,
0:05:32 which you can go use similar web
0:05:34 or whatever to the Chrome extension,
0:05:35 we’ll just tell you that.
0:05:38 And you say, great, you reach out to them cold.
0:05:41 We can always get the business owners email and you say,
0:05:43 hey, notice you’re not on Amazon right now,
0:05:46 probably because it’s a big lift.
0:05:47 It’s kind of operationally intensive.
0:05:50 You don’t know where to do, blah, blah, blah.
0:05:51 But I did a little research
0:05:54 and three of your competitors are on Amazon.
0:05:55 There’s another tool that will tell you
0:05:56 how much somebody’s selling.
0:05:59 So you say, your competitors are doing $1 million a month
0:06:00 on Amazon right now.
0:06:02 And actually there’s low competitiveness
0:06:03 for this key word.
0:06:06 I think you’re leaving X dollars on the table.
0:06:08 It’ll take some time to ramp up,
0:06:10 but I can do that for you.
0:06:12 Leave the items in your warehouse.
0:06:13 You don’t even need to ship it to Amazon yet.
0:06:15 We could start simple and then we can get more complicated
0:06:17 once it starts to show results.
0:06:21 And you could pick up 5K a month, 10K a month clients.
0:06:25 And 10, 5K a month clients is 50,000 a month
0:06:28 that really one person who understands Amazon FBA could do.
0:06:31 And to understand Amazon FBA is like,
0:06:35 you’re four months away from being good enough
0:06:37 to operate this for one store.
0:06:38 And then you do it for two stores.
0:06:40 By the time you do it for two stores, you’ll be able
0:06:41 to do it for 10.
0:06:42 You’ll just have to hire a couple people.
0:06:45 And so I think that that’s another example
0:06:47 of people just find a group,
0:06:50 find a class of businesses that are not on a channel
0:06:52 and make them a custom killer offer,
0:06:56 as you call it, a Godfather offer to do business with you.
0:06:57 – Exactly.
0:06:59 Yeah, I think that that is something
0:07:03 that is not a lot of people are talking about.
0:07:05 And it is a very nice shoeing.
0:07:09 You’re already being able to identify a group of people
0:07:10 that would be a perfect candidate
0:07:14 for what it is that you’ve got that have money, right?
0:07:15 But they don’t have time.
0:07:16 And they don’t have the expertise in that channel
0:07:19 and just bringing that to them and making it a very recent.
0:07:21 – The mistake here is people try to do this for podcasters.
0:07:23 They’re like, hey, you should be posting clips
0:07:25 or you should do this.
0:07:26 I’ll do it for you.
0:07:28 And then what they forget is that most podcasters
0:07:30 don’t have any money or they don’t have enough,
0:07:31 they don’t make enough money on a podcast
0:07:32 to be able to do this.
0:07:34 And so you want to go fish in a pond
0:07:37 where something like e-commerce works
0:07:39 ’cause if an e-commerce store is still in business
0:07:41 three years later, it’s making money.
0:07:43 And for them, it’s very easy to say
0:07:45 why they should do this new channel
0:07:47 because it will also generate money right away.
0:07:50 You can make a strong case for why Amazon is worth it
0:07:52 ’cause it’ll generate revenue from day one.
0:07:55 Whereas posting your podcast clips on TikTok
0:07:57 is kind of silly because you’re not necessarily
0:08:00 gonna get money or even podcast subscribers from it.
0:08:02 – Yeah, it’s harder to justify the sale, right?
0:08:04 Like if you’re giving someone an ROI,
0:08:06 it’s a much easier sale than just like,
0:08:10 here’s another expense just to get clips chopped up for you.
0:08:12 And you already don’t have no money.
0:08:12 (laughing)
0:08:14 All right, what’s idea two?
0:08:16 – So idea number two is I think this would probably be
0:08:20 the place that I would start if I didn’t have any skills.
0:08:23 And so one thing that’s present right now
0:08:26 is that CPMs on Facebook are through the roof.
0:08:29 And there’s only pretty much one certainty
0:08:30 other than death and taxes.
0:08:33 And that is that the cost to advertise next year
0:08:35 is gonna be more expensive than this year.
0:08:36 And it’s gonna keep going up
0:08:38 and it’s gonna keep going up.
0:08:40 And so what’s happening right now
0:08:42 is a lot of these SaaS businesses
0:08:45 that have these CACs that are very high,
0:08:46 they’re really feeling the pinch
0:08:48 and their payback period’s gone from six months
0:08:51 to 12 months to 18 months, right?
0:08:54 I think I read a report the other day about Salesforce
0:08:57 and their payback period is something crazy now,
0:09:00 like 24 months or something, or even longer than that.
0:09:01 – Yes, two or three years I think it was.
0:09:02 – Two or three years, right?
0:09:05 And so that is going to continue,
0:09:07 people are gonna continue to feel that pinch.
0:09:11 So I think that as long as that continues to happen,
0:09:13 there is gonna be an arbitrage with people
0:09:15 that can actually deliver people with customers
0:09:16 with a lower CAC.
0:09:19 And so a great way to do that
0:09:20 is that a lot of these businesses,
0:09:23 whether it’s HubSpot or GoHighLevel,
0:09:25 ClickFunnels, Pyros, all of these guys,
0:09:30 they offer insane affiliate commissions, right?
0:09:34 I believe HubSpot’s affiliate commission is 40%,
0:09:36 which is just astronomically high.
0:09:38 So what I would do is–
0:09:40 – I’ll put that in dollar terms roughly.
0:09:43 What do you think that means to deliver a customer?
0:09:45 So this is, the HubSpot affiliate
0:09:47 is basically the bottom tier of it,
0:09:51 it says is 30% recurring up to one year.
0:09:56 And so I don’t know what the average price point is for this,
0:09:58 but–
0:10:00 – What do you see on the pricing page?
0:10:02 – Okay, marketing hub is $800 a month,
0:10:04 marketing enterprise hub is $3,600 a month.
0:10:06 So let’s just pick the 800, right?
0:10:10 And then we’re saying that they pay you over the year,
0:10:11 you get 30% of that.
0:10:13 So that’s three grand, right?
0:10:16 Is basically what you’re gonna make for not doing a lot.
0:10:19 – Per customer.
0:10:21 Per customer, without having to operate
0:10:22 and maintain that customer,
0:10:23 you’ve offloaded the rest of that
0:10:25 to the actual company themselves.
0:10:28 – Yeah, and there’s some that are even more lucrative
0:10:29 than that, right?
0:10:30 So if you look at Hyros,
0:10:32 they say that they pay a minimum of $1,000
0:10:35 and up to $15,000 for a customer.
0:10:38 And there’s countless of these guys.
0:10:40 So what I would do if I was in this niche
0:10:42 is I would pick one niche.
0:10:44 Let’s just say it’s chiropractors.
0:10:46 And I would build out a full funnel
0:10:48 that I know converts for that niche.
0:10:51 With an offer, the opt-in, the email flows and everything,
0:10:53 I would then build a list of people
0:10:55 in that it for all chiropractors
0:10:58 in whatever the geography is that you want to service.
0:10:59 You can do this on Upwork,
0:11:00 you can do this with BuiltWidth,
0:11:01 you can do it with a whole bunch of them.
0:11:04 And then I would run a campaign where I outreach
0:11:06 to these people or I would cold call these people.
0:11:08 And I would say, hey,
0:11:10 I can see that you’re running ads right now,
0:11:13 but you’re sending them to your homepage, right?
0:11:15 Just tell me the date that we can hold the funeral
0:11:18 for all the money that’s being murdered from you doing this.
0:11:21 So instead, what I’m gonna do for you
0:11:24 is I’ve already built you a funnel and here it is, right?
0:11:25 You get the email flows,
0:11:27 you get the landing page, the offer,
0:11:29 everything like that, the text messages.
0:11:30 You don’t need to pay me nothing for it.
0:11:32 I usually charge $5,000.
0:11:35 All that I ask is that you sign up through this commission,
0:11:37 through this affiliate link in order to sign up
0:11:41 and get this funnel through HubSpot for free, right?
0:11:44 Of course I have to pay there and then I get my kickback.
0:11:47 And that is something where a lot of agencies
0:11:50 that service chiropractors or dogwashers
0:11:52 or it doesn’t matter the niche,
0:11:54 these people are actually charging for that.
0:11:56 So if you’re able to go out there
0:11:57 and actually just offer people
0:11:59 or the same thing with high roast, right?
0:12:01 It’s like their guarantee is like the guarantee
0:12:05 to give you an uplift of 15 to 20% in revenue from that.
0:12:08 Build a list on built with of all Shopify stores,
0:12:10 cross-reference the ones that are running Facebook ads
0:12:12 that have the Facebook ads pixel on there.
0:12:15 And I will guarantee to increase the revenue track
0:12:16 from your ads by 20%.
0:12:17 – Interesting, okay, so I thought you,
0:12:20 I didn’t understand the genius of your idea here.
0:12:22 So what you were saying, I thought you were just saying,
0:12:25 hey, HubSpot pays at affiliate commission,
0:12:27 become a HubSpot affiliate, run traffic
0:12:29 to get people to sign up for HubSpot.
0:12:30 But no, no, no, you had a two-step system.
0:12:32 You were saying, find a bunch of people
0:12:36 that if they were sophisticated in their funnel
0:12:38 would have enough leads where they would need
0:12:38 to use HubSpot.
0:12:40 So you’re like, let me just do,
0:12:43 create a free turnkey funnel for chiropractors,
0:12:45 then go to the chiropractor and have them
0:12:47 just give that to them and they’re like, wow, thanks,
0:12:48 really, what’s the catch?
0:12:50 And you’re like, oh, the only catch is that
0:12:51 these leads need to live somewhere,
0:12:53 they should live in HubSpot, use my affiliate link
0:12:55 when you sign up, when you go ahead
0:12:56 and make that official there.
0:13:00 And so that is how you would generate
0:13:02 a higher volume of customers for these SaaS products
0:13:05 by giving away the thing to the end user
0:13:06 who needs to use it.
0:13:07 – Correct.
0:13:08 – Okay, smart.
0:13:09 All right, cool, I like it.
0:13:10 Give me another one, give me a different one.
0:13:13 Is there one that you have that’s not as internet marketing?
0:13:17 – Well, I do, they are pretty much all kind of
0:13:18 in that internet marketing niche.
0:13:21 Another one that I think, I’ll hit you with two more.
0:13:24 So the next one that I would do is
0:13:27 there are 400 million small businesses in the world, right?
0:13:29 There’s 60 million in America,
0:13:31 there’s five million in the UK,
0:13:32 there’s two million in Australia.
0:13:36 And as everyone moves online,
0:13:39 and there’s people all over at all different time zones
0:13:40 that want to get in contact with these business,
0:13:43 a lot of these businesses have a Google My Business listing,
0:13:44 right, a Google page with their reviews
0:13:46 and all of those kind of things.
0:13:50 And the thing that very, very few of these people
0:13:51 offer is live chat.
0:13:54 So I would offer live chat as a service.
0:13:58 And it was just me and I was trying to start a side hustle,
0:13:59 you know what I mean?
0:14:00 I could do it after hours,
0:14:04 whereas where a lot of people don’t have the manpower
0:14:06 to offer support after hours,
0:14:08 or to be able to field inquiries.
0:14:10 And again, it would be free.
0:14:12 I would say, hey, I’m gonna do this for you, no charge.
0:14:15 So I don’t need to try and convince these people to do it.
0:14:18 Right, a compelling offer is infinitely more powerful
0:14:19 than a convincing argument.
0:14:21 So I do not want to get into a convincing argument
0:14:23 over the phone that they should do this
0:14:25 and they should pay me money to do this.
0:14:27 I would say, cool.
0:14:30 I know that this can increase your sales by 10%,
0:14:32 because I can look at your Google My Business listing
0:14:34 and say that you gain so much traffic after hours
0:14:35 that you guys aren’t open,
0:14:36 when no one can get in contact with you.
0:14:38 I’m gonna field those leads.
0:14:39 I’m gonna nurture those leads.
0:14:41 I’m gonna then send them to your sales team
0:14:44 or even close some of them for you through chat.
0:14:46 And I want a 20% commission as a result of that.
0:14:49 I would start it as myself until I got it going
0:14:51 and then I’d hire some people in the Philippines
0:14:54 or wherever it might be to actually service that.
0:14:56 And I think that that is something that,
0:14:57 for people that are running ads
0:14:59 or that already rank on Google,
0:15:01 is just a nice little shoehorn.
0:15:03 It just fits.
0:15:05 – Okay, I like it.
0:15:06 What would you target?
0:15:09 So when you’re, let’s say you were at the beginning
0:15:11 and you’re trying to build up,
0:15:14 are you trying to make these into $20 million companies?
0:15:17 Are you trying to get to $1,000 a month
0:15:18 or trying to replace a job?
0:15:20 What’s your mindset if you were starting
0:15:22 from the beginning here and you’re thinking
0:15:24 about one of these kind of hustler ideas
0:15:26 where you’re gonna be doing the internet marketing
0:15:27 for somebody, what would be your goal
0:15:28 or your approach to that,
0:15:30 to get to that first milestone?
0:15:31 How do you think about that?
0:15:33 – I can tell you how I thought about it.
0:15:35 And at the beginning it was like,
0:15:37 just operation, don’t be broke, right?
0:15:39 Like you are broke right now
0:15:41 and you need not to be broke.
0:15:44 So it wasn’t like, I had this big elaborate vision
0:15:46 of having all these team members
0:15:48 and multiple offices in a book.
0:15:49 No, none of that.
0:15:52 It was just like, you need to not be broke, right?
0:15:56 So what I look for is people like what I call customers
0:15:57 that have a bleeding neck, right?
0:16:00 The neck is bleeding and they need an immediate solution
0:16:02 to solve that problem.
0:16:05 And so I like to try to get as close to like the revenue
0:16:08 producing activities for business as possible
0:16:09 because that’s the oxygen, right?
0:16:11 That’s the blood of a business.
0:16:14 And I think that the way that I would think
0:16:18 about it straight away is first replacing my income
0:16:20 if it was just started as a side hustle.
0:16:22 And everyone kind of has this magical number
0:16:25 of like 10K per month that they want to get to per month.
0:16:28 And I think that going through this route
0:16:31 is a way to very, very clearly get there.
0:16:34 But the other lens that I like to look at it for
0:16:38 is like, what other skills that I’m going to need to possess
0:16:42 in order to make this business get to $10,000 per month?
0:16:45 And what are the half-life of those skills, right?
0:16:47 Am I going to be learning just Facebook ads
0:16:49 that what I know right now with Facebook ads
0:16:52 is going to be infinitely different in the next three years?
0:16:56 And so the half-life of those skills is probably 36 months
0:16:58 and then I’ve lost those skills
0:17:00 and then they don’t compound for me.
0:17:01 So then I would be looking at it is like,
0:17:04 what are the skills that I’m going to acquire
0:17:07 that this might be a little dirty down side hustle
0:17:11 at 10K per month, but I can then use those skills
0:17:14 and build something that is really big further down the line
0:17:15 and it’s going to serve me.
0:17:19 Which will bring me to the last thing, right?
0:17:22 Which I think that this is the best business opportunity
0:17:26 right now for people that want to get started by none.
0:17:29 So the idea that I want to speak to you about
0:17:33 is something that you need no money to begin with, right?
0:17:35 You don’t need to show your face.
0:17:37 You don’t even need to use your voice.
0:17:40 There’s nothing about it at all that you need.
0:17:43 And it is a market that is completely exploding
0:17:45 and it is a way that you can earn
0:17:48 at a bare minimum $10,000 per month.
0:17:50 And there’s proof of people making
0:17:52 100, 200 grand a month of this.
0:17:53 Do I have your interest?
0:17:55 – You have my interest, you have my attention.
0:18:00 – So we all know the TikTok shop is exploding right now, right?
0:18:02 And what we’re also seeing right now
0:18:06 is that obviously the whole war between these platforms
0:18:09 is now YouTube shopping is about to have a second crack
0:18:11 at it and they’ve just launched their thing.
0:18:13 And so what TikTok shop is,
0:18:15 if anybody that doesn’t know it,
0:18:17 TikTok shop launched their platform
0:18:20 which allows brands to sign up to be,
0:18:23 to offer affiliates and to have people sell their products
0:18:24 with a product tag on it.
0:18:27 And then they get a percentage of whatever sales
0:18:29 that they drive towards that business.
0:18:31 And this thing is exploding.
0:18:33 Like social commerce under that umbrella
0:18:35 is completely exploding.
0:18:39 And we’re kind of in a war right now for like Gen Zs
0:18:40 and these younger generations.
0:18:42 Like everyone wants to get in on these guys
0:18:43 ’cause they know, right?
0:18:45 They don’t focus on them now.
0:18:47 They’re gonna be dinosaurs in the next five years.
0:18:52 So what you wanna do is you can use a website
0:18:56 like Callo Data or there’s another one called Fast Moss
0:18:59 and you can go through and you can find
0:19:02 the best selling products on TikTok shop.
0:19:05 And then they will tell you,
0:19:07 not only they’ll show you exactly the revenue
0:19:08 that these products are doing,
0:19:11 they’ll show you the TikTok videos and the reels
0:19:14 that people are using to actually sell these things.
0:19:16 Now you might be thinking right now,
0:19:18 I can hear them, I can hear the objections
0:19:19 coming out of the back of the crowd.
0:19:22 I don’t wanna show myself, I’m not a content creator.
0:19:24 Well, this is where the magic happens, right?
0:19:26 You don’t need to do none of that.
0:19:29 So what you can do is a lot of the people
0:19:32 that are selling the most through these platforms
0:19:35 is they’re using 11 labs, right?
0:19:36 Cool, 20 bucks a month.
0:19:38 We’re good to go on that bad boy.
0:19:41 And you can start to look at the scripts
0:19:42 on something like Callo Data
0:19:44 and have a look at what are they writing in them,
0:19:48 get them transcribed, figure out what’s making the ones
0:19:50 sell the most, what’s one making the most views,
0:19:52 reverse engineer that.
0:19:55 Then you can plug that into something like 11 labs.
0:19:57 It will give you the voiceover for it.
0:19:59 And then you can use mid-journey
0:20:02 or whatever free AI generation tool
0:20:04 to create the images for that.
0:20:07 And then throw all of that into CapCut
0:20:09 and away you go and the boys are cooking, right?
0:20:11 The boys are girls and cooking if you do that.
0:20:13 And you might be thinking, yeah, that sounds okay.
0:20:16 Like, there are people printing with this.
0:20:19 There are kids out there that used to work in Chipotle
0:20:22 that are earning 50 grand a month doing this.
0:20:25 And it’s not by doing a thousand of them, right?
0:20:28 It’s about doing one a day, right?
0:20:29 What’s an example?
0:20:32 How did you stumble across these kids?
0:20:35 Give me a story about somebody you met that’s doing this.
0:20:40 – Yeah, well, I saw, I kept on seeing all these crazy ads
0:20:41 for like this stuff.
0:20:44 And it was like called shilligit resin.
0:20:47 And I was like, what the hell is shilligit resin?
0:20:49 And it was like this black tar.
0:20:51 And it was like an ad that came up and it was like,
0:20:52 what would happen to you?
0:20:53 This is what would happen to you
0:20:57 if you ate shilligit every day for 14 days.
0:20:58 – What is shilligit resin?
0:20:59 I’ve never even heard of this.
0:21:03 – Shilligit is like a black tar
0:21:06 that they get in the Himalayas in India.
0:21:10 And it has like all of the essential minerals.
0:21:11 – You drink it, you put it on your teeth?
0:21:12 What do you do with it?
0:21:13 – It’s a wild black syrup.
0:21:16 And they sell it in these tiny little jars
0:21:18 that look like a lip balm jar.
0:21:20 And it comes with a golden spoon.
0:21:21 And for anyone that runs ads,
0:21:24 know that that is immediately killer, right?
0:21:27 But it’s a little pattern interrupt with black tar.
0:21:29 It looks really weird on the feed.
0:21:32 And so I started to see these things everywhere.
0:21:33 And they were all AI voices.
0:21:35 And they were making the most outrageous claims
0:21:39 that I’ve ever seen that it doubles your testosterone.
0:21:42 It increases your pencil size as they call it.
0:21:44 And it does all these wild things, right?
0:21:46 And all these like weird people getting jacked
0:21:48 with this black tar all over them.
0:21:49 And I started to look,
0:21:52 then once I clicked on one, the algorithm knows,
0:21:54 and I start seeing these things everywhere.
0:21:56 And I was like, I need to go down this rabbit hole.
0:21:58 I need to.
0:22:00 I am a man of the internet and this is my duty.
0:22:03 So I will go down and I will start to investigate this thing.
0:22:06 And so I found this company
0:22:08 called BetterAlt Himalayan Shilijit Resin,
0:22:11 that all of these TikTok affiliates were pushing.
0:22:16 And then I found CaloData and I plugged them into that.
0:22:21 And I saw that they were selling 91,000 units, right?
0:22:24 Over like a 90 day period.
0:22:28 It was like a thousand units a day of this Shilijit Resin.
0:22:29 And I was like, that is insane.
0:22:32 And then I went further down the rabbit hole
0:22:36 and these guys had done just shy of $9 million
0:22:38 in Shilijit Resin.
0:22:38 – In 90 days.
0:22:41 – In 90 days through a TikTok shop.
0:22:44 – $100,000 a day on TikTok shop.
0:22:45 – Yeah, and that was the tip of the iceberg.
0:22:47 Cause then I went over to their funnel
0:22:48 and started to have a little look
0:22:51 and started to see what I could find.
0:22:55 And there was like thousands and thousands of reviews.
0:22:57 And then if you go to their website,
0:23:02 that they say that they sold 9.5 million servings, right?
0:23:06 And it was, it’s crazy.
0:23:10 Like it was like a $200 million worth of Shilijit.
0:23:11 If you look at it, it calculated that
0:23:14 based on their lowest average order value.
0:23:18 – Yeah, okay, so they’re crushing it.
0:23:19 What’s the other one?
0:23:21 The like Guru Nanda or whatever that is?
0:23:23 Is it teeth whitening or what is that thing?
0:23:26 – You were seeing this Guru Nanda oil pulling kit everywhere.
0:23:28 These guys are all over TikTok.
0:23:33 Like they do lives, their funnel is very crazy.
0:23:34 – And who’s behind this?
0:23:38 Is this just like two 26 year olds or like who is,
0:23:39 how did they do this?
0:23:42 Cause it sounds like some ancient Indian herbal recipe
0:23:43 or something like that.
0:23:47 – Which is exactly how it’s meant to sound, right?
0:23:48 – But it’s crushing on TikTok shop.
0:23:51 So I assume it’s like a guy with a, you know,
0:23:56 zero high fade on a haircut who is behind this.
0:23:57 Do you know the story?
0:23:58 Do you know who these guys are?
0:24:01 – I don’t know the founders behind these things,
0:24:03 but basically I guess like one thing
0:24:07 that they all have in common is story-based copy, right?
0:24:10 It’s all like, it’s all about the story
0:24:12 about the thing that they’ve got.
0:24:15 And they’ll focus on a ancient oil pulling.
0:24:16 The Egyptians used to do it.
0:24:19 And they had the, there’s still people that are mummies
0:24:21 that are under the pyramids that have perfect teeth
0:24:24 because they’ve been doing this oil pulling.
0:24:27 And then they hook you in like that.
0:24:29 And yeah, Guru Ananda, same thing here,
0:24:33 like 100,000 units a week through TikTok shop.
0:24:34 – Well, I’m looking up the founder right now.
0:24:37 I mean, it looks like what you would expect.
0:24:41 And I mean, either this is a complete,
0:24:45 this is a fake AI generated guy or he’s got an nephew.
0:24:49 He’s got like a nephew with the fade who is doing this
0:24:52 because it is remarkable how much they’ve done.
0:24:53 Give me a sense of the numbers.
0:24:54 How big is this thing?
0:24:56 I thought this was the number one selling product
0:24:58 on TikTok shops for a while.
0:25:00 – Yeah, it was, they’re doing like,
0:25:03 I think they had done like 1.2 million in sales
0:25:05 for the app, 100,000 units a week.
0:25:08 They’ve got 40,000 reviews
0:25:10 and there’s like 30,000 videos tagged
0:25:12 with Guru Ananda on TikTok.
0:25:15 And again, these is only seeing the numbers directly
0:25:17 through TikTok shop using these websites
0:25:19 that you can find them.
0:25:22 But the crazy thing is all of these products,
0:25:24 they’ve got way more reviews on Amazon
0:25:27 because the thing that they’re doing so smart is that,
0:25:30 like you’ve got a lot of people that are promoting the product
0:25:32 on something like TikTok, right?
0:25:36 And they’re getting a lot of attention and eyeballs on it.
0:25:38 But then the people arrive at something
0:25:40 that is much more trusted like Amazon.
0:25:43 And then they get that little bump in conversion rate,
0:25:45 there’s trust already, they’re sold from a video
0:25:47 and then they get all of these secondary sales.
0:25:51 So the opportunity here is twofold, right?
0:25:54 Because you can attack it where you can go and say,
0:25:56 hey, like you’re just gonna start as an affiliate, right?
0:25:59 And that’s just like, the skills that you will learn
0:26:03 is like copywriting, how to grab people’s attention, right?
0:26:05 How do you will understand the social currency
0:26:08 of these platforms, what goes viral?
0:26:11 And you can take those skills to any business
0:26:13 and just explode their sales.
0:26:16 And what you can do is for instance,
0:26:18 you could start off like that and you could get some traction
0:26:20 and then you could go to a business and you could say,
0:26:22 hey, you’re gonna pay me 20 grand a month.
0:26:26 And what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna build out TikTok shop
0:26:27 as a platform for you.
0:26:29 I’m gonna do all the creatives for you.
0:26:32 I’m gonna run that, I’m gonna crank the revenue from it.
0:26:36 It’s a $20,000 per month retainer plus 5% of sales.
0:26:37 You don’t do nothing.
0:26:39 But I’m gonna do you one better than that.
0:26:41 Because I know that you guys are running a lot of Facebook ads
0:26:44 and anybody that runs a lot of Facebook ads
0:26:47 knows that the number one bottleneck is creative.
0:26:50 So I’m gonna vet, I’m gonna run all of these TikToks,
0:26:51 I’m gonna make them go viral
0:26:54 and then I’m gonna give them to you to run on Facebook
0:26:57 that you can scale up on paid ads even more.
0:27:00 – 100%, this is a great idea.
0:27:02 And the beauty of what you just said is,
0:27:07 you’re gonna learn these more timeless skills,
0:27:10 copywriting, understanding consumer psychology,
0:27:12 video editing, video storytelling,
0:27:16 knowing how to utilize social media to go viral.
0:27:19 All of these things which are horizontal skills
0:27:21 that can be used in any business,
0:27:23 but you’re gonna get paid to do it.
0:27:25 You’re getting paid to go to school
0:27:27 to build the most valuable skills
0:27:30 that exist for marketers if you’re going forward
0:27:32 by doing this as a either affiliate
0:27:36 or as a retainer consulted for some of these brands.
0:27:39 And that’s the reason why I think it’s the best
0:27:41 is because the skills that you’re getting
0:27:43 and getting paid to get
0:27:45 are gonna serve you for the rest of your life.
0:27:46 Like these are not skills,
0:27:49 these are not shiny objects that are gonna go away.
0:27:51 Like we are gonna be communicating
0:27:53 in 20 to 30 years from now, right?
0:27:56 And it’s gonna even be a more hyper fragmented,
0:27:59 there’s gonna be even a greater war for attention.
0:28:01 And if you get the reps in now,
0:28:03 if you’re uploading a TikTok a day, right?
0:28:04 Just imagine the skills
0:28:08 and the understanding that you have on human psychology
0:28:09 in a year, in two years time.
0:28:11 And what that will allow you to do
0:28:13 if you go into a more legitimate business
0:28:16 and you know this and you know all of those skills,
0:28:18 what you’ll be able to bring to those businesses.
0:28:19 – I mean, I think this is great advice
0:28:22 for people early in their careers,
0:28:26 people whose main attribute and asset is hustle
0:28:29 and willingness to learn things and figure them out.
0:28:30 If that’s all you have going for you,
0:28:32 then this is the perfect type of thing for you,
0:28:35 especially if you don’t have, you know, coding skills, right?
0:28:38 If you can’t build in other ways, then, you know,
0:28:40 which is me, I was that guy, right?
0:28:42 I was 21 years old, I didn’t have coding skills,
0:28:43 I didn’t have any assets, I didn’t know.
0:28:45 You know, if I was a great investor,
0:28:47 cool, I don’t have any money to invest,
0:28:48 nor do I have any track record
0:28:49 to be able to go raise money to invest.
0:28:52 So I can’t do that career yet.
0:28:55 I didn’t have any skills to build software.
0:28:57 If I could have built software, I would have built software,
0:28:59 but I would have had to have learned that first
0:29:02 in order to even build a product in that category.
0:29:07 Whereas this is something that the bar to enter is so low
0:29:09 that it’s applicable advice to anybody
0:29:10 who’s at the beginning, I’ll just say that.
0:29:12 So I don’t necessarily think it’s the best,
0:29:15 but I do think it’s the best for a certain group of people
0:29:16 who are in a certain context
0:29:18 where they only have certain attributes
0:29:20 and they have certain things that they’re lacking
0:29:20 at that time.
0:29:24 – Correct, you just don’t need like anything
0:29:26 to get started other than time,
0:29:28 and that’s when you’re broke, that’s all you have is time.
0:29:31 And the reality of it is that most of these people
0:29:34 are already spending four and a half hours a day
0:29:35 on their phone.
0:29:40 So that’s where I believe that it’s a very ripe opportunity.
0:29:42 – You have a few phrases that I like.
0:29:44 I want you to tell me about them.
0:29:47 One is killed a little bitch inside.
0:29:49 What is this?
0:29:51 It sounds like a David Goggins phrase.
0:29:54 – Yeah, I just, I think that there is a duality of man
0:29:55 that is present.
0:30:00 And whenever you try to do something that is hard,
0:30:01 there’s the little bitch that comes out
0:30:03 and starts to whisper in your ear.
0:30:06 Like, hey, it’s cold outside, Subri.
0:30:08 Like you’ve been working out all week, man.
0:30:12 Just, it’s okay, just roll over and go back to sleep.
0:30:15 Or, hey, you’ve already had really great conversations
0:30:16 this week.
0:30:18 You send out some very promising proposals.
0:30:21 You don’t need to make another 20 cold calls, right?
0:30:24 Just knock off for the day and go hang out.
0:30:28 And there’s always that little bitch that comes out
0:30:32 and typically the harder the things that you do,
0:30:34 the more loud it gets.
0:30:37 And it is the best salesperson that exists
0:30:39 ’cause it knows all of your little weaknesses.
0:30:41 It knows all of your little vices.
0:30:44 And it knows exactly how to hit those pain points.
0:30:47 And it’s, I have found that the harder things that I do,
0:30:50 the more it’s my ability to silence that person
0:30:52 and to do things despite them.
0:30:55 And I have like an interesting relationship
0:30:57 with that little voice that lives in my head
0:30:59 because if it rears its ugly head
0:31:01 and tries to say that stuff to me,
0:31:02 then I just put it through pain.
0:31:05 So it’s like, you need to skip the gym.
0:31:07 Like you go a little bit of a tweak in your muscle.
0:31:07 Like, don’t go.
0:31:09 It’s like, just for recommending that,
0:31:10 like we’re gonna finish the workout
0:31:12 with 15 minutes of Hill Sprints.
0:31:15 Like, you shouldn’t have come out here today.
0:31:18 – You want to send it into isolation.
0:31:19 – Exactly.
0:31:22 I want to let it know what will be accepted
0:31:24 in this relationship. – Not only do you ignore it,
0:31:26 you penalize it for being there
0:31:28 so that it doesn’t re-rotate again.
0:31:28 – I do.
0:31:31 Because I think that like the biggest lie
0:31:34 that people tell themselves is like the lie every day.
0:31:35 Like the people that say, I need to work out
0:31:38 or I need to do this or I need to do that.
0:31:42 And then they start their day by like lying to themselves
0:31:43 and not accepting that.
0:31:45 Like for me, it’s just like binary.
0:31:47 It’s like, either I know that I’m not gonna do something
0:31:50 then I’m just not gonna say to myself that I’m gonna do it.
0:31:51 ‘Cause I don’t want to teach myself
0:31:54 that I make promises to myself that I don’t keep.
0:31:56 Like that’s a really bad thing.
0:32:00 So if I feel like I don’t want to go to the gym the next day
0:32:03 or there’s gonna be a reason why I can’t go,
0:32:04 I’ll just say it now.
0:32:08 I’m not gonna say I’m gonna go and then lie to myself.
0:32:10 – What do you do when you get caught in that situation
0:32:12 where you said you were gonna do something you didn’t?
0:32:15 So let’s say you didn’t catch it ahead of time.
0:32:17 Yeah, what is the tax that you pay?
0:32:19 – The tax is always more volume.
0:32:23 So it’s always more of the thing that I said I was gonna do
0:32:23 that I didn’t do.
0:32:27 (laughing)
0:32:29 – Not only do I do it, I now have to do more.
0:32:33 – I do, it comes to collect.
0:32:36 – What are some of the other big ideas
0:32:40 that serve you well, either like philosophy,
0:32:42 maybe a lifestyle technique you have,
0:32:44 maybe it’s a belief you have
0:32:46 that you think most people don’t live by that you do,
0:32:48 that has served you well.
0:32:50 So I think what I’m asking is,
0:32:52 what’s some wisdom you can drop on me?
0:32:53 But the wisdom is in the form
0:32:56 of something you actually take action on.
0:33:00 – I think that when I started my career,
0:33:05 I thought that I needed to look and act a certain way.
0:33:08 And I was watching business shows,
0:33:10 I had read business books and I was like,
0:33:12 okay, I need to be like this serious dude,
0:33:14 like I need to wear a blazer
0:33:16 and I need to show up like a businessman.
0:33:20 And as a result of that,
0:33:23 I had to act a certain way.
0:33:26 And that certain way wasn’t really a way
0:33:29 that was indicative of having a lot of fun.
0:33:33 And over the years, it’s like the world just like,
0:33:36 tries to beat you down to being like vanilla, right?
0:33:39 And to fitting in and like not being
0:33:40 that like dark rich chocolate
0:33:42 or that person with a bit of showmanship
0:33:44 or a bit of flair and a bit of fun to it.
0:33:46 Like people think this is business,
0:33:48 so I need to act a certain way.
0:33:50 And I definitely fell into that.
0:33:54 And so one of the philosophies that I try to embrace
0:33:56 is just to have more fun.
0:33:59 And everything that I do is just to have more fun
0:34:01 in my life and in my business.
0:34:03 Because at the end of the day, like the revenue,
0:34:06 the sales numbers, the profits and all of that kind of stuff,
0:34:07 like the years roll by.
0:34:09 And unless you’re having a lot of fun
0:34:11 doing what it is that you’re doing,
0:34:13 like nothing else matters.
0:34:15 So, and it was actually like,
0:34:20 it was only after I started on focusing on having more fun
0:34:23 did I start making a lot more money.
0:34:25 And so like- – What’s an example?
0:34:26 So what did you do that was more fun?
0:34:28 And how did that, what was the turn of events
0:34:29 that led to more money?
0:34:31 Or were they not connected?
0:34:32 – No, they were definitely connected.
0:34:36 So obviously like some of the things that like,
0:34:40 I would say that are fun is that like a specific example
0:34:42 is about a year and a half ago,
0:34:46 I put together an ad campaign.
0:34:48 And usually when I put together an ad campaign,
0:34:51 I’ll be like, okay, how do I make this convert the best?
0:34:52 Right, that is the goal.
0:34:54 It’s like, how do I just make it convert?
0:34:57 And to cold traffic, ’cause that’s the game.
0:34:59 And then I was like, let me just think about like,
0:35:02 what would be the funniest ad?
0:35:05 Like what would I need to do to have the most fun?
0:35:09 And I started from that place of just having,
0:35:12 it’s still wild fun ad that regardless of the,
0:35:13 whether you’re in business or not,
0:35:15 it would be entertaining and fun.
0:35:19 And we did all types of outrageous things.
0:35:22 One of them was like having me dressed as a priest
0:35:26 and we had Lord Zucks and Lord Elon in the background.
0:35:30 And we were having a funeral in a church for the money
0:35:33 that is being murdered in most people’s ads campaign, right?
0:35:37 And that was a whole lot of fun making that ad.
0:35:39 And everything that we did in that whole script
0:35:41 was a lot of fun, it was funny.
0:35:43 And that one campaign tripled our sales.
0:35:49 And so that is a very transactional example,
0:35:52 but it’s more so about like, what is it that would be fun?
0:35:54 So I try to do something that is like,
0:35:57 really big and have a big swing,
0:35:59 something that’s really risky every year.
0:36:03 Because I know me and I know the urge that I have
0:36:05 as an entrepreneur to like always keep engaged
0:36:08 and to have, to scratch that itch.
0:36:11 And the big sin that I made early on in my career
0:36:13 is I looked at scratching that itch
0:36:16 through other business opportunities and other like things.
0:36:19 When what I do now is I’m present that,
0:36:21 that is the law of gravity.
0:36:23 I’m always gonna wanna do a new and novel things,
0:36:25 but I have a new and novel thing that I do
0:36:28 that is attached to the main thing, right?
0:36:30 So it might be a new campaign or a new channel
0:36:32 or a new offer that I’m gonna run.
0:36:34 And that will scratch that itch.
0:36:37 And I think that like getting wrapped up in working,
0:36:39 people as they get older in their life,
0:36:42 they start to take things a lot more seriously
0:36:43 and they forget they’re like,
0:36:45 “Hey, oh, we’re just all here having fun
0:36:46 “at the end of the day, right?”
0:36:48 Like, what’s the point of you not having fun?
0:36:51 So I like to talk to strangers, lots of strangers.
0:36:53 You were told from a very early age
0:36:54 not to talk to strangers.
0:36:57 Strangers have got everything that it is that you want.
0:36:59 My wife was once a stranger, right?
0:37:02 Like my customers, my business partners, my best friends,
0:37:05 all of these guys were strangers to me.
0:37:08 And so I think that is something that is underutilized,
0:37:12 having parties and entertaining people.
0:37:16 It’s so easy to get caught up in organizing your business life
0:37:18 and the meetings and the events
0:37:22 that people don’t take that same vigor and discipline
0:37:26 with planning fun and making like events fun.
0:37:28 And when you do that and you have fun
0:37:29 and you’ve got all of these things
0:37:31 that you do in your downtime,
0:37:35 it just makes you like bring so much more zest and life
0:37:37 to your everyday business
0:37:40 because it’s not like there’s just never ending
0:37:41 constant grindstone.
0:37:45 – Yeah, there was a great Google principle,
0:37:47 I think called 20% time that they had for a period
0:37:50 which was they acknowledged that the most talented people,
0:37:53 the best programmers that they wanted to hire,
0:37:56 they would never be able to just chain them to the desk
0:37:59 and say optimize these Google ads for the rest of your life.
0:38:01 And that they needed the 20% time to just say,
0:38:02 “Go work on whatever you want.”
0:38:03 And you’re gonna do it anyways,
0:38:05 you’re either just gonna do it when you go home
0:38:07 and that’s gonna become a side hustle,
0:38:08 it’s gonna become a new company,
0:38:09 it’s gonna become a reason to leave,
0:38:11 it’s gonna become so much more fun
0:38:13 that you’re just kind of disconnected from your job
0:38:16 ’cause the fun is what you’re having outside of the job.
0:38:20 So instead they said explicitly use 20% of your work time
0:38:21 to do something completely different
0:38:23 than what you wouldn’t do in your normal day to day.
0:38:25 And out of that came some really great ideas.
0:38:28 I know with Facebook, out of their hackathons,
0:38:30 which were their version of like,
0:38:31 yo, let’s just build some shit, forget the process,
0:38:33 forget the product, forget the roadmap, forget everything,
0:38:35 let’s just build some shit tonight, have beer and pizza.
0:38:37 And I think like the like button came out of that.
0:38:40 The most pushed button in the history of the universe
0:38:43 came out of somebody in a hackathon saying,
0:38:45 “Hey, what if we added that to our product?”
0:38:47 And so I think that there’s great examples
0:38:49 of this in business as well.
0:38:51 We used to have a do cool shit budget,
0:38:53 which was we would take 20% of our time,
0:38:56 but we’d also take, I think it was like 10% of our money.
0:38:57 We said 10% of the marketing budget
0:38:59 has to be a no ROI play.
0:39:02 Meaning we think it’s awesome, but it’s not measurable.
0:39:05 It’s not clear, it’s not proven that this would work.
0:39:07 And it was only out of that extra 10%
0:39:09 that we would do things that were the kind of big swings
0:39:12 out of the box ideas that might result in a big winner
0:39:14 or might result in, we just tried something,
0:39:15 we learned some fun, we have a good story to tell,
0:39:18 we moved back on and we had a creative release
0:39:20 that we now use to do something else.
0:39:22 Tim Ferriss was on the podcast and he said this well,
0:39:27 he goes, “I’ve learned that just ’cause I charge my batteries
0:39:29 “doing something silly doesn’t mean I have to use them
0:39:31 “doing something silly.”
0:39:33 So for example, he will do something
0:39:36 that’s not quote unquote productive
0:39:37 because it charges his batteries.
0:39:39 And he’s like, now I have batteries to go do more
0:39:41 productive stuff if I wanted to.
0:39:43 If I only ever do the super productive stuff,
0:39:46 but it’s just draining my batteries, that’s not better.
0:39:48 That’s not the way.
0:39:51 – And I think that that is even a more powerful example.
0:39:54 Because like looking at like Google’s like,
0:39:58 they’re 20% time and all that, that’s still tied to work, right?
0:40:01 But it’s more so it’s like, as we get older,
0:40:05 like most people think that getting old means getting boring.
0:40:06 Like just think about it.
0:40:08 They think about most people as they get older
0:40:11 and they have the kids and all of these things happen,
0:40:15 then it’s like, they just feel like that that is almost
0:40:17 like a hall pass to being boring
0:40:19 and just like fitting in and doing stuff.
0:40:22 So like there’s this annual server that they do every year
0:40:24 that is the happiness index, right?
0:40:27 That measures people based on their happiness.
0:40:30 And if you ask most people, like, are you happy?
0:40:33 Or like, you know, if you had to rate yourself on a scale
0:40:34 of one to 10, how happy would you be?
0:40:36 Most people say seven.
0:40:38 – Yeah, seven, obviously.
0:40:40 – But I don’t like to live at sevens, right?
0:40:42 Like I want to be very happy
0:40:45 and I want my life to be very, very full.
0:40:49 And I just think that this far too often,
0:40:51 we take things far too seriously,
0:40:54 that do not need to be seriously taken seriously.
0:40:55 And we just, we feel like that
0:40:58 because naturally we’re getting older
0:40:59 or we’re getting more cynical.
0:41:03 And it comes back to you need to do silly things
0:41:07 that do charge you and that you do get energy for
0:41:09 because you want to have like those sprints.
0:41:12 It’s not about sitting down and working 16 hours a day,
0:41:14 just grinding on something
0:41:16 because you’ve got the hours to do it.
0:41:19 It’s about doing your most meaningful work.
0:41:22 And I find that I do my most meaningful work
0:41:24 when I focus on having more fun
0:41:26 with everything that I’m doing.
0:41:28 Because it’s like, if you’re going to compete with somebody,
0:41:30 it’s like the Naval quote, right?
0:41:32 You want to do things that feel like play to you
0:41:34 and that look like work to others.
0:41:37 So if you can inherently have more fun doing those things,
0:41:38 you’re going to do them for longer.
0:41:39 You’re going to get better
0:41:41 and you’re going to see better results.
0:41:44 – Can I read you a quote about this exact topic?
0:41:46 An hour before this podcast,
0:41:47 I was supposed to be preparing for the pod
0:41:49 but I was deep in a rabbit hole
0:41:52 on Sylvester Stallone of all people.
0:41:55 I was studying the story of Rocky and Sly
0:41:57 and he said this quote.
0:42:00 He goes, “I think that life belongs
0:42:03 to people who can make a sick joke out of it all.”
0:42:06 And he said, “If you take life too seriously, I don’t know.
0:42:09 Either you think one of two things.
0:42:11 Either you think that life is a comedy
0:42:13 or you’ll feel that life is a tragedy.”
0:42:14 And I just love that.
0:42:18 And it reminds me of, I was at a Tony Robbins event once
0:42:20 and there’s 7,000 people from 56 countries
0:42:23 and we’re all totally different ages,
0:42:25 groups of people, different backgrounds,
0:42:27 different economics, different everything.
0:42:28 And he says something.
0:42:33 He goes, “Show me what a depressed person looks like.
0:42:36 How does a depressed person stand?”
0:42:38 Don’t say a word, just how do they stand?
0:42:40 And everybody instinctively does the same thing.
0:42:41 You sort of shoulders down.
0:42:43 He said, “How do they breathe?
0:42:45 It’s like shallow, it’s not deep breaths.”
0:42:47 He said, “How does their face look?”
0:42:49 And you can see everybody, regardless of background,
0:42:51 knew, we all knew the protocol.
0:42:54 And he says it, he goes, “You guys have practiced this.
0:42:55 You know what stress looks like.
0:42:56 You know what depressed looks like
0:43:01 because we all know instinctively what that looks like.”
0:43:04 You said something earlier, which is that we all believe
0:43:05 that as you get older, you get boring.
0:43:06 Nobody says that out loud,
0:43:08 but I think it’s an implicit belief
0:43:09 that’s baked into all of us.
0:43:11 Just like knowing that, well,
0:43:13 if I wanna be in a low-energy depressed state,
0:43:15 I should hunch over, breathe kind of shallow,
0:43:18 shuffle my feet and talk in a low voice.
0:43:20 That is gonna manifest that in the same way.
0:43:24 I think that most people truly do believe and accept
0:43:27 that as I get older, life becomes more boring.
0:43:28 And that’s crazy.
0:43:30 We gotta uproot that and eradicate that
0:43:34 as a default way of accepting how things are gonna go
0:43:37 because it’s these beliefs that are so ingrained in you
0:43:38 that you don’t even really acknowledge,
0:43:41 those are the ones that kind of drive your life.
0:43:45 – Correct, and it’s all driven by the activities that you do.
0:43:50 If you think about why are you more energized
0:43:55 and excited for life when you’re maybe in your 20s
0:43:57 as opposed to being later in life, right?
0:43:58 Just as an example.
0:44:00 And a lot of the times,
0:44:03 it’s because people stop doing new things
0:44:07 and it’s like they just repeat the same thing every day.
0:44:10 So instead, it’s like the manga quote of like,
0:44:12 show me where I’m gonna die so I never go visit there.
0:44:14 It’s the same thing, same activities.
0:44:18 You wanna look at like, why do you have a little bit more
0:44:19 pep in your step when you’re younger?
0:44:21 You’re always doing new things.
0:44:23 You’re taking big swings.
0:44:27 Like there’s always a gain to quote the little bitch
0:44:28 in the back of your mind.
0:44:29 They’re saying, but yeah, I have kids now.
0:44:31 I have responsibilities.
0:44:33 I have certain things that I need to do.
0:44:36 Whoever said that means that you can’t do also new things
0:44:39 or that you can’t also have fun while doing those things.
0:44:42 And it says little exercises that you can put
0:44:47 in your daily life that you make the ordinary extraordinary.
0:44:51 – So here’s the deal.
0:44:54 I made most of my money from a newsletter business.
0:44:56 It was called The Hustle.
0:44:57 And it was a daily newsletter at scale
0:44:59 to millions of subscribers.
0:45:01 And it was the greatest business on earth.
0:45:04 The problem with it was that I had close to 40 employees
0:45:07 and only three of them were actually doing any writing.
0:45:10 The other employees were growing the newsletter,
0:45:12 building out the tech for the platform and selling ads.
0:45:15 And honestly, it was a huge pain in the butt.
0:45:18 Today’s episode is brought to you by Beehive.
0:45:21 They are a platform that is built exactly for this.
0:45:22 If you want to grow your newsletter,
0:45:24 if you want to monetize a newsletter,
0:45:26 they do all of the stuff that I had to hire
0:45:28 dozens of employees to do.
0:45:30 So check it out, behive.com.
0:45:33 That’s B-E-E-H-I-I-V.com.
0:45:39 This is a little small talk pro tip.
0:45:41 One of the most common questions people ask is like,
0:45:43 “So what’s new?”
0:45:46 That’s what we ask people when we see them, “What’s new?”
0:45:47 And if you’re on the receiving end
0:45:50 of the “What’s new?” question, it’s like,
0:45:52 “Oh, what’s new?”
0:45:53 Like, and it’s sad.
0:45:54 It’s like, “Nothing’s really new.”
0:45:56 But for most of us, nothing is just new
0:45:58 between the last time we saw you and now, right?
0:46:00 Like, we’re still working that same job.
0:46:02 We don’t change jobs every week.
0:46:03 Still got the same kids.
0:46:05 They’re still around, still got the same.
0:46:07 Most of the things we do are the same.
0:46:11 And so asking “What’s new?” is a terrible question to ask
0:46:13 and it puts the other person in a sort of,
0:46:16 you sort of pin them into a sort of sad realization
0:46:18 about their life in the moment.
0:46:20 A different small talk question that I think
0:46:23 generates much more interesting responses is,
0:46:25 what’s something you’re excited about coming up?
0:46:26 So I’ll ask people this all the time.
0:46:29 I’ll be like, I’ll say, I’ll even say “What’s new?”
0:46:30 so that the question doesn’t sound different.
0:46:31 I’ll be like, “What’s new?
0:46:33 What’s something that you’re looking forward to right now?
0:46:34 What are you excited about?
0:46:35 What’s coming up for you?”
0:46:36 And then they’ll tell me like,
0:46:38 “Oh, I’m really looking forward to this thing
0:46:39 that I’m going to do, this show I’m going to,
0:46:41 this thing I’m going to go see.”
0:46:43 And then they light up because people light up
0:46:44 when you ask them what they’re looking forward to
0:46:47 because we need things that we’re excited about
0:46:48 and we’re looking forward to.
0:46:51 To your point, we should be building the muscle
0:46:54 of having more fun, of building, planning things
0:46:56 that we’re excited about that are going to be fun.
0:46:58 – Yeah, you go to engineer them.
0:47:00 You can’t just wait for them to happen by chance.
0:47:03 And the best way that I have found to do that
0:47:04 is just to sit down at the start of the year
0:47:06 with your partner, whoever it might be.
0:47:10 And not as everybody plans out their work here,
0:47:12 they’re like, “These are the projects that I want to do.
0:47:14 I want to do it in Q1, then we’ve got this.”
0:47:16 It’s like, “Do that about your own life.”
0:47:18 I’m like, “We’re going to go on a holiday here.
0:47:19 I want to try this here.
0:47:21 I want to do some crazy here.”
0:47:23 – What are some examples you’ve done?
0:47:26 – Yeah, so some of the stuff that I like to do is,
0:47:29 I like to look at all the different areas of my life,
0:47:31 my relationships, wealth, all of those kind of things.
0:47:33 And you start to have these pillars.
0:47:34 So the pillars might be like, for me,
0:47:36 I like to go away every 90 days.
0:47:40 I’ve got three daughters, my wife, I work very, very hard.
0:47:42 And I love to travel.
0:47:44 I like to go through cooking classes,
0:47:46 experience new cultures.
0:47:48 And I don’t wait for when I need a holiday.
0:47:49 I just plan them in advance.
0:47:52 ‘Cause I know that a 10 day holiday
0:47:54 is going to give me that zing, is going to give me that juice.
0:47:56 And I come back and get way more done in that next quarter.
0:48:00 So we like to plan the year in terms of all the holidays
0:48:01 that we’re going to take.
0:48:04 And then a little hack that I like to do with,
0:48:06 you’ve got kids and you go traveling,
0:48:10 is whenever we go to a new city, you know, every year,
0:48:11 we go to multiple new countries,
0:48:13 try to go to multiple new countries a year.
0:48:15 And whatever the cities or the countries
0:48:18 that we’re going to be visiting, I go to chat GPT
0:48:21 and I ask it to write me a children’s story book about that.
0:48:23 And I read that to my daughters,
0:48:25 leading up to going to the countries.
0:48:27 And it’s incredible.
0:48:28 Like you can say, “No, make it.”
0:48:31 Like I had three characters and these are the characters’ names
0:48:33 and they’re all my daughters’ names.
0:48:35 And then like it fuses all the things
0:48:36 about that culture into it.
0:48:38 And it just makes everyone bored in
0:48:40 and so much more excited.
0:48:42 – Yeah, ’cause the anticipation is always more fun
0:48:44 than the actual event itself.
0:48:46 So that makes sense to actually invest
0:48:48 in the anticipation part of it.
0:48:49 – Indeed.
0:48:54 – And you have a pretty interesting set of interests
0:48:56 that align with what I’m interested in.
0:48:58 You like, I asked you, I texted you, I said,
0:49:01 “Hey, what should we talk about on the pod?”
0:49:02 And you said to me four words
0:49:05 of which I’m actually interested in all of them.
0:49:08 One of the first one you said was showmanship.
0:49:09 Talk to me about showmanship.
0:49:11 Why is this on your mind?
0:49:13 – Yeah, I think that like, you know,
0:49:16 entertainment is like the currency
0:49:18 that buys the attention of your prospect
0:49:20 and of your marketplace.
0:49:23 And showmanship for me is like, you know,
0:49:25 it’s a lot of things.
0:49:27 Like it’s storytelling.
0:49:30 It’s being able to have like stage presence
0:49:32 and energy with the way that you show up.
0:49:35 And it’s also visual storytelling
0:49:38 and being able to surprise and bring drama
0:49:41 and excitement to whatever it is that you do.
0:49:44 And I think that regardless of the business
0:49:46 that you choose to build,
0:49:49 you very quickly, once you get to a certain height,
0:49:52 you realize that you’re in the people business, right?
0:49:55 You’re in the business of leading people
0:49:57 and communicating to those people,
0:49:58 regardless of what the product
0:50:00 or the industry that you’re in.
0:50:03 And it just becomes infinitely more important
0:50:05 with your ability to be a showman
0:50:07 and to bring like a bit of pizzazz,
0:50:09 you know, a bit of that source
0:50:12 to things that seem ordinary, right?
0:50:14 And that can seem mundane and boring,
0:50:16 whether it’s a job advert that you’re writing
0:50:18 or an interview that you’re conducting
0:50:19 or a team meeting that you’re running
0:50:21 in all hands on deck.
0:50:24 And it’s just one of those lost art forms
0:50:27 where people just like most of our communication
0:50:29 is done through text and email.
0:50:33 So I think that people just naturally just get to a plateau
0:50:35 where they don’t really emphasize it anymore.
0:50:37 And I think that with everything that’s happening
0:50:39 with content creation and stuff like that
0:50:41 and the importance that people are placing
0:50:43 on building an audience,
0:50:46 there’s like, you know, a renaissance of like showmanship
0:50:47 that is having to come back.
0:50:50 – I like that you said showmanship
0:50:53 is the currency that buys the attention of your prospects.
0:50:55 That’s killer.
0:50:58 You, it seems like it’s kind of polarizing, right?
0:51:01 The people who are out there creating content on TikTok
0:51:05 and YouTube, they probably know more than anyone
0:51:06 how important showmanship is
0:51:08 and they’re benefiting from doing it.
0:51:10 And then there’s a whole bunch of people
0:51:11 who are opted out of that.
0:51:13 That sounds complicated, hard.
0:51:14 I don’t know how to do that.
0:51:16 And they’re living in emails, text messages,
0:51:19 maybe where most business owners live.
0:51:21 And I think I buy what you’re saying,
0:51:23 which is that when you’re communicating through,
0:51:27 let’s say just emails or you’re running ads,
0:51:32 you tend to kind of conform or subdue yourself
0:51:34 into a very transactional,
0:51:37 just dry informational way of communicating.
0:51:39 And that actually does you a disservice.
0:51:42 Is most of the new business you get through content
0:51:44 you’re making on your YouTube channel?
0:51:47 – No, we run a lot of ads.
0:51:49 So we get that as well.
0:51:51 I look at it as like the whole ecosystem
0:51:55 and the YouTube content is a way
0:51:57 to also get more reps in, right?
0:51:59 I understood that like,
0:52:00 I want to become a better storyteller.
0:52:03 If I want my hooks to get more dialed in,
0:52:06 if I want the whole thing of retaining people’s attention,
0:52:09 learning all these storytelling techniques for shadowing
0:52:11 and all of this kind of stuff that, you know,
0:52:14 I kind of really came up through the whole tutelage
0:52:17 of direct response and learning my way through that.
0:52:20 And understanding that like the landscape is changing
0:52:23 and like you really need to become even better
0:52:26 at storytelling and all of those reps
0:52:27 that I get in on YouTube,
0:52:29 I can then translate them to all the ads that I do,
0:52:32 the emails, the video sales letters
0:52:33 and whatever it else that I’m going to do,
0:52:36 even presenting and just being a showman.
0:52:38 It allows me that instead of getting feedback
0:52:42 of maybe doing a launch or a campaign every quarter,
0:52:44 like I’m uploading a YouTube video every week.
0:52:47 So it just, it’s about practice.
0:52:49 – Let’s say if I’m good,
0:52:50 what’s something you’ve learned in the gap
0:52:54 between good and great on storytelling
0:52:55 or showmanship through content?
0:52:56 – Yeah, I wouldn’t say,
0:52:59 like I wouldn’t put a crown on myself and say
0:53:00 that I’m great yet.
0:53:03 I think I still got, I’ve got ways to go.
0:53:07 But I think that fundamentally it’s understanding
0:53:09 the principles of like,
0:53:12 how do you first hook somebody’s attention
0:53:16 and then retain it and then be able to make an ask.
0:53:19 And I think that the place that a lot of people start
0:53:22 is really focusing on how to make an ask.
0:53:25 They think about how to write the most,
0:53:27 you know, influential copy,
0:53:29 the most persuasive copy
0:53:33 to have a huge amount of emphasis on the offer
0:53:36 and the ask that you’re making to your audience.
0:53:39 And I think that the number one thing,
0:53:41 if you want to improve the conversion rate
0:53:43 of anything on any vehicle,
0:53:45 the thing that you need to focus on
0:53:47 is improving the consumption first.
0:53:50 And so, you know, I think that you want to place
0:53:53 a disproportionate amount of your effort
0:53:55 on first getting that consumption.
0:53:58 And the way that you do that is by understanding the hook
0:54:01 and understanding the lead, right?
0:54:03 So how do I have either something
0:54:05 that’s going to be a patent interrupt
0:54:07 or a patent match to my market?
0:54:10 And then how do I slowly just foreshadow?
0:54:12 How do I build stakes?
0:54:15 How do I have where I’m basically delaying a payoff out there
0:54:17 and have multiple storylines in it?
0:54:20 Because if you can do that and if you can earn that viewer,
0:54:24 even if, like, yes, you want to have a very strong offer,
0:54:26 but it doesn’t matter how strongly offer is
0:54:27 if you don’t get people to that part
0:54:30 of your whole pitch anyway.
0:54:31 – Right.
0:54:32 And you have a,
0:54:36 you have an interesting method here
0:54:38 that I just was reading one of your titles
0:54:40 that I really like.
0:54:42 The title of one of your most popular videos is,
0:54:45 “Sell Like Crazy, Stop Praying to the Internet Gods.”
0:54:49 What’s the premise of that video?
0:54:52 – Is that like a lot of people sit around
0:54:55 and hope and pray to Zucks
0:54:57 about that they’re going to get cheaper CPMs, right?
0:55:00 Or everything would just get easier with my attic,
0:55:03 and it’s like the algorithm wouldn’t be so wild
0:55:05 and so volatile or people, you know,
0:55:08 basically beg people for referrals
0:55:10 and they sit around and operate their business
0:55:13 by whatever fate falls in their lap.
0:55:16 But most businesses don’t have a repeatable predictable way
0:55:18 to actually put a dollar into a machine
0:55:22 and turn it into three or five or $10 back.
0:55:25 And with all the businesses that I’ve seen
0:55:26 with the thousands of clients that I’ve worked
0:55:28 with all the businesses that I’ve actually been
0:55:31 an employee of, you know, that’s the one thing
0:55:33 that those people all have is a repeatable process
0:55:35 to go out there and get clients.
0:55:36 Because if you do not have that,
0:55:39 you have an expensive hobby that just is worse than a job
0:55:42 because you don’t get vacations, you got all the stress,
0:55:45 you got everything that else that you need to deal with
0:55:47 and you end up working double the amount of hours
0:55:48 and you would in a normal job.
0:55:50 – Right, right.
0:55:53 What are some examples of these repeatable systems
0:55:54 which might be just a sales funnel,
0:55:57 a great sales funnel that you’ve seen right now
0:56:01 that you could teach me about or tell me about?
0:56:04 – Yeah, I think that like if you look at it
0:56:06 on like a lead gen perspective,
0:56:09 you know, a basic funnel is having somebody,
0:56:12 having a piece of information or a video or a free report
0:56:15 or something that you can get your target market
0:56:18 to raise their hand in a sea of people and say,
0:56:22 “Hey, I would be interested in learning more about that.”
0:56:25 And that’s the first like cardinal sin
0:56:29 that most businesses make is that they go out to their market
0:56:31 and they conduct it like they’re there in the dark ages.
0:56:34 They lay out their wares like they’re in the marketplace.
0:56:36 They can say, “These are all the products
0:56:37 “and services that I’ve got.”
0:56:39 There’s a little bit of haggling back and forth
0:56:42 on the prices and then the deal is done, right?
0:56:44 They’re just like, “Get a quote, buy, buy, buy.”
0:56:48 Where you will get 10 times the amount of people
0:56:51 if you go out to your marketplace with something of value
0:56:55 to try and educate people and basically lead
0:56:58 with your best foot forward and use a piece of content
0:57:01 that you know that is gonna be baited to get that person
0:57:02 to raise their hand in a sea of people, right?
0:57:05 And it can be a free report about anything.
0:57:07 And then once you get them to raise their hand
0:57:10 on a very small ask that is not confronting,
0:57:15 it’s not intimidating, then you have them arrive on a page
0:57:17 where then you make your offer, right?
0:57:20 Where then it’s a basic two-step funnel.
0:57:22 So instead of saying, “Get in contact with our sales team
0:57:25 “or get a quote,” you say, “Here’s a free piece of information.”
0:57:28 They download that, then you arrive them on a page
0:57:31 that makes them a Godfather offer to get on the telephone.
0:57:34 And you just get 10 times the volume of people
0:57:35 that will come into communication
0:57:37 with what it is that you do, if you do that.
0:57:39 – So what’s an example of,
0:57:42 a specific example of someone doing this?
0:57:44 – So in terms of like, we do that a lot,
0:57:45 all of our clients do that,
0:57:49 but there is like, say for instance, you’re a digital agency
0:57:51 and you wanna sell your digital agency services
0:57:53 instead of being like, “Hey, we can help you grow your business
0:57:55 “with digital marketing.”
0:57:56 You’re like, “Here is a free report
0:57:58 “of the 22 things that you need to know
0:58:00 “when running Facebook ads,” right?
0:58:02 And then that’s only gonna pull people in
0:58:04 that are interested in running Facebook ads
0:58:07 and a percentage of those people are gonna be interested
0:58:09 in having someone run their Facebook ads for them.
0:58:12 That’s it on the lead gen side, right?
0:58:15 Then if you’ve got like the e-commerce side of things,
0:58:18 again, it’s about being able to first go out there
0:58:21 and get people’s attention through content.
0:58:24 And then the brands that are crushing it the most
0:58:27 is they’re not like, “Here is our goop in a bottle.
0:58:29 “Here is our protein shake,” right?
0:58:31 All of these people now,
0:58:33 if you look at the landscape with TikTok
0:58:34 and everything that’s going on,
0:58:36 they hit you with a piece of content
0:58:38 that just looks, it just slides under the radar.
0:58:40 It’s completely organic.
0:58:42 It doesn’t look like a sales message.
0:58:44 And then you’re watching it ’cause it’s very interested
0:58:47 and the algorithm does all the optimizing for you
0:58:49 and then you get to the end of it
0:58:52 and then they make the ask, right?
0:58:55 So if they’re selling like a testosterone boosting supplement,
0:58:58 they’re not like, “Here’s this testosterone boosting supplement.”
0:58:59 – Buy it.
0:59:02 – Yeah, they’re like, “Did you know that testosterone in males
0:59:05 “has dropped by 70% over the last 10 years?”
0:59:07 And it’s like, that will get someone’s ears to kind of perk up
0:59:09 and go, “Okay, what is that?”
0:59:10 And did you know the reason why?
0:59:11 – Or they’ll post a clip of Joe Rogan
0:59:12 talking about testosterone.
0:59:15 It just looks like it’s someone sharing a clip of Joe Rogan
0:59:19 and then it starts to weave you into an actual,
0:59:20 a product pitch later.
0:59:22 – Exactly, like I saw a brilliant one.
0:59:24 The other day, like I’m in the process right now
0:59:27 of building a house and it was a real on TikTok
0:59:31 and the guy’s like, “These are the best 20 things
0:59:34 “that you definitely wanna be building inside your house
0:59:36 “that nobody tells you about.”
0:59:38 And he’s like, “You want a whole house water filter.
0:59:40 “You want this dehumidifier for your whole property.
0:59:42 “You want these essential oils that diffuse
0:59:44 “and go through your AC.
0:59:45 “You want heated tiles.”
0:59:47 And I’m like, “Dude, like this is fire.”
0:59:48 And then at the end of it, he’s like,
0:59:50 “And all these things are expensive.
0:59:53 “And so if you want, you must be thinking like,
0:59:55 “How much is this gonna cost me?”
0:59:56 Well, I’ve just put together a course
0:59:58 that shows you how to buy and flip home
1:00:00 so you have the money to buy all this stuff.
1:00:05 I was like, “Dude, you got me hook line and sink up.”
1:00:08 – Yeah, that’s an absolute judo flip at the end there.
1:00:09 – Exactly.
1:00:11 – And forget about having a home, you can’t afford it.
1:00:14 But the way you could afford it is if you like my course
1:00:17 and start learning how to make money online.
1:00:17 That’s amazing.
1:00:19 You did this with your book, right?
1:00:22 I remember going down the funnel once of your free book.
1:00:25 And I was like, this is very, very smart.
1:00:26 He’s got a free book funnel.
1:00:29 Tell me about this sell like crazy book funnel.
1:00:32 How many people have gotten a book from you
1:00:33 from through this?
1:00:35 I guess it’s a pretty ridiculous number.
1:00:37 – Yeah, we’ve sold a million copies now.
1:00:40 – But are you selling them or are they free?
1:00:41 I thought they’re free.
1:00:43 – Yeah, like it’s free plus shipping.
1:00:46 So like between we are on Amazon and whatnot as well.
1:00:50 But yeah, overall it’s, we’ve sold a million copies
1:00:52 through both the Amazon and the funnel.
1:00:54 – And when I saw this, I was like, this is genius
1:00:58 because books are not good money makers anyways.
1:00:59 So instead of trying to make a profit
1:01:01 charging nine books for a book, you’re like,
1:01:04 let me give away a free book on teaching you how to sell.
1:01:07 And then you would create what I call the yes, yes, yes,
1:01:08 no funnel.
1:01:12 The yes, yes, yes, no funnel is you hear somebody
1:01:13 telling you how to do something,
1:01:14 how to get better at something.
1:01:15 They’re not selling you anything.
1:01:19 And you say, yes, yes, yes, that all makes sense.
1:01:20 That’s true.
1:01:22 That’s a great example.
1:01:23 That’s a great point.
1:01:24 Yes, yes, yes.
1:01:25 And at the end, you just say,
1:01:27 no, I don’t have the energy to do that.
1:01:29 And at the end, what you’re hoping for,
1:01:31 the ideal prospect for a lot of these businesses
1:01:34 is somebody who is now convinced that you know your shit,
1:01:36 but they’re also convinced that they don’t have the time,
1:01:39 the energy or the skill to go do it themselves.
1:01:41 And you could say, if you don’t want,
1:01:42 I’m giving you the playbook,
1:01:43 but if you don’t want to do this to yourself
1:01:46 or you don’t have the time to do this yourself,
1:01:48 luckily we’re here, we do this for you.
1:01:49 And you have a marketing agency, for example.
1:01:50 So you could teach people,
1:01:53 you could give away how to do marketing
1:01:55 and people would do yes, yes, yes.
1:01:57 And at the end, they would say,
1:01:58 no, but I’d rather you do it for me.
1:02:00 You’ve, all you’ve done is convinced me
1:02:01 that you are an expert at this
1:02:04 and I want to now enlist you to do it.
1:02:06 – Yeah. And I think there’s a caveat to it though, right?
1:02:09 And so like what a lot of people do
1:02:11 when it comes to book funnels or any of these kind of things
1:02:14 is they effectively make the book
1:02:18 like a thinly veiled sales pitch to do exactly just that.
1:02:21 And one of the things that like, you know,
1:02:23 I think I started it in the different way.
1:02:24 Like I started in a position where it’s like,
1:02:28 we were getting so much inbound to what we were doing.
1:02:30 And, you know, we’re a premium agency.
1:02:32 There’s a lot of businesses that couldn’t afford
1:02:33 to work with us.
1:02:34 And they would always ask us like,
1:02:36 who else would you recommend?
1:02:38 Like, who’s the no frills version of what it is
1:02:40 that you guys do?
1:02:41 And in the beginning, I was like,
1:02:42 okay, let me try to find some people
1:02:44 that kind of know what they’re doing
1:02:45 and send them their way.
1:02:47 And they would always come back to bite me in the ass.
1:02:49 And they’d be like, hey, you recommended this person
1:02:51 and they just murdered my money, right?
1:02:54 So, and so I just decided then I was gonna write
1:02:57 like a playbook to help those people
1:02:59 to get them to a point where they may not be ready right now.
1:03:01 But let me give them this stuff for free.
1:03:04 Let me literally no holds barred,
1:03:07 give them exactly the playbook and not hold anything back.
1:03:08 And then maybe in the future,
1:03:10 they might come back as a client.
1:03:12 And if not, that’s completely fine.
1:03:14 So there’s a lot of people that just,
1:03:16 they go the opposite route.
1:03:19 And they go, let me build the yes, yes, no funnel.
1:03:21 And let me just make basically the book,
1:03:24 a sales letter for my core offer.
1:03:27 And so I was very conscious of not making that,
1:03:31 the situation, because I wanted to be something like,
1:03:32 books is interesting.
1:03:35 Books is not like a YouTube video of a real, right?
1:03:37 Like that book is gonna be around in some capacity,
1:03:40 hopefully long after I am gone.
1:03:43 So you really need to pour a lot of time and energy
1:03:45 to make it the best that you possibly can.
1:03:49 And so yeah, like I think that that’s the distinction
1:03:51 to make is that it’s not a bait and switch of like,
1:03:53 yeah, you buy the book and it’s just like,
1:03:55 I’m gonna hold back all the secrets.
1:03:58 Usually the secret 11 herbs and spices, baby,
1:04:00 you’re not gonna know them, right?
1:04:03 And you need to literally lead with your best foot forward
1:04:04 and do give them everything.
1:04:07 And then if they arrive at that decision,
1:04:10 they don’t feel like, okay, he’s giving me everything
1:04:13 but the secret little part that turns the machine on.
1:04:15 – Yeah, I think that’s a very good point.
1:04:17 Awesome, well, dude, thanks for coming on, man.
1:04:19 I knew I would learn some stuff about marketing,
1:04:22 but I also got some good life tips
1:04:23 and life wisdom out of this,
1:04:25 which is always a good thing for me.
1:04:26 So I appreciate you coming on.
1:04:28 Where could people find you or get more about you?
1:04:30 – It’s been a pleasure, thanks for having me on.
1:04:34 You can check me @subrisubi pretty much on all platforms.
1:04:36 And if you liked this, you can go to YouTube
1:04:37 and check me out.
1:04:40 – Awesome, thanks man, how ’bout this?
1:04:42 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
1:04:45 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
1:04:47 ♪ I put my all in it like no days off ♪
1:04:51 ♪ On the road let’s travel never looking back ♪