0:00:04 My job as a founder, it’s to inject risk into the business.
0:00:08 You can get away with certain things that other people simply can’t because you own the damn place.
0:00:10 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:00:13 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:00:16 ♪ I put my all in it like the days off ♪
0:00:21 All right, today’s episode, we’re going to talk about things that interest us.
0:00:24 One thing that I tweeted out the other day.
0:00:27 I wasn’t surprised by this result,
0:00:30 but it still made me sad.
0:00:32 I tweeted out, I said,
0:00:41 “If you could guarantee a 7.5% real return for the rest of your life every year, guaranteed.”
0:00:46 But you can’t invest in any individual stocks forever.
0:00:48 However, you can start your own business,
0:00:52 and I think I even said you can only invest $10,000 into that business.
0:00:57 Or you can invest actively, you can’t really buy the index,
0:01:00 but you can invest actively and do whatever you want.
0:01:03 Some days, maybe, or some years, maybe you’ll get plus 50%.
0:01:05 Some years, you’re going to get minus 50%.
0:01:07 Which would you choose, option A or B?
0:01:12 40% of my 300,000 followers selected option B.
0:01:16 And you replied and you said, “Option A, all day, easy.”
0:01:18 Why did you select that?
0:01:26 Well, to get 7.5% with no effort and you’re guaranteed, it’s a no-brainer.
0:01:28 It’s an absolute no-brainer for me.
0:01:33 Now, I’ve got a business, I have a lot of risk in my own business,
0:01:35 so that might be part of it as well.
0:01:37 I have all the risk there.
0:01:41 So let me ask you this, were you intending this to be someone who’s 21 years old,
0:01:45 straight out of school, never invested before, has nothing else going on,
0:01:47 or is it just at any point in your life?
0:01:50 I think at any point in your life, that’s still the right decision.
0:01:52 I still turn that switch on in a second, yeah.
0:01:56 That’s a ridiculous return, in a good way.
0:02:00 And a consistent return, I mean, the way that would compound over time would be fantastic.
0:02:02 And there’s nothing boring about that.
0:02:06 That’s an incredible, I mean, it’s boring, actually, but also an incredible thing.
0:02:09 So yeah, would you think that the survey was going to produce?
0:02:11 Were you surprised by the ratio?
0:02:18 I’m surprised that the average Joe, I mean, and my followers are probably above the average Joe,
0:02:21 in terms of income, maybe IQ, maybe not, I don’t know.
0:02:23 But they’re typically a higher-
0:02:25 Good looks, for sure. They’re up there.
0:02:30 They’re very good looking. It’s a very high, I would imagine it’s a high-educated, coastal crowd.
0:02:35 And so, anyway, I would have thought that they would have seen the fallacy,
0:02:39 that they probably can’t beat all the others,
0:02:42 particularly the other people who have a much better advantage.
0:02:47 And so, the idea that although everyone else fails at getting this return,
0:02:53 I, in my little office in part-time with just me, can somehow beat all the others.
0:02:57 And I thought that that was shocking to me, that they thought that they were exceptional at that.
0:02:59 That’s what I was surprised at.
0:03:01 Yeah, well, that’s pretty common.
0:03:03 I think everyone thinks they’re exceptional in some way.
0:03:08 I mean, the thing people don’t take into consideration is risk.
0:03:14 So, like, they might go, “Well, if I could just buy Nvidia or Apple or whatever, Shopify.”
0:03:18 And the thing is, in the short term, you almost certainly can.
0:03:22 Over the next two or three years, you get lucky, pick one, pick a winner.
0:03:24 But the rest of your life, that’s the question.
0:03:30 Alright, let’s take a quick break, because I want to talk to you about some new stuff that HubSpot has.
0:03:34 Now, they let me freestyle this ad here, so I’m going to actually tell you what I think is interesting.
0:03:39 So, they have this thing called the “Fall Spotlight,” showing all the new features that they released in the last few months.
0:03:42 And the ones that stood out to me were Breeze Intelligence.
0:03:46 I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but if you’re in HubSpot and you have, let’s say, a customer there,
0:03:49 you can just basically add intelligence to that customer.
0:03:52 They estimate a revenue for that company, how many employees it has,
0:03:56 maybe their email address or their location, if they’ve ever visited your page or not.
0:04:00 And so, you can enrich all of your data automatically with one click,
0:04:02 using this thing called Breeze Intelligence.
0:04:05 They actually acquired a really cool company called Clearbit, and it’s become Breeze,
0:04:07 which is great because now it’s built in.
0:04:09 I always hated using two different tools to try to do this.
0:04:10 Now, it’s all in one place.
0:04:14 And so, all the data you had about your customers now just got smarter.
0:04:15 So, check it out.
0:04:17 You can actually see all the stuff they released.
0:04:18 It’s a really cool website.
0:04:22 Go to HubSpot.com/Spotlight to see them all and get the demos yourself.
0:04:24 Back to this episode.
0:04:25 So, here’s what I’ve done lately.
0:04:28 I’ve been spending time in New York because I’ve got family here.
0:04:33 And I called the email, then did call outreach, and I randomly met a bunch of people who work at hedge funds.
0:04:36 And I’m like, hey, like, I’m not like a competitor.
0:04:37 You don’t ever have to worry about me.
0:04:40 I’m just like a passionate, interesting, interested person.
0:04:44 Can I just, like, see your office and just, like, can I just sit at your computer
0:04:46 and you just show me your software?
0:04:48 And, like, I just want to see, like, what you do all day.
0:04:51 And you go to some of these offices and, you know, I would have thought,
0:04:55 like, they were like, “Wolf of Wall Street,” where it’s like buzzing and like the phones are ringing.
0:04:56 It’s really just a bunch, it’s pretty quiet.
0:04:59 And it’s usually just like a bunch of nerds, like, looking at a computer screen.
0:05:04 But they got, like, four screens and they’ve got, like, incredibly complicated software.
0:05:09 And the average show is getting paid hundreds of thousands, sometimes tens of millions of dollars,
0:05:12 to be good at this one thing.
0:05:18 And then I think about, like, how is, like, Bobby Lee in whatever, Missouri, where I’m from,
0:05:23 on his Robin Hood app, possibly going to have, like, an edge on all these resources.
0:05:26 And these people with all these resources, they’re still not that good.
0:05:29 You know, I talked to a guy who worked at Bridgewater recently.
0:05:32 And I was like, “Bridgewater, I’ve run up Ray Dalio. Are you guys, like, the best?”
0:05:35 He’s like, “Sometimes we’re the best, but the last 15 years, we’ve sucked.
0:05:37 We’ve underperformed the market.”
0:05:41 And I’m like, “That’s insane that 1,500 employees, tens of billions or hundreds of billions
0:05:45 under assets, you’re all paid, like, the best there is, you still can’t beat it.”
0:05:48 And so that kind of, like, that’s kind of where I’m coming from.
0:05:56 Yeah, it’s also, like, Vegas. You go to Vegas and, you know, you’re on a hot streak for 30 minutes.
0:05:59 And, you know, the longer you play, the less you’re going to win.
0:06:01 You’re going to lose, like, you’re going to lose.
0:06:03 The house is going to win over the long term.
0:06:06 So people, I think, have this idea of short-term performance in the market,
0:06:09 feeling like, “I can do this forever.”
0:06:12 Just like in Vegas, you can’t do that forever and you will begin to lose
0:06:13 and the same thing is true in the market.
0:06:15 So, yeah, lock it in.
0:06:18 What’s this thing about loosening the grip on the stick?
0:06:22 Oh, yeah. So, I got a drum set recently.
0:06:25 I used to kind of want to play drums. I kind of did for a little bit.
0:06:27 I stopped for many years and I kind of just picked it up recently.
0:06:30 My office is a bit of a mess, so I got to find a better place for it.
0:06:32 But right now, it’s in the corner.
0:06:36 And as I’ve been playing, I learned this very quick lesson.
0:06:38 And actually, it’s true when I try to learn how to play guitar.
0:06:42 I say try again because I’m not very good at these things, but I enjoy them.
0:06:47 Is when you’re new at something, you tend to hold things too tightly.
0:06:50 Like, I hold the drumstick too tightly.
0:06:52 I hold the neck of the guitar too tightly.
0:06:55 Anyone who’s played any instrument will understand kind of where I’m getting,
0:06:56 what I’m coming from here.
0:06:57 I used to play drums. I know what you’re talking about.
0:07:01 Okay, so you hold this stick really, really hard and then you fatigue faster.
0:07:03 You don’t have as much articulation on the stick.
0:07:06 You can’t get certain ghost notes and tones out of things
0:07:10 because you’re always hitting too hard and too firmly and you just, there’s no finesse.
0:07:16 And it kind of dawned on me recently that this is very, very true for most things in life.
0:07:21 I think especially business, I kind of, in some ways I feel silly always bringing this back to business.
0:07:26 Anyway, I realized that like by simply loosening my grip a bit, by lightening up,
0:07:29 you end up having better control.
0:07:33 You end up playing better. You end up working better. You can do it longer.
0:07:37 And you allow other things to happen that weren’t possible when you’re gripping so tightly.
0:07:38 I think this is true for business.
0:07:41 I think when you’re starting a business, you have a really tight grip on things typically
0:07:45 and it’s best at some point to loosen up a little bit and let the rest of the organization
0:07:50 expand into itself versus you trying to control every last thing.
0:07:55 And I run into a lot of entrepreneurs who I think have not learned how to let go of the stick.
0:07:58 I think that that’s also a young man’s thing to do, right?
0:08:00 Like you learn this with age.
0:08:02 What are you saying? What are you trying to say?
0:08:09 Well, what I’m saying is you have a couple of decades of experience and so do I.
0:08:15 And I think that as I’m getting older, which I’m not old, but neither of you, I’m learning it is okay to loosen up.
0:08:17 That’s what they say a lot about men.
0:08:22 They say, “Oh, well, she used to be intense, but he’s mellowed out. He’s mellowed out.”
0:08:24 And that’s usually what they’re referring to.
0:08:28 Yes, that’s a good point. Yeah, the mellowing out.
0:08:34 It’s nice though in a different realm of something to find a metaphor.
0:08:40 And in my head now, I am kind of thinking about this, like loosen up your grip a little bit.
0:08:41 In what parts of life?
0:08:46 Well, I’d say business. I would say also with my kids a little bit.
0:08:51 I would say there’s a way where I kind of wanted them to do certain things a certain way.
0:08:57 And it creates this conflict. They’re their own people. I’m my own person.
0:09:00 And I want to encourage them to do certain things in a certain way,
0:09:04 but I also got to loosen up a little bit around that and let them find their own way.
0:09:08 And that’s something I kind of learned pretty early in parenting.
0:09:14 So there’s a lot of things, but in general, I just feel better when I’m not gripping things so tightly.
0:09:21 And when I look out there on Twitter or anywhere, LinkedIn or whatever,
0:09:28 and I’m looking at these like business stories, I’m reading a lot of grip.
0:09:36 I’m reading a lot of tension that people are trying to over-optimize and paying attention
0:09:40 to every last little thing in a way where I feel like just loosen up a little bit,
0:09:45 like pay attention to a few things that matter and let things just be a little bit more.
0:09:49 The best example that I’ve experienced this in my real life is arguing with people.
0:09:53 And so before it was like every word that I like, when I learned to talk,
0:09:57 it was like it was “fight” was the first thing that came out.
0:10:00 You know, like my early words were, “I wanted to fight.”
0:10:04 And so if I met someone with a different political perspective, it was,
0:10:08 “You’re wrong for these reasons. You’re really stupid for that.”
0:10:14 When I lived in San Francisco, I was significantly more combative than I am nowadays.
0:10:21 I’ve been lucky that I was raised in Missouri and that I lived in San Francisco, lived in New York,
0:10:28 lived in Texas, and that has shaped me a bit politically, but also that it bleeds other points of life,
0:10:32 which is like instead of someone saying something, when someone says something that I disagree with,
0:10:36 it’s more so instead of fighting, it’s, “Well, why do you feel that way?”
0:10:40 That’s a really interesting perspective. Tell me more about why you feel that way.
0:10:44 And I think I don’t know if this is just a clickbait thing, but Keanu Reeves had this quote
0:10:47 where he was like, “I used to argue with people, now I never argue.”
0:10:52 He was like, “One plus one equals five,” and I’ll say, “Well, I hope you have a really good day.”
0:10:57 And that’s a little bit about how it’s been where I just want to argue a bit less.
0:11:02 And I’ll still catch myself arguing, but Dale Carnegie in this book, “How to Win Influence,”
0:11:06 “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” he’s got many famous lines,
0:11:10 but one of the famous teachings is basically just don’t argue with people
0:11:14 because no party typically walks away happy or satisfied.
0:11:18 And so loosening the grip for me is arguing less, where it’s,
0:11:21 “I’m not even going to judge you, and I’m just going to–
0:11:24 I can recognize that you think this way and I think this way,” and it’s cool.
0:11:28 It’s a great example, actually. I hadn’t thought about that, but that’s another great example.
0:11:31 It’s just like holding on– it’s not even holding on too tightly to a perspective
0:11:34 because you can have a perspective that you really believe in,
0:11:40 but it’s like don’t clench or you’re not even able to listen.
0:11:47 I think the point about being too grippy is it’s like you’re a spring under tension,
0:11:50 and if someone says something to you that you disagree with,
0:11:55 you’re going to, boom, expand and explode, which is kind of what an argument can be,
0:11:58 versus just already taking some of the tension out of that spring
0:12:01 and just bouncing with it and listening versus exploding out of it.
0:12:03 I think that’s a big difference.
0:12:07 Have you ever read– there’s this term. I’ll have to figure out what the term is,
0:12:13 but there’s this term where astronauts go to space and they see the Earth from far away,
0:12:19 and many of them have reported to have a life-changing perspective where they think to themselves,
0:12:22 “The fact that we’re fighting over religion is ridiculous.
0:12:25 The fact that we’re fighting over borders is ridiculous.”
0:12:27 Now, let’s zoom down to the smaller things.
0:12:30 The fact that we’re fighting over someone saying something rude to us is absolutely crazy
0:12:34 because we’re all just a bunch of monkeys on this floating thing.
0:12:36 Monkeys with cars, so we are.
0:12:41 Yeah, and we see this abyss, and then we’re just this silly blue thing in the middle of it,
0:12:46 and a lot of astronauts say it changes their perspective and it mellows them out.
0:12:51 And I think that when I read about that years ago, it kind of helped me calm down a little bit more
0:12:54 to where you think the stuff that I thought mattered doesn’t matter.
0:12:56 For example, I remember when COVID happened, and I was like,
0:12:59 “We’re never going to a concert ever again.”
0:13:03 And then three years later, I’m like, “Fuck that. I forgot all about that.”
0:13:04 Do you know what I mean?
0:13:10 Totally. To that point about astronauts, have you read that great passage from Carl Sagan,
0:13:11 the pale blue dot?
0:13:12 What’s he say? No.
0:13:15 I mean, it’s one of the most beautiful.
0:13:17 I’m not going to say it because I want you to read it.
0:13:19 I want you to have the experience of reading it.
0:13:20 Sure, it’s a paragraph.
0:13:24 It is one of the most beautiful passages I’ve ever read,
0:13:27 but it’s exactly kind of what you were talking about with the astronauts,
0:13:29 like looking back at the Earth.
0:13:33 It’s all about all the things that have ever happened.
0:13:36 I’m going to really generalize here because I want you to read the words,
0:13:38 but all the things that have ever happened,
0:13:42 every leader, every religion, every point of view, every argument, every whatever, right?
0:13:49 Beautifully and beautiful prose happened on this speck of dust, basically.
0:13:51 I think he calls it like a moat of dust.
0:13:54 It’s such a beautiful passage, and it brings tears to my eyes,
0:13:59 and I try to read it a few times a year because it’s so right.
0:14:00 It’s so spot on right.
0:14:04 It’s exactly what you’re talking about in the most beautiful poetic way,
0:14:08 which is all the stuff that we’re worried about.
0:14:11 All these things, like very few of those things matter.
0:14:13 Although, of course, they matter in your day-to-day life.
0:14:16 They’re real for you, but they really don’t matter that much.
0:14:20 It’s just a good reminder that all the things were just so fired up about.
0:14:25 Well, it’s a paradox of caring by not caring.
0:14:28 Why do you not like comparing this stuff to business?
0:14:31 Afterwards, I’ll tell you my reason why I think it’s good.
0:14:36 Yes, so this is an undeveloped thought of mine that’s been sort of on my mind.
0:14:40 I don’t know if it’s a good idea or not, so just run with me here.
0:14:43 This is undeveloped.
0:14:49 It seems like every great lesson is then applied to business by someone.
0:14:52 For example, a Navy SEAL learns all the stuff in the military,
0:14:59 and they come and they then consult for companies about how to run teams or some great coach.
0:15:02 Coaches are a great team, and then they come and they bring it to the business world.
0:15:05 It’s always like bringing it to the business world.
0:15:09 I’m like, “What does the business world deserve the best lessons from things
0:15:12 that are completely unrelated in many ways to business?”
0:15:14 But why does it always come to the business world?
0:15:18 The main reason is why, in my opinion, is because the business world pays for that advice.
0:15:20 It’s not that it deserves the advice.
0:15:25 It’s not even that it’s advice that’s applicable, but that it pays for the advice.
0:15:30 The way I’ve been thinking about it is not as this shining beacon on a hill
0:15:34 that business deserves all the greatest things, but actually as the drain,
0:15:38 that all these ideas drain down through business
0:15:43 because business sort of just is willing to pay for it and listen to it
0:15:47 and have this insecure in a way.
0:15:49 It wants to listen to the Navy SEALs.
0:15:52 It wants to listen to the great NCAA coach.
0:15:56 It wants to listen because it’s insecure in its own way.
0:16:02 Also, there’s this sense of these other places and people they know better than us.
0:16:06 We’re going to just bow down for their advice.
0:16:13 Again, this is a little bit unformed, but it’s something that just bugs me a little bit.
0:16:16 Does that make any sense or is it just a weird idea?
0:16:22 No, it makes sense, but my argument would be instead of the image that you’ve just painted,
0:16:29 you’ve painted a upside-down triangle with all of this beautiful stuff draining down into this bad thing.
0:16:30 Thank you.
0:16:35 I would turn that upside down and say, “It all is going up to this amazing thing,
0:16:41 and here’s why, because I think that whether you like capitalism or don’t like capitalism,
0:16:43 you cannot deny that it’s here to stay.
0:16:48 At worst, it’s here to stay in the lifetime of everyone who’s alive.
0:16:52 Maybe America will change, maybe the majority of the world will change,
0:16:56 but I wouldn’t bet on that happening anytime soon.
0:17:04 Therefore, I think that capitalism and thus business building is the most practical way to manifest a dream or a reality.
0:17:07 Oftentimes, you could say, “Well, what about art?”
0:17:11 I would agree with that, but at the end of the day, you’re still making stuff that people want
0:17:16 and you’re still selling tickets, you’re still trying to make some type of money off of your art
0:17:20 so you can continue doing it, or you’re just going to have a rich person who funds you,
0:17:22 so you are able to do it.
0:17:31 My opinion, business is the most practical way to actually kick a dent in the world or to manifest a vision.
0:17:37 I think of business as a very, I’m very passionate about it being a little bit of a spiritual journey
0:17:39 of turning dreams into reality.
0:17:42 That’s an optimistic point of view, which I do understand.
0:17:44 Here’s my question.
0:17:52 If this thing called business is absorbing all of these lessons from all of these other realms,
0:17:57 and they’re all filtering down or filtering up, but they’re filtering two,
0:18:05 and maybe I’m wrong about this, but why aren’t the Navy SEALs asking CEOs for advice?
0:18:07 Sometimes they are.
0:18:09 I don’t know, maybe they are.
0:18:13 Jack Welch’s book, Six Sigma, a lot of different types of organizations outside of business
0:18:15 view that book.
0:18:19 I don’t really like that book, but they view it as the rules of the game.
0:18:21 Yeah.
0:18:27 I might be uninformed in a sense of who the military is listening to and who sports teams are,
0:18:33 but there’s something that you would imagine this entity, this business thing that has absorbed everything
0:18:37 would then be the definitive source of this wisdom.
0:18:41 But I wonder, is it a one-way street or is it a two-way street?
0:18:44 I think you’re more right than you are wrong, that’s for sure.
0:18:46 It’s definitely more one-way.
0:18:51 I just wanted to give one example, but frankly, that’s a nitpick example.
0:18:52 Totally.
0:18:55 Again, I don’t know if this is a good idea or not.
0:18:59 It’s been sort of floating in my head for a bit, so it’s fun to air these things out.
0:19:03 What was more fun, early days or late days of the company?
0:19:07 That’s a really good question.
0:19:09 They’re very fun in very different ways.
0:19:13 It’s a bit of a cop-out, but it’s true, but they’re fun in different ways.
0:19:19 What’s exciting about the early days is there’s a certain energy that you can never capture again,
0:19:23 which is there’s so much more unknown.
0:19:28 You’re starting from zero and you’re building something and you don’t know where it’s going to be
0:19:31 and where it’s going to go and what’s possible and what isn’t
0:19:33 and how long it’s going to last and all those things.
0:19:37 Now, you don’t know how long it’s ever going to last in a sense, but there’s this hope,
0:19:39 there’s this possibility, there’s this birth.
0:19:44 It’s like, boom, we’re out in the world and here we are and this is an incredible thing.
0:19:45 That’s super fun.
0:19:51 Then you get a lot of new attention and you’re kind of burst on the scene and that’s exciting, really exciting.
0:19:53 I think what’s hard actually is the middle.
0:19:57 We’ve gotten to a place now, having done this for 25 years.
0:20:04 It’s become really fun again in a different way, but I would say like 15 years in is a different story.
0:20:07 Because at that point, it’s like we’ve been doing this for a while.
0:20:09 I don’t know how much longer it’s going to last.
0:20:12 You’re kind of in this sort of maintenance thing.
0:20:17 Were you big enough at 15 years where you’re like payroll is not an issue?
0:20:23 Were you out of like any type of outside pressure where it was like, things are fine.
0:20:27 It’s like, I feel weird that I’m complaining, but this feels weird.
0:20:33 Yeah, and I’m not really complaining about it, but yeah, it’s more like, you know, Scott Belsky wrote a book called The Messy Middle.
0:20:37 Yeah, I’ve not read the book actually, but I understand the idea of it.
0:20:44 And it’s kind of what I’m trying to get at, which is like the middle of it is like, what do we want to be now?
0:20:46 And where do we want to go now?
0:20:48 And are we going to be a big company?
0:20:49 Are we going to stay a small company?
0:20:55 There’s all these opportunities that are surrounding us now and swirling around us versus when you’re starting, you’re just like, you’re just going, you’re just moving.
0:20:59 Then you just play a place where you’re like kind of evaluating.
0:21:12 And now we’re in this place where we’re just sort of mellowed in a sense to your point, although we’re actually getting very ambitious again, because we have the sense of like, we’ve been doing this so long now that like, if we took some crazy bets or made place some crazy bets and it just totally all fell apart.
0:21:16 Like, I don’t want that to happen, but I’d be okay with that too.
0:21:21 Like we’re the place where it’s like, we’ve done plenty and we’ve had an incredible run.
0:21:27 And if it all ended with a bang because we tried some crazy stuff that didn’t work, like, I’d be okay with that too.
0:21:30 So I feel like I’m at that place now where I wouldn’t have been at 15 years.
0:21:32 That makes any sense.
0:21:34 What’s your sense? I mean, you started a bunch of stuff.
0:21:44 My sense is that so none of my things have had been as big as yours, but they’ve been big enough where we’ve had dozens or, you know, 50, 60 employees.
0:21:50 And we got outside of the like existential crisis moment where it’s like, things are working.
0:21:54 And everyone talks about focus.
0:21:58 Focus is a very common thing and it’s something I firmly believe in.
0:22:09 But as someone who likes to make things, for my skill set, a company outside, like maybe let’s say 3 million in revenue or maybe maybe 5 million in revenue.
0:22:16 I’ve noticed consistently a 5 million in revenue and like 15 employees, something like that.
0:22:19 I’m like, I don’t know what to do with my hands.
0:22:21 I’m just sitting here like, what do I do?
0:22:28 I feel useless and I feel like sometimes a general behind the scenes just pointing.
0:22:35 And I’ve noticed something that I really dislike, but I think it’s normal is a company ebbs and flows.
0:22:45 And I’ve noticed that this ebb and flow carries over to the rest of my life where I just had a child and I’m like, I’m in this quiet time for a moment where I have to be present.
0:22:54 Whereas there’s other times where you’re dating or something like that and you’re like, I’m in more mode a little bit where it’s like, it’s action constantly or like, I’m on top of my game and I got to be on top of my game.
0:23:00 Same with business where it’s like, we’re launching this new thing, we’re out fighting with the troops, we’re in the trenches.
0:23:07 And then there’s other times, sometimes this I think can last for years maybe where it’s just like, we’re just doing the same thing over and over and over again.
0:23:12 And that period can be a little depressing even though everything is going well.
0:23:16 It’s a very saddening period because you lack action.
0:23:19 It’s basically like what they say with a lot of great investors.
0:23:24 I think Manish said this on our Pabraya on our last podcast.
0:23:28 He was like, if you can watch paint dry, you’re going to be a good investor.
0:23:34 The problem with that for a lot of entrepreneurs or a lot of like go-getters is that’s a really sad place to be in.
0:23:40 Even though everything is going well, it’s really uncomfortable to be in that feeling.
0:23:46 So have you guys had a lot of, have you had a lot where you’re like, man, I just kind of unfortunately have to do nothing for maybe years?
0:23:48 Yeah, I can totally identify with that.
0:23:58 And I think what you’re getting at with entrepreneurs is that what you’re describing is in the early days, you are very important as a founder.
0:24:06 Then there’s a point where you build an organization and then the organization is able to in some ways in a good way run without you to some degree.
0:24:12 And at that point, you kind of feel a little bit less valuable to your own thing that you made.
0:24:22 It’s a good thing, but for you, it’s a good thing because it means there’s some stability and you’re not the bottleneck and you’re not the only person that matters here anymore, obviously.
0:24:28 But for you personally, it feels a little bit like you’ve become detached from this thing that you made.
0:24:38 And you’re now further away typically from the creation phase and now you’re more in the maintenance phase of something.
0:24:46 And you’re dealing with internal politics and personalities and hiring and you’ve got some great people who just left and now you’re going to find new people and the culture is changing.
0:24:50 And that’s a pretty tumultuous, turbulent time for a founder.
0:24:56 And I’ve gone through that many times and it comes in a goes.
0:25:05 What I’ve found is that what I’ve kind of discovered actually recently is that my job as the founder, I’m still a founder, I still started this company.
0:25:07 I’m still in it 25 years.
0:25:13 My job as a founder, what I’ve realized is it’s to inject risk into the business.
0:25:24 Most people, everyone pretty much at your company’s job is to manage risk to some degree, to keep their job, to not push too hard or too far ultimately.
0:25:28 You can get away with certain things that other people simply can’t because you own the damn place.
0:25:30 You are the original person.
0:25:39 So what I’ve found a lot more joy and excitement in is revising this idea of injecting risk.
0:25:42 And by the way, I don’t think you could change that.
0:25:45 I think like for a long time, I was like, why aren’t these people taking risks?
0:25:47 I got to force it and I’m like, it’s impossible.
0:25:49 That’s impossible to change.
0:25:54 Even if you hire a great CEO to replace you with CEO, they just don’t have that.
0:26:02 They might be an incredible CEO, great executive, executing things, trains are on time, incredible.
0:26:09 But there’s that thing that’s present in a founder simply because they were there from the beginning.
0:26:19 They have an extra ounce of latitude that allows them to take risks that nobody’s going to say no to.
0:26:25 Maybe if you have a board, maybe someone’s going to say no, but they’ll still give you more latitude than a hired hand basically in a sense.
0:26:38 So my sense is the way I found to return to this sort of flow versus the app is to inject more risk, which for us means we’re going to build a lot more products.
0:26:40 This year, we’re going to do four products.
0:26:46 We’re going to begin, we’re about to start working on two products simultaneously, which we’ve never done before.
0:26:49 We’ve never built two things at the same time.
0:26:52 There’s a lot of stuff going on.
0:26:53 We’ve got different models.
0:26:55 We’ve got once, we’ve got SaaS, we’ve got all these things.
0:26:59 We’re going to do multiple versions of multiple things and different business models.
0:27:06 We’re really off balance in a really healthy way at the moment because we’re doing a bunch of new stuff.
0:27:08 And that gets me excited now.
0:27:10 It makes some people internally nervous, understandably so.
0:27:12 It’s like, well, this is different now.
0:27:15 We’re kind of off balance a little bit and we’re trying new things.
0:27:18 But that’s how I have to run the business.
0:27:20 Otherwise, I will become bored.
0:27:26 And at that point, it won’t serve me or the business well if I’m in charge and bored.
0:27:28 That’s not a good thing.
0:27:34 For my professional life or for my main company, that’s like the main nine to five thing for Hampton.
0:27:37 I do inject risk, but I have a CEO.
0:27:42 I have to respect that relationship.
0:27:43 Yes.
0:27:48 On my nights and weekends, I created a new website for fun.
0:27:50 I created this website called Sam’s List.
0:27:52 It’s Sam’s List.co.
0:27:53 Nice.
0:28:00 And the reason I did it was I tweeted out who’s got an accountant that they love because I just needed an accountant for something.
0:28:08 I got like 300 replies and I was like, wait, something’s interesting here because this tweet got so many bookmarks.
0:28:12 A lot of people bookmarked it and someone was like, oh, I’m saving this for later to find an accountant.
0:28:14 So I was like, this is interesting.
0:28:25 So I spent a few months calling every accountant on the list, finding out how much they charged, what services they provide, what services they don’t provide, who the ideal client is, who isn’t the ideal client, whatever.
0:28:34 And then I created a website called Sam’s List where I reviewed or I put all the information from all of my research for all these accountants, created this website.
0:28:37 I think I got 8,000 people to come in the first week.
0:28:41 And then I started figuring out how to monetize it.
0:28:48 And so this month, the first month that’s been live, it’s May 22nd when we’re filming this, I think it’s done 20,000 this month.
0:28:59 And the $20,000 that I’ve made from that is more dopamine than let’s say a million dollars a month or two million dollars a month that I’ve gotten from other things.
0:29:02 It’s a total rush and I love it.
0:29:06 Why is it? Why do you think that’s so exciting for you?
0:29:16 It’s a total rush because what started, it’s so fun. It’s so fun for things that start as silly jokes, like just stupid.
0:29:23 Like the logo that we have is a calculator that has three numbers and a Q and it looks like Clippy.
0:29:27 It looks like Clippy from Microsoft waving at you. It looks like Mickey Mouse.
0:29:31 And I just used chatGBT, I said make a logo that looks like Clippy, but it’s a calculator.
0:29:38 And it’s so fun to take silly, jokie stuff and turn it into real things that actually solve problems.
0:29:44 And I find that to be almost like part trolling, part like shit eating grin, like scheming.
0:29:48 Like I love that, like, wouldn’t it be hilarious if we made this a thing?
0:29:53 And then actually seeing it become a thing, I find to be so exciting.
0:30:03 I also think that when you have a silly idea, even if it’s like a serious idea and you start seeing customers truly like it, that’s a very invigorating feeling.
0:30:09 It’s the best. And we have this internal say, we don’t say it that much.
0:30:15 I’ve said it before and we kind of try to feel it, which is that cool wears off, but useful never does.
0:30:18 And what you’ve made is something that’s useful.
0:30:24 And that is one of the most beautiful things I think you can do for humanity is to make something useful.
0:30:29 And to have fun with it and to screw around and not like take it so seriously, this is going back to the thing.
0:30:32 Your grip is loose on this. You know, you’re having fun with it.
0:30:36 You ask chatGBT to make a logo and you’re goofing around and the name is just your name.
0:30:38 It’s like, it’s just have some fun.
0:30:44 And it’s a reminder that that’s what this should always feel like as much as possible.
0:30:48 It is totally valuable to do hard things. Absolutely.
0:30:52 But not everything should be hard. There should be plenty of easy things in your life, too.
0:30:56 Things that flow, things that you have fun doing, things that don’t feel hard.
0:31:00 You don’t need to pile up and collect only hard things.
0:31:07 And so while some of your business ideas might be harder to pull off for other reasons, this one is so light hearted and easy.
0:31:09 It’s healthy. It’s good for you.
0:31:13 And you rediscover like why you do this sort of stuff. And it’s also fun.
0:31:18 I think there’s something probably I’m guessing there’s something probably in this that like you’re like, I did this by myself.
0:31:19 Yeah.
0:31:22 That’s like the feeling of accomplishment.
0:31:26 And I can still do something by myself, like really by myself.
0:31:30 And that’s useful is very rewarding and hard to come by.
0:31:36 Sometimes when we all think we need to have partners and co-founders and teams and stuff to pull things off.
0:31:40 Do you and your partner get along like beautifully?
0:31:44 We get along really well. We’re not like we’re friends, but we don’t see each other very often.
0:31:50 We live in the same town and we don’t see each other. I see them once every, I don’t know, couple months.
0:31:56 We’re very good partners and we’re friendly, but we just don’t we don’t hang out like our families don’t hang out.
0:31:59 It’s not that we wouldn’t enjoy it. We just like we just don’t.
0:32:06 There was a there was a study where they looked at the most common reasons why couples get divorced.
0:32:12 The most common reason was contempt and the most common the most common reason for divorce was contempt.
0:32:15 The most common reason for staying together was you admired the other person.
0:32:19 Oh, I hadn’t heard that, but it resonates like resentment is just bad.
0:32:25 And I think a lot of business partners resent each other. Actually, I think you’ve been in business with others, I’m assuming.
0:32:34 Yeah, I’ve got the most I’ve had bad relationships. I’m currently in a very harmonious relationship with my co-founder Joe that I could see lasting a lifetime.
0:32:36 What feels different about it?
0:32:45 So when we first started together, we we we invested in startups together and we had a great time and he previously helped me with my old company, the hustle.
0:32:49 I cold emailed them and he was like, hey, if you’re in New York tomorrow, just stop by the office and we could talk.
0:32:50 And I was like, yeah, I’ll be there.
0:32:55 I like flew out there and like hung out with them. And that’s how we became friends. And then we invested in startups together.
0:33:01 And then I was like, I took like a really formal conversation with them. I was like, Joe, I love working with you.
0:33:10 Something I did with my wife early in our relationship when we were like thinking like, hey, is this something that we want to like make real and like get married and have a family.
0:33:18 And I sat down with my wife and I was like, let’s just like walk through our life values and like what type of life do we want to have and let’s see if like they kind of align.
0:33:22 And that’s okay if things change eventually. But let’s just say, let’s just see if the direction is similar.
0:33:28 And so I sat down with Joe and we said, hey, let’s just outline like what sacrifices are you willing to make?
0:33:32 What sacrifices are you not willing to make? What’s a perfect day look like for you?
0:33:37 What are you driven by? And like, for example, for me, I was like, you know, I’m driven by ego.
0:33:45 Like it bothers me that people think I’m not good enough. So like I always want to prove that I’m as good as I think I am or I’m driven by money.
0:33:49 I was like, I work only 40 hours a week. I don’t really want to work more than that.
0:33:56 I’m not willing to sacrifice traveling. I’m not going to like get out of my house often if I have a family.
0:34:01 And he like named all of his things and we looked at the all the things and we’re like, how much money do you want to have?
0:34:09 How much money do I want to have? We looked at all of the things and we’re like, for everything that is agreed upon awesome for everything that’s not agreed upon.
0:34:14 Do we think that that’s like a deal breaker? And they weren’t. And we’re like, cool.
0:34:18 We like did a really good job of being very honest up front about our wishes.
0:34:25 And now it’s a much easier to address like any issues we have because it’s like, hey, you, he’ll be like, hey, we got to get this done.
0:34:31 And I was like, yeah, but I but he’ll be like, but you told me that you don’t want to like grind on a Saturday.
0:34:34 So I’m not going to ask you. It’s all good. We agreed to this.
0:34:42 Things like that. And that makes the relationship really nice is that we respect one another and we had those conversations super early on.
0:34:51 Do you feel like the list or the conversations you had about that turned out to be true?
0:34:57 Like, are those really the things that that you guys share together or was that sort of what you imagined you would share?
0:35:05 Yeah, for example, for the money, let’s just do the money one. That’s a really easy one. We actually shared each other’s personal finances with each other.
0:35:06 Interesting.
0:35:13 Yeah, we were like super transparent. We’re like, here’s all of our finances. What matter? Like, I would like to go here one day. Where would you like to go?
0:35:20 It’s like, all right, well to go there. We’re going to be like, let’s say that my goal is less than your goal. Let’s hit your goal then.
0:35:25 And if we need to hit your goal, here’s maybe what the numbers would need to look like. And here’s what we’d have to make.
0:35:31 So, is that something we both agree upon? Do you know what I mean? We’re very transparent with each other.
0:35:37 That’s wild. I know you and I were talking on Twitter a little bit about how I’m super uncomfortable talking about money.
0:35:41 And you’re sharing your personal finances with your founder. It’s interesting.
0:35:43 Wait, you don’t do that with your partner?
0:35:47 You don’t do that with your partner? Well, your guys’ finances are probably so tied together.
0:35:54 They are tied together. Basically, all of our, essentially, the vast majority of our net worth is tied in our business.
0:36:00 So, we know what our distributions are and all that stuff. But yeah, we don’t, I mean, we don’t talk about that ever.
0:36:09 But it’s interesting. Also, you’re Midwestern or I’m a Midwestern. I feel like my thing is like, don’t talk about it.
0:36:14 I don’t know why it gets ingrained in me. Were you like that at one point or did you change?
0:36:19 I was always open about it because I saw my family like that. And I was like, that’s so unhelpful for me.
0:36:25 Because you’re not telling me, you’re not giving me a roadmap. You’re not, I don’t have anything to strive for because I don’t even know what’s possible.
0:36:34 My father owned a produce brokerage company, which like, it’s like a small business, but they sell like, let’s just say, over the course of his 30 or 20 year career,
0:36:42 he sold like $150 million worth of onions. But like, I’m like, how much is a lot of money? Is a lot of money like $50,000 a year or like $300,000 a year?
0:36:49 I have no, I have no clue about this. And so I, and I always regretted that they weren’t open with me. And so I was like, I’m just going to be open about it.
0:36:58 My folks never talked about money. I don’t still to this day, don’t know if they’re middle class, wealthy. I don’t, I don’t really know.
0:37:03 You’re kidding me. Do you really? You have no idea. That’s weird. Do you support them?
0:37:11 I have supported them. I gave them a big chunk of money at one point, but they like regretfully took it. They didn’t really want it.
0:37:17 Then I don’t think they need it. And I think I’m going to get it back when they pass kind of thing. Like, they’re not going to use it, you know?
0:37:24 They’ve always been very frugal. We don’t talk about it. My dad was an entrepreneur, worked for himself, like a small business owner.
0:37:32 He was a trader. So he traded stocks on his own. He wasn’t a broker. I think he started out as a broker for a little bit, but then he was on his own individual investor, basically.
0:37:37 I think he did well for a while. I think he didn’t do well for a while. I think, you know, that’s, that’s a tough road in a lot of ways.
0:37:43 He wasn’t a day trader, but there wasn’t anything we couldn’t have, but we also didn’t strive for anything that we couldn’t afford.
0:37:49 It just, I don’t really know. My parents have always been careful with it. So I kind of absorbed that, like, just don’t really talk about it.
0:37:56 And it didn’t limit me, though. It’s not like, I just felt like we were, everything was sort of fine is how it felt to me.
0:37:59 What are you going to do? What are you going to do with your kids?
0:38:10 I struggle with this. Like my parents never really talked about it. We don’t talk about it, but we certainly act differently than my parents are growing up.
0:38:26 We own a few homes. We have a couple of nice things. So it’s like, it’s kind of obvious that we can afford things and do things, but we just don’t, we haven’t talked about it.
0:38:34 I think that’s, that’s an incredibly Midwestern and an incredibly more traditional, older set of values.
0:38:41 My family had very Midwestern values. And I think a lot of those values are great. Hard work. Don’t complain.
0:38:49 Don’t, don’t make people work for like a, like, I remember going to like a restaurant and like we ordered a pizza and they brought us like a chicken salad.
0:38:55 And I’m like, we’re not going to deal. We’re not going to inconvenience you. Whatever. Just give me like, I will eat that.
0:39:01 Exactly. Yeah. That’s like the attitude. I’ve never sent a dishback in my life. Not in a million years. Never, ever. Not in a million years.
0:39:11 Steel, whatever. Yeah. And so like, I actually think some of those values are great. I think there’s many other values that are like, I don’t like using this word because it’s too loaded, but toxic, bad.
0:39:24 There are a lot of values that are bad. For example, I think the stoicism that Midwesterners tend to have that you definitely have. I think that it’s gotten you to where you wanted to go in a traditional success perspective.
0:39:34 But also like not being transparent with certain people. I think I just don’t want my family to be left wanting more when I’m gone in the sense of like, I wish that they were more open with me.
0:39:49 For example, I’ve not seen photos of my family really when they were younger or like I don’t have any. Your parents, you mean? Yeah, my parents. When my parents were younger, I’m like, and I don’t even know their grandparents’s name.
0:39:59 I don’t know. I had to do 23 of me because I’m like, when I asked them what my heritage was, they would just go, we’re white. I’m like, yeah, okay, but what flavor? Like, come on, I need some more.
0:40:11 Or I had to do ancestry.com in order to understand like who my grandparents were. Like, what are you guys hiding? And it turns out I found out that an uncle is actually, my grandmother was married previously.
0:40:18 And I’m like, why didn’t you guys tell me this? And they’re like, oh, we didn’t want to bring it up. You know, like little things like that. And I’m like, that’s weird. Just like, just discuss it.
0:40:20 Just tell me. Yeah, right.
0:40:35 That’s weird. So anyway, I think that is actually bad, though. And I pray that I don’t fall into that trap. And so that’s why with my family, I’ve been overly transparent with a lot of things. And I just think that that like lightens things up a little bit.
0:40:44 I admire that actually. And this is something I actually also admire about David. I’m sure you wouldn’t mind me telling you this.
0:40:50 David used to, when we were in Chicago, when we had an office, he used to drive to work in like incredibly fancy cars.
0:40:51 Yeah.
0:41:01 And my Midwestern sensibility is like, dude, don’t do that. He’s like, why not? I’m like, my sense was like, it just, it sends a weird message.
0:41:02 Right.
0:41:08 He’s like, what’s the message? I mean, everyone knows like, everyone here who works like they know we’re doing well, like, why would I hide that?
0:41:10 I agree with you on that one, by the way.
0:41:14 And I, it’s so funny because he’s right, I think.
0:41:18 Have you seen the big Lebowski? He goes, you’re not wrong, dude. You’re just an asshole.
0:41:32 So in my mind, I’m like, but I still struggle with it just because of how I was raised and how I was brought up and, and, and, and the imagined messages.
0:41:36 Like the whole point is like, I’m imagining that everyone’s looking at that and going, what an asshole.
0:41:41 It’s like, most people probably don’t care. They don’t care. They know this. They know the score. They’re fine with it.
0:41:46 And if they’re not, that’s their problem. Like David’s point is like, if they have a problem with me driving a nice car, that’s their problem.
0:41:53 It’s not my problem. Like I’ve earned this. I enjoy this car. I buy this car because I like the car. I’m not going to hide the car and he’s, he’s right.
0:41:59 But I just have a hard time with it still not anymore with it with him. This is like way back in the early, early years.
0:42:12 But, but it still is something that’s in there. There’s a residual, like struggle with that degree of honesty around money in a similar way that people like, you know, in America, like who’d you vote for?
0:42:13 Like, I don’t talk about who I vote for.
0:42:14 Same.
0:42:16 I think Chris Rock has a great bit on that. It’s, it’s so funny.
0:42:23 Like when I see someone with a, with a political bumper sticker on their car, I’m like, you’re insane. You’re, you’re a crazy person.
0:42:29 Yeah. And they’re probably like, why? I like this guy. I like that guy. I like her. I was like, why am I have to watch to hide my point of view?
0:42:36 And they’re right too. You know, so deep down your point of view is healthier. I still have a hard time with it. Not.
0:42:41 And that’s probably my problem or maybe it’s not. I don’t really know. I don’t really know. It’s very interesting.
0:42:42 Do you want to change or do you not care?
0:42:49 Well, I think the truth is my kids have a, or at least my son who’s older, my daughter’s five. She doesn’t recognize any of the stuff yet.
0:42:55 But my son does and my son’s really into like, it seems to be into expensive things.
0:43:02 He like has this craving for expensive things. So, I mean, he’s got to know what’s going on to some degree. He’s not an idiot.
0:43:10 Do I want to sit him down and go, hey son, we’ve got this and we’ve got that. And they’re like, that isn’t how I would handle it.
0:43:15 It’d be more like, I’ve worked hard. Here’s what we have. We have some things. We’re going to enjoy these things. We share these things with friends.
0:43:25 This is not just our stuff. And that’s kind of how I treat, for example, the house thing, when I renovate a nice old house and I make it better.
0:43:32 It’s our house, but it’s also all of our friends’ house. Free people are free to stay there as much as they want, visit as much as they want.
0:43:39 I have this property in Wisconsin, this old farm house, 160 acres. It’s a beautiful piece of land. I’ve been working on it for years.
0:43:43 My friends use it more than I use it. I don’t use it anymore. I’m not even around there.
0:43:49 My friends can just go up there whenever they want and use it. So it’s about like, we’re fortunate, clearly fortunate and lucky.
0:43:55 And a big part of this is you want to share these things. You’re not fortunate if you hoard the things.
0:44:02 Then there’s something, I think, kind of wrong about it from my point of view. So share as much as you can. Share these experiences with other people.
0:44:08 And we’re fortunate. That’s kind of how I sort of left it at this point. I don’t know. We’ll see.
0:44:18 The thing that I tell my friends and family is I try to let them know, and this is something that I couldn’t grasp earlier on in my career.
0:44:33 I refused to admit this one thing, which was luck is real. And it has played such an important part of any type of financial, like just meeting the woman who you spend your life with.
0:44:41 Like, just the fact that we are in the same place at the same time. Luck is such a bigger component than I ever would have been willing to admit years ago.
0:44:49 And I think, and I think that what I’ll explain to my children is like, look, I worked hard, but I frankly didn’t work harder than many other people.
0:44:50 Right.
0:44:58 I’m smart, but I’m not that much smarter, if at all, than the average person. The truth is, is that I worked hard. I had a skill.
0:45:06 But I got like 50% of luck was like, was like part of that or maybe even more than 50%. Luck is such a huge, huge component.
0:45:19 And I hope that I can put that on my family to realize that luck was real. It just happened to work out because some timing thing worked out like, let’s say you started a business and you surged during COVID.
0:45:25 You’re like, dude, I just kicked ass because something had nothing, which I did our business killed it during COVID. I’m like, I didn’t know that was going to happen.
0:45:33 That was just total luck. Or you know what I mean? Like things like that. It’s absolutely real. And I need, and I hope my family will understand that.
0:45:43 100% with you. And I think it’s way more than 50%. I mean, all the way back to you didn’t choose your parents. You didn’t choose anything, right? You didn’t choose your mind.
0:45:51 How’d you become the kind of person who is the way you are? Like there’s a million inputs, a billion inputs that you don’t know about all the things.
0:46:03 I don’t regret too strong a word, but one of the things I regret most in my career is getting on stage at startup school. So this is like why combinators start up school.
0:46:09 Years ago, I forget when I was invited to speak. I was only invited once because I was pretty anti raising money.
0:46:12 Yeah, I was going to say, I thought you’re like the opposite of their ethos.
0:46:17 I was, but Paul was kind enough to ask me to come up on stage and give a talk.
0:46:20 But you and Paul seem quite similar, to be honest.
0:46:28 Well, I appreciate that. I mean, I have a lot of admiration for his ability to put ideas together and think things through what he’s built.
0:46:35 But he invited me on stage and there was a question from the audience about luck. So I was like, do you believe in luck? I’m like, hell no. I don’t believe in luck.
0:46:36 Wow.
0:46:51 And I was such a prick. Early, mid 20s, mid 20s, I think it was. And I was just such a prick, but a young punk prick, you know, kind of like, and it’s so embarrassing.
0:47:05 But you know, like a lot of things are, you look back on like poetry you wrote in college, like, oh my God, I wrote that or whatever, like whatever it is, you know, and, you know, it’s like, you just realize like that’s part of growing up is totally misunderstanding the world.
0:47:20 And your position in it. And then hopefully, hopefully, you get to the place in your in your in your world where you’re you develop a bit more and you have some self reflection and you can call yourself out of the bullshit that you that you thought.
0:47:23 But also like, that’s who you were at the time. And that’s that’s that.
0:47:37 So here’s the deal. I made most of my money from a newsletter business. It was called The Hustle. And it was a daily newsletter at scale to millions of subscribers. And it was the greatest business on earth.
0:47:48 The problem with it was that I had close to 40 employees, and only three of them were actually doing any writing. The other employees were growing the newsletter, building out the tech for the platform and selling ads.
0:47:57 And honestly, it was a huge pain in the butt. Today’s episode is brought to you by Beehive. They are a platform that is built exactly for this.
0:48:11 If you want to grow your newsletter, if you want to monetize a newsletter, they do all of the stuff that I had to hire dozens of employees to do. So check it out. Beehive.com. That’s B-E-H-I-I-V.com.
0:48:30 Last thing I wanted to ask you about was this staying off versus staying up. You said, imagine all the things you felt you were falling behind on. If you didn’t learn about them last year, would it really have mattered if you started today instead? Watch out for the trap of must know now. What’s that mean?
0:48:44 Right now, this is like in the AI world we’re in right now. Every once in a while, like in my 4U feed and Twitter, it’s like, 10 things you got to know or you’re falling behind. It’s like, everyone’s falling behind.
0:48:57 Meanwhile, this thing is brand new and moving faster than any human can pay attention. I just keep seeing these stories about, like, if you don’t know this and they’re doing that, and if you’re not on top of this, it’s like, no, it probably doesn’t matter that much.
0:49:11 And all the things that if you would have read that feed a year ago that you were supposed to know, it wouldn’t have mattered that much if you didn’t. Most things, some things would be handy to know, but like, it probably wouldn’t have mattered that much if you started now instead or waited a year in some cases.
0:49:31 One of the things I was doing for a while, I’m not doing anymore, but I should go back to doing it again. This is actually easier to do during the pandemic was to go back. And so today is May 22, 2024, is to go back and all the podcasts I listened to, and listen to May 22, 2023.
0:49:46 So listen to podcasts that are a year old. And during the pandemic, it was great because you hear all these experts talking about this and talking about that and everyone’s so certain of everything. And you go back and listen to it, man, we are so wrong about so many things and so many of the things we were worried about never happened anyway.
0:50:15 And this political issue and that political issue and if this guy gets in office, this is going to happen. If they get in the office, this is going to happen. Turns out very, very few things actually happened. And it’s really a nice exercise to go back and listen to old podcasts and old interviews of substance and realize that like, there’s some stuff that was right, some stuff that was wrong, but man, the sense of urgency in these podcasts is so misplaced, because most things don’t need to happen right now.
0:50:26 You don’t need to be up on this right now. And you shouldn’t feel bad about not being on the cutting edge of X, Y, or Z, especially an edge that is recutting itself and resharpening itself every few months.
0:50:35 So that’s what I’m saying. I try to stay a bit out of things. I don’t want to be on the edge of things. I like what things settle in a little bit more before I really start to dig in.
0:50:48 Do you read any biographies? A few. I’ve read a few. I really love the idea of biographies. I have a hard time reading long books. And most biographies tend to be very long.
0:51:01 I’ve got a limit where it’s like 500 pages or less. But I’ll do a long one every once in a while. And I read a fair bit, not because I’m in a competition. It’s just an hour a night is typically a book a week.
0:51:16 And I read a lot of biographies. I like business biographies. I love history. So a lot of the World War II leaders, a lot of the American titans of industry, a lot of just random people, I love biographies.
0:51:28 And I have this process of what I do. I’ve got this spreadsheet where if I only read on Kindle and anytime I see something interesting, I highlight it. And at the end of the book, I’ll like insert, I’ll create a timeline.
0:51:36 Here’s where they were born. Here’s where they died. And then anything that I highlighted that happened in this year that happened in this year.
0:51:49 And then what I do is I go to this website called newspapers.com. Newspapers.com has archived pretty much every newspaper ever back into back until like the 1600s.
0:51:57 And what I like to do is let’s say I read this biography about Ted Turner. Ted Turner is the guy who started CNN. He was a fascinating guy to me.
0:52:11 Yeah, and he’s done a lot of fascinating things. And the reason why I use newspapers.com is I like to go back to my Kindle and my spreadsheet. And I see, all right, in this year, he decided that he wanted to buy land.
0:52:20 You know, I’m going to go read a newspaper article that wrote about him during that period. And I want to see what he said about his interests, why he’s doing it.
0:52:30 And like, did he say it like, for example, maybe he’ll say like one day I hope to own like 5,000 acres turns out he owns millions and millions and millions of acres.
0:52:38 And so I like to read what the predictions were as well as what the people were saying about the person at the time so you don’t get revisionist history.
0:52:51 And what you notice when you do this is there’s oftentimes that you’ll read a biography and you’ll think this was obvious that this person was going to do this or there are who wouldn’t have predicted that this was going to happen.
0:53:01 And or here’s another example. World War II Churchill was like basically he was like the world’s going to end like we are going to die. The world’s over.
0:53:10 We felt that way during COVID. But if you read a lot of history, there’s been many times where we have felt this exact same feeling and we had this exact same prediction.
0:53:19 You know, I remember I recently read JFK’s book and like with the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was like the world’s over and I go into newspaper.com and I’ll go and read what the predictions are.
0:53:32 And what you notice is that people are wrong more than they’re right. And so what you’re saying about things moving too fast, I read Henry Ford’s biography about cars or Henry Ford’s biography.
0:53:40 So I got interested in cars and I went and read like what people were saying in 1912 when the Model T was coming out and like the predictions are just ridiculous.
0:53:48 And it’s so funny that you don’t to reiterate at your point, you don’t actually have to be that fast to pounce on certain things.
0:53:56 It’s really quite fascinating and to put this in perspective, the Ford came out with the Model T I think in 1912 or 1916.
0:54:01 So the Internet right now is something like 30 years old.
0:54:06 So that is basically like how old would you say the Internet is or like the modern day Internet.
0:54:14 The commercial Internet, yeah, like 95, 96 is when like, you know, really Mozilla or Nescape kind of came out and really kind of made it happen.
0:54:20 It’s basically basically older than that because it’s a research thing, but yeah, commercially, yeah, 35 years.
0:54:24 It’s basically like a car company in 1940. Do you know what I mean?
0:54:25 Yeah.
0:54:35 And so what’s really fascinating is to like read all these biographies and use newspaper.com is one of my favorite things to use and to see what are interesting predictions and how have they come true.
0:54:39 Because I already know the answer, but I want to know what were they saying at the time.
0:54:43 And so that’s my version of what you do with 2023’s podcast.
0:54:47 I love that. I didn’t know that site existed too. That’s fascinating.
0:54:52 There’s an ex-account I follow called like pessimists archive or something like that.
0:54:54 Love it. I love that one.
0:55:04 It’s a great one to follow and just, you know, like, and the thing is, the thing that’s a little bit interesting about right now, the time we’re in is that there’s so many people saying so many things.
0:55:07 All wearing the expert uniform.
0:55:16 Some people are experts like there are experts in this world, but many people act and play as one based on just their ability to communicate on platforms.
0:55:31 And there’s just so much certainty layered into their suggestions and requirements and requests and demands that it’s just it’s very healthy to go every time you see that every time there’s like a you must.
0:55:40 I always back off and go probably not like the more forward they are about being certain and right about something sort of the less interested.
0:55:44 I am in the short term and I’d rather just sort of stand back and see how it all plays out.
0:55:50 And at the end of the day, you know, there’s there’s plenty of opportunity in a lot of different areas.
0:55:53 You don’t need to just pounce on everything as it’s happening.
0:55:57 And in many cases, it’s best to wait a little bit and see how things settle out.
0:56:02 I mean, I just think about like with AI, like all the companies that began to implement AI stuff early on.
0:56:06 And then open AI is just like wipe them out in a lot of ways for a lot of different reasons.
0:56:13 And when you build on other people’s platforms, you’re very, very much at risk of things changing, tectonic plates shifting very quickly.
0:56:16 You might have been better off waiting and seeing how things shake out.
0:56:18 So anyway, who knows?
0:56:25 I wanted you to come on here and just talk because I’ve read your work for years.
0:56:27 I’ve been a fan of yours for years.
0:56:34 I’ve seen you do a bunch of interviews and I just wanted someone told me this guy named Dylan just said you should just ask people what’s interesting to them.
0:56:40 And that’s what I wanted to do with you because you’re an interesting person and I respect your opinion on so many things.
0:56:44 And so I appreciate you just coming on and just riffing with me and just telling me what’s intriguing to you.
0:56:51 And it’s been a lot of it’s been very valuable for me just to see how you think and what what grabs your attention.
0:57:01 Well, thanks for the invitation. It was it was really fun. And as I mentioned earlier, I just I want to make useful things and hopefully this is a useful conversation for for us and for anyone listening.
0:57:03 So thanks. Thanks for inviting me. It was a real pleasure.
0:57:05 All right. That’s the pod.
0:57:14 I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like days on a road less travel never looking back.
0:57:14 ♪ Back, back ♪
0:57:15 ♪ Back ♪
0:57:23 [BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00:02 Yeah, actually call him right now and put on speakerphone
0:00:09 Yo Preston you’re live on the podcast right now
0:00:25 All right, we’re live Sean I’ve got a weird thing for you. Do you remember like 12 months ago?
0:00:31 I told you about Craig Fuller. You know who Craig Fuller is. Yeah, he’s a freight waves, right?
0:00:32 Yeah, so freight waves
0:00:36 it’s a data product for people like guess who are freight brokers something like that and
0:00:42 They’re pretty big for some reason if you go they run their company like they’re publicly traded and that you can Google them and see all
0:00:45 The revenue and profit and so I don’t know the exact numbers
0:00:49 But you guys can just Google a freight waves revenue and they put out like quarterly statements, which is interesting
0:00:54 But it’s like a large like 60 or 80 million dollar a year software business or subscription data business anyway
0:01:01 Craig is an interesting entrepreneur and I told you about how he bought this thing called flying magazine
0:01:04 and what he did was he was a big fan of flying and
0:01:09 He’s wealthy on paper, but I don’t know how wealthy is liquid and so I think this was like a big deal for him
0:01:15 But he bought flying magazine and then he also bought a seven million dollar like
0:01:20 300 acre plot of land in Tennessee and was turning that into basically a flying club
0:01:26 where you it’s kind of like a country club where you like an own-a-home on a golf course except now you own it around an airplane strip and
0:01:31 An airplane hangar and they use the magazine to sell plots of land
0:01:34 It was like a neighborhood and basically they were like you could buy a house
0:01:39 It’s gonna be it’s you know the middle of this neighborhood is basically the airstrip
0:01:44 So we’re gonna be able to take off if you if you like, you know either flying your own plane or private private flights
0:01:48 And so they were like we’re gonna that’s the vision. That’s the field of dreams
0:01:54 We’re gonna start doing this and I think it was working extremely well. I have an update. I will tell you how it’s going
0:02:00 so Craig has now acquired 30 or sorry 44 different magazines and
0:02:08 They are gonna do roughly 50 million dollars this year with 18% EBITDA and it’s his prediction by
0:02:16 2030 this side business that he started he says I think we can get to a billion dollars in revenue with 30% profit margins
0:02:22 And so that’s an update on this guy what he’s doing and he tweeted out recently his quarterly revenue
0:02:29 I think last quarter Q4 of 2024 was 15 million in revenue and he’s doing it profitably and here’s what he does
0:02:33 So he finds an old title like an old magazine
0:02:39 Where it’s around a expensive hobby. So I think he has a boating one
0:02:45 He’s got I think he is even looking at like RC planes and RC cars and things like that
0:02:47 so where there’s an expensive hobby
0:02:53 And he uses this thing that he calls negative cack meaning people pay for the magazine
0:02:56 And so that is how he acquires a customer. Of course
0:03:00 They are paying for the magazine not him trying to advertise to get the the user
0:03:04 And then he goes I want to create commerce products to sell
0:03:08 To the audience and so the media businesses pay for the company
0:03:14 They pay for the audience creations and then they help bootstrap other businesses that I can sell to this audience
0:03:16 and at this point
0:03:19 He’s buying companies for three to five times evita, which is
0:03:24 I think that’s pretty cheap, but it’s a dying. It’s a dying medium. So maybe that’s not that cheap
0:03:26 It does require some sophistication in order to like turn them around
0:03:32 But it’s really fascinating that he’s pulling this off and this is his side like his side hustle
0:03:35 This is his side business. His main business is freight waves
0:03:42 Marketing used to be fun content was simpler to create the leads were easier to capture
0:03:47 And now with hubspot’s new marketing and content hub, you can generate more content more leads and next level results
0:03:51 So marketing can be fun again with content tools like content remix
0:03:54 Which will turn your existing content into all new assets lead scoring
0:03:58 Which shines a light on which leads are most likely to purchase in the analytic suite
0:04:03 Which will give you out of the box reports and a goldmine of ai powered insights. It’s quick to get your results
0:04:05 It’s easy to use and it connects all your data
0:04:10 So put the fun back in your marketing funnel with hubspot visit hubspot.com to get started for free
0:04:15 Well a couple questions. So he bought this personally not it’s not a part of freight waves
0:04:16 No, it’s its own thing
0:04:21 So that’s why I said it was like kind of a big deal for him because I don’t know craig’s personal situation
0:04:25 But I don’t think he’s sold any of freight waves other than taking on venture capital to build the company
0:04:29 This is wildly impressive. So first of all, it’s called fire crown
0:04:33 So fire crown dot com and you could go to their brand section
0:04:37 You can see all the things that they bought fire crown great name. They’ve got 44 brands
0:04:40 You’re right. Basically. It’s a bunch of things about private flight
0:04:45 It’s a bunch of things about boating and sailing and fishing and yachting and wakeboarding
0:04:49 And then there’s things like classic toy trains garden railways
0:04:51 trains.com
0:04:57 And then some like astronomy stuff as well looks like so this is a lot of the things that he he rolled up
0:04:59 he must have found a
0:05:05 A kind of repeatable rinse and repeat models says here that he buys them for three to five x e but as his typical range
0:05:07 and
0:05:11 Was he using debt? Was he using revenue from the business? What was he our cash flows from the business?
0:05:15 How was he buying? I think he got a bunch of friends to invest, but I don’t know exactly
0:05:17 He’s going to come on the pot. I asked him to come on to explain this strategy
0:05:22 But what he did was there’s a bunch of companies that own tons and tons of magazine titles. So
0:05:26 Meredith corporation owns and owns like Martha Stewart magazine
0:05:28 and then I think there’s like
0:05:34 Rodale and then there’s Bonner and there’s all these companies that are like old family companies that have been in business since the 30s
0:05:38 or 40s whatever and they’ve got these publications that are just sitting there and they’re like
0:05:41 Just take them
0:05:44 And and so he could buy them like five or ten at a time or you know
0:05:48 I think he’s tweeted out that he’s bought like 13 the other day and so he buys them in bulk a little bit
0:05:55 I mean, this is super impressive the the side hustle that’s now 50 million a 50 million a year profitable
0:05:58 Really really specific
0:06:03 You know expensive hobby magazines and then basically has a better business model sounds like right?
0:06:07 So it sounds like the old business model was it’s a media business. So we make money on the media
0:06:09 He’s like no, no, it’s a media business
0:06:12 So we’re going to use media to acquire customers for a much more valuable
0:06:19 Business model, you know, for example with the flying thing, you know, they’re selling these homes on this plot of land
0:06:21 For like a couple million bucks each
0:06:26 So I think you said what seven million bucks to buy that that 300 acre plot of land something like that. Yeah
0:06:31 So roughly, you know, uh, let’s even round it up 10 million bucks to buy the thing
0:06:35 But then they’re selling each home at 2 million bucks. They sold 50 homes, right?
0:06:37 Just rough numbers
0:06:41 I don’t know how many they sold but they sold enough that it’s worthwhile and it’s a beautiful place a piece of land and
0:06:49 On flying magazine. They’re also if you follow Preston Holland, he’s the CEO of flying magazine. Yeah, he’s brokering jets
0:06:51 He’s selling jets. He’s like right
0:06:56 Yeah, on twitter he goes we’ve got this jet for sale. It’s seven million dollars
0:07:01 He’s a good dude. We text all the time and I’m like, he almost gets me to buy a plane
0:07:05 Like I’m like, dude, do you stay away from me, man? I’m not gonna buy a plane just because you uh, you know
0:07:06 You made a funny joke in this day
0:07:11 Dude, Nick Hubert. I’m gonna do it. This is a Hampton plug Nick Hubert and and Craig are in the same Hampton group
0:07:17 They bought a plane. They bought a plane together. And so the now Nick owns a plane. I guess they like
0:07:19 I don’t know how you buy a plane together if they did it
0:07:24 But they but Preston’s selling these like 10 million dollar jets online. It’s on twitter. It’s crazy
0:07:30 Nick shared the economics of buying these small planes. By the way, uh, we should we should ask him for permission to
0:07:35 To share the numbers like we bought it for x. Here’s how much it costs to do each flight
0:07:39 Here’s how the rules work because it’s kind of a timeshare. It’s like him and six other guys or whatever bought the plane
0:07:40 and um
0:07:42 And so you pay for like the
0:07:44 The pilot and the fuel when you need it
0:07:45 But then you just pay like an ongoing basis
0:07:51 But then you got this tax benefit of buying a plane and so how how does it what does it all work out to?
0:07:55 What does the cost per flight ultimately work out to he’s he’s shared the numbers with me before
0:07:57 So we should uh, we should do a segment on here talking about that
0:08:01 But isn’t this crazy that this is this guy’s side thing and how amazing it is
0:08:04 It’s pretty it sounds like it’s about to be his main thing. It’s what I’m hearing
0:08:08 Well, what’s crazy here’s kind of a takeaway, which is all right
0:08:11 So most people couldn’t imagine this being their main thing
0:08:15 When you get into business like him and you have some success
0:08:18 With freight waves and you start seeing like how things work
0:08:24 It’s like you get these like weird like unlocking moments where you don’t see certain things as risk
0:08:27 So i’ve never bought a business before I see buying a business. I’m like that’s really risky
0:08:31 But he’s like no like I’ve done it enough times that I know how to unlock value
0:08:38 And I don’t think this is risky because we’re going to do this this this and this and it really is a confidence game as much as it is a knowledge game
0:08:40 Uh, but it’s pretty amazing. I’ve always been able to pull this off
0:08:47 I’m super impressed by this is one of my favorite kind of like uh businesses that you brought to the to the pod to the people’s attention
0:08:51 And uh, really really impressive what he’s done. So where do you think this goes?
0:08:54 What what do you think he’s going to do and and what does he do for the boating ones?
0:08:59 Like is he doing the same thing he’s selling boats or what is he doing to make the business work out of those?
0:09:05 I don’t know. I mean, I don’t think he knows yet. I’m not sure he hasn’t shared it publicly
0:09:08 But I guess you could do similar things where you have a marina
0:09:15 I mean, have you ever like no like my parents used to have boats and I know that they would spend like 500 to $1,000 a month on a
0:09:16 on a
0:09:20 Boat slip rental and it became it became a community where we would hang out and stuff like that
0:09:24 Something like that. I’m not sure what he’s going to do selling boats
0:09:27 I mean, I’m not sure how he’s going to pull it off, but there’s like plenty of options
0:09:31 Should we call this Preston guy right now? Just get him on here to uh to explain this
0:09:34 Yeah, actually call him right now and put on speakerphone
0:09:41 Yo Preston you’re live on the podcast right now
0:09:43 What’s going on?
0:09:50 Dude, we are talking about flying and we’re talking about firecrown and i’m blown away. I didn’t know about firecrown
0:09:56 I only knew about flying and sam is telling me about the the growth of this thing. I got two questions for you
0:09:58 Uh, number one when you guys started this
0:10:04 Was this the plan or you guys sort of stumbled into oh, wow, this might be bigger and better than we thought
0:10:08 So when crick called me
0:10:12 In 2021 it was a lifestyle side help basically side hustle
0:10:15 He’s like, hey, you want to come out? We run this
0:10:20 I asked him I was like, why are you buying a magazine? You know, I can’t tell last time I read a magazine and
0:10:25 He was like, well, it’s just going to be kind of like a side hobby freeways is really my business
0:10:26 but
0:10:31 Yeah, keep it small and uh, but if you if you know anything about Craig as a person
0:10:34 He can’t eat that’s not in his nature
0:10:39 So all of a sudden it you know, we started rolling stuff up as we saw opportunities and you know
0:10:43 Now it’s blowing up and see I mean we’re 257 employees
0:10:47 And there’s the side hustle has 250 employees. All right, amazing
0:10:51 And um, tell can you can you give a little bit of the a peak of the
0:10:55 Sam has a bunch of the numbers of fire come because I think Craig tweeted out
0:11:01 But can you talk about the thing you guys did where you basically bought the the land and then you started building a neighborhood on top of it?
0:11:05 So really what we did was we let the content inform
0:11:08 Uh, the commercial decisions that we made right so
0:11:14 We had an idea to kind of build an airport. We’re like, that’d be cool. Uh, you know
0:11:20 We there’s it’s hard to find hangar space around Chattanooga. And so, you know, as we’re looking at I always tell myself that too
0:11:22 Where’s the where’s the hangar space in Chattanooga?
0:11:30 Yeah, right exactly. Well, so we’ve got three airports and each of them have a waitlist of like seven to 10 years long
0:11:36 And so we’re like, well, I guess we’re gonna have to build an airport if we’re going to be able to get hangar space for any
0:11:38 Airplanes, you know that we
0:11:45 Get on demo or whatever build we wanted to build a media center on the runway and
0:11:49 You know every airport was like, yeah, good luck. It’s going to take at least 10 years
0:11:53 So we said, hey, let’s build her in runway to build a runway. We should
0:11:57 You know do something unique these flying communities are interesting
0:12:02 And we started writing about it and realized that like there’s really high performing content like
0:12:08 User, you know, you from a from a google analytics standpoint. It’s like, you know, we could see that the content
0:12:13 Being engaged with and we’re like, okay. People actually care about this. They care about air parks
0:12:18 So we said, okay. Well, let’s let’s go ahead and let’s build an air park. We announced it
0:12:20 on the land 1,500 acres
0:12:23 about 45 minutes outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee
0:12:31 And through advertising in our own magazine and said, all right. Well, this will probably be like a five to seven year project before we get started
0:12:33 Uh, you know, kind of underwriting
0:12:42 And we had we basically met our three year kind of pro forma in pre reservations in like the first three months
0:12:45 So you’re like, all right, there’s there’s definitely demand here
0:12:50 And so, uh, so yeah, so we’re set to break ground. We just finished, uh
0:12:54 Some regulatory stuff that the government loves to tell you
0:13:01 Where water should go and so we just finished that and uh are set to break ground probably here in the next 30 days
0:13:04 Can you give us a sense of the numbers? Uh, what can you share on the numbers?
0:13:08 So like, you know, how much you guys buy the land for how’d you finance this whole like big construction endeavor?
0:13:15 Yeah, for sure. So the uh, we bought the acreage around $1,500
0:13:18 150 in uh an acre
0:13:22 Um, so it was it was really cheap land. It’s also in an opportunity zone
0:13:27 So there’s a lot of tax incentives for making investments in that area
0:13:29 um, and then we are
0:13:37 We’ve taken $25 million of pre deposits. So that’s people basically sending us a percentage of the deposit
0:13:43 You basically funded it through the pre the the deposits kind of like how tesla does with the trucks and all that before they
0:13:48 Before they build the trucks they they take the deposits and they use that to basically finance the the manufacturing
0:13:54 Now if you if you’ve got those deposits, it’s it proves to the banks you can go to the bank and basically
0:13:58 Say, okay, look, we’ve got you know, $25 million of
0:14:00 of these lots pre sold so like
0:14:08 You know that represents future cashals of $25 million and they say, oh, okay. So let’s say, you know using round numbers
0:14:12 Let’s say round one of infrastructure costs. I don’t know 10 or 15 million dollars
0:14:18 The bank’s gonna go. Okay. Well, you’ve got 25 million dollars represented of future sales
0:14:23 Um, so that you know, 10 to 15 million dollars of phase one infrastructure
0:14:25 Is a super low risk bet for them
0:14:32 Nice and then are you guys, um bootstrapped or did you raise money to buy all these magazines? How did you do it?
0:14:38 Yeah, so we have we’ve been really fortunate, you know, since we’ve got some private capital behind us
0:14:42 Um, it’s patient which is really key, right? It’s not venture
0:14:49 It’s uh, it’s more, you know patient capital that says, okay, you know, we’re gonna take a 15 year time horizon
0:14:51 20 year 30 year time horizon
0:14:56 Um, and then actually go and grind this thing. So we we got some capital behind us
0:14:59 but we didn’t have to go raise, you know venture or
0:15:04 You know private equity or anything like that. That’s kind of you know, we don’t have a ticking time
0:15:10 Basically, we don’t have a ticking time bomb waiting for us to sell in seven or 10 years that have hundreds valuation
0:15:15 Is that you know, you talked about the google analytics. Is this actually a print business or is it?
0:15:23 It’s a online, you know a media site a blog that has print as like a vanity piece. Which what what is the business actually?
0:15:27 So when we buy these when we buy these media assets
0:15:33 Uh, what we have to do is we Joe in it and it really is a shift in mindset
0:15:37 And a shift in product velocity at a lot of these companies
0:15:44 We are we tend to buy print magazines that happen to have a website where it’s like, okay
0:15:46 We check our print content and then we post it online
0:15:52 Uh, and so, you know when when you go in you require these you kind of have to you know
0:15:57 Level set with everybody and say look, you know digital is its own product
0:16:00 And it’s kind of you know, we we split out the peonels, right?
0:16:04 So digital has its own peonel and print has its own peonel and we make peonel
0:16:10 We know we make print a product as opposed to the core business if that makes sense
0:16:15 Gotcha. Um, so it’s like and and the other thing here’s the thing and it’s and look
0:16:20 We came in, you know, Craig and I day one. We’re like, all right. We’re killing print because like
0:16:25 I don’t know Sean Sam. I don’t know if you guys have a lot of print magazines, but like
0:16:32 I didn’t I don’t have I don’t have a lot of print magazine subscription. Let’s just you know, not
0:16:35 I’m 30 years old like I you know, that’s that’s not how I consume media
0:16:41 And so, you know, we went in to shut down print, but there’s something about being in print and
0:16:46 Neil Vogel talks about this at Don Dash Meredith as well that he’s had a similar experience
0:16:48 So it’s not you know, this is not a unique perspective
0:16:53 Like we’re not the only ones that are thinking this but there’s something about having a long
0:16:58 A feeling of longevity and a perception of longevity in having a print product
0:17:02 Whether that’s with advertisers or it’s with audience or readers
0:17:09 That you just don’t get with a blog. You don’t it doesn’t feel and you know, you think about a brand like Dwell
0:17:16 Is a great example like they have a print magazine and it for some reason feels more legitimate than
0:17:21 Architectural blog xyz.com right because it has a magazine
0:17:25 So it’s like we we use it as kind of a staying power
0:17:28 But you know, we also recognize the like the world’s going to show
0:17:34 Yeah, you also mentioned you like you leave the you hustled your way to get the magazine in every like
0:17:39 Private chartered plane right just to get get the right rich people to be reading the thing
0:17:42 Because you like left it on the table in those planes. Is that right?
0:17:47 Yeah, exactly. So we we send them on the non-solicited
0:17:52 To a lot of fbos across the country some are solicited, you know, there’s about
0:17:56 1800 or so that are solicited that we’ve got an agreement with the distribution company
0:18:02 But the other ones are not solicited but they they feel like we’ve created a product that has so much value
0:18:07 That they feel as though it’s something that they want to display on the tables people go and pick them up
0:18:10 and I mean we’ve had conversations with
0:18:14 You know some pretty wild folks that were like, oh, yeah
0:18:19 I was in the fbo and I read your magazine and I want to collaborate on your real estate project
0:18:21 And so it’s like
0:18:25 Okay, like how do you how do you quantify like an ROI on that like and you know
0:18:29 Hard to like do your last touch attribution except for like, oh, yeah
0:18:32 You read about our project in our magazine that we put in the fbo
0:18:37 And now we have, you know, really cool partners, uh, you know on the real estate project
0:18:44 Gotcha. Well, Preston you’re the man. This is a crazy business. Thanks for uh, the on the on the spot call in
0:18:47 Yeah, man. Long time listener first-time caller, so
0:18:55 First-ever caller we’ve ever had first-ever caller actually. All right, man. Take care. All right. See you man. That was awesome
0:19:01 All right, we changed the show. Um, that was cool. I like him
0:19:06 All right. Well, I mean we got our information. That’s awesome. Congratulations to krega presid
0:19:10 I’m happy that he was transparent. Yeah, really cool. Uh, all right. What else we got
0:19:16 You got one. You got one. Yeah, let me do one. Okay. Let’s stick to the print. Let’s stick to the print idea
0:19:19 uh, but take a different angle so
0:19:22 The new york times
0:19:27 The new york times when you think about it, you think this prestigious newspaper. It’s all about the news
0:19:31 They want you to think it’s all about the truth. That’s their marketing
0:19:37 The new york times has more in common with zynga than it does the truth. The new york times is a games company
0:19:43 And um, this is the the numbers behind the new york times and their gaming products is pretty amazing
0:19:47 So I don’t know. Do you ever play their games? I I’m a supply paying subscriber to their games
0:19:51 Well, I know they have wordle and I played that one. They bought wordle
0:19:52 um
0:19:55 The guy had made like the guy like made wordle for his girlfriend or something like that
0:19:58 Then it took off and then they ended up buying it. But like I have a
0:20:05 22 days 22 day streak going right now on the crossword puzzle on the mini crossword and how much you pay
0:20:09 I think it’s like 6.99 a month or something. And what’s the revenue on that?
0:20:12 Take a guess
0:20:14 100 million dollars
0:20:16 Uh a lot more than that
0:20:18 So the new york times just in q4
0:20:24 Their digital only subscribers was 289 million, which is almost all their games
0:20:28 It’s a little bit of their cooking product as well, but it’s like mostly their games revenue
0:20:30 And so that’s 300 million in the quarter
0:20:37 Uh, they’re they’re uh gaming basically has pushed their annual subscriptions over a billion dollars a year for the first time ever
0:20:43 And they released this chart that was basically like the new york times bundles. So you have
0:20:47 The news you have their cooking section their cooking product
0:20:51 You have the athletic which is their sports the sports thing they bought and then you have games
0:20:54 So take a look at that that chart right there. You could see that games
0:21:00 You know a few years ago a few years ago games was roughly 15 percent of time spent
0:21:05 Now it’s over 50 percent of the time spent in their bundle is on the games product
0:21:11 Which is pretty wild that’s more time spent on games than on news it has overtaken news
0:21:13 And so you have this thing that is
0:21:15 Um, just fascinating
0:21:21 It was like, you know, they used to in the newspaper have a little crossword section a little sudoku section
0:21:25 And what they did was as they transformed the product they unbundled it
0:21:31 They made it a standalone thing and what’s cool about it is almost every game on my phone is just trying to like
0:21:33 it’s like
0:21:36 Needy is that how do I take all of your time and all of your money?
0:21:39 And the new york times thing is works way different. It’s you have one a day
0:21:43 There’s one mini crossword a day one crossword a day and one
0:21:47 You know one word all day you do that every day
0:21:49 Every day me and my daughter do it together
0:21:51 We play wordled together and then I do the crossword on my own
0:21:56 The crossword the mini crossword literally takes under one minute like my average time is about 57 seconds to finish this thing
0:21:58 It’s a very short game
0:22:01 And so i’m able to like play a game and have that dopamine hit without it like
0:22:06 Taking away from my life by being like, oh great now i’m the hours on this. Hey, baby
0:22:12 What’s it starts with an e what’s the disease that brought down chipotle in 2009?
0:22:15 Oh, you’re right ebola. That’s it
0:22:21 Yeah, well she plays wordled with the and uh she gets to type and then I come up with the words and um
0:22:24 And so you know these the games are really fun
0:22:26 It’s a really well done app
0:22:31 And it’s shocking to me how successful this thing has been and so I want to just read you a couple things
0:22:35 So it says basically a few years ago the time spun off cooking crossword offerings to standalone products
0:22:39 Meaning you could subscribe to either without being a new york times new subscriber
0:22:40 seemed like an odd choice
0:22:43 Because the internet already had millions of games and millions of free recipe apps
0:22:49 But what they did was they just digitized decades of old crossword puzzles and old cooking recipes that they already had
0:22:52 So this is kind of like remnant inventory that they weren’t using
0:22:57 And they took that stranded asset and they turned it into like a viable asset a live asset
0:23:02 And then they just like modernize this they put it in an app. They made it like work really well
0:23:03 and um
0:23:08 Super simple app and it basically breathed new life into the company the company has grown like crazy. So now there’s like
0:23:13 Over what now between crossword and cooking check this graph out
0:23:17 Should we just start calling the new york times a gaming company? Yeah, exactly
0:23:21 Yeah, you guys weren’t those great games. Did you got like a sick blog that you talk about like the trump trial?
0:23:23 I love that too side hustle. Yeah
0:23:27 I love that little blog you guys got going to have over and this was in 2020
0:23:28 So this is years ago
0:23:32 They had 1.3 million paying subscribers that paid on average
0:23:34 You know $40 plus a year
0:23:40 On the on the games and cooking product, which is mostly games and they’re not alone. So that so that’s the new york times
0:23:43 Then I saw um, you know, I opened up the youtube app
0:23:47 I don’t do you use the youtube app because I opened it up and I saw something very new use that. Yeah
0:23:50 Did you see their new games product?
0:23:51 Look at this
0:23:53 If I open up youtube
0:23:56 Oh my god games and it says play now
0:24:02 And you don’t have to download anything, right? So it’s like I click play and now i’m just i’m gonna be in this game
0:24:05 And this is a popular mobile game this this thing called states
0:24:08 Um, it’s like a little like risk type of game
0:24:13 And so they have like 20 of these games. It says instant games. No no downloads
0:24:19 So youtube’s doing it now and then linkedin the other day announced linkedin games
0:24:23 So I have three three games on top of linkedin. There’s like a wordle variant
0:24:27 There’s like a whatever there’s like they they took popular games. They just kind of made their remix of it
0:24:33 And if anybody needs engagement like a real engagement, it’s linkedin right linkedin’s got a billion users
0:24:36 and you know, but like
0:24:41 There’s not a lot of good content on on linkedin to do but this is cool because they basically made it where they have their
0:24:43 Sudoku they have their trivia
0:24:48 They have their word game and basically you can you can see how other people in your company do so it’s like
0:24:53 They already have the social graph of who’s in your company and who are you connected to
0:24:57 So when you play the game you can see how you compare to people you already know
0:25:03 Because they already have that social layer built in of like, you know, kind of competing amongst your who do you think they
0:25:05 stole this from because like imagine
0:25:06 imagine like
0:25:12 Um the the meeting where they’re bringing this up. It’s like, uh, hey Sharon. You got any ideas. Uh, what if we
0:25:18 Call it linkedin influencers and we get famous people to post. Ah, I’ve been there down that and then this other person’s like, hey
0:25:23 Charlie, what do you got? What if we just put like risk in the feed of linkedin?
0:25:25 Do you know what I mean? Like how would you justify doing that?
0:25:28 So I don’t know if they acquired a company that was doing this
0:25:30 or if they um
0:25:36 Or if there was just like I imagined some product manager that looks like he’s just got back from nom and he’s like
0:25:38 I had an idea and I got it through
0:25:42 I got the I got the I got my manager to approve my manager’s manager
0:25:47 We went all the way up to the product org and went through the committee and it happened
0:25:50 They all said yes, I get to launch this thing and like in six months it’s gonna die
0:25:54 But I actually think there’s actually a good opportunity
0:25:59 I think that if somebody built the third party linkedin games app, like I don’t know fully
0:26:02 I haven’t explored the linkedin api and like what’s all possible
0:26:06 But if you can hook in and if you can build a game on top of linkedin
0:26:11 That’s just like a total greenfield opportunity and linkedin will buy it if you do a good job
0:26:14 if you build the actual games product that’s getting engagement there and
0:26:19 You don’t have to invent the game just steal the games and you’re basically just saying proven game
0:26:24 And new new social graph. Um, and that’s that’s the whole business model here
0:26:31 That’s pretty insane. I did not see that they were doing this and that is actually quite smart linkedin is the the behemoth
0:26:34 That somehow always works and so it’s quite wise that they’re doing this
0:26:37 And you know the one that the one that I don’t believe in is netflix is doing games
0:26:42 I don’t know if you’ve ever seen like they have a games thing in like there’s a trivia game
0:26:43 You can play in netflix
0:26:46 But also if you go to the app store and you search netflix as the game producer
0:26:52 They have like 50 game titles is like pretty insane. How many mobile games that they have I don’t understand this
0:26:58 I don’t think it’s gonna work. I don’t understand the tie between this but you know, basically secrets out
0:27:01 It’s like, you know games make a lot of money and people use it all the time
0:27:07 Um, maybe we too should be in the games market and that’s wild. That’s what they’re trying to do
0:27:13 Uh, that’s awesome kudos to those guys. I’ve I’ve not seen that. I will um, let me do a quick thrill of the show
0:27:16 I want to I want to promote something. I’m going to try and make it extra
0:27:17 Thrilly
0:27:21 Have you ever thought while you’re building stuff you think to yourself?
0:27:22 Am I doing this right?
0:27:27 Like I remember being in san francisco and I thought well, you know, shan’s got a fancy office
0:27:30 therefore we have to have a fancy office or
0:27:36 You know this particular ceo said you have to focus on this one thing. So I have to focus on this one thing
0:27:43 So to grow hampton we came up with this podcast called money wise and money wise is basically like a personal finance podcast
0:27:48 But for high net worth people and I’ve done eight or nine of the episodes as like the temporary host
0:27:53 And I want to tell you what my biggest takeaway which is to get wealthy or even to spend the money once you’re wealthy
0:27:56 There’s no one way that people are doing it
0:28:00 There’s a lot of different ways that people are doing it and I’ve already like recorded
0:28:06 I think 12 or 15 of these and I had to do nine already for the the um first season
0:28:10 Dude, it’s it first of all it’s insane that people reveal all this information
0:28:13 So we basically what we do is we have people come on
0:28:16 And they reveal their income their expenses
0:28:21 Exactly what their portfolio looks like and then like we’ll dive deep on one topic like parenting or are they anonymous
0:28:24 Or they put their name on it. I have to listen to it half and half
0:28:29 So sometimes they’re anonymous and what we do is we change the name and we we actually change the voice
0:28:33 And so there’s a bunch of people who you who you know of that have been on but they changed the voice
0:28:37 but then sometimes like the guy from simple modern came on and he’s completely
0:28:41 Open about it and he’ll say here’s exactly how much I have in my bank account
0:28:46 Here’s what we have in my index or in my portfolio. Here’s how much income I have
0:28:51 It’s insane that people reveal this amount of information. It’s almost scary. And so
0:28:58 My big takeaway is one there’s no one way to do it two. I’m shocked that people reveal all this information
0:29:05 And number three the more money you get the more intentional you have to become because these people will make literally a hundred million dollars
0:29:10 And they don’t spend any of it and they’re like, I don’t even know what to do with this money. What’s been a
0:29:14 Lesson learned either in
0:29:15 Probably in the spending side
0:29:21 So how what is what something somebody said about how they spend that you were like, oh, that’s a good idea
0:29:24 That’s a cool intentional way of going about this. We talked about giving money away last time
0:29:26 You can’t use that one use a different one
0:29:31 So I I firmly believe that owning more than one home is a massive pain in the ass
0:29:36 And that’s a dream that people want to have they want to have a second or third or sometimes fourth home
0:29:42 That a lot of these people have I think that is a huge right pain in the ass place the word home with problem
0:29:47 It’s like I have a second problem in Tahoe. I have a third problem in florida that I go visit once a year
0:29:49 nice problems
0:29:52 Dude, it’s such a pain in the ass is to have that and and
0:29:58 Unilaterally people seem to regret having multiple homes and so being intentional about spending money
0:30:04 It seems like a huge deal one rich person one of the very few rich people things that I think is totally worth it
0:30:05 flying private
0:30:10 Uh, I think that is the one thing where it actually might live up to the hype when people I think buying a plane
0:30:12 Sorry, Preston. I don’t know if that’s worth it
0:30:16 But I think charting a jet as much as you can would absolutely worth it
0:30:20 And uh, so we’re doing this podcast whatever it’s called money wise. You guys should look it up
0:30:22 I’ll tell you quick quickly
0:30:26 I uh, I had this premise to make a hit podcast. I think you need one or more of the following
0:30:32 You either need great production. You need great delivery. You need a unique perspective
0:30:34 So unique perspective is like lebron james talking
0:30:38 Great delivery is typically like comedians and then great production is like
0:30:42 Serial or whatever like these like wandering things
0:30:45 My gap in the market that I wanted to exploit was the first one
0:30:49 I think you and I do number two and number three and I wanted to do number one
0:30:51 And so so far it appears to be working
0:30:56 So if you’re a creator, those are the three the three ways I think to do a podcast
0:31:01 And that’s my little pitch on money wise. Congrats. That’s a good good thriller show. I liked it
0:31:02 Um
0:31:07 All right, let’s do let’s do some other ones. Do you have another good one or can I do my ai camera one real quick?
0:31:10 Do your ai camera one because I have something funny to tell you. All right ai cameras
0:31:11 so
0:31:14 I play in this basketball league in san francisco
0:31:19 Shout out to ruben torrenberg who who hosts this league’s been hosting it for like 10 years and um
0:31:22 It’s basically it’s called sf tech hoops
0:31:26 I think it’s called and basically it’s like people from the tech industry that like to play play basketball
0:31:28 and
0:31:29 for a long time
0:31:34 Ruben basically he runs the league with some real heart and I really appreciate that meaning
0:31:41 He makes the teams. He has the league. There’s the table stakes. What you expect teams jerseys referee scoreboard great
0:31:47 But then what he does is every week he writes an email recap with gifts and whatever and he basically team one took on team three
0:31:52 They were led by sam par. He scored 13 points and he had a great buzzer beater blah blah blah
0:31:57 But then in the second half. This is what happened. So he writes these great updates from the commission
0:32:01 He writes his own like internal newsletter for the thing. The second thing he does is he
0:32:05 Films it he used to film it basically put two tripods with the iphone on each side
0:32:07 And he would try to afterwards go through and cut a highlight
0:32:10 And highlight is a really generous term because you’re talking about
0:32:13 out of shape tech dudes
0:32:16 Like I made a game-winning shot last week and in my head
0:32:20 And if you asked anybody that I talked to afterwards, this was fucking
0:32:25 Jordan against the calves in 89 or whatever. You know, I was I was flying through the air
0:32:32 You know hit the shot at the buzzer. It was amazing. It was like just and then I watched the clip and I was like
0:32:38 Uh, like you could literally you couldn’t fit a book under my feet where I jumped. I was like, this is ridiculous
0:32:42 This looks slow. This looks terrible. This is like a game loser not a game winner
0:32:46 So highlight is a little bit generous, but either way he puts the you know
0:32:51 The tlc into to running this league. So he just bought this new thing that
0:32:53 is a game changer
0:32:58 And he bought this ai based camera call. I think it’s called vio. There’s a and there’s a bunch of these
0:33:00 There’s like four companies doing this but veo check this out
0:33:03 Basically, it’s one camera
0:33:07 That you uh, it’s a like a smart camera that you post on a tripod tripod
0:33:12 And it does a couple of very basic things things that sound trivial but make a huge difference
0:33:16 So he used to have two iPhones because you needed to record both sides of the court
0:33:21 And basically for one iPhone half the time when when everybody runs to the other side of the court
0:33:22 It’s just empty
0:33:26 And so then he could never have like a full video of the game because he couldn’t get the camera to follow it
0:33:30 Right, you’d have to hire somebody to manually like swivel their head
0:33:35 And do this but now with ai basically it’s one camera that just tracks the ball at all times
0:33:37 So this works in soccer it works in basketball works in football
0:33:39 It just it just tracks the ball and the players
0:33:43 It just keeps everything in the center of the frame without having to have a human doing
0:33:45 The second thing it does is it uploads it all to the cloud
0:33:49 The third thing it does is it live streams at all which is cool because now people can watch your games
0:33:51 Which is like, you know friends and family can watch games
0:33:53 Um the fourth thing it does is it could try to cut highlights
0:33:55 So it could basically try to identify
0:33:58 A cool moment and then cut the highlights or keep track of stats
0:34:01 It’s just getting better and better. These are all software updates from here
0:34:03 The hardware is just camera
0:34:08 With the center with enough, you know enough of a chip inside that can connect it to the internet connected to the ai software
0:34:15 And so these companies are crushing it like he bought it raised over a hundred million dollars in funding and it’s like some european company
0:34:19 Um, there’s four or five competitors all of them have raised raised a bunch of money
0:34:22 And I think they’re all doing really well. So I noticed this at our game
0:34:27 Um, and then my brother-in-law who’s got a kid that that plays like competitive soccer
0:34:30 She’s like, you know seven years old and I was like, dude, have you seen this thing?
0:34:34 He’s like bro, it’s on every field like this is like you can’t go to youth soccer now
0:34:40 And not like every single field has one of these and so I think the same way that you know, steve jobs had like the vision
0:34:44 Oh, I think it was jobs or maybe it was bill gates, but it was like a computer on every desk
0:34:48 I think it was gates is a computer on every desk was that it was the goal a personal computer
0:34:52 And I think now it’s going to be basically a camera on every field
0:35:00 All right, it’s like every single high school every single middle school every au game every, you know travel team
0:35:04 They’re going to use these things because why not well somebody’s going to make the investment one time
0:35:09 They’re really it’s not one time. So uh, all right, so for the the most popular version
0:35:15 It’s a thousand dollar one-time expense and then it’s 130 dollars per month. Yeah the most expensive one
0:35:18 I think there’s like cheaper ones than that. I don’t think you have to get the the crazy one
0:35:23 But yeah, like it though that price is going to go down like the thousand dollar hardware is going to go down
0:35:26 But the you know 100 a hundred bucks a month is going to stay there
0:35:29 But if you’re like a team or really you don’t even have to buy it per team
0:35:31 It’s like the league needs to have right
0:35:36 So it’s like the the venue needs to have it and I just predict that every venue is going to have these
0:35:40 Like they will guess whoever wins is going to get these into every single field every single court
0:35:45 And it’ll just be that way tennis wrestling like every fringe sport
0:35:50 There’s people who want to watch it’s the family the friends the athletes themselves and their coaches
0:35:57 And um, there’s enough motivation to do this their website is so good that it makes me want to play soccer
0:35:58 It’s sort of like
0:36:01 It’s sort of like gopro where I like
0:36:06 The the footage is awesome that like I got to get into snowboarding right now
0:36:08 Just so I can go and like live a life worth recording
0:36:11 Dude, that’s how I felt when you were talking about the magazine stuff
0:36:16 I was like, yeah the wind blowing through my hair my hair as I’m on this boat. Yeah, maybe I do want that lifestyle
0:36:22 Yeah, do I want to be a boater? Uh, that’s how I feel when I when I go to their website. This is a this is awesome
0:36:26 Be I’d shocked at how large this is. I guess it’s not a surprise
0:36:30 But it sort of is a surprise that there’s multiple companies that have raised nine figures to build this
0:36:32 I think these are doing, you know
0:36:37 50 million plus a year in revenue minimum, um, you know, the leaders of this space
0:36:41 I don’t know the exact numbers but like ballparking. I would I would be surprised if it was under that
0:36:46 This is absolutely insane. I never in a million years would have thought that this would become a thing
0:36:48 I have the opposite opinion, which is
0:36:56 This is an obvious idea. It’s obvious that it’s working, but it’s not obvious that like no, I think this was obvious before dude when
0:36:59 Like why didn’t you start it?
0:37:03 Well, because the idea this idea has been around for a long time. So for example in nba stadiums
0:37:08 they there’s like an enterprise version of this called second spectrum and
0:37:13 There’s a company called synergy sports that basically there’s like cameras that they install in the
0:37:19 Um, in the aba venue that tracks all the players and all the motion and it keeps track of certain specific advanced stats for the teams
0:37:26 And so this idea of like, oh, wow, couldn’t you either install cameras or use computer vision to
0:37:31 To track stats. That’s that’s interesting. Then there was flow flow sports
0:37:36 Which is basically live streaming niche sports like, you know, jujitsu competitions wrestling competitions
0:37:41 And they were doing tens of millions a year in revenue. Yeah, their office is here is in austin and I’ve been to it and it’s sick
0:37:46 It’s really cool. It’s a big company and you for those those are for more official competitions
0:37:52 Like, you know, the texas state, you know, karate championships or whatever not like, you know
0:37:57 Little susie’s soccer game, which like, you know, susie’s parents and grandma and whatever want to be able to watch
0:38:00 Like back in college. I remember, um, my my roommate trevor
0:38:06 He would always watch his little sister’s basketball games and he’d be on his computer and he’s watching this greeny
0:38:13 Footage and I’m like, who the hell’s streaming this ninth grade girl’s wyoming basketball regular season game
0:38:15 and he’s like
0:38:21 He’s like I pay for this thing because like we pay and then this guy films it and then he’s, you know, he uploads it later
0:38:22 It’s not live stream
0:38:25 But he pay uploads it later and I watch the shitty footage
0:38:30 But like I really want to see my sister’s play like that matters to me. I’m willing to pay like my price sensitivity
0:38:33 It’s like I will pay the equivalent of a netflix monthly subscription
0:38:36 But instead of giving me like all the world’s best content
0:38:42 I get my my niece’s games and it’s like there’s an emotional reason to do that. So this idea was around for a long time
0:38:44 I’ve noticed this
0:38:45 but
0:38:47 It needed a technology inflection
0:38:51 And it needed the ai camera where you don’t have to hire somebody the quality is now good enough where it’s actually fun to watch
0:38:56 You can live stream it record it cut highlights all that shit. And so now I feel like the idea
0:38:58 it’s an idea whose time has come and
0:39:02 We were I was talking to my buddy luke about the ai
0:39:08 Like the ai wave. He’s in my like ai tutoring group where we we like learned about ai together every week once a week
0:39:11 And he’s like, you know, whenever there’s a new technology shift. He goes
0:39:14 I always think back of what he was I asked the question
0:39:19 What is the restaurants on the uh menus on the internet of this wave like a menus on the internet
0:39:23 What do you mean? He goes well when the internet first came out the very first obvious startup idea was like
0:39:26 Well, let’s just take like restaurant menus and put them on the internet
0:39:30 He’s like before we could do doordash and online ordering like all the next gen shit
0:39:34 The first thing you do is you just put the menus on the internet just a picture of the menu
0:39:39 And he’s like for every tech wave. There’s always like the like very obvious
0:39:44 It’s kind of not where the thing is going to go, but it’s like immediate value add no brainer like
0:39:48 Wave one of what people do on these apps. It’s like for for the iphone
0:39:52 Remember it was like the beer app the flashlight app the calculator app
0:39:57 Like that was the menus on the internet and now with ai there’s some things like this that are like the menus on the internet version
0:39:59 Of what you can do with with ai
0:40:03 All right, if you’re listening to this pod, I already know something about you
0:40:06 You my friend are nosy
0:40:12 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
0:40:16 How much money businesses make you want to know all of this people’s net worth all of it?
0:40:21 Well, I’ve got good news for you. So my company hampton. We’re a private community for CEOs
0:40:25 We do this thing where we survey our members and we ask them all types of information
0:40:27 Like how much money they’re paying themselves
0:40:30 How much money they’re paying a lot of their employees what their team?
0:40:35 My bonuses are what their net worth is what their portfolio looks like we ask all these questions
0:40:39 But we do it anonymously and so people are willing to reveal all types of amazing information
0:40:43 So if you really cannot google you can’t find anywhere else and you could check it out at joinhampton.com
0:40:48 Click the report section on the menu. Click the salary and compensation report
0:40:53 It’s going to blow your mind. You’re going to love this stuff. Check it out now back to the pod
0:41:01 So you’re AI tutoring person. It’s now warped into a studying group. Oh, yeah, bro. It’s growing. What is it?
0:41:07 I don’t want to tell you it’s like fight club. It’s like fight club with no fighting
0:41:09 Just green sharing on zoom
0:41:14 But is it like a group of you who meet and you just come like with the homework and questions?
0:41:16 it’s
0:41:21 Three of us who people I think are awesome that I wanted an excuse to hang out with so it’s me
0:41:25 It’s Matt Masio and it’s my buddy Luke and I’m like I wanted to hang out with these people more anyways
0:41:29 They’re also in AI. They’re investing. They may be, you know start companies in the space whatever
0:41:32 And it was like, hey, let’s just do this together that way
0:41:36 It’s a little study group where you cut, you know, you see something and then one person says something
0:41:39 And then the other person pushes back and is like, well, I don’t know
0:41:43 What about this and it everybody gets a little smarter for for doing it
0:41:46 What are your biggest takeaways now with AI then because I don’t know much about it
0:41:52 So sam altman recently said something he goes there’s two types of companies in AI
0:41:55 There’s the companies that
0:41:57 Can’t wait for us to release a new model
0:42:03 And there’s these companies that can’t sleep at night knowing we’re going to release a new model meaning he’s like we’re going to crush you
0:42:06 They’re not saying this but the way they’ve architected their business is
0:42:11 If we make gpt 5 better than gpt 4 and we improve a bunch of capabilities
0:42:16 The model gets smarter it gets better at doing all the things he’s doing which he’s like, by the way, that’s exactly what’s going to happen
0:42:19 duh like insane to bet against that he’s like
0:42:22 They risk being like, you know
0:42:27 You know blown up like, you know, they’re they become obsolete when that happens
0:42:32 I’m pretty sure he goes we’re going to steamroll them. Yeah, he goes. Well, they will those companies will get steamrolled
0:42:33 yeah
0:42:35 Which is not a good thing
0:42:43 That is amazing. So then the other companies he’s like the other companies are begging us can’t wait for the next model to come out
0:42:47 Because it’s just going to make their product better. So what’s an exit? So then the group we were talking through like, okay
0:42:51 What does that really mean? Who are the companies that fall into group a and fall into group b?
0:42:54 And there’s an interesting discussion around that but I’ll just give you like a simple example
0:42:56 Let’s say you’re some company that
0:43:02 You do transcription translation and whatever in, you know, four companies
0:43:05 that are com
0:43:07 But not rev.com. So rev.com says
0:43:12 Pay us rev.com is a good example of the steamroll type of company. So it’s basically it’s like got it pay us
0:43:15 We do transcription really good. We have human transcribers. They’re great
0:43:18 It’s like, well, guess what? It’s going to be better than the human transcribers gpt5
0:43:20 It’s going to be awesome and it’s going to be way cheaper than rev.com
0:43:25 It’s going to like drive your price to zero and be better. So that’s like rev.com is in trouble
0:43:30 um, then you have a company that’s like cool, we do transcription translation in the context of
0:43:35 This certain healthcare thing this workflow where doctors need to transcribe their notes on the go
0:43:39 And it needs to be really high fidelity and today that transcription is done by a human
0:43:43 But like whatever it’s like they have a full like enterprise workflow
0:43:47 And if the transcription capabilities get better, they’re like awesome a product got better
0:43:52 But the product was like open ai is never going to build the thing that integrates in with the
0:43:58 The doctors, you know, like, um, whatever, you know, healthcare record system that they use like
0:44:01 They embed themselves in a workflow
0:44:08 And that’s like 90 of the product and the 10 improvements to the the ai that the transcription the translation
0:44:09 But whatever it is
0:44:12 If those get better great our product got more effective
0:44:15 But it didn’t make our product obsolete because we have this 90 that we’ve built around it
0:44:21 that are that is really specific to a certain use case certain workflow and um
0:44:24 And so we’re we can’t wait for the next model to come out
0:44:29 Versus maybe other companies like rev.com or companies that are like we’re like open ai
0:44:34 But we’re better at like, you know, here’s an example of a company. I think is at risk
0:44:41 You know, um, these companies that do voice text to voice. So like, you know, 11 labs one play ht is another it’s like
0:44:47 Basically, they’re like we’re better than like we can do ai you type in a thing and we can create a human sounding ai
0:44:50 And we’re going to fine-tune our model to do that
0:44:54 But then open ai releases like every every month they just release a new thing
0:44:57 It’s like, yeah, we have text to voice now. Check it out. Here’s the demo and the demo is awesome
0:45:02 It’s like it’s only going to get better and then it’s going to become a standard api for anybody to use to use text to voice
0:45:07 It’s like I think those companies that are trying to be like we have our own proprietary model
0:45:11 Our own fine-tuned use case they’re going to really struggle because
0:45:14 They can’t compete with the behemoth
0:45:16 How are you taking advantage of this then? Uh
0:45:20 From a business point of view or are you I would say
0:45:23 On the investing side, I’m much more
0:45:30 Measure twice cut once right now meaning i’m not spraying and preying a bunch of checks into a bunch of random ai companies
0:45:32 I think it’s really hard to figure out right now
0:45:39 Which companies actually have legs also they’re all really overpriced. So I have this combination of really high price really low traction
0:45:43 um product is really good in a demo but not really good in production and
0:45:47 I don’t know if they’re going to become obsolete due to open ai. So there’s a bunch of problems there
0:45:49 It’s like actually a better bet was just like in the stock market
0:45:56 Just buy companies that have like a massive advantage when it comes to ai’s go buy nvidia buy facebook buy buy a bunch of stocks that are
0:45:59 Going to benefit from ai whether they’re not just like
0:46:04 A one random startup that i’m hoping is the one out of a thousand startup that becomes enormous
0:46:08 well, that’s what uh morgan stanley put up this report and they said um they go uh
0:46:11 Uh ai is going to be a big deal
0:46:17 Unfortunately, we well not unfortunately, but we think that it’s going to impact big companies who are already established
0:46:21 It’s just going to make them significant. You’re going to get there’s going to be more value in making those companies better than
0:46:25 There is starting new companies exactly and we actually and they actually said marketing
0:46:27 and the reason I thought it was cool is because uh
0:46:33 I own stock in a in a marketing technology company and they’re like we think that marketing technology and that type of stuff sales force
0:46:35 How’s about whatever that’s going to be the biggest?
0:46:38 Sector that’s going to use this shit to to grow well
0:46:41 I think it’s good. I think it’s a safer bet and it’s a more obvious bet
0:46:46 I don’t I don’t think that investing in startups right now is a bad idea. I just meant no
0:46:49 Uh, it’s really hard right now and it’s unclear to me
0:46:53 And I haven’t put in the time to get a lot of clarity on which which I don’t have a bunch of startups
0:46:57 I’m like these are going to be winners in this space. I just haven’t been able to get that level of clarity yet
0:47:03 So it’s like measure twice got once meaning first. I’m like, let me just learn this in more depth. Let me use all these tools
0:47:07 Which is what we do. So like in these sessions, we will just be like cool
0:47:11 Here’s a tool that could do x and then I he’s like you drive and I go and I start
0:47:15 Trying to build a thing that’s going to be useful in one of my businesses
0:47:17 Are you paying this person? Yeah, still
0:47:19 Dude, this is so smart
0:47:21 because we did it as a group
0:47:26 Like the sessions are more fun and it’s like a pretty valuable network of people to be really tight with right?
0:47:28 Like which is ultimately what you want
0:47:33 You want the thing to be so mutually beneficial that the financial outcomes of the thing are so secondary
0:47:37 Like the primary should be the session is fun and these people are awesome
0:47:40 And I get to hang with these people these people I get to basically, you know
0:47:44 Iron sharpens iron with these people right now. That’s like what I wanted this to get to
0:47:48 So I feel really good about that. Dude, that’s so smart more people should do this
0:47:50 I mean, I used to do this with book clubs
0:47:53 But if I had a very specific interest like you have right now
0:47:58 And even if it’s just a temporary thing that lasts six or 12 months, that’s the way to go. It’s so smart
0:48:02 That’s such a smart thing for you to do. Well, the smartest people I think always did the second crypto
0:48:04 I know people were doing this early on
0:48:05 you know
0:48:09 I remember hearing these like sessions about south by southwest where
0:48:12 I forgot whose room it was but it was like everybody used to go up to
0:48:14 Garrett camp’s room
0:48:18 And at south by southwest there’s like 15 people that were all kind of like loose friends like this
0:48:20 But like a lot of mutual respect
0:48:24 And it wasn’t like a paid party or some like event with sponsors. It was like no dude like
0:48:27 We’re here to basically talk about everybody
0:48:30 He should have opinions on where they think the puck is going and then they would debate
0:48:33 And that’s how Matt Masio actually got in with Chris soccer
0:48:36 So I was like, who is this motherfucker that has like really interesting things to say
0:48:39 It’s like he’s the agent at cAA in Hollywood
0:48:42 Like this guy should be in the tech world and he recruited him from there
0:48:46 And this is where like, you know, they were there’s a lot of the guys who invested in uber early on
0:48:49 like Garrett and
0:48:53 Travis were in the room and they were you know talking about uber at the time and gary v was in the room
0:48:56 And there’s all like this is legendary story. I have no idea what actually happened
0:49:00 But I remember hearing these stories and being like I need to get into rooms like that
0:49:04 What is a room like that? How do I make a room like that if I either need to get in or I need to make a room like that
0:49:09 What was the story of the room? Well, I just told told you. Yeah, Ari
0:49:12 Was that the second time this episode Sean copped an attitude with me?
0:49:16 Well, I’m like, I told you the story. You’re like, well, so what happened? I’m like, well, that’s this
0:49:18 I told you everything I know bro. I don’t know anything else
0:49:23 Does zoom have like a bitch slap animation that I could use I know they got a thumbs up
0:49:26 Yeah, you know, we could do the thumbs up and it like starts bubbling hard behind you
0:49:28 Did they got a middle finger one of those?
0:49:35 Does that work? That’s the second time. I apologize. I’m a little sassy today
0:49:39 I could be caddy on Wednesdays. I know I’m my bad
0:49:45 Um, I apologize. Is that the pod? Do we wrap up there? I guess, uh, I think I need to go work on myself
0:49:50 I think I’ll meditate
0:49:52 All right, that’s the pod
0:49:56 Feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to
0:50:02 I put my all in it like no days off on a road. Let’s travel never looking back
0:50:04 (upbeat music)

0:00:01 – All right, what’s happening everyone?
0:00:04 Today’s podcast is with Kevin Espiritu.
0:00:07 So Kevin has this company called Epic Gardening.
0:00:09 Epic Gardening started as a blog
0:00:12 where Kevin would just blog about his hobby as a gardener.
0:00:14 He started it in 2016.
0:00:16 And in this podcast, he’s gonna tell us the revenue
0:00:19 for every year that he’s been doing it.
0:00:20 But this year, they’re gonna do something
0:00:23 like $45 million a year in revenue.
0:00:25 And Kevin walks through how they got traffic,
0:00:26 how he’s built the company,
0:00:29 how he bought other companies to make Epic Gardening
0:00:30 a big business.
0:00:31 It’s incredibly fascinating.
0:00:33 He’s super transparent with all the numbers.
0:00:35 So he goes through deal by deal,
0:00:36 all the companies that they bought,
0:00:38 how much they paid for it, how they found the company,
0:00:40 how they found other companies that they didn’t end up buying
0:00:41 and why they didn’t buy it.
0:00:43 It’s a really fascinating story.
0:00:45 This guy is really, really cool.
0:00:47 I think in about five years,
0:00:49 this guy is gonna be a really, really big deal.
0:00:50 He’s already a pretty big deal.
0:00:52 But I think in five years,
0:00:53 he’s gonna be like Chip and Joanna.
0:00:55 You guys have to listen to this podcast.
0:00:56 He’s a really fascinating guy.
0:00:57 Let me know what you think.
0:00:59 All right, check it out.
0:01:00 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:01:03 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:01:06 ♪ I put my all in it like no days off ♪
0:01:07 ♪ On the road, let’s travel never ♪
0:01:11 – Dude, so it’s finally nice to talk to you.
0:01:12 I didn’t know who you were.
0:01:16 And then on the podcast, Sean told your story.
0:01:19 And I’m like, “Oh, I recognize this guy from everywhere.”
0:01:21 And I didn’t realize how big of a business that you’d built.
0:01:23 So congratulations, that’s insane, right?
0:01:26 – Yeah, yeah, it’s been a crazy ride.
0:01:27 It’s been a crazy ride.
0:01:28 – I just watched one of your YouTube videos
0:01:30 where one of your videos had just gotten,
0:01:33 I think you’ve had 70 million views.
0:01:36 And it’s just like you kneeling on a,
0:01:38 like a little kneeling device
0:01:40 so you can garden on your knees more easily.
0:01:43 And you’re like, “I’ve been getting noticed in the streets
0:01:45 because of the silly kneeling video.”
0:01:47 – Yeah, that video might haunt me.
0:01:50 I think it’s the most viral thing I’ve ever made.
0:01:52 It’s a short form video.
0:01:54 So I’d seen this little kneeling device.
0:01:57 It was like a Instagram reel of a German trade show.
0:01:59 And it was just this little kneeling device
0:02:00 where you kind of pop down.
0:02:02 I think it’s made for brick layers.
0:02:03 So I saw it and I was like,
0:02:05 you know what, I kind of want to try it out just to see.
0:02:07 And so I had my team grab one.
0:02:10 There was like one in San Diego where I live.
0:02:12 And I made that piece of content in like,
0:02:15 maybe 10 minutes maximum.
0:02:17 And then edited it up, tossed it out,
0:02:18 put it on, I think, TikTok first.
0:02:19 And it just started ripping.
0:02:22 So I was like, okay, I know this thing, it has some legs.
0:02:24 So then I threw it on Instagram and Facebook
0:02:25 and then threw it on YouTube.
0:02:27 I think it’s like 150 million views across the platform.
0:02:30 And the whole logic of doing it was,
0:02:33 let me put this product in front of our gardening audience
0:02:34 and see if they like it.
0:02:37 So then we can either hit up the manufacturer
0:02:39 and carry it on our store,
0:02:41 or we can maybe make some modifications to it
0:02:43 that make it a little better suited for gardening.
0:02:46 And then it’s basically just market validation, right?
0:02:48 By the time we went that viral,
0:02:50 we hit up the manufacturer, which is a German company.
0:02:52 And they’re like, we would love to sell you some,
0:02:55 but our entire stock in America is gone.
0:02:57 So every distributor we already have has sold out,
0:02:59 so we can’t get it to you.
0:03:02 – How much missed revenue was that?
0:03:03 – I have no idea.
0:03:04 – What’s your guess?
0:03:06 Over or under 10 million?
0:03:08 – Oh, it’s got to, I think it’s under, for sure.
0:03:11 ‘Cause I think these things are like 50 bucks maybe.
0:03:13 I don’t know how many we would have sold,
0:03:16 but I don’t think there was some crazy supply in the US.
0:03:17 But yeah, it was kind of a bummer.
0:03:19 So the only thing I’ve ever gotten out of it
0:03:22 is just being memed to death about it.
0:03:26 – Marketing used to be fun.
0:03:27 Content was simpler to create.
0:03:28 The leads were easier to capture.
0:03:31 And now with HubSpot’s new marketing and content hub,
0:03:33 you can generate more content, more leads,
0:03:34 and next level results.
0:03:35 So marketing can be fun again.
0:03:37 With content tools like Content Remix,
0:03:39 which will turn your existing content
0:03:40 into all new assets.
0:03:41 Lead scoring, which shines a light
0:03:44 on which leads are most likely to purchase.
0:03:45 And the analytics suite,
0:03:46 which will give you out-of-the-box reports
0:03:48 and a goldmine of AI-powered insights.
0:03:49 It’s quick to get your results.
0:03:51 It’s easy to use and it connects all your data.
0:03:54 So put the fun back in your marketing funnel with HubSpot.
0:03:58 Visit hubspot.com to get started for free.
0:04:00 – Dude, so you, the reason you’re sort of interesting to me
0:04:03 is did you start with like an internet marketing background?
0:04:05 Cause I know that you were interested in search
0:04:05 and SEO and stuff.
0:04:07 Was it like to be an agency?
0:04:10 And then, I mean, were you even into gardening
0:04:11 and plants and all that stuff?
0:04:14 Or were you like, I’m the plant daddy now
0:04:15 because I’ve got this website.
0:04:17 And so like, which came first?
0:04:20 – What came first was, yeah, I guess,
0:04:22 I guess designing websites did come first
0:04:24 cause I came out of college with an accounting degree,
0:04:27 but I played online poker to pay for school.
0:04:29 And so that kind of like put me off the path
0:04:31 of wanting to be an accountant right out of the gate.
0:04:32 – And you were making money.
0:04:35 – Yeah, I made like 200, $250,000
0:04:36 probably playing poker in college.
0:04:38 So I used that to pay for school
0:04:40 and then I had some money to like sit on.
0:04:41 – Was it all online?
0:04:42 – Yeah, it was all online.
0:04:45 I hated playing in person because it’s so slow.
0:04:46 Cause when you’re playing online,
0:04:48 you’re playing faster,
0:04:49 but you’re also playing like more tables.
0:04:51 – What makes a good online poker player?
0:04:53 Because I would think I don’t play poker really.
0:04:55 I’ve only played like 10 or 20 times.
0:04:57 It’s just like, it seems like reading body language
0:05:00 and things like that is part of the game.
0:05:01 But what makes a good online player?
0:05:02 Just straight math?
0:05:05 – Straight math is a big part of it.
0:05:08 So like understanding probability theory
0:05:10 and understanding the types of hands
0:05:11 that someone could or couldn’t have
0:05:13 in a particular situation.
0:05:14 But you’re kind of right.
0:05:17 Like eventually when you play enough online poker,
0:05:19 it gets down to the point where you know
0:05:20 the people’s screen names you’re playing with
0:05:22 and you probably have played with these people
0:05:24 like over days, weeks or months,
0:05:26 depending on how often they play.
0:05:28 And you can even get down to the point where,
0:05:29 you know, in this particular position,
0:05:31 like I’m sitting on the button,
0:05:33 they’re sitting in this position
0:05:36 and they wait three seconds longer than they normally do.
0:05:38 And it’s this person’s screen name.
0:05:39 A lot of the times you can develop
0:05:41 some sort of weird sixth sense and you know,
0:05:44 you’re like, I’m like nearly sure that’s a bluff
0:05:44 and you’ll call them.
0:05:48 – And you made $250,000 over four years doing that.
0:05:48 – Something like that.
0:05:49 I didn’t track it super well.
0:05:51 It was like $250,000.
0:05:52 – That’s insane.
0:05:53 That is insane.
0:05:54 – Yeah, yeah.
0:05:55 So it threw me off the path of wanting
0:05:57 to be an accountant for sure.
0:05:59 And then when I got out of school,
0:06:02 I played poker for like six more months or something
0:06:04 and then quit, but I had nothing to do.
0:06:06 So I started playing video games
0:06:09 and then I was designing websites to just pay some bills.
0:06:11 And then I got into the marketing thing
0:06:13 because I was like, well, once you sell a website,
0:06:16 it’s sold so you make your $1,500 for two grand
0:06:18 or whatever the hell I was charging at that time.
0:06:20 So then I got into SEO stuff
0:06:23 and I built the gardening blog at the same time
0:06:24 ’cause I was getting into gardening.
0:06:26 I was doing it with my brother over a summer.
0:06:29 But I was like, I need like a digital business card.
0:06:30 Like I need a little calling card.
0:06:32 So I built the gardening blog as a way to show
0:06:34 the website design clients like,
0:06:35 hey, look, look what I can build.
0:06:37 – What year was that?
0:06:39 – That would have been 2013.
0:06:41 – Dude, I think in the same year,
0:06:42 I did the same thing as you.
0:06:44 Were you reading like Smart Passive Income?
0:06:46 – Yeah, yeah.
0:06:49 – Okay, so Pat, for those young listeners,
0:06:51 I think you and I were on the young side
0:06:53 probably at the time of his blog.
0:06:56 I think you and I are the same age, I’m 34.
0:06:57 – Yeah, 36.
0:06:59 – And Smart Passive Income was like,
0:07:01 this guy Pat Flynn, he’s still quite popular.
0:07:03 He’s one of the early bloggers
0:07:05 of like making money on the internet.
0:07:07 And he had a, what did he do?
0:07:10 He did like a, he wrote like a blog in an e-book
0:07:13 on how to like get your building like green
0:07:15 or lead certified or something like that.
0:07:16 And he was making money doing it.
0:07:20 And he would display all of his income and revenue online,
0:07:22 which at the time was like insane.
0:07:25 And then he did like a food truck,
0:07:28 a food truck, like a book on how to create a food truck
0:07:29 or something like that.
0:07:31 And he like was like, I’m gonna rank high on search
0:07:32 and I’m gonna blog throughout the way.
0:07:34 So you guys can see how I did do it.
0:07:38 I read that and I created a poison ivy,
0:07:42 like how to treat poison ivy website at the same time.
0:07:44 And it was making like $1,000 a day.
0:07:47 And I was like copying everything he was doing.
0:07:48 And I have a feeling that you were reading
0:07:50 that same blog at the same time.
0:07:54 – I have an even more cringe story around that time.
0:07:56 So I was reading Pat like crazy.
0:07:57 – You just call me cringe.
0:08:00 – I mean, we all, that first site that you make,
0:08:01 it’s always kind of weird.
0:08:02 Like, come on, poison ivy site.
0:08:04 – Yeah, it’s so stupid.
0:08:05 – I have one worse than that for sure.
0:08:08 So Pat to me was like a God back in the day
0:08:10 ’cause he’s a half Filipino, half white guy
0:08:12 living in San Diego, building businesses.
0:08:13 – Are you half Filipino?
0:08:14 – I’m half Filipino, half white.
0:08:17 And we’ve become good friends now, which is awesome.
0:08:20 But when I read it, I was like, okay, cool.
0:08:21 I see the blueprint.
0:08:24 Pat’s got this like green certification thing.
0:08:26 And so my choice was to,
0:08:30 I created a website called CocoButterCream.org.
0:08:31 And so I go CocoButterCream.org
0:08:34 and I start reviewing every CocoButter Cream
0:08:35 that’s on Amazon.
0:08:39 And I was using an alias and like, come on.
0:08:41 Like I was like early 20s, I was doing some dumb stuff.
0:08:45 And I was Susie Michaels, a mother of two
0:08:47 who was like reviewing how
0:08:49 all these different CocoButters worked on me.
0:08:52 And then I, you know, who can do Amazon affiliates?
0:08:54 And I remember it took me like a month,
0:08:56 I made like two bucks on that site.
0:08:58 And I was like, oh my God, I made money
0:09:01 in a way that’s not like someone just paying me, you know?
0:09:02 And it kind of blew my mind.
0:09:04 Like the whole saying,
0:09:05 like everyone remembers your first dollar in the internet.
0:09:08 I wish it wasn’t CocoButterCream, but.
0:09:10 – And then, and that’s when you got
0:09:11 into like internet marketing,
0:09:14 but then you do like a Kendrick Lamar website too.
0:09:16 – Yeah, that was, that was a,
0:09:17 man, that was probably like a couple of years later.
0:09:19 So the story on that one is my cousin,
0:09:21 I was living with my cousin at the time.
0:09:22 He was like a biomechanical engineer.
0:09:25 And I’m over here doing all this weird stuff on the internet,
0:09:26 like building sites and stuff.
0:09:28 And he’s kind of getting intrigued by it.
0:09:29 And a friend hits me up and he was like,
0:09:32 hey, I have all these blogs that I need to sell.
0:09:33 I just need some money.
0:09:37 I have Kendrick Lamar, Rita Ora, Schoolboy Q,
0:09:39 like all these sort of up and coming artists.
0:09:42 And this would have been like 2014, I think,
0:09:43 because you want to buy one.
0:09:45 And I go, I’m kind of doing my own thing,
0:09:48 but maybe I’ll have my cousin buy it and we’ll do it together.
0:09:51 So my cousin, Johnny actually puts up the money for it.
0:09:53 And I think I had like 10% equity
0:09:55 in this Kendrick Lamar website.
0:09:57 And we start like scouring the internet.
0:09:59 And we actually become like the biggest source
0:10:01 of Kendrick Lamar news on the internet
0:10:05 before he drops his first album, Good Kid Matt City.
0:10:06 And so no one really knows Kendrick,
0:10:08 like only super fans know him.
0:10:10 And there was a point where like,
0:10:12 I think Kendrick’s manager, even called my cousin,
0:10:13 was like, I like, we really appreciate
0:10:14 what you’re doing for Kendrick.
0:10:17 Like you’re putting his name out there, da, da, da, da.
0:10:20 And the way we monetize that is we were just selling shirts,
0:10:22 just like print on demand shirts.
0:10:25 I think we probably made like 30 or 40 grand doing that.
0:10:27 And then after the album dropped and he blew up,
0:10:29 all of a sudden he like trademarked his name
0:10:30 and we had to shut the site down and stuff.
0:10:34 But that was another like weirdo internet thing that we did.
0:10:35 – What was the main thing though?
0:10:38 Was it the gardening, like gardening websites the whole time?
0:10:43 – No, the gardening thing didn’t really start until for real.
0:10:44 Like it was a hobby that I love doing.
0:10:48 And I’ve done it every year of my life since 2013.
0:10:52 But it was just like a hobby blog until 2016
0:10:54 when I went full time on it.
0:10:56 – And hobby blog in that you were actually like
0:10:58 into gardening and you’re like,
0:11:00 I’m just gonna create content around.
0:11:03 But did you see any numbers where you’re like,
0:11:08 this could be a big company or was it your straight joy?
0:11:10 – No, no, I mean, it was a mix, right?
0:11:11 Like I was gardening for fun.
0:11:14 And then I would just document whatever I was doing
0:11:16 and like make a YouTube video or make a blog post.
0:11:17 And I would try to monetize it.
0:11:18 Like I’d make some ad revenue
0:11:20 or I’d make some affiliate revenue.
0:11:24 But I never thought it could be huge.
0:11:26 Like I remember talking to friends
0:11:28 that were all kind of doing the same thing at the time.
0:11:29 I was like, man, if this thing could just make
0:11:31 two grand a month or if it could make five grand a month,
0:11:32 like that’d be amazing.
0:11:34 Then I wouldn’t have to go get a job.
0:11:37 ‘Cause I think my mind didn’t understand the scale
0:11:41 that any business could really become at that point in time.
0:11:42 So yeah, it took a while for me
0:11:44 to realize the potential of it.
0:11:48 – And then you kind of like had this,
0:11:51 it’s not like a cliche to most people,
0:11:54 but for the media world, it’s like a cliche at this point.
0:11:56 But at the time when you were doing it,
0:11:57 it was like content and commerce
0:11:59 was actually like a pretty innovative idea,
0:12:02 which is I’m gonna build this huge blog
0:12:04 and instead of just making money on advertising,
0:12:07 I’m going to sell my own products.
0:12:09 Which is like, it sounds silly
0:12:11 that I’m calling that innovative,
0:12:14 but like when you were getting going, that was a thing.
0:12:15 I mean, I had a blog and I was like,
0:12:17 I don’t think that you can like sell your own products.
0:12:19 I’d rather just stick to like what I know,
0:12:21 which is content and ads.
0:12:23 And I was like totally against selling stuff,
0:12:26 but you made the right decision for sure.
0:12:28 That’s a significantly better business.
0:12:30 – It’s a way better business.
0:12:33 And yeah, the brief story on that is 2016,
0:12:35 I go full-time on Epic Gardening.
0:12:37 I was at Scribe Media or Book in a Box,
0:12:39 it was called before that, it was like second employee there.
0:12:41 So I quit that, go full-time on Epic.
0:12:43 It was just a blog and YouTube channel.
0:12:45 – Did you have any revenue when you quit?
0:12:47 – Yeah, I was making $450 a month.
0:12:49 I have this spread sheet of like what it was making
0:12:50 at the time.
0:12:53 So at that time, I actually thought I was going to farm.
0:12:56 Like legit farm in people’s front yards
0:12:59 and like aggregate all their square footage
0:13:01 and like sell that produce to restaurants
0:13:02 and stuff like that.
0:13:05 – Right, I mean, that sounds like really hard.
0:13:06 – Yeah, it’s a really hard way
0:13:09 to make a small-ish amount of money,
0:13:10 which there’s people that do it
0:13:12 and I actually respect it a lot, but-
0:13:13 – It’s cool.
0:13:13 – It’s cool, yeah.
0:13:16 It’s just not scale.
0:13:18 So I go, okay, how about I just make this blog,
0:13:19 make a couple grand a month?
0:13:20 ‘Cause it was making $450.
0:13:23 So if I can make $450, I could probably make $2.
0:13:25 If I can make two, I could make five.
0:13:26 And so I started growing it.
0:13:31 And I think that year, the blog made 17 grand total,
0:13:33 about six months of the year.
0:13:37 And then the next year, it was 72,000 revenue.
0:13:38 And this is all media.
0:13:40 ‘Cause I haven’t done any product yet, right?
0:13:43 2018, it was 225.
0:13:46 And then 2019 is where I had that realization
0:13:48 that you mentioned where I was like,
0:13:51 wait, why am I just making money from ads
0:13:52 and like brand sponsorships?
0:13:53 Like what do the brands want from you?
0:13:56 When they do a brand deal, they want access to your audience.
0:13:58 Well, I have complete access to my own audience.
0:14:00 So why don’t I just be the brand selling
0:14:02 to my own audience?
0:14:05 And so what I did is I realized like,
0:14:09 whatever piece of content I put out is basically a search
0:14:12 for validating demand for whatever’s in that content.
0:14:14 And so in all these photos I’m putting out,
0:14:17 ’cause at this point I’m gardening in Hillcrest, San Diego
0:14:20 in like a very small front yard in a pretty urban part
0:14:22 of downtown San Diego.
0:14:24 And so I’m like filming my content there.
0:14:25 I have these little raised beds in the front yard,
0:14:27 which is just a way to grow plants
0:14:28 and they’re made out of metal.
0:14:30 And every time I took a photo of these,
0:14:31 everyone’s like, what are those?
0:14:32 What are those things in the photo?
0:14:33 Like, where’d you get those?
0:14:35 So I was like, I actually don’t know.
0:14:36 Like a brand just sent these to me
0:14:38 and I put them in the front yard.
0:14:40 And so I started emailing this company,
0:14:41 they’re from Australia.
0:14:46 I emailed them like maybe once or twice a quarter
0:14:48 for like a year saying like, hey, can I get these?
0:14:52 Can I just like somehow get these to America and sell them?
0:14:53 And they’re like, no, no,
0:14:54 we already have someone we’re working with,
0:14:55 like we don’t need to do that.
0:14:58 And then the beginning of 2019, they emailed back
0:15:00 and said like, hey, are you still interested
0:15:01 in carrying our products?
0:15:05 We like a distributor just isn’t working with us anymore.
0:15:06 I’m like, yeah, sure, let’s do it.
0:15:09 And I think I probably had like 70, 80 grand
0:15:11 in the business bank account at that point in time.
0:15:14 – All right, so it’s like, it’s like promising.
0:15:16 You’re not rolling in it yet, but it’s media.
0:15:17 So it’s mostly profit.
0:15:18 – Yeah, it’s mostly profit.
0:15:21 And it’s a small business with nearly zero employees.
0:15:24 So to me, I’m like, I’m making like a,
0:15:26 like a mid-level doctor’s salary
0:15:27 out of this business now, you know?
0:15:30 So I’m chilling, I’m gardening, I’m liking my life.
0:15:33 So I hit these guys up and they’re like, yeah, sure,
0:15:33 like here’s how it works.
0:15:34 And I’m like, holy shit,
0:15:37 I don’t know how buying product works
0:15:38 ’cause I’m used to media.
0:15:41 And so much like like the sort of cringe early days,
0:15:45 the way I tried to do it was sort of new.
0:15:48 Like I was like, okay, how do I buy the product?
0:15:49 And they’re like, well, you have to pay us, you know,
0:15:51 here’s all these different like shipping terms.
0:15:54 So I bought a 20 foot container of these raised beds
0:15:58 for I think $35,000, which was like half the money
0:15:59 that I had.
0:16:03 And I go, okay, well, what happens when they get to America?
0:16:04 Like what am I supposed to do?
0:16:06 Like, well, you got to receive it at the port
0:16:08 and then that container has to like go somewhere
0:16:09 and then you have to unpack it
0:16:11 and then you have to ship it.
0:16:13 And I’m like, okay, cool, like thanks for that information.
0:16:17 So what I tried to do is I tried to rent
0:16:20 a storage facility out of a Costco.
0:16:22 And like just one of the ones that you like go to
0:16:24 if you’re going to move for a year, you know?
0:16:25 And you put all your furniture in there.
0:16:26 So I tried to do that.
0:16:28 And I was like trying to figure out how to get it
0:16:30 for the port to the storage facility.
0:16:31 And then I was trying to look up like, well,
0:16:33 how do you get internet in the storage facility
0:16:36 so you can, so I can print the labels.
0:16:37 – Oh, and you were going to literally mail
0:16:39 these things out yourself.
0:16:41 – ‘Cause I didn’t know anything about commerce.
0:16:44 So I didn’t know you could like send it to a 3PL
0:16:45 or you could send to a warehouse.
0:16:48 – How many like units of stuff did you have?
0:16:51 – I think it was 550 beds at that time.
0:16:54 – Okay, so like that’s a ton.
0:16:55 But it’s like, all right,
0:16:58 I’m just going to go to the post office four times a week
0:16:59 and I’ll just, I’ll figure it out.
0:17:00 I mean, that’s a lot of work,
0:17:03 but I guess it’s kind of reasonable.
0:17:03 – I thought it was reasonable.
0:17:05 And the reason why I was trying to do it like that
0:17:08 is because when I ordered it
0:17:10 and they packed the container in Australia,
0:17:12 I was like, okay, cool guys, like to my audience.
0:17:14 I was like, hey, you guys asked where these things were from.
0:17:16 I figured it out.
0:17:18 I put up a really crappy Shopify store
0:17:19 and I was like, here they are.
0:17:22 And then I sold them out in like four or five days
0:17:24 while they were still getting to America.
0:17:27 So I knew it was working, right?
0:17:29 And so then what I did is I used that money
0:17:31 to buy another container and then that was on the way
0:17:32 and then that sold out.
0:17:33 And then I was like, oh my God,
0:17:35 like I think there’s something really going on here.
0:17:37 – So what was your revenue in ’19,
0:17:39 the year you started selling stuff?
0:17:43 – So ’19 was like $5.50 and half of it was the product.
0:17:47 So in the year one, like immediately half was product.
0:17:48 So I was like, oh my God,
0:17:50 I think what I’ve been building this whole time
0:17:54 is the top of a business and not the bottom of it.
0:17:55 Like I thought media was the whole thing.
0:17:56 I was like, oh, actually media is right here
0:17:58 and it monetizes, but the bottom is actually
0:18:01 where the business lies.
0:18:03 – The weird, innovative idea.
0:18:06 I remember, so like my friend Nathan Barry
0:18:10 has this awesome blog post called like billion dollar blogs.
0:18:13 And it’s like basically the story of a handful of people
0:18:15 who started out blogging and then built companies
0:18:16 around the blogs.
0:18:20 And the most famous example is probably Glossier.
0:18:21 I think that’s what it’s called Glossier.
0:18:24 It’s the women’s makeup brand that started
0:18:27 as Emily Weiss, I think her name is.
0:18:28 She had like a fashion blog.
0:18:31 And then she was like, oh, this selling stuff
0:18:33 is way better than selling ads.
0:18:34 And it became a billion dollar company.
0:18:37 And he has a few more examples of that.
0:18:40 And that’s when I first read about that idea,
0:18:42 but I still thought this is way too intimidating
0:18:44 and like too challenging.
0:18:45 And particularly for me at the time,
0:18:47 I ran a business website and I was like,
0:18:49 I can’t, what am I gonna possibly sell?
0:18:51 – Yeah, like what product?
0:18:53 – Yeah, so like it didn’t really make sense for me,
0:18:54 but even still I was like, this is too intimidating,
0:18:57 but you were living it and doing it, which is pretty cool.
0:18:59 – Yeah, I mean, frankly, like it was quite intimidating
0:19:02 to me, but I just was too either dumb or smart
0:19:06 to like realize that and just went ahead and did it.
0:19:07 But anyways, like to wrap that up,
0:19:09 like I ended up talking to a friend of mine
0:19:10 who was in commerce and he’s like,
0:19:12 what the hell are you doing dude?
0:19:15 Just get like a 3PL and get a freight forwarder
0:19:19 and send the container to there, hook the Shopify to there
0:19:20 and then they’ll ship it all out for you.
0:19:22 And that’s what I ended up doing.
0:19:24 And so that, that was kind of the genesis
0:19:26 of selling products at Epic Gardening.
0:19:28 – And didn’t you grow that to like 7 million in revenue
0:19:30 with like four people?
0:19:32 – Yeah, so yeah, I mean,
0:19:35 I think 2020 would have been 2.8 in revenue.
0:19:38 So almost a 6Xing year on year.
0:19:42 And then 2021 was 7.3, 7.4 or so.
0:19:44 And most of it was product at that point in time.
0:19:46 And that would have been on a team of me,
0:19:48 my garden assistant, my actual assistant,
0:19:51 a video editor and a writer.
0:19:52 And that was it, that’s all we had.
0:19:55 – On 7.3 in revenue, what could your profit be?
0:20:01 – Oh man, it was probably like 50% or something like that.
0:20:03 – So you’re rolling in it.
0:20:04 – Yeah, yeah.
0:20:06 Well, ’cause the thing about it is,
0:20:08 if you run it like that,
0:20:10 and it was with $0 or paid spent, right?
0:20:13 And so I have no acquisition cost.
0:20:16 My acquisition cost is equal to my media,
0:20:18 ’cause that’s the only way I was getting the word out,
0:20:21 but my media is not a cost, it’s a profit driver.
0:20:23 And so it’s that term negative-cac,
0:20:25 like I had negative-cac on the business.
0:20:26 – Why raise money then?
0:20:29 I know you raised, I think, $17 million, why?
0:20:32 ‘Cause the cool thing about bootstrapping a company
0:20:34 is you could do whatever the hell you want.
0:20:35 And there’s freedom in that.
0:20:39 And that’s, frankly, my favorite part about business
0:20:41 is the freedom of you’re creating your own empire,
0:20:42 you could do whatever the hell you want.
0:20:43 If you wanna grow it, you can.
0:20:45 If you don’t wanna grow it, you don’t have to.
0:20:48 You get all the money, you don’t have to answer to anyone.
0:20:49 I assume at this point you own,
0:20:51 you still own 100% of the company.
0:20:54 At least if I’m you, I’m not giving equity to my employees
0:20:57 because it’s like, I’ve been doing this by myself
0:21:00 for a long time, I’d rather just pay you a high salary.
0:21:03 Why even take $17 million?
0:21:06 – Yeah, I wrestled with it for a long time.
0:21:09 Like maybe that deal took like six months to close,
0:21:10 I would say.
0:21:12 And at least for the Turner Group,
0:21:14 it’s not some massive deal for them.
0:21:16 Like that’s not a ton of money for them.
0:21:17 It was huge amount for me.
0:21:20 Though the logic ended up being,
0:21:23 I was like, do I know what I’m gonna do
0:21:24 in the next couple of years?
0:21:26 Like do I understand the complexity
0:21:27 of the business I had built?
0:21:30 ‘Cause that’s a really lean team to be at 7.3
0:21:32 with like a commerce business shipping product.
0:21:35 – Yeah, there’s like a bunch of redundancy issues.
0:21:38 Like at that round, like anything north of 5 million,
0:21:39 it’s like, all right, we’ve got something here.
0:21:41 We’ve got a seed of something working here.
0:21:43 It potentially could be huge.
0:21:44 Like I should have some,
0:21:47 I should actually like shift to being a proper CEO.
0:21:50 And like with being a proper CEO is like
0:21:53 hiring extra employees, even if like, you know, like
0:21:56 at that point it’s like, with the size that you were,
0:21:58 everyone was working 110%.
0:22:00 And at that point it’s you kind of like,
0:22:03 almost purposely become a slightly more inefficient
0:22:04 because you’re like,
0:22:06 if I get 70% of effort from 10 people,
0:22:08 that’s better than 110% effort of five people
0:22:10 and I’ll have some redundancy
0:22:12 so people can like chill a little bit
0:22:13 or someone gets sick or quits.
0:22:16 Like there’s actually like some proper CEO work
0:22:18 you have to do at that stage, I would think.
0:22:19 – Oh yeah, oh yeah, totally.
0:22:21 I mean, and the operational side,
0:22:22 like the hiring, et cetera side,
0:22:24 like I had no clue because I was on a team
0:22:26 of me and four contractors.
0:22:29 Like I didn’t, I didn’t really have hiring experience.
0:22:31 And then on the commerce side,
0:22:34 it’s not like we got to 7.3 selling like an online course
0:22:36 which would be a lot simpler to fulfill.
0:22:38 Like there’s, there’s inventory planning.
0:22:40 There’s like sales tax nexus that you hid
0:22:42 in all these different states that you have to file for.
0:22:44 So there was a lot of complexity.
0:22:46 I was like staring down the barrel of that I,
0:22:48 I knew that I didn’t know about.
0:22:49 I was at least smart enough to know,
0:22:51 I didn’t know what was coming.
0:22:54 And then frankly, like that was just a crazy period
0:22:55 in the market.
0:22:58 Like 2021 was probably still the last best time
0:22:59 to do any kind of raising.
0:23:02 And then at the same time, I was like,
0:23:04 look, I’m already ahead in my space.
0:23:08 Like no one, no creator in gardening is doing what I’m doing.
0:23:11 And so why don’t I just make sure that I stay ahead
0:23:14 and partner with people who actually understand
0:23:17 how these media to commerce businesses are built.
0:23:19 And that’s what ended up making me do the deal.
0:23:20 – Were you able to take any money off the table
0:23:23 or did the 17 go straight to the balance sheet?
0:23:25 – I was able to take some off, which was great.
0:23:27 – Yeah, that’s like life changing, right?
0:23:28 – Yeah, it was, it was life changing.
0:23:32 And then like I had bought a warehouse to start fulfilling
0:23:34 ’cause eventually like I moved off the 3PL.
0:23:35 I was like, you know what?
0:23:37 I’m paying these guys like 30, 40 K a month
0:23:38 in fulfillment fees.
0:23:40 Why don’t I just like start a separate company
0:23:43 by a warehouse and then become my own tenant
0:23:45 and then like build equity in the real estate side.
0:23:48 And so when we raised, I actually didn’t,
0:23:49 that warehouse didn’t go with it.
0:23:51 And so I had the warehouse too.
0:23:53 So like the way the whole personal financial math worked out,
0:23:56 I was like, the way I live, I’m good now.
0:23:59 And I can just like fully focus on trying to win this space.
0:24:01 So that was another part of it.
0:24:02 – You have a family?
0:24:04 – Yeah, I have a girlfriend.
0:24:07 Yeah, and then a lot of my family lives in San Diego.
0:24:09 – What’s it feel like to be,
0:24:11 I don’t know if you were single at the time or not,
0:24:13 but what’s it feel like to be a young guy
0:24:14 and you’re like, I’m good.
0:24:17 I’m good for potentially forever.
0:24:20 – Yeah, I mean, it’s kind of underwhelming, I guess.
0:24:22 I don’t know, was it like that for you?
0:24:25 I don’t know, for me, I’d already made quite a bit of money
0:24:29 running up through 2021, just sort of solo.
0:24:32 And so it was a huge change, but it wasn’t,
0:24:33 it wasn’t like, you know,
0:24:36 one million to $200 million net worth or something like that.
0:24:39 Like the way I live, I just don’t,
0:24:41 I just don’t need it, I guess.
0:24:45 And so all I did was eliminate worry about like,
0:24:46 I don’t know what if something medical goes wrong
0:24:48 or I couldn’t even figure out
0:24:50 if I wanted to buy anything for a while.
0:24:53 Like I didn’t buy anything like fancy to celebrate or whatever.
0:24:56 – Not having money is, the period of my life
0:25:00 where I didn’t have as money was more stressful
0:25:03 than the period of my life where I did have breathing room.
0:25:05 – That I completely agree with.
0:25:08 That, I always think like it mitigates all your downsides,
0:25:10 but it doesn’t, at least I haven’t found
0:25:14 that it makes you some massively happier person.
0:25:17 – Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:25:21 But you remember that study where it was like $70,000 a year?
0:25:22 – Right.
0:25:23 – That’s bullshit.
0:25:24 That is absolute bullshit.
0:25:25 – That I agree is bullshit.
0:25:26 That I agree.
0:25:27 – Why do you agree that that’s bullshit?
0:25:30 – Okay, so first of all, I think inflation adjusted,
0:25:32 isn’t it like 160K now or something like that?
0:25:35 – Yeah, even I think that numbers might be bullshit too.
0:25:39 160 grand in one of the top five cities,
0:25:40 shockingly, doesn’t go very far.
0:25:41 – Doesn’t go far.
0:25:44 Yeah, I think that’s bullshit because the things,
0:25:47 let’s say you’re making like 200 a year,
0:25:49 you can get, like you can have someone come
0:25:51 and clean the house, or you can have like meal support
0:25:55 or these sorts of things that help you free your time up
0:25:58 from things you like genuinely don’t like to do.
0:25:59 There’s things like I love to do
0:26:00 that of course I could pay for.
0:26:04 Like I obviously I grow my own food and I like cook meals
0:26:05 and bake my own bread and stuff like that.
0:26:07 I don’t have to do that.
0:26:10 But like I don’t clean my house anymore, right?
0:26:13 And so like things like that, I think gives me,
0:26:14 I don’t know if like positive joy would be the way
0:26:15 I would phrase it though.
0:26:18 It’s just like I don’t have to do an annoying thing
0:26:19 is the way I think about it.
0:26:21 – Yeah, it’s like, you remember that book,
0:26:23 like the five languages of love and it’s like,
0:26:25 oh, your girlfriend’s like an active service woman.
0:26:28 So like if I do something nice for her, she’ll feel loved.
0:26:30 There’s like the five languages of love,
0:26:33 but for money where it’s like, for me, it’s not nice things,
0:26:35 but for some people it could be they love cars.
0:26:37 For me, it’s the same thing where I’ve got a cleaner
0:26:40 who comes often and I just like genuinely feel happier
0:26:43 not having to do my laundry and clean.
0:26:45 And so in those like small things,
0:26:47 which frankly aren’t expensive,
0:26:50 it definitely makes you happier.
0:26:52 Like those little small things.
0:26:54 – I learned that all from Rameet.
0:26:55 – Same.
0:26:58 – I learned that all from Rameet is just,
0:27:00 he has like a surgical team on every single part
0:27:03 of his life that he hates to do.
0:27:04 And I was like, you know what?
0:27:05 That’s actually pretty smart.
0:27:06 And so.
0:27:07 – And he spends big on stuff.
0:27:09 I was with Rameet on Saturday.
0:27:11 He like always asked these like crazy questions
0:27:13 where sometimes I’m just wanting to chill and have fun.
0:27:16 And he’s like, Sam, let me ask you a question.
0:27:18 What’s your rich life?
0:27:21 And I’m like, I don’t know, man.
0:27:23 Like let’s just drink our coffee.
0:27:24 He’s like, no, no, no, tell me your rich life.
0:27:27 And I’m like, okay, it’s not stuff.
0:27:28 It’s services.
0:27:31 He goes, what would happen if you 10 extra spending
0:27:32 on your services?
0:27:33 – I was having a coffee with him.
0:27:36 We had the same conversation with his accent.
0:27:40 He goes, he goes, how big would your staff be
0:27:43 if it could be as big as you wanted it to be for your house?
0:27:44 And I was like, I don’t know.
0:27:46 Like I got to have like a cleaner
0:27:49 and maybe like a cook every so often or something.
0:27:51 He’s like, oh man, like what kind of cook?
0:27:52 You know, he gets into the details.
0:27:53 – He gets into the details.
0:27:53 He loves it.
0:27:54 He loves it.
0:27:56 And when he asks those questions, frankly,
0:27:59 it does make me start thinking, A, like maybe I should do
0:28:01 this and B, like am I thinking too small?
0:28:05 Like if I love something, why don’t I like get 10x more
0:28:06 of that thing?
0:28:09 And so it is like cool to think about it.
0:28:11 He does do a good job with that of like make,
0:28:14 of like pressuring me to think beyond like how I’m thinking.
0:28:19 And Ramit’s stuff has actually been life changing for me.
0:28:20 – Same.
0:28:21 – How big is the business now?
0:28:22 Can you say?
0:28:23 – Yeah, yeah.
0:28:28 We’re about 90 ish people and we’re hoping to hit somewhere
0:28:30 like 40, 45 million this year in revenue.
0:28:31 – That’s insane, right?
0:28:34 Did you ever think that, and are you doing it profitably
0:28:36 still now that even though you’ve raised money?
0:28:37 – Yeah, we’re profitable.
0:28:38 We’re profitable.
0:28:41 The first year after I think we were not
0:28:44 because we hired quite a bit ahead of growth
0:28:45 because we were like way under hired
0:28:47 with me and four contractors.
0:28:50 And then this year we are.
0:28:52 – You think, how big do you think it’s gonna get
0:28:54 in like five years?
0:28:56 – I mean, I think it’s like a foregone conclusion
0:28:59 to get above 100 million because we have,
0:29:01 we’ve made a couple of acquisitions.
0:29:03 We made two small ones and one large one
0:29:05 and even just sort of growing those,
0:29:08 I think has a shot at getting us past 100.
0:29:10 I don’t know how much bigger than that.
0:29:14 – Why acquire something instead of building it on your own?
0:29:15 – It’s really just speed.
0:29:18 And if you have the competency internally to do it.
0:29:20 – I mean, you studied accounting,
0:29:22 but did you know anything about acquiring a company
0:29:24 or did churn and kind of hold your hand?
0:29:28 – So the big acquisition where we bought the seed company,
0:29:30 that was churn and led a lot of the diligence on that
0:29:32 ’cause it’s like way too complex a 30 year old business.
0:29:36 Like there’s no way I could do the diligence on that.
0:29:38 But the two small acquisitions, I led those
0:29:41 and they sort of just helped with the legalities
0:29:43 of getting it all done.
0:29:46 So the very first one was a seed tray.
0:29:48 So like when you’re gardening,
0:29:50 you usually start seeds in like a little tray.
0:29:53 And a lot of these trays are made out of pretty flimsy plastic
0:29:55 and they’re just like throw away things.
0:29:57 And so a friend of mine who was in the space
0:30:00 on the media side of gardening, he was like an educator,
0:30:02 he was developing these trays and he hit me up
0:30:04 and he was like, “Hey, can I come down to the house
0:30:06 and just show you this new tray that I made
0:30:07 to start seeds in?”
0:30:09 And this was early 2021.
0:30:12 I was like, “Yeah, sure, come on down.”
0:30:13 He comes down, he shows me this tray
0:30:16 and it’s like this very super sturdy durable tray
0:30:20 to start seeds in, which solves like some of the problems
0:30:21 of them being flimsy.
0:30:23 Then he had like cut all these little slits in it
0:30:24 and there’s like a big hole in the bottom,
0:30:26 which if you’re a gardener, you know, it’s like,
0:30:28 that makes it easier to like pop the seed out
0:30:29 and put it out in the garden.
0:30:32 So I hold the tray and the second I hold it,
0:30:34 ’cause I’ve been gardening for like eight years now,
0:30:36 I’m like, “Holy shit, this is like the best seed starting
0:30:37 tray I’ve ever seen in my life.”
0:30:39 Like for sure.
0:30:40 And he’s like, “You can stand on it if you want to.”
0:30:42 So I like, I’m like 220 pounds.
0:30:44 So I stand on it with one foot, it doesn’t budge.
0:30:47 And I’m like, “Okay, like that thing’s durable.”
0:30:48 And so I go, “Well, what do you want to do?
0:30:50 Like I think this is a cool product.
0:30:53 Do you want to like, I can put it on my Shopify store
0:30:55 and like see if the audience wants it?”
0:30:56 And he’s like, “Yeah, sure, what do you think?
0:30:58 Like we’ll just split the profits 50/50,
0:31:02 you have the audience, I have the product and let’s go.”
0:31:04 So I started teasing it in like Instagram
0:31:07 or YouTube videos and it’s an injection molded product.
0:31:09 So we can only make so many in a day.
0:31:12 You have to like press the mold and like accumulate inventory.
0:31:15 So we built up like maybe a week or two of inventory
0:31:17 or what we thought was.
0:31:18 And then I just put an Instagram reel out and I was like,
0:31:21 “Hey, this is the coolest tray I’ve ever seen
0:31:23 and there’s a link in my bio to go grab it.”
0:31:25 And we sold it out like Shopify has this live analytics
0:31:26 you can look at. – It’s awesome.
0:31:28 It’s like, it’s like– – It’s so cool.
0:31:30 – Just the biggest dopamine rush
0:31:31 when you start seeing that coming in.
0:31:34 – So I remember I was screen recording
0:31:37 just to see, just to kind of flex and record the live screen.
0:31:39 And we sold out like a couple of weeks inventory
0:31:40 like 25 seconds.
0:31:42 – How much revenue was that?
0:31:44 – It was like 25 or 30 grand, I think.
0:31:47 So now that’s an entire line of products we own.
0:31:48 It’s on our shop.
0:31:51 It’s called our Epic Trayline.
0:31:53 So if you go to our shop and you go to seed starting supplies
0:31:55 you’ll see all the trays there.
0:31:58 So over the next like, over the next like three, four weeks
0:32:01 we just like built up inventory, dropped it, sold it out.
0:32:03 Built up inventory, dropped it, sold it out.
0:32:04 And we were just splitting the profits.
0:32:06 And then I go to him and I was like,
0:32:09 hey, look, not only is this working like really well,
0:32:12 better than I thought, but there’s definitely more trays
0:32:13 that we could make.
0:32:15 There’s like different form factors and different ideas
0:32:16 and like little domes you could put on top
0:32:19 to keep humidity in or whatever.
0:32:21 And I was like, but I can’t make them
0:32:22 ’cause that’s what you do.
0:32:26 And I’m like 95% of your sales.
0:32:29 So what if you just joined Epic?
0:32:30 You know, we raised some money.
0:32:32 I was like, you could be our product lead.
0:32:35 Well, I can’t really buy the business based on revenue
0:32:38 ’cause that is, we are your revenue, right?
0:32:41 And so how do we structure a deal?
0:32:42 And so the deal we came up with
0:32:44 without getting into like crazy specifics is
0:32:47 we basically paid him for all of the assets
0:32:49 like the molds themselves
0:32:51 and the research and development time
0:32:53 and a premium on that gave him some equity
0:32:56 and hired him as our product lead.
0:32:58 And then we’ve built that line out to like,
0:33:02 I think like 12 or 15 SKUs going D2C
0:33:05 and wholesale now and it’s like,
0:33:08 I think we’re like up seven X probably
0:33:10 on the acquisition price as far as like revenue
0:33:11 after the fact.
0:33:13 So, and that wasn’t like a big acquisition.
0:33:14 It was sub 500,000.
0:33:19 So to me, I’m like, that’s why you would buy
0:33:20 because I- – Yeah.
0:33:22 And that’s a great deal for everyone involved.
0:33:23 – Yeah, exactly.
0:33:25 It was a total win-win.
0:33:27 – What are the other two?
0:33:29 – So the second biggest one we did
0:33:31 was actually a media acquisition.
0:33:32 So that was a blog.
0:33:36 So a friend of mine from like the old SEO days
0:33:38 had built a gardening blog
0:33:41 and we were hiring for a director of editorial
0:33:42 like just someone to run our blog.
0:33:43 And our blog was doing well,
0:33:47 like maybe like eight, 10 million sessions a year.
0:33:49 And that was monetizing off of display ads
0:33:50 but then hopefully like people will go through
0:33:52 and like buy some stuff on our store too.
0:33:54 – All from search or mostly from search?
0:33:55 – Yeah, it was like mostly search.
0:33:57 I was like 80% search.
0:34:00 And so this guy emails me and he’s like,
0:34:03 hey, look, I saw that, that head of editorial position.
0:34:05 I’m working in SEO right now,
0:34:08 but I’ve also been building a gardening blog on the side.
0:34:11 It was called allaboutgardening.com
0:34:13 which is now redirecting to Epic Gardening.
0:34:15 And he’s like, I’d like the job,
0:34:16 like I’d like to put my hat in the ring for the job
0:34:20 but I kind of have like a competing blog.
0:34:24 So to me, I go, look, you’ve built that blog really fast,
0:34:26 way faster than we’re currently building ours,
0:34:29 but you kind of can’t work for us and run that blog.
0:34:33 So what if we bought your blog and hired you to run our blog?
0:34:35 And he goes, okay.
0:34:38 And so what we did is we bought the blog
0:34:41 and we migrated his blog into our blog,
0:34:44 which was like, call them both like 10 million sessions a year,
0:34:45 something like that.
0:34:47 So you’d think like 10 plus 10 is 20,
0:34:51 but our blog from an SEO perspective was like super strong.
0:34:55 So by migrating his into ours, our blog went to like,
0:34:58 we probably got like a 20, 30% premium on the traffic.
0:35:01 So like 10 plus 10 equals 25, right?
0:35:05 So then you monetizing better off of the display ads there,
0:35:09 but then we also just made more from the ads themselves.
0:35:13 And so effectively the acquisition financed itself
0:35:16 by the increased revenue of like month one.
0:35:18 So that was another like sort of weird acquisition.
0:35:22 – What did you, can you say, was that more or less than 500?
0:35:25 – It was, yeah, it was in between 500 and a million.
0:35:26 And the way we structured that one
0:35:29 is we paid some upfront and some over a period of time,
0:35:31 job plus equity.
0:35:32 So it was- – And this was post,
0:35:33 this was post churnin’.
0:35:35 – This was post churnin’, yeah.
0:35:37 So the way that one has ended up working out
0:35:40 is we have a awesome leader running our blog
0:35:42 at a higher level than ours was before.
0:35:44 Our traffic has over doubled
0:35:47 and we’re monetizing at over double the rate on the traffic.
0:35:50 So you know, like YouTube RPMs, right?
0:35:51 It’s the same with blogs.
0:35:55 Like our blog RPM doubled after doing the acquisition.
0:35:58 And so basically we just created like a cash flow
0:36:00 that finances the thing that we bought
0:36:01 that created the cash flow.
0:36:03 – Did you read a book about this?
0:36:05 I mean, how did you learn about acquisitions like this?
0:36:06 I mean, that’s a pretty good one.
0:36:07 – I just thought, I don’t know.
0:36:08 I just thought about it.
0:36:09 I was like, if I do that,
0:36:11 I feel like all these things will happen.
0:36:13 And then they did.
0:36:14 I don’t know.
0:36:16 Like my old- – You’re like,
0:36:17 you’re like, look, I don’t make up the rules.
0:36:19 I just think them up and write them down.
0:36:20 – Yeah. – I don’t know.
0:36:21 I just, I-
0:36:22 (laughing)
0:36:23 – Well, you know how I just-
0:36:26 – People say like, there needs to be one like core reason
0:36:28 to do something, like an acquisition
0:36:30 or a business move or whatever.
0:36:31 I agree with that.
0:36:35 But to me, the way I mentally underwrote both of those things
0:36:37 is I was like, well, the core reason is pretty obvious.
0:36:39 Like, I don’t have a product, now I do.
0:36:42 Or like, I don’t have the traffic and a leader, now I do.
0:36:43 But then I just go,
0:36:46 how many other ways could this benefit us?
0:36:48 And how many other ways could it hurt us?
0:36:50 And if the ways it could benefit us
0:36:51 outweigh the ways it could hurt us,
0:36:54 I go like, I feel like it’ll just work then.
0:36:57 And this probably holds true for like acquisitions
0:37:00 that are smaller where it’s maybe a less efficient market
0:37:01 or something like that.
0:37:02 I don’t know how it would work
0:37:04 if you have some sort of big, big deal.
0:37:06 – What was the third one?
0:37:08 ‘Cause you’re two for two, you’re two for two now.
0:37:09 That sounds pretty good.
0:37:10 – Those ones worked, those ones have worked out.
0:37:11 Yeah, yeah.
0:37:15 So the third one was almost like kind of a condition
0:37:17 of doing the turn and deal in the first place.
0:37:18 ‘Cause they’re like, look, like this is,
0:37:20 this is not a big amount of money for us,
0:37:23 but we wanna do some follow on
0:37:26 and see if we can like purchase
0:37:27 a really awesome company in the space
0:37:29 and help power up Epic Gardening.
0:37:30 I was like, okay, cool, that sounds good.
0:37:33 – Which is I think what they did with like Meat Eater
0:37:35 and a few others where they buy,
0:37:39 like they buy the, or they invest in the media company
0:37:40 and then immediately they’re like,
0:37:44 let’s go acquire a company to sell to the audience.
0:37:45 – Yeah, yeah, exactly.
0:37:47 And so we were looking, man,
0:37:48 we looked at so many different companies,
0:37:51 like maybe 150, 160 different companies in the space.
0:37:55 I was like out at a fruit tree farm in Missouri
0:37:57 at one point in time.
0:37:59 – When you say look at 150,
0:38:03 does that mean just like put like ideas on paper
0:38:06 or does that mean actually contacting 150 people?
0:38:08 – Oh, it means contacting more than 150.
0:38:11 It means like talking or like looking at a deck
0:38:15 or inspecting in some way, somewhere around 150.
0:38:16 Something like that.
0:38:18 – I mean, that’s a shit ton of work.
0:38:21 – Yeah, this is why having them has been helpful
0:38:22 or having an investor on your side has been helpful
0:38:25 ’cause like I’m out here running the business
0:38:27 and I might mention a company and they’ll diligence
0:38:28 and say like, yeah, this makes sense.
0:38:29 This doesn’t make sense.
0:38:32 – And then they’ll cold email them or cold call them
0:38:34 and be like, hey, it’s who we are.
0:38:35 I know this is out of the blue,
0:38:37 but would this ever entertain you?
0:38:39 And then if they say yes and like,
0:38:40 look, why don’t you like put together
0:38:43 some high level numbers and then send something over
0:38:45 and then we can talk about it with our team
0:38:47 and then you get some type of like DocSend
0:38:51 or PowerPoint or you get something and you’re like,
0:38:53 yay or nay, like it could go to the next step.
0:38:55 Let’s actually have a real discussion about this.
0:38:57 Is that how the diligence looks like?
0:38:58 – Pretty much, yeah.
0:38:59 Yeah, pretty much.
0:39:02 I remember we were looking at like the top 600
0:39:04 gardening apps at one point in time.
0:39:08 And so we, I got like a sheet from one of the people
0:39:10 on the investment team and they were like,
0:39:12 yeah, here are like the seven we think make any sense
0:39:14 whatsoever and here’s like the 593
0:39:16 that don’t make any sense at all.
0:39:18 – So these guys are doing a lot of the work then.
0:39:21 They’re helping you, they’re pulling their weight.
0:39:23 – I think so, yeah, absolutely.
0:39:26 So anyway, so the seed company,
0:39:29 this is like the big acquisition.
0:39:31 This was a company that without me knowing it,
0:39:33 it was the first pack of seeds I had ever grown
0:39:34 when I first started gardening.
0:39:36 So I went into some random nursery with my brother
0:39:39 and just picked up like a beautiful packet of seeds,
0:39:41 just cucumber seeds and lo and behold,
0:39:44 turns out to be the seed company we end up buying
0:39:46 in the story I’m about to share.
0:39:47 So we go out to Colorado,
0:39:49 it’s this company called Botanical Interests
0:39:51 and they’re really well known for having
0:39:52 high germination rates.
0:39:54 So the seeds sprout really well when you buy them,
0:39:57 but also the packet is just beautifully designed.
0:39:58 – What are they growing?
0:39:59 You know, I’m a new,
0:40:01 but I’m a total new when it comes to this stuff.
0:40:03 What are they, what’s the output?
0:40:06 – There’s six, I think we talk about 650 varieties
0:40:07 of vegetables, flowers and herbs.
0:40:09 So pretty much anything under the sun.
0:40:11 Anything that you would like reasonably want to grow,
0:40:14 we have it and it’s a husband and wife.
0:40:16 They’ve been running it for like 28 years.
0:40:17 They were married,
0:40:20 I think they had divorced like a few years prior to that
0:40:23 and they were sort of ready to hand the business off
0:40:25 to whoever wants to run it next.
0:40:27 But it’s like one of those like quote,
0:40:30 boring businesses that people talk about all the time,
0:40:31 who’s actually going to be able to buy it?
0:40:33 And the seed business is actually fairly complex.
0:40:35 There’s a lot that goes into it
0:40:36 that you have to understand.
0:40:40 And so we go out there, I meet the guy, the husband,
0:40:41 and he’s like, “Hey, can I grab a selfie?”
0:40:43 Like, actually I have a friend
0:40:45 who’s like a big fan of your YouTube.
0:40:47 It’d be amazing if I could show her that we met
0:40:49 and immediately I’m like, okay,
0:40:52 maybe I’ve got a little edge in this process.
0:40:54 Like maybe I’m going to be able to get this company.
0:40:55 – Or you can go either way.
0:40:58 It could be like you have an edge or shit.
0:41:00 They know that we have money behind us
0:41:01 or something like that.
0:41:03 – Could be that too, yeah, could be that too.
0:41:05 But we go through the whole,
0:41:06 like the diligence happens,
0:41:08 we go on a tour of the place
0:41:09 where we’re talking through pricing
0:41:10 and all this sort of stuff.
0:41:12 And so I told my investors, I was like,
0:41:14 they gave me all this swag, they gave me like a hat.
0:41:16 So I go, I’m just going to wear this hat
0:41:18 in every piece of content we make
0:41:21 until we either win or don’t win this deal.
0:41:23 Because I know the guy watches it, right?
0:41:26 And I know like probably his team watches it too.
0:41:28 So for the next, like this was maybe May,
0:41:30 for the next six months, which is a great time,
0:41:32 like May, that’s spring through summer.
0:41:34 I’m cranking YouTube videos out.
0:41:36 I’m cranking Instagram reels out, short form,
0:41:41 whatever hats on 24/7, every single piece of content.
0:41:44 And we go through the bidding process, we win the deal.
0:41:46 We were not the highest bid by like quite a bit,
0:41:49 I would say, a material amount for the sellers
0:41:52 to like not have in their pocket if they went with us.
0:41:54 And we go out to celebrate and I go,
0:41:56 hey, you know, I really appreciate you guys.
0:41:59 Like it’s truly an honor to be able to carry
0:42:00 on the legacy of this company.
0:42:02 Like this is the first seed packet I ever grew.
0:42:04 And I’m just being very gracious
0:42:05 ’cause I did feel that way.
0:42:09 And he goes, you don’t know how much wearing that hat helped.
0:42:12 And I go, I knew it.
0:42:13 – You got him.
0:42:15 – Yeah, I got him, not in like a malicious way,
0:42:16 just like- – Sure, sure, sure.
0:42:18 – I’m using the angle that I have,
0:42:21 which is my- – Everyone won, everyone won.
0:42:23 – Did you, what were some of the red flags
0:42:27 and I guess green flags or whatever it is for that deal,
0:42:28 along with a few other deals
0:42:31 when you’re looking through the financials and the business?
0:42:34 – So the seed companies, red flags,
0:42:36 are basically that it is a seed company.
0:42:39 Like that’s just a hard, it’s a difficult business.
0:42:39 Like there’s a ton- – Why?
0:42:41 ‘Cause there’s so many different SKUs.
0:42:43 – Tons of different SKUs.
0:42:46 There’s, you have to do like a non-GMO certification.
0:42:47 You have to do germination testing.
0:42:50 You have to do pesticide and herbicide testing.
0:42:54 You’re physically purchasing or contracting a grower
0:42:59 to grow seeds that you then receive, test, repack, et cetera.
0:43:01 And so there’s just like a lot of,
0:43:03 it’s not like you’re selling like a rug
0:43:04 or something like that.
0:43:05 And you can just buy rugs from China
0:43:08 and then sell the rugs to other people in America.
0:43:10 So that was complex.
0:43:12 But the part that I think was really green about it
0:43:14 is it was far and away one of the best brands in the space.
0:43:17 Like I loved it for 10 years.
0:43:21 And on top of that, they were mostly a wholesale business
0:43:23 and the online business they sort of hadn’t done
0:43:24 a whole lot with.
0:43:26 And I was like, okay, well we’re definitely
0:43:28 an online first company, media and product.
0:43:31 So why don’t we just plug those two together?
0:43:34 And I think the first year after we did the deal,
0:43:36 the online part of the business for the seed company
0:43:39 was up like 70, 60 or 70% year over year
0:43:40 without really doing much.
0:43:42 Like all we did was move it to Shopify
0:43:43 and tell people we own the company now
0:43:45 and that’s pretty much it.
0:43:47 – What payback cycle are you looking for?
0:43:51 And what type of multiple do businesses like this sell for?
0:43:53 – Man, I don’t remember offhand the multiple,
0:43:57 but I wanna say it was probably six to eight X,
0:43:58 somewhere like that.
0:43:59 Income.
0:44:00 – Yeah, I think so.
0:44:04 – And how long until you could pay back the acquisition?
0:44:05 – That’s a good question.
0:44:10 I don’t know, maybe hopefully like, hopefully like.
0:44:13 – So I mean, I think that’s pretty fast.
0:44:16 – Yeah, it’s like, I would say like five, hopefully.
0:44:19 – Yeah, I mean, more, I mean, if they only sell
0:44:22 for five to seven times, I would think that you’d actually
0:44:25 grow it or get that money back significantly faster,
0:44:29 I would think because of kind of the audience that you have.
0:44:30 – The audience, and then like just the opportunity
0:44:34 ’cause we’re carried in, I would say 4,500 stores
0:44:35 around the country.
0:44:37 And so to me, I’m like, well, it’s just seeds
0:44:39 that are carried, like just our seed brands there
0:44:41 ’cause they were a seed company,
0:44:43 but we’re making these trays that I told you about,
0:44:44 we’re making these other new products.
0:44:46 Now we have a distribution network.
0:44:49 So why don’t we tell all those retailers,
0:44:50 hey, look, we’re like making better product
0:44:52 that your customers will want,
0:44:54 just stock our product in your store.
0:44:57 And so that was another like big lever, I think.
0:44:58 We’re still testing it out and trying to prove
0:45:01 if that’s right or not, but we’re like, yeah,
0:45:03 why wouldn’t we just offer a ton of our products now
0:45:06 to wholesale in a network that we couldn’t have built?
0:45:09 – Have you ever been to Chip and Jo-Ann’s like,
0:45:12 – Oh yeah, yeah. – Waco, like, they’re like,
0:45:14 – I did a show for them in 2020.
0:45:16 – Like you were on their show?
0:45:20 – I filmed a show for Magnolia back then.
0:45:23 – They have, it’s basically like Disneyland
0:45:25 for like four-year-old white chicks.
0:45:28 It’s like, you could like buy anything in the world
0:45:30 that you’re like for your home or living room.
0:45:33 I went to it once and like my mother-in-law
0:45:36 and her sisters like wanted to go and like take pictures
0:45:38 of like, they just wanted to like anything
0:45:40 with Chip and Jo-Ann’s name on it,
0:45:42 they just wanted to see it.
0:45:44 And I was like doing math around like how,
0:45:46 I mean, it’s like a, it’s like a, it’s like a campus.
0:45:51 And so they’ve got like food and many, many different stores.
0:45:52 And I was doing math and I’m like,
0:45:54 these guys are going to be billionaires.
0:45:56 Like this is going to be the greatest thing ever.
0:45:59 And that’s going to happen to you
0:46:01 because you’ve got the same shtick where
0:46:06 you’re in a good niche of, I imagine it’s mostly women
0:46:08 and they probably have, they probably spend a lot
0:46:10 or just for the hobby, they spend a lot,
0:46:14 but B, you got the charisma, you got the look.
0:46:17 Like it’s going to happen.
0:46:21 Do you get crazy like stalker messages
0:46:23 or like fans who are obsessed with you?
0:46:25 – It’s definitely happened.
0:46:26 Yeah, it’s definitely happened.
0:46:29 – People make fun of me on this podcast all the time.
0:46:30 Everyone thinks I’m gay because they’re like,
0:46:32 I comment on like a man all the time,
0:46:35 but you know, I’m not embarrassed to say
0:46:36 you’re a charismatic, good looking dude.
0:46:38 I imagine you’ve got, you’ve got a lot of fans.
0:46:40 – Back as you dude.
0:46:42 So everyone thinks I’m gay too, actually.
0:46:45 Just because I’m like, just cause I’m a guy,
0:46:47 I think it’s cause I’m a younger guy in gardening
0:46:50 and gardening is seen as a more feminine hobby.
0:46:52 People just think I’m a gay guy,
0:46:55 which is just, it’s just an interesting phenomenon
0:46:57 to experience on the internet all the time.
0:47:02 But yeah, no, I mean, I would say it happens for sure.
0:47:04 I’ve done the whole like delete all your info
0:47:07 from the internet process, but it’s kind of hard.
0:47:08 – It’s never good enough.
0:47:09 It’s never good enough.
0:47:12 – Well, especially when you film at your home, right?
0:47:14 Like my set is my outdoors.
0:47:17 And so I can’t like not show the street, et cetera.
0:47:18 Cause it’s just in the shot.
0:47:20 There’s nothing I could really do about it.
0:47:22 – Dude, I’ve had times where like I took a picture of my house
0:47:24 and I didn’t think you could see it.
0:47:25 And then like the next couple of days,
0:47:28 I’ll get gifts sent to my home.
0:47:30 And like people will find it on like street view.
0:47:31 And I’m like, oh shit.
0:47:33 And like, I’m not a famous person.
0:47:37 I’m a mildly popular person in a small subset of the internet.
0:47:39 And so I can’t imagine if you’re like real famous
0:47:40 or if I’m like you and my videos
0:47:43 get millions and millions and millions of views.
0:47:45 – Yeah, I mean, look, it hasn’t been as bad
0:47:48 as I think like legitimate celebrity type people,
0:47:49 but I’ve definitely had like,
0:47:52 I had an experience earlier this year where this woman,
0:47:53 we’re all in the backyard
0:47:55 cause that’s where we film most of the time.
0:47:57 But there’s a garden in the front yard too.
0:47:59 And I have security cameras on now
0:48:00 that record like locally to my house.
0:48:03 So I can pull up footage of whatever I want.
0:48:06 And this woman like comes up the front door, knocks on it,
0:48:09 says you who, and then like looks in the house
0:48:12 and then goes out into the front gate, walks, opens it,
0:48:14 like kind of messes around with some plants,
0:48:16 tries to walk around the backyard.
0:48:17 And my assistant was in the backyard.
0:48:19 She’s like coming around the back to the front.
0:48:21 So they kind of like butted heads.
0:48:22 And my assistant just freaked out.
0:48:23 She’s like, who is this woman?
0:48:26 And this woman saw nothing wrong with what she was doing.
0:48:27 She was like, oh yeah, I just wanted to see
0:48:30 if you guys were filming, like wanted to come say hi.
0:48:32 And we’re like, we don’t know who you are.
0:48:34 And she like, there’s nothing we could have said to her
0:48:35 that would have made her understand her behavior
0:48:38 was like completely out of the norm.
0:48:39 And so every so often,
0:48:41 it’s like the law of large numbers, man.
0:48:43 Like if you have an audience of many millions,
0:48:48 all you need is 0.01% and that’s still like 14 people,
0:48:50 you know, that’ll come mess with you.
0:48:52 – All right, if you’re listening to this pod,
0:48:54 I already know something about you.
0:48:57 You, my friend, are nosy.
0:48:59 You wanna know the numbers behind all of these things
0:49:01 that we’re talking about, how much money people make,
0:49:04 how much money people spend, how much money businesses make.
0:49:07 You wanna know all of this, people’s net worth, all of it.
0:49:09 Well, I’ve got good news for you.
0:49:12 So my company Hampton, we’re a private community for CEOs.
0:49:14 We do this thing where we survey our members
0:49:16 and we ask them all types of information,
0:49:18 like how much money they’re paying themselves,
0:49:20 how much money they’re paying a lot of their employees,
0:49:23 what their team-wide bonuses are, what their net worth is,
0:49:24 what their portfolio looks like.
0:49:26 We ask all these questions, but we do it anonymously.
0:49:28 And so people are willing to reveal
0:49:29 all types of amazing information.
0:49:32 So if you really cannot Google, you can’t find anywhere else.
0:49:34 And you could check it out at joinhampton.com,
0:49:37 click the reports section on the menu,
0:49:39 click the salary and compensation report.
0:49:40 It’s gonna blow your mind.
0:49:41 You’re gonna love this stuff.
0:49:42 Check it out.
0:49:43 Now, back to the pod.
0:49:47 – You were telling Ari before about something
0:49:48 that I wanted to ask you about.
0:49:51 And this is something that I’ve been crazy interested in.
0:49:53 It’s a business I don’t really know much about
0:49:54 other than listening to like two or three podcasts
0:49:56 and reading a couple articles.
0:50:01 But the licensing of fruits or vegetables
0:50:02 or different types of seeds.
0:50:06 So I was reading about the history of honeycrisp apples.
0:50:10 And I believe it was started in either,
0:50:13 I think it was Minnesota, like University of Minnesota.
0:50:16 What they did was I think they like took two plants
0:50:18 and they bred them.
0:50:19 However, that people even do that.
0:50:20 I don’t even know how you do that.
0:50:23 But it took like many decades
0:50:25 because I guess it takes a year to get a new plant
0:50:27 or I guess it takes like 10 years to get an apple tree
0:50:29 in the first place or five years, something like that.
0:50:31 And then you screw up a bunch.
0:50:33 And then so it ultimately will take many years,
0:50:35 sometimes decades to get like a good apple.
0:50:37 And then they come up with a really cute name
0:50:38 like honeycrisp or like,
0:50:40 I think I had one the other day
0:50:43 that was called like a cotton candy apple.
0:50:46 Like you like brand it with some like cute name.
0:50:50 And then you license it out to other farmers.
0:50:52 And then you build this massive business
0:50:56 that has this moat that will take 30 years to disrupt.
0:50:57 Is that how it works?
0:50:59 Am I, do I have that right?
0:51:00 – That’s pretty much right.
0:51:01 That’s pretty much right.
0:51:04 So we’re going to go into like garden or territory
0:51:06 for a sack just so I can explain how it works.
0:51:10 So when you’re making a new tree, it’s really difficult.
0:51:11 Like you mentioned, like actually
0:51:13 when you’re making new varieties of most plants,
0:51:18 it’s super painful to get the variety that you actually want.
0:51:20 Like I met a guy at a farm once,
0:51:23 he’d been working on a potato for like 20 years.
0:51:26 – And what was his goal outcome for that potato?
0:51:28 – So the goal outcome, potatoes are grown
0:51:29 from what are called seed potatoes,
0:51:31 which is basically just a potato that you throw
0:51:32 on the ground.
0:51:33 So you don’t plant like a little seed,
0:51:35 you just throw a potato on the ground.
0:51:37 So this guy was trying to make a potato
0:51:39 that you could grow from an actual potato seed.
0:51:41 Cause when a potato is in the ground,
0:51:43 it throws like leaves up
0:51:45 and it actually makes a potato flower,
0:51:47 which produces a potato berry
0:51:48 and that berry has seeds in it.
0:51:50 And if you plant those seeds,
0:51:52 the problem is that you don’t get the potato
0:51:53 that you planted.
0:51:54 You get something different.
0:51:56 – And so his outcome was like a more efficient way
0:51:57 for a farmer.
0:51:59 It wasn’t necessarily a certain taste.
0:52:00 – Yeah, it was, it wasn’t,
0:52:02 I mean, it definitely was a taste, but you’re right.
0:52:05 Like the idea was instead of buying a ton of potatoes
0:52:07 and planting them by hand,
0:52:08 you could just plant a bunch of seeds.
0:52:10 That took him 20 years, right?
0:52:12 – Did he get his, did he do it?
0:52:13 – He got it, yeah.
0:52:14 It’s called the Clancy potato.
0:52:16 We actually sell it on our, our store.
0:52:17 It’s an awesome potato.
0:52:18 – Did he get wealthy from it?
0:52:18 – I hope so.
0:52:20 I didn’t ask, but I hope so.
0:52:22 I think he did it under a seed company.
0:52:24 So probably they got wealthy, I’m not sure.
0:52:26 But either way, he’s an interesting guy.
0:52:28 So with fruit trees though,
0:52:30 it’s kind of the same thing where like,
0:52:34 you have to, you have to keep developing tons
0:52:36 and tons of trees and then figure out, let’s say,
0:52:40 okay, this is the apple out of the hundreds that I grew out
0:52:42 that I actually like.
0:52:44 It’s, that’s my next honeycrisp, right?
0:52:47 And what you then do is you, you have to graft.
0:52:49 You have to take a piece of that tree
0:52:52 and put it on what’s called the rootstock of, of an apple.
0:52:55 So like the roots and below,
0:52:57 ’cause you can’t use the seed of that
0:52:58 ’cause it’ll be a different apple
0:52:59 and it will take a long time.
0:53:02 So let’s say you get this magical new honeycrisp.
0:53:05 What you do is you take a bunch of those,
0:53:06 those little branches off
0:53:08 and you put them on other apple rootstock
0:53:09 and then grow those out.
0:53:12 And then those are genetic clones of that new honeycrisp.
0:53:14 And then you do that again and then you do that again.
0:53:15 And so that’s how-
0:53:17 – And is each time one year
0:53:19 or how long does it take to grow a tree?
0:53:21 – It’s probably like,
0:53:23 it would really depend on the type of fruit,
0:53:26 but it’s probably, I’ll say this,
0:53:29 it’ll shorten from growing from seed by like 70, 80%.
0:53:31 It’s like way faster than growing it from seed.
0:53:34 Not only that, you have to do it that way
0:53:36 ’cause you won’t get the same genetic apple.
0:53:39 And so what guys like the honeycrisp guy you mentioned
0:53:41 or there’s a guy named Floyd Zager
0:53:44 who’s sort of known as like the godfather of stone fruit,
0:53:46 which is like peaches, nectarines,
0:53:48 all those types of trees.
0:53:51 What they do is they have tens of thousands, I think,
0:53:54 of trees that they’re cross pollinating,
0:53:57 growing out, grafting, tasting, testing.
0:54:01 And then when maybe 0.1% of those actually become a variety,
0:54:03 they now have a patent on that
0:54:05 ’cause they’ve developed that what’s called a cultivar.
0:54:07 They have that cultivar.
0:54:08 And then they can license that out
0:54:10 for other people that put into production.
0:54:11 They take like a licensing fee on all those.
0:54:13 So you’re right, like once they actually create
0:54:17 the next honeycrisp or the next like killer peach,
0:54:19 they can make a cash flow off of that thing
0:54:20 for like, who knows how long
0:54:22 until the next one comes around.
0:54:23 – I’m looking at this guy Floyd.
0:54:25 So he’s 94 years old.
0:54:27 It looks like he’s still doing it.
0:54:29 – I think he passed away like a couple of years ago,
0:54:31 but he’s like a total legend in the space.
0:54:32 – Oh yeah, you’re right.
0:54:34 He passed away, but it looked like based off the photos
0:54:36 up until like when he passed away,
0:54:40 it looks like he was still planting or involved.
0:54:42 Did he build a big,
0:54:45 his name of his company was Zager’s Genetics.
0:54:45 Is that right?
0:54:46 – Yeah, Zager’s Genetics.
0:54:50 And then what there’s a nursery called Dave Wilson Nursery,
0:54:52 which I think they sell the most fruit trees in the US.
0:54:56 They use a lot of Zager’s stuff.
0:54:58 So they’ll be the people who grow out
0:55:02 a lot of Floyd Zager’s actual trees.
0:55:03 So it’s a crazy model because you’re right,
0:55:05 like good luck competing.
0:55:08 You have to spend like 20 years to even get started.
0:55:09 – Does it make, does it make,
0:55:10 is it like a good business
0:55:12 or is it something that looks awesome?
0:55:15 But day to day, it’s quite challenging.
0:55:17 – I mean, I don’t think it’s the easiest business.
0:55:18 You have to know a lot about plant botany
0:55:19 and genetics and all that.
0:55:21 But like the people who like this type of stuff,
0:55:23 like there’s nothing you could pay them
0:55:24 to make them stop doing it.
0:55:27 So they might as well have a business based on it, you know?
0:55:29 – Yeah, my parents are in the agriculture industry.
0:55:34 So my father, his first business was a fruit stand on the,
0:55:35 he started as a stock boy
0:55:38 in like the produce section of a grocery store.
0:55:40 Then he opened up a fruit stand
0:55:43 and then he created a produce brokerage,
0:55:46 which is like a, basically you have relationships
0:55:50 with farmers in Idaho or Bakersfield, California,
0:55:53 and you buy, let’s say, $500,000 of onions,
0:55:55 and then you go and find a trucker to pick it up,
0:55:59 and then you sell that $500,000 of onions to Walmart
0:56:04 for $500,000, $50,000, and you make like 10 grand of profit
0:56:08 or something like that off organizing that deal.
0:56:10 And you have to sell, at this point,
0:56:13 he’s sold over $100 million of onions
0:56:15 over the course of 20 years,
0:56:18 but the margins are like 3%.
0:56:22 Or like, you know, it’ll be basically him by himself
0:56:25 selling 20 million a year worth of produce,
0:56:26 and like you make, I don’t know what you make,
0:56:29 but like $300,000 a year, so good living,
0:56:32 but like you’ve got to sell a shit ton of product
0:56:35 in order because the margins are so small.
0:56:39 And so I’ve grown up talking to some of these farmers,
0:56:43 and it’s more of a vocation than anything
0:56:44 because it’s just what they know.
0:56:47 It’s, you know, they’ve been born and raised doing that,
0:56:51 and it’s like, I am a farmer no matter what.
0:56:54 And it’s not like maybe traditional businesses
0:56:56 where it’s like, I see an opportunity, I’m gonna do this.
0:56:59 It’s like, no, this is just what I was bred to be.
0:57:01 – That’s what I’ve noticed in our space
0:57:04 ’cause there’s a lot of like smaller product companies
0:57:06 or small seed companies, et cetera.
0:57:09 Like no one’s, no one’s trying to get super rich doing it.
0:57:12 Like even me, like back in the earlier days,
0:57:15 I was like, I just, I’m very happy
0:57:17 making that 250 that I made, gross revenue,
0:57:19 and pulling out whatever I made.
0:57:22 It just so happened that I also like business,
0:57:24 and so they combined really well.
0:57:27 – Can I, well, we’ll wrap up here in a second,
0:57:30 but look, I wanna ask you a quick question about diet.
0:57:33 I’m a little, I recently moved to a new place
0:57:35 just mostly because it was across the street
0:57:38 from a farmer’s market, and I’ve been obsessed
0:57:41 with the idea of buying produce and meat
0:57:44 that only comes within like a 20 or 50 mile radius
0:57:49 of where I am, because like even if you buy food
0:57:51 at Whole Foods, I still think like Whole Foods
0:57:54 is supposed to be like some type of standard,
0:57:56 which I don’t think it is the standard anymore,
0:57:57 but for a long time it was like,
0:57:59 that was the standard of healthy eating.
0:58:02 But I still feel crappy after I eat that
0:58:04 because I don’t, you know, like,
0:58:06 I don’t even know what organic actually means,
0:58:09 and I don’t actually bind to the height necessarily
0:58:12 that that makes, that is the right way to do things.
0:58:15 Are you eating all of your own food
0:58:17 and do you think that makes you feel different
0:58:20 than grocery store food?
0:58:22 – I think, I think for sure it does
0:58:26 because I don’t know that I believe,
0:58:27 you know that book, Blue Zones,
0:58:28 remember that one that came out?
0:58:30 It’s like kind of long. – Dude, I think that,
0:58:32 that book is awesome, but I think it’s bullshit.
0:58:34 – I think a good part of it is bullshit, yeah.
0:58:35 – You know why it’s bullshit?
0:58:37 So here, well, I’ll tell the audience,
0:58:38 I did a little research on it.
0:58:40 It’s like, what they all have in common
0:58:44 is that like in Osaka, Japan,
0:58:47 or like they lie about their age.
0:58:50 And so like they notice that like, wow, this,
0:58:52 in this town, there’s a shit ton of people
0:58:54 born on January 1st, like what’s going on?
0:58:56 And it turns out a lot of them lie about their age.
0:58:58 I guess so they get Social Security
0:59:00 at a certain time or something like that.
0:59:01 – Oh, wow.
0:59:04 – And so there was a lot, like the,
0:59:07 although maybe there was some bit of truth in there,
0:59:10 the commonality between the five Blue Zones
0:59:13 is that they have a huge amount of like age fraud.
0:59:15 – I also saw something about,
0:59:17 can you imagine like lying to be older?
0:59:18 I saw something about like,
0:59:20 it also maps to when we started
0:59:22 accurately tracking birth certificates,
0:59:25 like a lot of these people are old enough
0:59:27 that they’re from before when we did that.
0:59:29 And so how can you really know how old they are?
0:59:30 The thing I do think is-
0:59:33 – And that’s the nicer way to put it when I maybe said.
0:59:34 – Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:59:37 Well, I think the thing that is somewhat true there is like,
0:59:39 it does seem to just make logical sense
0:59:43 that the fresher food you eat, the better off you’ll be.
0:59:44 And so to me, I go, well,
0:59:46 it doesn’t get fresher than out of my own backyard, right?
0:59:49 Like we just had a amazing carrot salad we made yesterday.
0:59:50 I’ve even grown my own wheat
0:59:52 to make my own sourdough bread,
0:59:53 which is definitely extreme.
0:59:55 Like I don’t think that’s practical.
0:59:58 But yeah, I mean, I think you do feel better.
1:00:01 And I think the next best thing to growing your own food
1:00:03 would be going to like a farmer’s market.
1:00:05 As long as you know, like the farmer
1:00:07 is actually growing things the way that they say they are.
1:00:09 ‘Cause now there’s like farmer’s market fraud.
1:00:10 ‘Cause down here in San Diego,
1:00:14 people will drive up from Mexico with like monocropped food
1:00:16 and just pretend like it’s a farmer’s market.
1:00:18 – What questions do I have to ask them?
1:00:21 – You would have to ask like, well, where is your farm?
1:00:22 Which they could definitely-
1:00:23 – Show me pictures.
1:00:25 – Yeah, yeah, they should have pictures of it.
1:00:29 And you could ask like, you know, do you spray
1:00:30 pesticide herbicide, fungicide?
1:00:32 If so, like which ones?
1:00:34 You don’t even have to know what their answers mean,
1:00:36 but if they can’t fire the answers off quickly,
1:00:37 that’s your signal
1:00:40 that they kind of don’t know what they’re talking about.
1:00:42 – What do you do for meat?
1:00:45 – Meat, I tend to just buy at,
1:00:46 I’ll go to like a Whole Foods
1:00:48 or there’s like a local fish market
1:00:50 called Point Loba Seafoods down here in San Diego,
1:00:52 I’ll try to go to.
1:00:54 And sometimes, so I’m trying to get like some friends
1:00:57 to do that like quarter cow thing with me.
1:00:57 – Yeah, me too.
1:00:58 – But so far, no one’s down.
1:01:01 So if you’re out there, all are on me.
1:01:03 – I’ve been trying to do that as well.
1:01:05 You need like a huge garage fridge,
1:01:07 which is how you know you made it
1:01:10 by having a garage fridge to like store all this meat.
1:01:11 But I’ve been doing it too.
1:01:16 Have you seen, it’s called, it’s called Coop,
1:01:17 but if you Google like Coop.
1:01:18 – Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:01:21 We shot them on our podcast, the smart farm.
1:01:22 Yeah.
1:01:23 – Yeah, AJ’s a good buddy of mine.
1:01:24 AJ’s awesome.
1:01:25 What’s his URL?
1:01:27 I want to give him a shout out.
1:01:28 – Coop.farm.
1:01:29 – Coop.farm.
1:01:33 So Coop is like, it’s like the tagline that I saw
1:01:36 in an article was like, it’s like the Tesla for a chicken coop.
1:01:38 And it’s like, so Coop.farm.
1:01:40 It’s like a smart chicken coop.
1:01:42 And it looks pretty cool.
1:01:43 I think I might get one.
1:01:47 I think it’d be awesome to have your own chickens,
1:01:49 ’cause that’s like a pretty low maintenance way
1:01:52 to just kind of get into the habit or get in the hobby.
1:01:55 The other thing that I’ve done for years is beekeeping.
1:02:00 So I’ve raised my own bees in order to get honey,
1:02:01 which is like an awesome hobby.
1:02:02 And beekeeping is a cool thing
1:02:07 because it requires like not much maintenance at all.
1:02:09 And from a business perspective,
1:02:12 you remember that flow hive or whatever
1:02:15 that went viral on Kickstarter and it raised like $20 million.
1:02:19 I do think that beekeeping, like the supplies
1:02:22 could actually be a legitimately good business.
1:02:24 And you can create like,
1:02:26 you can create like a lifestyle brand around it
1:02:29 because the content to around that
1:02:31 is like inherently quite viral.
1:02:34 Like I used to create these like just videos of me
1:02:38 like scraping off the honey or the, what’s it called?
1:02:40 The honey comb?
1:02:41 – The honey from the comb, yeah.
1:02:44 – Yeah, like scraping the comb off of my,
1:02:47 my trays or whatever that’s in the hive.
1:02:49 I don’t actually know anything about it,
1:02:50 even though I’ve had bees for years,
1:02:52 but like that’s how little you have to know about this
1:02:54 in order to like successfully do it.
1:02:56 Like I would like scrape off the comb
1:02:57 and like make these awesome videos
1:02:59 and then just like give it to my friends
1:03:02 and they loved it and it was like such a fun hobby.
1:03:04 And so I’m really big on that.
1:03:06 – Named, I think her name is like Texas Bee Works.
1:03:08 I don’t know if you’ve seen her stuff on the internet,
1:03:11 but she has this like very soft pleasing voice
1:03:13 and she’ll be like, there’ll be music
1:03:16 and there’ll be some crazy scenario where there’s a hive
1:03:18 and she’s like called out and she goes,
1:03:21 I’ve been called out to take this hive out of a manhole.
1:03:24 – Dude, she has a 1.6 million subs on YouTube.
1:03:25 – Oh yeah, yeah, she’s huge.
1:03:28 And so I always look cause I know what I did with Epic
1:03:30 and I look at all these other people and I go like,
1:03:32 don’t you realize like you could have a thriving
1:03:35 beekeeping like goods company.
1:03:38 But then, you know, the sort of paradox
1:03:40 of the whole creator world is that most creators
1:03:41 just don’t want to do that.
1:03:43 And that’s why they don’t do it.
1:03:44 – Dude, she was on Joe Rogan.
1:03:46 I’m looking at it now, Erica Thompson.
1:03:47 She was on Joe Rogan.
1:03:50 She goes, I did my first podcast.
1:03:51 And it’s-
1:03:51 – It’s Joe Rogan.
1:03:52 – It’s Joe Rogan.
1:03:54 She goes, I did my first podcast.
1:03:55 Link is in the bio.
1:03:57 Thank you so much, Joe Rogan and team.
1:04:00 This was such a wonderful experience for me and my bees.
1:04:01 – Damn, that’s a flex right there.
1:04:02 That’s a flex.
1:04:03 – Awesome.
1:04:04 This is a gem.
1:04:07 This woman, she’s got it.
1:04:10 Yeah, man, beekeeping is an interesting hobby.
1:04:11 You should try it out.
1:04:12 Like it requires no work.
1:04:14 And I’m pretty sure it makes your plants way better.
1:04:16 I noticed that whenever I get bees,
1:04:19 you start seeing like all different types of flowers
1:04:20 in the backyard.
1:04:22 – That’s the last thing I haven’t done.
1:04:24 Like I’ve got the chickens.
1:04:25 I’ve got all the pond.
1:04:26 You know, I don’t have bees yet.
1:04:28 So I might have to get some bees.
1:04:29 – Dude, it costs like $200 to start.
1:04:33 Like my hives are from Amazon for 200 bucks.
1:04:35 And then you go on Craigslist and you find
1:04:37 like a bee delivery person.
1:04:39 The lady that I used was this like beautiful,
1:04:41 like Eastern European woman.
1:04:43 She shows up in her Lexus.
1:04:45 She pops out with a hive.
1:04:46 She’s not wearing any mask.
1:04:48 She’s got like a fancy watch on
1:04:50 and like beautiful blonde hair and nice clothes.
1:04:53 And she just goes like, you know, I’ve got your bees.
1:04:55 And I was like, yes, man, please come put them over here.
1:04:59 And I paid her $200 for the bees and the $200 for the hive
1:05:00 that I got on Amazon.
1:05:01 And that’s all, that’s all I needed.
1:05:04 – Do you still have them right now?
1:05:06 – I recently moved, but up until recently, yeah,
1:05:09 I had them on the, I had them in San Francisco
1:05:11 and I had them in Texas, but in San Francisco,
1:05:13 I had them at my small little house.
1:05:16 I had a backyard and then I also had them on the roof
1:05:18 of my office in downtown San Francisco.
1:05:21 And I had about 10,000 bees and you wouldn’t even,
1:05:24 you could, your hive could be like 30 feet away
1:05:25 and you wouldn’t even know that it’s there.
1:05:27 It’s like a pretty self-contained thing.
1:05:28 It’s like an awesome hobby.
1:05:29 – I’ve got a spot for my hive.
1:05:31 Then I have the perfect spot in my backyard for my hive.
1:05:33 – Yeah. And like, I think I like,
1:05:36 I don’t even know what I’m talking about and I have them.
1:05:38 And like I got, I got stung.
1:05:39 I’ve been stung like twice.
1:05:41 Like it’s not like that big of a deal.
1:05:43 Like it’s like people think it’s a very intimidating
1:05:46 unapproachable hobby, but I got into it
1:05:48 because I like made a list of like, I was like,
1:05:51 I need a hobby that doesn’t require a ton of work.
1:05:53 I can’t cost a ton of money
1:05:54 because if it costs a ton of money,
1:05:55 I’m going to break rule number three,
1:05:58 which is I can’t turn it into a business to make money.
1:06:01 And so like, I like, and I was like, what’s a good hobby?
1:06:03 And then I saw a bird speed documentary
1:06:04 and I was like, that’s a good hobby.
1:06:05 Let’s do it. – There you go.
1:06:07 – So it’s, and AJ’s a buddy of mine
1:06:11 and he got me into beekeeping as well.
1:06:12 – Yeah. Yeah.
1:06:13 I’m excited to see how that coup,
1:06:14 that smart coup business does.
1:06:16 It’s a really cool design.
1:06:18 – Well, thanks for doing this, dude.
1:06:18 You’re the man.
1:06:24 You’re going to be fun to watch over the next like five years.
1:06:26 This is going to be a very exciting journey.
1:06:29 I am, we take pride on having people on
1:06:32 before they like write the beginning of their like takeoff.
1:06:35 And even though you, you’re already incredibly successful,
1:06:36 I have a feeling that this is still going to be early
1:06:37 in your journey.
1:06:38 And, and we’re going to brag
1:06:41 about having you on early in your career.
1:06:41 – That’s awesome, dude.
1:06:42 Well, thanks for having me.
1:06:43 I appreciate it.
1:06:45 – All right, that’s the pod.
1:06:46 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
1:06:49 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
1:06:52 ♪ I put my all in it like no days off ♪
1:06:54 ♪ On a road let’s travel never looking back ♪
1:06:56 ♪ Life ♪
1:07:06 [BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00:06 All right, everyone. So I did this podcast for me, and I’m going to explain why today’s guest is this guy named Jack Carr
0:00:09 If you don’t know who Jack Carr is you guys should look him up
0:00:15 But basically he has this series of books called the terminal list terminal list is now a it’s definitely a best-selling book
0:00:19 They’ve sold millions and millions of copy. It’s a novel about a Navy seal
0:00:24 Who’s wronged and then there’s like eight books of him getting revenge and it’s an Amazon Prime show with Chris Pratt
0:00:31 It’s awesome. However, I had Jack Carr on the podcast because I read his book when I was going through a little bit of a
0:00:37 period where I had just had a daughter and I wanted to do something where I would become a little bit more of a man than
0:00:41 Before I wanted to learn something about high integrity about things
0:00:43 I should be doing as a man and
0:00:46 It’s just kind of honestly changed my life and it doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman
0:00:50 I think you’re gonna enjoy this episode. We talk a lot about his writing process
0:00:55 But we mostly talk about the process of masculinity and what it means to be a stand-up person
0:01:00 We talked about the business of writing books and how he makes money. I think you’re gonna enjoy this one
0:01:06 It’s a little bit out of left field, but try it out. I I love this guy. So check it out
0:01:17 So I’m happier here man
0:01:22 We um, this is a business show and so like we don’t do like authors and stuff like that all the time
0:01:27 But I published a podcast where I was talking about how I loved your books
0:01:32 And I I’m halfway through the third one and the reason I found you guys or I found you
0:01:39 Is because I tweeted out I want to read a book. That’s the ultimate man novel
0:01:46 Something that is action adventure page churning high integrity like teaches you values because I just had a kid
0:01:52 And I was like I want to be inspired a little bit and all these people were tagging you and saying jack car
0:01:56 And I was like, I’ve never heard of jack car. I don’t know. I don’t know anything about this
0:02:03 What is this all about and I started reading the terminalists and I read the first book and I was hooked and I’m so hooked
0:02:07 I’m on I’m halfway through number three and I’m gonna make it through all through seven and
0:02:13 You I think you actually are like a lot more business savvy than most authors if I had to guess
0:02:19 It’s more entrepreneurial then I think there’s a difference between being entrepreneurial and being business minded
0:02:26 Which is why at some point you grow like startups eventually sell or bring in a business person to run it and professionalize it and scale it
0:02:27 And that sort of a thing
0:02:33 But I didn’t really think of myself that way and tell about I’d say a month before the fuck first book came out
0:02:38 So I’m all into the novel leaving the SEAL teams and just writing because I love it
0:02:39 My mom is librarians
0:02:42 I grew up surrounded by books and a level of reading as you can tell from the background here
0:02:49 I have quite the quite the collection always been a reader and it’s really the foundation from which everything else has grown
0:02:56 And so it’s all about the book and then about a month maybe two before first book publication in March of 2018
0:02:58 I was like, oh, okay
0:03:01 I’m gonna look at this the way I looked at the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan
0:03:04 Meaning you are looking for gaps in the enemy’s defenses
0:03:11 You’re looking how to adapt how to capitalize on momentum and I just looked at the space in general and I was like
0:03:12 Oh, wow
0:03:19 Publishing really hasn’t kept up. It’s a very it’s a very legacy type of a business and they do so well because they’ve been around for
0:03:23 So long so they’re very entrenched in what they do and they make some money
0:03:27 But they’re safe as far as business goes very slow to adapt to things
0:03:33 Even like audiobooks or ebooks that sort of that thing. So I looked at it and I was like, okay
0:03:38 Why when I get my iPhone it doesn’t just come in a manila envelope
0:03:43 It comes in packaging and as much thought went into that packaging as went into the actual product
0:03:48 itself and when I was getting books from other authors for blurbs or that sort of a thing
0:03:54 They were just coming in these manila envelopes. Yeah, you you send these like amazing gift boxes
0:03:58 One of my one of my really close friends is Richard Ryan and I saw awesome
0:04:02 I went to his house and I saw like the boxes that you send to people. Yeah, I told I go
0:04:03 I told Richard I go after this pod
0:04:06 I’m gonna try and make Jack like me so much that he sends me one of these boxes
0:04:09 I got your names your names on in one of this for the next one
0:04:12 So it’s a gun case and it has the book. Does it have anything else in it?
0:04:12 Yep
0:04:19 So it’s you open this thing up and it’s kind of a way to make people who want to help you like make it easy for them
0:04:25 Like I might send this to Chris Pratt. Maybe he has time to open it. Maybe he doesn’t but if he does then this makes it easy
0:04:28 For him to do a 15-second something to help, you know
0:04:30 So that’s awesome
0:04:35 Bookmark that has the leather bookmark all super high quality stuff because everything has to be
0:04:40 That commensurate level as the novel itself. So everything I do has to be like right here
0:04:42 Like we talked about you guys talked about your site merch on the site
0:04:47 It’s not just a glass where you go to some company and like pick key chain pick hat pick mug
0:04:53 It’s like those are hand-picked by me and they’re all the best you can possibly find or the best that I could possibly find
0:04:57 I try to do Made in America not always possible try to veer towards veteran-owned businesses
0:05:02 But book is in there inside the book is personalized to the person and then they have stickers
0:05:07 There’s three stickers personalized all of them personalized all them. How many of those did you send out?
0:05:12 I send out about 350 and most of them go to people as just thank you there
0:05:17 So people with no social media presence at all just a thank you for whatever x y or z someone helping me with
0:05:19 research on a novel
0:05:23 This one someone helped me with some aircraft stuff because I’m not a pilot so he’ll get one
0:05:25 Some fans that were with me from the very beginning
0:05:32 They get they get them and then people like Chris Bratt get them and and and he gets the same one is as everybody else
0:05:36 But the coin goes in there and a coin different coin with every single awesome
0:05:41 And you can’t buy these and I know you talked about on that podcast where you talked about me and James Patterson
0:05:45 You you also talked about the memento moray coins
0:05:52 I don’t sell these you should it should but so if I were to first if you were to make some money on it
0:05:56 But for me right and I don’t say I never will because people ask me to sell them all the time
0:06:00 But I have to give you one so that’s kind of the thing with these is I have to get a book signing
0:06:05 Law enforcement military firefighter or somebody they coin you and they have this in their hand
0:06:09 And they shake your hand and then I have these in my back pocket and I coin them back
0:06:13 All right, I want to tell you about a really cool feature in HubSpot
0:06:18 I don’t think most people know about it’s called the marketing and content hub. All right, so here’s how it works
0:06:22 You’re doing content marketing. That’s what I do. That’s how many brands do it works really really well
0:06:26 But it could be very time consuming so what they do is they have tools like content remix
0:06:32 Which will take one piece of content and immediately turn it into a bunch of pieces for all the different platforms in one click
0:06:37 Or they have lead scoring which will basically shine a light on which leads that you have or most likely to purchase
0:06:43 And then they have the analytics week so you get reports KPIs and all kinds of AI powered insights that you can share with your team
0:06:45 And not be flying blind anymore
0:06:50 So if you’re doing content marketing highly recommend you check out the content hub and marketing hub for HubSpot
0:06:54 You could visit hubspot.com to get started or free back to this episode
0:06:57 I want to talk about the economics and all this stuff
0:07:01 But how do how do I introduce you to people so like I was thinking about this I was like well
0:07:08 So Jack writes these books that’s so the the one-line summary is basically a navy seal
0:07:13 Who’s wronged and he goes and gets revenge involving family country and a bunch of adventure
0:07:16 It’s a seven or eight book series now
0:07:21 It’s an Amazon Prime show starring Chris Pratt, but the cool thing about the book
0:07:26 You do a bunch of things interesting interesting, but it’s like a huge hit and
0:07:32 When I was on Amazon it has like a hundred thousand plus reviews across all the books something like that
0:07:34 Can you say how many copies have you sold so far?
0:07:37 You know, I don’t know because I don’t keep track of those things
0:07:42 And this is where the entrepreneurial side versus the business side comes in that we talked about at the beginning is I spend zero
0:07:50 Bandwidth worried about that. So my my metric is is Simon and Schuster happy and how happy are they and they’re a static
0:07:57 So that is my millions I would assume. Yeah, it’s up there. Yeah, is it do you think it’s north of 10 million?
0:08:01 No, so that’s just a guess. I don’t know, but I think they tell me if it was north of 10
0:08:08 It’s up there. I think we had um, I’m friendly with James clear and Mark Manson and I think that they have
0:08:12 Some of the best-selling books of the last like maybe decade
0:08:15 I wouldn’t imagine I would have imagined that after a few more years
0:08:20 You’re gonna be up there because you you’re a navy seal what you’ve talked a bunch about but you started writing
0:08:22 But the books are relatively new, right?
0:08:27 Yeah, so 2018 I started writing the first one when I was still in as I was getting out of the military
0:08:31 So I think December of 2014. I wrote my first words for the first book
0:08:36 So they first that but it came out 2018 and then there’s been one a year ever since and this is the first year with two books
0:08:41 So I have my newest one the seventh book in the series red sky morning comes out in June
0:08:45 And then I have my first nonfiction that comes out in September
0:08:50 So September 24th and that’s on the 1983 Bay root barracks bombing and you probably noticed I weave a lot of history
0:08:55 Into that as well. That’s why I liked it so much, you know, I’m reading a looming towers right now
0:09:01 And I typically read American history. That’s what my audience knows me for and that’s why I wanted to read yours
0:09:06 And what’s weird is a lot of I think without giving away. There’s talk of a virus
0:09:10 There’s talk of Ukraine before any of this stuff was even a thing
0:09:16 Yeah, that was crazy. So the book with Ukraine came out in 2019. So I was writing it before I was writing
0:09:20 Actually before I sent the first novel to Simon and Schuster. I didn’t have a publishing deal
0:09:24 But I always knew I was gonna write two books because of the John Grisham story
0:09:27 He wrote a time to kill first and he could not give that book away
0:09:30 And then he writes the firm that takes off
0:09:34 It’s the movie with Tom Cruise and we’ve had a John Grisham legal thriller every year since
0:09:38 You’ve got a good track record at the moment for like predicting a handful of things
0:09:43 Well, I hope this next one doesn’t come true as this next one’s pretty brutal. So I hope this next one does not predict the future
0:09:48 What did you I know that you’re writing you’re talking about like finding an agent and things like that
0:09:50 And you’re like, I didn’t even know you needed an agent
0:09:53 I think he read like Steven Pressfield to like learn a little bit about the publishing process
0:09:57 But what did what would you have defined as a success?
0:10:03 Like when you’re first starting because I imagine now you you’ve made millions of dollars. You’re famous your books are loved
0:10:06 It’s a movie. I know that you originally
0:10:10 Before Chris Pratt was even a movie star. He was just a parks and record guy
0:10:13 You’re like Chris Pratt’s the guy so like you’ve kind of manifested all this
0:10:20 But what would you have defined as success like ten years ago, you know, it’s personal or professional different different sides
0:10:26 But for me growing up, I’m reading all these books. They all say number one New York Times best-selling author on the cover
0:10:32 So I’m reading Tom Clancy. I’m reading Nelson DeMille. I’m reading Ajay Kamal, JC Paul, Mark Olden, Louis Lamour
0:10:36 All these guys who are like my professors in the art of storytelling
0:10:40 But at the top of each one of those paperbacks, and I think I have a tie at the Tom Clancy one somewhere here
0:10:45 But it says number one New York Times best-selling author. So in my head from age
0:10:49 Well, let’s say 11 so sixth grade when I start reading all the same types of books
0:10:56 My parents are reading fifth grade is kind of that transition time from young adult type fiction to the same types of books that I’m reading and writing today
0:11:01 They all said that and so in my head at that age knowing that I wanted to write in the future
0:11:07 Just like I knew that I wanted to be a Navy SEAL from age seven onward that I didn’t think of it in terms of hey
0:11:09 this is success once I do this
0:11:12 But that was like a benchmark. That’s funny
0:11:17 That was your goal because I think in the same podcast you said you listened to for MFM. We talked about this guy
0:11:19 I don’t remember his name
0:11:25 But basically he self-published a book and he got really popular in Goodreads and I think on Goodreads collectively
0:11:27 he also had hundreds of thousands of
0:11:30 reviews and
0:11:34 From reading your books. I wouldn’t call you anti establishment
0:11:39 But there’s like some subcontext there of like don’t trust too many people and whatever
0:11:43 I would have not thought that you’d give a shit about New York Times and more
0:11:48 So just do lots of people love this and does this create like financial freedom and and like spiritual
0:11:55 Wholesomeness for you, you know what I’m saying like if you could like make if you could feel good and and make money
0:12:00 That would be the win not New York Times. Yeah. Well, the New York Times is like, you know, like when you see a book that says
0:12:03 Number one or just like
0:12:09 USA Today bestseller what that tells me and what has always told me is that they didn’t make the New York Times list
0:12:15 So the New York Times list is kind of a benchmark because you can be a number one something on Amazon in pretty much anything
0:12:21 So I knew that that that’s not my I’m never gonna say that I think the the publisher for the first or second book
0:12:26 They put something like that somewhere and I was like take that down. I don’t want that in my calculus
0:12:30 That’s not that’s not me for me like leaving the military the things that were important
0:12:32 I think it’s important to articulate that
0:12:35 No matter what it is guys, we’re all gonna go through transitions in life
0:12:36 whether it’s
0:12:42 Professional transition death of a loved one divorce whatever it might be but you’re gonna move on and do something else change
0:12:44 Just change jobs and for me
0:12:49 It was financial freedom and being able to control my schedule and I knew I wanted to write
0:12:54 I’ve heard him from a very early age that after my time in the military. I would write thrillers just like I’m writing today
0:12:56 Were you writing?
0:13:00 Books from an early age. So yeah, always a writer
0:13:04 So at any time we’re having English English class and in high school that’s what I gravitated towards
0:13:09 I’m at the most dangerous game, which is a short story that came out in 1924 heavily inspired
0:13:15 Your book three I assume exactly exactly. That’s my and so in sixth grade. I said one day
0:13:19 I’m gonna write a novel it’s tribute to that short story and that savage son the one that you’re on right now
0:13:24 So it’s so it’s it’s so I was writing, but I wasn’t
0:13:31 Writing throughout my time in the military. I was reading so I’m always reading and I’m reading both nonfiction and fiction
0:13:35 So I’m always just got there’s never been a time when I haven’t had a book in my hand or know what I’m gonna read next
0:13:43 There’s a bunch of jokes. I’m friends with a bunch of steel guys and there’s a joke that like many of them want to write a book
0:13:46 Because you guys experience such like crazy lives
0:13:50 But there are like some actually interesting people doing stuff in the creative space
0:13:56 So obviously you and then we know Jocko and people like that, but then there’s mr. Ballin
0:14:01 Do you follow mr. Ballin? No, I know who he is, but I’ve never never met him and I haven’t watched any of his stuff yet
0:14:06 But I know who he is I so mr. Ballin I listen to all of his stuff. So mr. Ballin
0:14:09 started I think as a YouTube page and
0:14:15 he was basically like just telling scary 10 and 20 minute stories of true crimes and
0:14:19 I don’t know how he managed to do this because
0:14:24 But for I mean, he’s a great delivery. He delivers his stories wonderfully. So I guess it’s it’s it’s it’s
0:14:29 Clear how he kind of figured it out. But now it’s like this massive thing
0:14:32 He’s got millions and millions of subscribers in Austin near where I live
0:14:40 He’s got a billboard now where he’s got this deal with audible and it’s like pretty amazing that this guy’s pulled this off
0:14:43 He doesn’t pull too many details from his his military days
0:14:50 But it is like interesting to see some of these like ex seal guys or seal guys like tell some of these like interesting stories
0:14:54 And be creative because when I think of you guys, I think of like a tough guy
0:14:57 I don’t think of like an artistic guy. Do you know what I mean? Yeah
0:14:59 but on the battlefield you have to be creative and
0:15:04 I think that’s something that really was what made us successful in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places around the world
0:15:08 over the last of the 20 years that we were at war engaged in those places is
0:15:14 Being able to be creative and be very be creative very quickly and be aggressive problem solvers
0:15:17 So now I can be an aggressive problem solver
0:15:20 But you know what if I make a mistake no one’s coming home in a body bag
0:15:23 And I can sleep on it and I can come back to something in a month
0:15:26 Which is why when I do the outlines for these books and I get to a place where I’m like
0:15:30 Oh, how’s James Reese gonna get out of this one? I don’t say it’s stall me out
0:15:33 I know that I have a year to figure this out because it’s one book a year
0:15:37 So it takes about it the whole process takes about a year, but I don’t get stuck there
0:15:41 I know that I’m gonna figure it out or on the battlefield. You’re making split-second decisions
0:15:46 That are gonna impact people’s lives forever if you make the wrong one. There’s this amazing book called mate to stick
0:15:53 I read mate to stick in 2008 or 2010. It’s awesome. It’s by I think his name is
0:15:59 I think it’s the Heath brothers out of Stanford and it’s a whole book about how to make idea stick
0:16:02 and there’s like six or eight principles and
0:16:05 one example they give is
0:16:09 Like if I told you a
0:16:15 Movie theater popcorn had a hundred grams of fat that doesn’t really mean anything
0:16:20 But if I got a hundred grams of fat and I showed that butter and like you can grab it
0:16:26 Or if I showed you like a black smokers lung, then it’s an easier way to understand and remember an idea
0:16:32 One thing that the book says is they talk about the demise of local newspapers
0:16:36 And they tell a story about this guy in North Carolina who’s got a thriving local newspaper
0:16:41 And they go hey will what’s your what’s your deal? What’s your secret with this newspaper and he goes?
0:16:46 Names names and names. It’s simple if I could print the yellow pages
0:16:52 I would all I want to do is name as many local people and their friends as possible in their newspaper
0:16:56 In my newspaper because people will buy it more to see their friends and family in themselves
0:17:00 Something you do in your book and this is what I talked about in the last podcast
0:17:06 And what what I thought was savvy is you name so many products like it’s to the point now where I’m
0:17:08 I have a
0:17:13 Notification on my bring a trailer profile to see a Land Cruiser because I want to buy a look
0:17:15 I want to buy a Land Cruiser. I know all about Land Cruisers
0:17:19 I just bought someone just I talked about that on the podcast someone just set me one of your
0:17:22 Not one of yours, but a hatchet
0:17:24 I’m looking at like hill people like
0:17:30 Fanny packs you like name all of this stuff where I’m like I didn’t even know I need this pair of sunglasses
0:17:36 But because Jane Reese is using this sunglass like I want it or like black rifle coffee on President Richard Ryan
0:17:40 one of the founders you name black rifle coffee all the time you talk about a I think his name is a
0:17:44 Reef he has this leather type of boot
0:17:49 That’s a little bit more sophisticated than James Reese’s because he’s a more of a suave type of guy
0:17:54 And I find myself googling this stuff and I noticed on your website you list many of the stuff
0:17:57 So it’s like James Reese’s like daily wear in
0:18:05 Book one or or the guns the planes cars and supplies in book two. Do you monetize that?
0:18:08 Well, no, I’ve been a gear guy my entire life
0:18:13 And I should monetize people like assume that you are like right from the get-go, but I don’t know at the beginning
0:18:18 I knew I knew some of those brands because I’m just friends with them from getting that gear to go down range with in the seal
0:18:19 Teams and that sort of a thing
0:18:24 But not all it’s just stuff that I use but I have no personal connection to the company
0:18:28 But it added a personal not an authentic element
0:18:32 So if you’re a law someone in law enforcement or a firefighter or intelligence agent or you know
0:18:38 Military and you’re reading this thing and you can be reading a book and it can just say he picked up the shotgun
0:18:41 He picked up the pistol he but doesn’t tell me anything about the character
0:18:45 Yeah, when I see somebody and they walk in or they walk on to a range
0:18:47 I can see the pistol that they have on I can see the holster
0:18:52 They’re using the belt their shoes their hat their watch that tells me a story about them the car
0:18:55 They pull up in that all tells me something that’s giving me information
0:19:02 And so same thing in these books and I think if you if you spend let’s say 20 years in the seal teams or special forces or whatever
0:19:04 It is then you’re reading a book
0:19:09 And it says hey the main protagonist has a background similar to yours, but he’s can it shows what he’s carrying and you’re like
0:19:13 We would never carry something like that like this doesn’t make any sense
0:19:19 This person obviously doesn’t know what they’re writing about and so then that impacts their story in general
0:19:25 So it’s it’s a way to to add authenticity and tell a story about that person because sometimes I’ll use brands that
0:19:32 That it says this person doesn’t know what they’re doing and that tells that reader who’s in law enforcement or military
0:19:37 Ah, it tells me something about this guy’s character even before he’s described before even opens his mouth
0:19:40 And so I so I love using those brands that way
0:19:45 So I haven’t monetized it the way people think that probably I have by looking at the website because I put together
0:19:51 Gear guides for each book and I have a father’s day gear guide and a holiday gear guide and that sort of thing and I link out
0:19:54 And a few of them have a affiliate links. There’s an Amazon affiliate link
0:19:57 I don’t really think it makes I have no idea if it makes any money or not actually
0:20:01 But it’s more for the fun of it and also to help a lot of those companies like better known businesses
0:20:04 Like this is a way for me to give back and offer a helping hand
0:20:07 Yeah, and I get that for like a small business
0:20:13 But there’s many businesses that you mentioned are brands that aren’t small and your website gets traffic
0:20:19 And I’m like, why wouldn’t you monetize that? You know, like there’s gear junkie.com. There’s a
0:20:29 Gear patrol. There’s a Steve Rinella’s company me eater and they have turned these into like big businesses of merchandise or affiliates
0:20:32 What is that because I know you’re entrepreneurial
0:20:38 What’s stopping you from turning this into like a legitimate media company beyond what most authors do?
0:20:42 I thought the first hesitation was that I wanted to be an authentic
0:20:45 I didn’t want anyone to ever be able to say people are to say it anyway
0:20:50 But it I didn’t want it to be true that hey all of a sudden he had this one pistol in there
0:20:54 And all of a sudden he switched how much are they paying him to put that in there and the answer is zero dollars
0:21:00 The answer is always zero dollars people have reached out and said how much how can I how much do you need to put my
0:21:02 Product on your gear your gear guy and the answer is nothing
0:21:08 What do you think an author like you if you wanted to do it what you don’t but I bet it happens
0:21:10 What would you have to what would it a brand charge?
0:21:16 I don’t even know and at some point maybe it might turn into something like that where it’s a little more more obvious
0:21:21 And there’s like the pomade podcast is something that that gets sponsored and has the ads on it
0:21:22 But those are obvious
0:21:28 Totally ask and that’s separate and there’s never anything attached to that that says you’re gonna do any of these posts on social media
0:21:30 and you’re gonna do this gear guide and
0:21:31 in the book or in the show
0:21:36 So none of that exists and I want to keep it pure like that
0:21:41 But I saw the podcast as a way to semi-monetize a little bit of those some of those relationships because they want to help
0:21:47 Anyway, they want to be associated at this podcast that is a way that authors couldn’t reach an audience 20 30 40 years ago
0:21:51 So once again looking at that battle space. I looked at it at it will
0:21:56 James Patterson he’s been around because you did your research since the 70s
0:22:01 And Stephen King 70 so there’s a reason that those names on the New York Times list that are at the top are the same names
0:22:06 That our parents would have opened the New York Times bestseller list and seen back in the 80s 90s
0:22:09 So it’s I realized that hey
0:22:14 What can I do today to create new readers because those authors that have been around for so long?
0:22:18 They have a reader base that they have built up over 30 40 years
0:22:21 I have to I have not done that and there’s more distractions today
0:22:26 so back then let’s say 70s 80s you have a book that’s competing with maybe television and
0:22:31 Possibly film so those are three things a newspaper or magazine, but that’s that’s about it
0:22:36 So now when I’m stepping into this space now I’m competing with all those other
0:22:38 distractions and all those other
0:22:44 Products and platforms streaming every single streaming service every single app every single social media all
0:22:47 Internet everything out there plus the movies and TV shows still
0:22:53 So I realized that if you want to build an audience today with new readers
0:22:57 Well now it’s podcast. It’s social presence. It’s that blog
0:23:02 It’s adding something of value to their lives throughout the year that they’re not paying for
0:23:04 But that helps free that connection
0:23:09 Yeah, not the guy who does that well is a friend of mine who I’d imagine you’re friendly with him too
0:23:12 It’s Ryan holiday. So Ryan does a really good job
0:23:16 I don’t know how his output is so high because he’s always has a book that he’s doing
0:23:20 I think he has maybe two daily emails for sure one
0:23:25 He has a business selling merch and coins and things like that and then he has a bookstore
0:23:28 I don’t know how his output so high as a podcast and then
0:23:34 You have a bunch of stuff you got the site. You have the newsletter of social media. You got your podcast
0:23:36 You’re always on other people’s podcast
0:23:38 How big’s your team?
0:23:40 It was me and tell
0:23:46 This last fall and then I got a chief of staff with no staff and she’s she’s amazing and then
0:23:48 Starting in February we started adding to the team
0:23:52 So this is my first year of putting a team together and I was writing this last book
0:23:54 I thought it was gonna be that first
0:23:58 I thought I was gonna be finished December 1st and then January 1st and then February 1st
0:24:05 It ended up being the longest book here. It’s actually it’s it ended up being the longest book to date because you just don’t know
0:24:10 And you start like I thought I had a pretty good idea 7th book like I it’ll be about a hundred and fifteen hundred and twenty thousand words
0:24:15 It ended up being like a hundred and fifty thousand words how which is to add months to the writing process
0:24:18 So I started hiring some people to help
0:24:23 But I didn’t really get to interact with them at all until about two weeks ago when I finally sent my final edits in
0:24:28 For the good and all is so it’s so now the team is as of yesterday six
0:24:37 But it’s very new very new. How are you balancing being a writer or a creator and also a manager?
0:24:41 Is that paint? I mean, it’s I think it sucks. Yeah, well to this point
0:24:48 It’s been just me my wife like she was doing all the fulfillment in our boxes over our bedroom all over the living room like just chaos
0:24:51 And I realized early on that I needed help
0:24:55 But you’re not yet to a place financially where it makes sense to do that
0:25:01 So it’s just been me essentially start up in the garage making a computer in 1976
0:25:07 1977 building all the parts also letting people know it exists why they need it and doing
0:25:13 Every single being the CEO the CFO the CMO the creator being every single piece
0:25:20 Now and as of yesterday, I hired six person yesterday to handle the Hollywood side of the house because there’s multiple projects in Hollywood now
0:25:26 And I was doing all the calls all the writing all the creative everything. No shit. You are doing that by yourself
0:25:31 So no each one has a team and as each project and a lot of some haven’t been announced yet
0:25:35 But you’re putting together a team of a showrunner director a lead
0:25:41 Production team all those things and you’re essentially putting together this package then to take to
0:25:48 Netflix usually through another production company that you have a relationship with so there’s multiple of those going on right now
0:25:51 so I’m jumping between either writing a script writing a
0:25:58 Writing a executive summary writing an outline doing a creative back and forth to see if someone is the right person to be a
0:26:02 Showrunner for the show or be a lead writer on a show for a new idea
0:26:06 And then I’m jumping back in because I have a deadline on my novel. I’m doing that and then I have to jump over to the podcast
0:26:12 Are you dealing with that context switching because that’s that’s that’s really hard? Yeah
0:26:13 No, well yesterday
0:26:17 I had my call with the person I brought on to run the Hollywood side of the house and I told them I’m like I need to do
0:26:22 Prioritize and execute I need to be focused on one thing at a time and then switch to the next one
0:26:26 There’ll be a little bit of overlap there as you’re editing or coming up generating some new ideas
0:26:30 But for the most part I need to be focused on one thing at a time and then switch gears
0:26:34 And I know you do something cool. So you you write
0:26:40 I think I heard on your podcast you’d like to write a one pager and you write a one pager
0:26:45 I think we’re you didn’t exactly explain what’s on the one pager, but I imagine it’s like a summary of the book
0:26:49 but maybe there’s more to it like my goal is that it
0:26:52 Sells as many copies or it makes a reader feel like this
0:26:56 But you said I do this one pager because I know that this project
0:27:01 I’m gonna spend 18 minutes of my life and I want to make sure that like I’m willing to do that and
0:27:03 I think that’s kind of cool because
0:27:12 when you know running a business tends to actually probably go into three or five year cycles, but I thought it was pretty cool that
0:27:16 Writing this one pager, you know Amazon does this thing where they go
0:27:19 We’re gonna create this product go ahead and write the press release now
0:27:25 So we know like what do we want it to say in 24 or 12 months when this product is live
0:27:27 What how do we want it to be received?
0:27:33 What do we want to tell people it does and then let’s work backwards to creating that and that’s sort of like what you’re doing
0:27:37 and I thought that was pretty interesting and I try to do that with a bunch of projects in my life whether it be like a
0:27:43 Fitness challenge that I have or a business or whatever like a new life event
0:27:50 Where it’s like what’s what’s the outcome gonna be like this in 12 or 18 months and do I really want to go all in on that?
0:27:53 And I thought that was cool. You do that. Yeah, I didn’t know that on Amazon, but it makes total sense
0:27:58 So I do that I write it’s like it’s kind of like what you’d find on the back of a in a on the back of a paperback
0:28:01 Or in the front flap of a of a book, you know, it’s me that describes it
0:28:06 So it’s about a one one pager and it’s like a executive summary and then I read it to myself
0:28:09 And I ask myself that question is this worth the next year year and a half of my life
0:28:12 And if the question is yes, if I’m that excited about it
0:28:17 Then I read it again and I ask myself another question if someone’s walking by Hudson news in the airport
0:28:21 They’re pulling this off the shelf and they’re to read this same thing or something similar
0:28:28 Is that so is it does this idea get them excited enough to want to spend time that they’re never gonna get back in these pages?
0:28:34 So as I’m writing, I am thinking about that. That’s what I’m thinking about thinking about the story. It’s all about the story
0:28:39 It’s not about what’s selling. It’s not about short short chapters or longer chapters. What’s popular
0:28:43 It’s about none of those things it is all about the story because you’re never gonna gonna please everyone
0:28:49 So if you honor the story and take all your band with all your heart soul into every single word
0:28:54 Then you’re respecting that reader or that listener today who is spending time with you that they’re never gonna get back
0:28:58 So that’s how I approach it. I don’t approach it from a business side
0:29:03 Which maybe I should I always sound like what’s popular, but no it all has to be about the story
0:29:07 Why not just be your own publisher at this point, you know
0:29:09 You have like a pretty nice direct audience
0:29:15 You’re you’ve been on Joe Rogan a bunch of times and those get millions of views you get millions of impressions across all these other podcasts
0:29:18 Why not just do your own thing at this point?
0:29:22 Well, I like being where I am. I like the team that they have at Simon & Schuster
0:29:28 I like the production value of the audiobooks. I like Ray Porter who narrates who’s absolutely amazing
0:29:34 I like that they have regional representatives all across the country to get these books into Target and Walmart and all that
0:29:38 I like that machine that’s doing that because that allows me to focus solely on writing
0:29:41 And I don’t have to worry about that other side
0:29:48 So it’s I can see why someone would want to first build up a social media presence or something or an audience and then have the
0:29:51 Book knowing that a certain percentage of that audience will take the action that you want
0:29:57 But that’s not that wasn’t my my way and that’s not how I grew up and that’s not how I wanted wanted to adapt to the new
0:30:03 Space I wanted to adapt to it in a different way where I still have a publisher and they’re still an art department for the cover and they
0:30:10 Still all that that’s why I have that machine working there and I can solely focus on writing and then also figure out the things that
0:30:17 Maybe a large publishing company isn’t so great at so the social side of the house and the digital marketing side of the house and the podcasts and
0:30:23 All that so I think it’s a very good partnership as far as the business goes for for me. Everybody’s gonna have a different
0:30:31 We have this guy on the pod and we’ve had him a few times his name Scott Galloway Scott Galloway is a successful entrepreneur
0:30:35 But he also is a author and kind of a thought leader
0:30:41 I don’t know what you wouldn’t would describe him as but he he’s a wonderful speaker and his new crusade right now is on young men and
0:30:44 How young men are kind of getting forgotten a bit
0:30:48 you know if you look at like suicide rates the pressure rates if you look at
0:30:51 education like young men are getting are getting left behind a bit and
0:30:58 I felt that and I remember I was going through a period in my late 20s where I had a little bit of success
0:31:04 But I was like I still like I now have a young family and I was like I need I want to learn a little bit more about what it means
0:31:06 To be a man and so I went through this um
0:31:13 This like reading like I read all these like man books like teach me to become a man
0:31:15 I guess and so I
0:31:22 Noticed that I would read your books and I felt like I was being inspired to be a more high integrity man’s and which James Reese is
0:31:28 What books have you read that sort of like got you on that path of being this sort of?
0:31:33 I don’t know like teacher of young men because that’s kind of like what you’ve become a little bit
0:31:36 Yeah, and it’s interesting now when I go to book signings
0:31:39 I said first book came out in 2018
0:31:42 So now somebody read that book when they were 15 16 17 18
0:31:44 Now there are a few years into a uh
0:31:48 Their time in uniform in the military or law enforcement or whatever else
0:31:51 So now I have people coming up to me and saying I was inspired to join the military
0:31:52 I was inspired to get into law enforcement
0:31:55 I was inspired to do this because of your books and I knew that was a possibility
0:31:57 But I didn’t really dwell on it
0:32:02 But the last book tour uh, or maybe we were long before was the first time where that really started happening
0:32:04 but uh, you know
0:32:05 It happened naturally for me
0:32:10 So I didn’t like get to a certain age and say what book should I read in order to
0:32:13 It was just I was constantly reading as a student of warfare
0:32:16 Um, and and one book that stands out as my most gifted book
0:32:21 It’s called once an eagle by Anton Meyer has written in 1968 and it’s historical fiction
0:32:25 And it follows two people from right before world war one up to vietnam
0:32:26 They don’t call it vietnam in the book
0:32:29 They call it something else but that’s what it is one of them is an officer
0:32:32 And one of them gets a battlefield commission on the battlefield in world war one
0:32:37 And then you have the inner war years you have world war two and it goes like I said up to vietnam
0:32:42 But the guy who is the uh, he’s a politician in uniform. He’s the he’s the officer
0:32:44 He’s always just a little bit ahead of this guy
0:32:51 Sam Damon who is uh, who who’s who’s the he’s like the leader of men that you would want to be as you read this book
0:32:55 And so I would gift this book to people who are starting their career in the profession of arms
0:32:58 There’s a reason it’s called the profession of arms not the career of arms
0:33:01 And I would write a letter and I would put it in the front cover
0:33:06 And that’s one that they could read before they started reading and would kind of set the tone why I’m giving them this book
0:33:08 And then I would say in that letter
0:33:12 But there’s another letter at the back and that is sealed and you have to work your way through this book
0:33:16 And it’s pretty thick so you can use it as a blunt impact weapon or as a door stop if you need to
0:33:19 So it’s dual use technology and at the end
0:33:25 Then that’s my take on what you just read and I don’t want them to read it beforehand because I don’t want to pollute their reading
0:33:27 It’s awesome readings with my interpretation
0:33:32 So it gives them incentive to get to the end to get to read that last letter and setting the tone with the first one
0:33:37 So that’s my most gifted book, but it really is a is a book about leadership
0:33:40 And uh, and so that’s why I would give it to these to these guys
0:33:43 But through that context of historical fiction so it reads like a thriller
0:33:47 But you’re learning about history at the same time, but it’s really all about leadership
0:33:51 All right, if you’re listening to this pod, I already know something about you
0:33:53 You my friend are nosy
0:33:59 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
0:34:03 How much money businesses make you want to know all of this people’s net worth all of it?
0:34:08 Well, I’ve got good news for you. So my company Hampton. We’re a private community for CEOs
0:34:12 We do this thing where we survey our members and we ask them all types of information
0:34:17 Like how much money they’re paying themselves how much money they’re paying a lot of their employees what their team?
0:34:22 My bonuses are what their net worth is what their portfolio looks like we ask all these questions
0:34:26 But we do it anonymously and so people are willing to reveal all types of amazing information
0:34:30 So if you really cannot google you can’t find anywhere else and you could check it out at joinhampton.com
0:34:36 Click the report section on the menu. Click the salary and compensation report
0:34:40 It’s going to blow your mind. You’re going to love this stuff. Check it out now back to the pod
0:34:46 Well, you have this I mean you had a career where you sort of you had a rite of passage
0:34:50 So you went to the military you experienced some crazy stuff and I imagine
0:34:55 It’s like I imagine there’s some times where it’s like I just grew up really fast
0:34:57 And now I officially feel like a man
0:35:01 Um women a little bit have uh, you know, they have a physical thing where it’s like you’re now a woman
0:35:06 Men don’t typically have that at least not now in some cultures they do where they’re like
0:35:10 You know, I like to read about the spartans and they’re like all right now you go off in the wilderness and you do this thing
0:35:12 You come back you’re a man, you know
0:35:16 The jewish culture has a bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah
0:35:18 So there’s a little bit of a you’re a man now
0:35:25 But we don’t really have that in america for like most men and the reason why and I always felt that was lacking
0:35:31 I’m like I I don’t have this like I didn’t I didn’t there wasn’t this like beginning middle of an end of a journey where it’s like
0:35:33 I’ve come out and I’m
0:35:34 now an adult
0:35:40 And so I think that’s why I like reading your stuff because it’s like I’m living vicariously through the through through james reese
0:35:46 and I experienced this like heartache and this like evolution and it’s like I now feel
0:35:51 weirdly more manly every as as cringe as that sounds but it’s like
0:35:55 You know, they say you’re the average of the five people you spend with most
0:35:59 I think i’m the average of like the last years worth of reading i’ve done
0:36:00 Do you know what i’m saying?
0:36:06 So it’s like i’m getting a little bit of a write a passage a little bit through like your work if that’s if that makes sense
0:36:08 Well, yes, and that’s why it’s so important
0:36:13 I think for our kids especially like who they follow now in this world because you those five people you’re spending the most time
0:36:14 With how it can be virtual
0:36:19 It’s not that person on the playground or as you get older someone you’re in a that’s a mentor type relationship or
0:36:25 In an internship or something like that. Um, a lot of these people are the people that they’re following
0:36:28 So that’s why it’s so important to follow. Um, but yeah for most of human history
0:36:32 There was exactly that there was a right of passage and it was there for a reason
0:36:38 The reason the reason was so that you could prove to the tribe to the community that you could add value
0:36:42 Because if you didn’t then well your tribe’s not going to last for very much longer
0:36:44 So with these trials there were these teachings
0:36:49 Mentorships and then you’d have this trial that you would go through to prove
0:36:53 That you were a valued member of the tribe and then that’s slowly started to go away
0:36:58 But mostly in the well 19th 20th century because there was still we’re still around before that but uh today
0:37:01 It is almost entirely lacking
0:37:07 Which is why I think so many people feel lost because they it’s not institutionalized into our society
0:37:13 But it’s in our dna because I think that there there’s a reason that it was around from the beginning of time
0:37:15 Up until the time we got so comfortable where we didn’t have to have it
0:37:20 Um, and that was so that we could survive as a species so your tribe could survive
0:37:25 Um, but that’s why I think young men whether they know it or not are drawn towards typically in this country
0:37:28 It’s marine boot camp like that’s the one that most people think out
0:37:32 But it’s also you see these things where it’s like rich guys spending like 15 grand for a weekend
0:37:35 And a little bit if it’s like dude, that’s fucking lame
0:37:41 Uh, but on the other side, I’m like I understand why you want that and uh, you got to get it how you can get it
0:37:47 I guess yeah, they missed it when they should have done it or when uh, another culture the thousand years ago would have had it
0:37:51 As part of this process to bring people into the tribe
0:37:54 But we don’t have it so people find it later and they’re like, oh jeez
0:37:58 I missed that part and then they start reading these books and they’re like, oh, that’s what I was missing
0:38:03 That’s why I felt this draw at a certain age that I didn’t listen to like listen to that calling like the hero’s journey
0:38:09 Heed the call and uh, so yeah marine boot camp or its army special forces q course maybe seals
0:38:15 It’s called bud’s training but something that allows you to go through this trial and tribulation allows you to test yourself
0:38:18 And then prove to the group that you’re worthy of joining the ranks
0:38:23 Um, and I think if you don’t do that in one way shape or form it doesn’t actually be military
0:38:28 But if you don’t do that, then I think that’s why people feel so lost these days gentle
0:38:31 Yeah, look, I get those things and maybe I’ll do them just don’t
0:38:34 post any pictures of me online doing it because
0:38:41 That would I would need another write a passage to get through the ridicule that I would receive for posting
0:38:48 We’re obsessed. I uh, there’s in the comfort crisis. I’m obsessed with this idea. They had um, it was called misoji
0:38:52 Have you and we talked about a bunch here on this five? I have you heard of misoji
0:38:57 It’s basically like this idea of uh, it stems from this Japanese guy who this Japanese myth of like he goes to like
0:38:59 I think he goes to like hell or something to
0:39:04 Find his wife who has been kidnapped and he goes to this massive journey
0:39:09 Where he gets dirty and grimy and he’s finally saves his wife. He brings her back
0:39:15 he washes himself off in this waterfall and he’s now a new man because of the hardship that he went through and uh,
0:39:20 the miso it was I think his name was misoji and so a lot of people now what they’re doing is
0:39:25 They’re doing these like really hard things physical things. So for example the guy who made it popular
0:39:29 He’d be like today we’re gonna get our paddle board and we’re gonna paddle to this island
0:39:34 That’s 15 miles out and then we’re gonna paddle back and the there’s basically two rules
0:39:38 Which is one you have to only have a 50 chance of succeeding and number two
0:39:44 Don’t die. And so I’m training for my misoji right now, which is a 50 mile race
0:39:50 But I got like obsessed with this idea of like a misoji of like having this like really hard concept
0:39:56 Um, and I would like went to this whole like phase where I was reading you and and all about all this stuff
0:39:58 Have you ever heard of the the misoji?
0:40:00 You know, I feel like I shouldn’t because I read the comfort crisis
0:40:04 But I read it a couple years ago now when it first came out at Michael Easter on the podcast
0:40:10 Um, but yeah, I don’t feel that anymore because I feel like I did that already. I’m like, oh this looks exhausting
0:40:15 I think I feel like I’ve done that most of my life. So now it’s really all about writing every each book better than the last
0:40:20 That’s always my goal, which is why the last book I finished is always my favorite up to this point
0:40:22 Anyway, I don’t know if it’ll always be that way, but that’s how it is thus far
0:40:27 Because I do feel like I’m improving with each with each book improving as as as an author
0:40:33 As a writer and that’s what I owe the audience. So so yeah, but so I don’t but I understand it
0:40:38 I understand that draw to do something difficult to test yourself. I certainly understand it
0:40:43 You kind of have this even though, you know, you’re I would stereotype you as like a tough guy
0:40:47 You have this like weird, uh, not weird, but you have this
0:40:51 I don’t know how how to describe it almost spiritual way about you
0:40:56 Where I remember you told the story about how before or maybe when you are writing the first book
0:41:00 You were like chris pratt is the guy. I need to get him to do this
0:41:02 and
0:41:07 Lo and behold after a handful of years he calls you and he was like, hey your book’s awesome
0:41:10 I would love to turn this into a show and it maybe I’ll star in it whatever
0:41:18 Do you believe in these weird type of like spiritual manifestation type of things of like if you want it bad enough
0:41:21 It things come true because it seems like it’s happened a few times in your life
0:41:24 Or it’s kind of you’ve kind of called your shot when it seemed ridiculous at the time
0:41:31 Yeah, I mean it seems like but it’s more than just calling it or manifesting it, you know sitting down and visualizing it
0:41:36 It’s more that’s like so it’s more that’s when you think about some
0:41:40 thinking about how they’re going to make that a serve in tennis or a
0:41:44 Extra kick point soccer or whatever like that’s very tactical
0:41:48 And you can watch videos and you can manifest it and think of it the strategic one
0:41:50 And now obviously that tactical level requires work
0:41:54 But the strategic level one also requires work
0:41:59 But it’s not that one thing like that one foot placement or that one that way you’re going to throw the ball whatever it might be
0:42:07 Um, so I think that’s but if there’s a spiritual side to it, which I think there there’s a spiritual side to everything that connects us
0:42:11 but uh, it’s more the work and it’s not going to happen without putting in the work
0:42:14 That’s the thing it might not happen if you put in the work
0:42:15 That’s that’s possible, too
0:42:20 But it’s certainly not going to happen if you don’t so as I’m starting to write this thing as a child of the 80s
0:42:23 It’s very natural for me to think about who’s going to star in the fell
0:42:27 Who’s going to star on the tv show and at the time I was like I saw chris pratt transform
0:42:31 From this guy who played andy dweyer on parts and rec funny ill overweight
0:42:38 Uh, and then I saw his transformation in zero dark 32 a seal and uh, so I said this is a guy who needs a role like this
0:42:41 He needs it for his career and so I’m thinking this in december of 2014
0:42:46 And uh, so i’m like chris pratt will play the main character. He’ll play james reese. He needs it for his career
0:42:48 And then who i want to direct antoine fuga
0:42:53 I love antoine fuga training day and cheers the sun and all this and he’s the guy
0:42:56 That’s that’s who I want to uh to direct this thing and then I just go about writing
0:43:01 I have no connection to hollywood no connection to publishing and you haven’t even uh published the first one at this point
0:43:04 No, no having published the first one. No idea how i’m going to get it to a publisher
0:43:08 But i’m not thinking about any of those things no social media presence. Uh, no facebook
0:43:10 Did you tell your friends that you wanted this to happen?
0:43:16 Um, no in the seal teams. You wanted to keep anything about writing close to the vest
0:43:19 But like would you tell your wife or whatever like hill talk? You’re like, hey
0:43:23 Would it be neat one day if chris pratt was james reese?
0:43:26 Yeah, yeah, no, I told people uh, like my wife
0:43:29 She’s known I wanted to be a seal and write with each other since we’re 18 years old
0:43:32 So uh, she’s been on this journey for the entire time
0:43:38 Um, but uh, but how it manifested, I guess is a way that I never would have expected is that I call
0:43:43 I’m going to call them a friend who I serve within the seal teams who calls me in november of 2017
0:43:47 So six seven months before the book even comes out and he calls me and says, hey
0:43:52 Do you remember me because I hadn’t talked to him in about five years and he said, uh, I said, yes, of course
0:43:56 I remember you he said you remember what you did for me in the seal teams and I was like, uh, no
0:43:59 And he said well, you’re the only person when I said I was getting out leaving the teams
0:44:03 You’re the only person that sat me down at your office talked about transitioning out of the military
0:44:08 Introduced me to people in the private sector followed up with me said asked if you could do anything else
0:44:12 I’ve never forgotten it and I always wanted to thank you and I said no problem
0:44:14 I was going and he said it’s going great
0:44:17 But I heard through the gray finding of a book coming out and I said, yeah, it’s coming out in a few months
0:44:18 It’s called the terminal list
0:44:21 I can send you a copy if you want to check it out and he said I like that
0:44:24 But I’d like to give it to a friend of mine also and like yeah, who’s that?
0:44:28 He’s like, well, it’s my best friend. It’s chris. Pratt. I was like, oh
0:44:32 Well, that’s very convenient for me because I pictured him playing this role all these years ago
0:44:37 and so he gave it to chris chris read it in december of 2017 and then he called me the first week in
0:44:43 2018 and wanted to option it at the same time another friend unbeknownst to me had given a copy to anfan fuku
0:44:47 Uh, they made it a speaking event and he gave a copy to anfan fuku anfan
0:44:50 What read it and he wanted to option it and chris and anfan knew each other from magnificent seven
0:44:54 So then they called and worked it out now. We have the terminal list on amazon prime
0:44:57 How does that feel to be?
0:45:02 Not a nobody but just a guy just a guy making these ridiculous predictions
0:45:06 And they’re they come true
0:45:11 Yeah, well, I mean it wouldn’t have happened if obviously if I hadn’t um, so I always really cared about people
0:45:17 In the teams and my focus was always on on the guys and helping them whether they’re staying in or getting out
0:45:22 And I did notice that a lot of other people especially officers didn’t do that if you said you were getting out
0:45:26 They only cared about you if you were in the seal teams and that just wasn’t wasn’t me
0:45:30 Um, so if I hadn’t helped Jared out and at the time I didn’t think anybody would ever come back around
0:45:35 That wasn’t the reason I did it obviously, um, but it did came came back around and now
0:45:38 I’m flying out to budapest in about a week to go film out there
0:45:39 They’re on set right now
0:45:46 Jared’s a writer and a producer and an actor and a technical advisor on set right now Jared Shaw gave uh, Chris the book
0:45:52 And uh, and this is the second season and we have another one coming up here with the second book with with chris in it
0:45:57 That’s uh, should start filming in 2025. You never know until it’s actually all completed ready and actually up there on the screens
0:46:00 But so I try to manage those expectations, but um, yeah
0:46:06 So now we’re off to the races and then there’s other Hollywood projects and multiple books and now the nonfiction and I have a
0:46:11 Have a strategic plan that uh that I’ve written out just by being a student of all this
0:46:17 My whole life, but not with the intent of being a student more so just like I said from the fan perspective
0:46:21 But I have a strategic plan with all these things that I want to build because essentially those goals that I that I wanted
0:46:24 Was to serve my country need to form as a seal do the best job
0:46:28 I could be the best leader be the best operator I possibly could then write a novel have it be number one
0:46:30 New York Times bestseller and get it up on the screen
0:46:36 So those things are done and now it’s just by doing all those things better and continuing to grow in a way
0:46:40 That’s real and authentic and adds value to people’s lives and allows me to do what I love to do
0:46:43 And then also allows me to hit my my my mission
0:46:46 So my mission is taking care of my family my passion is writing
0:46:49 I wanted to combine those things for purpose going forward as I left the sealed
0:46:55 Because I saw so many people not know what they wanted to do or think that they knew and then all of a sudden step into it
0:46:57 Realized this wasn’t really what they wanted after all
0:47:00 Do you think you have you hit the you know?
0:47:06 I sold my company my first company when I was 31 and that’s where I hit that’s where I hit the financial where it was like
0:47:15 On paper I never need to work again because my income from my uh stock portfolio can pay for a really great life forever
0:47:22 Of course, I still want to work forever because I I enjoy it. Have you been able to cross that threshold to where?
0:47:28 financially you’re like I can breathe because uh, I you know as a working for the government
0:47:33 You’re you’re not rolling in it, but I imagine you are now like have you have you been able to like cross that threshold?
0:47:39 Yep, not yet. Not yet, but I’m on the on the cusp, but not uh, not quite there yet and uh
0:47:42 Getting closer, but a lot of this has been invested back in so I think a lot of people
0:47:47 Probably would have held on and not done boxes when you can’t afford it
0:47:50 Put it all on your credit card early on like a box. Is that what you’re doing those boxes?
0:47:55 Everything so it’s everything’s going back in like how do I how do I get a podcast going?
0:48:02 How do I do a video for this book that looks like a movie that’s better than any author has ever made before to promote a book?
0:48:06 Uh, okay, how do I do that? Well, I invest uh because there’s cost money to do that
0:48:11 Um, so I invested a lot back in to grow you can’t get the publisher to pay for that
0:48:14 No, but I think people think that the publisher pays for these things
0:48:19 I would have thought that yeah, and I think some other people now because now I see other authors doing something similar and I
0:48:24 I’ve like I got I guess one from meteor the other day you talked about those and it came from the problem
0:48:26 From from meteor has a new
0:48:29 Has a new uh cookbook out and it came a couple days ago
0:48:31 It’s I’m going to be on my father’s day to your guy just to you know
0:48:36 Do my part and be it you know help him out a tiny bit. Um, but it came from certainly came from the publisher
0:48:39 Uh, so I think maybe other publishers also think
0:48:44 My publisher pays for these things, but it’s really just me out of pocket is a business
0:48:48 My hope for you and this probably doesn’t align with your one
0:48:50 So I don’t know if it’s gonna happen
0:48:56 But what I want as a fan is I want to see jack car become the new me eater
0:49:01 I want to see like a lifestyle media company all around your shtick
0:49:04 And I know I told you about churnin so churnin company
0:49:08 Uh churnin is a company that invests in me eater or things like it
0:49:15 so, you know brands that have a strong affinity with different lifestyles and then they eventually make more content and sell stuff and
0:49:21 Hopefully, uh, and they’ve done it a bunch. They create really big businesses
0:49:24 That are awesome for you as an owner because you make money
0:49:30 But also awesome as me as a consumer because now I have more uh james vareese terminalist jack car stuff in my life
0:49:32 That’s my hope for you is that you uh
0:49:36 That one day you take that path because I am being selfish
0:49:39 But it would be cool for you as well. Maybe if it aligns with your values
0:49:40 Thank you
0:49:43 Yeah, as long as there’s a way to do it where it still remains authentic and real to that
0:49:46 That person who’s trusting me with their time or their money
0:49:52 Um, then then yeah, so I think it’s things are going in that direction. That’s certainly a possibility
0:49:53 last question
0:49:57 Which books that or resources that are a little bit less known
0:50:02 That helped you that taught you most about the storytelling or creative process that I can go and read
0:50:08 Yeah, so those those for sure the one on steven king on writing series of books by steven fressfield at all
0:50:17 Really talk about same thing but going to different nuances as far as uh overcoming resistance doing the work putting in the time becoming a professional
0:50:24 So those uh one’s another one’s called the successful novelist by david morrell who created rambo with first blood back in 1972
0:50:30 Uh, where’s that one? Uh, and then the hero’s uh, the hero’s journey through hero with a thousand faces
0:50:34 by joseph campbell and that one right there influence star wars
0:50:40 And once you read that book or watch a series of interviews that he did on pbs back in 1988 with bill moyer’s of the power of myth
0:50:43 You realize how similar these stories are
0:50:51 Across cultures and why they resonated from the beginning of time because some of these stories these myths were really created to pass on lessons
0:50:54 Uh lessons of the hunt lessons of warfare
0:51:00 So the next generation doesn’t have to learn those same lessons in blood and that tribe that community can grow and not just survive
0:51:02 Hopefully but thrive
0:51:05 You’re the man. I um, I appreciate you doing this you um
0:51:13 Your books have uh, not only been fun, but they’ve changed me a little bit as a kind of as a man as a husband as a father as a citizen of america
0:51:20 Uh, you you’ve done amazing stuff, and I uh, I wish nothing but amazing success for you and your family
0:51:25 So thank you for all this. This is awesome. Oh, man. I appreciate that and then thank you for the podcast
0:51:26 I’m so glad I discovered it
0:51:31 Because I’m gonna be taking taking notes going forward on how to to scale things and how to do things a little better
0:51:34 Because no matter what I’m doing in life. I always want to do it a little better the next time
0:51:37 I always want to adapt and be more effective and efficient with what I’m doing
0:51:42 So, uh, thank you for what you do. Well, I appreciate you and that’s the pod
0:51:46 I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to
0:51:52 I put my all in it like no days off on a road. Let’s travel never looking back
0:51:54 ♪ Backline ♪