0:00:07 All right, Sam. I got to tell you about this. There is a guy in Japan who I read about who is making $80,000 a year
0:00:09 for doing
0:00:23 They called him the do nothing man. Have you ever heard of this guy? No, what you read about this?
0:00:31 Well, I originally saw it. I don’t even know where I saw it somewhere and I was fascinated because what happened is this guy was at
0:00:35 Work and his boss called him a do-nothing man
0:00:40 And he like it was insulting him as like dude, you just do nothing
0:00:45 You don’t really add anything you don’t provide any value and he says that he thought to himself and he goes
0:00:52 Hmm. Is there value in society for a man who does nothing and he went online and he posted a tweet
0:00:56 Saying I’m car. I’m starting a new service. It’s called
0:00:58 rental people who do nothing
0:01:01 and it’s basically was like I will be a
0:01:07 Companion a friend who will do nothing. So what this guy does is you rent him out and he’ll go hang out with you
0:01:10 And he says nothing. It’s pretty much a silent companion
0:01:12 completely
0:01:14 non-physical non-sexual
0:01:21 basically an introvert for hire and so what people do is they will either they have a task they need to go do like an
0:01:27 Errand they need to run or they just feel really lonely and they just want somebody to have some tea with them and he’ll come and he’ll sit
0:01:30 He won’t really say anything and if you ask him a question
0:01:31 He’ll give you a simple answer
0:01:35 But it’s really just the presence of another human body and this guy made
0:01:43 $80,000 in a year renting himself out and he then he wrote a book a memoir called rental people who do the man
0:01:45 who didn’t did nothing or the rental people who do nothing and
0:01:48 He’s continued to do this now for years
0:01:53 So he did it before coven the coven hits we couldn’t do it and then he started it back up again
0:01:55 And now he doesn’t even charge for the hangout
0:02:02 He used to charge $68 for a session and now he just says just cover the food and travel and then I’ll hang out with you for free
0:02:09 And so he travels around and he gets paid to go he gets paid for his food in his his event tickets
0:02:11 and all all the things that people want to do with them and
0:02:14 This is what this guy does isn’t this fascinating
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0:02:54 What I’m reading the
0:03:00 Comets on his Goodreads account for his book. Yeah, what were the reasons why people wanted to hang out with him?
0:03:06 Well, so this was pretty fascinating. So I was wondering this too. I was like, why is there a need for this and I guess in Japan?
0:03:12 There’s a loneliness epidemic. It’s kind of crazy. They have words for this that we don’t even have words for so
0:03:14 Have you ever heard this term like Hikikomori?
0:03:18 You know, I haven’t
0:03:23 I have not heard that word before that’s a new word for me
0:03:29 So it’s a word that they have for severe social withdrawal. It’s total withdrawal from society
0:03:35 So typically it’s kind of like in cell in the States. So typically it’ll be it’s mostly men
0:03:41 Who are living at home still in their parents home, but they are completely recluse. They don’t work
0:03:44 They don’t socialize and there are like
0:03:46 Estimated two million men in Japan
0:03:52 That are in this category for six months. They basically have not engaged with anybody in society
0:03:58 So that’s like kind of one problem is this growing trend of Hikikomori and then there’s another word
0:04:03 I think it’s Kotokushi, which is it’s basically death without being cared for
0:04:10 so it’s like older people who are dying and then they find their bodies like five months later because they were so socially isolated that
0:04:12 nobody knew that they passed away and
0:04:20 This is like number that the last ten years has doubled like I think 70,000 people died this way where they’re found weeks or months later and
0:04:24 This trends are all like very concerning. So like in Japan
0:04:31 Single-person household. So, you know, no no wife. No no family members. No friends just living alone by yourself
0:04:34 is now 38% of the population which is
0:04:38 It was that’s like triple where it was like on a five or seven years ago
0:04:44 They appointed a minister of loneliness in Japan because this has become such a big problem
0:04:46 And so this guy
0:04:49 Doing this is almost like a an art statement in a way
0:04:55 About this to bring awareness to this huge problem that people are just really freaking lonely in Japan everywhere
0:04:58 But really in Japan, it’s even more heightened. Dude, let me explain something to you
0:05:03 That’s very similar to this and I’m gonna I want to hear your opinion of this premise that I have and I also
0:05:08 I think it’s a good premise that I think a lot of people can learn from so I don’t live in Austin anymore
0:05:16 I went and visited it again for a wedding and I realized how lucky I was to have a community there of just the best people on earth
0:05:18 I consider them family dude. I saw your
0:05:23 Live laugh love post where you posted a picture with your friends and you said
0:05:27 This is wealth and I saw it. He’s not wrong
0:05:34 He’s not wrong, but he’s also not Sam Park. What is going on? Well, this is wealth. What new era have you entered?
0:05:38 I’ve been I’ve entered a very special era. I love you
0:05:42 Listen, it’s weird ever since having a kid the things that I thought I cared about
0:05:48 I don’t care about as much and so I realized I’m kind of like going all into this like emotional side of like caring about others
0:05:50 Whatever all that stupid shit
0:05:53 But listen
0:06:01 You can’t even say it. It’s like her yeah say the sentence, but we believe it. Yeah, so before
0:06:07 So I basically lived in San Francisco and I moved from San Francisco to Austin my best friend at the time
0:06:11 Novel Madura he lived there and I had this conversation with him before I moved. I go Neville
0:06:15 I’m thinking about moving to Austin. One of the big reasons I’m moving is because of you
0:06:19 I want to be with you. I want to be near you. Would you be willing to be in you?
0:06:21 I want to be in you
0:06:23 You can
0:06:29 It goes a better way than than that one way
0:06:31 and so
0:06:38 If I do this would you like commit to like us like living a life together like with our families and like and that sounds weird
0:06:44 But I did that and it worked wonderfully. So we had there was about four other couples where we had this conversation where we’re like
0:06:48 Let’s live life together. Like you can count on me. I’ll count on you whatever
0:06:50 And when you think about that, that’s strange
0:06:54 But if you really dive deep it’s actually not that weird because that’s what you did with your girlfriend probably
0:06:57 Like you’re like, hey, so uh, should we put a label on this?
0:07:03 You know what I mean? And you do a girlfriend a boyfriend and then you make a huge ordeal until where you uh get engaged
0:07:08 You get down on one knee and there’s like a there’s like a big like epic thing where like you were boyfriend a girlfriend
0:07:12 Now you are officially a fiance and then you get married where you basically
0:07:19 You know talk about how yeah, you take a vow you take a vow in front of people who have flown from around the world
0:07:22 To witness this vow and that’s normal
0:07:24 But we don’t really do that with friends
0:07:27 And so I have recently moved in order to be closer to family
0:07:29 And so now I’m trying to like develop friends in a new town
0:07:34 And I’m starting to go to them and I’m having this formal conversation
0:07:38 And it really weird people out, uh, right away by the way, obviously
0:07:43 But after a few minutes the men in in particular, they’re like, oh, I kind of get this and
0:07:50 Kind of feels nice. It kind of feels nice to like talk about how we’re going to do life together or how we can counter each other or like to set
0:07:56 You know to define the relationship saying that let’s let’s let’s make this real. So what do you actually say?
0:08:03 So here’s what i’m saying what i’m saying is what this guy about uh in in japan is experiencing is this lonely thing
0:08:05 And you’re talking about people living by themselves
0:08:09 Uh 38 of the time you’re talking about people dying and for weeks not being found
0:08:15 What i’m saying is I think a lot of people experience loneliness and I think one key way to
0:08:20 Get over particularly men men in particular once they approach their 50s and 60s
0:08:22 You basically never make a new friend again
0:08:25 Just like you never go to the doctor you don’t go to the dentist and you don’t make new friends
0:08:30 But I think there are ways around this and it’s around having these formal conversations
0:08:37 And in particular one extreme example is to move places just for for the sole reason of like this friend being there
0:08:39 Do you know what I mean?
0:08:40 I know exactly what you mean
0:08:44 Uh, but I guess what i’m saying is what is the conversation you’re having with people especially new people
0:08:46 So I get the the nevel one because he was already
0:08:52 A really close friend from san- you guys he was in san francisco, right? That’s where you guys originally friends
0:08:54 No, he would spend his summers in san francisco
0:08:57 And we would like hang out and then he would go back to austin because awesome was unbearable
0:08:59 So you guys were already really close and you’re like hey
0:09:02 I want to move there and I really like i’m kind of moving there for you
0:09:06 Or I want to move right really close to you and like let’s do life together and i’m a big fan of this
0:09:13 I’ve said this before one of the most impactful things that’s come out of this podcast was a guy named mike brown came on the pod and he said
0:09:16 Um, I was asking about going into business with his brothers and he goes
0:09:23 That’s to me. That’s the point of life. You find the people you love and you do life with them and that became like a very simple
0:09:28 Operating philosophy for me. So I am a definite but deep believer in that
0:09:33 What are you doing now with new people because i’m curious how that conversation goes when it’s not somebody you’ve already been friends with for
0:09:40 Five or ten years. I’ve only done it once so far and I just kind of like I hope they’re listening
0:09:46 Dude, it’s weird like it’s definitely like it’s definitely weird, but I’d be like hey, so um
0:09:52 You know, I’m looking to like have like close friends who I can rely on and I want to let you know that like
0:09:54 You are that to me right now where
0:09:58 Uh, I hope I can rely on you for important things and I want you to know that
0:10:02 You can rely on me for stuff and like whatever I have it’s you can use whatever I have
0:10:06 I got your back no matter what and I know this sounds weird and everything
0:10:11 But I’m looking to do life with someone and it seems like you and your wife might be that person for me and my wife
0:10:14 And I make jokes about it and I realize how silly this sounds
0:10:19 But it was actually really great. Did you feel really good?
0:10:25 This is like how swinging starts. Um, so so actually I have a sort of related story
0:10:28 one time I was doing a
0:10:31 Uh angel investment a deal by the way, we need we need a word for this
0:10:34 You were saying in japan they have a word for a japanese word for it
0:10:38 We need a japanese word for this because when you don’t have words to label these things
0:10:42 We needed to find this word. It’s got to be explicitly heterosexual
0:10:48 Explicitly not involving swinging. It’s got to be like some type of reciprocity or like
0:10:52 I’m willing to give more than 50 to this relationship
0:10:55 Do you know what I mean? Like this idea of like a good relationship you had to be willing to over give
0:10:59 So I just went into google translate and I wrote male friends that don’t have sex and it says
0:11:03 Sekusu no otoko tomodachi. So I think that’s the
0:11:06 Tomodachi for short
0:11:10 All right, what were you saying about angel investing? So I was I was trying to do an angel investment
0:11:13 This was maybe I don’t know 12 years ago or something
0:11:18 And I had no money and I wanted to invest in this company and I’d finally realized like oh
0:11:20 I have friends who have money
0:11:23 And I could probably go to them and I probably pitch them a deal and if they do the deal
0:11:26 They’ll probably give me a little piece of the of the of the upside if it works out
0:11:32 And so I go to a friend I go to my buddy Sully and I say, um, hey, I want to invest in this company
0:11:34 He’s like, all right, great. Let’s do it
0:11:38 I mean, he’s like cool. So for the economics of this like how do you want to do this?
0:11:44 And I was like, I don’t really know. What’s the norm? He’s like, well, the norm is probably this where you would get, you know
0:11:47 Like 10 15 percent of my carry
0:11:52 But you know, we could do whatever you want and I was like, well, you know, I just want to make sure you’re you know
0:11:55 It’s fair. I was kind of thinking transaction. I was like, I just want to make sure this is fair
0:11:59 Like I don’t want to I don’t want this to be, you know, one side or the other and he goes
0:12:03 Let’s make it one sided in your favor and he goes, I don’t care what happens on this deal
0:12:07 what I care about is us doing deals together for the next 20 years and
0:12:14 First of all, it was not just hollow words because he was giving more action on the deal to me that he did not need to
0:12:19 I wasn’t asking for it. He just you know, did that on on on his own
0:12:24 The second was the way he signaled that like, hey, I’m looking for 20 years of doing stuff together
0:12:27 was kind of intentional and new in a way that I hadn’t really
0:12:30 Heard and then I started doing that with other people
0:12:33 So when I met up with ben and I was like, ben, hey, you want to do this project together?
0:12:35 He’s like, yeah, we did a project together went great
0:12:38 Want to do another project together. We did another project together went great
0:12:40 And I was like, hey, let’s start a business together
0:12:44 But I what I told him was I was like, I think you’re awesome and I think we work really well together
0:12:47 I want to
0:12:51 Like I want to be in business for 20 years. So let’s basically only make decisions that will
0:12:54 increase the likelihood of us doing this together for 20 years
0:12:56 and
0:12:58 That really changed the game. So that one little
0:13:06 Way of being intentional that this I want this relationship to go beyond this transaction this this moment in time and saying like
0:13:07 I think you’re awesome
0:13:10 And I want to be doing stuff with you for a long time
0:13:13 That has really helped me or changed the way that I viewed things
0:13:16 But also the way that other people receive it because then they know
0:13:19 They know that I’m putting my foot forward and saying yes
0:13:22 I think you’re awesome and I can see us doing plenty of things together
0:13:24 Let’s do this for the long haul
0:13:29 Which I think settles everybody down and gets everybody out of a sort of selfish or short-term mindset
0:13:31 Just supposed to guys being dudes
0:13:34 You know
0:13:41 That’s what it comes down to we just it’s just much us guys. We want to be dudes, you know, that’s maybe tomodachi. Okay
0:13:44 Let’s just be gross. You want to be gross?
0:13:47 Okay, so
0:13:50 Here’s some I guess like related things to this. So
0:13:56 So back to this guy by the way, this shoji morimoto. So this guy 39 years old. Look at his twitter
0:13:58 His twitter has
0:14:04 420,000 followers. He’s gotten like very famous off of this. He said that before kovati was making 300 dollars a day
0:14:07 So he’s doing this 68 dollars a session or whatever
0:14:11 And he was just going to coffee shops and playing video games and doing you know random stuff with each other
0:14:16 Dude, he’s hard. It’s twitter. It’s hard to these japanese. I’ll tell you what they got a different word for everything
0:14:24 So, uh, his service is called rental people who do nothing
0:14:30 So I started thinking do we have this here because loneliness is not a only in jet only a japan thing. Obviously, it’s everywhere
0:14:35 And actually there are some things like this. So go to rent a friend calm
0:14:37 I don’t think I ever see this
0:14:42 No, you know what shon? I’m proud to say I’ve been actually been on this website yet
0:14:47 Friend seeking friends. Okay. So now type in like just type in san francisco and click search
0:14:51 And then you’re gonna see just like a huge list of
0:14:55 Totally platonic friends who are down to hang out and just have a day together
0:14:58 It’s pretty wild that there’s this whole
0:15:02 I didn’t even know this existed. It’s craigslist for friends. It’s pretty pretty cool, right?
0:15:05 And it actually has a lot of traffic
0:15:11 You know, this is a little sus. Oh, there’s a lot of pretty women with full body shots on here
0:15:16 Yeah, this might be like I found a laundromat and I’m like this place is doing a huge amount of business
0:15:22 And it’s like, well, it’s not just a laundromat, right? Like they’re laundering other things besides clothes here
0:15:25 Like so I don’t know exactly that the social norms here
0:15:30 But I’m going to take it at face value that this is rent a friend that is truly for for friendship
0:15:33 And I’ve read some articles of people doing this and what they said was they were like, you know
0:15:36 It was actually in some ways kind of nice
0:15:38 to have
0:15:42 Just someone on demand that I could go do this thing with maybe a plus one for
0:15:46 An event or to go to a concert together or whatever it is didn’t want to go by myself
0:15:47 But I still wanted to go
0:15:51 They’re like, but the other side of it was it had this like weird dynamic was like wait by the way
0:15:53 Does rent a friend mean I pay them money?
0:15:55 Yeah, you pay the money to hang out
0:15:57 Sean this is like where you get a hooker
0:16:03 This is like there’s Valerie odd here is like in a bikini and she’s 20 and like really good looking
0:16:07 It might be but I read this article on like whatever vox or whatever somebody went and they did this
0:16:10 So they rented a friend on this site and so they what they said was they were like
0:16:13 Yeah, it was uh, you know, I paid for this person to come hang out with me
0:16:16 They’re like, you know, one of the things and they talked to them about like the other jobs that they’ve done
0:16:19 They’re like, yeah, it’s a lot sometimes for older people or it’s for
0:16:25 You know somebody who’s you know, just sort of been very busy with work hasn’t really developed their social life
0:16:27 and one of the things that they talked about was like
0:16:33 It made me a more rude person because they’re like, oh if I’m paying you then this is all on my terms
0:16:35 I’m gonna we’re gonna do what I want
0:16:40 We’re gonna and they’re like there were some downsides to like there’s upsides of wow this companionship on demand on the other side
0:16:42 There were some downsides which was like
0:16:47 The power dynamic was off. You know, I was too aware at least the journalists was like I was too aware of
0:16:53 The the the differentiation here. So that’s one one business. There’s another one that you’ve probably heard of called papa
0:16:54 You know papa
0:16:55 No, it’s papa
0:17:00 This is for your grandparents. So it’s basically a lot of people have, you know, grandparents who are alone
0:17:06 Both they’re both lonely, but also kind of need help like maybe the little errands that they can run or
0:17:10 Somebody to help them when they’re going to the store just in case anything happens or to make
0:17:13 You know a little easier to move around
0:17:17 And this was a silicon valley startup that was basically like you pay for
0:17:22 You pay for a basically I could task grab it specifically to help
0:17:27 The older people and it’s something less than kind of like a live in live in care
0:17:32 But it’s more than you know, me once a month calling my grandparents
0:17:37 And so that’s uh, this company was I remember when this came out it was sort of this crazy idea
0:17:41 And it was backed by some investors. I remember alexa sahanian the guy who created reddit. He backed it
0:17:44 He said something like uh, you know, there’s 11,000
0:17:46 You know
0:17:50 Boomers that are are retiring like every day or something crazy like that some some huge number
0:17:54 And he’s like the you know, our aging population is growing very fast
0:17:58 So we’re going to need services that are going to help them and this company is valued over a billion dollars
0:18:04 Holy sh*t. I’m looking at their funding. They’ve raised hundreds of millions, uh, 250 million dollars. 250 million. Yeah
0:18:09 Softbank put a bunch of money into and they were valued at 1.4 billion and it’s literally
0:18:13 A sort of like on-demand companionship for older people
0:18:19 Dude, have you ever met a sugar baby?
0:18:23 Have I ever met a sugar baby? I think I have but I
0:18:27 I don’t know if it was like official or if it was just like a
0:18:30 Like
0:18:34 You know, there’s like the the website where it’s like this is an official arrangement
0:18:37 And then there’s like, you know, just the they just happening in the wild
0:18:39 So I think I just met someone who is happening in the wild
0:18:45 So there’s sugar daddy.com where you like go and you meet someone and it gets a lot of traffic
0:18:51 And I was talking we got to go incognito for this one. Let me just make sure I don’t get targeted for ads for the rest of my life
0:18:54 I was talking to my wife about this the other day because she uh
0:19:01 Uh, somehow knew someone who was a sugar baby or or and I think there’s like reality tv shows about it too
0:19:05 Yeah, yeah, you definitely have seen because you guys have like the same tv taste
0:19:10 Uh, but but I actually think that this is like a fairly fair trade
0:19:16 Uh, as long as it’s consensual obviously, but I’m I’m shockingly on board with having a sugar baby
0:19:22 Like if you’re if you’re an old guy and you just want to and like a lot of these guys they literally just want a companion
0:19:27 They just want someone to be there for them and things like that and it’s not always like, you know, as weird as it sounds
0:19:31 It’s no different than wanting to rent this japanese guy to come hang out with you
0:19:36 Yeah, and you know, I don’t really have any judgments on this like I don’t I’ve never experienced this
0:19:41 I don’t really know the lifestyle. I’ll try not to be, you know, two judgmental things. I don’t really understand
0:19:42 what I’m
0:19:45 Fascinated by is just this phenomenon and again, like
0:19:47 Uh, I remember when I first moved to silken valley
0:19:53 I met the guy who was the first p.m at twitter. Um, and I asked him I was like
0:19:58 Man, that’s amazing. You picked twitter really early on there’s only 14 people there or something like that at the time
0:20:02 How’d you know like was was it obvious that twitter was going to be a big deal?
0:20:05 He goes no everybody thought twitter was weird
0:20:09 Stupid useless just like a strange thing to do
0:20:13 And he goes well, I remember when I joined somebody asked me why do you join he goes
0:20:16 Because you can’t deny the phenomenon
0:20:23 Meaning when you observe people doing a behavior that kind of makes no sense or seems odd seems strange seems weird to you
0:20:27 The natural inclination is to push that away and be like, oh, that’s
0:20:31 That’s stupid. That’s weird and you sort of resist it
0:20:36 And he goes as an investor or somebody, you know in where where we worked in the technology space
0:20:39 You want to lean into the phenomenon you want to understand?
0:20:42 Wow, why is it that people are watching other people play video games twitch, right?
0:20:48 Why is it that people are just texting out to a random group of strangers what they’re having for lunch twitter?
0:20:53 Why is it that people are getting into strangers cars instead of taxis uber, right?
0:20:56 Like the why are people sleeping on other people’s couches instead of hotels airbnb?
0:20:59 All of the biggest winners tended to be
0:21:06 These weird behaviors things. That’s you know, either broke a social norm or sounded a little sketch
0:21:10 And once you sort of wrap that into, you know, a more
0:21:15 Safe and acceptable behavior unlocked a pretty big market. And so I’ve always tried to have
0:21:19 I’ve tried to learn to have a more open mind about this stuff. And so
0:21:22 would I be surprised if
0:21:27 The way that getting into people’s you know sleeping on couches or getting into strangers cars
0:21:33 Like would I be surprised if companionship as a service like totally non-sexual companionship as a service was a big deal
0:21:39 I would absolutely not be surprised because I think that probably by default most people are are lonelier than they want
0:21:42 Yeah, and I actually think that this is not a new phenomenon
0:21:48 I think that it’s a phenomenon. It’s a thing that’s always existed. Now. Let me get let me get biblical on your ass
0:21:52 I was uh, I was uh raised catholic. So I went to catholic school my whole life
0:21:54 So I had to read the bible all the time
0:21:59 Did you ever read the the story about jesus how I was like carrying the cross up like the hill or something to like
0:22:05 You know to be executed. No, I didn’t read that one. Well. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s like part of culture a little bit
0:22:10 But like there’s a at one point. There’s like a line where like these
0:22:13 professional women or these women who are professional
0:22:15 I think they call them wailers
0:22:23 But basically these women who are hired to come cry at a funeral to grieve to make you feel like you’re not the only
0:22:26 One there to grieve for this person
0:22:29 And like he like dismisses them and he’s like, you know, don’t
0:22:31 Don’t get me get this out of here
0:22:35 His direct quote was like get that nonsense out of this out of here or something like that
0:22:39 No, but I actually think that is a thing at funeral home. By the way
0:22:45 A funeral home is where like you have like a griever who will come and and make and fill the room
0:22:46 You know what I’m saying
0:22:51 But these sites of things have been around forever. And so I don’t actually think it’s particularly a new phenomenon
0:22:56 I think we’ve always felt this way now. There’s just interesting platforms to help solve the problem
0:23:00 Right, right. It’s like those uh, there’s like these marketplaces now online to rent a crowd
0:23:05 It’s like, oh, you need a crowd people who either love you or protesting you push this button
0:23:07 I’ll get you 30
0:23:14 30 people in a crowd today, right? And you know politicians use this and brands use this like it’s a it’s a easy
0:23:16 Technology made it easier to coordinate
0:23:21 By the way, there’s a great tweet. Have you seen it where he’s like, uh, hey, I’m willing to show up
0:23:23 Looking like a mob boss at anyone’s funeral
0:23:27 Just so your friends and family feel like man, you really have some shit going on that they didn’t know about
0:23:33 Dude, I bet you the uh, rent a friend’s CEO or like company
0:23:36 They’re listening to this podcast and they’re like, oh, that’s so cute
0:23:41 Sean thought that we were just so you could meet friends and not for prostitutes friends is an air quotes
0:23:46 Oh
0:23:49 By the way, if it’s not friends
0:23:57 That’s just me being me naive old me just sucker for for for uh, for whatever you tell me. Okay. I believe in humanity
0:24:00 There’s hundreds of thousands of people right now collectively saying
0:24:02 Oh
0:24:06 Can I um
0:24:10 Can tell you about another thing that I saw that I think you might have seen as well because it happened at a ufc event
0:24:13 A few weeks ago that I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this. Yeah, what?
0:24:17 Did you see at the recent? I think it was at the sphere event
0:24:24 Did you see a very interesting advertisement on one of the on the post during the ufc?
0:24:28 Are you familiar with what I’m talking about? I saw what you were talking about, but I don’t know enough to like riff on it
0:24:35 I mean explain it and then maybe I’ll remember I’m watching the ufc pay-per-view and it’s their first event at the sphere
0:24:37 Uh in las vegas
0:24:39 And I heard you bought tickets for it
0:24:46 Yeah, that’s another story how I uh, I actually ended up paying $15,000 to not go to the sphere event
0:24:51 Which is a a big L for me. Wait, you made 15 grand for tickets
0:24:57 So speaking of friends, uh, I was like, hey, let me buy tickets for the sphere event
0:25:00 I heard Dana white talking about it and I was like, oh wow, he says there’s a one and done
0:25:03 It’s going to be something like you’ve never seen before blah blah blah
0:25:07 So months ago, I just go online and I buy six tickets to the sphere
0:25:09 I think it was like after the ticket master fee was like 25
0:25:12 27 grand or something like that. Oh my god. All right
0:25:16 And then I emailed a bunch of people who I haven’t hung out with
0:25:20 either ever or recently and I was like, hey
0:25:22 Uh, do you want to come to this event?
0:25:26 And they’re like, yeah, this is awesome
0:25:30 And so some some of them said yeah, some of them said, oh, I’ll try let me let me see if I can make it work
0:25:32 because there’s still months out
0:25:37 And then a bunch of things happened a two of the people couldn’t make it for like medical reasons
0:25:42 Uh, the card for the sphere got way worse than it was supposed to be. I got way worse
0:25:46 I myself had just gotten sick like the two weeks prior to it
0:25:49 And so I’d like had just come off of like not being helpful at home to like, oh wait
0:25:52 Now I’m going to go on a trip to las vegas after this
0:25:56 Not really the best game plan for me and the ticket prices dropped like crazy
0:26:00 So we ended up selling the tickets for like, you know, a third or something of whatever I paid for them. So
0:26:03 Yeah, not a good win for me
0:26:06 But uh, a great story that I got to tell here. So that was that
0:26:08 expensive
0:26:10 So then I’m watching it on tv
0:26:15 And I see on the post behind all the fighters that says invest like a politician
0:26:21 Invest like a politician. What is that? That is a kind of an amazing hook
0:26:27 And I realized oh, this is that app that um, I’ve been following for a little while this guy chris
0:26:29 He’s behind this app called autopilot
0:26:36 And he came and he he went on twitter and he explained this thing that they were doing this stunt that they did around the UFC
0:26:38 So they they sponsored the invest like a politician
0:26:45 But they did a lot more than that. I just think it was a badass marketing stunt that he did like the tesla the cybertruck
0:26:47 so so check out this thread so
0:26:53 Uh, look at the photos in this and if you’re listening on audio go to youtube and watch this thing because you’ve got to see
0:26:55 the clips of this. All right, so
0:26:58 What they did was
0:27:01 They hired so like it’s the premise of autopilot
0:27:03 I should say is it’s a investing app
0:27:08 But it’s kind of like you basically pick who you want to follow their portfolio and you will invest
0:27:11 It’s like let’s say I wanted to just mimic Warren Buffett’s portfolio
0:27:17 I want to mimic, you know, some famous traders portfolio. I could do that one of the traders that they follow is Nancy Pelosi
0:27:19 who everybody kind of knows is
0:27:25 You know a legendary a legendary trader in her own right and so what they did was for the sphere event
0:27:29 They found a fake Pelosi impersonator. Do you see her there?
0:27:32 they find her on tiktok
0:27:35 And they hire her and they put her through hair and makeup and then she
0:27:41 She goes to they fly her to vegas and she goes to the event and before the event
0:27:46 She starts interacting with all these influencers so they go get mike from, uh, you know the impulsive podcast
0:27:47 And she’s hanging out
0:27:50 Oh, she’s playing blackjack with mike and then she meets up with the milk boys and the milk boys are like
0:27:54 Oh, holy shit. It’s Pelosi and they’re playing blackjack with her and then she gets um
0:28:01 Then she’s in the crowd when sugar shalom alley walks out and she’s in this hot pink pantsuit power
0:28:05 Pantsuit like Pelosi and it gets freeze framed and everybody’s like holy shit
0:28:11 Is Nancy Pelosi at the ufc and all these people are tweeting about this and then she doesn’t look like her at all
0:28:16 This model or actress is way better looking. It’s like hot Pelosi. Yeah
0:28:20 She’s actually kind of like sarah palin and Pelosi together
0:28:26 It’s because Nancy Pelosi is like 80 years old or something. So yeah, this woman looks is like legitimately a model
0:28:33 But go ahead. So then they got a truck a cyber truck and they wrapped it and it says Pelosi 2024
0:28:38 And it says invest like a politician autopilot and they drove this around las vegas
0:28:44 Getting just honked at and there’s all these like tick tocks of people taking videos of this Pelosi 2024
0:28:49 Thing and if you look at their google trends, they go from like nobody searching for them to like, you know
0:28:55 It spiked and hit 100 interest on that day of the event and basically they were like, yeah
0:28:57 We just took a risk we spent a bunch of money on this
0:29:04 And uh, let’s give it a go and I just thought it was a amazingly well done marketing stunt
0:29:06 Did he say how much he spent on it?
0:29:09 Uh, I didn’t ask him that so I did talk to him
0:29:13 He goes he said we pulled it together in three weeks. We had the Pelosi idea
0:29:15 We came up with a bunch of research
0:29:18 They searched through tick tock for impersonators went through agents found an actress
0:29:24 They hustled their way into you know getting kind of like collabing with the milk boys and mike during that event because they knew
0:29:27 Where they like to gamble so they kind of arranged for them to bump into each other
0:29:31 And they’re like, we got a bunch of downloads. It’s more what he said was he goes
0:29:34 It was more expensive than just if we had just run, you know facebook ads
0:29:40 But um, you know our view is that we’re trying to like build the brand and make a statement about what are we all about and
0:29:43 That we believe that over time this is going to pay off
0:29:46 And if you’ve seen they’ve done this actually in a bunch of a bunch of interesting marketing things
0:29:51 So they did the Pelosi tracker on twitter, which has I don’t know hundreds of thousands of followers
0:29:55 They have an instagram account called politicians
0:29:58 politician trade tracker
0:30:04 Which has seven hundred and thirty thousand followers and the posts so like, you know like the last post was
0:30:07 They had called out weeks ago
0:30:16 That debbie schultz who is a politician had made a fifteen thousand dollar trade in her son’s name of one random small mining stock a silver mining stock
0:30:21 And they had flagged it as like, hmm. Here’s a politician trade that you want to be aware of
0:30:25 We you know, they don’t give financial advice, but they just tell you what the politicians are doing
0:30:29 And sure enough in a month. It’s gone up 30 percent
0:30:33 This like random small mining stock helco mining company
0:30:39 So, you know called it and and so they they follow these politicians and that’s what the whole account is and I think
0:30:41 they they tapped into some
0:30:44 feeling of
0:30:49 Like outrage or wrongness that people have about what’s going on like why why Nancy Pelosi?
0:30:54 You know outperforms hedge funds and Warren Buffett and her you know her trading track record
0:30:56 uh, they tapped into this feeling that like
0:31:01 This is wrong and they should not be allowed and they’re using it for their own growth, which I think is great
0:31:04 dude, have you um
0:31:09 AOC and uh, what’s parker or palm or lucky’s brother-in-law?
0:31:16 Do you know who palm or lucky’s brother-in-law is matt gates? Yeah him and uh, AOC have like joined hands
0:31:22 for this for like the one thing that they’ve come together on is the fact that they want, uh politicians
0:31:28 To not be able to trade or at least have all of their money in like a political etf or something like that
0:31:31 and uh, it reminds me of um
0:31:36 Have you seen that uh video go viral of AOC and Elon musk flirting?
0:31:39 Yeah, it’s so good. We gotta play that
0:31:45 Oh, we should play that right now. I need to just play that clip. It is whoever made this you’re an absolute genius
0:31:48 I’ve looked I’ve tried to look up who made this this is like some anonymous account
0:31:53 I watch that video like I’ve seen it a bunch of times and I rewatch it all the time
0:31:54 It’s so funny
0:31:59 It’s one of the funniest things and they needed they need to do on with AOC and this guy matt
0:32:04 Uh of them like fake flirting because it’s the one thing because I think he’s pretty far right
0:32:11 She’s pretty far left and they’ve come together on this one like idea that politicians should not be able to trade
0:32:13 Uh from individual accounts, and I think it’s pretty funny
0:32:18 Yeah
0:32:20 That’s uh, that’s pretty wild
0:32:24 Do you want to do uh one more thing? What’s this blue collar side hustle?
0:32:26 All right, so i’m bringing it back in old segment
0:32:30 We used to have called the blue collar side hustle of the month and this is
0:32:33 The goal here is these aren’t the biggest businesses
0:32:37 But they’re straightforward businesses that anybody could do if you were just willing to work hard
0:32:42 And so the blue collar side hustle is I saw forget who it was chris corner or somebody like that
0:32:44 They’re talking about this woman in dallas
0:32:50 Who has this big business awesome porch pumpkins. Have you seen this the bass the bass?
0:32:53 Wow, you’re really into this tell tell me more
0:33:02 All right, so so the the business idea here is uh every fall for you know, sort of halloween and thanksgiving people like to decorate
0:33:04 their front porch
0:33:06 with a bunch of pumpkins
0:33:11 And what she does is she will do that as a service so she’ll bring to your house a package
0:33:16 I mean you can go to her website and you can see she’s it’s popped up currently sold out
0:33:21 But you can see like three or four packages. There’s like the luxury package which is 1350 so
0:33:27 Uh, $1,300 there’s like kind of the medium one $750 and there’s a smaller one for like 300 bucks
0:33:33 And what she’ll do is she’ll come and she’ll decorate your front front porch the doorstep all that with
0:33:38 A bunch of really cool variety of of you know fall, you know harvest type pumpkins
0:33:43 And this is all she does and that the numbers that came out was that basically she’s done
0:33:48 900 jobs that range, you know from this 300 bucks to you know, 1500 bucks
0:33:52 And the estimate was that she might have done a million dollars in revenue in a year
0:33:56 off of uh off of those 900 jobs
0:34:03 And how cool is this just a you know a mom in dallas who is going to people’s porches and just putting out pumpkins
0:34:08 And wow you can kind of hustle your way into a pretty cool business for a very small window of time
0:34:10 I think that’s the other cool part about this is that uh
0:34:13 It’s only going to take place in a few months out of the year
0:34:18 And then she posted on instagram and that kind of drives the flywheel and then people like us talk about this
0:34:21 And it gets on the local news and then she’s built a kind of cool business here
0:34:23 And we talked about this last year
0:34:27 I think one of my blue color side also last year was the guy who came and did christmas lights at my house
0:34:31 And he did it for you know half the houses in our neighborhood and I realized like wow
0:34:34 In kind of a six to ten week period
0:34:38 You know this guy probably pulled in you know
0:34:42 60 to 100 grand of side income just by putting up lights him and and he had one guy working with him
0:34:46 And I think this is the extension of that it turns out that it wasn’t just christmas lights
0:34:50 You could also do it with fall pumpkins and I’m sure you could do it with halloween decorations as well
0:34:53 If you wanted to expand into that so to me this is an example
0:34:57 Of a blue collar side hustle now to be clear. I don’t think she made a million dollars
0:34:59 I think she might have generated a million dollars revenue
0:35:02 Apparently she’s got like 15 delivery guys and like a bunch of other stuff
0:35:05 Yeah, but even if she made 200 000 dollars
0:35:10 I would bet it’s like you know 100 grand is my my guess being conservative. I would sort of assume that
0:35:15 But that’s still pretty great for what’s probably a you work, you know
0:35:17 Two months out of the year or three months out of the year
0:35:22 Straightforward business that you could do that doesn’t require you know any special skills and it’s pretty fun
0:35:25 You know for somebody who’s got you know a little bit of design taste. I think this is great
0:35:31 All right, if you’re listening to this pod I already know something about you
0:35:34 You my friend are nosy
0:35:39 You want to know the numbers behind all of these things that we’re talking about how much money people make
0:35:44 How much money people spend how much money businesses make you want to know all of this people’s net worth all of it
0:35:49 Well, I’ve got good news for you. So my company Hampton. We’re a private community for CEOs
0:35:55 We do this thing where we survey our members and we ask them all types of information like how much money they’re paying themselves
0:35:58 How much money they’re paying a lot of their employees what their team?
0:36:03 My bonuses are what their net worth is what their portfolio looks like we ask all these questions
0:36:07 But we do it anonymously and so people are willing to reveal all types of amazing information
0:36:12 So if you really cannot google you can’t find anywhere else and you could check it out at joinhampton.com
0:36:16 Click the reports section on the menu. Click the salary and compensation report
0:36:21 It’s going to blow your mind. You’re going to love this stuff. Check it out now back to the pod
0:36:28 My wife’s uh, um, not working right now, you know, she we had a kid and she’s uh, quit her job
0:36:32 And like she’s thinking of these things that she can do she’s like, you know, I don’t
0:36:37 I can’t commit to a 40 hour work week or 50 52 weeks out the year
0:36:44 But I would love to have a project, you know, something that I can do and when I see projects like this, I’m like
0:36:50 That’s awesome. That could be perfect. Do you know what I mean? Uh, and and so she’s like looking for projects
0:36:55 But you know, you can’t like you can’t commit to a nine to five or at least you can’t commit to a nine to five for
0:37:01 The entire year, but you could for a little sprints. And so I love ideas like that that could satisfy that need
0:37:04 Yeah, yeah, exactly. My wife works only on Wednesdays
0:37:08 So she works one day of the week two works kind of like an eight hour day on that day
0:37:14 And it’s a super creative kind of job. I can’t go into all the details, but it’s very creative. So it’s fun
0:37:19 Um, it’s with somebody she really likes so co-worker comes over they work together for eight hours day
0:37:21 She’s no lot then she doesn’t have it doesn’t spill over
0:37:24 So like the next day and the next day after that she doesn’t have to like
0:37:27 follow through on all the deliverables from the meeting or anything like that
0:37:32 And we didn’t plan for that but that’s we kind of stumbled into but what is basically the perfect
0:37:37 amount of work for her because we got three little kids and she wants to be a stay at home mom, but also
0:37:40 It’s pretty easy to just go nuts
0:37:43 You know like to just be because it’s groundhog day when you have three little kids
0:37:47 You are doing the same routine every single day and as much as you love your kids
0:37:50 Like it is nice to have a small break
0:37:53 Some project you can put your creative energy into a person
0:37:57 that’s not your family member that you can get to talk to that day and
0:38:01 You know not have to deal with the kids for you know, eight hours is is a huge win for her
0:38:04 Dude after this problem be like babe
0:38:07 What do you what do you know about pumpkins open the trunk?
0:38:12 Like I love the homepage everything. It’s a trunk full of like 65 pumpkins
0:38:15 I love this shit dude
0:38:16 I think this is fantastic
0:38:20 And I’m sure that there’s like some type of like artful like aesthetic or you know
0:38:23 Like you got to have like some type of eye, but uh
0:38:26 And it would be silly of me to like be like anyone could do this
0:38:30 But it definitely seems learnable. This seems very learnable
0:38:33 Anyone can do this not anyone will do this
0:38:36 But but I do think this is not like
0:38:37 above
0:38:41 You know most people’s means to be able to do to be able to pull this off
0:38:46 You know what I would do let’s say I wanted to do this. How would you how would you approach this? You know, I would not
0:38:48 Go into the pumpkin business right away
0:38:55 What I would do is I would go door to door and I would have basically like three photographs of what the front can look like
0:38:59 Uh, what what packages you have and I would just go to door go door to door
0:39:01 And I would say I’m going to knock on a hundred doors
0:39:05 I’m not gonna hundred doors in my neighborhood and I’m basically going to say hey
0:39:09 Um, just wanted to let you know I do this for families in the area
0:39:12 I can make your porch look really great. Is this something you’d be interested in?
0:39:16 Um, and then try to see does anybody is anybody interested in basically if people are interested
0:39:22 That’s the your preorder and then you basically go buy the inventory you need to go fulfill just that demand
0:39:26 And then as soon as I get some I would take photos of that I would ask them
0:39:29 Can I uh, you know, would you mind if I use this for my website for my marketing?
0:39:30 They would say yes
0:39:35 And if they say yes, then I would go to I would now have better marketing material that I would go to the next door with
0:39:41 And I would say, um, you know, we did this there and I would try to have something if I could maybe one branded pumpkin
0:39:45 That’s kind of like this was done by the you know
0:39:49 The local pumpkin queen or whatever it is right and like have my my domain on one of them
0:39:53 If I if I could try to get people to be able to go find me from there
0:39:57 And then go and upcharge them when they fucking start to rot and you got to get rid of them
0:40:01 Well, there is a there is a pickup or like a cleanup fee, right that you do at the end
0:40:02 Same thing with the Christmas lights guys
0:40:05 Like yeah, then you pay me up you pay me to put them up and you pay me to put them take them down
0:40:08 And so you get both sides of it
0:40:14 I also think that this is one where you could if you ever go read like these pr books that were like local pr news jacking
0:40:19 So like local news is pretty much devoid of good stories
0:40:23 And so you can see this if you ever turn on like your local news channel
0:40:26 There y’all this restaurant you know got flagged for this thing
0:40:30 They’re looking for you know good local feel-good stories
0:40:32 And so as soon as you get a little bit going and then you could say
0:40:40 Whatever single mom who’s making thousands of dollars decorating their you know their neighbor’s porches
0:40:42 And so as soon as I get just enough momentum
0:40:47 My goal would be to get to the new local news and I would go them and make my pitch for the story
0:40:48 And I would try to get it
0:40:53 You know try to get my story on there for that local news and then what I would do
0:40:57 Is I would take that that news story right you’re stacking the marketing chips
0:41:01 And then you could even run ads on that local news story that article
0:41:03 In your area dude, I grew up
0:41:06 Like with a big steep driveway
0:41:09 And then after there was a small street and then there was like a park
0:41:12 And it was it was as if I was like the park was like a canyon
0:41:19 And one month after Halloween it was a tradition at my house and my parents
0:41:23 This was one of the more redneck things that my father has ever done
0:41:28 Which was we would take all 20 of our pumpkins and we would let them roll down our hill
0:41:36 Straight running of the bulls straight into the middle of the park and I up until like uh, I was like 25
0:41:38 I thought it was okay
0:41:41 Because if you have like a banana peel or something
0:41:46 I’m like you just like fucking toss it into the street like it doesn’t matter like we used to put our pumpkins like in the street
0:41:51 Like it doesn’t matter right that’s not littering. Turns out that is littering by the way like you can’t like just like
0:41:56 We’re all of like November or whatever. There’d be like the
0:41:58 20
0:42:01 Rotting pumpkins in the middle of the middle of this park
0:42:06 And I’m like if you’re gonna go play flag football that month like look out for the rotting pumpkins at the parks
0:42:13 Through in the middle of that fucking park. Yeah, you needed the opposite of the news story. It’s like local family terrorizes park
0:42:15 rotting pumpkins again
0:42:20 Dude, I thought I was like acceptable. It’s like it’s like, oh, just put it back to its home. I’m just throwing this
0:42:24 Throwing this fucking banana peel and all our garbage right in the middle of a park
0:42:26 um
0:42:28 Where do you want to go from here?
0:42:32 Uh, I think we wrapped this one. So we got the do nothing man the loneliness epidemic
0:42:38 We have uh the autopilot marketing stunt and then we got the blue collar side hustle that anybody could do door to door
0:42:40 All right, let’s do it. That’s it. That’s the pop
0:42:45 I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to
0:42:51 I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let’s travel never looking back
0:42:53 Bye
0:42:55 You
0:42:57 You
0:43:07 [BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00:04 All right, we’re live with Steph Smith. Steph Smith, this is your eighth time on the podcast,
0:00:10 is that right? I know. It’s wild. Yes. You sent me a document in advance and it had a bunch of stuff,
0:00:16 but there was one topic that caught my eye. It’s called the silver tsunami, which basically just
0:00:22 means that we are living way longer than expected. If it’s cool with you, I kind of just want to talk
0:00:28 about that topic this entire time because there were so many stats here that kind of shocked me.
0:00:35 I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like the
0:00:40 days off on the road. Give me the background. Tell us in the background, what’s the silver
0:00:45 tsunami and what’s like the one sentence summary of this entire topic? I mean, the simplest summary
0:00:51 is just we’re expected to live way, way later. And I think there’s this kind of misconception
0:00:59 that we’ve hit some sort of basically plateau in aging. In the last, I think, several decades,
0:01:04 the stat is for every decade, we’ve added two to three years to the average lifespan,
0:01:11 which means that we are expected to grow older compared to our parents, compared to their parents,
0:01:15 et cetera, et cetera. So you can just go to, I mean, the simplest way to look at it is if you
0:01:20 just go to our world and data life expectancy, you can see around 1900, something fundamentally
0:01:26 changes, and we’re just growing way, way older. That has to do with child mortality, but also just,
0:01:32 again, extending that maybe like 50 year period. And so what that means is that you have this cohort
0:01:37 of people, you called it the silver tsunami, who are just going to be around for a lot longer than
0:01:42 maybe people expected. And that impacts tons of things. That impacts the pensions that people
0:01:48 were expecting. It impacts the kind of nursing homes you need. It impacts the kind of healthcare
0:01:54 people think about in that later age. It impacts a lot of young people who then, at least in theory,
0:02:01 have to support those old people. And so this whole silver tsunami is a little bit overlooked.
0:02:06 So all right. So I want to go through the story. So the story of what has changed
0:02:11 and the story of what to expect in the next, well, I guess, if you’re listening to this,
0:02:17 you’re probably at least 18 years old all the way up to 80 years old. But let’s just say the
0:02:21 average, let’s just say the average is 25 to 35 years old, if you’re in that demographic,
0:02:26 what to expect. And then after that, we’ll go through the different business opportunities or
0:02:31 potential issues and other things like that that might exist if all this comes to fruition.
0:02:36 Yeah. So maybe let’s start with a really simple stat. I got this from a book called Longevity
0:02:43 Imperative that I read recently. And he’s from the UK. So he uses UK data here, but he says,
0:02:50 in the UK in 1965, the most common age of death was the first year. That’s perhaps not surprising.
0:02:54 But today, the most common age to die is 87. So that’s a really simple just encapsulation
0:03:00 of how things have completely flipped on their side. But then let’s move on to maybe cohort
0:03:05 data. So I’d like you to guess the chance of a newborn girl in Japan as of 2020 data,
0:03:16 what is their chance of living till 20? Close to 100%, 98. So 99.6% chance. Now,
0:03:28 guess the same for living to 40. To 40, 90%. 99. And the chance of making it to 60.
0:03:36 98. No, no, no, that’s too high. 95 again. 96%. So if you think about it, a woman in Japan
0:03:44 born in 2020 or as of 2020 data has a 96% chance of making it to 60. That’s like pretty close to 100%.
0:03:51 Obviously, that’s not 100%. But the point is your calculus changes when you fundamentally expect to
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0:04:26 get your results. It’s easy to use and it connects all your data. So put the fun back in your marketing
0:04:35 funnel with HubSpot. Visit hubspot.com to get started for free. So whenever I think about my life,
0:04:41 it’s kind of messed up. So I actually think that like I’m only going to live to be 75,
0:04:47 which means at the age of 35, I’m nearly halfway through my life. But then when I like calculate,
0:04:51 so I do this weird thing with my net worth where I edit in these calculators and I’m like,
0:04:57 all right, at this, if I have what I have now, and it grows at 8% a year, that means at the age of 40,
0:05:02 I’ll have this at the age of 50, I have this, and I’ll drag it on to like 110. And I’m like, holy
0:05:06 crap, at the age of 110, I’m going to have this and like the number is just like massive, right?
0:05:11 And so in some ways, I assume I’m going to live to be like 110. In other ways, I assume I’m going
0:05:20 to live to be 75, which is actually totally that range is problematic. What ages do people like you
0:05:25 and me, so we do a lot of stuff that is good for our health and we have resources, what are we going
0:05:32 to live to then? Well, I think, yeah, the even just like the average lifespan in America is longer
0:05:38 than 75. But I mean, in theory, it’s going to be a range, but that’s part of the complexity here
0:05:42 where, so Sam, you’re also thinking about this from the perspective of like, you sold the company,
0:05:47 you have a nest egg, and so you can imagine how that nest egg grows over time. But you imagine
0:05:53 the flip side for like the average American who expects to retire at 65. Well, if you’re only
0:05:59 expecting to live to 75, then you can probably save up for 10 years of life. But as soon as you’re
0:06:06 living to 85, maybe even 95, then you are in theory having to save up for 30 years of life.
0:06:12 And the way that, again, like our economics, real estate, all of that isn’t really set up
0:06:17 for people living substantially longer. And by the way, the last thing I’ll say there is one thing
0:06:22 that I was surprised by in the book is one, so this isn’t surprising, America is falling behind
0:06:29 some of the other like G7 nations around longevity. But I thought it was because
0:06:34 generally people were dying earlier, but it’s actually due to these things called diseases
0:06:41 of despair. So just like alcoholism, drugs, etc. But if you remove those, Americans are
0:06:46 living just as long as, you know, the comparable nations. And so what are some other crazy stats
0:06:51 around this? Because you had some like ridiculous stuff. So like, for example, you said something
0:06:59 like America was spending some absurd number for NASA and getting to the moon, which is
0:07:04 awesome. I’m in favor of that. And then you compared it to how much they were spending for
0:07:10 longevity or expanding life. And it was like a fraction of the amount. Is that true?
0:07:14 Well, so I think there’s a couple of different stats there. So America, I think like healthcare
0:07:21 is like 20% of GDP, which is huge. But I think the stat specifically that you were looking at was
0:07:27 shared on Twitter. And it was basically that 0.8% of the US budget is spent on kidney dialysis,
0:07:34 which was basically three times NASA. So all these people need dialysis. It’s like, I think
0:07:39 Medicare spends over $50 billion annually on dialysis and other related treatments, which is
0:07:46 just wild. And it’s I think an example of how, you know, like when health goes awry and all
0:07:50 these people are living to old age, the budget that’s required for it is just blowing up.
0:07:52 And so what are the opportunities here?
0:07:58 Let’s start with one that maybe the MFM listener base won’t be super stoked on. Maybe the four
0:08:04 female listeners. But one really interesting one is menopause. So menopause is when women’s
0:08:10 ovaries stop working. So it obviously impacts anyone with ovaries. Once you get to a certain
0:08:15 point. And here’s an interesting stat, again, from that book below the age of 55, cardiovascular
0:08:21 illness is a more likely cause of mortality in men. And then after 55, again, around that
0:08:27 menopause stage, it basically reverses because what menopause is is like, I’m obviously oversimplifying.
0:08:32 It’s just like an super, super accelerated aging period for women.
0:08:35 What age does that typically happen 50?
0:08:39 Yeah, around like 50 or 60, like in that range, I think sometimes even earlier, sometimes in 40s,
0:08:46 but I haven’t hit it yet. So not having experienced it firsthand. But what happens,
0:08:49 because it’s like kind of a fundamentally, your hormones are changing. One of your most
0:08:56 significant organs is just no longer producing eggs. Your body ends up having all these symptoms.
0:09:03 People often refer to 34 symptoms of menopause. And just due to the nature of like, you could say
0:09:09 Tam, 6,000 women in the US hit menopause every single day. So if you think about people who
0:09:13 all of a sudden are facing this thing that they’ve never faced before, kind of like pregnancy.
0:09:19 And interestingly, there’s all these companies that are oriented around people getting pregnant
0:09:22 and having that done successfully. There’s apps like Flow.
0:09:26 Dude, Flow is a massive business, isn’t it?
0:09:31 Yeah. I mean, at least even publicly on their site, they say over 380 million people use it.
0:09:32 And what’s Flow do?
0:09:36 So Flow is a period tracking app, or at least that’s how they started.
0:09:41 But also, I think they’ve expanded. And like, even when you track your period, I use it, right?
0:09:45 It’ll give you suggestions on like, are you bloated? Or like, you should be eating this,
0:09:51 this or this. It’s actually pretty simplistic, but 380 million people use it because it’s just like,
0:09:55 again, the Tam is so big of people who care about this thing.
0:09:58 And so where are the different opportunities you think in with that?
0:10:04 I mean, there are some companies that have sprung up already. One of them is called Bonafide or
0:10:10 Bonafide, another called Genev. But basically, like all of the symptoms, the 34 of them that
0:10:14 women start to face like hot flashes. But that’s just an example of where I think
0:10:22 even just fundamentally, it’s, there are less female entrepreneurs. There are less entrepreneurs
0:10:26 over the age of 50, right? Who are starting companies. And so I think it’s a completely
0:10:32 overlooked space because once people hit this age, they’re not really trying to start a company.
0:10:37 And then all the other people aren’t really aware of how significant this transformation is for
0:10:42 all of these women, for literally billions of women around the world. And so I feel like it’s
0:10:49 just totally overlooked. We use this phrase “one chart businesses” because you just see this chart
0:10:53 in it. Like you said, well, that thing’s obvious. Just get into that industry. You have one here.
0:11:00 In the United States, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that nursing will be the
0:11:10 fastest growing occupation between 2020 and 2030, growing in number by 275,000 jobs. That’s insane.
0:11:12 That’s insane. Talk to you about this nursing thing.
0:11:18 Yeah. Well, I mean, again, it’s like a pretty clear trend that comes with a bunch of people
0:11:23 getting older. Like everyone’s talking about AI and that’s great. But what about the billions
0:11:31 of people around the globe that are 65+ that are just going to need physical human support?
0:11:35 So nursing’s one area. Also, the rest of that stat talks about in Japan, the number of nursing
0:11:40 homes has risen nearly 50% over the last decade. And Japan is interesting because it’s kind of like
0:11:48 this early case study where they’ve hit this silver tsunami a little earlier than a lot of
0:11:53 other countries. Why has Japan hit this first? Like all these stats are like Japanese stuff is
0:11:58 always referenced when it comes to getting old. Why Japan? I think they just hit the declining
0:12:04 birth rate earlier than many other countries. And so another interesting, you could say an
0:12:10 opportunity, maybe just an interesting thing for individuals to explore. But because Japan hit the
0:12:15 like silver tsunami a little earlier, they have this interesting thing where they’re giving away
0:12:22 free houses or super cheap houses, sometimes free. They’re called Akiyas, A-K-I-Y-A. I was in
0:12:27 Japan this summer and we did a walking tour and they took us around and they were showing us
0:12:31 these houses and they’re like, “See this house?” And it was like in the middle of Osaka, it was a
0:12:37 little rundown for sure. But they were like, “This house is free.” And we were like, “What do you
0:12:45 mean?” But because there’s so many of these people who have grown old, unfortunately passed away. And
0:12:52 then there’s also some social aspects of the Akiyas where in some cases not all, because Japanese
0:12:57 people really care about status. If let’s say they grew up in a poor neighborhood, their parents
0:13:04 passed away and then they’ve moved into a different social strata, they don’t want to claim the house
0:13:08 because they’re like, “I don’t want to be associated with that neighborhood.” And there’s
0:13:13 tons of articles on this, over 8 million Akiyas that are being given away by the government
0:13:21 or again, sometimes for very cheap. Well, have you heard the theory about Osaka and how
0:13:25 a lot of people are lying about their age? Oh yeah, the Blue Zones and how?
0:13:31 Yeah, there’s a book called The Blue Zones. And basically, I read it 10 years ago or something
0:13:37 and I was like, “This is my Bible for living a long, healthy life.” Turns out now this is a,
0:13:42 I believe, a hypothesis. I’m kind of regurgitating like a headline a little bit,
0:13:48 so I would have to actually research it to definitively say. But the idea is that
0:13:53 someone studied Osaka’s population and they found that too many people claim to have the
0:13:59 same birth date in Osaka to the point where the only way that this could be possibly true
0:14:04 is if many of them committed fraud in order to say that they are of a certain age so they
0:14:09 can start receiving social security and other benefits that you get when you hit a certain age.
0:14:16 And so, it potentially puts a lot of this idea of we study this particular population for old
0:14:20 health or old people and looking at like, “Wow, they’re so healthy.” When they’re just liars and
0:14:24 they’re actually a lot younger, they’re a lot younger potentially than they’ve said they are.
0:14:28 What are some other stats about those? I love talking to you because you just have
0:14:33 you actually have the data and the stats instead of just guessing.
0:14:38 Okay, so we didn’t really drill down as much on the, I mean, you talked about nursing homes and
0:14:43 assisted living, so let me give you one more from Numwalk, which by the way is a great newsletter.
0:14:48 Walt Hickey runs it and people, I feel like MFM listeners would love it. It’s great because you
0:14:52 talk about these one-chart businesses. I’ve done a thread on something similar and I call them digits,
0:14:58 but he calls them just numbers. So basically every single day, actually, he sends a newsletter of
0:15:05 maybe five or so different, just small paragraphs. And each paragraph has just one statistic.
0:15:10 And I like his because some of them are really important, like this silver tsunami and how
0:15:14 that’s going to impact things much greater than ourselves. But then sometimes it’s like,
0:15:20 there’s this random gerbil that it has infested homes in South Carolina or something like that.
0:15:26 This is awesome. Yeah. He sent this paragraph about assisted living. So let me just read this
0:15:32 out. This is directly from Numwalk. From 2004 to 2021, the median annual price of assisted living
0:15:39 increased 31% faster than inflation and has hit $54,000 per year. This is the crazy stat to me.
0:15:46 There are 31,000 assisted living facilities in the United States. Four out of every five are run as
0:15:51 for-profits and half of all the operators in the industry are clearing annual returns of 20% or
0:15:58 more than it costs to operate. With 850,000 older Americans living within assisted living,
0:16:03 the rents are getting jacked up. So I don’t actually know how assisted living
0:16:07 businesses are valued. Like, is it considered like a real estate valuation
0:16:14 where it’s just like a way to finance or pay for real estate or is it considered like a proper
0:16:18 operating business? Like, I guess, you know how hotels are classified as real estate? Yeah. You
0:16:25 know what I mean? So I would assume that’s the case of which 20% is fantastic. And 20% were
0:16:31 operating profit on a proper internet business. That’s not that great. But if it’s on real estate,
0:16:36 that’s really great. However, when I read this, I think, yeah, that’s lucrative.
0:16:40 I don’t want to operate this. No, I don’t either. I don’t use-
0:16:44 So it sounds like the worst thing ever. You’d have a funeral a day. You know what I mean?
0:16:49 Well, I mean, I think people are in this for quite some time. So you could say, again, purely from
0:16:53 the business perspective that you have this recurring revenue for years, you know, before
0:16:58 obviously some eventual very unfortunate form of charge. I would love to invest in a nursing home
0:17:04 fund, but I would not want to operate a nursing home. Well, what I’ll say is, I mean, I have parents
0:17:08 that are getting older and there’s also tons of assisted living for not just elderly, right? People
0:17:14 with mental illness or who need other support, mental or physical. And I think what I’ve seen
0:17:21 from exploring this space anecdotally is that most of the options really suck, as in you don’t
0:17:28 really feel great about sending your parent or loved one to these places. And so I haven’t explored
0:17:32 this deeply enough. This might exist. So if folks are listening and they know of this, I would love
0:17:39 to hear about it. But imagine the premium version of assisted living where you feel really, really
0:17:44 good about sending your grandparent, your mom, your sister, whatever it is, to one of these places.
0:17:50 And obviously, the price would have to go way up. But people are already, like this stat is saying
0:17:58 they’re spending $54,000 per year as the average. And so for the wealthy, like, wouldn’t you pay
0:18:02 five times that to send your loved one to something a lot better?
0:18:09 Yeah, and I think people do. Like, I know people who have people in nursing homes and they spend
0:18:16 $20,000 or $30,000 a month. It’s insane. It’s absolutely insane. Why haven’t there been any
0:18:25 new startups in this space? Like, for example, I got sick a few years ago and I had a IV in my arm
0:18:32 for, I think, 35 days. And I used to have a nurse have to come to my house every three or four days
0:18:40 set to change out the IV. And typically, these nurses that did this, they I was in that I wasn’t
0:18:45 normal. It’s mostly older people who they work with. And finding these nurses was a nightmare,
0:18:52 like finding them via my healthcare provider nightmare, shockingly, a large percentage of
0:18:57 the people. And this is when I was in New York, I got sick over summertime and had I get this.
0:19:01 And shockingly, a large percentage of these businesses were mom and pop businesses.
0:19:05 And so it was actually quite hard to operate. Like, they didn’t have a web portal that I
0:19:10 could interact with. I had to call them all the time to schedule them. Why hasn’t there been
0:19:16 interesting technology-based startups in this space? I mean, I’m sure there are some that exist,
0:19:20 but I’ll kind of revert back to what I said about even menopause. Like, this is not a sexy space,
0:19:29 right? The problems that people face at this point in their life. Most entrepreneurs have
0:19:35 not experienced, right? So like, they are not thinking about what an 80 year old might need,
0:19:40 because they’ve never been 80, right? And so I think it’s a little different where if I’m,
0:19:48 you know, in Gen Z, I’m very, I’m not, but if I were, I’d be very much, I’d be more likely to
0:19:52 want to create a business for people that I understand. And so for that reason, I think this,
0:19:55 this, these industries haven’t really been tackled as much.
0:20:05 Here’s an example of where I think you could merge knowledge from a younger base with, you know,
0:20:12 the assisted living facilities. I don’t know if this would work, but there’s this idea. I
0:20:16 also read Outlive by Peter Atia, and he talks about this centenary in Decathlon, right? And he
0:20:23 talks about how he works with people and he tries to get them to basically the fitness level of
0:20:27 people two decades younger. And actually what he tries to do is to get them at the fitness level
0:20:34 at the elite top 2% of people two decades younger. And he talks about in his book how, you know,
0:20:38 when people first hear that, he’s like, you know, most people think it’s impossible, right? Like,
0:20:43 I can’t even get in the top 2% of my age, let alone two decades younger. But he gives all these
0:20:47 examples. And the one that all site is, have you heard of Robert Marchand?
0:20:55 No, what’s that? So he’s unfortunately passed away. He passed away at 109, but he at 101
0:21:02 was still cycling and he, he broke some records at 101. And he decided that wasn’t enough. So he
0:21:10 then worked with a bunch of trainers and tried to break his existing record at 103. He hit 27
0:21:16 kilometers an hour on a bike. And he continued competing until he’s 105. If you look him up
0:21:20 on YouTube, there’s all these videos of him like getting past the finish line. And there’s all these
0:21:24 reporters like coming in trying to film him because he’s just like, he shouldn’t be doing the things
0:21:31 that he’s doing at 101, three or five. And so he gives several examples, as in Peter does in his
0:21:40 book of these people who at 80, 90, even over 100 like Robert, who have kind of not just competed
0:21:44 throughout their life, but in some cases, like didn’t take care of themselves, and then got on
0:21:51 this regimen and completely like shaped, reshaped their fitness. And so you could imagine what if
0:21:55 you could send your loved one, or they opt into this hopefully,
0:22:01 to a place where it’s not just this idea of assisted living where you kind of go there to die.
0:22:07 What if you go there for like a revival? What if you go there with a VO2 max of 15,
0:22:12 and all of a sudden you leave with it at 25, and you’re 80, like that is really cool.
0:22:17 And it kind of merges some of the trends that we’re seeing in like the kind of more new age
0:22:22 fitness and longevity with this massive business around assisted living.
0:22:27 So when I lived in Austin, I would say Austin is probably the most fit place I’ve ever been in.
0:22:33 If you like go along the trail and like Ladyburg Lake, like everyone is jacked and like muscular
0:22:38 and like women there tend to like lifting weights more than I’ve ever seen in different
0:22:44 like cities. Like it’s pretty wild. Like everyone’s into it. And so amongst my friends,
0:22:48 like being healthy is it’s definitely a lifestyle that we’re all bought into.
0:22:54 When you’re doing this research, is there something where it’s just like,
0:22:59 so like in order to do what you’re saying, you need, I think there needs to be like a,
0:23:05 it needs to be part of like the fabric of society. Whereas right now it’s not. So for example,
0:23:11 I love watching prison TV shows. It’s a confession. I’m Sam Parr. I like watching
0:23:16 TV shows. And one of my favorite things to watch are in different European countries
0:23:22 as well as in China and parts of a few other countries in Asia. They make the inmates do
0:23:28 exercise hour where like you have to like get out of the cell and you must do a routine. And the
0:23:33 idea is like, if you care about your body and exercise, you’re going to start caring about
0:23:37 other things and hopefully you’ll be a better person. Another example is I’ve got this friend
0:23:42 named Ann and started this company called solid core, which is like a Pilates business that she
0:23:46 sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. Her first company was a nonprofit that taught homeless
0:23:52 men how to run. And the reason she taught homeless men how to run is because if you learn how to
0:23:58 get up at 5am and care about fitness, you’re likely to care about other things and thus hopefully
0:24:05 get clean and sober and get a stable job, whatever. And so anyway, I’m on board with what you’re saying,
0:24:10 but I don’t think any of this will actually happen, at least in America, not for a while.
0:24:14 And a lot of people listening to this podcast are coastal people. They’re basically like coastal
0:24:19 elites. You know, they live in New York. They live in San Francisco like you or me. They live in LA
0:24:23 where they’re used to seeing the fit stuff. But if you go to Missouri, where I’m from,
0:24:28 or you go to other parts of the Midwest, this all fitness stuff ain’t exactly a thing.
0:24:33 Like, for example, I had a family member who got diabetes. And when he saw the doctor,
0:24:37 like he was like, “I got really sick and hospitalized.” And the doctor was like,
0:24:40 “Yeah, you have diabetes.” And the person was like, “Well, what do I do?” And the doctor was
0:24:48 like, “Just eat healthy.” It was like, “I don’t know, man. Figure it out.”
0:24:55 And the doctor was fat. So, anyway, my point being is, is this realistic that any of this
0:25:01 can actually happen? Or that if you started some of these businesses that people would actually
0:25:08 take to it? Yeah. So, I think this is actually an opportunity in the sense that if you think about,
0:25:14 yeah, like you said, we’re coastal elites. We’re also highly competitive. I think the
0:25:18 people who listen to this podcast are the same. So, what do we gravitate towards? 75 hard. You
0:25:24 gravitate towards like hitting new PBs on Strava. You go to doctors like Peter Atia,
0:25:29 who only sees like a few dozen patients a year. And it’s a quarter of a million dollars.
0:25:34 Exactly. Exactly. So, I agree. But I actually tweeted this the other day. I was like,
0:25:39 “How much better would a lot of people’s lives be if they just moved for three miles a day?”
0:25:43 I know that sounds like a lot to some people. You could even bring it down to one or two.
0:25:50 But we don’t need 75 hard and nothing against it. But we need someone commented,
0:25:54 we need 30 moderate. Because if you actually, it takes a little bit of time for people if
0:25:58 they’re really out of shape to get here. But if you get into even moderate shape,
0:26:04 you can run three miles in 30 minutes. And if you think about, that’s half the length of a yoga
0:26:10 class. It doesn’t take that much of your day. You don’t need the hour plus morning routine.
0:26:14 You just need something really, really moderate. And that’s obviously, like you said,
0:26:18 it’s what does James Clear talk about, like Keystone habits. You do that and everything
0:26:25 else unlocks. And so, I think there’s some sort of very, very average, and I mean average in a good
0:26:32 way program that should be out there that is not 75 hard like, that is something way, way more
0:26:38 approachable that the average American can do. And maybe it’s not even three miles at this point.
0:26:42 Maybe it’s one. And then the second year, you go to two. And then the third year, you go to three.
0:26:47 But I say that because I used to hate running. And there’s all these, you said something.
0:26:48 Do you even exercise?
0:26:54 I’m probably going to hit around 500 miles this year in running and then soccer, spin, etc.
0:26:59 But it took me, here’s the real takeaway for the average person who hates running.
0:27:05 It took me probably a year and a half to like running, which was way longer than I thought.
0:27:10 People talk about the runner’s high. And if you just do it enough, it’ll kick in.
0:27:15 Took me a year and a half of pretty consistent running for some switch to flip,
0:27:16 where all of a sudden, it was enjoyable.
0:27:23 Keep just rattling off some of these interesting stats. And it’s okay if it’s not related to
0:27:24 longevity.
0:27:29 Well, let’s talk about one thing real quick on the longevity side. I think one of the reasons that
0:27:34 I got into running was because I started using Strava and I had data. So another example of people
0:27:37 getting data, you used a CGM before, right? It continues.
0:27:42 Yeah, I’m an investor of levels. So I used one of those for a long time. I’ve also done a lot of
0:27:48 telomere length. I think it’s telomere anyway, like measuring those cells.
0:27:54 I do a lot of blood work. I do a ton of blood work, actually, probably quarterly.
0:28:01 I track my weight every day for the last four years, I think for three years.
0:28:07 I’ve tracked almost everything I’ve eaten on my body or I use my body tutor, which is like a
0:28:13 nutritional service, but I track all of my food on my fitness pal. But yeah, I track a lot of stuff.
0:28:17 You do a lot more than the average human. But CGMs in particular…
0:28:22 By the way, what I just said sounds like a lot. It adds up to roughly 10 minutes a week.
0:28:23 Wow.
0:28:25 Like it’s not that hard.
0:28:30 Well, let me just quickly share this one thing on the CGMs, which is Dexcom,
0:28:35 which was one of the companies that manufactures them. I think they have 40% market share or
0:28:41 something in that range. Their new product, Stella, is the first over-the-counter FDA approved CGM.
0:28:47 This was just as of last month, end of August. To me, this is really interesting because
0:28:53 I think before… I don’t know exactly how you got one. I think you needed a prescription,
0:28:56 but you could get that if you’re overweight or you had diabetes. Most people didn’t seek it out.
0:29:04 I’ve been testing one for the last two weeks and I love it. I’m obviously not affiliated at all.
0:29:10 And by the way, CGM, that stands for Continuous Glucose Monitor, which basically
0:29:16 you put this little quarter-sized button. It’s a little dirty from my sweater, but…
0:29:23 Yeah. You basically inject that into your arm and it measures your blood glucose levels.
0:29:29 And so you can just put your app to it at any given point and it will tell you what your blood
0:29:35 glucose monitor is or your blood glucose levels are. Yeah, exactly. So each one lasts around two
0:29:40 weeks. I think a lot of people just do it for two to four weeks and they get a lot of data around
0:29:47 what’s your resting or fasting glucose level. And it basically does the same thing that
0:29:52 DEXA does, which is a lot of people will say, “Oh, I’m 15% body fat.” And they go do a DEXA
0:29:58 and they’re really like 22. It’s like a very harsh thing. DEXA is very harsh. Oh, totally.
0:30:04 And CGMs are very harsh too. You’ll think, “Oh, I’m going to eat healthy. I’m going to eat a salad.”
0:30:09 And then you eat just a little bit of cranberries in your salad or a little bit of dressing,
0:30:15 like some type of sugary dressing in your salad and your blood glucose spikes. Or you’re like,
0:30:21 “I’m just going to eat steak and a potato.” Or something that you view as a whole food
0:30:27 and your blood glucose monitor starts going off like an alarm because it’s shocking how
0:30:34 some of this stuff peaks your blood. Yeah. The reason I love it is because of what you’re saying.
0:30:39 So we are a family at home with an eight-sleep. I’ve got an Apple Watch. My husband’s bought
0:30:44 like four oar rings. We are similar to you in that place. Where does he put all his oars ring?
0:30:48 They get a new version. He’s like, “I need the new version.” I don’t know.
0:30:56 But the point is, we’ve used a lot of this technology and my problem with some of it
0:31:02 is that it is so broad that you’re like, “Okay. I slept bad last night. How do I fix it?”
0:31:07 And I think the most major thing people talk about is alcohol. But on a more granular level,
0:31:12 like what changes should I make? This, like you said, it’s so reactive where you can see exactly
0:31:19 what spikes you. And sometimes it’s not very reassuring where you’re like, “Okay. I can’t hide
0:31:25 it.” Basically is the idea. And so I’ve really been enjoying it. And I think the fact that it
0:31:31 now is over the counter, I think there’s what levels is the company already kind of doing this.
0:31:38 By the way, I did invest in levels. So I will promote it at levels.com. I think you can go
0:31:43 to their website right now and you can get one of these things. That is my plug and I’m letting
0:31:47 people know. So we both have a stake here. Just let everyone know. But go ahead.
0:31:53 Well, I was going to say, Subdexcom, the company that sells these Stelos and they have a few other
0:31:58 more expensive CGMs, they have an API. I don’t think it’s fully open, but I think you can apply
0:32:05 to use it. And very simple idea. I hate to even use this comparable, but I think there should be
0:32:12 a Strava for CGMs. Now that more people are using it, even during just that trial period of a month
0:32:20 of learning, like I think being able to kind of socialize what you’re learning, but also compete
0:32:24 in a way, that’s what Strava is. Like you’re congratulating each other, but you’re also seeing
0:32:30 other people’s PBs, seeing in the equivalent version with the CGM, you see like, are you spending your
0:32:35 day in range? Like how big are your spikes? What’s your dawn effect? Which is when it’s basically
0:32:40 your rising glucose after you wake up. I think that there’s going to be some sort of socialization
0:32:45 of this. I don’t know exactly what it looks like. And maybe just one example of where you can
0:32:49 already see this before Stelo existed is, have you heard of the glucose goddess?
0:32:55 No, what is this? It’s just this woman. She’s got five million followers on Instagram,
0:33:01 one million on YouTube. She has a recipe club where she charges $5 a month and she recently
0:33:07 released, I think it was just as of the last few months, a product called Anti-Spike.
0:33:12 Dude, her website is awesome. I love this woman. Is that her in the main photo? She looks like
0:33:19 her 1970s. She’s got like a cool haircut. Yeah, I know. She’s like, cool to look at. This lady is
0:33:24 cool. All right, so go ahead. Who’s this lady? She calls herself the glucose goddess and she
0:33:32 basically is an educator on glucose. And I think, or as in specifically, like how your body reacts.
0:33:38 And is this a big business? Well, so again, she’s got, so she just released Anti-Spike,
0:33:41 which is her first product. I have no idea if it’s good or not. I think she said,
0:33:46 it’s four ingredients. It’s like cinnamon, mulberry leaves, and two other things. And
0:33:51 that website, which is separate from her Made One, is already doing over 100,000 views a month.
0:33:57 So I don’t know what her sales are, but she’s definitely getting traffic there. And I think,
0:34:01 you know, that’s just like one example where people are like really engaged in this channel.
0:34:07 What’s, what’s the point of this? Why is keeping my blood glucose from spiking good for me?
0:34:12 When your blood glucose is high, it’s basically doing damage to your organs. I think, like,
0:34:18 basically the granules impact your artery walls. They also, like, if you over time have too much
0:34:24 blood glucose, when your body is secreting insulin to bring it down, your insulin resistance goes up.
0:34:28 And basically, like, I think a lot of people are aware of type two diabetes, like that is one
0:34:34 way that your body breaks down with high glucose. But again, like just having an elevated glucose
0:34:41 level over time just impacts, like, yourself specifically and how they operate. So there’s
0:34:45 a few things that you want to pay attention to. It’s like how high the spike is. But also,
0:34:50 I think the more important part is the area under the curve of your spikes. So how long does it take
0:34:55 for it to bring, for you to bring your glucose down? But the point is that, like, I’ve started to
0:35:01 do this for two weeks. And similar to you, it’s like an endless stream of questions around, like,
0:35:06 how high is too high? And, like, what does it mean if I have, like, a double hump? And what does it
0:35:11 mean if my glucose is higher the next day? And so I think there’s, like, a community aspect. And I
0:35:17 also think, like, if we think about the marketing side of this, I think there’s probably some genius
0:35:25 business where you actually use something like a cello as a loss leader. So it’s around 50 bucks
0:35:31 for one for two weeks. And you could imagine a business where you’d have to map, like, get this
0:35:40 really right. But you give them the cello for free. You make sure, like, they have to use it for two
0:35:45 weeks and jot down what they’re eating and their lifestyle. And at the end of that two weeks, think
0:35:49 of all of the information you have about that person’s metabolic health, the way they eat,
0:35:55 the way they exercise. And there are so many different businesses that, I mean, you mentioned
0:36:01 some of them, like, you have the health concierge that they sign up for after that. You have someone
0:36:05 who educates them on, you know, their nutrition and their exercise. Maybe they get a personal trainer.
0:36:12 Maybe you have some sort of referral with specific gyms in their area. Maybe you have a deal with
0:36:17 Dexcom directly for their next CGM, because they’re probably going to want to keep going.
0:36:25 I think there’s something genius in that loss leader idea, given the price point of it being
0:36:28 around 50 bucks for two weeks. You know what one of my friends did? And I think you know,
0:36:34 I’m just a mayor. So he did it during COVID, I believe. It was called wearablechallenge.com.
0:36:46 And the way it worked was I Venmo’d him $900 and I would have to send him proof. So basically,
0:36:50 I sent him $900. The goal of the challenge was to keep my blood glucose level below,
0:36:54 I forget the metric. Would something like 115 make sense?
0:37:02 That roughly makes sense. The range is like 80 to 140 healthy, but a lot of like health geeks are
0:37:06 like that’s way too broad. And they say like 120. So whatever the threshold is, like 115 or 120,
0:37:14 I forget. Anyway, it was like 120, whatever. And I had to send him proof that day that I did not
0:37:22 go above 120. And every day that I sent him proof, I got $30 back. And so by the end of the challenge,
0:37:30 if I had a 100% success rate, I got my whole $900 back. If I did it well, or if I screwed up,
0:37:35 which I actually screwed up like four times, I think it was like four times on accident where I
0:37:42 was like, like this particular fruit, I’m able to have a little bit of that is and I like,
0:37:46 it was like shit. Or another time it was like a raspberry flavored dressing or something like
0:37:51 that that totally made me spike. And it was pretty brilliant. And I think Justin said that it was
0:37:56 like fairly successful. I don’t know why I shut it down. And so anyway, that was like a cool business
0:38:00 built on the back of that. One last thing I wanted to ask you about was this, what was all
0:38:06 this posture stuff that you had? And by the way, I think it’s crazy that you’re like all of a sudden
0:38:10 into all this health stuff, because that’s not the stuff that I knew. Because when I first started
0:38:16 working with you, you were naturally a very thin person. And I think when you’re naturally thin,
0:38:20 you don’t really give a shit about health because you’re like, I’m skinny, therefore I’m healthy.
0:38:24 And so now I think it’s cool that you’re into all this stuff. Well, that’s exactly right. I think
0:38:29 there’s this misconception that if you’re skinny, you’re healthy. And as I’ve gone down this rabbit
0:38:35 hole, I was like, oh, I was not healthy. And I think actually one of the things that triggered me
0:38:40 was two years ago, I did Cubio. So you guys have talked about that before. It’s like one of the full
0:38:46 body health scans. And my cholesterol was high. And I was like, why is my cholesterol high? And at
0:38:51 first I was like, oh, it must be genetics, right? Like, I must have a history of this. And then I
0:38:56 found out neither of my parents have high cholesterol. And my dad is like, not very healthy at all.
0:39:01 And I was like, how do I have higher cholesterol than my father? And so it was like this, I think
0:39:07 that was the impetus. But I think generally, that’s why I encourage people like, I mean,
0:39:11 do your own research, not affiliate it or whatever. But like doing something like a CGM,
0:39:16 like you said, is like, you just cannot hide getting your blood work, you cannot hide, you get the
0:39:23 data. And no matter how skinny you are, you see the results. And by the way, like, I wasn’t surprised
0:39:28 in a way because I wasn’t exercising properly, like I wasn’t eating as well as I could. But on the
0:39:34 posture side, is just another one of these like spin offs of health. But I spend way too much
0:39:39 time online. I think a lot of people do too. So I’ve got a bad case, hopefully improving case of
0:39:46 nerd neck. Some people call it forward head posture. But basically, it’s just because we’re hunched over
0:39:52 at a computer all day long. And I haven’t done a ton here at like, I’m kind of on the like very
0:39:58 early part of this curve. But I have played around with I’m not using it right now. Hold
0:40:02 up, there’s this thing. I don’t know if I vouch for it or not yet, but this thing called Betterback.
0:40:08 I’m looking at it. I think any any time that you have to use one of these devices,
0:40:11 I tend to get nervous that it’s legit. But go ahead, what is it?
0:40:15 Well, that’s why I don’t know. So it has helped me sit up more. It basically like it
0:40:21 runs around your knees and your back. And I like it better than something there’s things you can put
0:40:25 on your back that like zap you and stuff. And I feel like that’s really unnatural. But this actually
0:40:31 just because it’s like fixated around your knees, you just sit up straighter the whole time you’re
0:40:37 sitting. So there’s things like that for those listening, it’s basically like a strap that when
0:40:41 you’re sitting down, it wraps around your back and then attaches to your knees. And in doing that,
0:40:48 it kind of forces you to sit up. Yeah, exactly. There’s other for the women, your four female
0:40:54 listeners. There is a sports broad that I haven’t tried yet called Form, which apparently like
0:40:58 folks like Taylor Swift have used. If you look at her posture a decade ago, it was way, way worse.
0:41:02 So there’s like, there’s a small part of me that believes that something like that works.
0:41:08 Can I use this? You can. Like you’re telling me just like this like
0:41:13 shirt that I mean, for me, it would be a shirt that’s going to make me
0:41:17 have better posture. What is this thing? I haven’t tried it, but it’s a sports broad that
0:41:24 people vouch helps your posture. But I think generally, as I’ve explored this a little bit,
0:41:31 it is a function of your muscle, right? Like if you have strength in your abdomen and your back,
0:41:36 like you’re going to sit up straighter, but there’s a video I shared. We can include all
0:41:40 this in the show notes. This is actually just like an email I sent or I’m going to send to
0:41:46 the internet pipes crew this month. But like it’s a video from Brian Johnson around his posture.
0:41:51 He worked with a posture coach for several months. And then Tim Ferriss has recommended something
0:41:57 called the ego skew method, which I have not tried. And what’s this Brian Johnson video?
0:42:02 What’s how do I just make my posture better? There’s three different exercises that he does
0:42:06 every single day. And he shares them in this video that improved his posture.
0:42:14 And what’s this ego, ego, a skew? It’s a method that I think you need to like work with a
0:42:19 practitioner for, which is why again, I’m not, I don’t, I don’t think I’m vouching for this
0:42:25 in any way, but it’s just something that came up. All right, if you’re listening to this pod,
0:42:31 I already know something about you. You, my friend, are nosy. You want to know the numbers
0:42:35 behind all of these things that we’re talking about, how much money people make, how much money
0:42:39 people spend, how much money businesses make, you want to know all of this people’s net worth,
0:42:44 all of it. Well, I’ve got good news for you. So my company Hampton, we’re a private community for
0:42:48 CEOs. We do this thing where we survey our members and we ask them all types of information,
0:42:52 like how much money they’re paying themselves, how much money they’re paying a lot of their
0:42:56 employees, what their team, my bonuses are, what their net worth is, what their portfolio looks
0:43:01 like. We ask all these questions, but we do it anonymously. And so people are willing to reveal
0:43:04 all types of amazing information. So if you really cannot Google, you can’t find anywhere else.
0:43:10 And you could check it out at joinhampton.com, click the reports section on the menu, click
0:43:14 the salary and compensation report. It’s going to blow your mind. You’re going to love this stuff.
0:43:23 Check it out. Now, back to the pot. Dude, there’s this great TED talk that you should watch it.
0:43:30 Why Sitting Down Destroys You. I think it’s by Roger Frampton. I believe that’s the one.
0:43:36 But it’s a TED talk that has millions of views. And he basically goes through this idea of how
0:43:42 he worked. I think he worked in the Amazon. He worked with some like Indigenous tribe where they
0:43:48 didn’t use like a lot of chairs or something like that. And what he found was that basically the
0:43:55 people who, in today’s age, we don’t really do this, but we used to, where if you stand a lot,
0:43:59 you squeeze your ass. Imagine you got a little penny in your butt cheeks that you’re trying
0:44:03 to keep from falling down on the ground. That’s basically what you do. You squeeze your butt
0:44:08 together when you’re standing. And there’s a reason why our glutes typically tend to be our
0:44:13 largest muscle. It’s because we are supposed to use them a lot and how we don’t really use them
0:44:18 too much anymore. And so instead, when we stand, we kind of lean forward. And he was like, no,
0:44:23 you should actually, when you stand, he was like, a lot of babies actually, if you watch like a kid,
0:44:30 you’ll notice they do a good job of this, but you squeeze your butt together and you flex your abs
0:44:36 as opposed to just falling forward. And if you work on it, you can actually hold that for like
0:44:40 a fairly long time when you’re standing. And that’s the proper way to stand. And so it’s not just
0:44:46 sitting that will destroy you, but standing incorrectly. You know what I mean? Yeah, totally.
0:44:49 Well, even in the video I did watch with Brian Johnson, he was talking about how most people,
0:44:55 when they think they want good posture, they like tilt their head back. And that’s bad as well.
0:45:00 Like they’re kind of like, oh, I have good posture like this. And you really want to be more like
0:45:08 head, the back of your neck should be absolutely straight. So yeah. Dude, Steph, are there any
0:45:14 more of these stats or storylines that we should dive into? Let’s do this idea of barbell sports
0:45:18 just because we’re doing this whole like fitness longevity stuff. So all I want to do is share
0:45:23 kind of a frame with folks, which is like, you know, you’ve had a bunch of the, you know, you
0:45:28 call tier one sports that everyone knows soccer, basketball, baseball that have existed for a long
0:45:34 time. They’re in every school. But now you’re seeing all of these more niche sports pop up.
0:45:38 Pickleball is the most famous example. But there’s also sports like tech ball. Have you
0:45:47 heard of tech ball? What is tech ball? TEQ ball. So it’s, I don’t know how to explain it. The best
0:45:53 version, I think is like it’s a mix of soccer and ping pong. So imagine like a big ping pong table,
0:45:58 and then you’re using your body and it’s like a large ball to basically lob, you know, the ball
0:46:05 over the net. There’s crazy videos on YouTube of this, this tech ball. I think tech ball itself
0:46:09 has 4 million followers on Facebook. Some of their videos on YouTube have millions of views
0:46:14 because it really is just like freak of nature kind of stuff. People are doing almost like flips
0:46:20 to like to get the ball. But the reason I mention it is because again, this frame is
0:46:26 what did pickleball do? Pickleball basically took tennis or something like it, and it made
0:46:32 it more accessible, right? They changed how bouncy the ball was. They changed the size of the court.
0:46:38 They changed the way that the paddle feels so that just about anyone could play, right?
0:46:44 Tennis is like pretty, pretty hard to do well. And there’s a version of people who want to do it.
0:46:51 But pickleball basically opened the aperture so more people could participate. So I think
0:46:56 like if you take an existing sport and you make it more, make it less agile,
0:47:00 so more people can participate, that’s one direction. And then tech ball is the opposite.
0:47:06 The same way that in like fashion, you have fast fashion, and then you have the premium brands
0:47:11 and basically nothing in the middle succeeds. I think it’s like an interesting parallel where
0:47:17 tech ball is like you actually make it way harder, right? So that some people who just want to like
0:47:23 prove that they’re extremely agile and that their competitors and their winners gravitate
0:47:27 to sport something like that because they just want to be the best. And that’s a much more,
0:47:33 again, shareable sport because you’re clipping this thing up and you’re basically showing like,
0:47:38 look at this freak of nature. What’s Padel? All my friends keep talking about this thing called
0:47:44 Padel. And I’m like, is it paddle or Padel? I always thought it was Padel before hearing people
0:47:48 play. Here’s what reminds me of one time I went to a conference in Europe and there was this like
0:47:54 white Michigan lady who was like, had been living in Germany or something like that for like two
0:47:59 years. And she was this influencer asshole. And she was talking about how she had this brand deal
0:48:05 with Adidas. And she’s talking to me. I’m like, dude, we’re both from the Midwest. And I’m like,
0:48:11 what the hell is Adidas? She’s like, Adidas. You don’t know Adidas. The shoe brand. And I’m like,
0:48:18 do you mean Adidas? And she’s like, no, I mean Adidas. That’s called Adidas. And I was like,
0:48:24 dude, you asshole, just call it Adidas. You know, I don’t know what that means. And I always thought
0:48:28 that Padel, it was someone like this fancy guy talking to me about Padel. I’m like, are you
0:48:33 trying to say the word paddle? Is that really what you mean? What the hell does Padel mean?
0:48:38 And I think it’s actually called Padel. That’s my long story of saying. I don’t know what it’s
0:48:43 called. Like all the best players are in Spain. And I think I don’t know. I don’t know if this is
0:48:47 one of those cases where like, you know how countries will have their own name and then
0:48:51 other countries will be just be like, actually, we’re not going to call you Sveria, which is what
0:48:56 you call yourself. We’re just going to call you Sweden. And we’re just like, imagine if I did
0:49:00 that to you, Sam. I’m like, I know you think you’re Sam, but like, I’m just going to call you Scott.
0:49:05 Yeah, I feel that it’s weird. So I don’t know what I don’t know if Padel is correct
0:49:11 or it’s just the Americanized version of paddle. But that is I played it while I was in New York.
0:49:18 It’s like also kind of like tennis, but there’s a wall behind you and the wall is in play.
0:49:22 And it’s blowing up. It’s totally blowing up. I think that’s another example of the latter example
0:49:27 where you take something and you actually make it harder. So that’s just a frame and like maybe one
0:49:32 other example of where you make something. Again, you’re attracting these like go hard people is
0:49:39 Everesting. Have you heard of Everesting? Yeah. So one of the guys who started this company,
0:49:44 Mark, is in Hampton and I’ve gotten to know him. Go ahead. What’s it called or explain what it is?
0:49:50 It’s basically just for the people who want to climb Everest, but can’t make it to Everest.
0:49:58 It’s just this competition where people like run up and down any hill as many times as possible
0:50:04 that equates to what it would be to climb Everest. This is an interesting frame because it’s actually
0:50:08 what can you do with no equipment, right? Like running, you can do that with, right? And what
0:50:13 can you do anywhere? But running is boring for a lot of people just like pure play running. So
0:50:16 this is an example where you can do it anywhere. You’ve got a hill.
0:50:24 I am going to do one of those this year. It’s called 29029.com. I’m doing one this year. Do
0:50:32 you want to do it with me? When is it? He’s sending me the list of he’s let me pick one at 10-1
0:50:37 for free, which is like a big deal. I think it’s like five grand. Talk about it. Yes.
0:50:43 It’s expensive. It’s really expensive because they give you like a glamping tent setup. Like
0:50:47 it’s like kind of like a high end camping thing. I could get the price wrong. I think it’s
0:50:53 I think it’s thousands of dollars. I thought it was 5,000, but I could get I could have gotten
0:50:58 it wrong. But he’s sending me the the schedule and they have them in like Maine and Utah and
0:51:04 all these places. It looks pretty awesome. I mean, I’m down. I don’t think I honestly don’t
0:51:09 think I’ll be able to complete it. So he told me when he was creating it. You said that the rules
0:51:13 are to me or you said that with a lot of these sports, you want it to be hard. He said he said
0:51:18 you want it. He’s like, we made it hard enough that only 25% of the participants will be able to
0:51:26 finish. Okay. And like really hard. Yeah, maybe I’m not down. I feel like I really care. So even in
0:51:30 setting my goal for the half marathon, I’m like one of those people where I’m like,
0:51:35 I probably should set a more ambitious goal, but like I really want to hit my goal. I’m going to
0:51:41 feel really bad. It’s not even that. That’s what I mean. It’s it’s nine minute mile for for the half.
0:51:47 I think that’s good. I don’t know. Who cares though, really? I mean, I’m five three. So
0:51:50 five three females. So what does that have to do with anything? Well, I mean, it’s I think it’s
0:51:55 just like, you know, it’s my first half. I’m like, you’re better if you’re shorter, by the way.
0:52:01 Are you? Is that true? Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of people, so I looked into this because I was always
0:52:09 curious. I believe stride length and height are not necessarily correlated. So the length of your
0:52:13 legs is not entirely. No, you’ll have to look this up to verify that I’m right. But the length
0:52:17 of your legs is not necessarily correlated with the strength or the length of your stride. It’s
0:52:24 how much force you’re exerting against the ground. And so you can have similar height or different
0:52:28 height people have very similar stride length, depending on how much force they put against
0:52:34 the ground. Does that make sense? It does. But I had no idea. I was used. Look at me. I was this
0:52:39 whole time. I was like, no, you’re using it as a bullshit excuse. No. And in fact, if you look at
0:52:46 some of the fastest marathoners in the world, so if you or even like the 5K, 10K, a lot of them,
0:52:51 particularly, you know, these Ethiopian women are quite short. And I would argue, I bet you if you
0:52:56 looked up who won the 5K, 10K marathon this year in the Olympics, I bet you the top 10 finishers
0:53:04 of each on average was five, three height. So that’s a bullshit excuse. Okay. Okay. I’m all I’m
0:53:10 guessing that excuse. But here’s another thing that I was going to ask you when we were talking
0:53:16 about living forever. I think a lot of people who live to be old, I think they’re smaller.
0:53:24 So if you look like there aren’t a lot of old giants. And so what always freaks me out is I’m
0:53:33 six to 205 pounds or so. So I think I may be the 90th percentile of height. I get nervous that
0:53:37 there aren’t a lot of examples of tall people who live a long time.
0:53:43 Yeah, but I think like so probably the references you’re thinking of are people who are like
0:53:48 100 plus. I think it’s probably pretty common for people to live into their 90s.
0:53:54 Yeah, but I’m trying to be I’m trying to get to that 120, 130 range. Come on.
0:53:58 What’s the oldest of like oldest human who’s lived?
0:54:07 Probably 120 something. So yeah, 122. So like you’re you’re aiming for oldest human
0:54:13 to have ever lived. I don’t think that’s going to be crazy uncommon for our generation to have a
0:54:19 hand. So you have this stat in there. You say that you said that you are more likely to be a
0:54:24 billionaire of which there are something like 3000. You’re more likely to be a billionaire
0:54:31 than you are to be someone who lives to be 110 or above, which there’s like 800 or 1000 or something
0:54:38 like that. Exactly. But I think that’s going to be way more common. Like we’ve had a lot of really
0:54:44 smart people on this podcast and they were like I just and they just tell these stories where I’m
0:54:50 not smart enough to understand the data. But I talk to smart people and they say things like they
0:54:56 don’t think it’s going to be particularly uncommon to have 110, 115, 120 in the next 50 or so years.
0:55:00 Well, there’s actually like, yeah, in the book, they kind of break down that
0:55:06 basically the calculus around if you make it to 100, there’s a certain percent chance that you
0:55:11 make it to 110 versus 120, et cetera. We don’t know 130 because people haven’t really made it there.
0:55:17 But if you just do the same math around like, okay, instead of having 1000 people to make it to 100,
0:55:21 if we then have 100,000 people make it to 100 or a million people make it to 100,
0:55:26 then like you just you take those same percentages and you’re like, oh, actually, yeah,
0:55:31 then we’re for sure going to have like, let’s say instead of one person making it to 120,
0:55:38 something you have, let’s say 50, right? And in that case, it’s like, well, then we’re going to
0:55:43 get some data on it likely, you know, not all of them are just going to drop at one. What is it,
0:55:48 122? Some of them are going to make it. Dude, all and all this bums me out because it makes you
0:55:57 realize how short life is. Like 100 years is not a long time. It’s not, it’s not a long time at 30
0:56:03 years old. We, you know, you are you’re you’re a good chunk of the way through your life already,
0:56:10 even though I feel like a child still. Yeah, it’s just it’s life is I think I felt this particularly
0:56:15 when I had a baby because I saw how fast she grew where we’re at the stage now where every two weeks,
0:56:21 like there’s like a different brain like something like just the other day she woke up and she now
0:56:26 knows how to high five or like little small things like, oh, wow, now she knows how to mimic.
0:56:31 She really can mimic. And then I’ll look at photos of her just three months ago and I’m like,
0:56:36 she didn’t even have really any hair or like the idea of like mimicking that wasn’t even part of the
0:56:42 equation. And so you go through this thing of having a kid and you’re like, that’s nothing. Like
0:56:47 it’s just like this, it’s going so fast 100 years is nothing. Or I do the math and I’m like at the
0:56:54 age of 40, when she’s 40, I’m going to be 75, which means if I continue having kids for the next
0:57:00 six years, I’m going to be in my 80s when they’re in their 30s and 40s. And that just seems insane
0:57:05 to me. That seems insane, right? By the way, have you seen the smile curve around happiness?
0:57:11 No. How older people just generally tend to be happy. And so people tend to be happy early
0:57:16 in life. And then in mid mid years, there’s this like they call it the smile curve because like
0:57:22 generally, they become a little less happy. And then that curve goes like up and up and up as people
0:57:26 get older, which is really interesting. I don’t know exactly what to take away from that other
0:57:31 than like. Well, the takeaway is that you spend your 30s and 40s giving a shit about what other
0:57:39 people think, climbing the ladder. And you want to flex on others. But when you’re 10 and 15,
0:57:44 you care about that a little bit less. And then at the age of 30 and 40, you sacrifice your values
0:57:50 in order to appease other people and to climb up this ladder. And then at the age of 50, 60, 70,
0:57:56 you have grandkids and you realize none of that fucking matters. That’s what I that’s my assumption.
0:58:00 Yeah. I mean, people can interpret a lot from that. But I agree. I think there’s something around
0:58:04 like you learn a lot about what to care about and what not to care about. And then you’re happy.
0:58:08 Steph Smith, thank you very much for doing the pod. We appreciate you.
0:58:12 Thank you. By the way, can I say something really quick, which is just the last time I was on
0:58:19 just a shout out to the listeners. Like we talked about so the product that I had launched a year
0:58:24 ago, Internet Pipes for like 30 seconds at the end of an hour plus long podcast.
0:58:28 How much revenue did you make off that off that? I’m pretty sure it’s hard to
0:58:34 tie directly like, but for sure, six figures, which is crazy. So I just want to shout out
0:58:38 to the folks and all the people who listen, who are in Internet Pipes and all that.
0:58:43 So Internet Pipes.com. It’s like a it’s a it’s kind of started as like a book, but now it’s a
0:58:47 community, right? It’s a community. We run events that are kind of weird and quirky, weird fruit
0:58:53 tastings. We did like electric shuffleboard, documentary screening. So it’s cool. We can
0:58:57 do a code if people pay for the events. No, no, no. So it’s a one time thing. And then you’re in
0:59:03 the community, you get access to the events that we do monthly emails. So again, the one I’m sending
0:59:08 is on longevity last month. It was basically just took our idea from trends and you did it on your
0:59:13 own. You said it. I didn’t say it. But actually, the point was around Internet Pipes was meant to
0:59:18 be a little different in the sense of trends was like, here are the trends. Internet Pipes is meant
0:59:24 to be here are the tools so that you can surface your own trends as well. Like, you know, behind the
0:59:34 scenes, how the sandwiches. This is awesome. You owe me a dinner then. Oh, totally. More than a dinner.
0:59:38 And we can set up that’s all I’ll take. I’ll accept a dinner. That’s a fair trade.
0:59:43 And if future people want to join, they can sign up. We can set up a code. Why don’t we just do
0:59:48 Sam? I say, I’m on your website right now. Sam is a good code. It looks like it hasn’t been used.
0:59:55 All right, internetpipes.com. Use the code Sam Steph. We’re giving you all this plugs, man.
1:00:00 Thank you. You guys are the best. All right, I’ll talk to you a little bit. All right. See you.
1:00:04 I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to
1:00:11 put my all in it like the days on the road. Let’s travel never looking back.
1:00:21 [BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00:05 Alright, so Sean, I wanted to have Isaac on because we talk a lot about making money on this podcast
0:00:10 But I’ve been with Isaac at his home a bunch. I’ve got to know him and he’s inspired me that
0:00:15 To believe that like money isn’t the only reason for business. It’s about like kind of craftsmanship
0:00:19 It’s about like creating like your little like corner of the universe and into your vision
0:00:23 And I wanted to have him on the pod because I think he’s different than a lot of the guests that we’ve had on here
0:00:25 But let me explain how I met Isaac
0:00:31 I saw that he had this amazing website for his Airbnb and it said Isaac French owns this place
0:00:39 He’s a former accountant turned real estate mogul, but he’s really most passionate about painting and being an artist and I was like
0:00:41 This kid’s the most interesting person I’ve ever read about
0:00:47 What the hell and so I just called him and we became friends on the phone and then eventually met up in real life
0:00:50 And he’s kind of blow my mind as I’ve got to know
0:00:52 I
0:01:01 So when I met Isaac I met him in a business context
0:01:07 He had this vibe where he was like, oh like no the right way to do this business is doing this this admits
0:01:11 When you say you met him in a business context, what context did you meet him in the same?
0:01:16 Can I tell a tiny story here about that? Yeah? Yeah, so shout out Zach. He’s cool
0:01:20 He introduced us he introduced me to Sam at least I had no idea who Sam was but
0:01:24 Basically, I started texting this guy named Sam and I was like I couldn’t really give a rip
0:01:28 I had just built Live Oak Lake which I’ll get to in just a second and like here’s this guy Sam
0:01:33 Who’s some business moguls what Zach told me and so I started texting him and he’s like, oh, this is super cool
0:01:37 You know whatever I told him all my numbers and then he was the next morning
0:01:41 He was like, hey, I’m about to make a post on Twitter. You should join so I’ll shout you out
0:01:46 I was like, I don’t have Twitter. That’s a total waste of time. Good luck basically and he’s like, no
0:01:48 You should really make a post that you should make an account and it’s like no whatever
0:01:53 So he made this post that kind of blew up. It got like millions of views so halfway through that process
0:01:58 I was like, oh, maybe I should go ahead and join this and the rest is history because like I actually and I’d love to
0:02:04 Talk about that but I absolutely love the ability to connect with other people online and share what I’m all about
0:02:08 But that was my introduction to Sam. It was not as a fanboy
0:02:11 It was just like this random dude on the internet who started texting me about business
0:02:14 and his numbers Sean
0:02:20 They’ll blow you away. I’m ready to be blown away. Go ahead. What is it? Can you can you say the numbers?
0:02:25 Yeah, yeah, so let me just tell you a quick story live oak lake if that’s alright because it’s it’s pretty cool
0:02:30 So I was a bookkeeper and I had this dream. I was 24 years old just got married
0:02:33 I had this dream to create this like immersive
0:02:36 cohesively designed
0:02:40 Village of tiny homes in Texas. I didn’t really have terminology for it
0:02:45 I just had it’s really hard to articulate because I just had this vision for what it would feel like and I put
0:02:48 an emphasis on feel because that’s it was like a vibe I wanted to create and
0:02:53 People started laughing at me like you’re crazy and I started looking for land for like three months one morning
0:02:56 I wake up open up Zillow and there’s this five acre like
0:03:01 Jungle down the road for me that I driven past probably a hundred times but never thought anything of
0:03:04 But it had this little cow pond in the middle
0:03:05 So I was like hmm
0:03:09 I should check that out drove over and when I walked on the property. I literally got goosebumps
0:03:12 I was like this is the place to create to realize this dream
0:03:19 Met the realtor got it under contract. I had nineteen thousand dollars of savings to my name again 24
0:03:26 Was not bankable by any standards had experience in construction. So my dad was a plumber general contractor
0:03:30 I grew up with that experience. I’ve always been an artist. I’ve always loved design
0:03:33 So how did you get under contract? Would you if you didn’t have any money?
0:03:35 What would you pay to put it under contract?
0:03:37 I paid like two thousand dollars of earnest money
0:03:41 But to close with cash in 30 days because it was a super competitive market
0:03:46 This was 2021 in Texas people were flocking here and I knew this property
0:03:50 I mean, I was there within hours of when it was listed and I knew it would have been gone by the end of that day
0:03:54 So I was like, I’m gonna get under contract with the due diligence period and then I’ll figure this out
0:04:00 All right, let’s take a quick break because I want to talk to you about some new stuff that HubSpot has now
0:04:04 They let me freestyle this ad here. So I’m gonna actually tell you what I think is interesting
0:04:09 So they have this thing called the false spotlight showing all the new features that they released in the last few months
0:04:12 And the ones that stood out to me were breeze intelligence
0:04:16 I don’t know if you’ve seen this but if you’re in HubSpot and you have let’s say a customer there
0:04:18 You can just basically add
0:04:24 Intelligence to that customer the estimated revenue for that company how many employees it has maybe their email address or their location
0:04:26 If they’ve ever visited your page or not
0:04:32 And so you can enrich all of your data automatically with one click using this thing called breeze intelligence
0:04:37 They actually acquired a really cool company called clear bit and it’s become breeze, which is great because now it’s built in
0:04:40 I always hated using two different tools to try to do this now
0:04:45 It’s all in one place and so all the data you had about your customers now just got smarter
0:04:46 So check it out
0:04:49 You can actually see all the stuff they released through the cool website go to hubspot.com
0:04:54 Slash spotlight to see them all and get the demos yourself back to this episode
0:04:58 How much would you need at the end of that period to have come up with?
0:05:03 $133,000 was the price of the property which was a really good deal to it for five acres
0:05:09 So you just make this clear you have $19,000 you put $2,000 down to lock this up
0:05:14 You now have I forgot how many you said days you said 30 69 30 days like that 30 days where you’re like
0:05:18 I am I have faith that I will come up with another hundred thirty thousand dollars
0:05:23 That I’ve never seen before in the next 30 days. Of course. Why would I not?
0:05:27 Well, you got to have conviction you got to believe in yourself if you expect anybody else to believe in you
0:05:32 And I did have a list of people that are like, yeah, these people are I’m gonna find somebody to make this dream work
0:05:38 So I started calling people. Well, my brothers and my dad who have this small general contracting company
0:05:41 Which is what I’d grown up working. They didn’t have the cash either
0:05:43 But they had access to a line of credit
0:05:48 So my hope was that I could get a hard money loan from them to buy the land to get the
0:05:53 20% of whatever the bank wouldn’t loan me and then pay it back once I could refinance the property
0:06:00 So I was already, you know, really banking a little overconfident really banking on my abilities to deliver this just crazy property
0:06:04 That would appraise at really high values. So, okay, I called them up and they’re like, no
0:06:05 We don’t want to give you a hard money loan
0:06:09 We want equity in that because we like the idea and we’ll loan you the money through our line of credit
0:06:16 So great. I gave them just handshake deal that day 40% equity and they were gonna help me with the difference of whatever
0:06:21 But then of course, I was gonna have to find a loan and you know, go through all the rigor moral of that
0:06:25 So we get under contract and literally I hit the ground running. So
0:06:29 The next day well the first three days
0:06:34 I spent on the phone with banks like hitting up every local bank
0:06:39 I possibly could and then also walking the property all by myself with no phones or anything
0:06:44 just sort of like letting the land speak to me about how to build this this little micro resort and
0:06:52 Figuring out like how each cabin would be positioned and like being a little maniacal about the details of that because I’m a little little bit
0:06:54 OCD as a perfectionist. So
0:06:56 Finally, I got a bank that’s like they were like, no, no
0:07:00 I mean literally you could imagine 24 year old kid rolling their eyes
0:07:04 But I found the local bank who said we’ll give you a loan because you know, you have your dad and brothers on board
0:07:06 We want them to co-guarantee it
0:07:11 But they were like 80% of the appraised value is what will loan you so great
0:07:16 You know box is checked then they send an appraiser out and the appraiser and I gotta give it to them
0:07:19 I didn’t know what I was doing. I drafted up this
0:07:26 Really primitive pro forma. I didn’t know what a pro forma was just like this Apple numbers spreadsheet thing. It was like my
0:07:30 Guestument on how much the property was gonna cost how much it was gonna bring in
0:07:35 sensitivity analysis for like occupancy and they probably laughed their heads off
0:07:41 But anyway, they gave that along with like some napkin sketches of what these cabins were gonna look like my drone photos like marked up
0:07:46 Of the site plan and the appraiser came back at like, okay
0:07:50 This is gonna cost 1.8 million so the bank was like won’t loan you 80% of that
0:07:53 So bank was like we’ll give you a million and a half
0:08:01 Loan if your dad and brothers will co-guarantee this and my estimate was that the project was gonna cost like 2 million
0:08:08 So we had like $500,000 shortfall. She wasn’t great long story short. It actually cost us 2.3 million
0:08:13 So here’s the deal. I the spec home market was booming in Texas at that time
0:08:17 And so I was like, okay. We’re going all in. I got to make this work
0:08:20 I bought another five acres down the road built a
0:08:24 $750,000 spec home in four months and sold it and profited
0:08:30 200 grand from that home was able to roll all of those profits directly into this project
0:08:35 Of course maxed out every credit card put in my 19,000 my dad and brothers brought their line of credit
0:08:42 We got the project done nine and a half months start to finish which was absolutely wild as you can imagine too
0:08:45 I mean, this is post-covid supply chain issues are crazy
0:08:49 I was designing it as we went it was the wildest year of my life on top of that
0:08:55 I broke my pelvis like seven months into the project. So we open in January of 2022
0:09:00 Two weeks later my whole business as I knew it ended. I woke up one morning
0:09:03 Open the Airbnb app
0:09:09 Everything’s grayed out were suspended on Airbnb worst feeling probably I’ve top ten worst feelings
0:09:14 I’ve ever had in my life and I called their customer support couldn’t get a hold of anybody. There was no warning
0:09:15 There was no explanation
0:09:20 So I felt like I was totally kicked in the gut and was like, oh like all right
0:09:27 we got to figure out direct bookings and so long story short found this travel influencer who lived like an hour away and
0:09:33 I didn’t even know what this was but just by digging I stumbled upon them. They said pay us
0:09:37 $950 will make a post a giveaway post about your property
0:09:40 So I sent them photos two days later. They made the post
0:09:48 Seven days later. We had $40,000 of direct bookings through our website. So I whipped up a website overnight and
0:09:53 40,000 of direct bookings and 5,000 followers on Instagram from scratch
0:10:00 So as you can imagine that was my sort of eureka moment on direct bookings and Instagram six days later
0:10:03 We got restored on Airbnb. So the timing was like perfect
0:10:07 It was a glitch in their system, but the direct bookings game was on fire
0:10:14 So then that first year was a whirlwind 95 percent occupancy overall with these seven cabins
0:10:19 Just just crazy starting from zero 80 percent of all the bookings were direct
0:10:24 So here’s the deal about direct bookings the OTA, which is like online travel agency
0:10:27 So Airbnb their fees are like roughly 15 percent
0:10:33 So if you can capture the customer direct you make 15 percent of margin you get the customer’s email
0:10:38 So you can retarget them you can’t ever be D platformed and you’re reaching a more aspirational
0:10:44 Guest because they’re booking from Instagram not Airbnb. So they’re not price shopping
0:10:46 They see these immersive videos and like oh we got to come stay here
0:10:54 We had guests come back three or four times in one year because we were able to retarget them and because the experience was just and wow
0:11:02 You you sold this what four years in for how much to two and a half years and we sold for seven million
0:11:07 So last October two and a half years in yeah, all right guys. So listen up. We’re doing something a little bit different here
0:11:12 So we had this guy named mr. Ballin. Mr. Ballin is one of my favorite people on earth
0:11:16 If you have been on YouTube or tiktok, you probably know who mr. Ballin is
0:11:20 So he’s has tens of millions of followers and he’s built this massive business on it
0:11:23 He’s probably the best storyteller I’ve ever heard of my life to be honest
0:11:26 And he did this amazing podcast with us that we’re gonna release soon
0:11:29 We’re not releasing the episode right away
0:11:33 But we are gonna give it to our true fans and if you are one of those true fans and you do want this interview
0:11:35 We have a link below so check it out
0:11:40 Click the link in the description below and you can listen to it right away now back to the show
0:11:48 So you let’s just recap here you go by land land is you said what 130k or that was just the down payment
0:11:50 That was the land
0:11:56 That was the whole land okay the land you never did you never had built things like this you had done some construction some plumbing
0:12:02 Projects, but I assume you had never like had you ever built a cabin before no and you built these yourself
0:12:06 Are you subcontracted out to a company? I subcontracted but it like I said
0:12:09 I mean I was in there on ladders doing stuff myself. That’s how I broke my pelvis
0:12:14 Okay, so you you build seven cabins on top and the whole project build out
0:12:18 You thought was gonna cost you two million bucks ended up costing you two point three
0:12:20 But did you say you were selling?
0:12:25 The spec market was booming you just sold a separate property just to help fund it
0:12:28 You didn’t sell you didn’t pre-sell anything on this property correct
0:12:33 Okay, so you you do this it took you nine months to get live with the seven with all seven cabins
0:12:36 Is that right or one at a time all at the same time nine and a half months?
0:12:44 Nine and a half months. Okay, that’s amazing and this is like, you know post post COVID and you start renting these out
0:12:48 How much does a cabin rent for what was the average kind of nightly rate like 600 bucks a night?
0:12:51 Yeah, he said he was doing one point one million a year in revenue
0:12:58 So you do a million a year a million a year in revenue 500k of profit and you sold this thing for seven million bucks
0:12:58 Yep
0:13:05 So a million dollars a key two and a half years after starting construction on the whole thing and you sold it to who a
0:13:10 Small private equity group and how did that come about they approach you you approach them. What happens?
0:13:16 So we actually listed it my philosophy is that every material thing should have a price tag
0:13:20 This was super controversial a lot of people that saw the success were like you should never sell this
0:13:21 This is lightning in a bottle
0:13:27 but I was like no I’ve learned so much from this process that I could theoretically redo everything way better and
0:13:32 Plus if I ever want to raise money, I want to be able to show like the full life cycle of a deal
0:13:35 so we went ahead and listed it with a broker and we got approached by
0:13:42 Multiple private equity groups. They see the writing on the wall for commoditized short-term rentals
0:13:44 and they want these one of one of a kind properties and
0:13:47 But most of them need to operate like at a much bigger scale
0:13:51 This group was small enough that they were willing to take a one-off property
0:13:57 So here’s the crazy thing in the hotel industry. You typically have three parties. You’ve got the real estate
0:14:02 You’ve got the managing company and you’ve got the brand sometimes the operator and the brand are the same
0:14:07 well with this property we built a hundred and fifty thousand followers on
0:14:11 Instagram plus like thirty or forty thousand people on the email list
0:14:17 So we essentially were selling the brand and the real estate together, which is part of the reason we got such a crazy high price
0:14:21 You know for a seven cabins in the woods in Texas
0:14:24 But basically they came along offered seven seven million
0:14:28 we negotiated some of the terms because they wanted to sell or finance some of it and
0:14:32 The deal fell through like three times as could be expected
0:14:35 They ended up having to get a bunch more debt than they thought
0:14:38 But they came through eventually and we closed last October
0:14:43 So yeah, the look that you have Sean, that’s how I had when I first met him
0:14:47 So when I first met him, I was just in the phone with him and I go
0:14:50 Hey, like I’m got to go to this conference in Idaho
0:14:53 I think you said your parents or something like you have a connections there
0:14:57 You want to meet me up there and like you want to become friends because when I met this kid
0:14:58 I was like
0:15:03 You’re you’re amazing and I said when I share you on Twitter
0:15:09 You’re gonna get popular and just promise me that you’re gonna let me always invest in anything you ever do from now on
0:15:15 because I think you’re gonna be a very popular person because his passion and the way that he’s principled and like he like
0:15:19 Outlines what he’s gonna do. I found to be intoxicating. Do you get that vibe Sean? You know what I mean?
0:15:26 Yeah, well, I think the hustle that you showed there’s great. I mean, that’s like what successful entrepreneurship looks like right?
0:15:28 You start with a vision
0:15:33 Then you don’t count yourself out. I think that was the next most important step. You didn’t count yourself out
0:15:37 You could have said I don’t have the money. I don’t have the experience. I don’t have the the time
0:15:41 I don’t have anyone who believes in me. You don’t have the network. What whatever you didn’t say any of those things
0:15:43 You said, how do I get the time? How do I get the money? How do I get the network?
0:15:44 How do I get the cash?
0:15:48 What do I need to do to get this right and you did it and I think you had a unique insight which is that?
0:15:50 a
0:15:54 that people would want to stay in kind of a more unique experience and
0:16:01 B once you realize once you turned your disadvantage into advantage you turned your Airbnb disaster into a
0:16:05 Wait, I got to find another way to promote this and you found a better way to promote it, right?
0:16:09 because let’s say you had never done let’s say Airbnb had never knocked you off the platform and
0:16:13 You had never realized that I should be using Instagram
0:16:20 Content through influencers or through my own to do direct bookings. What do you think this property would have been worth?
0:16:22 Had that not happened?
0:16:26 Maybe three or four million is my guess
0:16:30 Right, maybe and that’s and maybe not even be a sellable asset
0:16:34 Right, maybe maybe not like definitely not a private equity sellable asset
0:16:38 But maybe just to another real estate owner who’s looking for rental properties. Yeah, totally
0:16:43 I think the brand that moment with Instagram which felt like it with Airbnb originally which felt like a
0:16:52 Complete defeat like literally you can’t imagine. I mean it was 24 recently married had just spent two over two million dollars of other people’s money
0:16:59 Had been a little bit laughed at by even some of my friends like why are you spending because that was even a lot of money when we built it a
0:17:02 Lot of my friends in Waco in the short-term rental market said you’re crazy
0:17:08 We already have this glut of short-term rentals here, but my whole thing was we’re building a new lane of traffic
0:17:12 We’re creating a destination build it and they’ll come but when that
0:17:14 Airbnb
0:17:19 Debacle hit it ended up being the biggest blessing in disguise. I could have ever engineered
0:17:24 I got extremely lucky and just overall was obviously extremely blessed with the project
0:17:30 But it’s become my conviction that if you have an inspiring vision, you have the ability to communicate it and you have
0:17:38 The conviction to bring that vision to life you become a magnet for everything you need and that applies to capital to guests on and on
0:17:43 The universe conspires for those with a mission. There’s a bunch of stories of people winning
0:17:45 massively
0:17:53 By having the idea of build it they will come but there’s a whole lot more stories of people having that attitude who lose big
0:17:59 And I like it doesn’t matter what what business you’re in this idea build it
0:18:03 When they come build it and they’ll come that kind of separates. I think a
0:18:06 visionary from someone who’s
0:18:13 Tapping in and building a great business. I like people who point and say this is where we’re gonna go and
0:18:18 A lot of times those people a lot of times those people fail more often than not they fail
0:18:22 But I think it’s dope when they do it when they when they succeed
0:18:26 Do you know what I mean? I find that to be different than how I look at life and I find it to be
0:18:28 inspirational
0:18:30 Yeah, okay, that makes sense
0:18:32 Isaac, you’re gonna say something on that. Well, I was just gonna say
0:18:38 you know people now come to me asking all the time like how do we recreate that same success and
0:18:44 What I really do believe I just said this but is that you have to have a vision and then you have to story tell
0:18:48 I think storytelling is the most valuable skill not just in marketing
0:18:55 But in building something including building something like construction and here’s why I’ve got a friend Devon
0:18:58 So Devon is also 24 years old for now
0:19:02 I’m 27 but I was 24 when I built Live Oak Lake and he was he was an engineer
0:19:05 so he’s a smart kid and he had this dream to create this
0:19:08 Shipping container home that was just super wild
0:19:16 it’s like five containers stacked on top of each other and he has an incredible amount of resilience and passion he went out and
0:19:20 Built the whole thing with his two hands like 95% of it
0:19:23 He built with his two hands and he documented the whole process
0:19:31 With an iPhone and a $20 tripod on Instagram and tiktok and he grew 1.5 million followers from scratch
0:19:35 Look it up. It’s called the Pacific Ben. That’s B. I n it took him a year to build this thing
0:19:39 And when he launched he had so many emails that when he opened up the calendar
0:19:44 He he pre sold the first year in like two weeks and now again
0:19:46 He’s become this magnet where people are like hey come build
0:19:51 You know get they’re trying to give him money and I understand a little bit about what that feels because people have done
0:19:54 The same thing to me but again like he understood storytelling
0:19:59 he did it very authentically and he had a vision and you just have to believe in it now
0:20:03 It’s a little bit more art than science in terms of like is the vision a good one
0:20:08 I think some people have that and some people don’t I credit my childhood some of the stuff
0:20:12 I already described and the character that my parents put in me as
0:20:17 Like fully responsible for the success that I’ve had and let me just tell you like if you’re a
0:20:21 Super confident person like I tend to be you’re going to have some hard knocks
0:20:25 I have fallen flat on my face more times and you want to hear including
0:20:30 During and even after the sale of live oak lake. So you have to learn humility and you got to learn it the hard way
0:20:35 But that doesn’t that’s not mutually exclusive from having that kind of just
0:20:39 Intuition and sense that like I think it’s a sense of taste too
0:20:42 It’s like this is going to work and here’s why and even if I can’t convince you
0:20:47 I still believe in it ends a conviction and then people rally around that and then of course
0:20:50 Your track record is a lot when you’re starting from zero you don’t have that
0:20:55 But as you go you got to be very careful with the projects you take on because obviously you don’t want to compromise that record
0:21:01 So I think this idea of creating these unique spaces and places
0:21:06 And having people fall in love with them online and then that turns into a business that makes you millions of dollars
0:21:07 I think that is a
0:21:11 Awesome romantic vision. I know several people my life that would like
0:21:17 Have the urge when they hear about these to be like could I do that could we do that where we live in this area?
0:21:20 Whatever what are the opportunities you see? So what do you think?
0:21:28 Somebody out there could go do and break that down like a blueprint like okay. You’re not talking not to me and sam
0:21:30 You’re talking to this person who’s listening
0:21:35 Who is inspired by this and says could I do that? How would I do that? What would you tell them?
0:21:37 What’s the the two-minute blueprint you would give them?
0:21:43 Yeah, love it huge opportunity again, arabian bees have been commoditized. They’re just
0:21:48 You know unrecognizable from each other. There’s no differentiation
0:21:55 So whether this is a an old summer camp that could be totally transformed into like this micro resort or say
0:22:00 It’s a roadside motel a lot of people are doing these or it’s seven cabins around the lake
0:22:06 I got a friend named brian who had this idea to rethink what houseboats meant and so he
0:22:12 Built for $200,000 built this houseboat. You can look it up. It’s flow home. That’s f l o h o m
0:22:17 It means like totally different than what you think of it’s like a mini yacht almost and then
0:22:24 He started renting it out. Absolutely when berserk now. He’s raised a bunch of money. He’s buying marinas
0:22:29 So the cool thing about houseboats is you don’t fall typically into the same regulations as st
0:22:31 R as short-term rentals because you’re on the water
0:22:37 So he gets to be in like these prime locations in like, you know, baltimore harbour or in aplis or
0:22:46 Wash place wherever and you get 360 degree harbour views. You’re you’re sometimes in hotels sometimes not even in any zoning at all
0:22:52 And there’s zero competition. So again, that’s completely unique. There’s such a spectrum of what these could be
0:22:59 I’ve got another friend who’s doing tree houses. So he bought a piece of property and here’s here’s the blueprint that I go after
0:23:03 number one choose red states over blue generally speaking because
0:23:09 Get speed to market is everything and you want to be in a place that’s super easy to build
0:23:12 So rural texas, which is where I am
0:23:17 There’s essentially like no zoning and I didn’t have to go through some long permitting process
0:23:21 Like I would if I was on the big sir coast or that’s a radical example. So find
0:23:25 Go off the beaten path. It’s okay to get away from places
0:23:32 But you want to be within two hours from a major metro area of like let’s say a million plus people because that’s your drive to
0:23:38 Distance it it’s like a staycation distance. So you’re going to get a lot of two three night staycations
0:23:41 You need to be within two hours from a major metro area
0:23:47 You need to be within 15 to 20 minutes of like a town that has a a coffee shop. Maybe a good restaurant
0:23:53 Maybe there’s ways around that like you could do a meal kit where you could partner with a local chef or local farmers and like
0:23:56 Make that part of the experience that you’re offering the guests
0:24:00 But it’s okay to get off the beaten path. You want to find that two hour goldilocks zone
0:24:04 Then find land that’s super cheap that has some natural potential
0:24:09 Let’s say trees are kind of a must because you can’t grow a tree overnight
0:24:12 And that’s what live oak lake had
0:24:17 Maybe it has some topography people love water. Perhaps you can create a water feature
0:24:20 So i’ve got this other crazy story and i’m about to make a twitter thread on this
0:24:23 But some friends named kimball and christine had a dream
0:24:25 They’re in rural ohio
0:24:29 They buy this piece of property with zero money that the guy was a pastor
0:24:30 He had no money
0:24:34 He bought this piece of property and then he noticed it had like this old dilapidated lodge on it
0:24:38 But he noticed like down below the lodge. There’s this little cliff
0:24:42 And there’s a seasonal stream that only flows like a few weeks out of the year
0:24:47 And they had this idea so they actually dug out and dammed up this little pool
0:24:54 And then they put in a pump recirculated the water so that it’s flowing year-round and there’s essentially a waterfall swimming pool
0:25:00 Look it up. It’s called the cliffs at hawking hills. It’s absolutely wild. This place has gone mega viral
0:25:07 They’ve got 600 000 followers on instagram. They’re booking out every single night two years in advance
0:25:09 And that water feature probably cost them
0:25:14 20 to 30 thousand dollars and has literally created millions of dollars
0:25:18 of value both in the brand and in the property that they have so
0:25:20 Like find a property that’s mediocre
0:25:25 but that has the potential with your vision to create something totally one of a kind and then
0:25:34 Architecturally make a beautiful infuse unreasonable hospitality into it. So you don’t need an on-site concierge. You don’t need
0:25:39 People holding your hand, you know at every like five-star luxury would be what you need is
0:25:43 Touch points that people care about so when I opened live oak lake
0:25:47 I I quickly just had this idea people love to see their name handwritten
0:25:52 So I perfected this process where we would hand write a card to each guest
0:25:59 And then I partnered with a local bakery that was like five minutes down the road to fresh bake our own recipe of chocolate chip
0:26:05 Cookies every single morning and then on the back end with my software because I pretty much automated the whole property
0:26:09 So it was running with like two part-time employees the whole thing on its own
0:26:15 I gave access to those bakers and they could see every morning like how many reservations were that day
0:26:20 They would make the cookies the cleaners who also had access to the property management software would pick them up
0:26:24 Would deliver them they would write the card so I didn’t have to do any work
0:26:29 For less than ten dollars some fresh baked cookies a handwritten card and a couple topochikos in the fridge
0:26:33 Made a massive impact and an emotional connection with the guest
0:26:36 Not only was it a beautiful architectural and natural experience
0:26:40 But they felt like me as the owner as Isaac like my story which
0:26:42 We could go we could go down so many rabbit holes
0:26:46 But like I wrote out our story in this booklet that we gave them like we turned
0:26:51 What would have been a boring house manual into like this fun to read coffee table book?
0:26:54 But then on top of that there’s this handwritten note and they all felt like
0:26:59 Oh, Isaac just now left this for me this morning and so and then like in the messaging
0:27:05 We did all these automated messages, but we wrote them in such a way that was extremely careful and extremely intentional
0:27:09 So it felt very fresh and spontaneous. It’s a little ways like this
0:27:14 I love this Sam has this phrase and I’ve taken his copyrighting course copy that two times now
0:27:20 It’s absolutely gold in my opinion, but he has this little thing about these forgotten areas of copy
0:27:25 So whether that’s like the 404 landing page on a on a website or like the terms and conditions
0:27:31 Whatever you find these little places that are overlooked and then you just spice them up and you make them feel
0:27:35 Careful and that’s what we did with live oak lake and the guests absolutely loved it
0:27:39 So there’s a bunch there. I could go on and on about this, but basically
0:27:42 Here’s the play anyone can do this
0:27:49 Anyone can go out and and spend a hundred thousand dollars if you find the people buy this piece of land
0:27:51 Yeah, you’re gonna have to get a bank loan. I know tons of people doing this
0:27:56 I’ve got a community of about 50 people building these properties right now around the country
0:28:01 And the value creation in such a short amount of time if you execute this well is just off the charts
0:28:06 Did you like one of these toys that we just wound up we just kind of let go and just like
0:28:09 Holy shit
0:28:14 Sorry, I love it. I know don’t apologize. I love it. I
0:28:19 Whenever I get done hanging out with you. I I feel more energy you
0:28:21 You know, I think there’s like two types of people
0:28:24 There’s people who are you feel like worn out when you get done hanging out with them
0:28:27 And then you feel like there’s people where you you feel inspired
0:28:31 What are some ways that a smart person could get this wrong? So
0:28:37 Not not every you know any blueprint if I say hey, I’ve had all the success in e-commerce
0:28:39 Well, I know a bunch of people who have failed in e-commerce and I could tell you
0:28:43 Where they go wrong, you know, some of the common traps that a smart person could fall into
0:28:45 I mean, I I I feel that it
0:28:51 Uh, or at least I didn’t say I’ll take this one. Yeah, I mean like I I bought one of the I bought
0:28:55 A property wanted to turn into this and I actually didn’t I broke even I mean
0:28:58 I probably made a little bit of money, but I didn’t it wasn’t like a screaming success
0:29:03 So here’s like a list. Uh, the first thing is uh, there is no such thing as set it and forget it
0:29:05 passive income when it comes to real estate
0:29:11 If you own the thing that that that ain’t true. It’s still like a business that you have to run. There is no set it and forget it
0:29:13 Would you agree with that Isaac?
0:29:18 99% of the time unless you are just an extreme exception. But yes, the illusion of total
0:29:21 Automation is absolutely just that an illusion
0:29:26 I think another thing is you really actually have to give a shit and care about it like
0:29:29 In order to like make outsize returns
0:29:34 You do really it needs to be really really different and special as opposed to just like in my case
0:29:40 I was like, oh, well, there’s not a lot in this part of the the country like this picture looks good. I’ll stand out done
0:29:44 That’s why my returns were only okay that that was not an exceptional plan
0:29:51 Yeah, I think that design is the number one lever that you can pull as my friend Hans who’s awesome. By the way, Hans Loreight
0:29:54 Um, absolutely blown up on instagram recently
0:29:59 He’s got like 550,000 followers and he’s like breaking down interior design in these little short form videos
0:30:06 The design is the biggest lever you can pull in controlling how people feel and going back to that vibe and that feeling that you’re creating
0:30:13 Hospitality is all about emotional connections with people with your guests and you’re in a business that’s notoriously difficult to operate
0:30:15 So you live or die
0:30:20 Based off of every single guest interaction and going back to raising all the money
0:30:22 This is what I feel like a lot of startups
0:30:27 Inevitably fail at they try to scale too fast. They invest all that money
0:30:29 They see the opportunity. They see the live oakley case study
0:30:37 They invest all that money and like hiring these designers and hiring, you know, spending a ton on ads and doing all these things that are
0:30:40 Like the priorities are wrong. You need a story
0:30:46 So like if you want to do this, you probably chances are like you shouldn’t just dump a bunch of money into somebody else’s
0:30:48 Well, you can do that if it’s the right person
0:30:55 But ideally you need to be or you need to be partnered neck and neck with someone who is extremely passionate and wants to tell that story
0:31:00 But hospitality is all about like how do you serve these people?
0:31:06 And so this is where even though I I did automate most of the property like I’m telling you it was awesome
0:31:10 We had zap here. We had like six softwares. We had smart home technology. The place was
0:31:15 Just running like a machine, but I was still reading every single review
0:31:21 I was still at least seeing every single message from every single guest and that’s a 24/7 thing
0:31:24 I mean that is that’s intense any way you cut it and
0:31:30 When you don’t have somebody who cares about that or you don’t have the right employees that have even once you’ve built it
0:31:33 Who can operate it with that owner’s mentality?
0:31:40 You’re just you’re going to suffer and there’s this great quote by tem ferris. You’ve probably heard it, but he says
0:31:45 There’s a glut of mediocrity in the world. Please don’t contribute to it
0:31:51 And I would say that applies to the design aspect that applies to the operations and like hospitality aspect
0:31:56 That applies across the board. So if you come with the right mindset of I’m here to serve
0:32:06 I’m here to like again build out this incredible vision. Tell that story authentically chances are you’re absolutely going to succeed because people gravitate towards that naturally
0:32:11 You know Sean, um, you and I make money on the internet and when you make money in the internet
0:32:17 That means the barrier to entry is really low. So it’s really easy to have an idea and turn it into something
0:32:23 Very quickly because of that. I think I’ve gotten into a habit of creating things that were
0:32:26 To use a funny pun
0:32:28 subpar
0:32:32 Like there was very little passion involved in them or there’s very little excellence
0:32:35 Have you ever like felt like that when you’re making stuff online?
0:32:39 Sean like where you’re like looking back and you’re like, this is just not
0:32:42 A very high quality thing even though it’s making money
0:32:49 Honestly, I disagree like I think the barrier to entry is low. Yes, it’s easy to play but it’s not easy to win
0:32:51 um
0:32:54 And so anytime I’ve tried to do something that works online
0:32:59 I don’t know. I threw my all into it. Uh, I wasn’t necessarily very good
0:33:02 So even if I got a mediocre result, it wasn’t due to lack of effort
0:33:08 It was due to lack of skill or or I’d make something really good that nobody cared about nobody wanted
0:33:10 It was just the wrong problem to solve
0:33:15 Um, so I I think that yes, it’s easy to try something online. I don’t think it’s easy to
0:33:19 Win at something online. I don’t think you can get away with something. How do you define winning?
0:33:25 Uh, you know, whatever hitting my goals for it, right? So having something that actually grows that is sticky that is, you know
0:33:29 Very profitable, you know the the things I look for when I do a project online is
0:33:33 I’m trying to have it be successful. I don’t think any of these are easy
0:33:38 They’re definitely easier than going out into a plot of land and being like I’m going to build
0:33:43 A luxury, you know, a luxury stay here and I’m going to serve customers essentially by hand
0:33:46 Uh, it’s definitely easier than that, but I wouldn’t say it’s like
0:33:50 I don’t think you can get away with sucking online and be successful because the barriers entry is so low
0:33:52 Because the barrier entry is so low
0:33:56 There’s so many people playing because there’s so many people playing to actually do something that’s
0:33:59 That works and captures people’s finite attention. It’s still hard
0:34:03 Well, you we have so many friends that are popular on the internet and they make crappy stuff
0:34:07 Like it’s crappy by our standard. This is not crappy by the customer standards, right? Like
0:34:10 I was thinking about this the other day so
0:34:14 Jimmy mr. Beast who you know is is friendly with us and and
0:34:21 Is obviously super successful youtube. He just released a guy. I guess I got leaked his uh production document
0:34:25 Do you guys see this I read the whole thing? So I actually want to do like a whole bigger thing on it
0:34:26 So I don’t want to go too much into it
0:34:32 But one amazing thing is you know, you get to see inside of his mind and his mind works in a really unique way
0:34:35 And I think you could see from that document why he’s so successful
0:34:40 But if you read the document or you hear the stories about him, you would think that he is making
0:34:45 The greatest videos the world has ever seen that he is the whatever
0:34:51 I don’t know who the famous directors and and artists of our time are but you would think he’s doing that when in actuality
0:34:53 It’s it’s sort of like saying
0:34:55 Who makes the best burgers?
0:35:00 Is it mcdonald’s who has the most popular burgers? They sell the most volume of burgers
0:35:06 Is it someone in the middle is it five guys because they they’re pretty popular, but maybe their taste is a bit better
0:35:08 or is it
0:35:09 the chef in
0:35:16 You know new york who makes this one unbelievable burger that’s 36 dollars and if you ever put a mcdonald’s burger next to that
0:35:19 You could you would laugh at the mcdonald’s burger, right? Which one is the best burger?
0:35:25 And mr. Beast has made his success because he’s decided to be mcdonald’s on the internet, right? He is creating the videos
0:35:30 That are mass market that are going to get the most number of views even if they’re not the most
0:35:38 Life-changing introspective emotional or beautifully told stories. There are other people who do those and so I think there’s just like
0:35:41 It’s hard to say what is what is the best, right?
0:35:45 Like the people the friends of ours and we think make this like pretty crap content that works
0:35:48 It’s because they’re doing the mcdonald’s thing, right?
0:35:53 They’re giving people fast food content and then there’s other people that are giving them artisanal content and you know
0:35:56 Who’s to say what’s better? What’s better than the others depends on your goals?
0:35:58 Can I tell you a crazy story about?
0:36:02 Uh twitter and going viral. Yeah, what do you got?
0:36:09 So actually sean, I need to publicly thank you because your episode on how I write with david about
0:36:15 Storytelling was I mean golden and you don’t know how many people I’ve referred to that episode
0:36:18 But like I don’t know four or five months ago
0:36:21 Alex Lieberman made a post about he was like
0:36:25 I just watched this interview with erin sorkin about stories and I I’m in
0:36:28 Transpired I want to go down that rabbit hole and
0:36:35 So anyway when I saw that it resonated with something. I was already feeling I wouldn’t consider myself naturally a great storyteller
0:36:38 Actually, but I was like I feel like I can learn this skill and I’m gonna figure it out
0:36:46 So I went down the rabbit hole and I listened to podcasts and I read books and I took courses and and copywriting and writing in general
0:36:51 and then I was like, okay, I’m gonna figure this out and I’m gonna I’m gonna try it and so
0:36:58 Well, first of all, I take it an eight month break from twitter. So last fall I stopped posting at all and I took an eight month break
0:37:00 But I would sort of describe it for various reasons
0:37:06 But one was I was just recharging as a creator. You can’t just constantly go. You’ve got it. You’re like a battery
0:37:10 You’ve got to recharge and but I came back kind of guns a blazing in june
0:37:12 with all of this like
0:37:15 Knowledge that I had been accumulating from all of these different sources
0:37:19 And right out the gate. I had like a six million view
0:37:26 Thread and people were like threads are dead and you know twitter is dead the algorithms trash whatever whatever and literally one after another
0:37:29 And I’m knocking on wood
0:37:34 But at the end of the day like I’ve never had so much sustained success like the last 10 threads
0:37:37 I’ve written in a row without exception have gone an average of like a million views apiece
0:37:42 And then one of them went totally crazy. So I wrote this thread
0:37:47 Um about this train car that my dad it’s pinned to the top of my profile if you want to look at it
0:37:52 But yeah, I’ve seen that one. So I wrote this thread. I stayed up like all night. I spent eight hours writing it
0:37:58 I just finished copy that the second time and so like it was fresh on my mind and I I wrote this thread
0:37:59 and
0:38:05 Uh, I didn’t know you know, I put 60 percent going off of your advice going off of a lot of people’s advice
0:38:07 Like 60 percent of my effort of those eight hours were spent
0:38:12 Writing that hook like both writing it and also curating those images
0:38:19 So it’s got this great visual hook where you see like side-by-side train car before after and then like hours writing
0:38:25 Four or five sentences. I know that sounds crazy, but writing and rewriting it just trying to make it a science
0:38:28 But I had this sentence in there
0:38:35 Let me read it. So I said my dad bought this 120 year old train car for $2,000. It was a rotting cat infested wreck
0:38:42 So I knew that I was probably being a little controversial when I said that I had no idea just how controversial this would be
0:38:47 I said but after investing 147k and five months of work. We redeemed it today
0:38:50 It’s one of the most profitable and exclusive stays in the country. Here’s what happened
0:38:52 So here’s here is what happened
0:38:58 There is like 30 of the population. I’ve come to believe are these cat-loving
0:39:00 I mean
0:39:06 Karens and I loved guess what spoiler alert. I love cats too. I was not meaning disrespect to the cats when I said this
0:39:13 But these people read that whole thread and then just absolutely murdered me in the comments
0:39:17 What happened to the cats the cats were the landlords they should have kicked you out
0:39:22 Blah blah blah blah blah blah like machine gun fire. I mean it was crazy and so
0:39:26 On top of what was a pretty good hook and a good story
0:39:32 We had just jet fuel poured on the fire by these cat lovers and me haters
0:39:35 So that was kind of crazy and I’ve learned
0:39:41 I’ve been like Brian Chesky comment on the or Brian Chesky reposted it twice in one day Joe Gabby
0:39:47 I reposted it Paul Graham repote quote tweeted it and then like you know 20 million views total in the first day
0:39:49 But here’s here’s another crazy thing
0:39:54 So there’s all these journalists that lurk on x you don’t know about them because they probably have like 300 followers
0:39:58 So within like two days. I got invitations for
0:40:04 Coverage so in in the two or three weeks since I wrote that post we’ve been now the story has been featured in
0:40:06 the new york post vice
0:40:12 uh business insider fast company the daily mail kody sanchez is coming to do a youtube video like
0:40:15 Tens and tens of millions of views
0:40:22 So you’re just really creating like this surface area of for luck when when you post on twitter because it’s basically proof of concept
0:40:25 They’re like, oh this story is resonating. We should go ahead and post it too. So it’s crazy
0:40:30 All right, if you’re listening to this pod, I already know something about you
0:40:36 You my friend are nosy you want to know the numbers behind all of these things that we’re talking about
0:40:43 How much money people make how much money people spend how much money businesses make you want to know all of this people’s net worth all of it
0:40:48 Well, I’ve got good news for you. So my company hampton. We’re a private community for CEOs
0:40:52 We do this thing where we survey our members and we ask them all types of information
0:40:54 Like how much money they’re paying themselves
0:41:00 How much money they’re paying a lot of their employees what their team my bonuses are what their net worth is what their portfolio looks like
0:41:03 We ask all these questions, but we do it anonymously
0:41:06 And so people are willing to reveal all types of amazing information stuff
0:41:13 You really cannot google you can’t find anywhere else and you could check it out at joinhampton.com click the report section on the menu
0:41:19 Click the salary and compensation report. It’s going to blow your mind. You’re going to love this stuff. Check it out now back to the pod
0:41:26 I love that story. Yeah, I checked out this this thread. It’s it’s great. But I think that the
0:41:31 The real lesson here. What’s the right takeaway? I think there’s a few one is
0:41:33 Yeah, there were some nice
0:41:40 Copywriting techniques in here and yes, it’s cool that you decided like hey, this is all a skill. I can learn I can learn storytelling
0:41:43 I can learn writing I can learn how to how to be better at content creation
0:41:46 And you just decided to like obsess and devour that stuff
0:41:51 But the real thing is the story went viral because of what you guys did you did something amazing you took this
0:41:56 You know basically like beating up rotten rotten train car and you turned it into something cool
0:42:01 And it’s like without that you could obsess of all the tendencies you want that car that story is going nowhere
0:42:05 And so the best content creation is go do amazing things in your life
0:42:10 And then learn some best practices about how to talk about them is a much better approach than
0:42:14 Learn the amazing skill of writing hooks and never do something amazing in your life
0:42:18 And I hope that more people do the amazing thing in life instead of of the opposite
0:42:21 But dude, why are you on twitter? Because
0:42:24 You need to be doing this on tiktok
0:42:27 Uh, you you’re on the wrong platform my friend man
0:42:30 It’s I want to start doing short form video, but I love writing
0:42:33 And twitter helps me think better like at number one
0:42:36 I get to connect with much smarter people than those other platforms
0:42:40 And it’s not just about some vanity metric of having a big audience for me
0:42:44 I genuinely enjoy the process of having to write concisely and again
0:42:48 It’s like a skill I just wanted to attack in copywriting and writing in general
0:42:54 And so that process of like clarifying your thoughts by writing tweets and like every single word counts
0:42:57 And building a slippery slope that sam talks about that people will fall down
0:43:00 I just absolutely love that process and not just for
0:43:06 Production value of the story but for what it does in my own thinking. But yeah, the iteration will probably be
0:43:09 I prove these these story concepts
0:43:12 And and sort of write a script in my twitter thread
0:43:16 And I’ve had like 10 of these that have like I said gone like pretty viral
0:43:20 And then I basically have all my heavy lifting done for me
0:43:25 And I just like throw together a nice green screen maybe video of me talking about it and telling that story
0:43:27 like really snappy on
0:43:31 Instagram on instagram and tiktok and then eventually
0:43:37 I want to do youtube because of course as you guys know, there’s an insane loyalty
0:43:39 And of course you can monetize and whatnot through that as well
0:43:40 But i’m also
0:43:46 A perfectionist and like the short form thing like people what really is working right now is really raw and authentic
0:43:51 And that’s cool. But again, I care so much about the production value that’s hard for me to sort of fit into that
0:43:52 slot
0:43:56 Originally when I told shon about you he was like, oh, it sounds like an amish guy who likes money
0:44:00 And I was like, yeah, I guess that’s a that’s an interesting description
0:44:04 Um, but if that is yeah, I was like, I’m the next two words were i’m in
0:44:10 Yeah, um, and if that and let’s just say uh, it’s just someone who’s not like entrenched in this isaac
0:44:12 Your community is similar ish to amish
0:44:17 What do they think about you like being this popular internet guy or did they even know?
0:44:19 Do they even know like who you what you’re doing?
0:44:23 Are you sinning by being on this podcast right now? Like what’s going on? What’s the reaction back at the farm?
0:44:25 All right
0:44:27 We’re gonna go way back, but i’ll try to be brief here
0:44:33 So my wife’s grandparents actually founded this community 51 years ago and it started as an inner city mission in
0:44:35 the slums of manhattan
0:44:39 And they had actually been atheists but had these radical
0:44:45 Life-changing experiences with god became christians and then felt called to start this mission there
0:44:48 And it was super unlikely beginnings
0:44:55 But basically a motley crew of folks from all backgrounds a lot of people that were sort of like disaffected with life
0:44:58 Sort of came together and a core group
0:45:00 started coalescing and
0:45:03 Basically a church was founded but then a few years into it
0:45:08 They they were like, you know, they were all young parents and they realized we need to have a culture where we can raise our kids that
0:45:13 Is going to sustain the values that we care about like family and our faith and whatnot
0:45:16 So they started looking for land outside the city
0:45:18 Long story short
0:45:22 They all moved about 200 people to colorado western colorado
0:45:27 Which was like the middle of nowhere for people that had spent their whole lives virtually in new york city
0:45:29 And that’s where my parents
0:45:36 Recently graduated high school western slope of colorado encountered these group of like weird people being called a cult by all the locals
0:45:39 but again had these
0:45:41 transformational experiences
0:45:43 Came to god and joined this group and then
0:45:49 In colorado, they sort of learned all these skills like how to live off the land how to grow your own food
0:45:56 How to work with your hands and you know relearn all these traditional skills like woodworking and pottery and blacksmithing and
0:46:00 Then fast forward they picked up and moved to texas in the early 90s
0:46:07 And so we have a piece of property around 450 acres just outside of uh weiko where
0:46:12 First the group was in austin some was in weiko it consolidated here
0:46:14 and basically
0:46:21 What makes us different is we take our faith very seriously and we want to make that faith come alive in every aspect of life
0:46:26 So instead of just like church being a program that you attend a few times a week
0:46:30 We we truly try to live out community. So we’re uh working playing
0:46:33 Doing doing life together and there’s about 1200 people
0:46:39 A part of this texas branch about a third of those actually live on that piece of property that 400 acre piece of property
0:46:43 The rest live on their own places nearby. We’re not common purse
0:46:48 We put a huge emphasis on like individual responsibility, but basically we strive for simplicity
0:46:50 so well just explain it like this if i
0:46:52 I live in a
0:46:55 What a you know a cookie cutter suburb
0:47:02 Of america so just like general emin california if i went and visited where you guys live what would seem
0:47:06 Most different to me. Well, what is it that you guys do that would be most different?
0:47:11 Yeah, uh, we don’t have tv’s in our homes. We don’t really have internet in our homes
0:47:15 We again like 95 of the community
0:47:20 Either is self-employed or works for each other. So we live this agrarian lifestyle. We grow gardens
0:47:24 We do use technology and this is where we’re one of the ways we’re different from amish
0:47:28 We just our whole philosophy is we want to control it versus being controlled by it
0:47:34 And so basically I grew up on a farm taking care of animals. I was homeschool. So we homeschool our kids
0:47:37 I I have nine siblings. There’s a lot of big families not everybody has a big family
0:47:42 But I I went by the way shawna and I stayed in the community and I would joke with isaac. I’m like isaac
0:47:45 I’m an atheist don’t try to convert me any of this stuff
0:47:49 But I would love to explore and learn about your community and when I went there
0:47:55 They believe i’m gonna kind of summarize isaac and they believe that in order to like show they’re close to god and everything
0:47:59 That they were they’re craftsmen in like everything they do
0:48:04 So they have this like restaurant and like they make all of their own food there
0:48:09 Or they have a church where they built it, you know, and it’s like beautiful. It’s a beautiful church
0:48:14 Dude, they had this easter thing that I went to and there was these women singing. I swear to god
0:48:21 I’m like this sounds like a black choir in like in harlow. Like this is the most like stylish like best singers
0:48:25 I’ve ever heard of my life because they like studied it and they like perfect these things
0:48:31 And so he had this vibe where he was like, oh like no the right way to do this business is doing this to submit
0:48:34 So in order to learn instagram, I have to study it and i’m going to execute
0:48:38 Uh, perfectly. No, like I said, we use technology
0:48:43 We we use media too like we we haven’t really used social media and i’m kind of one of the first that’s pioneering that
0:48:46 But we want to tell our story. We just we don’t want to
0:48:54 substitute for the substance of the community that we’ve created so intentionally over decades by using like social media
0:48:56 Which innately is just a virtual world
0:49:03 So we’re trying to find ways to the story teller because I feel like we just like I feel like sam got you hooked on sugar
0:49:06 And you hadn’t had sugar you were like, yeah, no, I love vegetables
0:49:11 And I just love all these earthy flavors and then sam was like here have some sugar and now you’ve had sugar
0:49:18 You’ve had the viral sugar the feeling of going viral on making millions of dollars and everybody loving your story
0:49:22 And some people hating your story and then you want to respond to them. You’ve now tasted that
0:49:28 How is that f with your brain? Yeah, it’s like, hey, I think just just a little crack. You just want a little crack
0:49:34 Just a little you’ve had that social media crack. What’s what’s your honest feeling of where you where you are right now with that
0:49:40 Man, it’s it’s tough. That’s one of the reasons I took the eight month break because personally I felt like it was becoming
0:49:41 I love attention
0:49:47 I’ll just be honest about it and I I felt like it was becoming a distraction for what really is like
0:49:53 A lived life and for one I have a family. We have we have a little boy. We have another on the way
0:49:56 I have this amazing community life, which I’m starting to be more public about
0:50:00 I made a thread about the community in a couple months ago and people are really intrigued with that
0:50:02 but again like
0:50:07 Work life to use the term everybody’s familiar with work life balance is is a very very real thing
0:50:16 I just feel like if there’s a way if there’s an overarching guiding principle that work and life and family and play and everything can fit into
0:50:19 They don’t need to constantly feel like they’re in conflict with each other
0:50:22 But in order to make that happen
0:50:28 I need people in my life that hold me accountable and like are going to be real with me and I’ve had plenty of that just to be
0:50:30 Honest like some of my friends that know me very well
0:50:38 Um have been like very honest with me and at times critical and I totally love them and respect them for that
0:50:41 What’d they say?
0:50:44 Oh like, you know the way you’re the way you came across here was
0:50:47 bragging or the way you said that
0:50:48 um
0:50:49 was
0:50:55 Maybe not completely what or not telling me it was more like asking questions because again like nobody tells you what to do here
0:51:00 We’re very very much like we we open ourselves up voluntarily, but they’re like, you know
0:51:02 Is that consistent with?
0:51:08 You know the way that you would talk so and so and basically we want to be very careful that we and I want to be very careful that I don’t put
0:51:13 That the version of me that you see on the internet is exactly what you’re going to get in person
0:51:15 And and as you guys know there’s just like that inevitable conflict
0:51:20 But I feel like I’ve learned a ton through it and it’s a constant struggle for me where I
0:51:24 I probably need to delete the app from my phone and just use it on desktop
0:51:26 I have a lot of friends that do that but
0:51:31 Twitter is that thing for me. I mean, it’s it’s highly addicting. It’s just such a great format to connect with interesting people
0:51:37 Sean I think that every man once he has children and becomes a family man
0:51:39 I think they have two urges
0:51:44 The first one is to be in some type of situation where they can exert force and be like
0:51:47 Use a little bit of violence to be a hero. You know what I mean?
0:51:52 Like a man robs a man robs a bake and you like suddenly stop it and you’re the hero
0:51:56 That’s one of them patrolling main street. Yeah, something goes down and I might be needed
0:51:59 Yeah, just like to be the tough guy that protects everyone once
0:52:05 Then the second thing is to like live in a farm with your family and your community as like
0:52:09 Everyone’s like lives like a little socialist hippy life and I’ve went to his
0:52:13 I hung out in his area and Isaac was like hey check this out
0:52:18 I just planted a hundred apple trees and a bunch of like fruit trees and about three years
0:52:19 These are gonna be ready to bloom and I’m like
0:52:24 Oh nice, that’s kind of a lot of fruit like you’re gonna eat all that fruit. He’s like no, it’s for everyone
0:52:26 I’m like, well, you’re gonna have to take care of this
0:52:27 He’s like no
0:52:32 I just told everyone in the community that I planted these trees and we’re probably gonna make like a schedule
0:52:36 But we’ll we’ll all chip in and like tend to the trees to make sure like it’s gonna bear the most fruit
0:52:39 And then we’ll just like we’ll just spread it out evenly
0:52:43 Just being there for that 24 or 48 hours that one particular time
0:52:47 I was like I’m fulfilling that need of like seeing this like hippy lifestyle
0:52:50 You saw that David Beckham post Sam. Oh where he’s growing
0:52:54 He’s like growing a fruit now or growing vegetables friends of them
0:52:57 Yeah, he went viral because he posts this video on his instagram
0:52:59 But it’s him in a flannel shirt and the like old time
0:53:04 Me like Irish hat and the caption is my kale is doing well and it basically it’s him on his farm
0:53:07 He like now lives a farm life. He’s him on his farm. He’s gardening
0:53:12 He’s beekeeping and this is what he’s doing and people people just went nuts and
0:53:18 About this about this trend Isaac. I feel like you you’ve influenced him or maybe you should influence him
0:53:21 I think he he might slide into your DM soon to learn a little bit
0:53:24 Do you not feel this urge showing every once in a while?
0:53:28 We are like I wish I would just sort of farm with my family and friends and we all like did this together
0:53:32 No, dude, it’s way too much work. No, I don’t have that urge Sean. You got to come visit at least
0:53:39 I have my versions of of these but they’re like, you know, like for example, I like writing and I’m like cool
0:53:43 I just don’t want to work. I just want to like, you know, I don’t I don’t know how to paint. I’m not skilled enough to paint
0:53:47 I don’t know how to build. I’m not skilled enough to build. I don’t really want to go develop those
0:53:50 But I’m like, I want to write a movie or I want to spend my day
0:53:54 You know playing playing soccer with my kids or whatever it is things like that
0:53:58 But I’m not as I don’t have the same like Roman Empire urges that most guys have meaning like
0:54:01 I don’t care about history as much as get most of my friends do
0:54:08 I don’t care about living off the grid and like providing, you know, like pumping my own water and like irrigating something
0:54:11 I don’t want to irrigate nothing. Okay. So like I don’t have that urge
0:54:16 For me personally, I got I guess my own versions of them, but they’re a lot more mild
0:54:18 Well
0:54:20 That’s
0:54:26 Okay, dork, let me go play house in the woods without you
0:54:29 I still want to have wi-fi like
0:54:36 This is like the man version of playing house and dress up like, uh, you know what I mean
0:54:40 Isaac, can we do rapid fire to end this? So, uh, how old are you?
0:54:42 27
0:54:46 What’s one thing I can learn from you about hospitality even though I’m not going to have my own
0:54:50 You know mini hotels and all that but if I just have a guest coming over to my house
0:54:54 I got an old friend from college coming over. What’s one hospitality thing I can learn from you
0:55:02 It’s the single most valuable skill to have in life and you have to be selfless you have to
0:55:05 Want to serve other people. So I don’t think it’s something that you can affect
0:55:11 but if you I think everybody has that urge inside of them, I think we’re born to serve other people and
0:55:18 Read unreasonable hospitality if you haven’t already but basically look for those little ways like I described with the handwritten note
0:55:21 That are surprising. They’re small but they delight people and
0:55:27 Sometimes the smallest acts of kindness and generosity show the biggest parts and so I don’t think that
0:55:30 Uh, I don’t think it needs to be some grandiose thing
0:55:33 I think you just have to want to serve them and people are going to feel it
0:55:35 Isaac, I think what you did with uh
0:55:41 The live oak lake and what you’re showing other people doing with floating homes and shipping containers and stuff like that is
0:55:46 Amazing it’s an amazing trend people should go follow you on twitter to kind of like see more of these
0:55:49 I think it is amazing because it is so hard
0:55:51 and so for the few people who are
0:55:57 Capable of putting in the like, you know the creativity the passion the care the hospitality that takes to make these successful
0:56:01 That’s amazing and send me your links so that I can go stay at your places and for me
0:56:04 It’s a it’s a reminder of like
0:56:10 If if you want an unreasonable result you sort of have to do an unreasonable thing
0:56:13 In certain in certain areas and this is definitely one of those areas
0:56:16 And so for me, you know, I would never be able to pull one of these off
0:56:20 So props to you because I hear your story and part of me is like oh, I would love to do that
0:56:25 But the bigger part of me who knows me better is like this is not for you
0:56:29 You have to be exceptional to make this work. You have to be exceptional on the real estate development side
0:56:34 You have to be exceptional on the content marketing to go viral so that you can get booked
0:56:35 You know for two years out
0:56:39 You have to be exceptional on the hospitality because you have to re-earn the business
0:56:43 You know with every guest stay and I think it’s I think you are exceptional
0:56:46 You’ve done that and I think also it’s a it’s a good thing to know about yourself
0:56:51 Whether that’s for you or if it’s not for you and I think it’s a very small subset of the population who who it’s for them
0:56:55 Well, I appreciate that can I close with two quotes that mean a lot to me
0:56:56 one
0:56:59 The way you do one thing is the way you do everything
0:57:01 So sweat the details care
0:57:06 Put your heart into whatever you’re going to do do it with hospitality do it with excellence and number two
0:57:10 There’s this quote by this English pastor actually named John Wesley
0:57:11 He was like a few hundred years ago
0:57:12 But he said
0:57:17 Light yourself on fire with passion and people will come from miles to watch you burn
0:57:20 And that’s kind of my my hope in life. I want people to
0:57:23 Say well, that’s a life well lived and I want to say that at the end of my own life
0:57:26 That is an amazing quote
0:57:33 Dude, thank you so much for the band. Um, we appreciate you and we’ll wrap up there. That’s the pot
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0:00:04 All right, everyone. Today’s episode is Anne Malume and started this company called Saladcore. Saladcore
0:00:08 is a Pilates studio where she bootstrapped it. In the first year, she did something like a million
0:00:13 and a half in revenue. It cost like $100,000 to start and she eventually sold this company in
0:00:18 year nine for something like $350 million. And she goes through this entire story. But if you’re
0:00:24 listening, I think the really amazing part is to copy some of her attributes because I get done
0:00:29 listening to her and I’m like, I need to step it up in terms of confidence or in terms of being
0:00:36 passionate about something. And in fact, there’s like, in minute 30, I honestly teared up hearing
0:00:40 some of her stories. So check it out. And by the way, if you are interested in Anne, I’m going to
0:00:45 give a plug for Money Wise, this podcast I did with her where she went deep on her finances. So how
0:00:49 much money she spends, how much money she made, everything. And because I liked her so much
0:00:53 on that podcast, I wanted her to come on here. So check it out. And I hope you guys enjoy this
0:01:07 episode and let me know in the comments. Let’s do a little background. So I think you had a normal
0:01:13 job, but then started a nonprofit called Back on My Feet. Is that right? Yeah. And what was the
0:01:17 original idea? I don’t know if you know much about how the homeless system works, but many of the
0:01:22 shelters in the major cities, you can go live there for 30 days and then you get kicked out.
0:01:27 They give you 30 days to get your crap together, which is not very much time for someone who isn’t
0:01:32 going through homelessness, to be honest, to sort of start over, go back in the city, get back in
0:01:39 the system. 95% of the folks we worked with were dealing with addiction on some level. So, you know,
0:01:42 Sam, I know a little bit of your background. And I think I mentioned on our last conversation,
0:01:49 my dad’s an addict. And when you ask my dad, Mark, what was your addiction? And he’ll kind of look
0:01:56 at you and say everything because my dad doesn’t understand moderation. You know, he had unfortunately
0:02:00 instances with drugs and alcohol. He went into inpatient program before it was five. So I don’t
0:02:07 really remember this, but that seemed to do the trick. He hasn’t had a drink or used drugs in 37,
0:02:13 eight years. Unfortunately gambling then surfaced for my dad when I was a teenager and he struggled
0:02:19 with that. And now my dad fishes, he fishes every day for hours a day. But you have to find some
0:02:26 place to put this thing. And I had felt like, if you can master the drugs and alcohol, you know,
0:02:33 and try to get away from the bad behaviors, having an addictive personality can actually be beneficial
0:02:38 because when you get into something, you know, you are in it and you kind of obsess over it.
0:02:45 So running was this great alternative because there is no end. You can always do more. It’s
0:02:51 there for you. You only need a pair of shoes. It was a really great substitute for a lot of these
0:02:55 guys who were still chasing the high. I don’t know if you know this, but there’s a correlation of
0:03:01 people who work out who actually tend to drink more because you’re chasing the dopamine. You’re
0:03:06 looking for these opportunities to get the elevated serotonin spikes. So that’s why, you know,
0:03:10 yeah, working out can be a great option for people who are struggling with addiction.
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0:03:50 Yeah, basically addictions. I mean, I don’t know shit. I just didn’t, I know my situation,
0:03:55 but addictions don’t go away. They just get transferred. You know what I mean?
0:04:02 And so our thought was, you know, we can really help to change the emotional identity and get them
0:04:07 to like themselves, believe in themselves, put them in a positive support network,
0:04:12 and turn them into somebody who is a runner and athlete, responsible, reliable,
0:04:19 and then we can go advocate for them at jobs that need employees who have those types of
0:04:25 characteristics. So Marriott became the largest employer of back on my feet, not because we were
0:04:30 a charity, Sam, but because we actually had good candidates for them who were so appreciative
0:04:38 to have a job in a respectable place where they got benefits, paid pretty well, and opportunity
0:04:43 for growth. By the way, what do you do like your first day? So you just quit your other job.
0:04:50 It’s a Monday. You just walked to the corner and like, Hey, everyone. Or I guess the night before,
0:04:55 like meet me here tomorrow at 530. Like I don’t know if you have running shoes or not, but like
0:04:58 make sure you know what I mean? Like what do you do like the first like five days?
0:05:03 Yeah. So I was a little more organized than, than that. I knew I needed the shelter to,
0:05:07 you know, work with me and give me permission. So I emailed the, I found the director of the
0:05:13 shelter online. I emailed him. He didn’t email me back. Took a little while for him to respond to
0:05:20 me, but I kept like badgering him. And, you know, he tries to think of the nicest way to tell me
0:05:24 that like, this isn’t going to work. These guys have bigger problems. They’re not like interested
0:05:30 in running. And I was very persuasive. I’m like, if you could please just meet me. Like I literally
0:05:35 have ran by this shelter for two years. I’m not a very religious person, even though the shelter
0:05:41 was religious, but like, I am being called to do this. Please meet with me and let me explain to
0:05:47 you why I feel so compelled. So he did. And Sam, the crazy thing was this shelter.
0:05:51 That’s such a great line. By the way, I’m being called to do this. That’s good.
0:05:55 Yeah, but it’s true. I mean, yeah, totally. But it’s also a good, like it’s like, that’s like a,
0:05:59 that’s like a great argument. Right. And so he met with me and this shelter, again,
0:06:03 I didn’t know anything about this shelter. It was called the Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission.
0:06:07 But when people enter this shelter, they, the guys have rules and they are not supposed to
0:06:13 have any contact with women. Zero. They are there to, you know, no drugs, obviously, no alcohol,
0:06:19 they have a curfew, every rules, no women. And this guy, Mr. McMillan, like I owe a lot to him
0:06:25 because he trusted me, believed in me and was like, okay, I’m going to break our rules.
0:06:30 I’m going to allow this woman to come in here and build relationships with these guys. And he’s
0:06:35 like, I’m not going to tell them and that there’s some, you know, young woman who wants to come
0:06:39 run with them. I’m going to let them, the, the participant or the members of the shelter at the
0:06:44 time, ask them if they are interested in joining a running club. That’s it. And if they say yes,
0:06:50 I’ll let you do it. And, you know, I’m like waiting and waiting and a couple weeks go by and I finally
0:06:55 get a response that says, all right, here’s the names, nine guys. These guys want to run. And I’m
0:07:01 like, awesome. I need their shoe sizes. So I go to a local running store. I get the shoes donated.
0:07:07 Again, I can be very convincing. It’s one of my superpowers. I get them to give me all new shoes
0:07:12 because I don’t want that. I don’t want to show up there in my new shoes and then I give these guys,
0:07:17 you know, crappy old shoes because they’re homeless. I just felt like that’s going to say,
0:07:22 I’m better than you. And I didn’t want them to feel that way. So I got shoes, shirts, socks,
0:07:27 shorts. And I went up there and met them. I got to meet them in the chapel for the first time.
0:07:33 I introduced myself. And then I made them sign a contract. And it just said, if you’re going to
0:07:38 join the running club, you got to show up three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and you
0:07:43 have to be on time. You need to come up with a positive attitude and you need to be willing to
0:07:50 respect and support your teammates. And everybody like sat up straighter in their chair. They were
0:07:56 waiting, at least what it felt like for me. They were waiting for someone to tell them they were
0:08:01 capable of excellence and expecting. I didn’t say to them, you know, just show up if you can. It must
0:08:06 be tough living in here. Just, you know, do your best. If you’re, please try not to be too late.
0:08:12 It was like, these are the expectations. And if you can’t agree to them, then don’t join the club.
0:08:17 And if you can’t agree to them once you do join, you know, you’re going to get kicked off the team.
0:08:24 We have to adhere to principles. So everybody showed up day one. And we all ran a mile, like
0:08:29 some of the guys cruised and got it done really quickly. And then there was George, who took a
0:08:35 while, like he was struggling. But we made a rule that day that nobody finished the run on their own.
0:08:40 So everybody went back to get George. And we all like brought him into the finish line together.
0:08:46 And that like first day, it was like, okay, like this is the group. And all the media was there
0:08:51 for day one. Like I wanted to get the word out. Everybody had to come and see this for themselves.
0:08:56 So the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Daily News, the local ABC, NBC, every, I mean,
0:08:58 it was all of a sudden like this thing was everywhere.
0:09:01 All right, guys. So listen up. We’re doing something a little bit different here.
0:09:06 So we had this guy named Mr. Bollin. Mr. Bollin is one of my favorite people on earth.
0:09:09 If you have been on YouTube or Tik Tok, you probably know who Mr. Bollin is.
0:09:14 So he has tens of millions of followers and he’s built this massive business on it.
0:09:16 He’s probably the best storyteller I’ve ever heard of my life, to be honest.
0:09:20 And he did this amazing podcast with us that we’re going to release soon.
0:09:24 We’re not releasing the episode right away, but we are going to give it to our true fans.
0:09:28 And if you are one of those true fans and you do want this interview, we have a link below.
0:09:33 So check it out. Click the link in the description below and you can listen to it right away.
0:09:38 Now back to the show. Did people cover you because you’re like a charismatic,
0:09:41 like you got, I don’t know if you had your hair like that,
0:09:45 but like you look like a celebrity when you have your hair like your short blonde hair
0:09:49 and you look dope and you’re charismatic. Were they covering you because you were
0:09:53 charismatic and awesome or because this idea was so novel? Like how do you,
0:09:57 how does someone who’s not as cool get all this type of press?
0:10:00 Well, I think I’ll give you this, this, this straight answer and cause this is,
0:10:04 you know, probably no bullshit podcast. The video and the media was like,
0:10:07 here’s this white lawn girl from North Dakota,
0:10:15 putting herself in the middle of these homeless shelters, like running with all of these men.
0:10:20 Like the camera, the story, everything about it was like, wait, what?
0:10:24 They just kind of had to know the background. And then you add in the fact that my
0:10:29 dad is an addict and I’m so drawn to these guys and I could never help my dad and
0:10:33 running helped me. So now I feel like I can help people who remind me of my dad,
0:10:37 you know, through this. And yeah, so I think it all just worked. And then once they got to,
0:10:42 I mean, the homelessness itself, right? People are like, wait, the people who are homeless are
0:10:49 actually running that alone made people make their brains be like, wait, what? And then add in,
0:10:53 you know, the young white girl from North Dakota, like, what’s the connection here?
0:10:58 So the media truly ate it up. And it was coming from such a peer place for me of like, I’m trying
0:11:05 to heal myself from 10 years of nothing coming good from my dad’s addictions and tearing apart
0:11:12 my family. And now I get to use all that pain as fuel to help people. And, you know, meeting some
0:11:18 of the guys in our program, I really think about those first nine guys, because the majority of
0:11:24 them were charismatic and lovely. And like, you just can’t help but root for them. So once the
0:11:30 media started to talk to Mike and to George and to James and learn their stories and the fact that
0:11:35 they’re out there working hard, I mean, it’s the ultimate underdog story. And volunteers started
0:11:40 showing up, this group started to grow. And it was like, I’m like, this is an opportunity,
0:11:45 you know, Tony Robbins talks a lot about these windows that open. And like, this is my window.
0:11:50 And I had just taken a job at Comcast, I was supposed to go work there in their government
0:11:56 affairs department, six figure job, like, everything that my college degree, graduate
0:12:01 degree was setting me up for this Comcast opportunity was it. And I remember going,
0:12:07 they asked me to go to a baseball game with a lot of like some senators and people on the
0:12:12 political sort of world were in town and Comcast was hosting them. And I went that night and I
0:12:18 was like, I am so bored out of my mind, there’s no way that I can go take this job. Like, all I
0:12:23 want to be doing is hanging out with the back of my beat members. All I thinking about is like,
0:12:27 this organization and how I grow it and vision. And so I called them the day I was supposed to
0:12:32 start. And I thanked them for the six weeks that they gave me from time off of my other
0:12:37 nonprofit job before I was supposed to start. And I was like, I can’t take this job. Like,
0:12:43 I have found what I’m supposed to do with my life. And I’m really sorry, I know it’s the day
0:12:52 before, but like, I got to follow my gut on this. How old are you? I was 26. 26. Yeah. I mean, again,
0:12:57 I’m asking all adults in my life, I’m thinking of doing this, like, what do you think and
0:13:02 everybody’s like, are you nuts? Like for your job, like, you’re going to run with people in
0:13:08 homeless shelters for your job. And I’m like trying to explain the vision, you know, and nobody
0:13:12 got it. You know, my mom thinks I’m like, irresponsible. She’s worse. You know, like,
0:13:18 what are you thinking? My dad’s concerned for my safety. All my mentor boss people are like,
0:13:24 and you don’t even have any savings. I had, I had no money. Nothing. What was the first year’s revenue?
0:13:28 Or how are you? I’m sure I raised a million bucks in the first year. I was no shit,
0:13:33 really. So you’re a machine. Oh, yeah. And I would ask, I mean, I would ask anybody and
0:13:41 everybody for money. And I knew who to ask Sam. I figured out that I had to find the executives
0:13:48 who were runners in companies that could give. And so I would only meet, like Larry Solomon
0:13:52 was my first, I had a huge article in runners world. It was awesome. But but I’ll also send you
0:13:58 that. Larry lived in Philly. He was the COO of one of Accenture’s vertical businesses. He mailed
0:14:04 me amazing article, you know, rooting for you. Well, I took one look at Larry’s title and I was
0:14:11 like, can we please have coffee? I love to tell you more. Right. Larry is still a very good friend
0:14:17 today. But he, we met and I was just like, I need your help. I want you to sit on the board. Larry,
0:14:22 I just become a runner. And I’m like, you know, I really want to build this thing. And I want to
0:14:27 make it big and blah, blah, blah. So he came on board and Larry, like Accenture, right? They had
0:14:33 massive, Marriott was a client, Vivo Bakeries, AT&T. They had so many tentacles. And I’m just like,
0:14:38 I just need you to introduce me. I will go in and close the deal, but I need you to introduce me
0:14:44 to the big players so that they can write the check. And I don’t waste weeks or months climbing the
0:14:48 meeting with the marketing coordinator. And then the marketing director, and they just keep passing
0:14:54 me up the chain. Like, I’ll never be able to raise money fast enough. So, yeah. And every meeting I
0:15:01 went to, I made a specific ask whether it was like, I need $20,450. And here’s why. And I need you to
0:15:07 pick me to three more people. And then I would also learn that I would, that like letting me come and
0:15:12 speak at your corporate event or something, I was like, Oh, that’s, I did that one time. And I’m
0:15:17 like, Oh, this is really powerful. Like now I get the whole company, you know, excited about back on
0:15:23 my feet because it was just so innovative. So what’s your pitch to me? Let’s say, let’s say I’m an
0:15:28 executive, you know, I probably spent a few hundred grand a year giving it away to causes. I care
0:15:33 about single moms, I care about animals, homeless guys, I mean, I guess that’s like kind of important,
0:15:38 but like, why should I like give a shit about you? Well, for one, Sam, I would ask if you, you know,
0:15:43 are you a runner? And hopefully you would say yes. I would say so you, so you understand that, right?
0:15:48 So if you’re an executive of this, perfect. So if you’re an executive of this company,
0:15:54 you understand how important culture is and how important culture is for performance and making
0:15:59 sure your people feel appreciated and valued here. A lot of our members grew up in households and
0:16:03 environments and neighbors where they didn’t have that before. And I can tell you being out there
0:16:09 firsthand with all of these guys, they are some of the hardest working individuals I have ever
0:16:14 met before, but no one’s given them a chance. And if you don’t have respect for people who are out
0:16:20 there at 530 in the morning trying to put their life on the right track and doing the work and the
0:16:25 effort, no one’s running their miles for them. They are doing it on their own. And it’s a pretty
0:16:34 compelling site to see. And I can guarantee you if you give us a check, not only will, you know,
0:16:37 the money go to helping these individuals in my life, but we’ll get your employees involved,
0:16:42 you know, talk about a cause where, you know, employees can get actually involved on the
0:16:48 ground floor running with us. We do a skill set training, right, where we teach these guys about
0:16:53 financial literacy, helping them train them for, you know, what their next opportunity could be.
0:16:58 But I can tell you from all the other companies we work with, we have higher employee engagement
0:17:01 with back on my feet than people have had in any other nonprofit that they’ve worked with.
0:17:11 You make me emotional, because like on this podcast and in my life, I care about making money,
0:17:15 you know, I care about businesses, and we’re going to talk about solid core and all the
0:17:22 traditional success that you’ve had. It just seems, you know, like, I remember being in the
0:17:26 hospital recently, because I had like a kidney stone and I felt like I was dying. And this like
0:17:30 Nigerian nurse was like taking care of me. And like in my head, I’m like,
0:17:35 you probably have seen five of me today. And like, you don’t even make that much money, whatever,
0:17:40 but like, you’re making my life so much better right now. Like you have, you’re calming me down.
0:17:45 And like, you are making this stay the best as opposed to the doctor who makes way more money,
0:17:51 but like he’s just in and out. And that’s sort of kind of like, how I feel when I talk about this
0:17:56 nonprofit stuff, which is making rich people richer is kind of insignificant compared to
0:17:59 giving someone a shot or like doing something that actually matters. And so
0:18:08 did you get equal fulfillment pursuing solid core for the sake of like wealth creation versus
0:18:16 what you were doing with back on my feet? I had a lot of fun building solid core. And I feel really
0:18:22 good about how I’ve made my wealth over the last 10 years. I mean, I get to make people’s lives
0:18:28 happier, healthier, and help people be more confident. And my team, you know, there are
0:18:36 thousands of people who work at solid core, who love their job, who, you know, we pay people really
0:18:42 well, I think we pay higher than any other fitness organization, our coaches on a per class basis,
0:18:47 like there are coaches who make over 300 bucks a class, because we’ve always done a revenue
0:18:53 share model. And I have just never believed Sam that it has to be a zero sum game. Like, yeah,
0:19:00 should I have made the most money? Sure, because I took all the risk, put all the money in. Like,
0:19:05 I have no problem saying that some people can disagree with me. That’s fine. But do I think
0:19:11 that my employees should have made zero? No, which is why I put a long term incentive plan in place
0:19:17 for them. A profit sharing plan when I sold the business and everybody got paid. Every full time
0:19:23 employee who had been with solid core for a year, got paid on that last transaction. And they’re
0:19:30 going to get paid on the next transaction as well. And I feel really good about that. So I would say
0:19:36 honestly, like a similar fulfilling, but like back in my feet made my life make sense. So when I
0:19:42 started to feel like it was time for my next thing, yes, I fought it. And I thought it out of a few
0:19:49 things. One, who am I, like my life is extraordinary. I get to help people all the time. Oh my God,
0:19:53 fear. Like what if I fail at my next thing, whatever that is, is all this going to be for nothing.
0:19:58 And people will just think I’m a one hit wonder that definitely was something I had to work through.
0:20:03 And I didn’t really know kind of how to top that thing, you know, all the attention that
0:20:11 it was receiving. I was receiving all the accolades. My ego was involved for sure. But I couldn’t
0:20:16 sit there and tell back on my feet members in our mission to push and challenge themselves,
0:20:22 you know, move, moving things forward one step at a time growing. If I wasn’t willing to do the
0:20:30 same. So I was like, listen, I have an incredible board of like 1314 C level people. There is an
0:20:36 amazing budget, the program, the systems, the processes, the team, everything had been set up.
0:20:42 Like I really felt like I did my job as the founder and the first CEO of the of the organization.
0:20:49 So it, it helped me to be able to move on to the next thing. And then you, you go on and you do
0:20:54 solid core, which if you don’t know for the listener, it’s a Pilates studio. That’s just
0:21:00 fucking badass. You scale that out and you get to sell it eventually for like 300 million dollars.
0:21:05 But you had this story and you could dive deep on the numbers and we went through a lot of the
0:21:08 numbers on money wise, but you can go through some of the numbers. But if I remember correctly,
0:21:13 your idea was basically like you were in LA, you, you went to a Pilates studio, you do the math and
0:21:18 you’re like, well, they have like eight reformers here, a reformer costs this much money. I think
0:21:23 I could do like a hundred grand a month if I make this in DC or New York or wherever you made the
0:21:28 first one. Is that, is that story right? Pretty close. I discovered it in LA and then I was back
0:21:33 in New York and found another Pilates studio that had the same machines as them. And I was,
0:21:37 then I started to do the math after, after I went for like 30 days and I was like,
0:21:43 I have never seen my body look like this and it’s only been 30 days and I feel so good and
0:21:47 I’m addicted to it. I was just bringing everybody I knew and then I did the math and I was like,
0:21:55 this is an incredible business and no one’s really doing it on a big scale yet.
0:22:00 What was the math? Well, so there’s 10 machines in there in this particular studio
0:22:06 and the per class was like $30 a class and you couldn’t buy membership. You had to buy every
0:22:14 time you went. And how many, how many people per class? 10, 10. Oh, sorry. Duh. And it was a full?
0:22:18 Yeah, 10 times. Well, yes, it’s 10. It was full every time you couldn’t get into these classes. So
0:22:25 there was 10 classes a day, right? Okay. So that’s $300 a session. Yeah. Times 10. So that’s
0:22:33 $3,000 a day and they’re full all the time or they were all the time, like impossible to get
0:22:40 into class. And you’re like $3,000 a day times 30. That’s $90,000. That would be cool. Yeah,
0:22:46 totally. And I was, and I also felt, you know, one of the things that I tell people a lot when I,
0:22:54 when I speak is like, play a game. You know, you can win. And so I knew after back on my feet,
0:22:59 I had to find another game I can win. I was the perfect person to start back on my feet because
0:23:05 of my story, my experience in nonprofits, my true authenticity for wanting to help these guys.
0:23:12 And I just had a knack for understanding systems, scalability and process. And so with solid core,
0:23:18 I knew I needed something that was authentically, authentically representative of who I was.
0:23:22 And I am the workout queen. I mean, out of all my friends, I’ve done so many marathons,
0:23:29 like fitness and wellness has always been a key, if not the key priority. And so when I discover
0:23:35 this, I’m like, nobody knows you can work out like this. We’re all out there jumping, pounding,
0:23:40 you know, getting injured because it’s a rite of passage to be fit. Like, this is so different.
0:23:47 And nobody knows about it. And, and I know, I know how to build community. I know how to scale.
0:23:52 I understand branding. And I understand how to give a really good experience.
0:23:57 Therefore, this is a game I think I can win. This is what I’m going to do next.
0:23:59 And how old were you for this one? 31, 30?
0:24:02 31, 32, 31, 32. Yeah.
0:24:09 And you had saved like, I think you said like 150 grand from five years, 175 from like five years
0:24:17 of running the nonprofit. And you put, didn’t you tell me you put all of it into a location and
0:24:22 reformers, like you like transferred the money, you like transferred it from like ants checking
0:24:25 account to solid cores, checking account, like all of it.
0:24:30 Yeah. And then that didn’t feel so scary because I was 100% owner in the business. So it was like,
0:24:35 the scary part was that that it wasn’t moving the money. It was that the money is going to leave
0:24:42 that account. Yeah. Yeah. Did it all leave? Oh, I mean, a high majority. But the great news was as
0:24:50 soon as I opened, we started making money. So, you know, I had, I mean, Sam, like I was, I still
0:24:56 am, but especially back then, not a necessity. I was like a killer negotiator. I had to get
0:25:01 you to root for me. You know, so I’m talking to my general contractor, you know, and it’s like,
0:25:07 listen, can we do net 60 terms? Like if I can pay you sooner, I will. This is who I am. I started
0:25:12 this nonprofit. This is what I’m doing now. You know, I have this money, you know, I can pay you,
0:25:17 but I’m trying to make sure I don’t like get in front of my skis. And so like I would negotiate,
0:25:22 you know, that side of things. And the first landlord made me give four months of security
0:25:28 deposit, which killed me. I was like 30 grand that I have to give to you that like just gets to sit
0:25:33 there. And after that, I refused to do security deposits and was very successful in making that
0:25:39 happen. But yeah. And so as soon as like we opened and I started selling packages, I’ll never forget
0:25:44 my first my first sale. It was this woman named Amy, who I still know she was pregnant. And she
0:25:50 was like, I want to buy, you know, private sessions. And she went online and she bought
0:25:55 $2,500 worth of private sessions. And I was like, I can’t believe this woman just gave me all that
0:26:00 money. She’s never even done the work out. She doesn’t know anything. And so I trained her every
0:26:06 day at five a.m. Before the the studio, like we started class at six a.m. And then, you know,
0:26:12 once we opened, I got press. I leaned on my media contacts from back on my feet. I got an article
0:26:21 on the post. Yeah, it was DC. Yeah. And so how much was the start of costs? It was, oh gosh,
0:26:27 maybe a math, but I know the bill that was like 150 grand, right? I had to buy them. I had to pay
0:26:34 a licensing fee of $25,000 just to open the studio. That was just a licensing fee. That’s
0:26:38 insane, right? That’s an insane deal. Why can’t I just buy a machine? It’s my machine. Let me do
0:26:42 what I want. That’s why I ended that relationship in a couple of years and went through a lawsuit.
0:26:46 But then I had to buy the machines, which I financed because I couldn’t afford to buy them out,
0:26:52 right? And have all the cash. I had to finance them. And I was paying a monthly fee to do that.
0:26:59 And then, so those machines were $6,000 at that time, I don’t know, $7,000 a piece. So that was
0:27:06 70 grand, but I didn’t have to pay it all upfront. And then the rent was nine, no, sorry, seven grand,
0:27:13 seven grand a month. Damn. And what was your first month of sales? Oh, I like, we literally did over
0:27:20 a hundred grand in the first month. That’s insane. It was nuts. I mean, but I was betting big. And,
0:27:24 you know, I think I told this story a lot, but it’s still going to have to tell it. I was petrified,
0:27:27 you know, those moments where you have that you’re like, all in and you’re like, oh my god,
0:27:33 what am I doing? Larry, here comes Larry again, from back on my feet. And he’s like, and listen,
0:27:38 I’ll give you 75 grand for 30% of the business. If you don’t want to use all your capital, like,
0:27:42 listen, you grew this nonprofit, I know you’re going to be successful. You know,
0:27:47 if you want to keep a little cash, I’ll do this deal. And back then 75 grand, when all I had was
0:27:55 175 was a lot of money. And I, you know, I was beginning to think it was a responsible thing
0:28:00 to do to take this money. Maybe I should do this deal. And then I remember thinking I have the
0:28:06 money. And if I take his money, all I’m going to say is this is a massive doubt in myself. I’m
0:28:12 doubting myself. And when things really get hard, I am then going to lean into that 75k and convince
0:28:17 myself like, well, at least I have that, you know, like, you know, I don’t need to, this is too hard,
0:28:22 at least I have my 75k. And so I was like, I can’t, I can’t take that money. It’s just going to,
0:28:27 it’s going to take my drive away. It’s going to take the hunger. I need to feel like I’m being
0:28:32 chased by a bear. I need to figure this out. And that’s the way this is going to be successful.
0:28:38 So I just, I mean, every, every hour of, I was passing out solid core pamphlets, flyers, like
0:28:43 anything I could do to get you to come take a class. And then fortunately, what happened
0:28:47 was the same thing that happened to me when I took it. Everybody started telling their friends.
0:28:51 And Sam, after your first class, right, you said you were so sore.
0:28:56 Guess what? Everybody was not in a bad way, by the way, but, but everybody wants to tell everybody
0:29:00 how, oh my God, I’m so sore. I did this workout called solid core. You’ve got to go. They all
0:29:06 want to tell each other how much they’re working out. So, so it just snowballed. Did you create the
0:29:13 routine? That was part of the license. So I got trained on what was called this method called
0:29:19 degree. So we had someone come in and train me. And then I trained my trainers on how to do that.
0:29:26 I’m not a personal trainer. Like that’s not my background. And so we started again, using
0:29:32 their training program for us. And then soon realized that like we actually want to make this
0:29:38 more athletic. These names that they’re using were kind of silly. It was, it was like nothing
0:29:44 intuitive. And then the machine started breaking. And so I was like, this relationship is doing
0:29:50 nothing for me. I don’t know why I have to be associated with LaGrie. I want to like make my
0:29:56 own machines. I need to be in charge of manufacturing. Like the workouts don’t make sense. I had hired
0:30:01 somebody else to do the training who had a big background in MMA. And, and, and, you know, she
0:30:06 was certified and everything else. And we started playing around with the workout. She wrote a
0:30:14 massive training program. And then we separated from LaGrie. And he sued me like immediately.
0:30:19 Which you won, I think, right? Or sorry, you’re not a lot of say.
0:30:23 Well, I mean, it’s far enough down. But for all intents purposes, he had to buy back his
0:30:29 machines for me. And we agreed to never, to never talk again, which we haven’t. So, and, and frankly,
0:30:35 after we did that, all these other people who were part of LaGrie then also started to make
0:30:40 their own machines realizing like, why are we paying a massive premium on machines? This isn’t a
0:30:46 franchise. So we’re not getting the benefit of a national grant here. Like it just didn’t make
0:30:52 any business for any of the sense. So yeah, and then making my own machines, like, that was a huge
0:30:59 gamble. I didn’t know how to do that, obviously. And like tooling, engineering, manufacturing,
0:31:05 prototypes, I probably spent lost a couple hundred grand just because I didn’t know what I was doing.
0:31:10 Maybe probably even more than that. But like, we got a machine. It wasn’t right. I already,
0:31:14 like, it like, it didn’t work properly. Like we had to redo it. It was a mess.
0:31:20 What was your first year’s revenue? The first year revenue, I think you asked me this last time.
0:31:24 And then I had, I think you said a million dollars, right? Well, the first, it was more than
0:31:29 that because that was the first studio’s revenue. And then in the first year, you know, I had five
0:31:35 of these open. So you had, I didn’t know you had five at the end of the first year. Yeah. That’s
0:31:41 insane, right? Yeah, but same thing. I’m like, momentum, momentum, momentum. Have you ever
0:31:45 heard the funny story about subway? And I don’t know if it’s true or not, but like I just love it.
0:31:50 So I keep telling it, but subway had one location and they were like off the beaten path and they
0:31:54 weren’t doing that great. So they thought, you know, we need to open a second one because people
0:31:57 will think if we have two that we’re killing it. And I like remember hearing that story. I’m like,
0:32:03 that’s so brilliant. And even though we were killing it, I was like, I need to maximize on this
0:32:08 and get two and three and four open so that people start being like, I’m seeing this thing everywhere.
0:32:14 I must be missing out. They must be doing so well. This thing must work. And that really
0:32:19 like served us really well. So we just kept reinvesting the profits into the next studio.
0:32:25 I kept negotiating, you know, as long, like longer terms to pay back if I needed to.
0:32:29 And I just stopped doing security deposits with landlords.
0:32:33 How old was the business when you sold each different chunk? Because you sold it a couple
0:32:40 times, right? Yeah. So I did a minority deal in 2017. So the business was four years old at that
0:32:47 point. And we had 27 locations on an annualized basis. Each one of those studios was doing about
0:32:57 700 grand. Okay. So 27 times 700. That’s roughly $19 million in revenue. Yeah. You sold the business
0:33:02 for what valuation or you sold a chunk for what valuation? I did a pretty big valuation back then.
0:33:10 So the valuation was like close to 60 million. Wow. Yeah. And people, people, the firms definitely
0:33:14 balked at that. And I just said, listen, it’s not so much about the number. It’s about the terms.
0:33:20 And I know how much money I need to get to 100 studios. And that’s $12 million because I’m going
0:33:25 to continue to use the profits. And I also want to take secondary off of the table. And
0:33:29 obviously no one like that, especially that early. And I was like, listen, these are those are the
0:33:35 terms. Like, don’t don’t get so freaked out about the terms. Tell me what you need in order to do
0:33:43 this deal. And so there was a healthy preff on the minority deal that I agreed to. And I had no
0:33:47 problem doing that. And I remember two people were like, you know, and well, how do we know you’re
0:33:52 not going to walk away for six million? And I’m like, I was like, I would just sell the whole
0:33:56 business if that was the case. Like, you think I’m in this for $6 million? Like,
0:34:00 which is such a good way to like approach it. You are good. I’m really bad at negotiating.
0:34:06 Like all my staff knows that like, don’t come to Sam about salary discussions because my default
0:34:11 is like, I just say, I just say, you got to talk to this for other person about that because I
0:34:14 just say yes to, I just say yes to everything. So I’ve like removed myself from negotiation
0:34:19 because I’m too nice. And like, how do you think I did on this podcast? I know. Well,
0:34:25 I don’t know. That would sound like a back-handed couple, but it’s not. But I’m just, I’m soft as
0:34:30 fuck. Like I just, I just, I’m like, yeah, I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll do. But to approach
0:34:36 like a negotiation of like, well, don’t say no, just tell me what you need to win. And I’ll see
0:34:42 if I can actually make that happen for you. But then in order for you to win, it has to take
0:34:47 it to account. Here’s what I need. Exactly. And so I did that with landlords and, you know,
0:34:51 and private equity. It’s like, you know, landlord would always block that. We always
0:34:54 do security deposits. I’m like, that’s not really a response, right? Like, what are you
0:34:59 trying to protect against, right? You have a corporate guarantee, you have X, like help me
0:35:06 understand this and I can try to solve the problem a different way. So I, I solved the
0:35:09 private equity problem with the preferred return, you know, it’s like your downside is,
0:35:14 I’m not going to see another dime until you make, you know, the 2.5 X your money.
0:35:18 That’s just such a funny response. We always, well, why do I have to give a deposit? Because
0:35:25 we’ve always do deposit. That’s not a good reply. Give me a different reply. That’s the
0:35:30 best. That is the best. And it really, it really does work because you make them articulate what’s
0:35:34 important to them. And usually what’s important to landlords is, you know, the ledger, the balance
0:35:39 sheet of the total, you know, term of the deal. And I’m, you know, so that’s why we were able
0:35:44 to push rent a little bit further down the road and like increase the rent in year five or six.
0:35:49 And, you know, okay, you’re protected on the corporate guarantee, you know, front. So like,
0:35:53 you know, you have three years, I’m not going to do a security deposit. And let me tell you why
0:35:58 that’s important for me and why it benefits you because the more I get open, the bigger the brand
0:36:04 is, you know, it’s going to get more brand equity and, and, you know, this location will do better.
0:36:09 So yeah, I think people, all people can do a better job of, of negotiating. And it’s one of a
0:36:14 really amazing skill sets to, to learn. Chris Voss never split the difference. I love that book.
0:36:18 I read that book during COVID because I really had to get good at negotiation. And what’s the,
0:36:22 what’s like the, the, the summary of that? Well, he just goes through these different
0:36:28 strategies, right? About like mirroring. And he gives this, one of my favorite examples was he
0:36:34 gives this of a car, he goes in, he’s like, listen, I have, call it $10,300. You know, that’s the car
0:36:40 that I want. And just say it was like 15 grand or something. And then I comes back and like, okay,
0:36:44 great news. I add down to 14. He’s like, wow, thank you so much. I really appreciate you advocating
0:36:49 for me. But the number of the amount of money I have right now hasn’t, hasn’t changed. I still
0:36:56 have $10,300. If you can do the deal for that, you know, I’m here, goes back, comes down more,
0:37:02 gets to like, call it 11 three. And at that point, he knows, right? Cause he hasn’t moved.
0:37:07 He knows you’re not walking away. You are, you’re so close. The guy’s going to do the deal.
0:37:11 And I remember using that strategy a lot as well and negotiating. You get people to come,
0:37:15 come, come. And now they’re just too close that they’re not going to move away. So the whole
0:37:21 point is like not meeting in the middle. Wait. So as the point is, then do you go to 11,000 or do
0:37:26 you stick at 10, five? He stuck, he stuck because that guy is so close now. He’s not going to walk
0:37:30 away when it’s like, you know, used to be five grand away. Now you’re just 800 grand or sorry,
0:37:36 $800 away. So he like, ends up getting, you know, the deal done. And he just goes through
0:37:41 different strategies in there on how you can mirror, you know, this is what I hear you’re
0:37:44 saying. Yes. You know, and like, don’t walk away when you hear and know, like the note
0:37:50 doesn’t have to be a bad thing. So me and my lawyer, who I had on staff at that point,
0:37:55 who’s just a jack of all trades and unbelievable, you know, we read that book, Sam, because during
0:37:59 COVID we knew it’s like, what’s going to kill us? What’s going to kill this company is not that
0:38:05 we don’t have revenue coming in right now. It’s if these landlords sue us and make us pay rent.
0:38:09 And no one really understood who was right or wrong then, you know, it’s like, well, this is a
0:38:13 force was sure. It’s like, well, we don’t have any money coming in. How do you expect us to pay rent?
0:38:18 So we just said, we just have to get the landlords on our side. We have to figure out a way to
0:38:23 restructure the deal that doesn’t allow us to pay rent when we are closed. And we also can’t kick
0:38:28 the can down the road. You know, so we came up with strategies like, how about we lengthen the
0:38:34 term of the lease? We’ll add another year or two to the back end of the lease, you know, so that
0:38:39 you have a longer tenant. Like if you force us to pay rent, you’re not going to get another dime
0:38:44 from us, you know, because we’re going to go bankrupt. But if you work with us, or maybe we
0:38:49 increase the rent, you know, year eight, nine and 10 to make up some of the difference for this.
0:38:54 But we know that we couldn’t in a year from now have this like, okay, you owe rent for those three
0:38:58 months and give us a check for 90 K, but it’s 75 studios. Like there was just no way we were going
0:39:05 to recover from that. So anyway, those kinds of things, you know, people talk about how COVID
0:39:10 killed so many gyms. And a lot of that was not just because of COVID, it was because of these
0:39:17 operational and financial decisions that weren’t like made as smartly as maybe some other companies
0:39:20 could have made and not understanding what was going to be the demise of them.
0:39:25 When you when you completely got out was like, what, $300 million valuation?
0:39:30 Yeah, a little more than that. But yeah. And that was last April. I got I sold out my shares.
0:39:32 How old was the business then?
0:39:34 Nine and a half years.
0:39:39 That’s a great run. And when you look at like what made you guys great, was it operational
0:39:44 excellence? Was it because your brand was cool? Was it because the workout was better than anywhere
0:39:48 else? Like what’s like the honest assessment of like these were the one or two factors that set
0:39:54 us apart from berries boot camp or whoever else is you consider to be competition or all the
0:39:55 mom and pops out there?
0:40:00 Yeah, the workout is incredible. And I’m glad you’ve gone to it because you can understand
0:40:03 a little bit what I’m saying. It’s just like unlike anything that was ever out there. And now
0:40:08 there’s a lot more Pilates out there. But we had speed to market. We are the dominant player,
0:40:17 you know, in the space. And we have a pretty cool brand. So I think the aesthetics, we know what
0:40:22 our brand is, right? The whole tagline is create the strongest version of yourself. And I think
0:40:27 the company is still doing a really good job of leaning into that. One of my favorite campaigns
0:40:32 we did was it’s not for everyone. And we really went in and like this doesn’t this may not be
0:40:36 for you, but it’s for somebody, you know, it was almost like a Nike commercial. It’s like,
0:40:41 if you like to push yourself, those are great commercials. Yeah, yeah. And the night you’re
0:40:47 talking about the Nike Olympic ones. Yes, exactly. Yeah, those are great. Winning when I’m not for
0:40:52 everyone. So we did we did this campaign a few years ago. And it really like people people
0:40:56 watch that and it’s like, I want that to be for me. I’m tough. I’m strong. I like to push
0:41:02 myself. I want to grow. I can handle tough things. And so I think there is this aura of if you know
0:41:07 somebody who does solid core, you’re like, I know who you are. Like I know exactly the type of person
0:41:11 you are, you’re driven, you’re ambitious, you like to work hard, you’re not afraid of the work,
0:41:17 you’re not the work is actually the joy for you. You want to feel good at the end of the day knowing
0:41:22 you put your all and tried your best at like everything you did. So I think the brand ethos
0:41:28 is definitely a big part of our success. And don’t get me wrong. Again, operationally, I’m a
0:41:32 pretty good operator. Are you like pretty good where you’re like, you’re actually the best,
0:41:37 like your top or are you like, that’s like, I’m pretty good at it, but it’s maybe not the best
0:41:42 the thing that I’m best at. Yeah, I’m great at putting systems, processes in place. But like,
0:41:47 I’m not the right person to run solid core today. If that makes sense, like it’s too big, it’s too
0:41:53 monolithic. It’s like, I just I move quickly. And that’s not actually what you need. You need
0:42:00 somebody like Brian, who’s much more methodical, analytical, patient. I think that for most
0:42:05 entrepreneurs who are like new, I think that branding and some of these exercises aren’t
0:42:09 terribly important. But I think that if you have a proven track record, where you’re like,
0:42:16 this person executes well, and they execute when you have that tracker track record, which I think
0:42:22 I do. Like for all my businesses now, I spent a lot of time on branding, where I’m like, what is
0:42:28 this? How does this make someone feel like the colors, the name, things like that. And that,
0:42:31 like I said, that’s I don’t think that’s important for most people when they’re just starting out,
0:42:35 because it’s like, you just got to get started and get some traction with you guys. You
0:42:39 kind of it seems like you came out the gate with good branding. And you’re kind of in that
0:42:43 that boat, by the way, where like, this is your second company. And you like, it’s like, no,
0:42:47 you execute it. So it’s okay to like kind of sweat the stuff or think this stuff through.
0:42:51 Who inspired you for your branding? And where what was the exercise that you went through?
0:42:58 Yeah, we’re similar there. I love the branding and marketing as as well. So I I did that for
0:43:04 back of my feet and and and solid core in the beginning. You know, like, with back on my feet,
0:43:08 it just that the name itself, I remember someone telling me like, oh, we should call this thing
0:43:13 the homeless runners Association of America. And I was like, that alone will make the thing fail,
0:43:18 because it doesn’t sound cool. It doesn’t you know what I mean, it sounds like one of these every
0:43:24 other organization that just like, you know, and I wanted us to be cool. And coming up with the name
0:43:29 for solid core, it was just like reiterating a bunch of names. I’m like, Oh, that just has it,
0:43:34 that just makes you sound badass. Like, you know, people like, Oh, that’s solid. Like, obviously,
0:43:39 like the core piece has, you know, lots of double meanings and whatever. And then the brackets,
0:43:46 I thought could indicate like your obliques and the tightness and community and together. And so
0:43:50 I was like, this is it, it just, it just kind of looks cool. And they, you know, we haven’t done
0:43:56 a redo of the logo or anything, like it just kind of stuck around and the brackets. I mean,
0:43:59 I have, I don’t know if you can see, but I have like a bracket. Now I lifted up my shirt for you
0:44:07 too. I have a bracket tattoo. Again, I just, I just always feel like things need to be cool
0:44:14 for people to want to want to be a part of them. And so I didn’t want to spend a ton of like stupid
0:44:20 money on branding and marketing for another idea that probably would have worked also. But
0:44:24 one of my mantras is that there’s more than one right answer. And this was like a right enough
0:44:33 answer to move. So here’s the deal. I made most of my money from a newsletter business. It was
0:44:37 called the hustle. And it was a daily newsletter at scale to millions of subscribers. And it was
0:44:43 the greatest business on earth. The problem with it was that I had close to 40 employees and only
0:44:48 three of them were actually doing any writing. The other employees were growing the newsletter,
0:44:53 building out the tech for the platform and selling ads. And honestly, it was a huge pain in the butt.
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0:45:21 I want to ask you about some ideas, but you kind of caught the Pilates thing at the right.
0:45:27 You timed that one well. What fitness-related businesses excite you right now? When you were
0:45:34 talking about something, and I started thinking of Hydrax. It’s called Hydrax. Have you seen Hydrax?
0:45:40 H-Y-D-R-O-X. Hydrox, I think it’s called. Hydrox? Yeah. Is it Hydrox? Sorry, am I saying it wrong?
0:45:44 Like the competition? Yes, the competition in New York. I went and saw it.
0:45:49 It’s awesome. It is awesome. I saw that and I’m like, “Oh, this is going to be a thing.
0:45:54 Maybe it’s already a thing.” But this is really going to be a thing. Are there any things that you
0:46:00 see where you’re like, “This is going to pop?” Well, I will talk about what you finished in a
0:46:05 second, but one of the things that my husband and I went to Friends just did is 29029. Have you
0:46:10 heard of this event? Yes. The founder’s in Hampton. Did you talk to him, Mark? Yeah, I did talk to Mark.
0:46:15 Yes. They’re releasing the schedule soon. I’m going to one of them.
0:46:23 You got to go. We just did it. 29029 is the elevation of Everest. They created this event
0:46:29 where they partner with ski mountains for the most part around the country. You have to climb
0:46:33 whatever the number of times up that mountain, that’s the equivalent of Everest. We were in
0:46:41 Mount Tremblant, which is in Canada. Our mountain was about 2,200 elevation. We had to climb this
0:46:49 thing 15 times, 1.7 mile, and it was steep. I’m like a marathoner. I’ve done these things. I really
0:46:56 was like, “I’m just walking up a hill. I’ll be fine.” Completely different than anything I’ve
0:47:02 ever done before for the pure duration. If you think it takes you 60 to 90 minutes to get up
0:47:08 these things, you’re out there for 15 to 20 hours. Some people longer. Some people literally had to
0:47:14 be on their feet for 30 hours to get the 15 hikes in for the time that you’re allotted because you
0:47:20 have 36 hours. It is unbelievably inspiring the people that are there because most people are
0:47:25 there because they’re going through a divorce. They’re fighting some health battle. They’ve lost
0:47:30 100 pounds. They’ve got something bigger going on in their life and they need to show themselves
0:47:36 that they can climb the Effen Mountain physically so that they can go back and do it emotionally,
0:47:42 mentally, spiritually, whatever. It’s just awesome. It’s awesome.
0:47:48 Yeah. His business is wild. Basically, I think they sell out most of their events now. I think
0:47:54 it’s like $5,000 to go and they provide the accommodations. You’re not slumming it. It’s
0:47:59 like really nice stuff. You think that’s going to take off?
0:48:03 I think things like that. I think there’s going to be high rocks. I love it. Innovation.
0:48:08 There was a crop this across the games. I think you’re going to start to see more events. Remember
0:48:15 when Ragnar and some of the Ragnar relay? No. What’s that? Oh my gosh. Ragnar used to have
0:48:21 it. How do you spell it? R-A-G-N-A-R. It might still be going on. I just don’t know anybody who
0:48:27 does it anymore, but it was these relays where you had two vans and you had 24 hours to run
0:48:34 hundreds of miles. You’re literally driving through the night. Your vans are moving on.
0:48:38 There’s stations. It was just, again, so cool. I don’t really know if it’s still going on.
0:48:45 It is. It is. The company that owns it, I think they own a bunch of different events now.
0:48:53 Yeah. I really think that there’s this continued movement. I know you don’t drink. I really don’t
0:48:59 drink. A lot of my friends don’t want to be partying. Everybody is looking, at least in my group, for
0:49:08 physical fun activities to be doing with their time. I think these endurance challenge events
0:49:14 of all sorts are going to continue to grow and pop up all over the place because that’s how
0:49:17 I think a lot of people want to spend their times. I’ll tell you, I didn’t have my phone with me
0:49:25 for the entire time I hiked. I refuse to bring it with. I’m craving being out in nature,
0:49:28 challenging myself physically. I think a lot of other people are too. You’re going to see more
0:49:34 of that, I think a lot. Then from the critique- By the way, Mark told me, I was like, “What makes
0:49:39 you guys special?” He was like, “Well, you have a big breakdown,” but he was like, “One of the
0:49:44 things is that we make it so most of the people are going to fail. We want it to be hard enough
0:49:49 to where if you get done with it, it’s a big deal to you, and you’re going to want to talk about it.”
0:49:53 He’s like, “Most events, they actually make it where too many people succeed.”
0:49:57 And so he was talking about how the mindset behind making that event.
0:50:03 But you know what they do really well? They list different mountains, so you actually don’t feel
0:50:08 like you’re failing. So even though you may have not made it to Everest, if you climbed 10 of those,
0:50:13 you made it to Kilimanjaro. So they give you a medal, a Kilimanjaro medal, instead of-
0:50:18 Did you get all to all of it? Did you almost quit at all, or were you like, “No, I’m getting this
0:50:22 no matter what?” Well, Mark will tell you. So I didn’t get any sleep the night before, and I
0:50:27 actually had a mini meltdown. I’m like, “I don’t do well with sleep deprivation. I’m not going to be
0:50:33 able to do this.” And so I was on three hours of sleep, and my strategy was, I’m just going to do as
0:50:39 many as I can as fast as I can before I hit a wall. So I was on pace to probably finish
0:50:46 within the top five. And my 11th lap, it just, you know, like if you’ve ever done an endurance
0:50:53 event and like the wall, it just happens, and it happened. And I made it up the mountain halfway
0:50:57 in the time that it was taking me to reach the whole thing. I had to sit in the med tent for 45
0:51:03 minutes. I’m asking them, I’m like, “I can’t keep going. I need to go down to the mountain.
0:51:08 There’s my half of lap count so I can come back tomorrow.” And they’re like, “No.” And I was like,
0:51:14 I’m like, “What?” And now I really can’t go down. And I just couldn’t get myself together. And along
0:51:20 comes Mark, and he gives me Coke, not that kind of Coke. He gives me Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola, yeah.
0:51:24 And he was like, “Yeah, he’s like, “You’re going to do this. I’m going to walk up the second half
0:51:30 of the mountain with you. You’re not going to go back down. I can see it in your eyes. You’re not
0:51:35 somebody who needs to go back down.” So like, yeah, I took that shot of Coca-Cola and like
0:51:41 got up and we made it up the second half of the mountain. And then I went down and went to bed
0:51:45 and finished my next four in the morning. But yeah, Mark came along and saved me.
0:51:50 You put in the notes. You said, “The number one reason we had to let people go was because they
0:51:54 lacked proper judgment and critical thinking skills.” You said, “What I discovered was that the
0:51:59 best critical thinkers are great at taboo because you have to think on your feet and be strategic
0:52:03 when you describe the word you want to get people to say. What’s taboo? I don’t even know what that
0:52:08 is.” Yeah. So taboo is a game where you have teams and you get a card. And at the top of the
0:52:13 card says a word. Let’s say it says, “Book.” And you have to get your team to say that word. But
0:52:19 underneath that word book is five words that you can’t say to get them to say it. So I say like
0:52:25 “page” or “reading” or things like that. So you have to think creatively. And I have to know who’s
0:52:33 on my team. So how would I get Sam to say this word? And there are people who fresh that game.
0:52:39 And from my experience, whenever we’ve played on a retreat or something, the people who get stuck
0:52:44 or flustered or can’t think on their feet, whatever, usually don’t work there very much longer. And
0:52:52 I’m like, there has to be a correlation between this game, the ability to figure it out of like,
0:52:56 who’s on your team? How do you make this happen? Thinking on their feet. And some of the smartest
0:53:00 people that I think are my friend group are also excellent at that game. So there’s something there.
0:53:07 You also said something like, well, AI is taking over fitness. And you can personalize data,
0:53:13 supplements, exercise, food based on individuals. So for example, if you’re a 44-year-old woman who
0:53:16 wants to gain 10 pounds of muscle, we know your blood work. We know this about you. We know that
0:53:22 about you. Here’s the program that you’re going to be using or you should be using. Is there anyone
0:53:28 in the space who you like who’s taking advantage of that insight? Yeah. So I’m an advisor and an
0:53:33 investor. So I will disclose that to a company called Oxfit. And they are an ad home. It’s sort
0:53:38 of like tonal, but I think it’s much more comprehensive and better. And their AI game is
0:53:43 really progressing to do just that. It knows when you’re tired, it knows certain things,
0:53:47 how you’re lifting the weight, you’re in balance, whatever. And they are really investing in the
0:53:53 AI so that they can partner and you can add your blood work in and you can add every sort of data
0:53:59 point that you have about yourself and then what your goals are. And it will design, again, exactly
0:54:04 what you need to be doing. And I think that’s going to start to take off in a lot of different
0:54:09 areas. But listen, there’s a lot of people who are still just checking the box. And I think that’s
0:54:13 why they get frustrated because they’re not doing the right things for the results that they want.
0:54:19 And it’s a little bit of a guessing game, not knowing your metabolism, not knowing your deficiencies,
0:54:25 not knowing, again, your age or hormones and how all these things are affecting the workouts that
0:54:31 you do. So I think that’s just going to continue to, within five years, I think it’ll be kind of
0:54:38 foolish to just be like guessing on what you should be doing to work out. I’ve had a handful
0:54:44 of friends get diagnosed with cancer recently. And one of my friends detected it because he did
0:54:50 one of these pre-novo or something like that, one of those scans that you just pay money for.
0:54:56 And in 50 years or some amount of decades, we’re going to look back and we’re going to think,
0:55:01 it’s insane that you had cancer growing inside of your body and it could have been okay had you
0:55:09 just been told that it was there. And it’s like you’ve got this foreign thing in your body that
0:55:14 you don’t know about it. And we accept that that’s normal now, but I think that in some time in the
0:55:20 future, we’re not going to be unwilling to accept that. And so I’m personally really interested
0:55:26 in that. I am also personally quite interested in like figuring out exactly the fitness or diet
0:55:31 that works for me. I can’t, based off of blood work, I don’t think I’ve seen a product out there
0:55:37 that’s doing it that’s nailing that though yet. I think a lot of it’s like pseudoscience. I just,
0:55:42 I think it’s none of it’s like awesome at the moment. You know what I mean? Yeah, I agree. And
0:55:50 I think it will get there because if people can figure that out, and again, imagine if you’ve
0:55:55 been so frustrated your entire life to not see the results when you’re willing to do the work,
0:56:00 when you’re willing to put in the effort, and like it’s still not happening. I just think it’s
0:56:06 only a matter of time with where we are with the AI stuff and the demand for it, frankly.
0:56:08 Are you going to start another company?
0:56:14 No, sir. Not right now. Not right now. I know too much. I know too much. Like the beauty of
0:56:20 starting companies is I think a lot of times is naivety. And I’ll also be truly honest that like
0:56:27 some, the financial motivation is a little bit gone, of course. You know, I really felt with
0:56:32 back in my feet in solid core that I’m like doing a certain, one, I was very into them both, but two,
0:56:37 it was like, I’m going to make people’s lives better. I felt like I’m the perfect person to do
0:56:43 that. So I haven’t had, I’m also not looking for it right now. But if I have that experience again,
0:56:49 where I come across something or I moved or I’m like, I have to do this. Like that is when I will,
0:56:56 that is when I will do it. But for now, I just feel like I’m giving myself some freedom, some time
0:57:03 to feel this new chapter. Are you like seeking anything? Or you’re just like, like, because
0:57:09 that’s like an interesting mindset that I’ve been in before. And I don’t know if I approached it the
0:57:15 best way, but it’s like the mindset, I’m just going to go out and live and I’m going to be, my
0:57:24 ears are open if I get called. Yes, I’m just going to live right now. And yeah, I think even if I got
0:57:28 called right now, Sam, I wouldn’t, I don’t know if I could, if I could do it. Like because you’re
0:57:33 tired or you’re happy. Exactly. It’s not tired. I’m actually very energized. But you’ve read the
0:57:38 book die was zero. Yeah, I think we talked about that. Right. So I’m just, you know, I want to be
0:57:44 playing like I’m trying to stay in my feminine, because I’ve been in my masculine a lot in my life.
0:57:52 And like I want to have room and prioritizing playing. And for me, that is beach volleyball,
0:57:57 it’s any kind of sports, it’s connecting with friends and family, and being able to be a little
0:58:04 bit carefree. And I don’t want to put so much rigid structure back in my schedule. And I just
0:58:08 feel like I need a breather from that. And I, and I’m not willing, I’m not willing to do it.
0:58:13 All right. So we are about to wrap up. And Anne was like, you got to talk about this idea. All
0:58:16 right. What’s this idea? I read it, but I need you to explain it better. So you got this idea.
0:58:22 Tell me about jump seat. Yeah. So I, so you’ve all been at the airport, right? And like your flight
0:58:25 gets canceled or delayed and you’re desperate to get home. And you, of course, like you go up to
0:58:29 the airlines and they can’t do anything because they’re not going to kick anybody else off of
0:58:34 the flight. They don’t care about your status and whatever. And so the idea for jump seat is
0:58:38 very much like ticket master or something else where there’s a platform where let’s just say
0:58:43 Sam, again, if I got canceled and you’re like, dammit, I have to get home, you go on jump seat
0:58:50 and you offer a thousand dollars for any seat on any flight going back to where do you live?
0:58:56 Let’s say I’m going back to New York. Okay. So you’re going back to New York and like
0:59:01 you put the offer out there and all someone has to do is accept your offer. You trade seats,
0:59:05 they now are on your flight whenever that flight gets rescheduled, but they don’t have the same
0:59:10 timeline that you do to get home. So it’s like no problem. And it can work in reverse where if I’m
0:59:15 at the airport and I’m like, you know, I have a flight back to Miami, but like I’m in no rush,
0:59:20 I’m going to put my seat up for sale. And if someone else wants to get home sooner, they can buy my
0:59:26 seat. Well, it’s like seat geek for play tickets where it’s like, someone owns them. But if you
0:59:31 own it, you can auction off your auction off. But think about, think about how much happier
0:59:35 customers would be in the airlines where you could build in the airline to take a little bit of the
0:59:40 cut. So now I’m a happier Delta customer because I solved my own problem, even though Delta couldn’t
0:59:44 solve it, but they’re allowing this platform and you can even do it for seats. So let’s just say
0:59:49 I’m on a flight and I’m sitting in 32 a and I’m like, I really want to buy first class.
0:59:54 This person has first class. They don’t really care. They put up their seat for like 500 bucks and
0:59:58 they’ll come back and take my economy seat. And now I get to sit in first class. Would you ever pursue
1:00:04 this? No, because I don’t think this is a game I can win. I’m not like a tech person or something.
1:00:09 That’s why I want like, I want this product so I can use it. So that’s why I want somebody who’s
1:00:15 like, Oh my God, this makes so much sense. And you fell in love with the name jump seat. That’s a good
1:00:20 name. Yeah. It’s a great name. And I have a logo and everything like someone. Do you really?
1:00:25 It’s so good. I’ll send it to Ari. You can see it. How could someone, wait, would you actually
1:00:29 work with someone if they wanted to, if someone wanted to, how would you want to give away? How
1:00:35 could someone contact you? Like at least DM you on Instagram? Yeah. Yeah. If you can figure out
1:00:43 how to find me, you’re not the right person to totally. So yeah. How much do you think? Well,
1:00:48 whoever owns jump seat.com, they’re just sitting there. They’re not using it. You own jump seat.com?
1:00:53 Yeah. Of course they own it. How much did you pay for this? Like $5 or something? Not much.
1:01:00 Jump seat.com was $5. I bought it years ago. I’ve literally had, I’ve had this idea for such a
1:01:05 long time and I’m like, just make the logo. You know, like I had my friend make the logo and
1:01:10 it’s, it’s really good. It’s, it’s, the name is so perfect. It’s like what I can just trade seats
1:01:14 and people are like, Oh my God, airlines are never going to allow that. And like they already
1:01:19 allow aggregates like Expedia and, you know, they’re already in their back end system and this
1:01:25 solves a problem for them. And they can make more money by just taking $5 off of every time
1:01:30 someone switched sheets. Why would, you know, why would they care? This is so funny. I thought this
1:01:36 was a half big thing. So you’re, you’re in. I mean, I would love for someone to do it. I’ll give
1:01:40 you the, I won’t give it for you. You can, you can give me a little bit of equity in the company
1:01:43 and you can, you can run with it, but you’re going to have to convince me why you’re the right
1:01:48 person to do it. What would they have to say to convince you? Well, I’d have to know again,
1:01:52 why it’s a game they can win. What’s their background? Do they have the tech? Do they have
1:01:56 any, you know, connections in the airline industry? Have they ever built anything like this before?
1:02:01 You know, why would this be interesting to them? Do they know how to scale and, and build something?
1:02:06 Like, do they have the tech experience, which I don’t have at all. That’s so funny. I like went
1:02:11 to jumpseat.com and I’m like, Oh, hey, it’s registered, but no one’s using it. I did not
1:02:15 realize you’re this, you’re this far down. All right. So they’re going to, well, here’s what I
1:02:19 want to know. You’re going to have to message me and I’ll have to do a, I’ll do a shout out, like,
1:02:23 if there ever are any results, but you have to let me know how many people message you. And if
1:02:28 anyone’s actually promising. Okay, I will. I said it last time, it felt like I was like,
1:02:35 like being not genuine because I was so happy, but you’re, you inspire the sh*t out of me. And
1:02:40 you’re one of my favorite people on earth. I have found myself since we last talked, like,
1:02:44 approaching a situation. I mean, like, what would Anne think about this? And so I just want to thank
1:02:50 you for being part of my life and doing these podcasts. You’re the best. You mean a lot to me.
1:02:55 That’s really sweet. We’ll get you a t-shirt, Sam, that says what would you do? Just kidding.
1:03:00 That would be great. That would be great as long as it’s a crop top. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, as long
1:03:06 as it’s a crop top, then it’s good. And it must be at least two sizes too small. Yeah. I appreciate
1:03:19 you. Thank you very much. That’s the pod.
1:03:19 you
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