AI transcript
0:00:01 But anyway, this is my Sunday brainstorm.
0:00:04 My Sunday brainstorm was, here’s three cool ideas.
0:00:06 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:00:09 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:00:12 ♪ I put my all in it like a days off ♪
0:00:13 ♪ On the road let’s travel ♪
0:00:15 – Dude, let’s do like a life update
0:00:17 because frankly, you and I mostly talk to each other.
0:00:19 I mean, we spend so much time on this podcast
0:00:20 but I don’t even like talk that much.
0:00:21 I want to know what’s going on with you
0:00:24 and I’ll fill you in on what’s going on with me.
0:00:27 – I did a thing I’ve never really done before.
0:00:28 It’s not background breaking.
0:00:30 I’m sure you or many people have done this
0:00:33 but I hadn’t and Friday hit
0:00:35 and I just put my phone in a drawer
0:00:36 and I didn’t touch it till this morning.
0:00:40 So I had a no phone weekend, which was pretty awesome
0:00:43 and very unusual for me.
0:00:44 – You’re not good at that.
0:00:46 Like you’re hardcore about your phone.
0:00:48 So tell me how that felt.
0:00:50 – It felt like it withdrawals from an addiction.
0:00:52 Like I would find myself, there was like funny things
0:00:55 and then there was like little moments
0:00:56 where I would notice it a lot more, right?
0:00:58 So like grabbing your pants all the time.
0:01:00 – I would just keep patting my pocket.
0:01:02 Like I would put my kids in their car seat, shut the door
0:01:05 and I’m walking around the car to get to my side
0:01:08 and I instinctively, I’m trying to pat to check.
0:01:09 Like why do I need to check my phone
0:01:12 in this three second break that I have walking around my car?
0:01:13 It’s pretty crazy.
0:01:16 And there was just like a hundred moments like that
0:01:18 where I instinctively wanted to go
0:01:20 and you know, just pull to refresh basically.
0:01:21 I needed to go see a feed.
0:01:22 It’s like I need to get my feed.
0:01:24 And so, you know, it was nice to do that.
0:01:25 I found myself doing randoms.
0:01:27 I was like humming a lot, I read a lot.
0:01:30 I was just like, our kids are kind of picky eaters
0:01:32 and we haven’t really taught them to eat very well
0:01:33 on their own.
0:01:36 And so like we feed them every meal basically still.
0:01:38 And so I’m sitting there and I’m feeding them.
0:01:41 And normally I’ve got my phone, they’ve got their cartoons.
0:01:42 We’re basically all just cartooned up
0:01:45 and I’m just shoving bites of mac and cheese in their mouth.
0:01:47 And it really slowed me down.
0:01:50 Like time went way slower,
0:01:52 but not in a bad way necessarily.
0:01:54 It was a lot more peaceful, I would say also.
0:01:58 Was part of the upside of not having my phone.
0:02:01 – Did you use your computer or Apple TV or cable TV?
0:02:02 – Yeah, so the rule was I don’t have to be like
0:02:04 without the internet or without any entertainment.
0:02:06 I didn’t go Amish.
0:02:09 I was allowed to watch TV and I was allowed to use my laptop
0:02:12 if the opportunity presented itself.
0:02:14 But on the weekends, I’m pretty much fully in dad mode.
0:02:18 So we’re not, I’m not really on the computer a whole lot.
0:02:20 And even just the physical distance of like
0:02:23 the computer that’s in your pocket all the time
0:02:25 versus okay, I guess if I wanna go on the internet,
0:02:27 I’m allowed to, I’m allowed to go on Twitter if I want to,
0:02:30 but I just have to go to my computer, open it up,
0:02:32 type in the thing and then like, you know,
0:02:34 I can only be on my laptop for so long basically.
0:02:36 So that was a good, a very good break
0:02:37 and something I’m gonna do a lot more of
0:02:41 because I don’t like the idea of being addicted to something.
0:02:44 And I would say by any definition,
0:02:46 I’m completely addicted to my phone.
0:02:48 If I don’t have it, I kind of freak out a little bit.
0:02:49 I’m like, I gotta go get my phone.
0:02:50 Hold on, wait, wait, wait, whatever we’re doing,
0:02:52 I gotta get my phone, I left my phone in the other room.
0:02:53 I gotta go get it.
0:02:55 And it’s pretty crazy that that’s the case,
0:02:58 finding myself instinctively reaching into my pockets
0:03:00 or like really wondering like, what time is it?
0:03:00 Did somebody text me?
0:03:01 It’s like, who cares?
0:03:03 You know, I don’t really need any of this.
0:03:04 – Did you follow the news?
0:03:06 – Well, that was of course the craziest thing is
0:03:09 while I’m not on my phone,
0:03:11 my wife was like, oh my God, Trump got shot.
0:03:13 I’m like, oh man, this is the one thing
0:03:16 that like the craziest news in the world happens
0:03:18 testing my resolve here.
0:03:22 All right, let’s take a quick break
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0:03:55 – And so I did get on my laptop a little bit later
0:03:56 and check out what was going on
0:03:58 and read all the crazy stuff.
0:04:00 But I stayed off my phone, so that was good.
0:04:02 – Have you ever heard of NoFap November?
0:04:06 – So, I like how you just said that
0:04:09 as if it’s like a scientific phenomenon.
0:04:11 Like you were like, have you ever heard of mitosis?
0:04:12 It’s when the cells split?
0:04:17 Like have you ever heard of non FAP November?
0:04:21 (all laughing)
0:04:22 – So like, I think that’s a great movement.
0:04:24 And they like mix it with humor or whatever,
0:04:26 but there’s like a reason, whatever.
0:04:28 And so basically for people who don’t know,
0:04:30 it’s just guys who don’t jerk off for November.
0:04:32 And I don’t know if the rules are,
0:04:34 you can’t have sex or if it’s just masturbation.
0:04:35 I don’t know what the rules are, but.
0:04:36 – I don’t know, never paid,
0:04:38 but never made it past day two, so couldn’t tell you.
0:04:39 – Yeah, clearly not into it.
0:04:43 We gotta have a cute, funny brand for like NoFo,
0:04:45 weekend, NoPhone or something like that.
0:04:46 You know what I mean?
0:04:47 No Scroll Sundays at least.
0:04:48 – No Scroll Sundays is good,
0:04:50 but a lot of my Jewish friends and family,
0:04:55 they do no phones from Friday evening to Saturday evening.
0:04:56 And they all say the same thing.
0:04:59 There’s like, this is the best, like it’s wonderful.
0:05:01 So we have to like do a take on that.
0:05:02 And we’ll have to have like a,
0:05:05 sometimes a cute way to do like Friday to Sunday,
0:05:06 no phone.
0:05:06 – Right.
0:05:08 – Have you seen people who raw dog flights?
0:05:10 – Yeah, dude, that is so funny.
0:05:12 (all laughing)
0:05:14 I’ll explain what it is for people who don’t know.
0:05:18 So like, so raw dogging a flight is what,
0:05:19 I think it’s mostly men.
0:05:21 So men are like-
0:05:23 – I can’t imagine a girl would ever care to do this.
0:05:26 – Raw dogging a flight is when it’s like,
0:05:28 when a guy goes out of like a Delta plane,
0:05:30 and you know how like, when you fly,
0:05:32 you see the plane going across America.
0:05:33 And that’s all you see.
0:05:35 And it’s guys who will just stare at that
0:05:37 for the entire time.
0:05:39 No phone, no phone, no books.
0:05:42 They just raw dog it.
0:05:46 And I think it is the funniest thing going on right now.
0:05:48 I love raw dogging flights.
0:05:49 – Yeah, yeah, exactly.
0:05:51 I think it’s hilarious.
0:05:52 I’m big on this though, this like note,
0:05:54 like control your inputs.
0:05:57 I think in all facets of life, right?
0:05:59 Control the foods that you put in your mouth,
0:06:02 control the information you put in your mind,
0:06:04 control the people you let in your world,
0:06:06 control the amount of the number of problems
0:06:08 you are willing to make your problem.
0:06:12 I think that that is probably the most underrated skill
0:06:15 you can have as somebody who’s trying to lead a good life
0:06:17 is learning how to control your inputs.
0:06:19 – So we’re doing like a little bit of life update.
0:06:21 And I was gonna say, that’s one of my updates
0:06:24 is I am not really reading the news a lot.
0:06:27 And I’m honestly like, I don’t have Twitter on my phone.
0:06:29 The news man, particularly this weekend
0:06:31 when a lot of crazy stuff went down,
0:06:33 it is exhausting me and like current events,
0:06:35 I find it to be, it wears me out.
0:06:40 And I’m just, I’m trying to refer like mostly to books
0:06:41 when I want like entertainment
0:06:42 as opposed to just scrolling through news.
0:06:45 It kills me, dude, where’s he out?
0:06:46 – 100%, 100%.
0:06:47 And I used to get a lot of shit for this.
0:06:49 I haven’t, I don’t watch the news.
0:06:52 I haven’t, I never have a news app on my phone.
0:06:55 I don’t follow like new social accounts typically.
0:06:58 You know, obviously some news just brute forces
0:06:59 its way into your world.
0:07:00 That’s kind of what happened this weekend
0:07:02 with the shooting and stuff like that.
0:07:07 But for the most part, I completely abstained from the news.
0:07:10 And I used to feel somewhat ashamed of that,
0:07:11 like kind of ignorant.
0:07:12 That just wasn’t really interesting.
0:07:14 It wasn’t very hard for me to abstain from it.
0:07:18 – But I called you out on that one time
0:07:19 when we were just hanging out off air.
0:07:21 I was like, you’re not a good citizen.
0:07:23 And now I’ve done a 180.
0:07:25 I’m like, no, it’s not important.
0:07:28 What’s going on like in most cases isn’t important.
0:07:30 – Well, my trainer gave me a great perspective on it.
0:07:32 He was like, it was one of the years
0:07:33 when the election was going on
0:07:35 or maybe it was like the state elections
0:07:36 or some shit like that.
0:07:37 And everybody was talking about voting
0:07:39 and every time it was kind of getting heated
0:07:40 as politics tends to do.
0:07:41 And he just said something in passing.
0:07:43 He was just like, he’s like, I don’t worry about the government.
0:07:45 I’m trying to govern myself.
0:07:48 I found that I can’t even govern myself.
0:07:49 What am I worried about what’s going on
0:07:51 across the country in Washington, DC?
0:07:53 I can’t govern myself yet.
0:07:54 And so he’s like, I focus on that.
0:07:55 And he’s like, if we all did that,
0:07:57 society would be actually in a much better place.
0:07:59 If we all learned to govern ourselves a little bit better.
0:08:02 And so when he was talking about the current election cycle,
0:08:03 somebody was criticizing, they’re like,
0:08:07 oh, well, you’re not doing your civic duty.
0:08:10 He’s like, I don’t know what you think your civic duty is.
0:08:11 He’s like, I’m in the grocery store.
0:08:12 I’m helping the old lady.
0:08:13 I’m over here.
0:08:14 I’m talking to a friend.
0:08:15 I see a kid doing something.
0:08:17 I give him a compliment.
0:08:20 There are many ways that you could be a good member of society
0:08:22 and just being like fully up to date on the news
0:08:23 and having an opinion on everything
0:08:26 or downloading today’s big problem
0:08:28 is not necessarily the only way to do it.
0:08:31 I kind of like that of like govern yourself first,
0:08:36 then be like a positive influence in your grocery store,
0:08:37 in the place around you.
0:08:40 That seems like a much better way to actually have an effect
0:08:45 than just siphoning off CNN all day.
0:08:47 What else you got in the life update corner?
0:08:48 Anything else, kid?
0:08:51 – For me, so I’m currently in Connecticut
0:08:52 where I’m staying for a little while.
0:08:54 I go to the beach every morning
0:08:56 and I go to the beach most evenings at 8.30
0:08:57 after the baby’s gone to sleep.
0:08:59 I’m nine months–
0:09:00 – What do you do, walk-in?
0:09:01 Or what are you doing on the beach?
0:09:05 – Dude, I have a scooter, like an electric scooter.
0:09:06 It has an odometer.
0:09:08 – ‘Cause there’s sand, what do you mean?
0:09:10 – No, like I ride from my house to the beach a mile away.
0:09:13 I have 2,000 miles on this scooter.
0:09:15 I drive it everywhere.
0:09:16 Sometimes I’ll go two weeks without driving a car.
0:09:18 I just drive a scooter everywhere.
0:09:20 I’m nine months into having a kid.
0:09:21 It’s the best.
0:09:22 I’m so freaking happy.
0:09:26 Like, I genuinely feel like a happier human being.
0:09:29 And I had a little mini, not midlife crisis,
0:09:30 but I’ve been asking myself,
0:09:32 like, what’s the point of this or that?
0:09:34 Like, you asked yourself,
0:09:35 I’ve asked myself about all types of things.
0:09:36 Like, why do I care about this?
0:09:37 Why am I doing this?
0:09:38 Being more intentional.
0:09:40 And I think it’s because I’m so happy.
0:09:41 Like, when you get happy
0:09:43 and you have less of a chip on your shoulder,
0:09:44 that’s kind of a weird feeling
0:09:47 if you’ve spent years grinding and things like that.
0:09:48 – Oh, you’re saying you’re asking the question
0:09:49 because you’re happy?
0:09:51 – Yeah, because I’m happy.
0:09:52 I’m like, why am I doing this or that?
0:09:53 Like, you know what I mean?
0:09:54 You start questioning things.
0:09:57 So I’m really happy right now.
0:10:00 So that’s kind of like the biggest update from me.
0:10:00 – I’m with you.
0:10:01 I got two things.
0:10:03 I saw a great Seinfeld clip the other day
0:10:06 and it said, Seinfeld talking to, he goes,
0:10:07 “You know why I believe in God?”
0:10:08 And the guy goes, “Why?”
0:10:11 He goes, “God made it so that people who don’t have kids
0:10:13 don’t know what they’re missing.”
0:10:15 And that’s the nicest thing they could ever do for somebody.
0:10:16 And I thought, oh, wow,
0:10:18 that’s a really like powerful way of putting it.
0:10:19 ‘Cause I’m the same way.
0:10:22 Like, I just, my cup feels incredibly full
0:10:24 just because of what’s going on in my house,
0:10:26 regardless of it really anything else,
0:10:28 which not to get too sentimental, but it’s pretty awesome.
0:10:30 And for everybody who’s out there on the fence
0:10:34 or wants to wait or whatever, it really is amazing.
0:10:38 And it is a hard to describe phenomenon,
0:10:39 how good it feels to just say,
0:10:41 especially like your kid’s pretty young, right?
0:10:44 She’s only less than a year old.
0:10:45 Once they’re like two, three, four,
0:10:46 and you can play with them,
0:10:50 it is like such a golden period of time.
0:10:52 I do have a life story here.
0:10:54 A life hack.
0:10:55 What’s that?
0:10:57 So we go to a birthday party, kid’s birthday party,
0:11:00 and there’s a bunch of three or four-year-olds running around
0:11:03 and it’s at a park and there’s like a park
0:11:04 with like a splash area
0:11:06 where there’s like water coming out of the ground.
0:11:08 And we show up and I noticed something.
0:11:09 I noticed that there’s like,
0:11:11 all the parents are standing on one side,
0:11:14 kind of like standing in the heat, sweating,
0:11:15 trying to get shade.
0:11:16 Just I don’t know, kind of like, you know,
0:11:17 kid runs up, needs a drink of water.
0:11:20 They give him water and then the kid runs back and plays.
0:11:22 And the parents are all making sort of awkward,
0:11:24 small talk with each other.
0:11:27 And you can just see the like, they’re looking at the watch.
0:11:28 They’re ready to get out of there.
0:11:29 It’s like, okay, we’ll be here for an hour,
0:11:31 then we gotta go do the next thing.
0:11:34 And so my kids run in and I’m like,
0:11:36 I just see like, while we’re walking up to the party,
0:11:37 I see like a fork in the road.
0:11:39 It’s like, I can take the right path
0:11:41 and I can go hang out with these parents.
0:11:43 Or I could just go run around with my shirt off
0:11:44 in this splash pad.
0:11:46 (laughing)
0:11:47 And so–
0:11:48 – Wait, was this during–
0:11:51 – I chose the road less traveled.
0:11:52 (laughing)
0:11:54 And I went down to the splash pad.
0:11:55 And I had so much fun.
0:11:57 And I just played with my kids.
0:11:58 I’m up in the playground.
0:12:00 We’re going on a splash pad, we’re playing tag.
0:12:02 We’re doing like water, like kind of like water fight.
0:12:04 And I just have a blast.
0:12:06 Two hours go by, I look over.
0:12:10 All the other parents are still just sweating and waiting.
0:12:13 And what I realized was like the great parenting hack.
0:12:14 ‘Cause before I had a kid,
0:12:16 I did read a couple of books about like,
0:12:18 what to expecting when she’s expecting or whatever.
0:12:20 Like, you know, how to be a dad.
0:12:21 I know I want to be good at something.
0:12:22 I’ve read a couple of books
0:12:23 to see if there’s any good information in there.
0:12:25 I now have a book that I’ll write,
0:12:26 which has one line in it,
0:12:29 which is don’t worry about being a dad, just be a kid.
0:12:33 And the best part about kids is that they keep you fresh.
0:12:34 They keep you playing.
0:12:36 They keep you, you have to act like you’re astonished
0:12:39 and things are fascinating to get them excited about things.
0:12:40 And actually it kind of makes you excited
0:12:42 and it makes you more curious
0:12:43 ’cause you’re doing that for them.
0:12:46 But the other part of it is the easiest way to be a parent
0:12:49 is to literally just play with your kid 80 to 90% of the time.
0:12:52 And sure 10% of the time you snap back into adult mode
0:12:53 and you make sure that, you know,
0:12:54 the train doesn’t go completely off the rails.
0:12:58 But I found that I have so much more fun as a dad
0:13:02 if I just lean in and just like completely play with them
0:13:03 all day.
0:13:07 And I don’t know why more parents don’t do this.
0:13:08 Like I’m in gymnastics class.
0:13:10 I’m doing like literally cartwheels.
0:13:11 I’m on the trampoline.
0:13:13 Like I’m doing all the things with them.
0:13:15 ‘Cause if I have to be there anyways,
0:13:16 I might as well have a good time.
0:13:17 That’s contagious for them.
0:13:18 They have a better time.
0:13:20 I’m in a better mood, which makes me a more patient.
0:13:22 You know, like it’s a complete life hack.
0:13:25 – Dude, I can just see you like bounce around gymnastics
0:13:26 and break some kid’s fucking femur
0:13:27 because you sit on it.
0:13:31 – Well, definitely not everything is built for me.
0:13:35 So, you know, there’s definitely been some spills.
0:13:36 But yeah, it’s great.
0:13:38 Like, yeah, I woke up yesterday.
0:13:42 I literally woke up, we go to a coffee shop,
0:13:44 go to a hit up a donut shop, go to soccer class.
0:13:47 I’m playing soccer in the soccer class.
0:13:48 And then after soccer, we just wanted to play
0:13:49 some more so we’re playing.
0:13:50 And now four other kids just joined me.
0:13:52 And where it’s me, my kids and four other random kids
0:13:54 that are all just like playing soccer afterwards.
0:13:57 Then we go to the pool and we’re in the pool
0:13:58 for three hours and we come home.
0:13:59 They were playing smash cart,
0:14:01 which is this like version of Mario Kart
0:14:03 that my kids are able to play ’cause they’re like toddlers.
0:14:04 We’re playing that.
0:14:06 Then we eat a little bit of dinner, we read some books
0:14:07 and then we go to bed and it was like,
0:14:09 I was just a kid for the whole day.
0:14:11 And therefore I had a great day.
0:14:12 – Are you gonna have more?
0:14:13 You’ve got three.
0:14:15 How many more would you want to do?
0:14:16 – No, my cup run is over.
0:14:17 I’m full.
0:14:19 I’m completely happy as is.
0:14:22 I don’t really feel the need to have any more kids.
0:14:24 – I’ve got Sarah bought into three, but in my head,
0:14:26 I’m like, yeah, you know, like,
0:14:28 but if we’re gonna go three, like five would be interesting,
0:14:29 right?
0:14:31 Like, you know what I mean?
0:14:35 I definitely am currently in the more is better at camp,
0:14:38 but like, I don’t have to push it out.
0:14:40 So it’s easy for me to say, which is,
0:14:43 but no man, being a dad, it’s awesome.
0:14:45 It has to completely change things.
0:14:48 I tweeted this out before we had kids like years ago
0:14:51 and I was like, because I had a bunch of friends
0:14:53 who were doing psychedelics because they felt lost.
0:14:55 And some of them kind of went over the edge
0:14:56 where they took too many.
0:14:58 And like, they started acting a little weird
0:15:00 where I’d be like, hey, are you okay?
0:15:03 And I just think that having a child kind of filled
0:15:04 that void for me where I didn’t feel like
0:15:06 I needed to do psychedelics
0:15:07 because I didn’t have a lack of meaning.
0:15:08 – Right.
0:15:09 – And so it’s been, it’s been really,
0:15:11 it just makes me happy.
0:15:13 But you’ve got a lot of interesting topics here.
0:15:14 I got a lot of interesting stuff.
0:15:17 Okay, so I have three ideas that I wanna pitch you.
0:15:19 And I’m gonna basically tell you about a cool business
0:15:22 and then I’m gonna tell you a idea
0:15:23 I think somebody could start
0:15:24 that’s similar to that cool business.
0:15:26 So the first one is sketchy.
0:15:28 Have you ever seen sketchy.com?
0:15:32 It is kind of an incredible business idea.
0:15:35 I’m sort of jealous I didn’t start this business.
0:15:38 So if you go to sketchy.com, what do you see?
0:15:40 – All right, learning made unforgettable.
0:15:42 – Sketchy turns what you need to know
0:15:45 into creative visual stories you’ll remember forever.
0:15:46 Oh, this is awesome.
0:15:47 – Right.
0:15:49 Basically it’s learned to take the MCATs
0:15:53 or the medical board exams with cartoons and drawings
0:15:55 instead of like boring textbooks.
0:15:58 And what they did was they created a Kaplan
0:16:02 or like a, what are the big like test prep Princeton review.
0:16:04 They created a test prep type of business
0:16:05 but they did two things.
0:16:09 One, they focused on a specific niche.
0:16:11 So basically med students.
0:16:12 So before you get into medical school,
0:16:14 you wanna take the MCATs or after you’re in med school,
0:16:17 you’re going through your medical classes
0:16:19 and then eventually the boards.
0:16:22 And second, the twist was they were like, cool,
0:16:24 but some people will prefer to learn
0:16:25 in a way that’s way more visual
0:16:30 and way more sort of like visual friendly,
0:16:35 easy to remember rather than kind of traditional learning.
0:16:38 And I love this ’cause A, that’s how I like to learn.
0:16:40 That sounds more fun, sounds more interesting.
0:16:42 And there’s actually like a bunch of science around
0:16:45 why we learn better through visuals.
0:16:48 So the same way we talked about last time about jingles,
0:16:50 how audio like a catchy earworm
0:16:52 is a much better way to remember something.
0:16:54 – So it’s basically storytelling and cartoons
0:16:58 to teach you things, specifically for doctors
0:16:59 for test prep.
0:17:01 And do they make all of the cartoons
0:17:02 and you pay a monthly fee?
0:17:04 – Yep, that’s exactly right.
0:17:07 – And so this business, I saw this, I was like, wow,
0:17:08 this is a great idea.
0:17:10 And so there’s also just like a cool business.
0:17:12 It’s like a cool thing to do with your life.
0:17:14 It’s kind of like Khan Academy,
0:17:15 where the guy’s like, yeah, actually like,
0:17:18 I just kind of want to make like a course
0:17:21 for everything on the internet for free.
0:17:22 And it’s just me kind of talking
0:17:24 and writing things out and trying to explain things.
0:17:26 I’m a pretty good explainer.
0:17:27 And that’s how he started to just explain things
0:17:29 to his own nephews or whatever.
0:17:31 And then he published on the internet and people liked it.
0:17:33 And so I really liked this business
0:17:35 ’cause I think it has like a cool mission.
0:17:37 I think it’s a cool business model.
0:17:41 And I think that it’s a fun product that I’m glad exists.
0:17:42 – And what’s the business model?
0:17:45 Because it looks like educators use that.
0:17:47 So how’s it work?
0:17:48 Do they work with schools?
0:17:49 – I’m sure they do a bunch of things.
0:17:53 My thinking is that this is, it’s very simple.
0:17:55 It’s your student who wants to pass an exam,
0:17:58 that’s the bleeding neck problem, right?
0:18:00 That’s the highest urgency problem.
0:18:02 And so they’re going to-
0:18:03 – Is bleeding?
0:18:05 – Yeah, I probably can’t say that anymore, huh?
0:18:09 Is bleeding, is bleeding neck problem your friend?
0:18:12 – It used to be hair on fire.
0:18:13 That’s what Dave McClure said.
0:18:14 And then somebody said bleeding neck.
0:18:15 I like that too.
0:18:16 – Oh my God, all right.
0:18:19 – So I think that’s the thing.
0:18:20 Somebody wants to pass a test.
0:18:22 They need to help studying for it.
0:18:23 They see this and they’re like,
0:18:26 oh, this seems like more fun to do than the other way.
0:18:31 And you pay something like 25 to 50 bucks a month for this.
0:18:33 And you sign up for a six, 12 or 24 month plan.
0:18:34 And then you go through it and you’re like,
0:18:36 wow, that was actually a really useful way to study.
0:18:37 And now the next test happens.
0:18:40 Maybe it’s your board exam,
0:18:42 or maybe it’s just a really hard course in med school.
0:18:45 And so they have like kind of the supplemental thing
0:18:48 for anybody on their like med school journey.
0:18:52 – Wow, and the only article I could find about them
0:18:55 is in 2020 where it says that they were doing,
0:18:57 I think $8 million in revenue.
0:19:01 And then did they also raise 30 million bucks?
0:19:02 – Yeah, they raised 30 million bucks.
0:19:04 It says on their website that 500,000 students
0:19:06 have used their thing.
0:19:07 That’s a big number.
0:19:11 But I think a business like this is set to dominate a niche.
0:19:14 And I think that Test Prep is a proven business model.
0:19:16 This takes a 20% twist on it,
0:19:18 which is the visual cartoon thing.
0:19:20 And by the way, what an amazing name, sketchy.com.
0:19:23 I think that’s such an awesome name for a business like this.
0:19:25 I think this is a great business.
0:19:27 Congrats to the people who did this.
0:19:28 I think this is really cool.
0:19:30 So now, what’s the idea?
0:19:34 So I tried to convince, do you remember Dylan and Henry?
0:19:36 The guys behind…
0:19:37 – Clips.
0:19:38 – Smart Nonsense and Clips.
0:19:40 Basically, if you don’t know them, they’re young guys.
0:19:42 We met them because they came to our house
0:19:43 and built out our podcast studio.
0:19:44 They were fans of the podcast.
0:19:45 – When they were in college.
0:19:47 – And then what they started doing was they,
0:19:49 they had their own podcast and they would cut clips.
0:19:51 They would cut clips for our podcast.
0:19:53 Then they started cutting clips for All In.
0:19:54 So right when All In blew up,
0:19:57 they were the ones doing the animated clips for them.
0:19:59 And so they got popular there.
0:20:01 Then they created an agency called Clips
0:20:04 where you can hire a video editor from them.
0:20:06 A video editor in the Philippines is a really good animator
0:20:10 who can, for a monthly fee, be your animator.
0:20:11 And that business is doing well.
0:20:15 So I got to kind of like low seven figures of annual revenue.
0:20:17 And then they started using their own animators
0:20:19 to do their own YouTube content.
0:20:20 And they both blew up on YouTube.
0:20:22 And so like Henry has like, I don’t know,
0:20:24 millions of subscribers now on YouTube
0:20:26 and he’ll just do like really short form animated videos.
0:20:27 – His shorts are really good.
0:20:30 Like I’ve never seen someone take shorts that seriously.
0:20:33 So for the listener, it’s basically him talking
0:20:36 and he’s clearly, you got a green screen behind him
0:20:39 because you see all these weird, interesting animations
0:20:42 pop up to interact with him and what he’s saying.
0:20:43 It’s awesome.
0:20:44 – And so those guys are awesome.
0:20:46 I really see a lot of myself in them.
0:20:47 I don’t know how old they are.
0:20:49 I think they’re like 25-ish years old.
0:20:51 And they remind me so much of how I was
0:20:53 when I was 24, 25, 26.
0:20:55 And so I really like these guys.
0:20:57 And I think they do a bunch of dumb shit by the way,
0:20:58 but that’s okay.
0:20:59 I did so much more dumb shit when I was there.
0:21:01 I was there way ahead of where I was.
0:21:02 – Like allegedly showing up to a meeting
0:21:04 without a shirt on.
0:21:06 (laughing)
0:21:07 – Well, you can tell that story.
0:21:08 That’s a good story.
0:21:10 – I don’t remember if it was them,
0:21:13 but that seems like something in the wheelhouse.
0:21:14 – So they’re a genre?
0:21:17 – The story is we got them a contract with HubSpot
0:21:19 to do clips for us and other things.
0:21:21 And I guess they showed up to one of the video calls
0:21:24 without a shirt on, which is cool by me.
0:21:27 I actually, you know, common practice where I’m from,
0:21:30 but I guess didn’t fly so well in the Fortune 500.
0:21:31 So maybe they lost that contract.
0:21:33 I don’t know exactly if that was the reason
0:21:35 or maybe a contributing factor to them.
0:21:39 – They get a pass because they were like 21
0:21:41 and they’ve redeemed themselves.
0:21:42 So I think they’re doing good.
0:21:43 I don’t wanna shit on them.
0:21:44 – They’re doing great.
0:21:46 And so I went to them.
0:21:48 I was like, guys, you should make this,
0:21:51 but for the SATs.
0:21:55 So do this for the SATs or for APs or IB exams,
0:21:56 start wherever you want to start.
0:21:57 – That’s a great idea.
0:21:58 – But I was like, this is a great idea.
0:22:00 And there’s no one on earth better built to do this
0:22:03 than you two because of their skill set.
0:22:05 They’re amazing storytellers.
0:22:07 They are really good with animated cartoons and stuff.
0:22:08 I don’t know if you’ve seen their newsletter,
0:22:10 but they have like an oatmeal style newsletter.
0:22:11 It’s great.
0:22:12 They created this like character
0:22:14 and they tell great stories through it.
0:22:15 I’m like, dude, just do that.
0:22:16 But instead of doing it for free,
0:22:19 for random subjects on the internet,
0:22:20 charge for it and do it for something
0:22:23 that people are willing to pay for, which is test prep.
0:22:25 Like people need to pass this test
0:22:26 and move on to the next phase of their life.
0:22:27 – Why would they not do that?
0:22:29 That sounds so much better than,
0:22:30 I mean, I was in the newsletter business.
0:22:32 The newsletter business is hard.
0:22:33 – It’s hard. – This sounds way better.
0:22:34 – And I tried to tell them, I was like, guys,
0:22:37 that’s, if that’s okay or good,
0:22:40 this is what great would look like in the same genre.
0:22:41 Like the same work you’re doing,
0:22:43 just applied in a different way.
0:22:45 And they were like, we agree with you,
0:22:47 but we just don’t wanna do it.
0:22:49 And we were gonna have more fun doing this other stuff.
0:22:50 Like we don’t know what,
0:22:52 but maybe these are the three ideas.
0:22:53 And I was like, hey, honestly, more power to you.
0:22:55 Like that’s actually cool.
0:22:57 I support you guys in that.
0:22:58 But now I can give the idea away for free out here,
0:23:00 which is like, I wrote them a business plan.
0:23:02 I wrote them like a Google doc and I was like,
0:23:03 here’s how I would do it.
0:23:04 Here’s how we’ll go to market.
0:23:06 Here’s the, here’s how we’ll charge for it.
0:23:08 I’ll fund it, like just do this guys.
0:23:10 This is like, this is how you disrupt a Kaplan
0:23:13 or a Princeton review is you take a,
0:23:15 you take your black belt that they have
0:23:17 in social media content.
0:23:22 Like they are top 1% level content creators,
0:23:25 but instead of competing for free views
0:23:28 in the free market of social media,
0:23:31 apply it in this place that’s like really backwards
0:23:33 and stodgy and hasn’t changed in 30 years,
0:23:35 which is test prep for the SATs
0:23:37 or test prep for the GMATs or whatever.
0:23:41 And so I think somebody could still go do this.
0:23:42 I think somebody could take sketchy
0:23:43 and do it in another niche.
0:23:44 You could do it in whatever it is,
0:23:46 dentistry, nursing, whatever.
0:23:47 And I’m sure sketchy will try to do some of those things.
0:23:48 It doesn’t matter.
0:23:50 I think this pie is big enough.
0:23:52 And I think if you just take the principles
0:23:53 of what they did,
0:23:55 I think you could have a lot of success with it.
0:23:56 So that’s idea number one.
0:23:57 What do you think of that idea?
0:23:58 – What was sketchy?
0:24:01 So that’s actually one of the better ones
0:24:02 that we’ve talked about,
0:24:04 but sketchy wasn’t always sketchy.
0:24:05 What were they doing before?
0:24:07 Because they launched in 2013,
0:24:10 or did it take seven years to get to 7 million in revenue?
0:24:10 ‘Cause that’s some pretty–
0:24:11 – I don’t know.
0:24:12 I don’t know their full backstory yet.
0:24:14 And then I see, of course,
0:24:16 churning group is the one who put 30 million into them.
0:24:17 I’m like, “God damn it.”
0:24:18 Everything I find that I’m like,
0:24:20 “Ooh, this is cool, this is interesting.
0:24:21 I’m ahead of the curve.”
0:24:25 It’s like, you know, yeah, churning funded us a year ago.
0:24:25 Right?
0:24:28 Like we did an episode on the guy,
0:24:30 the gardening guy at Epic Gardening.
0:24:32 And I’m like, “Dude, this guy can be big.
0:24:33 Actually, this could be really huge.”
0:24:34 I’m trying to like tell people,
0:24:35 they’re like, “What?
0:24:35 Gardening? I’ve never heard of that.”
0:24:36 And I’m like, I go and I’m like,
0:24:38 “Hey, dude, I will write you a big check.
0:24:39 Like, let me fund you.”
0:24:40 I really believe in you.
0:24:41 I’m like, “We’re all good on funding.”
0:24:42 Churning gave me like, I don’t know, whatever,
0:24:44 20 million bucks a year ago.
0:24:46 And it’s like, “Oh, damn.”
0:24:48 Wow, how are they ahead of me on all of these?
0:24:50 – I’m gonna give this a nine out of 10.
0:24:51 I think this is great.
0:24:52 I think this is awesome.
0:24:54 All right, I think this is a sketch.
0:24:54 She’s a great one.
0:24:57 Now the next one, Babylon B.
0:24:59 – Yes.
0:25:00 – Have you lived under a rock a little bit?
0:25:02 – I’m not saying this is new,
0:25:03 but I don’t think for most people,
0:25:04 they really appreciate this.
0:25:06 So if you haven’t seen this,
0:25:10 it’s a satirical news site.
0:25:12 So it’s like the onion,
0:25:14 but it’s just like a variation of the onion.
0:25:16 They have been around for a little while,
0:25:18 but they just seem to be getting more and more popular.
0:25:19 And I think a big part of it is that
0:25:21 Elon retweets them a lot.
0:25:22 And so if you’re on Twitter,
0:25:25 you see them because, A, they put out good content,
0:25:27 but B, they had like a turbo boost
0:25:30 from the most popular guy on Twitter.
0:25:33 And so I just, I’ve seen this and I’m like,
0:25:35 “Wow, this business model is really interesting to me.
0:25:36 It’s a media company,
0:25:39 but it’s got a such a different approach, right?”
0:25:42 So the way a media company grows is you make content,
0:25:43 that’s worth spreading.
0:25:45 And so there’s a tension there for most companies
0:25:47 because you need to write what’s going on.
0:25:49 You want to be trusted,
0:25:51 but then you kind of need to click bait the shit out
0:25:54 of everything to get people to click and come to your site.
0:25:57 And so you’re constantly in this like too much click bait.
0:25:59 I kind of lose trust,
0:26:01 too much just trust and factuality, too much dryness.
0:26:02 Nobody clicks my thing.
0:26:04 Nobody shares this.
0:26:05 Nobody reacts to it.
0:26:07 Nobody gets outraged and reposts it and says,
0:26:09 “This is bullshit.”
0:26:10 And then that’s what gets people to share.
0:26:12 So you kind of want to outrage people
0:26:13 or you want to get them to share something,
0:26:15 but then you don’t want to be overly sensationalist.
0:26:16 So they always have this tension.
0:26:18 – And by the way, so I ran a company
0:26:21 that was a media company that made money on advertising.
0:26:23 And I hated that feeling that you’re describing.
0:26:25 I thought email would solve it,
0:26:27 a newsletter instead of a website, which it did.
0:26:28 It actually helped solve it.
0:26:29 – Yeah, the news that comes to you.
0:26:30 – Yeah, it helped.
0:26:33 And then, but I was still mad at that that existed.
0:26:36 So I thought subscriptions will solve that.
0:26:37 So we launched a subscription thing
0:26:40 that within year one was doing like 5 million in revenue.
0:26:41 Still doesn’t solve it.
0:26:43 You still got to do the same game.
0:26:46 – A newsletter monetizes so much better
0:26:48 than just a general news website.
0:26:49 So like, you know,
0:26:52 you could have a million subscriber newsletter
0:26:55 and that business should be doing
0:26:58 five to $10 million a year, I would say.
0:27:00 Broad strokes, a million subscribers should get you,
0:27:03 you know, 5 million plus in revenue.
0:27:04 If you do a news website
0:27:06 and you get a million visitors a month.
0:27:06 – That ain’t shit.
0:27:07 – That ain’t shit.
0:27:08 You might not be doing anything.
0:27:10 So like, you know, the Babylonium B
0:27:11 or whatever the Babylon B,
0:27:15 these guys are, they’ll do 25 million plus visits
0:27:16 to their site.
0:27:17 The biggest newsletters in the world
0:27:19 don’t have 25 million subscribers, right?
0:27:20 So it’s our readers.
0:27:22 So it’s a, it’s a different game.
0:27:24 It’s a volume game when you’re trying to get the,
0:27:26 you’re trying to make a media destination
0:27:27 versus a newsletter.
0:27:30 Anyways, I guess like the thing I’m trying to say is
0:27:32 an underrated part of these media sites is this tension.
0:27:33 There’s an air intention between trust
0:27:36 and viral kind of like spreadability.
0:27:39 And so the beautiful thing about this category
0:27:40 where you go and you try to be the onion,
0:27:46 you do fake news as a service, you do, you know, satire is,
0:27:47 it doesn’t need to be factually correct.
0:27:49 So you only have to win on that one dimension,
0:27:50 which is shareability.
0:27:51 And in this case, you’ll share,
0:27:53 people will share because it’s funny
0:27:56 and it’ll share because it strikes a chord with people.
0:27:58 And that’s why this has spread so quickly.
0:28:01 And so the backstory of this is,
0:28:03 I think it started by one guy
0:28:06 and then he kind of like sold it to the two writers of it.
0:28:09 – Well, you’re missing a big part here, which is,
0:28:11 so the onion, which is a satire website,
0:28:15 although most satirical websites are left leaning.
0:28:16 This one is right leaning.
0:28:20 I think also has a Christian component to it a little bit.
0:28:23 So whereas many of these things tend to be left of center,
0:28:24 this is right of center.
0:28:25 – Exactly.
0:28:26 So that’s where I’m going to get to with the opportunity.
0:28:27 So the guy who started,
0:28:29 he calls himself a Christian entrepreneur, right?
0:28:31 He started off for doing Christian cartoons.
0:28:33 And then it became, now the guys you write it,
0:28:35 it’s more just about,
0:28:38 it’s lean’s more conservative than it does the other way.
0:28:41 But I think there’s a lot more,
0:28:43 like the world is not just liberal and conservative.
0:28:45 There’s like a hundred other variations
0:28:46 and segments of the market
0:28:48 that could be served with this same category.
0:28:50 So I’ll give you two
0:28:52 that I think somebody should go do.
0:28:53 So I think somebody could go do
0:28:56 the far more right-wing version of this.
0:29:00 So I think that they’re like super right.
0:29:02 So these guys I think are conservative,
0:29:05 but they’re still kind of like more centrist
0:29:07 than they are full right.
0:29:09 But like if you go read like dredge or info wars,
0:29:11 like there’s a whole appetite in the world
0:29:14 for like really drudge, really far drudge.
0:29:15 Really far right-wing stuff.
0:29:17 So I think you could go do that.
0:29:19 But here’s another angle altogether.
0:29:20 It’s not political at all,
0:29:23 which is just do the onion,
0:29:25 but only for fake news articles
0:29:28 that appeal to just like the millennial mom.
0:29:29 And cause like, you know,
0:29:33 the millennial mom follows a certain set of news subjects.
0:29:37 So, you know, you maybe it’s a little bit less on sports,
0:29:38 but maybe they watch the bachelor.
0:29:39 So they understand the bachelor means,
0:29:42 maybe it’s that they are following the Taylor Swift stuff.
0:29:43 Maybe it’s that they’re following whatever,
0:29:45 whatever topics are of interest,
0:29:47 do the onion for that category,
0:29:49 cause it’s a very valuable category.
0:29:50 And by the way, this might exist already.
0:29:51 I have no idea.
0:29:53 I don’t know, I don’t even know how you search for this.
0:29:55 But I think that that would be a very successful version
0:29:58 of the onion that’s not, or the Babylon B,
0:30:00 which is not political at all,
0:30:01 but it’s the same thing.
0:30:05 It’s poking fun at a certain set of popular subjects,
0:30:08 but make those popular subjects a different customer
0:30:09 than the one who reads the onion
0:30:11 or the one who reads the Babylon B.
0:30:13 – Here’s to why I know that that’s true
0:30:14 about the millennial mom.
0:30:16 So we had this couple over that have a one year old
0:30:19 overdure house and the kids started crying.
0:30:21 And so I go to grab a bunch of toys to like entertain him
0:30:22 and like show them off.
0:30:23 Like, oh, I bet you haven’t seen this thing.
0:30:26 And I start like using this puppet or whatever.
0:30:28 And the mom is like, yeah, we have this toy.
0:30:29 We have that toy.
0:30:31 In fact, all of the toys that you have,
0:30:33 we have the exact same words.
0:30:35 And I’m like, well, you guys just clearly follow
0:30:37 like the same like three people on Instagram
0:30:38 and you read the same blogs.
0:30:40 Cause you have bought all of the same stuff.
0:30:42 And like I couldn’t impress this kid.
0:30:45 I’m shocked at how the millennial mother,
0:30:47 like there’s probably like six buckets.
0:30:50 And it’s like just a different persona for each thing.
0:30:50 But for each bucket,
0:30:53 like just buy all of this stuff, read all of this stuff.
0:30:54 It’s so interesting.
0:30:55 Do you know what I mean?
0:30:56 – Yeah, exactly.
0:30:57 But I think every segment’s that way, right?
0:31:00 I think, I think there’s a Joe Rogan bro version of that
0:31:02 where it’s like, oh, let me guess.
0:31:05 Favorite podcast, Rogan, Huberman, right?
0:31:06 Let me guess you, you cold plans.
0:31:07 Let me guess you do this.
0:31:09 Let me guess if you could kind of predict their life
0:31:11 if you know one or two things about them.
0:31:14 And there’s, I don’t know, a giant cluster of people
0:31:15 that will fit that description.
0:31:16 Not everybody, of course,
0:31:17 but there’s a giant cluster of people.
0:31:19 That’s kind of what you need when you’re doing media
0:31:20 is you need a giant cluster of people
0:31:22 who kind of have a taste match.
0:31:24 And so I think you take that business model,
0:31:25 apply it to a new segment.
0:31:27 And again, this might already exist.
0:31:28 It doesn’t really matter.
0:31:29 You don’t have to be the first.
0:31:31 You just have to be successful at it,
0:31:32 which means just do a good job at it.
0:31:34 And I think the way to start this, by the way,
0:31:36 would just be Instagram.
0:31:37 You just make an Instagram account.
0:31:38 You don’t even need a website.
0:31:39 And just make an Instagram account
0:31:42 that’s doing these kind of like funny news things.
0:31:44 Like there’s a version of this in sports that I follow
0:31:46 where they’re supposed like funny sports,
0:31:49 like fake sports headlines that make fun of the NBA.
0:31:52 And I think that can be done so many times over.
0:31:53 And I think it’s probably one of the easiest ways
0:31:55 to build a media business.
0:31:56 – You know, what’s interesting is the guy
0:32:00 who started the Babylon B, you said he sold it,
0:32:03 his website, his personal website.
0:32:05 It’s called adam4d.com.
0:32:08 It’s all dedicated to webcomics.
0:32:10 It’s just a webcomic website,
0:32:13 which is intriguing because that’s similar to what,
0:32:15 what’s his name, Dylan and Henry do.
0:32:19 Who owns Babylon B now?
0:32:22 – I think it’s those Seth and Dan.
0:32:25 There’s like these, I think the main writers now.
0:32:28 It says in 2018, he sold it to them.
0:32:29 He kept a stake until 2023,
0:32:32 when he sold the remaining stake to the Dylan brothers.
0:32:34 – Do you know who owns the onion?
0:32:36 – Oh, is it with a guy who started Twilio or something?
0:32:37 – The guy who started Twilio.
0:32:40 So instead of like rich billionaires, you know,
0:32:42 they liked Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post,
0:32:44 one of those Facebook guys bought, I forget,
0:32:47 some other one, you know, Mark Benioff, I think,
0:32:50 bought Time, Jeff Larson, I think his name is,
0:32:51 he bought the onion,
0:32:54 but it’s actually like an interesting purchase.
0:32:55 – Yeah, I think that’s a great idea, by the way.
0:32:58 That’s, that’s what I like my billionaires doing, right?
0:33:00 Do interesting things.
0:33:01 Go buy the onion, make sure the onion doesn’t die,
0:33:03 ’cause I think the onion was kind of dying, right?
0:33:05 He like is trying to save it.
0:33:06 He’s trying to like reverse it out of like,
0:33:07 pretty much bankruptcy.
0:33:08 – Yeah, so the onion has been around,
0:33:11 I think since 1988, so it’s been around forever.
0:33:13 And it’s just like, it’s a shit business
0:33:15 to have to run for a little while,
0:33:17 particularly in the last like eight years
0:33:20 where digital media has just been crap.
0:33:21 But yeah, it’s hard, it’s a hard business.
0:33:24 ‘Cause also, when you think about what’s advertised,
0:33:26 or what’s the media business, it’s advertising,
0:33:30 who’s gonna wanna advertise on an article that’s fake?
0:33:31 Do you know what I mean?
0:33:32 Like–
0:33:35 – Maybe, I don’t know, I think that if you could curate
0:33:37 the right high value audience,
0:33:41 and they trust your voice to talk about a subject,
0:33:42 it’s kind of like comedians, right?
0:33:44 Why do people sponsor comedy podcasts?
0:33:46 Like, dude, these guys are vulgar,
0:33:49 they’re just saying random shit.
0:33:51 This is not like smart information, this is whatever.
0:33:53 But it’s, they have a trusted audience.
0:33:54 The audience trusts them.
0:33:58 And so when they do the ad read, people dig it.
0:34:00 That people trust them because they’ve, you know,
0:34:02 they’ve kept it real on all these other subjects.
0:34:03 ‘Cause I think you could do it there.
0:34:04 And I think there’s not that big of a gap
0:34:06 between, you know, a comedy, you know,
0:34:08 brand and a comedy podcast, for example.
0:34:10 – Yeah, I think the difference is that a lot of people
0:34:12 think that the Babylon B and stuff like that,
0:34:13 I think they think that– – It’s real.
0:34:16 – They’re real, and they share them as if it’s real.
0:34:17 Do you know what I mean?
0:34:19 – Yeah.
0:34:20 – Like that’s actually a massive issue.
0:34:24 Let’s do the last one, toxic tampons.
0:34:28 – Yes, so I saw this tweet about a TikTok that went viral.
0:34:31 So there was a TikTok of a woman walking through
0:34:34 kind of like a store, and she’s in the aisle,
0:34:37 the tampon aisle, and she’s talking about,
0:34:40 you see all the big brands, she’s Tampax, you see whatever.
0:34:42 And five million people saw this video
0:34:46 because Berkeley released a paper basically saying,
0:34:50 hey, the popular tampons all have like toxic metals,
0:34:52 arsenic, and other contaminants in them.
0:34:55 And so that’s concerning.
0:34:58 And so there’s like a moment here where I think,
0:35:00 I don’t know who is the leading player,
0:35:02 who’s doing native deodorant for tampons,
0:35:04 but whoever that is, they’re in a good position.
0:35:06 And whoever, if nobody’s doing it,
0:35:08 somebody should go do that.
0:35:09 Or even if somebody’s doing it,
0:35:11 I still think it’s a good idea,
0:35:13 which is it seems like there’s a general trend
0:35:15 of people being concerned about gut health,
0:35:17 about microplastics, about, is your water clean,
0:35:21 or is there like contaminants and heavy metals in your water?
0:35:22 Well, this seems like another category
0:35:24 that’s I think gonna get transformed, right?
0:35:26 I think people are not gonna,
0:35:28 if you can use the fear and uncertainty
0:35:33 and doubt around the safety of tampons,
0:35:35 I think you could build a new kind of like
0:35:38 alternative clean brand around it.
0:35:41 What I’m trying to prevent here is a bunch of dudes
0:35:43 talking about shit where like every woman’s listening
0:35:47 and they’re like, yeah, we know we use these eight brands.
0:35:48 Do you know what I mean?
0:35:50 So I actually, I have no idea.
0:35:52 – Could very well be and I would love to be educated.
0:35:53 Feel free to DM me.
0:35:56 – I’ll tell you what, in my home,
0:35:57 I only see the popular stuff.
0:35:59 – Yeah, and in general, like, I don’t know,
0:36:01 how many a hundred million dollar companies,
0:36:03 how a hundred million dollar year revenue businesses
0:36:04 are there that are doing this?
0:36:06 There will be, trust me, there will be one,
0:36:07 there will be two, there will be three
0:36:08 that are in this category.
0:36:11 Like, the current incumbents will either adapt
0:36:14 or be replaced by alternatives
0:36:17 that are gonna play on these health concerns.
0:36:19 This is not gonna go nowhere, right?
0:36:21 Look at your detergents, look at your soaps,
0:36:22 look at your deodorants.
0:36:24 This has happened in pretty much every other category.
0:36:25 They’re gonna do it here.
0:36:28 And this is a great product because high margin,
0:36:31 repeat purchase, and you know, like the other thing is that
0:36:35 it’s usually women’s products tend to be underserved
0:36:38 compared to the ideas that most guys have
0:36:40 around what businesses that they’ll go start.
0:36:44 So you kind of can compete in a less saturated field
0:36:46 than, you know, making to-do list apps
0:36:51 or whatever, whatever the average bro idea will be.
0:36:53 – Yeah, and what’s interesting is that
0:36:55 with a lot of these brands, like they’ll be like,
0:36:57 I need to come up with some innovative new thing.
0:37:01 And our friend Moyes, when he was selling native deodorant,
0:37:03 the buyer of the company was like,
0:37:05 well, how are you going to expand?
0:37:07 He’s like, well, can you write the word native
0:37:09 on some all-natural shampoo?
0:37:10 And they’re like, yeah, he goes,
0:37:11 that’s how you’re going to expand.
0:37:13 – He’s like, do you guys have a printer to do that?
0:37:14 – Yeah.
0:37:15 – Would you guys be able to type this?
0:37:16 If I give you the font,
0:37:18 could you type it on a shampoo bottle?
0:37:18 – Yeah.
0:37:19 – All right, sweet.
0:37:20 We should be good then.
0:37:23 (all laughing)
0:37:24 – And so with a lot of these brands,
0:37:27 you don’t really need like a significantly more innovative
0:37:30 thing other than you have to be able to make it clean enough
0:37:33 that you can accurately describe it as a better for you
0:37:35 alternative, but it doesn’t need to be
0:37:36 a significant thing.
0:37:39 And it’s not like native deodorant was original.
0:37:41 There was plenty of people selling it.
0:37:44 They just weren’t savvy go-getter entrepreneurs.
0:37:46 They were like hippies, you know,
0:37:48 who was selling it on Etsy?
0:37:50 And in fact, let’s do this.
0:37:52 Go to Etsy and look up tampons.
0:37:54 Let’s just see what’s available.
0:37:55 – I like how you’re making me do it.
0:37:57 So I get targeted for these ads.
0:38:00 All-natural, there we go.
0:38:04 Getting some interesting results that are not–
0:38:05 – Well, I was going to say–
0:38:06 – Exactly what I’m looking for.
0:38:08 – Is an all-natural tampon really like a cup?
0:38:11 (all laughing)
0:38:12 – Not that natural.
0:38:18 – I don’t know what I found, but we can take this out.
0:38:20 So I find this one, right?
0:38:23 The Honeypot Company, 100% organic regular tampons,
0:38:26 unscented, organic cotton with bioplastic applicator,
0:38:27 no chlorine, no pesticides, no fragrance.
0:38:28 I’m like, oh, great.
0:38:29 – In.
0:38:30 – In.
0:38:31 – First review.
0:38:32 – Very good coffee.
0:38:34 (all laughing)
0:38:39 All right, looks like we’re going to still get to work
0:38:41 to do with this idea.
0:38:42 – Wait, wait, wait, go back to that.
0:38:43 What’s going on with them?
0:38:44 Why is that like that?
0:38:47 – I think it must be that the shop has other products in it
0:38:48 and that’s for the shop.
0:38:50 It’s like reviews from the shop, not the product.
0:38:51 – Yeah, okay.
0:38:54 The shop has herbal teas and other things too.
0:38:56 – A tampon coffee company.
0:38:57 – Yeah.
0:38:59 (all laughing)
0:39:01 – But anyway, this was my Sunday brainstorm.
0:39:04 My Sunday brainstorm was, here’s three cool ideas.
0:39:06 Sketchy, which is doing visual learning
0:39:08 in the medical space.
0:39:11 The Babylon Bee, which is taken off as a satire news website
0:39:13 for kind of conservative political news.
0:39:15 And then this TikTok that was going viral,
0:39:18 obviously tapped into some concerns people have resonated
0:39:21 with the public around the toxicity and the metals
0:39:26 and the arsenic that’s in the popular tampon brands.
0:39:28 And for each, I think you could just take a 20% remix
0:39:29 and do it.
0:39:30 I think for Sketchy.
0:39:31 – I agree.
0:39:33 – You can do Sketchy for another test,
0:39:34 another customer segment.
0:39:37 Maybe it’s AP students or it’s SAT takers
0:39:39 or it’s some obscure test.
0:39:40 Who knows?
0:39:43 I think you could do it for, I think that the Babylon Bee,
0:39:45 I think could be done for other customer groups,
0:39:46 other customer segments,
0:39:48 like the millennial mom is the one I would go for.
0:39:53 And third would be this dood-native deodorant for tampons.
0:39:55 And maybe there’s somebody doing it,
0:39:57 but this is my Sunday brainstorm of three ideas
0:39:59 that maybe they’re not great ideas,
0:40:01 but they’ll at least get the wheels turned into your brain.
0:40:03 It’s kind of the promise I have here.
0:40:04 – I think this is, we gotta keep your phone away from you
0:40:05 for, from other weekends.
0:40:06 This is good stuff.
0:40:08 – Yeah, ’cause this is what happens when I don’t have
0:40:09 my phone.
0:40:09 – I want to talk about one more thing.
0:40:12 I don’t want MFM to like talk about politics,
0:40:13 ’cause I don’t think that that’s fun.
0:40:15 And I think this is like a little bit of an escape.
0:40:17 – I was gonna start the podcast with, you know,
0:40:19 Sam and I have both sold newsletter businesses.
0:40:22 So we feel pretty qualified to chime in here
0:40:25 on what’s going on in our country.
0:40:29 And that’s how every like business attack podcast is.
0:40:31 They’re just like, you know, as a venture capitalist,
0:40:32 where I start my career, you know,
0:40:34 investing in the early stage tech companies,
0:40:37 I just feel pretty qualified to talk to you about
0:40:39 what’s going on in the Supreme Court right now.
0:40:40 – It’s maddening, man.
0:40:41 It’s, that’s maddening.
0:40:43 And I don’t want to become that.
0:40:46 But I saw that you’re into Teddy Roosevelt.
0:40:48 – Well, I went down this rabbit hole, right?
0:40:51 So I’m like, the crazy Trump stuff happens.
0:40:52 And I’m like, wow, that’s crazy.
0:40:53 You got shot.
0:40:56 I’m like, I was like, I wonder how many presidents
0:40:57 have been shot at?
0:40:59 – So can I tell you, wait, let me,
0:41:00 and let me, don’t answer that question.
0:41:01 Don’t answer that question.
0:41:04 But let me tell you something, why I’m happy.
0:41:07 I have read not only the biographies
0:41:08 of all of those presidents,
0:41:12 but also multiple books on each assassination.
0:41:14 And one of my, and one of my,
0:41:16 so this is why I’m happy that you’re able to talk about this.
0:41:17 – I’ve walked into your wheelhouse.
0:41:19 I’ve stumbled into your wheelhouse.
0:41:20 – Welcome home, Sean.
0:41:21 One of the reasons, and here’s,
0:41:24 this is a trivia question that I would ask people all the time.
0:41:27 How many presidents and name them who have been assassinated?
0:41:30 Virtually no one gets the second two.
0:41:31 The first two are easy.
0:41:34 – So, okay, easy, easy assassinations
0:41:38 that I can remember, let’s say, Lincoln, Kennedy, right?
0:41:39 Those are easy.
0:41:42 Let’s see, what are the hard ones?
0:41:47 McKinley, ’cause he was, he died right before Roosevelt.
0:41:49 So that was, I think Roosevelt was the VP, right?
0:41:51 Is that how that happened?
0:41:52 He became president?
0:41:53 – I don’t remember exactly,
0:41:55 but they’re in the same ballpark.
0:41:56 I don’t know if Roosevelt was the VP,
0:41:58 but he could’ve been.
0:42:00 – Okay, so we’ll leave it there, he could’ve been.
0:42:01 And then, the last one. – Oh, you’re right, by the way.
0:42:03 I’m looking it up, yes, good job, you’re right.
0:42:04 – The last one I wouldn’t have got,
0:42:07 but I see it here, the notes is Garfield, Andrew Garfield.
0:42:08 I wouldn’t have got that one.
0:42:12 – And both of those guys, when they got shot,
0:42:15 it was a very solvable problem.
0:42:19 So basically, up until like the 1910s or 1920s,
0:42:20 we didn’t really believe,
0:42:23 or we didn’t know that germs were a thing.
0:42:24 And most of these guys, when they got shot,
0:42:27 they got shot, and then you go digging around
0:42:30 and with a dirty surgeon’s hand or a dirty instrument,
0:42:32 and they get infections, and that’s how they died.
0:42:33 – Exactly.
0:42:35 So like McKinley died like, I don’t know,
0:42:38 eight days later of gangrene caused by the wounds,
0:42:40 not from like the bullet itself, you know,
0:42:41 hitting him in the heart or something like that.
0:42:43 – Garfield died like six weeks later.
0:42:44 – So, I was pretty mind blown.
0:42:46 So basically, I wanna know how many presidents
0:42:48 have been shot at, either hit or missed,
0:42:50 but a gunshot has been fired at them.
0:42:51 Do you know the number for this?
0:42:53 – I think it’s seven or eight or nine,
0:42:54 like right around there?
0:42:55 – 13.
0:42:56 – Oh my God.
0:42:58 – And there’s only been 40, what, six presidents,
0:42:59 some of that, so it’s basically–
0:43:00 – A 10%.
0:43:02 – More than that, 25%.
0:43:05 25% chance of being shot at if you’re a president.
0:43:06 Dangerous. – That’s insane.
0:43:08 – Dangerous job. – That’s insane, right?
0:43:10 – And then of those, four have died.
0:43:14 – So here’s the deal.
0:43:17 I made most of my money from a newsletter business.
0:43:18 It was called The Hustle,
0:43:20 and it was a daily newsletter at scale
0:43:22 to millions of subscribers,
0:43:24 and it was the greatest business on earth.
0:43:27 The problem with it was that I had close to 40 employees,
0:43:30 and only three of them were actually doing any writing.
0:43:32 The other employees were growing the newsletter,
0:43:35 building out the tech for the platform, and selling ads,
0:43:38 and honestly, it was a huge pain in the butt.
0:43:41 Today’s episode is brought to you by Beehive.
0:43:44 They are a platform that is built exactly for this.
0:43:45 If you wanna grow your newsletter,
0:43:47 if you wanna monetize a newsletter,
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0:43:51 that I had to hire dozens of employees to do.
0:43:53 So check it out, beehive.com.
0:43:56 That’s B-E-E-H-I-I-V.com.
0:44:01 – The crazy one that I,
0:44:03 so there’s actually two that I found pretty interesting.
0:44:04 So I tweeted about one of them.
0:44:04 I didn’t talk about the other one.
0:44:05 Can I tell you about the two
0:44:07 that I found that were pretty interesting?
0:44:10 This is me just beginner level on Wikipedia.
0:44:11 – So I know you know it was Roosevelt.
0:44:13 Was the other one Andrew Jackson?
0:44:14 – Jackson, yes.
0:44:16 The Jackson one is crazy.
0:44:18 So here’s my understanding, fill in the gaps for me.
0:44:22 So the story is Jackson is going to a funeral.
0:44:24 He, and he’s 67 years old.
0:44:25 He walks with a cane.
0:44:28 He’s a kind of an old guy and he’s not very popular.
0:44:30 He’s walking, he’s at the funeral.
0:44:32 He’s walking into the funeral, whatever.
0:44:34 And a guy approaches him with a pistol
0:44:36 and the guy shoots at him.
0:44:38 The gun goes off, but the bullet doesn’t come out.
0:44:39 It’s a misfire.
0:44:40 So the powder explodes,
0:44:43 but the bullet doesn’t leave the gun.
0:44:46 And Jackson becomes angry.
0:44:48 Charges at him with his cane,
0:44:49 swinging at him with the cane,
0:44:51 trying to beat him up with his cane.
0:44:53 – He almost beat him to death.
0:44:54 – He almost beat him to death.
0:44:55 Well, there’s a conflict of course.
0:44:57 One is he beat him up and the other ones he misses.
0:44:59 And so I don’t know which one’s true.
0:45:02 The other, and then the guy takes out a second pistol,
0:45:04 does the same thing, shoots him with a second pistol,
0:45:06 also misfires.
0:45:08 Other politicians who are there jump on him,
0:45:09 kind of tackle the guy.
0:45:13 And they then take both of the guns
0:45:15 and they’re like, man, we got lucky that this guy,
0:45:17 or maybe he didn’t really mean to do it,
0:45:17 are these fake guns?
0:45:18 What happened?
0:45:21 We heard the gun fire, but no bullet hit.
0:45:23 And so then they shoot the gun again
0:45:25 and the bullet comes out.
0:45:26 And both guns were actually functioning.
0:45:28 And they basically said that the odds
0:45:31 of both pistols misfiring and jamming like this
0:45:33 was like one in 150,000.
0:45:34 That’s what they estimated.
0:45:35 – That’s insane.
0:45:38 – The odds of that happening are so low.
0:45:39 That’s pretty crazy, huh?
0:45:41 – And what’s here, here’s what’s even crazier
0:45:46 is when up until probably the 1960s after JFK,
0:45:50 secret service wasn’t really much of a thing.
0:45:52 So the secret service wasn’t a thing.
0:45:55 I don’t think it was a thing when Garfield got shot,
0:45:59 which I think was at 1900 even or so, maybe late 1800s.
0:46:03 When JFK got shot, there was only like 150
0:46:06 secret service agents.
0:46:09 It was not big and the budget was tiny
0:46:11 and they were overworked and tired all the time.
0:46:14 And when Andrew Garfield got shot,
0:46:15 after a look at the date–
0:46:15 – 1881.
0:46:19 – 1881, Lincoln was shot 20 years prior.
0:46:21 You could still, after Lincoln got shot,
0:46:22 you could walk into the White House
0:46:23 and schedule an appointment.
0:46:25 Anyone could go see these guys.
0:46:27 And when Garfield got shot,
0:46:30 he was walking from the White House to a train.
0:46:32 Him and a buddy were just walking
0:46:33 and someone walked up and shot him.
0:46:35 It was insane how like you could get away
0:46:36 with all this stuff.
0:46:39 And it’s wild to think about that.
0:46:42 – So the Teddy Roosevelt story was the one
0:46:43 that just blew my mind.
0:46:46 So the Teddy Roosevelt story goes as follows.
0:46:50 He’s supposed to give a speech, he’s having dinner,
0:46:52 he leaves the dinner, he’s getting into his car.
0:46:53 And as he’s walking up to his car,
0:46:57 a guy comes up to him and shoots him and hits him.
0:46:59 Hits him right in the chest.
0:47:01 And Roosevelt got lucky for two reasons.
0:47:04 I’m sure you already know, what are the two reasons?
0:47:07 – I believe the first one was he had his speech
0:47:09 in his chest, in his chest pocket.
0:47:11 – A 50 page speech printed out
0:47:14 and rolled up into his jacket pocket.
0:47:17 – And the second reason I think is that he was strong.
0:47:20 His chest muscles were just like, he was a buff dude.
0:47:23 – The second one was he had his glasses case,
0:47:25 which was made out of steel.
0:47:25 – I was making that up.
0:47:27 – The bullet went through both of those.
0:47:28 So it went through the speech,
0:47:29 it goes through the glasses case,
0:47:31 but it kind of took a lot of the heat off of it.
0:47:33 And it still hits him in the chest.
0:47:34 And the story’s crazy, he’s like,
0:47:40 so his secretary was an ex football player
0:47:41 and just tackles the guy.
0:47:44 And then he’s like, you know, people are swarming.
0:47:46 He’s like, no, no, no, bring him to me, bring him to me.
0:47:48 He’s like, I want to look him in the eyes.
0:47:50 And they bring the guy up to his face and he goes,
0:47:52 why did you do it?
0:47:53 And the guy doesn’t answer.
0:47:54 And he’s like, all right, forget it.
0:47:55 Take him away.
0:47:56 He’s like, but no violence on this guy.
0:47:58 Like I don’t want this guy hurt in any way.
0:48:02 Like I want him, you know, through the judicial system.
0:48:05 So I put him in the car and I guess he’s like a hunter
0:48:08 and like an anatomist, like a casual anatomist.
0:48:10 So he’s like, you know, I’m not,
0:48:11 they’re taking him to the hospital.
0:48:13 He’s like, I’m not coughing up blood.
0:48:14 I don’t think it’s hit my lung.
0:48:17 So I think the bullets lodged in there,
0:48:20 but I think it’s okay because it didn’t puncture my lung
0:48:21 or my heart.
0:48:25 So he’s like, take me to the speech.
0:48:28 So he goes and he still delivers like a,
0:48:30 something like a 50 to 90 minute speech.
0:48:32 And they have the shirt that he wore
0:48:35 and the blood is just soaking out of the shirt.
0:48:37 Kurt Schilling style with the sock.
0:48:38 Just as he’s giving the speech,
0:48:40 they now have this like whatever in a museum
0:48:42 and he’s giving the speech.
0:48:45 And he’s like, he says, ladies and gentlemen,
0:48:47 I don’t know whether you fully understand
0:48:48 that I have just been shot,
0:48:51 but it takes more than a bullet to kill a bull moose.
0:48:55 And that was the line that he gave during the speech.
0:48:58 After the speech, he then goes to the hospital
0:48:59 and they’re like, they take the X-ray.
0:49:00 They see the bullets in there,
0:49:02 but the technology wasn’t that good at the time.
0:49:05 They’re like, look, we could try to take it out,
0:49:06 but it’s risky.
0:49:07 I think this is how McKinley had just died.
0:49:10 – Well, the technology for the X-ray
0:49:13 basically was sort of invented for Garfield.
0:49:15 So I forget what the scientist’s name was,
0:49:18 but around the World’s Fair time,
0:49:20 they were trying to invent X-ray
0:49:22 and Garfield got screwed up and they were like,
0:49:24 dude, we’ve heard that you have this thing.
0:49:26 Can you, can we be your test patient?
0:49:28 You gotta find this bullet on Garfield.
0:49:33 And so like the X-ray, basically it kind of
0:49:35 was being developed because of,
0:49:37 yeah, because of this one or two examples.
0:49:40 – Well, in the end, the doctor decided just to leave it in
0:49:42 because they’re like, it’s too risky to take it out.
0:49:44 And so he lives with it for the rest of his life.
0:49:45 And people asked him, they were like,
0:49:47 do you feel, do you still have pain from that?
0:49:48 And he’s like, it doesn’t bother me more
0:49:51 than if it was a bullet sitting in my pocket.
0:49:52 – What a badass.
0:49:54 Did you know that he was partially blind
0:49:57 because Roosevelt was a crazy person.
0:50:01 So he liked to box and he was a man’s man.
0:50:05 And there’s a story where I think it was one of his aides,
0:50:07 but a professional boxer would come in and he’d be like,
0:50:08 oh, you like the box?
0:50:10 – No, he would invite people to spar him
0:50:10 in the White House, right?
0:50:12 – He’d be like, prove it, let’s see.
0:50:14 Like, you like the box, let’s box.
0:50:16 And he would box with these guys, like professionals.
0:50:19 And he would make people get out and they would spar.
0:50:23 Well, one time a guy, I think it was his aide
0:50:26 or a partner of his damaged his eye.
0:50:28 And so one of his aides was blind.
0:50:29 And during the boxing match, he was like,
0:50:32 hey, look, we can’t tell anyone about this.
0:50:34 Like no one could know that we were fighting in here.
0:50:36 Otherwise, I’m gonna get into a ton of trouble.
0:50:38 So he didn’t tell a lot of people,
0:50:40 but he was blind in one eye.
0:50:44 – Yeah, he got a detached retina from the boxing match.
0:50:47 And then he switched to Jujutsu instead.
0:50:51 There’s also, I guess, some story.
0:50:52 – It was hard.
0:50:54 – I guess when he was born,
0:50:57 he was born with some condition where his organs
0:50:59 were too small for his body or something like that, right?
0:51:00 Isn’t there something like this?
0:51:02 – And that’s why he was so active.
0:51:04 So he was born with a bad,
0:51:06 they were like, you’re probably gonna die young.
0:51:09 – They told his parents he’ll probably die as a teenager.
0:51:10 And he’ll be in bed most of the time
0:51:12 and he’ll die as a teenager.
0:51:14 – And so that’s why he was so invigorated with life
0:51:17 because they were like, A, he expected to die.
0:51:20 And B, his father was like, we have to get you strong.
0:51:23 You have to be strong so you can survive.
0:51:26 And so he wanted to exercise and do all the stuff
0:51:27 so he could live.
0:51:30 And so that’s one of the reasons why he was so active.
0:51:32 – Yeah, this is like the tip of the iceberg.
0:51:33 I think there’s a bunch of other crazy stories
0:51:34 about Teddy Roosevelt.
0:51:38 Also, the teddy bear named after him, didn’t know that.
0:51:39 – I believe it’s named after him
0:51:43 because he was known for hunting, bears and stuff like that.
0:51:45 And so one group was like, hey, we’ll take you hunting.
0:51:50 Turns out they had a bear chained up to a tree or something.
0:51:52 And Teddy sees this poor bear.
0:51:54 And he’s like, no guys, this is not how we do this.
0:51:56 You got to release that bear.
0:51:58 And so it was something involving that story
0:52:00 involved him having the teddy bear.
0:52:03 They call him a bear or teddy bear.
0:52:05 – He didn’t like being called teddy either.
0:52:07 – Yeah, I don’t think people call him to his face,
0:52:09 but there’s a whole book called “The River of Doubt.”
0:52:10 And so basically the river of doubt,
0:52:12 you hear that title and you think,
0:52:14 oh, that has to do with you making good decisions
0:52:16 or bad decisions and doubting your decisions.
0:52:18 No, there was a river called Doubt.
0:52:20 I think in Brazil that had never been explored
0:52:22 after he was president.
0:52:25 He was like, well, I’ll go figure out what’s,
0:52:26 and let’s, we got to like map that out.
0:52:27 Let’s make a map, I’ll do it.
0:52:30 And so he goes and he does this river
0:52:32 for weeks or months or something like that.
0:52:33 And he almost dies.
0:52:35 And this is just him wanting to explore it.
0:52:38 There’s all these crazy stories about him, like,
0:52:41 a lot of people accuse him of starting a war
0:52:42 just so he could go and fight.
0:52:44 ‘Cause he had, it was called “The Rough Riders.”
0:52:47 It was his own crew of like these military folks, but no,
0:52:49 – M, DMX, who else?
0:52:50 (laughing)
0:52:51 – And their own anthem.
0:52:53 – Teddy was pretty hard.
0:52:55 Teddy was an interesting guy.
0:52:58 – And by the way, he lost the election.
0:53:00 After the guy does this, gives his speech during,
0:53:03 with a bullet in his chest, he ends up losing to,
0:53:05 because I guess he had his own,
0:53:07 he was a third party candidate at this stage,
0:53:08 which is pretty crazy.
0:53:10 – He was an interesting guy.
0:53:13 He also, his wife died giving birth.
0:53:17 And so the same day that his daughter was born,
0:53:20 his wife died, and then in the same house,
0:53:22 that day, his mother died.
0:53:25 And he has the story where he said,
0:53:27 he used to journal every day.
0:53:29 And that was one day where he wrote in this journal,
0:53:31 he goes, “The light has left my life.”
0:53:33 And that’s all he wrote, and it’s a very touching story.
0:53:35 And then he goes on this tear,
0:53:37 where for the next year, he’s crazy active.
0:53:38 And they go, “Why are you being so active?”
0:53:42 And he writes, “Ceiceless action outruns depression.”
0:53:45 And so he was basically like doing all these amazing things
0:53:48 in order to outrun the sadness of that day.
0:53:49 And so it really-
0:53:50 – That’s wild.
0:53:53 Are his journals like published anywhere,
0:53:54 or his diaries or whatever?
0:53:55 – He was a prolific writer.
0:53:56 So his first book was actually,
0:53:58 I think he was in his teens or early 20s.
0:54:00 His first book was on zoology.
0:54:02 So he used to collect animals and take them apart
0:54:04 and explain like he loved Darwin.
0:54:06 He was like, he tried to discover species.
0:54:09 And he wrote, I think dozens of book,
0:54:12 or if that doesn’t a book, books like six or eight books.
0:54:14 So he wrote many, many books.
0:54:15 So yeah, he was really prolific.
0:54:16 So you can go and read all of his writing.
0:54:17 He was a really impressive guy.
0:54:20 – What’s the best book on him that you’ve read?
0:54:21 – I would read his biography.
0:54:22 His biography is amazing
0:54:25 because he had a lot of bad shit happen to him in his life.
0:54:27 And he was very optimistic.
0:54:28 – Wow.
0:54:30 What a guy, Billy of the Week, I guess.
0:54:32 – Well, he was, his father started MoMA.
0:54:33 – The museum?
0:54:34 – The museum.
0:54:35 His father, James Roosevelt,
0:54:38 like founded that because he was a wealthy guy.
0:54:39 – Oh, no way.
0:54:42 – But Teddy Roosevelt, by the way, horrible businessman.
0:54:43 He was a horrible businessman.
0:54:44 That was the one thing that he sucked at.
0:54:46 He like would invest in like horses and stuff.
0:54:49 And he would start ranches, really bad businessman.
0:54:51 He was, he blew a lot of money.
0:54:53 – Was he a good dude overall or a bad dude, right?
0:54:56 Cause he’s definitely like a sort of man’s man
0:54:57 in all these interesting ways.
0:55:00 It has like legendary feats.
0:55:02 He really lived a very interesting life,
0:55:04 but character wise, was he a good guy?
0:55:06 I mean, I’ve never read anything about it besides this.
0:55:08 – I think he had a strong character.
0:55:09 I have one massive critique of him.
0:55:11 And this is when I kind of were the phrase,
0:55:13 all great men can be bad men.
0:55:17 For example, he wasn’t, I felt like the most present father.
0:55:19 So when his wife died, he goes to North Dakota or whatever
0:55:21 to do his thing, the Badlands to do his thing.
0:55:23 He left his newborn daughter for like a year and a half.
0:55:26 And you could say like, maybe he was like suicidal,
0:55:27 depressed and he’s like, I gotta get away.
0:55:29 And you could argue that.
0:55:32 But he kind of wasn’t always around for his daughter,
0:55:34 I felt, but in general, he had high character.
0:55:35 Yeah, he was a good dude.
0:55:37 – Interesting.
0:55:38 All right.
0:55:40 Well, I think that’s a fascinating podcast.
0:55:42 I’m so glad that you have this.
0:55:44 You and Shane Gillis, by the way,
0:55:49 why is Shane Gillis like such a history like PhD?
0:55:52 – He has a major, he studied history.
0:55:55 – I’m a biology major, couldn’t tell you three things.
0:55:58 How does he know, he knows a lot about history,
0:56:00 like too much about history.
0:56:02 – Yeah, he knows way more than me.
0:56:04 He has a good like series of history podcasts
0:56:06 and he’s really talented at it.
0:56:08 I think it’s really fun to read stories.
0:56:13 So like you’ll read in the biography about Andrew Jackson
0:56:15 beating up this guy and you’re like, you’re just reading it.
0:56:17 But then you can take this other thing of like,
0:56:19 put yourself there and you’re like, that’s hilarious
0:56:20 or not hilarious, but like, that’s wild.
0:56:21 You know, that’s someone who would do that.
0:56:23 And so it’s fun to read in between the lines
0:56:25 and like actually imagine some of these stories.
0:56:27 It’s just, I think it’s fascinating.
0:56:30 I think it’s also cool to avoid the mistakes
0:56:34 that people make and just copy the winnings that they do.
0:56:35 So I love that.
0:56:36 – I don’t read any biographies.
0:56:39 And I, but I read a lot about people
0:56:40 and I don’t know what a word for this is,
0:56:44 but I basically will study the ideas
0:56:49 and the ideas and kind of like core plot lines.
0:56:52 But I don’t care where they grew up, how they grew up,
0:56:55 who they grew up with, what the scene was like,
0:56:56 what their family life was like.
0:56:59 I don’t really care about a lot of those things.
0:57:03 And so I find myself fascinated by people,
0:57:05 but I really want to know their philosophy.
0:57:08 And then the action of how they implemented that philosophy,
0:57:10 like the stories of them implementing that philosophy
0:57:11 or living up to that philosophy
0:57:13 or failing on that philosophy.
0:57:14 That’s really all I care about,
0:57:16 which is like a very weird sub-genre
0:57:19 of studying history or these people.
0:57:20 – Well, let me give you two recommendations.
0:57:23 So the first recommendation is a book called “Man Hunt”,
0:57:26 the 12-day chase for Lincoln’s killer.
0:57:27 The reason it’s interesting
0:57:29 is because you’ve heard the name John Wilkes Booth.
0:57:31 That’s the guy who assassinated Lincoln.
0:57:34 He was, he’s an intoxicating character.
0:57:36 He was sort of like a cult leader.
0:57:38 He was a famous actor, not quite,
0:57:40 but almost like Brad Pitt at the time,
0:57:42 where everyone recognized him.
0:57:43 – He was a celebrity?
0:57:44 – He was a celebrity.
0:57:47 And he was a bad, he was a bad dude, like crazy racist.
0:57:48 He was a horrible guy,
0:57:49 but he definitely had this intoxicating,
0:57:52 like I want to follow you to the death type of vibe
0:57:55 where he was really charismatic and he entranced people.
0:57:58 And so the Lincoln assassination, by definition,
0:57:58 was a conspiracy.
0:58:02 It was a group of like 30 people who worked together
0:58:03 to make this happen. – Conspired to do this.
0:58:06 – Yeah, and he was gone for 12 days.
0:58:08 So they assassinated Lincoln
0:58:10 and he escaped for 12 days and he almost got away with it.
0:58:12 He was very closely getting away with it.
0:58:14 And so the 12-day manhunt,
0:58:15 the 12-day chase for Lincoln’s killers
0:58:18 is a book about the 12-day manhunt.
0:58:20 And it’s a very good page turning read.
0:58:21 It’s very easy.
0:58:22 The second one is hellbound.
0:58:25 And it’s about the assassination of MLK.
0:58:26 A lot of people don’t know this,
0:58:28 but James Earl Ray, the guy who shot MLK,
0:58:30 and MLK was a great dude.
0:58:32 He had some downfalls.
0:58:34 He cheated on his wife a bunch,
0:58:35 but he was a net positive.
0:58:38 He was a great guy in general, but he had flaws.
0:58:43 James Earl Ray shot MLK and not only did he escape,
0:58:44 he escaped for months.
0:58:45 So basically when he shot MLK,
0:58:48 he escaped to, I think he shot him in Memphis
0:58:50 and then he drove all over America.
0:58:52 Then he went to Quebec and then he went to Europe.
0:58:53 And when he was in Europe,
0:58:56 he was flying around from country to country.
0:58:57 And the only reason he got caught
0:59:01 was he was in London on his way to Rhodesia,
0:59:02 which is basically South Africa.
0:59:04 At the time it was run by a racist regime.
0:59:07 And he was like, they’re gonna accept me with wide arms
0:59:08 ’cause I just killed MLK.
0:59:09 They’re gonna love me.
0:59:11 He gets through security.
0:59:12 Once he walks through security,
0:59:14 the security guard who lets him in,
0:59:18 he says, thank you, sir, and looks down.
0:59:20 And he sees that he has an additional passport
0:59:22 in his pocket.
0:59:23 And they’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa, dude.
0:59:25 Why do you have two passports?
0:59:26 And they pull it out and they’re like,
0:59:27 oh, shit, the one you gave me was fake.
0:59:28 I just got the real one.
0:59:32 And he was seconds away from getting away from all this.
0:59:34 He was gone for roughly six months.
0:59:36 He was gallivanting all over Europe.
0:59:37 He was all over Canada.
0:59:39 He was very close to getting away with it.
0:59:41 And a lot of people don’t realize that about that story.
0:59:43 And that book, I believe, is called Hellbound,
0:59:44 also a page turner.
0:59:45 So if you wanna read about assassinations,
0:59:48 those are my two favorite assassination books.
0:59:50 – Dude, we should make a, you know,
0:59:52 like a blue ribbon when you were a kid or whatever.
0:59:55 Like, we should have our own list of like books
0:59:59 that we think are awesome and some commentary around them.
1:00:01 Like, I wish we just had our own,
1:00:04 we should just make a separate YouTube channel
1:00:06 of just us doing like a book club
1:00:08 or doing like read a book, talk about it,
1:00:10 and curate for people like the books that we think
1:00:12 are just like really unbelievable books for the year.
1:00:14 – Yeah, I would love to do that.
1:00:16 Those two rank really high.
1:00:19 Those are some of, like I go through series.
1:00:21 So like, I got obsessed with shipwrecks.
1:00:23 So I read like 10 books all on shipwrecks.
1:00:25 I can tell you like, in my opinion,
1:00:26 what are some of the coolest shipwrecks.
1:00:28 And then I did assassinations of famous people.
1:00:30 And the reason why I love these books
1:00:32 and the reason why I think you don’t like biographies,
1:00:35 biographies don’t have a very good beginning
1:00:37 and a middle and an end.
1:00:40 Whereas I try to read books that are about an event,
1:00:41 ’cause an event typically has a beginning
1:00:43 and a middle and an end, where it’s, you know,
1:00:47 it’s more succinct as opposed to 1200 pages.
1:00:49 And so I like books that are on events,
1:00:50 particularly events in America,
1:00:52 so I can relate a little bit more.
1:00:53 – All right, this was fun.
1:00:55 I’m glad we did this at the end here.
1:00:56 – That’s the part.
1:00:58 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
1:01:01 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
1:01:04 ♪ I put my all in it like no days off ♪
1:01:06 ♪ On the road let’s travel never looking back ♪
1:01:07 Bye.
0:00:04 My Sunday brainstorm was, here’s three cool ideas.
0:00:06 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:00:09 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:00:12 ♪ I put my all in it like a days off ♪
0:00:13 ♪ On the road let’s travel ♪
0:00:15 – Dude, let’s do like a life update
0:00:17 because frankly, you and I mostly talk to each other.
0:00:19 I mean, we spend so much time on this podcast
0:00:20 but I don’t even like talk that much.
0:00:21 I want to know what’s going on with you
0:00:24 and I’ll fill you in on what’s going on with me.
0:00:27 – I did a thing I’ve never really done before.
0:00:28 It’s not background breaking.
0:00:30 I’m sure you or many people have done this
0:00:33 but I hadn’t and Friday hit
0:00:35 and I just put my phone in a drawer
0:00:36 and I didn’t touch it till this morning.
0:00:40 So I had a no phone weekend, which was pretty awesome
0:00:43 and very unusual for me.
0:00:44 – You’re not good at that.
0:00:46 Like you’re hardcore about your phone.
0:00:48 So tell me how that felt.
0:00:50 – It felt like it withdrawals from an addiction.
0:00:52 Like I would find myself, there was like funny things
0:00:55 and then there was like little moments
0:00:56 where I would notice it a lot more, right?
0:00:58 So like grabbing your pants all the time.
0:01:00 – I would just keep patting my pocket.
0:01:02 Like I would put my kids in their car seat, shut the door
0:01:05 and I’m walking around the car to get to my side
0:01:08 and I instinctively, I’m trying to pat to check.
0:01:09 Like why do I need to check my phone
0:01:12 in this three second break that I have walking around my car?
0:01:13 It’s pretty crazy.
0:01:16 And there was just like a hundred moments like that
0:01:18 where I instinctively wanted to go
0:01:20 and you know, just pull to refresh basically.
0:01:21 I needed to go see a feed.
0:01:22 It’s like I need to get my feed.
0:01:24 And so, you know, it was nice to do that.
0:01:25 I found myself doing randoms.
0:01:27 I was like humming a lot, I read a lot.
0:01:30 I was just like, our kids are kind of picky eaters
0:01:32 and we haven’t really taught them to eat very well
0:01:33 on their own.
0:01:36 And so like we feed them every meal basically still.
0:01:38 And so I’m sitting there and I’m feeding them.
0:01:41 And normally I’ve got my phone, they’ve got their cartoons.
0:01:42 We’re basically all just cartooned up
0:01:45 and I’m just shoving bites of mac and cheese in their mouth.
0:01:47 And it really slowed me down.
0:01:50 Like time went way slower,
0:01:52 but not in a bad way necessarily.
0:01:54 It was a lot more peaceful, I would say also.
0:01:58 Was part of the upside of not having my phone.
0:02:01 – Did you use your computer or Apple TV or cable TV?
0:02:02 – Yeah, so the rule was I don’t have to be like
0:02:04 without the internet or without any entertainment.
0:02:06 I didn’t go Amish.
0:02:09 I was allowed to watch TV and I was allowed to use my laptop
0:02:12 if the opportunity presented itself.
0:02:14 But on the weekends, I’m pretty much fully in dad mode.
0:02:18 So we’re not, I’m not really on the computer a whole lot.
0:02:20 And even just the physical distance of like
0:02:23 the computer that’s in your pocket all the time
0:02:25 versus okay, I guess if I wanna go on the internet,
0:02:27 I’m allowed to, I’m allowed to go on Twitter if I want to,
0:02:30 but I just have to go to my computer, open it up,
0:02:32 type in the thing and then like, you know,
0:02:34 I can only be on my laptop for so long basically.
0:02:36 So that was a good, a very good break
0:02:37 and something I’m gonna do a lot more of
0:02:41 because I don’t like the idea of being addicted to something.
0:02:44 And I would say by any definition,
0:02:46 I’m completely addicted to my phone.
0:02:48 If I don’t have it, I kind of freak out a little bit.
0:02:49 I’m like, I gotta go get my phone.
0:02:50 Hold on, wait, wait, wait, whatever we’re doing,
0:02:52 I gotta get my phone, I left my phone in the other room.
0:02:53 I gotta go get it.
0:02:55 And it’s pretty crazy that that’s the case,
0:02:58 finding myself instinctively reaching into my pockets
0:03:00 or like really wondering like, what time is it?
0:03:00 Did somebody text me?
0:03:01 It’s like, who cares?
0:03:03 You know, I don’t really need any of this.
0:03:04 – Did you follow the news?
0:03:06 – Well, that was of course the craziest thing is
0:03:09 while I’m not on my phone,
0:03:11 my wife was like, oh my God, Trump got shot.
0:03:13 I’m like, oh man, this is the one thing
0:03:16 that like the craziest news in the world happens
0:03:18 testing my resolve here.
0:03:22 All right, let’s take a quick break
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0:03:55 – And so I did get on my laptop a little bit later
0:03:56 and check out what was going on
0:03:58 and read all the crazy stuff.
0:04:00 But I stayed off my phone, so that was good.
0:04:02 – Have you ever heard of NoFap November?
0:04:06 – So, I like how you just said that
0:04:09 as if it’s like a scientific phenomenon.
0:04:11 Like you were like, have you ever heard of mitosis?
0:04:12 It’s when the cells split?
0:04:17 Like have you ever heard of non FAP November?
0:04:21 (all laughing)
0:04:22 – So like, I think that’s a great movement.
0:04:24 And they like mix it with humor or whatever,
0:04:26 but there’s like a reason, whatever.
0:04:28 And so basically for people who don’t know,
0:04:30 it’s just guys who don’t jerk off for November.
0:04:32 And I don’t know if the rules are,
0:04:34 you can’t have sex or if it’s just masturbation.
0:04:35 I don’t know what the rules are, but.
0:04:36 – I don’t know, never paid,
0:04:38 but never made it past day two, so couldn’t tell you.
0:04:39 – Yeah, clearly not into it.
0:04:43 We gotta have a cute, funny brand for like NoFo,
0:04:45 weekend, NoPhone or something like that.
0:04:46 You know what I mean?
0:04:47 No Scroll Sundays at least.
0:04:48 – No Scroll Sundays is good,
0:04:50 but a lot of my Jewish friends and family,
0:04:55 they do no phones from Friday evening to Saturday evening.
0:04:56 And they all say the same thing.
0:04:59 There’s like, this is the best, like it’s wonderful.
0:05:01 So we have to like do a take on that.
0:05:02 And we’ll have to have like a,
0:05:05 sometimes a cute way to do like Friday to Sunday,
0:05:06 no phone.
0:05:06 – Right.
0:05:08 – Have you seen people who raw dog flights?
0:05:10 – Yeah, dude, that is so funny.
0:05:12 (all laughing)
0:05:14 I’ll explain what it is for people who don’t know.
0:05:18 So like, so raw dogging a flight is what,
0:05:19 I think it’s mostly men.
0:05:21 So men are like-
0:05:23 – I can’t imagine a girl would ever care to do this.
0:05:26 – Raw dogging a flight is when it’s like,
0:05:28 when a guy goes out of like a Delta plane,
0:05:30 and you know how like, when you fly,
0:05:32 you see the plane going across America.
0:05:33 And that’s all you see.
0:05:35 And it’s guys who will just stare at that
0:05:37 for the entire time.
0:05:39 No phone, no phone, no books.
0:05:42 They just raw dog it.
0:05:46 And I think it is the funniest thing going on right now.
0:05:48 I love raw dogging flights.
0:05:49 – Yeah, yeah, exactly.
0:05:51 I think it’s hilarious.
0:05:52 I’m big on this though, this like note,
0:05:54 like control your inputs.
0:05:57 I think in all facets of life, right?
0:05:59 Control the foods that you put in your mouth,
0:06:02 control the information you put in your mind,
0:06:04 control the people you let in your world,
0:06:06 control the amount of the number of problems
0:06:08 you are willing to make your problem.
0:06:12 I think that that is probably the most underrated skill
0:06:15 you can have as somebody who’s trying to lead a good life
0:06:17 is learning how to control your inputs.
0:06:19 – So we’re doing like a little bit of life update.
0:06:21 And I was gonna say, that’s one of my updates
0:06:24 is I am not really reading the news a lot.
0:06:27 And I’m honestly like, I don’t have Twitter on my phone.
0:06:29 The news man, particularly this weekend
0:06:31 when a lot of crazy stuff went down,
0:06:33 it is exhausting me and like current events,
0:06:35 I find it to be, it wears me out.
0:06:40 And I’m just, I’m trying to refer like mostly to books
0:06:41 when I want like entertainment
0:06:42 as opposed to just scrolling through news.
0:06:45 It kills me, dude, where’s he out?
0:06:46 – 100%, 100%.
0:06:47 And I used to get a lot of shit for this.
0:06:49 I haven’t, I don’t watch the news.
0:06:52 I haven’t, I never have a news app on my phone.
0:06:55 I don’t follow like new social accounts typically.
0:06:58 You know, obviously some news just brute forces
0:06:59 its way into your world.
0:07:00 That’s kind of what happened this weekend
0:07:02 with the shooting and stuff like that.
0:07:07 But for the most part, I completely abstained from the news.
0:07:10 And I used to feel somewhat ashamed of that,
0:07:11 like kind of ignorant.
0:07:12 That just wasn’t really interesting.
0:07:14 It wasn’t very hard for me to abstain from it.
0:07:18 – But I called you out on that one time
0:07:19 when we were just hanging out off air.
0:07:21 I was like, you’re not a good citizen.
0:07:23 And now I’ve done a 180.
0:07:25 I’m like, no, it’s not important.
0:07:28 What’s going on like in most cases isn’t important.
0:07:30 – Well, my trainer gave me a great perspective on it.
0:07:32 He was like, it was one of the years
0:07:33 when the election was going on
0:07:35 or maybe it was like the state elections
0:07:36 or some shit like that.
0:07:37 And everybody was talking about voting
0:07:39 and every time it was kind of getting heated
0:07:40 as politics tends to do.
0:07:41 And he just said something in passing.
0:07:43 He was just like, he’s like, I don’t worry about the government.
0:07:45 I’m trying to govern myself.
0:07:48 I found that I can’t even govern myself.
0:07:49 What am I worried about what’s going on
0:07:51 across the country in Washington, DC?
0:07:53 I can’t govern myself yet.
0:07:54 And so he’s like, I focus on that.
0:07:55 And he’s like, if we all did that,
0:07:57 society would be actually in a much better place.
0:07:59 If we all learned to govern ourselves a little bit better.
0:08:02 And so when he was talking about the current election cycle,
0:08:03 somebody was criticizing, they’re like,
0:08:07 oh, well, you’re not doing your civic duty.
0:08:10 He’s like, I don’t know what you think your civic duty is.
0:08:11 He’s like, I’m in the grocery store.
0:08:12 I’m helping the old lady.
0:08:13 I’m over here.
0:08:14 I’m talking to a friend.
0:08:15 I see a kid doing something.
0:08:17 I give him a compliment.
0:08:20 There are many ways that you could be a good member of society
0:08:22 and just being like fully up to date on the news
0:08:23 and having an opinion on everything
0:08:26 or downloading today’s big problem
0:08:28 is not necessarily the only way to do it.
0:08:31 I kind of like that of like govern yourself first,
0:08:36 then be like a positive influence in your grocery store,
0:08:37 in the place around you.
0:08:40 That seems like a much better way to actually have an effect
0:08:45 than just siphoning off CNN all day.
0:08:47 What else you got in the life update corner?
0:08:48 Anything else, kid?
0:08:51 – For me, so I’m currently in Connecticut
0:08:52 where I’m staying for a little while.
0:08:54 I go to the beach every morning
0:08:56 and I go to the beach most evenings at 8.30
0:08:57 after the baby’s gone to sleep.
0:08:59 I’m nine months–
0:09:00 – What do you do, walk-in?
0:09:01 Or what are you doing on the beach?
0:09:05 – Dude, I have a scooter, like an electric scooter.
0:09:06 It has an odometer.
0:09:08 – ‘Cause there’s sand, what do you mean?
0:09:10 – No, like I ride from my house to the beach a mile away.
0:09:13 I have 2,000 miles on this scooter.
0:09:15 I drive it everywhere.
0:09:16 Sometimes I’ll go two weeks without driving a car.
0:09:18 I just drive a scooter everywhere.
0:09:20 I’m nine months into having a kid.
0:09:21 It’s the best.
0:09:22 I’m so freaking happy.
0:09:26 Like, I genuinely feel like a happier human being.
0:09:29 And I had a little mini, not midlife crisis,
0:09:30 but I’ve been asking myself,
0:09:32 like, what’s the point of this or that?
0:09:34 Like, you asked yourself,
0:09:35 I’ve asked myself about all types of things.
0:09:36 Like, why do I care about this?
0:09:37 Why am I doing this?
0:09:38 Being more intentional.
0:09:40 And I think it’s because I’m so happy.
0:09:41 Like, when you get happy
0:09:43 and you have less of a chip on your shoulder,
0:09:44 that’s kind of a weird feeling
0:09:47 if you’ve spent years grinding and things like that.
0:09:48 – Oh, you’re saying you’re asking the question
0:09:49 because you’re happy?
0:09:51 – Yeah, because I’m happy.
0:09:52 I’m like, why am I doing this or that?
0:09:53 Like, you know what I mean?
0:09:54 You start questioning things.
0:09:57 So I’m really happy right now.
0:10:00 So that’s kind of like the biggest update from me.
0:10:00 – I’m with you.
0:10:01 I got two things.
0:10:03 I saw a great Seinfeld clip the other day
0:10:06 and it said, Seinfeld talking to, he goes,
0:10:07 “You know why I believe in God?”
0:10:08 And the guy goes, “Why?”
0:10:11 He goes, “God made it so that people who don’t have kids
0:10:13 don’t know what they’re missing.”
0:10:15 And that’s the nicest thing they could ever do for somebody.
0:10:16 And I thought, oh, wow,
0:10:18 that’s a really like powerful way of putting it.
0:10:19 ‘Cause I’m the same way.
0:10:22 Like, I just, my cup feels incredibly full
0:10:24 just because of what’s going on in my house,
0:10:26 regardless of it really anything else,
0:10:28 which not to get too sentimental, but it’s pretty awesome.
0:10:30 And for everybody who’s out there on the fence
0:10:34 or wants to wait or whatever, it really is amazing.
0:10:38 And it is a hard to describe phenomenon,
0:10:39 how good it feels to just say,
0:10:41 especially like your kid’s pretty young, right?
0:10:44 She’s only less than a year old.
0:10:45 Once they’re like two, three, four,
0:10:46 and you can play with them,
0:10:50 it is like such a golden period of time.
0:10:52 I do have a life story here.
0:10:54 A life hack.
0:10:55 What’s that?
0:10:57 So we go to a birthday party, kid’s birthday party,
0:11:00 and there’s a bunch of three or four-year-olds running around
0:11:03 and it’s at a park and there’s like a park
0:11:04 with like a splash area
0:11:06 where there’s like water coming out of the ground.
0:11:08 And we show up and I noticed something.
0:11:09 I noticed that there’s like,
0:11:11 all the parents are standing on one side,
0:11:14 kind of like standing in the heat, sweating,
0:11:15 trying to get shade.
0:11:16 Just I don’t know, kind of like, you know,
0:11:17 kid runs up, needs a drink of water.
0:11:20 They give him water and then the kid runs back and plays.
0:11:22 And the parents are all making sort of awkward,
0:11:24 small talk with each other.
0:11:27 And you can just see the like, they’re looking at the watch.
0:11:28 They’re ready to get out of there.
0:11:29 It’s like, okay, we’ll be here for an hour,
0:11:31 then we gotta go do the next thing.
0:11:34 And so my kids run in and I’m like,
0:11:36 I just see like, while we’re walking up to the party,
0:11:37 I see like a fork in the road.
0:11:39 It’s like, I can take the right path
0:11:41 and I can go hang out with these parents.
0:11:43 Or I could just go run around with my shirt off
0:11:44 in this splash pad.
0:11:46 (laughing)
0:11:47 And so–
0:11:48 – Wait, was this during–
0:11:51 – I chose the road less traveled.
0:11:52 (laughing)
0:11:54 And I went down to the splash pad.
0:11:55 And I had so much fun.
0:11:57 And I just played with my kids.
0:11:58 I’m up in the playground.
0:12:00 We’re going on a splash pad, we’re playing tag.
0:12:02 We’re doing like water, like kind of like water fight.
0:12:04 And I just have a blast.
0:12:06 Two hours go by, I look over.
0:12:10 All the other parents are still just sweating and waiting.
0:12:13 And what I realized was like the great parenting hack.
0:12:14 ‘Cause before I had a kid,
0:12:16 I did read a couple of books about like,
0:12:18 what to expecting when she’s expecting or whatever.
0:12:20 Like, you know, how to be a dad.
0:12:21 I know I want to be good at something.
0:12:22 I’ve read a couple of books
0:12:23 to see if there’s any good information in there.
0:12:25 I now have a book that I’ll write,
0:12:26 which has one line in it,
0:12:29 which is don’t worry about being a dad, just be a kid.
0:12:33 And the best part about kids is that they keep you fresh.
0:12:34 They keep you playing.
0:12:36 They keep you, you have to act like you’re astonished
0:12:39 and things are fascinating to get them excited about things.
0:12:40 And actually it kind of makes you excited
0:12:42 and it makes you more curious
0:12:43 ’cause you’re doing that for them.
0:12:46 But the other part of it is the easiest way to be a parent
0:12:49 is to literally just play with your kid 80 to 90% of the time.
0:12:52 And sure 10% of the time you snap back into adult mode
0:12:53 and you make sure that, you know,
0:12:54 the train doesn’t go completely off the rails.
0:12:58 But I found that I have so much more fun as a dad
0:13:02 if I just lean in and just like completely play with them
0:13:03 all day.
0:13:07 And I don’t know why more parents don’t do this.
0:13:08 Like I’m in gymnastics class.
0:13:10 I’m doing like literally cartwheels.
0:13:11 I’m on the trampoline.
0:13:13 Like I’m doing all the things with them.
0:13:15 ‘Cause if I have to be there anyways,
0:13:16 I might as well have a good time.
0:13:17 That’s contagious for them.
0:13:18 They have a better time.
0:13:20 I’m in a better mood, which makes me a more patient.
0:13:22 You know, like it’s a complete life hack.
0:13:25 – Dude, I can just see you like bounce around gymnastics
0:13:26 and break some kid’s fucking femur
0:13:27 because you sit on it.
0:13:31 – Well, definitely not everything is built for me.
0:13:35 So, you know, there’s definitely been some spills.
0:13:36 But yeah, it’s great.
0:13:38 Like, yeah, I woke up yesterday.
0:13:42 I literally woke up, we go to a coffee shop,
0:13:44 go to a hit up a donut shop, go to soccer class.
0:13:47 I’m playing soccer in the soccer class.
0:13:48 And then after soccer, we just wanted to play
0:13:49 some more so we’re playing.
0:13:50 And now four other kids just joined me.
0:13:52 And where it’s me, my kids and four other random kids
0:13:54 that are all just like playing soccer afterwards.
0:13:57 Then we go to the pool and we’re in the pool
0:13:58 for three hours and we come home.
0:13:59 They were playing smash cart,
0:14:01 which is this like version of Mario Kart
0:14:03 that my kids are able to play ’cause they’re like toddlers.
0:14:04 We’re playing that.
0:14:06 Then we eat a little bit of dinner, we read some books
0:14:07 and then we go to bed and it was like,
0:14:09 I was just a kid for the whole day.
0:14:11 And therefore I had a great day.
0:14:12 – Are you gonna have more?
0:14:13 You’ve got three.
0:14:15 How many more would you want to do?
0:14:16 – No, my cup run is over.
0:14:17 I’m full.
0:14:19 I’m completely happy as is.
0:14:22 I don’t really feel the need to have any more kids.
0:14:24 – I’ve got Sarah bought into three, but in my head,
0:14:26 I’m like, yeah, you know, like,
0:14:28 but if we’re gonna go three, like five would be interesting,
0:14:29 right?
0:14:31 Like, you know what I mean?
0:14:35 I definitely am currently in the more is better at camp,
0:14:38 but like, I don’t have to push it out.
0:14:40 So it’s easy for me to say, which is,
0:14:43 but no man, being a dad, it’s awesome.
0:14:45 It has to completely change things.
0:14:48 I tweeted this out before we had kids like years ago
0:14:51 and I was like, because I had a bunch of friends
0:14:53 who were doing psychedelics because they felt lost.
0:14:55 And some of them kind of went over the edge
0:14:56 where they took too many.
0:14:58 And like, they started acting a little weird
0:15:00 where I’d be like, hey, are you okay?
0:15:03 And I just think that having a child kind of filled
0:15:04 that void for me where I didn’t feel like
0:15:06 I needed to do psychedelics
0:15:07 because I didn’t have a lack of meaning.
0:15:08 – Right.
0:15:09 – And so it’s been, it’s been really,
0:15:11 it just makes me happy.
0:15:13 But you’ve got a lot of interesting topics here.
0:15:14 I got a lot of interesting stuff.
0:15:17 Okay, so I have three ideas that I wanna pitch you.
0:15:19 And I’m gonna basically tell you about a cool business
0:15:22 and then I’m gonna tell you a idea
0:15:23 I think somebody could start
0:15:24 that’s similar to that cool business.
0:15:26 So the first one is sketchy.
0:15:28 Have you ever seen sketchy.com?
0:15:32 It is kind of an incredible business idea.
0:15:35 I’m sort of jealous I didn’t start this business.
0:15:38 So if you go to sketchy.com, what do you see?
0:15:40 – All right, learning made unforgettable.
0:15:42 – Sketchy turns what you need to know
0:15:45 into creative visual stories you’ll remember forever.
0:15:46 Oh, this is awesome.
0:15:47 – Right.
0:15:49 Basically it’s learned to take the MCATs
0:15:53 or the medical board exams with cartoons and drawings
0:15:55 instead of like boring textbooks.
0:15:58 And what they did was they created a Kaplan
0:16:02 or like a, what are the big like test prep Princeton review.
0:16:04 They created a test prep type of business
0:16:05 but they did two things.
0:16:09 One, they focused on a specific niche.
0:16:11 So basically med students.
0:16:12 So before you get into medical school,
0:16:14 you wanna take the MCATs or after you’re in med school,
0:16:17 you’re going through your medical classes
0:16:19 and then eventually the boards.
0:16:22 And second, the twist was they were like, cool,
0:16:24 but some people will prefer to learn
0:16:25 in a way that’s way more visual
0:16:30 and way more sort of like visual friendly,
0:16:35 easy to remember rather than kind of traditional learning.
0:16:38 And I love this ’cause A, that’s how I like to learn.
0:16:40 That sounds more fun, sounds more interesting.
0:16:42 And there’s actually like a bunch of science around
0:16:45 why we learn better through visuals.
0:16:48 So the same way we talked about last time about jingles,
0:16:50 how audio like a catchy earworm
0:16:52 is a much better way to remember something.
0:16:54 – So it’s basically storytelling and cartoons
0:16:58 to teach you things, specifically for doctors
0:16:59 for test prep.
0:17:01 And do they make all of the cartoons
0:17:02 and you pay a monthly fee?
0:17:04 – Yep, that’s exactly right.
0:17:07 – And so this business, I saw this, I was like, wow,
0:17:08 this is a great idea.
0:17:10 And so there’s also just like a cool business.
0:17:12 It’s like a cool thing to do with your life.
0:17:14 It’s kind of like Khan Academy,
0:17:15 where the guy’s like, yeah, actually like,
0:17:18 I just kind of want to make like a course
0:17:21 for everything on the internet for free.
0:17:22 And it’s just me kind of talking
0:17:24 and writing things out and trying to explain things.
0:17:26 I’m a pretty good explainer.
0:17:27 And that’s how he started to just explain things
0:17:29 to his own nephews or whatever.
0:17:31 And then he published on the internet and people liked it.
0:17:33 And so I really liked this business
0:17:35 ’cause I think it has like a cool mission.
0:17:37 I think it’s a cool business model.
0:17:41 And I think that it’s a fun product that I’m glad exists.
0:17:42 – And what’s the business model?
0:17:45 Because it looks like educators use that.
0:17:47 So how’s it work?
0:17:48 Do they work with schools?
0:17:49 – I’m sure they do a bunch of things.
0:17:53 My thinking is that this is, it’s very simple.
0:17:55 It’s your student who wants to pass an exam,
0:17:58 that’s the bleeding neck problem, right?
0:18:00 That’s the highest urgency problem.
0:18:02 And so they’re going to-
0:18:03 – Is bleeding?
0:18:05 – Yeah, I probably can’t say that anymore, huh?
0:18:09 Is bleeding, is bleeding neck problem your friend?
0:18:12 – It used to be hair on fire.
0:18:13 That’s what Dave McClure said.
0:18:14 And then somebody said bleeding neck.
0:18:15 I like that too.
0:18:16 – Oh my God, all right.
0:18:19 – So I think that’s the thing.
0:18:20 Somebody wants to pass a test.
0:18:22 They need to help studying for it.
0:18:23 They see this and they’re like,
0:18:26 oh, this seems like more fun to do than the other way.
0:18:31 And you pay something like 25 to 50 bucks a month for this.
0:18:33 And you sign up for a six, 12 or 24 month plan.
0:18:34 And then you go through it and you’re like,
0:18:36 wow, that was actually a really useful way to study.
0:18:37 And now the next test happens.
0:18:40 Maybe it’s your board exam,
0:18:42 or maybe it’s just a really hard course in med school.
0:18:45 And so they have like kind of the supplemental thing
0:18:48 for anybody on their like med school journey.
0:18:52 – Wow, and the only article I could find about them
0:18:55 is in 2020 where it says that they were doing,
0:18:57 I think $8 million in revenue.
0:19:01 And then did they also raise 30 million bucks?
0:19:02 – Yeah, they raised 30 million bucks.
0:19:04 It says on their website that 500,000 students
0:19:06 have used their thing.
0:19:07 That’s a big number.
0:19:11 But I think a business like this is set to dominate a niche.
0:19:14 And I think that Test Prep is a proven business model.
0:19:16 This takes a 20% twist on it,
0:19:18 which is the visual cartoon thing.
0:19:20 And by the way, what an amazing name, sketchy.com.
0:19:23 I think that’s such an awesome name for a business like this.
0:19:25 I think this is a great business.
0:19:27 Congrats to the people who did this.
0:19:28 I think this is really cool.
0:19:30 So now, what’s the idea?
0:19:34 So I tried to convince, do you remember Dylan and Henry?
0:19:36 The guys behind…
0:19:37 – Clips.
0:19:38 – Smart Nonsense and Clips.
0:19:40 Basically, if you don’t know them, they’re young guys.
0:19:42 We met them because they came to our house
0:19:43 and built out our podcast studio.
0:19:44 They were fans of the podcast.
0:19:45 – When they were in college.
0:19:47 – And then what they started doing was they,
0:19:49 they had their own podcast and they would cut clips.
0:19:51 They would cut clips for our podcast.
0:19:53 Then they started cutting clips for All In.
0:19:54 So right when All In blew up,
0:19:57 they were the ones doing the animated clips for them.
0:19:59 And so they got popular there.
0:20:01 Then they created an agency called Clips
0:20:04 where you can hire a video editor from them.
0:20:06 A video editor in the Philippines is a really good animator
0:20:10 who can, for a monthly fee, be your animator.
0:20:11 And that business is doing well.
0:20:15 So I got to kind of like low seven figures of annual revenue.
0:20:17 And then they started using their own animators
0:20:19 to do their own YouTube content.
0:20:20 And they both blew up on YouTube.
0:20:22 And so like Henry has like, I don’t know,
0:20:24 millions of subscribers now on YouTube
0:20:26 and he’ll just do like really short form animated videos.
0:20:27 – His shorts are really good.
0:20:30 Like I’ve never seen someone take shorts that seriously.
0:20:33 So for the listener, it’s basically him talking
0:20:36 and he’s clearly, you got a green screen behind him
0:20:39 because you see all these weird, interesting animations
0:20:42 pop up to interact with him and what he’s saying.
0:20:43 It’s awesome.
0:20:44 – And so those guys are awesome.
0:20:46 I really see a lot of myself in them.
0:20:47 I don’t know how old they are.
0:20:49 I think they’re like 25-ish years old.
0:20:51 And they remind me so much of how I was
0:20:53 when I was 24, 25, 26.
0:20:55 And so I really like these guys.
0:20:57 And I think they do a bunch of dumb shit by the way,
0:20:58 but that’s okay.
0:20:59 I did so much more dumb shit when I was there.
0:21:01 I was there way ahead of where I was.
0:21:02 – Like allegedly showing up to a meeting
0:21:04 without a shirt on.
0:21:06 (laughing)
0:21:07 – Well, you can tell that story.
0:21:08 That’s a good story.
0:21:10 – I don’t remember if it was them,
0:21:13 but that seems like something in the wheelhouse.
0:21:14 – So they’re a genre?
0:21:17 – The story is we got them a contract with HubSpot
0:21:19 to do clips for us and other things.
0:21:21 And I guess they showed up to one of the video calls
0:21:24 without a shirt on, which is cool by me.
0:21:27 I actually, you know, common practice where I’m from,
0:21:30 but I guess didn’t fly so well in the Fortune 500.
0:21:31 So maybe they lost that contract.
0:21:33 I don’t know exactly if that was the reason
0:21:35 or maybe a contributing factor to them.
0:21:39 – They get a pass because they were like 21
0:21:41 and they’ve redeemed themselves.
0:21:42 So I think they’re doing good.
0:21:43 I don’t wanna shit on them.
0:21:44 – They’re doing great.
0:21:46 And so I went to them.
0:21:48 I was like, guys, you should make this,
0:21:51 but for the SATs.
0:21:55 So do this for the SATs or for APs or IB exams,
0:21:56 start wherever you want to start.
0:21:57 – That’s a great idea.
0:21:58 – But I was like, this is a great idea.
0:22:00 And there’s no one on earth better built to do this
0:22:03 than you two because of their skill set.
0:22:05 They’re amazing storytellers.
0:22:07 They are really good with animated cartoons and stuff.
0:22:08 I don’t know if you’ve seen their newsletter,
0:22:10 but they have like an oatmeal style newsletter.
0:22:11 It’s great.
0:22:12 They created this like character
0:22:14 and they tell great stories through it.
0:22:15 I’m like, dude, just do that.
0:22:16 But instead of doing it for free,
0:22:19 for random subjects on the internet,
0:22:20 charge for it and do it for something
0:22:23 that people are willing to pay for, which is test prep.
0:22:25 Like people need to pass this test
0:22:26 and move on to the next phase of their life.
0:22:27 – Why would they not do that?
0:22:29 That sounds so much better than,
0:22:30 I mean, I was in the newsletter business.
0:22:32 The newsletter business is hard.
0:22:33 – It’s hard. – This sounds way better.
0:22:34 – And I tried to tell them, I was like, guys,
0:22:37 that’s, if that’s okay or good,
0:22:40 this is what great would look like in the same genre.
0:22:41 Like the same work you’re doing,
0:22:43 just applied in a different way.
0:22:45 And they were like, we agree with you,
0:22:47 but we just don’t wanna do it.
0:22:49 And we were gonna have more fun doing this other stuff.
0:22:50 Like we don’t know what,
0:22:52 but maybe these are the three ideas.
0:22:53 And I was like, hey, honestly, more power to you.
0:22:55 Like that’s actually cool.
0:22:57 I support you guys in that.
0:22:58 But now I can give the idea away for free out here,
0:23:00 which is like, I wrote them a business plan.
0:23:02 I wrote them like a Google doc and I was like,
0:23:03 here’s how I would do it.
0:23:04 Here’s how we’ll go to market.
0:23:06 Here’s the, here’s how we’ll charge for it.
0:23:08 I’ll fund it, like just do this guys.
0:23:10 This is like, this is how you disrupt a Kaplan
0:23:13 or a Princeton review is you take a,
0:23:15 you take your black belt that they have
0:23:17 in social media content.
0:23:22 Like they are top 1% level content creators,
0:23:25 but instead of competing for free views
0:23:28 in the free market of social media,
0:23:31 apply it in this place that’s like really backwards
0:23:33 and stodgy and hasn’t changed in 30 years,
0:23:35 which is test prep for the SATs
0:23:37 or test prep for the GMATs or whatever.
0:23:41 And so I think somebody could still go do this.
0:23:42 I think somebody could take sketchy
0:23:43 and do it in another niche.
0:23:44 You could do it in whatever it is,
0:23:46 dentistry, nursing, whatever.
0:23:47 And I’m sure sketchy will try to do some of those things.
0:23:48 It doesn’t matter.
0:23:50 I think this pie is big enough.
0:23:52 And I think if you just take the principles
0:23:53 of what they did,
0:23:55 I think you could have a lot of success with it.
0:23:56 So that’s idea number one.
0:23:57 What do you think of that idea?
0:23:58 – What was sketchy?
0:24:01 So that’s actually one of the better ones
0:24:02 that we’ve talked about,
0:24:04 but sketchy wasn’t always sketchy.
0:24:05 What were they doing before?
0:24:07 Because they launched in 2013,
0:24:10 or did it take seven years to get to 7 million in revenue?
0:24:10 ‘Cause that’s some pretty–
0:24:11 – I don’t know.
0:24:12 I don’t know their full backstory yet.
0:24:14 And then I see, of course,
0:24:16 churning group is the one who put 30 million into them.
0:24:17 I’m like, “God damn it.”
0:24:18 Everything I find that I’m like,
0:24:20 “Ooh, this is cool, this is interesting.
0:24:21 I’m ahead of the curve.”
0:24:25 It’s like, you know, yeah, churning funded us a year ago.
0:24:25 Right?
0:24:28 Like we did an episode on the guy,
0:24:30 the gardening guy at Epic Gardening.
0:24:32 And I’m like, “Dude, this guy can be big.
0:24:33 Actually, this could be really huge.”
0:24:34 I’m trying to like tell people,
0:24:35 they’re like, “What?
0:24:35 Gardening? I’ve never heard of that.”
0:24:36 And I’m like, I go and I’m like,
0:24:38 “Hey, dude, I will write you a big check.
0:24:39 Like, let me fund you.”
0:24:40 I really believe in you.
0:24:41 I’m like, “We’re all good on funding.”
0:24:42 Churning gave me like, I don’t know, whatever,
0:24:44 20 million bucks a year ago.
0:24:46 And it’s like, “Oh, damn.”
0:24:48 Wow, how are they ahead of me on all of these?
0:24:50 – I’m gonna give this a nine out of 10.
0:24:51 I think this is great.
0:24:52 I think this is awesome.
0:24:54 All right, I think this is a sketch.
0:24:54 She’s a great one.
0:24:57 Now the next one, Babylon B.
0:24:59 – Yes.
0:25:00 – Have you lived under a rock a little bit?
0:25:02 – I’m not saying this is new,
0:25:03 but I don’t think for most people,
0:25:04 they really appreciate this.
0:25:06 So if you haven’t seen this,
0:25:10 it’s a satirical news site.
0:25:12 So it’s like the onion,
0:25:14 but it’s just like a variation of the onion.
0:25:16 They have been around for a little while,
0:25:18 but they just seem to be getting more and more popular.
0:25:19 And I think a big part of it is that
0:25:21 Elon retweets them a lot.
0:25:22 And so if you’re on Twitter,
0:25:25 you see them because, A, they put out good content,
0:25:27 but B, they had like a turbo boost
0:25:30 from the most popular guy on Twitter.
0:25:33 And so I just, I’ve seen this and I’m like,
0:25:35 “Wow, this business model is really interesting to me.
0:25:36 It’s a media company,
0:25:39 but it’s got a such a different approach, right?”
0:25:42 So the way a media company grows is you make content,
0:25:43 that’s worth spreading.
0:25:45 And so there’s a tension there for most companies
0:25:47 because you need to write what’s going on.
0:25:49 You want to be trusted,
0:25:51 but then you kind of need to click bait the shit out
0:25:54 of everything to get people to click and come to your site.
0:25:57 And so you’re constantly in this like too much click bait.
0:25:59 I kind of lose trust,
0:26:01 too much just trust and factuality, too much dryness.
0:26:02 Nobody clicks my thing.
0:26:04 Nobody shares this.
0:26:05 Nobody reacts to it.
0:26:07 Nobody gets outraged and reposts it and says,
0:26:09 “This is bullshit.”
0:26:10 And then that’s what gets people to share.
0:26:12 So you kind of want to outrage people
0:26:13 or you want to get them to share something,
0:26:15 but then you don’t want to be overly sensationalist.
0:26:16 So they always have this tension.
0:26:18 – And by the way, so I ran a company
0:26:21 that was a media company that made money on advertising.
0:26:23 And I hated that feeling that you’re describing.
0:26:25 I thought email would solve it,
0:26:27 a newsletter instead of a website, which it did.
0:26:28 It actually helped solve it.
0:26:29 – Yeah, the news that comes to you.
0:26:30 – Yeah, it helped.
0:26:33 And then, but I was still mad at that that existed.
0:26:36 So I thought subscriptions will solve that.
0:26:37 So we launched a subscription thing
0:26:40 that within year one was doing like 5 million in revenue.
0:26:41 Still doesn’t solve it.
0:26:43 You still got to do the same game.
0:26:46 – A newsletter monetizes so much better
0:26:48 than just a general news website.
0:26:49 So like, you know,
0:26:52 you could have a million subscriber newsletter
0:26:55 and that business should be doing
0:26:58 five to $10 million a year, I would say.
0:27:00 Broad strokes, a million subscribers should get you,
0:27:03 you know, 5 million plus in revenue.
0:27:04 If you do a news website
0:27:06 and you get a million visitors a month.
0:27:06 – That ain’t shit.
0:27:07 – That ain’t shit.
0:27:08 You might not be doing anything.
0:27:10 So like, you know, the Babylonium B
0:27:11 or whatever the Babylon B,
0:27:15 these guys are, they’ll do 25 million plus visits
0:27:16 to their site.
0:27:17 The biggest newsletters in the world
0:27:19 don’t have 25 million subscribers, right?
0:27:20 So it’s our readers.
0:27:22 So it’s a, it’s a different game.
0:27:24 It’s a volume game when you’re trying to get the,
0:27:26 you’re trying to make a media destination
0:27:27 versus a newsletter.
0:27:30 Anyways, I guess like the thing I’m trying to say is
0:27:32 an underrated part of these media sites is this tension.
0:27:33 There’s an air intention between trust
0:27:36 and viral kind of like spreadability.
0:27:39 And so the beautiful thing about this category
0:27:40 where you go and you try to be the onion,
0:27:46 you do fake news as a service, you do, you know, satire is,
0:27:47 it doesn’t need to be factually correct.
0:27:49 So you only have to win on that one dimension,
0:27:50 which is shareability.
0:27:51 And in this case, you’ll share,
0:27:53 people will share because it’s funny
0:27:56 and it’ll share because it strikes a chord with people.
0:27:58 And that’s why this has spread so quickly.
0:28:01 And so the backstory of this is,
0:28:03 I think it started by one guy
0:28:06 and then he kind of like sold it to the two writers of it.
0:28:09 – Well, you’re missing a big part here, which is,
0:28:11 so the onion, which is a satire website,
0:28:15 although most satirical websites are left leaning.
0:28:16 This one is right leaning.
0:28:20 I think also has a Christian component to it a little bit.
0:28:23 So whereas many of these things tend to be left of center,
0:28:24 this is right of center.
0:28:25 – Exactly.
0:28:26 So that’s where I’m going to get to with the opportunity.
0:28:27 So the guy who started,
0:28:29 he calls himself a Christian entrepreneur, right?
0:28:31 He started off for doing Christian cartoons.
0:28:33 And then it became, now the guys you write it,
0:28:35 it’s more just about,
0:28:38 it’s lean’s more conservative than it does the other way.
0:28:41 But I think there’s a lot more,
0:28:43 like the world is not just liberal and conservative.
0:28:45 There’s like a hundred other variations
0:28:46 and segments of the market
0:28:48 that could be served with this same category.
0:28:50 So I’ll give you two
0:28:52 that I think somebody should go do.
0:28:53 So I think somebody could go do
0:28:56 the far more right-wing version of this.
0:29:00 So I think that they’re like super right.
0:29:02 So these guys I think are conservative,
0:29:05 but they’re still kind of like more centrist
0:29:07 than they are full right.
0:29:09 But like if you go read like dredge or info wars,
0:29:11 like there’s a whole appetite in the world
0:29:14 for like really drudge, really far drudge.
0:29:15 Really far right-wing stuff.
0:29:17 So I think you could go do that.
0:29:19 But here’s another angle altogether.
0:29:20 It’s not political at all,
0:29:23 which is just do the onion,
0:29:25 but only for fake news articles
0:29:28 that appeal to just like the millennial mom.
0:29:29 And cause like, you know,
0:29:33 the millennial mom follows a certain set of news subjects.
0:29:37 So, you know, you maybe it’s a little bit less on sports,
0:29:38 but maybe they watch the bachelor.
0:29:39 So they understand the bachelor means,
0:29:42 maybe it’s that they are following the Taylor Swift stuff.
0:29:43 Maybe it’s that they’re following whatever,
0:29:45 whatever topics are of interest,
0:29:47 do the onion for that category,
0:29:49 cause it’s a very valuable category.
0:29:50 And by the way, this might exist already.
0:29:51 I have no idea.
0:29:53 I don’t know, I don’t even know how you search for this.
0:29:55 But I think that that would be a very successful version
0:29:58 of the onion that’s not, or the Babylon B,
0:30:00 which is not political at all,
0:30:01 but it’s the same thing.
0:30:05 It’s poking fun at a certain set of popular subjects,
0:30:08 but make those popular subjects a different customer
0:30:09 than the one who reads the onion
0:30:11 or the one who reads the Babylon B.
0:30:13 – Here’s to why I know that that’s true
0:30:14 about the millennial mom.
0:30:16 So we had this couple over that have a one year old
0:30:19 overdure house and the kids started crying.
0:30:21 And so I go to grab a bunch of toys to like entertain him
0:30:22 and like show them off.
0:30:23 Like, oh, I bet you haven’t seen this thing.
0:30:26 And I start like using this puppet or whatever.
0:30:28 And the mom is like, yeah, we have this toy.
0:30:29 We have that toy.
0:30:31 In fact, all of the toys that you have,
0:30:33 we have the exact same words.
0:30:35 And I’m like, well, you guys just clearly follow
0:30:37 like the same like three people on Instagram
0:30:38 and you read the same blogs.
0:30:40 Cause you have bought all of the same stuff.
0:30:42 And like I couldn’t impress this kid.
0:30:45 I’m shocked at how the millennial mother,
0:30:47 like there’s probably like six buckets.
0:30:50 And it’s like just a different persona for each thing.
0:30:50 But for each bucket,
0:30:53 like just buy all of this stuff, read all of this stuff.
0:30:54 It’s so interesting.
0:30:55 Do you know what I mean?
0:30:56 – Yeah, exactly.
0:30:57 But I think every segment’s that way, right?
0:31:00 I think, I think there’s a Joe Rogan bro version of that
0:31:02 where it’s like, oh, let me guess.
0:31:05 Favorite podcast, Rogan, Huberman, right?
0:31:06 Let me guess you, you cold plans.
0:31:07 Let me guess you do this.
0:31:09 Let me guess if you could kind of predict their life
0:31:11 if you know one or two things about them.
0:31:14 And there’s, I don’t know, a giant cluster of people
0:31:15 that will fit that description.
0:31:16 Not everybody, of course,
0:31:17 but there’s a giant cluster of people.
0:31:19 That’s kind of what you need when you’re doing media
0:31:20 is you need a giant cluster of people
0:31:22 who kind of have a taste match.
0:31:24 And so I think you take that business model,
0:31:25 apply it to a new segment.
0:31:27 And again, this might already exist.
0:31:28 It doesn’t really matter.
0:31:29 You don’t have to be the first.
0:31:31 You just have to be successful at it,
0:31:32 which means just do a good job at it.
0:31:34 And I think the way to start this, by the way,
0:31:36 would just be Instagram.
0:31:37 You just make an Instagram account.
0:31:38 You don’t even need a website.
0:31:39 And just make an Instagram account
0:31:42 that’s doing these kind of like funny news things.
0:31:44 Like there’s a version of this in sports that I follow
0:31:46 where they’re supposed like funny sports,
0:31:49 like fake sports headlines that make fun of the NBA.
0:31:52 And I think that can be done so many times over.
0:31:53 And I think it’s probably one of the easiest ways
0:31:55 to build a media business.
0:31:56 – You know, what’s interesting is the guy
0:32:00 who started the Babylon B, you said he sold it,
0:32:03 his website, his personal website.
0:32:05 It’s called adam4d.com.
0:32:08 It’s all dedicated to webcomics.
0:32:10 It’s just a webcomic website,
0:32:13 which is intriguing because that’s similar to what,
0:32:15 what’s his name, Dylan and Henry do.
0:32:19 Who owns Babylon B now?
0:32:22 – I think it’s those Seth and Dan.
0:32:25 There’s like these, I think the main writers now.
0:32:28 It says in 2018, he sold it to them.
0:32:29 He kept a stake until 2023,
0:32:32 when he sold the remaining stake to the Dylan brothers.
0:32:34 – Do you know who owns the onion?
0:32:36 – Oh, is it with a guy who started Twilio or something?
0:32:37 – The guy who started Twilio.
0:32:40 So instead of like rich billionaires, you know,
0:32:42 they liked Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post,
0:32:44 one of those Facebook guys bought, I forget,
0:32:47 some other one, you know, Mark Benioff, I think,
0:32:50 bought Time, Jeff Larson, I think his name is,
0:32:51 he bought the onion,
0:32:54 but it’s actually like an interesting purchase.
0:32:55 – Yeah, I think that’s a great idea, by the way.
0:32:58 That’s, that’s what I like my billionaires doing, right?
0:33:00 Do interesting things.
0:33:01 Go buy the onion, make sure the onion doesn’t die,
0:33:03 ’cause I think the onion was kind of dying, right?
0:33:05 He like is trying to save it.
0:33:06 He’s trying to like reverse it out of like,
0:33:07 pretty much bankruptcy.
0:33:08 – Yeah, so the onion has been around,
0:33:11 I think since 1988, so it’s been around forever.
0:33:13 And it’s just like, it’s a shit business
0:33:15 to have to run for a little while,
0:33:17 particularly in the last like eight years
0:33:20 where digital media has just been crap.
0:33:21 But yeah, it’s hard, it’s a hard business.
0:33:24 ‘Cause also, when you think about what’s advertised,
0:33:26 or what’s the media business, it’s advertising,
0:33:30 who’s gonna wanna advertise on an article that’s fake?
0:33:31 Do you know what I mean?
0:33:32 Like–
0:33:35 – Maybe, I don’t know, I think that if you could curate
0:33:37 the right high value audience,
0:33:41 and they trust your voice to talk about a subject,
0:33:42 it’s kind of like comedians, right?
0:33:44 Why do people sponsor comedy podcasts?
0:33:46 Like, dude, these guys are vulgar,
0:33:49 they’re just saying random shit.
0:33:51 This is not like smart information, this is whatever.
0:33:53 But it’s, they have a trusted audience.
0:33:54 The audience trusts them.
0:33:58 And so when they do the ad read, people dig it.
0:34:00 That people trust them because they’ve, you know,
0:34:02 they’ve kept it real on all these other subjects.
0:34:03 ‘Cause I think you could do it there.
0:34:04 And I think there’s not that big of a gap
0:34:06 between, you know, a comedy, you know,
0:34:08 brand and a comedy podcast, for example.
0:34:10 – Yeah, I think the difference is that a lot of people
0:34:12 think that the Babylon B and stuff like that,
0:34:13 I think they think that– – It’s real.
0:34:16 – They’re real, and they share them as if it’s real.
0:34:17 Do you know what I mean?
0:34:19 – Yeah.
0:34:20 – Like that’s actually a massive issue.
0:34:24 Let’s do the last one, toxic tampons.
0:34:28 – Yes, so I saw this tweet about a TikTok that went viral.
0:34:31 So there was a TikTok of a woman walking through
0:34:34 kind of like a store, and she’s in the aisle,
0:34:37 the tampon aisle, and she’s talking about,
0:34:40 you see all the big brands, she’s Tampax, you see whatever.
0:34:42 And five million people saw this video
0:34:46 because Berkeley released a paper basically saying,
0:34:50 hey, the popular tampons all have like toxic metals,
0:34:52 arsenic, and other contaminants in them.
0:34:55 And so that’s concerning.
0:34:58 And so there’s like a moment here where I think,
0:35:00 I don’t know who is the leading player,
0:35:02 who’s doing native deodorant for tampons,
0:35:04 but whoever that is, they’re in a good position.
0:35:06 And whoever, if nobody’s doing it,
0:35:08 somebody should go do that.
0:35:09 Or even if somebody’s doing it,
0:35:11 I still think it’s a good idea,
0:35:13 which is it seems like there’s a general trend
0:35:15 of people being concerned about gut health,
0:35:17 about microplastics, about, is your water clean,
0:35:21 or is there like contaminants and heavy metals in your water?
0:35:22 Well, this seems like another category
0:35:24 that’s I think gonna get transformed, right?
0:35:26 I think people are not gonna,
0:35:28 if you can use the fear and uncertainty
0:35:33 and doubt around the safety of tampons,
0:35:35 I think you could build a new kind of like
0:35:38 alternative clean brand around it.
0:35:41 What I’m trying to prevent here is a bunch of dudes
0:35:43 talking about shit where like every woman’s listening
0:35:47 and they’re like, yeah, we know we use these eight brands.
0:35:48 Do you know what I mean?
0:35:50 So I actually, I have no idea.
0:35:52 – Could very well be and I would love to be educated.
0:35:53 Feel free to DM me.
0:35:56 – I’ll tell you what, in my home,
0:35:57 I only see the popular stuff.
0:35:59 – Yeah, and in general, like, I don’t know,
0:36:01 how many a hundred million dollar companies,
0:36:03 how a hundred million dollar year revenue businesses
0:36:04 are there that are doing this?
0:36:06 There will be, trust me, there will be one,
0:36:07 there will be two, there will be three
0:36:08 that are in this category.
0:36:11 Like, the current incumbents will either adapt
0:36:14 or be replaced by alternatives
0:36:17 that are gonna play on these health concerns.
0:36:19 This is not gonna go nowhere, right?
0:36:21 Look at your detergents, look at your soaps,
0:36:22 look at your deodorants.
0:36:24 This has happened in pretty much every other category.
0:36:25 They’re gonna do it here.
0:36:28 And this is a great product because high margin,
0:36:31 repeat purchase, and you know, like the other thing is that
0:36:35 it’s usually women’s products tend to be underserved
0:36:38 compared to the ideas that most guys have
0:36:40 around what businesses that they’ll go start.
0:36:44 So you kind of can compete in a less saturated field
0:36:46 than, you know, making to-do list apps
0:36:51 or whatever, whatever the average bro idea will be.
0:36:53 – Yeah, and what’s interesting is that
0:36:55 with a lot of these brands, like they’ll be like,
0:36:57 I need to come up with some innovative new thing.
0:37:01 And our friend Moyes, when he was selling native deodorant,
0:37:03 the buyer of the company was like,
0:37:05 well, how are you going to expand?
0:37:07 He’s like, well, can you write the word native
0:37:09 on some all-natural shampoo?
0:37:10 And they’re like, yeah, he goes,
0:37:11 that’s how you’re going to expand.
0:37:13 – He’s like, do you guys have a printer to do that?
0:37:14 – Yeah.
0:37:15 – Would you guys be able to type this?
0:37:16 If I give you the font,
0:37:18 could you type it on a shampoo bottle?
0:37:18 – Yeah.
0:37:19 – All right, sweet.
0:37:20 We should be good then.
0:37:23 (all laughing)
0:37:24 – And so with a lot of these brands,
0:37:27 you don’t really need like a significantly more innovative
0:37:30 thing other than you have to be able to make it clean enough
0:37:33 that you can accurately describe it as a better for you
0:37:35 alternative, but it doesn’t need to be
0:37:36 a significant thing.
0:37:39 And it’s not like native deodorant was original.
0:37:41 There was plenty of people selling it.
0:37:44 They just weren’t savvy go-getter entrepreneurs.
0:37:46 They were like hippies, you know,
0:37:48 who was selling it on Etsy?
0:37:50 And in fact, let’s do this.
0:37:52 Go to Etsy and look up tampons.
0:37:54 Let’s just see what’s available.
0:37:55 – I like how you’re making me do it.
0:37:57 So I get targeted for these ads.
0:38:00 All-natural, there we go.
0:38:04 Getting some interesting results that are not–
0:38:05 – Well, I was going to say–
0:38:06 – Exactly what I’m looking for.
0:38:08 – Is an all-natural tampon really like a cup?
0:38:11 (all laughing)
0:38:12 – Not that natural.
0:38:18 – I don’t know what I found, but we can take this out.
0:38:20 So I find this one, right?
0:38:23 The Honeypot Company, 100% organic regular tampons,
0:38:26 unscented, organic cotton with bioplastic applicator,
0:38:27 no chlorine, no pesticides, no fragrance.
0:38:28 I’m like, oh, great.
0:38:29 – In.
0:38:30 – In.
0:38:31 – First review.
0:38:32 – Very good coffee.
0:38:34 (all laughing)
0:38:39 All right, looks like we’re going to still get to work
0:38:41 to do with this idea.
0:38:42 – Wait, wait, wait, go back to that.
0:38:43 What’s going on with them?
0:38:44 Why is that like that?
0:38:47 – I think it must be that the shop has other products in it
0:38:48 and that’s for the shop.
0:38:50 It’s like reviews from the shop, not the product.
0:38:51 – Yeah, okay.
0:38:54 The shop has herbal teas and other things too.
0:38:56 – A tampon coffee company.
0:38:57 – Yeah.
0:38:59 (all laughing)
0:39:01 – But anyway, this was my Sunday brainstorm.
0:39:04 My Sunday brainstorm was, here’s three cool ideas.
0:39:06 Sketchy, which is doing visual learning
0:39:08 in the medical space.
0:39:11 The Babylon Bee, which is taken off as a satire news website
0:39:13 for kind of conservative political news.
0:39:15 And then this TikTok that was going viral,
0:39:18 obviously tapped into some concerns people have resonated
0:39:21 with the public around the toxicity and the metals
0:39:26 and the arsenic that’s in the popular tampon brands.
0:39:28 And for each, I think you could just take a 20% remix
0:39:29 and do it.
0:39:30 I think for Sketchy.
0:39:31 – I agree.
0:39:33 – You can do Sketchy for another test,
0:39:34 another customer segment.
0:39:37 Maybe it’s AP students or it’s SAT takers
0:39:39 or it’s some obscure test.
0:39:40 Who knows?
0:39:43 I think you could do it for, I think that the Babylon Bee,
0:39:45 I think could be done for other customer groups,
0:39:46 other customer segments,
0:39:48 like the millennial mom is the one I would go for.
0:39:53 And third would be this dood-native deodorant for tampons.
0:39:55 And maybe there’s somebody doing it,
0:39:57 but this is my Sunday brainstorm of three ideas
0:39:59 that maybe they’re not great ideas,
0:40:01 but they’ll at least get the wheels turned into your brain.
0:40:03 It’s kind of the promise I have here.
0:40:04 – I think this is, we gotta keep your phone away from you
0:40:05 for, from other weekends.
0:40:06 This is good stuff.
0:40:08 – Yeah, ’cause this is what happens when I don’t have
0:40:09 my phone.
0:40:09 – I want to talk about one more thing.
0:40:12 I don’t want MFM to like talk about politics,
0:40:13 ’cause I don’t think that that’s fun.
0:40:15 And I think this is like a little bit of an escape.
0:40:17 – I was gonna start the podcast with, you know,
0:40:19 Sam and I have both sold newsletter businesses.
0:40:22 So we feel pretty qualified to chime in here
0:40:25 on what’s going on in our country.
0:40:29 And that’s how every like business attack podcast is.
0:40:31 They’re just like, you know, as a venture capitalist,
0:40:32 where I start my career, you know,
0:40:34 investing in the early stage tech companies,
0:40:37 I just feel pretty qualified to talk to you about
0:40:39 what’s going on in the Supreme Court right now.
0:40:40 – It’s maddening, man.
0:40:41 It’s, that’s maddening.
0:40:43 And I don’t want to become that.
0:40:46 But I saw that you’re into Teddy Roosevelt.
0:40:48 – Well, I went down this rabbit hole, right?
0:40:51 So I’m like, the crazy Trump stuff happens.
0:40:52 And I’m like, wow, that’s crazy.
0:40:53 You got shot.
0:40:56 I’m like, I was like, I wonder how many presidents
0:40:57 have been shot at?
0:40:59 – So can I tell you, wait, let me,
0:41:00 and let me, don’t answer that question.
0:41:01 Don’t answer that question.
0:41:04 But let me tell you something, why I’m happy.
0:41:07 I have read not only the biographies
0:41:08 of all of those presidents,
0:41:12 but also multiple books on each assassination.
0:41:14 And one of my, and one of my,
0:41:16 so this is why I’m happy that you’re able to talk about this.
0:41:17 – I’ve walked into your wheelhouse.
0:41:19 I’ve stumbled into your wheelhouse.
0:41:20 – Welcome home, Sean.
0:41:21 One of the reasons, and here’s,
0:41:24 this is a trivia question that I would ask people all the time.
0:41:27 How many presidents and name them who have been assassinated?
0:41:30 Virtually no one gets the second two.
0:41:31 The first two are easy.
0:41:34 – So, okay, easy, easy assassinations
0:41:38 that I can remember, let’s say, Lincoln, Kennedy, right?
0:41:39 Those are easy.
0:41:42 Let’s see, what are the hard ones?
0:41:47 McKinley, ’cause he was, he died right before Roosevelt.
0:41:49 So that was, I think Roosevelt was the VP, right?
0:41:51 Is that how that happened?
0:41:52 He became president?
0:41:53 – I don’t remember exactly,
0:41:55 but they’re in the same ballpark.
0:41:56 I don’t know if Roosevelt was the VP,
0:41:58 but he could’ve been.
0:42:00 – Okay, so we’ll leave it there, he could’ve been.
0:42:01 And then, the last one. – Oh, you’re right, by the way.
0:42:03 I’m looking it up, yes, good job, you’re right.
0:42:04 – The last one I wouldn’t have got,
0:42:07 but I see it here, the notes is Garfield, Andrew Garfield.
0:42:08 I wouldn’t have got that one.
0:42:12 – And both of those guys, when they got shot,
0:42:15 it was a very solvable problem.
0:42:19 So basically, up until like the 1910s or 1920s,
0:42:20 we didn’t really believe,
0:42:23 or we didn’t know that germs were a thing.
0:42:24 And most of these guys, when they got shot,
0:42:27 they got shot, and then you go digging around
0:42:30 and with a dirty surgeon’s hand or a dirty instrument,
0:42:32 and they get infections, and that’s how they died.
0:42:33 – Exactly.
0:42:35 So like McKinley died like, I don’t know,
0:42:38 eight days later of gangrene caused by the wounds,
0:42:40 not from like the bullet itself, you know,
0:42:41 hitting him in the heart or something like that.
0:42:43 – Garfield died like six weeks later.
0:42:44 – So, I was pretty mind blown.
0:42:46 So basically, I wanna know how many presidents
0:42:48 have been shot at, either hit or missed,
0:42:50 but a gunshot has been fired at them.
0:42:51 Do you know the number for this?
0:42:53 – I think it’s seven or eight or nine,
0:42:54 like right around there?
0:42:55 – 13.
0:42:56 – Oh my God.
0:42:58 – And there’s only been 40, what, six presidents,
0:42:59 some of that, so it’s basically–
0:43:00 – A 10%.
0:43:02 – More than that, 25%.
0:43:05 25% chance of being shot at if you’re a president.
0:43:06 Dangerous. – That’s insane.
0:43:08 – Dangerous job. – That’s insane, right?
0:43:10 – And then of those, four have died.
0:43:14 – So here’s the deal.
0:43:17 I made most of my money from a newsletter business.
0:43:18 It was called The Hustle,
0:43:20 and it was a daily newsletter at scale
0:43:22 to millions of subscribers,
0:43:24 and it was the greatest business on earth.
0:43:27 The problem with it was that I had close to 40 employees,
0:43:30 and only three of them were actually doing any writing.
0:43:32 The other employees were growing the newsletter,
0:43:35 building out the tech for the platform, and selling ads,
0:43:38 and honestly, it was a huge pain in the butt.
0:43:41 Today’s episode is brought to you by Beehive.
0:43:44 They are a platform that is built exactly for this.
0:43:45 If you wanna grow your newsletter,
0:43:47 if you wanna monetize a newsletter,
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0:43:53 So check it out, beehive.com.
0:43:56 That’s B-E-E-H-I-I-V.com.
0:44:01 – The crazy one that I,
0:44:03 so there’s actually two that I found pretty interesting.
0:44:04 So I tweeted about one of them.
0:44:04 I didn’t talk about the other one.
0:44:05 Can I tell you about the two
0:44:07 that I found that were pretty interesting?
0:44:10 This is me just beginner level on Wikipedia.
0:44:11 – So I know you know it was Roosevelt.
0:44:13 Was the other one Andrew Jackson?
0:44:14 – Jackson, yes.
0:44:16 The Jackson one is crazy.
0:44:18 So here’s my understanding, fill in the gaps for me.
0:44:22 So the story is Jackson is going to a funeral.
0:44:24 He, and he’s 67 years old.
0:44:25 He walks with a cane.
0:44:28 He’s a kind of an old guy and he’s not very popular.
0:44:30 He’s walking, he’s at the funeral.
0:44:32 He’s walking into the funeral, whatever.
0:44:34 And a guy approaches him with a pistol
0:44:36 and the guy shoots at him.
0:44:38 The gun goes off, but the bullet doesn’t come out.
0:44:39 It’s a misfire.
0:44:40 So the powder explodes,
0:44:43 but the bullet doesn’t leave the gun.
0:44:46 And Jackson becomes angry.
0:44:48 Charges at him with his cane,
0:44:49 swinging at him with the cane,
0:44:51 trying to beat him up with his cane.
0:44:53 – He almost beat him to death.
0:44:54 – He almost beat him to death.
0:44:55 Well, there’s a conflict of course.
0:44:57 One is he beat him up and the other ones he misses.
0:44:59 And so I don’t know which one’s true.
0:45:02 The other, and then the guy takes out a second pistol,
0:45:04 does the same thing, shoots him with a second pistol,
0:45:06 also misfires.
0:45:08 Other politicians who are there jump on him,
0:45:09 kind of tackle the guy.
0:45:13 And they then take both of the guns
0:45:15 and they’re like, man, we got lucky that this guy,
0:45:17 or maybe he didn’t really mean to do it,
0:45:17 are these fake guns?
0:45:18 What happened?
0:45:21 We heard the gun fire, but no bullet hit.
0:45:23 And so then they shoot the gun again
0:45:25 and the bullet comes out.
0:45:26 And both guns were actually functioning.
0:45:28 And they basically said that the odds
0:45:31 of both pistols misfiring and jamming like this
0:45:33 was like one in 150,000.
0:45:34 That’s what they estimated.
0:45:35 – That’s insane.
0:45:38 – The odds of that happening are so low.
0:45:39 That’s pretty crazy, huh?
0:45:41 – And what’s here, here’s what’s even crazier
0:45:46 is when up until probably the 1960s after JFK,
0:45:50 secret service wasn’t really much of a thing.
0:45:52 So the secret service wasn’t a thing.
0:45:55 I don’t think it was a thing when Garfield got shot,
0:45:59 which I think was at 1900 even or so, maybe late 1800s.
0:46:03 When JFK got shot, there was only like 150
0:46:06 secret service agents.
0:46:09 It was not big and the budget was tiny
0:46:11 and they were overworked and tired all the time.
0:46:14 And when Andrew Garfield got shot,
0:46:15 after a look at the date–
0:46:15 – 1881.
0:46:19 – 1881, Lincoln was shot 20 years prior.
0:46:21 You could still, after Lincoln got shot,
0:46:22 you could walk into the White House
0:46:23 and schedule an appointment.
0:46:25 Anyone could go see these guys.
0:46:27 And when Garfield got shot,
0:46:30 he was walking from the White House to a train.
0:46:32 Him and a buddy were just walking
0:46:33 and someone walked up and shot him.
0:46:35 It was insane how like you could get away
0:46:36 with all this stuff.
0:46:39 And it’s wild to think about that.
0:46:42 – So the Teddy Roosevelt story was the one
0:46:43 that just blew my mind.
0:46:46 So the Teddy Roosevelt story goes as follows.
0:46:50 He’s supposed to give a speech, he’s having dinner,
0:46:52 he leaves the dinner, he’s getting into his car.
0:46:53 And as he’s walking up to his car,
0:46:57 a guy comes up to him and shoots him and hits him.
0:46:59 Hits him right in the chest.
0:47:01 And Roosevelt got lucky for two reasons.
0:47:04 I’m sure you already know, what are the two reasons?
0:47:07 – I believe the first one was he had his speech
0:47:09 in his chest, in his chest pocket.
0:47:11 – A 50 page speech printed out
0:47:14 and rolled up into his jacket pocket.
0:47:17 – And the second reason I think is that he was strong.
0:47:20 His chest muscles were just like, he was a buff dude.
0:47:23 – The second one was he had his glasses case,
0:47:25 which was made out of steel.
0:47:25 – I was making that up.
0:47:27 – The bullet went through both of those.
0:47:28 So it went through the speech,
0:47:29 it goes through the glasses case,
0:47:31 but it kind of took a lot of the heat off of it.
0:47:33 And it still hits him in the chest.
0:47:34 And the story’s crazy, he’s like,
0:47:40 so his secretary was an ex football player
0:47:41 and just tackles the guy.
0:47:44 And then he’s like, you know, people are swarming.
0:47:46 He’s like, no, no, no, bring him to me, bring him to me.
0:47:48 He’s like, I want to look him in the eyes.
0:47:50 And they bring the guy up to his face and he goes,
0:47:52 why did you do it?
0:47:53 And the guy doesn’t answer.
0:47:54 And he’s like, all right, forget it.
0:47:55 Take him away.
0:47:56 He’s like, but no violence on this guy.
0:47:58 Like I don’t want this guy hurt in any way.
0:48:02 Like I want him, you know, through the judicial system.
0:48:05 So I put him in the car and I guess he’s like a hunter
0:48:08 and like an anatomist, like a casual anatomist.
0:48:10 So he’s like, you know, I’m not,
0:48:11 they’re taking him to the hospital.
0:48:13 He’s like, I’m not coughing up blood.
0:48:14 I don’t think it’s hit my lung.
0:48:17 So I think the bullets lodged in there,
0:48:20 but I think it’s okay because it didn’t puncture my lung
0:48:21 or my heart.
0:48:25 So he’s like, take me to the speech.
0:48:28 So he goes and he still delivers like a,
0:48:30 something like a 50 to 90 minute speech.
0:48:32 And they have the shirt that he wore
0:48:35 and the blood is just soaking out of the shirt.
0:48:37 Kurt Schilling style with the sock.
0:48:38 Just as he’s giving the speech,
0:48:40 they now have this like whatever in a museum
0:48:42 and he’s giving the speech.
0:48:45 And he’s like, he says, ladies and gentlemen,
0:48:47 I don’t know whether you fully understand
0:48:48 that I have just been shot,
0:48:51 but it takes more than a bullet to kill a bull moose.
0:48:55 And that was the line that he gave during the speech.
0:48:58 After the speech, he then goes to the hospital
0:48:59 and they’re like, they take the X-ray.
0:49:00 They see the bullets in there,
0:49:02 but the technology wasn’t that good at the time.
0:49:05 They’re like, look, we could try to take it out,
0:49:06 but it’s risky.
0:49:07 I think this is how McKinley had just died.
0:49:10 – Well, the technology for the X-ray
0:49:13 basically was sort of invented for Garfield.
0:49:15 So I forget what the scientist’s name was,
0:49:18 but around the World’s Fair time,
0:49:20 they were trying to invent X-ray
0:49:22 and Garfield got screwed up and they were like,
0:49:24 dude, we’ve heard that you have this thing.
0:49:26 Can you, can we be your test patient?
0:49:28 You gotta find this bullet on Garfield.
0:49:33 And so like the X-ray, basically it kind of
0:49:35 was being developed because of,
0:49:37 yeah, because of this one or two examples.
0:49:40 – Well, in the end, the doctor decided just to leave it in
0:49:42 because they’re like, it’s too risky to take it out.
0:49:44 And so he lives with it for the rest of his life.
0:49:45 And people asked him, they were like,
0:49:47 do you feel, do you still have pain from that?
0:49:48 And he’s like, it doesn’t bother me more
0:49:51 than if it was a bullet sitting in my pocket.
0:49:52 – What a badass.
0:49:54 Did you know that he was partially blind
0:49:57 because Roosevelt was a crazy person.
0:50:01 So he liked to box and he was a man’s man.
0:50:05 And there’s a story where I think it was one of his aides,
0:50:07 but a professional boxer would come in and he’d be like,
0:50:08 oh, you like the box?
0:50:10 – No, he would invite people to spar him
0:50:10 in the White House, right?
0:50:12 – He’d be like, prove it, let’s see.
0:50:14 Like, you like the box, let’s box.
0:50:16 And he would box with these guys, like professionals.
0:50:19 And he would make people get out and they would spar.
0:50:23 Well, one time a guy, I think it was his aide
0:50:26 or a partner of his damaged his eye.
0:50:28 And so one of his aides was blind.
0:50:29 And during the boxing match, he was like,
0:50:32 hey, look, we can’t tell anyone about this.
0:50:34 Like no one could know that we were fighting in here.
0:50:36 Otherwise, I’m gonna get into a ton of trouble.
0:50:38 So he didn’t tell a lot of people,
0:50:40 but he was blind in one eye.
0:50:44 – Yeah, he got a detached retina from the boxing match.
0:50:47 And then he switched to Jujutsu instead.
0:50:51 There’s also, I guess, some story.
0:50:52 – It was hard.
0:50:54 – I guess when he was born,
0:50:57 he was born with some condition where his organs
0:50:59 were too small for his body or something like that, right?
0:51:00 Isn’t there something like this?
0:51:02 – And that’s why he was so active.
0:51:04 So he was born with a bad,
0:51:06 they were like, you’re probably gonna die young.
0:51:09 – They told his parents he’ll probably die as a teenager.
0:51:10 And he’ll be in bed most of the time
0:51:12 and he’ll die as a teenager.
0:51:14 – And so that’s why he was so invigorated with life
0:51:17 because they were like, A, he expected to die.
0:51:20 And B, his father was like, we have to get you strong.
0:51:23 You have to be strong so you can survive.
0:51:26 And so he wanted to exercise and do all the stuff
0:51:27 so he could live.
0:51:30 And so that’s one of the reasons why he was so active.
0:51:32 – Yeah, this is like the tip of the iceberg.
0:51:33 I think there’s a bunch of other crazy stories
0:51:34 about Teddy Roosevelt.
0:51:38 Also, the teddy bear named after him, didn’t know that.
0:51:39 – I believe it’s named after him
0:51:43 because he was known for hunting, bears and stuff like that.
0:51:45 And so one group was like, hey, we’ll take you hunting.
0:51:50 Turns out they had a bear chained up to a tree or something.
0:51:52 And Teddy sees this poor bear.
0:51:54 And he’s like, no guys, this is not how we do this.
0:51:56 You got to release that bear.
0:51:58 And so it was something involving that story
0:52:00 involved him having the teddy bear.
0:52:03 They call him a bear or teddy bear.
0:52:05 – He didn’t like being called teddy either.
0:52:07 – Yeah, I don’t think people call him to his face,
0:52:09 but there’s a whole book called “The River of Doubt.”
0:52:10 And so basically the river of doubt,
0:52:12 you hear that title and you think,
0:52:14 oh, that has to do with you making good decisions
0:52:16 or bad decisions and doubting your decisions.
0:52:18 No, there was a river called Doubt.
0:52:20 I think in Brazil that had never been explored
0:52:22 after he was president.
0:52:25 He was like, well, I’ll go figure out what’s,
0:52:26 and let’s, we got to like map that out.
0:52:27 Let’s make a map, I’ll do it.
0:52:30 And so he goes and he does this river
0:52:32 for weeks or months or something like that.
0:52:33 And he almost dies.
0:52:35 And this is just him wanting to explore it.
0:52:38 There’s all these crazy stories about him, like,
0:52:41 a lot of people accuse him of starting a war
0:52:42 just so he could go and fight.
0:52:44 ‘Cause he had, it was called “The Rough Riders.”
0:52:47 It was his own crew of like these military folks, but no,
0:52:49 – M, DMX, who else?
0:52:50 (laughing)
0:52:51 – And their own anthem.
0:52:53 – Teddy was pretty hard.
0:52:55 Teddy was an interesting guy.
0:52:58 – And by the way, he lost the election.
0:53:00 After the guy does this, gives his speech during,
0:53:03 with a bullet in his chest, he ends up losing to,
0:53:05 because I guess he had his own,
0:53:07 he was a third party candidate at this stage,
0:53:08 which is pretty crazy.
0:53:10 – He was an interesting guy.
0:53:13 He also, his wife died giving birth.
0:53:17 And so the same day that his daughter was born,
0:53:20 his wife died, and then in the same house,
0:53:22 that day, his mother died.
0:53:25 And he has the story where he said,
0:53:27 he used to journal every day.
0:53:29 And that was one day where he wrote in this journal,
0:53:31 he goes, “The light has left my life.”
0:53:33 And that’s all he wrote, and it’s a very touching story.
0:53:35 And then he goes on this tear,
0:53:37 where for the next year, he’s crazy active.
0:53:38 And they go, “Why are you being so active?”
0:53:42 And he writes, “Ceiceless action outruns depression.”
0:53:45 And so he was basically like doing all these amazing things
0:53:48 in order to outrun the sadness of that day.
0:53:49 And so it really-
0:53:50 – That’s wild.
0:53:53 Are his journals like published anywhere,
0:53:54 or his diaries or whatever?
0:53:55 – He was a prolific writer.
0:53:56 So his first book was actually,
0:53:58 I think he was in his teens or early 20s.
0:54:00 His first book was on zoology.
0:54:02 So he used to collect animals and take them apart
0:54:04 and explain like he loved Darwin.
0:54:06 He was like, he tried to discover species.
0:54:09 And he wrote, I think dozens of book,
0:54:12 or if that doesn’t a book, books like six or eight books.
0:54:14 So he wrote many, many books.
0:54:15 So yeah, he was really prolific.
0:54:16 So you can go and read all of his writing.
0:54:17 He was a really impressive guy.
0:54:20 – What’s the best book on him that you’ve read?
0:54:21 – I would read his biography.
0:54:22 His biography is amazing
0:54:25 because he had a lot of bad shit happen to him in his life.
0:54:27 And he was very optimistic.
0:54:28 – Wow.
0:54:30 What a guy, Billy of the Week, I guess.
0:54:32 – Well, he was, his father started MoMA.
0:54:33 – The museum?
0:54:34 – The museum.
0:54:35 His father, James Roosevelt,
0:54:38 like founded that because he was a wealthy guy.
0:54:39 – Oh, no way.
0:54:42 – But Teddy Roosevelt, by the way, horrible businessman.
0:54:43 He was a horrible businessman.
0:54:44 That was the one thing that he sucked at.
0:54:46 He like would invest in like horses and stuff.
0:54:49 And he would start ranches, really bad businessman.
0:54:51 He was, he blew a lot of money.
0:54:53 – Was he a good dude overall or a bad dude, right?
0:54:56 Cause he’s definitely like a sort of man’s man
0:54:57 in all these interesting ways.
0:55:00 It has like legendary feats.
0:55:02 He really lived a very interesting life,
0:55:04 but character wise, was he a good guy?
0:55:06 I mean, I’ve never read anything about it besides this.
0:55:08 – I think he had a strong character.
0:55:09 I have one massive critique of him.
0:55:11 And this is when I kind of were the phrase,
0:55:13 all great men can be bad men.
0:55:17 For example, he wasn’t, I felt like the most present father.
0:55:19 So when his wife died, he goes to North Dakota or whatever
0:55:21 to do his thing, the Badlands to do his thing.
0:55:23 He left his newborn daughter for like a year and a half.
0:55:26 And you could say like, maybe he was like suicidal,
0:55:27 depressed and he’s like, I gotta get away.
0:55:29 And you could argue that.
0:55:32 But he kind of wasn’t always around for his daughter,
0:55:34 I felt, but in general, he had high character.
0:55:35 Yeah, he was a good dude.
0:55:37 – Interesting.
0:55:38 All right.
0:55:40 Well, I think that’s a fascinating podcast.
0:55:42 I’m so glad that you have this.
0:55:44 You and Shane Gillis, by the way,
0:55:49 why is Shane Gillis like such a history like PhD?
0:55:52 – He has a major, he studied history.
0:55:55 – I’m a biology major, couldn’t tell you three things.
0:55:58 How does he know, he knows a lot about history,
0:56:00 like too much about history.
0:56:02 – Yeah, he knows way more than me.
0:56:04 He has a good like series of history podcasts
0:56:06 and he’s really talented at it.
0:56:08 I think it’s really fun to read stories.
0:56:13 So like you’ll read in the biography about Andrew Jackson
0:56:15 beating up this guy and you’re like, you’re just reading it.
0:56:17 But then you can take this other thing of like,
0:56:19 put yourself there and you’re like, that’s hilarious
0:56:20 or not hilarious, but like, that’s wild.
0:56:21 You know, that’s someone who would do that.
0:56:23 And so it’s fun to read in between the lines
0:56:25 and like actually imagine some of these stories.
0:56:27 It’s just, I think it’s fascinating.
0:56:30 I think it’s also cool to avoid the mistakes
0:56:34 that people make and just copy the winnings that they do.
0:56:35 So I love that.
0:56:36 – I don’t read any biographies.
0:56:39 And I, but I read a lot about people
0:56:40 and I don’t know what a word for this is,
0:56:44 but I basically will study the ideas
0:56:49 and the ideas and kind of like core plot lines.
0:56:52 But I don’t care where they grew up, how they grew up,
0:56:55 who they grew up with, what the scene was like,
0:56:56 what their family life was like.
0:56:59 I don’t really care about a lot of those things.
0:57:03 And so I find myself fascinated by people,
0:57:05 but I really want to know their philosophy.
0:57:08 And then the action of how they implemented that philosophy,
0:57:10 like the stories of them implementing that philosophy
0:57:11 or living up to that philosophy
0:57:13 or failing on that philosophy.
0:57:14 That’s really all I care about,
0:57:16 which is like a very weird sub-genre
0:57:19 of studying history or these people.
0:57:20 – Well, let me give you two recommendations.
0:57:23 So the first recommendation is a book called “Man Hunt”,
0:57:26 the 12-day chase for Lincoln’s killer.
0:57:27 The reason it’s interesting
0:57:29 is because you’ve heard the name John Wilkes Booth.
0:57:31 That’s the guy who assassinated Lincoln.
0:57:34 He was, he’s an intoxicating character.
0:57:36 He was sort of like a cult leader.
0:57:38 He was a famous actor, not quite,
0:57:40 but almost like Brad Pitt at the time,
0:57:42 where everyone recognized him.
0:57:43 – He was a celebrity?
0:57:44 – He was a celebrity.
0:57:47 And he was a bad, he was a bad dude, like crazy racist.
0:57:48 He was a horrible guy,
0:57:49 but he definitely had this intoxicating,
0:57:52 like I want to follow you to the death type of vibe
0:57:55 where he was really charismatic and he entranced people.
0:57:58 And so the Lincoln assassination, by definition,
0:57:58 was a conspiracy.
0:58:02 It was a group of like 30 people who worked together
0:58:03 to make this happen. – Conspired to do this.
0:58:06 – Yeah, and he was gone for 12 days.
0:58:08 So they assassinated Lincoln
0:58:10 and he escaped for 12 days and he almost got away with it.
0:58:12 He was very closely getting away with it.
0:58:14 And so the 12-day manhunt,
0:58:15 the 12-day chase for Lincoln’s killers
0:58:18 is a book about the 12-day manhunt.
0:58:20 And it’s a very good page turning read.
0:58:21 It’s very easy.
0:58:22 The second one is hellbound.
0:58:25 And it’s about the assassination of MLK.
0:58:26 A lot of people don’t know this,
0:58:28 but James Earl Ray, the guy who shot MLK,
0:58:30 and MLK was a great dude.
0:58:32 He had some downfalls.
0:58:34 He cheated on his wife a bunch,
0:58:35 but he was a net positive.
0:58:38 He was a great guy in general, but he had flaws.
0:58:43 James Earl Ray shot MLK and not only did he escape,
0:58:44 he escaped for months.
0:58:45 So basically when he shot MLK,
0:58:48 he escaped to, I think he shot him in Memphis
0:58:50 and then he drove all over America.
0:58:52 Then he went to Quebec and then he went to Europe.
0:58:53 And when he was in Europe,
0:58:56 he was flying around from country to country.
0:58:57 And the only reason he got caught
0:59:01 was he was in London on his way to Rhodesia,
0:59:02 which is basically South Africa.
0:59:04 At the time it was run by a racist regime.
0:59:07 And he was like, they’re gonna accept me with wide arms
0:59:08 ’cause I just killed MLK.
0:59:09 They’re gonna love me.
0:59:11 He gets through security.
0:59:12 Once he walks through security,
0:59:14 the security guard who lets him in,
0:59:18 he says, thank you, sir, and looks down.
0:59:20 And he sees that he has an additional passport
0:59:22 in his pocket.
0:59:23 And they’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa, dude.
0:59:25 Why do you have two passports?
0:59:26 And they pull it out and they’re like,
0:59:27 oh, shit, the one you gave me was fake.
0:59:28 I just got the real one.
0:59:32 And he was seconds away from getting away from all this.
0:59:34 He was gone for roughly six months.
0:59:36 He was gallivanting all over Europe.
0:59:37 He was all over Canada.
0:59:39 He was very close to getting away with it.
0:59:41 And a lot of people don’t realize that about that story.
0:59:43 And that book, I believe, is called Hellbound,
0:59:44 also a page turner.
0:59:45 So if you wanna read about assassinations,
0:59:48 those are my two favorite assassination books.
0:59:50 – Dude, we should make a, you know,
0:59:52 like a blue ribbon when you were a kid or whatever.
0:59:55 Like, we should have our own list of like books
0:59:59 that we think are awesome and some commentary around them.
1:00:01 Like, I wish we just had our own,
1:00:04 we should just make a separate YouTube channel
1:00:06 of just us doing like a book club
1:00:08 or doing like read a book, talk about it,
1:00:10 and curate for people like the books that we think
1:00:12 are just like really unbelievable books for the year.
1:00:14 – Yeah, I would love to do that.
1:00:16 Those two rank really high.
1:00:19 Those are some of, like I go through series.
1:00:21 So like, I got obsessed with shipwrecks.
1:00:23 So I read like 10 books all on shipwrecks.
1:00:25 I can tell you like, in my opinion,
1:00:26 what are some of the coolest shipwrecks.
1:00:28 And then I did assassinations of famous people.
1:00:30 And the reason why I love these books
1:00:32 and the reason why I think you don’t like biographies,
1:00:35 biographies don’t have a very good beginning
1:00:37 and a middle and an end.
1:00:40 Whereas I try to read books that are about an event,
1:00:41 ’cause an event typically has a beginning
1:00:43 and a middle and an end, where it’s, you know,
1:00:47 it’s more succinct as opposed to 1200 pages.
1:00:49 And so I like books that are on events,
1:00:50 particularly events in America,
1:00:52 so I can relate a little bit more.
1:00:53 – All right, this was fun.
1:00:55 I’m glad we did this at the end here.
1:00:56 – That’s the part.
1:00:58 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
1:01:01 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
1:01:04 ♪ I put my all in it like no days off ♪
1:01:06 ♪ On the road let’s travel never looking back ♪
1:01:07 Bye.
Episode 611: Sam Parr ( https://twitter.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://twitter.com/ShaanVP ) catch up and share 3 business ideas they came up with over the weekend.
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Show Notes:
(0:00) Shaan’s no phone weekend
(5:17) Control your inputs
(10:20) Life hack: Play with your kid
(15:38) Business Idea: Sketchy
(25:15) Business Idea: Niche Fake News You Can Trust
(34:41) Business Idea: Tampons that won’t kill you
(40:28) An unqualified brief history of presidential assassinations
(46:09) The ceaseless action of Teddy Roosevelt
(55:10) MFM Required Readling List
—
Links:
• r/regretfulparents – https://www.reddit.com/r/regretfulparents/
• Sketchy – https://www.sketchy.com/
• Babylon Bee – https://babylonbee.com/
• Manhunt – https://tinyurl.com/bdepazn4
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Check Out Sam’s Stuff:
• Hampton – https://www.joinhampton.com/
• Ideation Bootcamp – https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/
• Copy That – https://copythat.com
• Hampton Wealth Survey – https://joinhampton.com/wealth
• Sam’s List – http://samslist.co/
—
Check Out Shaan’s Stuff:
Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd
My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano