0:00:06 All right, we have Shiel today here, who is by my call the most interesting man in tech,
0:00:12 and that is a big claim. And I’m aware of the power of my words, but I did not start her.
0:00:26 Shiel, I think I’ve told you this before, but I think of all people, I feel like you live in
0:00:31 this beautiful blend of you do things that make you successful, but then you do a lot of things
0:00:37 that just seem like a lot of fun and they’re random, and you’re letting life kind of bounce
0:00:40 you in whatever direction it’s going to take you. And it’s kind of inspiring. And Sam,
0:00:46 I know it’s inspiring for you, because Sam is a perfect square, and he just likes to be a perfect
0:00:50 square, and he doesn’t know what to do with this crazy blob shape like you. Sam, is that right?
0:00:55 Yeah, I mean, he’s inspiring to me, like he just does the silliest stuff. But let’s just say,
0:01:02 so Shiel, here’s like, I’ll brag on your behalf. So basically, you have a $320 million VC fund.
0:01:05 You’ve built a business called Thistle to $100 million in revenue, and you’ve built another
0:01:09 business that sold domains. I think you’ve sold half a billion dollars in domains. You’ve done
0:01:13 all this amazing stuff, but then you do like the silliest things. Like you did like an online
0:01:18 version of The Bachelor. You’re in a Justin Bieber music video. Like you do ridiculous stuff.
0:01:23 You got married, sponsored by Taco Bell in the metaverse. You had a wedding in the metaverse
0:01:25 Taco Bell somehow. I don’t even know what that is.
0:01:27 I didn’t know about that. That’s awesome. What was that?
0:01:32 Oh, it’s a long story. But yeah, Taco Bell sponsored my wedding. We had a series.
0:01:37 I figured like, if you’re going to have a wedding, it’s a great excuse to bring your friends together.
0:01:41 And so I was like, and it’s an excuse for all your friends to come together. As many times you
0:01:48 do it, they’re all going to come. So we had six weddings and nine wedding related events over the
0:01:54 course of a year. One of which was sponsored by Taco Bell because we entered a contest and my
0:02:00 amazing wife let me do this. Makes sense. I don’t even know what to make of all this.
0:02:08 I went back and I listened because you’ve been on the podcast way back when I first
0:02:12 started it because you were a friend of mine in San Francisco and I wanted to
0:02:17 have interesting people on the podcast. So back in 2019, you’re probably in the first 20 episodes.
0:02:23 And I went back and listened to it this morning because I forgot all of it. I don’t remember
0:02:26 any of this. So I’m going to repeat a couple of the stories. I actually want to start. You
0:02:31 brought some ideas, opportunities you see, things like that. I want to get to those. But I want to
0:02:36 start with maybe the relatable side hustle. Can you talk about one of the way, one of the early
0:02:43 ways you made money, which was this story about the iPod mini. I don’t even know if you remember
0:02:49 the full story here, but can you tell this iPod mini hustle story? Yeah, I was like a new graduate,
0:02:56 college graduate. I was working a job. They gave me an iPod mini, which is the iPod had come out.
0:02:59 It was white. And then the mini came out. It was smaller and it was available in four colors,
0:03:08 blue, yellow, pink and green. And right after I got it, my headphones got stuck in a bike I was
0:03:14 riding and broke. And Apple was not selling those headphones, like those iconic headphones
0:03:20 that I wanted. Apple wasn’t selling them. So I had this idea of like, let me make these headphones
0:03:27 and I’ll make them in the colors matching the iPod mini. And so I went to China for the first
0:03:32 time in my life just to like, figure this out. And I like, you went for this reason. I went for
0:03:38 this reason. Yeah. I just, I was working a full-time job. I took a two week vacation and I was like,
0:03:43 let me spend those two weeks in China. Where in China? China’s a big place. You were just like,
0:03:48 I’m just going to go. I’ll find a guy. What was the plan? Okay. So I went to Hong Kong actually
0:03:52 originally. Like I looked up trade shows and there was this big consumer electronics trade
0:03:56 show. So I was like, I’m just going to go to this trade show and then I’ll figure it out.
0:04:02 And I hadn’t booked anything else. So like, I went to this trade show. There were thousands of
0:04:10 booths. And so like, I just went around having no idea about anything. Just like, went to these
0:04:17 booths, found ones that made headphones. Their English was very poor. I have my Chinese is negligible.
0:04:23 So it was a lot of like, they pull out a calculator and I’m like, this is what I want. And then like,
0:04:28 I had some sketch drawing that I had made of what I was looking for. And then they are like,
0:04:33 entering a number into a calculator. They’re like, that’s, you know, $5. And I’m like,
0:04:42 no, no, no, no, no. That’s like 83 cents. And then I actually went and visited their factories
0:04:47 in like Southern China, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. And it was awesome. Like it was a really cool
0:04:54 way for me to get into business. How much time passed between your headphone breaking and you’re
0:04:59 like, oh, I should sell headphones and I’m in China. I think it was like a couple months.
0:05:08 So you have a job, you decide to go, you’re like, I’m just going to kind of fund this off my savings?
0:05:11 Or did you place the initial was a big initial order? How did you do it?
0:05:18 The initial order, it was cheap. It was 10,000 headphones. And I think, yeah, I mean, for me,
0:05:23 at the time, it was a lot of money. Like it was my first job. But I think it was like,
0:05:25 like a total outlay of $20,000.
0:05:32 Gotcha. And so you, you make these headphones, which by the way, it seems like an insane oversight
0:05:36 by Apple to not sell the headphones. Just like you’re saying they were iconic at the time.
0:05:42 And you have to market these, how are you going to sell like a thousand or 10,000 pairs of headphones?
0:05:47 So there were like, now there’s a very, a playbook, quantitative marketing, all this stuff.
0:05:52 At that time on the internet, there wasn’t a playbook to follow. So I started out like going
0:05:58 after blogs. There were a lot of blogs when I was like, I’ll give you a giveaway for your,
0:06:05 for your readers. That was, that was one technique. And then one that was pretty awesome is Facebook
0:06:11 had just come out. And at this time, Facebook was limited to college campuses. And the way that
0:06:16 they monetized Facebook at that time was you can set up a flyer. So like I went to Carnegie Mellon,
0:06:21 I could pay $10 a day to have the sidebar at Carnegie Mellon. And it was basically for like a
0:06:27 flyer. Like if I was throwing a party, I could advertise on Facebook. And so what I did was
0:06:31 I went back to my high school friends who went to the biggest colleges. So like University of
0:06:36 Michigan, Ohio State, like those Penn State, those kind of colleges where they had like 30 or 40,000
0:06:42 students. And I said, give me your Facebook ID. And they gave me their Facebook login. I paid them
0:06:47 something. And I was able to market to those audiences for still $10 a day. Like you want
0:06:54 the biggest audience you can for that $10 a day. And so we did, in Michigan, we did like the colors
0:06:59 of Michigan, like blue and yellow, stuff like that. It was a cool, it was a cool little business.
0:07:04 Dude, that’s amazing that Facebook used to let you do that. Just to like market to your whole
0:07:10 campus for 10 bucks a day is insane. How much did it end up making? Yeah. So how much were you
0:07:18 ready to make? I want to say net was probably like $80,000. Do you plan anything? So like one of the
0:07:24 parts of this episode is that like you’re pretty spontaneous. And but, but, but you have a, you
0:07:29 know, a $300 million fund, you have $100 million your company who knows what that’s worth, but at
0:07:36 least probably a $100 million. So like pretty like epic success. But you also do the really random
0:07:43 things spur the moment type of decision making. Yeah. I just like, I think I’ve always chosen
0:07:48 like the more adventurous path, I would say. And then I think something I got from my grandfather,
0:07:55 my mom’s dad was like, he was just always bored and always coming up with new ideas. He would,
0:07:59 at the time, it was different. He would like read about something in the newspaper and be like,
0:08:04 I should start something. So like in India, when TVs were coming out, like growing up,
0:08:09 like there’s only like one TV station and then expanded from there. And he was like, oh, TVs
0:08:14 are going to be big. And he started a TV manufacturing company, knowing nothing about anything.
0:08:18 Like he just was like, I’ll just learn how to make TVs. And then he set up a manufacturing company.
0:08:24 It was hard to get us a phone in India. So he created this like pay phone company
0:08:30 that allowed people to just use pay phones. And like, he would just read about something in the
0:08:38 newspaper. And like me as a kid, he would actually like mail me like clips in the newspaper. And
0:08:42 he’d be like, should we start this company together? I’m like 15 years old. And he’s
0:08:47 like giving me an idea. And he had some good ones. One of the ones that I remember, like,
0:08:51 I was just a fess up recently, he passed away many years ago. But he had this idea for like,
0:08:57 he looked up ancestry.com, great business. And he was like, in India, people love their ancestry.
0:09:01 Why don’t we start one for India? And that was an idea he had for me. Good idea.
0:09:04 Wow. Did anybody do that, by the way? Is there now an ancestry for India?
0:09:06 I actually don’t know. Is that still up for grabs?
0:09:10 Still probably a good idea for my grandfather, who now passed away many years ago.
0:09:14 Yeah, that’s wild. Sam, on the first episode he did, he talked about the domain business.
0:09:20 It’s kind of a longer story. So he probably won’t do it again. But the short version of it is,
0:09:26 you were selling, you are not selling, you were the auctioneer for people who wanted to buy
0:09:34 new domain, like top level domains. So like dot photo, dot app, dot blog, whatever.
0:09:38 And so Amazon and Google and rich guys would come and they would try to bid and you guys were the
0:09:41 auction to do that. And you would take 4% of the auction you sold like, I don’t know,
0:09:45 $500 million worth of top level domains. But one of the things he talks about is like,
0:09:50 yeah, so my co-founder was this expert in auction theory and I met him on a train in India.
0:09:55 He just had these little things he threw out. Like, yeah, I was just happened to be on a train
0:09:58 in India, met this guy, I ended up starting a company with him.
0:10:01 Was he an American in India or an Indian? He’s German.
0:10:06 That’s ridiculous. What year was that? I met him in 2006.
0:10:12 When Darmesh came on the podcast, Darmesh, the founder of Hublot, we talked about the Steve Jobs
0:10:15 speech that he gave at Sanford. That’s pretty famous. A lot of people know that now,
0:10:20 he talks about like, you can’t connect the dots. Looking forward, you can only connect the dots
0:10:24 of your life looking backwards. And the famous example is he’s talked about like how he used
0:10:28 to love studying calligraphy and fonts and he got really into that. He took courses on it.
0:10:33 And then only later when he started Apple computers, he made sure that the first set
0:10:36 of Apple computers had these like beautiful fonts and no other computer company cared about that.
0:10:41 But he did, he connected those two dots, his passion for X and his passion for Y and they both
0:10:46 came together and Darmesh pointed out, he’s like, you know, I think a lot of people look at that
0:10:49 and they just sort of shrug like, well, I guess I just can’t connect the dots like, you know,
0:10:54 so don’t even try. He’s like, no, what that means is your job is to be a dot collector.
0:10:58 And yeah, the dots will connect later, but like you got to be a dot collector. And so
0:11:02 when I say that like, I guess like, what are some examples for you of dot collecting in your life?
0:11:06 Where at the time you didn’t really fully realize it, but you chose more adventurous path or you
0:11:10 followed your curiosity and then good things later ended up happening.
0:11:14 I think there’s a lot of that. And I love that idea of being a dot collector.
0:11:23 I think there’s a lot of like just saying yes to stuff. So one, I’ll just say, I’ll say yes to
0:11:27 a lot of crazy ideas that people throw at me. Investing, of course, you have to be discerning
0:11:33 when I’m investing other people’s capital. And so for the fund, I think we’re very discerning.
0:11:38 But for ideas for myself or like, people invite me to speak at a conference in some random country,
0:11:42 Latvia, I’ve been to like Latvia, Saudi Arabia, like all these countries that people don’t go to
0:11:48 just because somebody invited me. And I think that I’ve learned a lot by doing those things.
0:11:54 One of the crazier things I did is I lived in India on a dollar a day.
0:11:55 It’s like a Mr. Beast video.
0:12:07 And I did it for a year. So like, I moved to India. I was 24 years old. And I lived for one year on
0:12:14 around a dollar a day. What does that do in India? Is that like a McDonald’s value meal?
0:12:20 Like, I don’t know. Yeah, maybe like a McDonald’s value meal per day. And so I think like what I
0:12:27 learned from that, I think it was like supremely influential in my life. And I learned one, like,
0:12:33 I don’t need a lot of money to be happy. Like, I was so happy in that time. And like, I went from,
0:12:37 I was a management consultant in the United States, like making a six figure salary and
0:12:45 I moved to India on a dollar a day. And I, I really, I had a convertible here in India. I had like
0:12:53 a bicycle. And even the bicycle was like a big deal for me to buy. And I just had so much fun.
0:12:58 And there’s this concept in India called jugad, which is a Hindi word. It means like,
0:13:05 there’s no perfect word for it. It kind of means like creative problem solving. And I think like,
0:13:11 I really learned a lot of creative problem solving during that year, like just reusing things.
0:13:15 I learned like the importance of community resourcefulness.
0:13:19 But you spent $365 in one year. That was it.
0:13:20 Yeah.
0:13:22 Does that include rent? And what type of program is this?
0:13:28 The program no longer exists. It was called IndieCorps. And it was like a volunteer program.
0:13:32 And part of it was like, they want, I wanted, so I was working for Kiva, a non-profit,
0:13:38 microfinance institution. And I wanted to live like my borrowers. And so the people that we were
0:13:43 lending money to were living on a dollar a day. So I was like, I’m going to do it too.
0:13:47 So did you just like have a midlife crisis when you were 25? Like, why did you do this in the
0:13:49 first place? What was the why?
0:13:54 Yeah. The why is kind of silly in hindsight, but actually I watched a movie, a Hindi movie
0:13:59 called Rang De Basanti, where they were like, India isn’t just going to change. You have to
0:14:04 change it. And I was thinking like, I grew up in America, but I have a lot of affinities to India.
0:14:10 I want to change India. So I had this like lofty ambition. And then I don’t think I did anything
0:14:14 for India. Like I did a lot for myself, but I don’t think I accomplished anything for India.
0:14:23 I was trying to convince Sean, like three weeks ago, I think we’re, it was like live,
0:14:28 like don’t spend any money for a week or something like way less significant than what you did.
0:14:32 And I got like a hard no, a hard no.
0:14:34 I didn’t watch that movie, dude. I wasn’t inspired.
0:14:40 In hindsight, it was stupid. Like I got, I got super sick. I got typhoid. And I,
0:14:46 well, besides that, yeah, besides that, no, overall, it was an amazing experience. And
0:14:50 actually like I have so many, so many of my close friends today or from that time.
0:14:55 There’s another good dot collector story, I think for you, you correct me if I’m wrong,
0:14:59 but I think you were one of the first investors in Flexport. Is that right?
0:14:59 Yeah.
0:15:06 And, but you didn’t just like, it wasn’t just like a traditional VC move where somebody cold pitches
0:15:10 you and then you write this check cause you’re like, yeah, I totally see the future of freight
0:15:15 forwarding. No, it wasn’t that. There was some, you did something. You just said yes to something
0:15:19 before that. I don’t know the full story, but I know that it wasn’t just a cold pitch that
0:15:23 walked into your office. And by the way, just, just so we have context, what’s,
0:15:29 what’s Flexport valued ish now? And what was it when you invested? Like how big of a deal is this?
0:15:35 Yeah. So I actually don’t know the most recent, but it’s in the several billions of dollars.
0:15:37 And when I invested, it was a $10 million valuation.
0:15:41 Something like $10 million to $3 billion, let’s call it.
0:15:52 Yeah. And I sold some of my shares and the ones that I sold, it was more than a hundred X return.
0:15:54 Wow. Okay. All right. Go ahead. Sorry.
0:16:01 And, okay. So Flexport, it’s a digital freight forwarding companies, one way to think about it.
0:16:05 If you have a bunch of stuff in China and you need to get it here, there’s a bunch of steps
0:16:07 required in between and they’ll help you do those steps.
0:16:12 Like when you wanted your iPhone, your iPod mini headphones to get here, they got to get
0:16:16 onto a container, get onto a boat, get from the boat to the port, port to the truck,
0:16:18 truck to your warehouse. How does all that happen?
0:16:22 Go through customs, all those other stuff. Exactly. Exactly. And so it just made sense
0:16:26 to me that this needed to be digital. It’s a real pain in the ass if you, if you don’t use
0:16:33 Flexport or something like it. And so I met Ryan at a party and we bonded over some really funny
0:16:39 things, which were, he, I think he’s a really hacky guy. Like he just figures stuff out.
0:16:45 He started the company by himself, non-technical, like outsourced team originally. And then
0:16:54 eventually he built up a lot of stuff internally. But we were buying Uber credits in our name.
0:16:57 So I did that. You did that too?
0:17:03 It was a, what’s your guide, India? No, no, no, we were like, I was advertising
0:17:09 Google AdWords for my referral code. And at times, at that time, I would buy free rides
0:17:12 from this guy in India. Oh, who was probably doing what we’re doing.
0:17:19 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I would buy like $1,000 of Uber credit for like $100 or something like that.
0:17:24 Okay. So we were effectively doing the same thing, like just advertising for our name.
0:17:29 And we kind of bonded over that and became friends. And then he had done some previous
0:17:34 businesses in the import/export space. And so I was like, dude, whatever you start,
0:17:38 I’m going to be investing in it. And it obviously turned out great.
0:17:43 That’s amazing. Isn’t it crazy, by the way, how like, so, you know, I don’t know what Ryan’s worth,
0:17:48 but like, you know, if you have a multi-billion dollar company, you’re in the vicinity of hundreds
0:17:51 of millions or even billions of dollars of net worth. So you’re like, it’s like, you’re a big shot.
0:17:58 And just eight years prior, you’re selling Uber credit. Like, and that’s a pretty common story,
0:18:04 I think. For sure. For sure. Silicon Valley, it’s like so many people that you meet. I guess,
0:18:08 like, I’ve lived in San Francisco for 12 years now. And this is like a common story. There’s a
0:18:14 bunch of people I met early on who were just like hustling and then eventually started something
0:18:19 that became big. That’s so funny. Sean, that’s actually like, you talked about the surface area
0:18:25 like all the dot collecting. I think part of it is being in San Francisco. Like, I moved here in
0:18:29 2012, and there were just a lot of interesting things happening. Like, if you were out meeting
0:18:35 people, you met people doing interesting things. The way you’re saying you live is different than
0:18:40 what you probably advised the companies who you invest in to live. Just like saying yes to a
0:18:45 variety of things, which like, if I wanted to like paint this in a bad way, I’d be like, well,
0:18:50 you’re ADB and you can’t focus. And like, you’re missing out on like year eight, nine, 10, and
0:18:56 you’re 20. We’re all like, a lot of the compounding like growth comes from. How do you balance like
0:19:04 those two things of being focused, which is like what every VC will ever tell a founder versus
0:19:09 saying yes to speaking in Latvia or going to China to start a new company?
0:19:13 Totally. It’s such a good question. And I think the way I think about it is,
0:19:20 I’m probably more of year zero to one guy than I am year like one to 100. And so like, I’ve started
0:19:25 a lot of things and then mostly found other people to actually run them over time. And like,
0:19:32 some of the things I started got to exit and were successful. But if you want to have like huge
0:19:36 success, multi-billion dollar companies, which is like what we’re hopefully investing in,
0:19:42 you need to be really focused. And so I would not invest in most of the companies that I would start.
0:19:49 If I were running a VC fund, these companies aren’t VC type opportunities.
0:19:57 All right, let’s take a quick break because I got to tell you about a friend of the pod who’s
0:20:01 got their own podcast. If you know Steph Smith, she is a legend. She’s been on MFM many times
0:20:07 and she’s got her own podcast called the A16C podcast. And it’s all about technology. If you
0:20:12 think about it, technology has evolved like crazy. I mean, I grew up in the 90s. I had CDs,
0:20:17 phones had chords. You couldn’t use the internet if your mom was on the phone. And now there’s like
0:20:22 3D printers and there’s rockets that could go up into space. AI, there’s so much crazy stuff going
0:20:26 on. And you got to have a place that helps you stay ahead of the curve. And that’s what the A16C
0:20:31 podcast is trying to do. It’s a podcast from the VC firm, Andres and Horowitz. And it’s trying to
0:20:34 give you an inside look at the trends that are shaping our future. They’ve had guests like Mark
0:20:40 Cuban and Neil Stevenson on and they talk about topics like deep fakes or the science behind GLP
0:20:45 ones or autonomous drones. No small boy stuff at all. Steph is the host. She’s awesome. I think
0:20:49 you’ll enjoy the podcast. So check it out. It is the A16C Z podcast. And I like this tagline to
0:20:53 say it’s like eavesdropping on the future. That’s pretty cool. That’s a good tagline. So check it
0:21:02 out. The A16Z podcast, wherever you get your podcast. What’s the story of this all? Because I
0:21:06 remember we went out to dinner once many years ago and you’re like, you started this like you
0:21:11 helped start, I don’t know what your role was, but you helped start some local food delivery
0:21:15 business. And at the time there was just a bunch of them going out of business. Sprig was going
0:21:20 out of business. And it was like, it looked like a bloodbath. And you were like, no, we’re kind of
0:21:24 approaching it like not the venture funded way. I started ordering from it. I started eating it
0:21:30 all the time. I love this all. And Sam just said it’s now 100 million a year business. What is,
0:21:36 can you tell what is the origin of this business? Yeah. So the origin is myself and my roommate
0:21:40 in San Francisco at the time. We were, we felt like we were just like making unhealthy choices
0:21:46 and like eating the fastest thing possible to get back to work or whatever. And the idea was
0:21:51 like, what if there was healthy food in your fridge already? You would just, that would be the most
0:21:57 healthy thing you could eat and most convenient thing you could eat. And at the time, as you said,
0:22:01 there were these companies, Sprig, Munchery, Spoon Rocket, were the most popular ones in the
0:22:08 Bay Area where you could order and for like 10 or 15 bucks in 20 minutes or even 10 minutes,
0:22:11 food would show up at your door. And we were like, should we invest in these companies?
0:22:16 Should we start one of these companies? I ended up driving for Sprig. I was like,
0:22:21 let me sign up to be a driver. There he goes again. It’s so funny. Yeah. And for those people who
0:22:26 don’t know, Sprig has started by all of our friend, Gagan, and it was one of the innovators
0:22:30 before Dorda, or I think before Dorda. And you’re driving there as like due diligence?
0:22:37 Yeah, I like signed up to be a driver and to like, yeah, diligence. And I was like, okay, so
0:22:41 there are a bunch of problems with this model. I don’t know if this is going to be a massive
0:22:47 business. And the problems are, one, they’re wasting a ton of food. Like, you cannot predict
0:22:51 how much food you need on any given day. And they were like, yeah, we have this AION model. Like,
0:22:56 we’re going to predict if there’s a Giants game, it’s this, if this, it’s actually like kind of
0:23:02 impossible to predict. So wasting like a third of their food. Drivers all are driving at the same
0:23:08 time. It’s like lunchtime or dinnertime. That’s when it’s all happening. And then routes aren’t
0:23:12 optimized. So like, you’re kind of driving one place, then you go, and you have to go somewhere
0:23:18 else across the city. So we were like, can we solve this? And so we set out to solve it. And
0:23:25 the idea was a subscription service. And the idea was, you have to order by Friday your meals for
0:23:30 the week. And there are people, like, it doesn’t work for me. Like, I’m, I might be, I don’t know
0:23:33 what I’m doing tonight for dinner, but like, somebody might invite me to something and I’ll go.
0:23:37 But a lot of people are more structured in life. And the idea was, for those people, we can give
0:23:44 them a meal plan. And it’s kind of like a private chef might be. And do it at an affordable price
0:23:49 point. And it’s been great. Like the business is awesome. This whole.co. If you’re on the East
0:23:53 Coast or West Coast, you can check it out. Is it bootstrapped? Or do you guys raise funds?
0:23:58 We did ultimately raise funding. And we’ve raised a few rounds of funding, but not that much money
0:24:02 over time. But it’s going to be, it’s a good outcome for you personally. Yeah, it should be.
0:24:07 You know, look, I think food businesses are tough, low, multiple businesses.
0:24:12 And so I don’t know what it’s going to be. I haven’t like, you know, I haven’t like assigned
0:24:16 any value to that equity, but hopefully it’s going to turn. Is it still just in San Francisco?
0:24:21 I remember at one point you had said it was like doing 20 million a year in just San Francisco.
0:24:24 Is it, did it branch out into like a hundred other cities now or what?
0:24:30 So yeah, so it’s all along the West Coast and the Northeast as well.
0:24:34 Yeah, I see it out where I live. I live out right outside of New York. And I see,
0:24:41 do I see billboards? You might see billboards. You see a lot of bags. One, one kind of like
0:24:50 fun thing is a lot of celebrities use them. And you’ll see like videos of celebrities on the
0:24:55 internet, like carrying the thistle bag, which is kind of cool. Like this mega famous person
0:25:00 is carrying something that I helped create. You know, you sent us a list of like four or five,
0:25:06 six ideas. And interestingly, Sean, a few of them are in your wheelhouse involving schools.
0:25:11 A few of them are in a thing or two that I know about. And I think it’d be interesting,
0:25:16 since you see so many ideas with the fund and you’ve been well connected in Silicon Valley for,
0:25:20 I don’t know, 20 years now, if you could list out some of the interesting opportunities that
0:25:26 you’re kind of seeing. I have some that are like maybe venture scale ideas. And then most of my
0:25:30 ideas are not venture scale, but I could talk about a few of them. One is I just got back from
0:25:37 Florida. My parents moved to Florida. They moved to a Indian retirement community. And it’s called
0:25:44 Shanti Nikita. And it’s not that well executed. But the idea is Indians, they like, this guy
0:25:50 created a huge plot where he put up like a hundred homes. And then there’s a community center where
0:25:55 they have Indian food. They have like movie nights, stuff like that. It’s really fun for old, for
0:25:59 Indian people, for Indian retirees. Do you have to be Indian to go? Or is it just like everyone
0:26:04 who lives there is Indian? Yeah. But like, can I go enjoy? Yeah, you can go check it out anytime.
0:26:09 Yeah. Eat the food. And so the idea, it’s a good idea, but it’s not that well executed.
0:26:15 And I’ve just been thinking, like, there are a lot of retirement communities out there. And most
0:26:20 of them are aligned to a single affinity, which is golf. And so like most retirement communities
0:26:26 are built around golf, which is great for people who love golf, but there’s so many other affinities
0:26:32 out there that should have their own retirement community. And, you know, people are living longer
0:26:37 than they did. So like people are still retiring in 65, but they have like, not only are they
0:26:42 living longer, they’re living longer, healthier lives. So like my parents are still like relatively
0:26:48 healthy. I expect them to live another 20, 30 years. And you can build these communities where people
0:26:54 like do whatever their affinity is. And so I think there’s an opportunity here in building,
0:27:00 in like building a roadmap for an affinity and then like stamping it for other affinities over time.
0:27:05 Sean, don’t you know someone in this? Yeah, yeah. So I’ve looked at this because
0:27:10 I found it fascinating for the same reasons that she was saying, well, first they’re good
0:27:14 businesses, right? Because you’re basically taking raw land. And then you’re like, you just do the
0:27:20 math. You’re like, okay, cool, we’re going to sell, let’s call it 50 plots or 75 plots or 100 plots.
0:27:25 And the numbers get pretty big, pretty fast when you’re buying these at a raw state and you’re
0:27:29 able to sell them. But they also, one of the things that some of them are doing is they blend
0:27:34 together the like different health spans. So for example, you can start there when you’re just
0:27:40 retired, but then you need some assistance. And then there’s like assisted area. And then there’s
0:27:45 like, you need a lot of assistance. And then you’re at the kind of like the full full service model,
0:27:49 but you don’t have to move, you don’t have to like move very far, right? You’re just like
0:27:53 community still there. Yeah, you’re still in the same community. You don’t have to like, you know,
0:27:59 do this like big cross country move. It’s not the scary thing. You just sort of as your body,
0:28:02 you know, goes down that gradient, you just sort of move down a different level of service
0:28:07 in the community. And so that’s super profitable when you do that. And the LTV of the customers,
0:28:12 I mean, imagine, right, you’re 20, 30 years in one of these communities. It’s really high.
0:28:16 And I know it because my parents kind of had the same reaction that Shields Parents had, which is,
0:28:21 yeah, I mean, that’d be great. I don’t play golf. But if there was a place I had the food we like
0:28:25 with people that we get along with to speak the language, you know, that we have the same cultural
0:28:31 values. And I was like, well, that’s going to exist for every race, but also not just race,
0:28:36 like what are other things that people bond over, or is like the central pillar of their life?
0:28:40 And how do you build communities around that? That seems very lucrative to me.
0:28:47 Totally. For this, for the one my parents did, there was a waiting list. So my parents prepaid.
0:28:51 They put 100% of the money down and didn’t get the home for five years.
0:28:54 And on these things that you get, when I think of an old home, I think of like,
0:29:01 like a hospital looking center where, but these are like a plot of land where you buy a house.
0:29:05 Yeah, they bought a townhouse. Got it. And you pay like a monthly fee.
0:29:11 Yeah, you pay monthly fee. You get food, which is, you know, for Indian people,
0:29:14 especially I think a really big deal. And then they have like, they have a bunch of community
0:29:18 events, like they play like cards, they’ve, there’s a community center, they play,
0:29:22 they have movies, Indian movies going on, they have concerts. Actually, I talked about our
0:29:29 weddings. My parents, one of the events that they had was a showcase of all of our wedding videos.
0:29:35 And then like, I called in, like we called in and did Q-nip.
0:29:40 That’s hilarious. Yeah, because I feel like, you know, this is like the country club model,
0:29:44 but it’s just for, what else is there besides a bougie country club? Like, what are the other
0:29:48 ways that people could get together in a clubhouse and have, you know, that that would add a lot to
0:29:53 their lives because it’s pretty lonely. If you’re older, you’re living somewhere,
0:29:57 you don’t know other people and the effort it would take to go make new friends or drive to
0:30:02 places just for certain events versus having it almost like resort style for you. It just
0:30:06 makes a lot of sense. And we have a friend who came on the pod, Craig Fuller, who did this with
0:30:13 airline or flying enthusiasts. So basically, he bought a plot of land, he developed homes on it,
0:30:18 he pre-sold a bunch of them and basically the center of the property is instead of a golf course,
0:30:23 it’s an airplane hangar. So if you own like a Cessna or something like that, you could keep it
0:30:27 there and you could live there. So, you know, I was like, I want to go fly this morning. I’m just
0:30:30 going to walk out. There’s like a runway in the middle of the neighborhood, basically.
0:30:34 That’s so cool. Yeah. So I think you can do this for a bunch of different affinities.
0:30:38 Like I’ve talked to my Chinese friends and like their parents play a lot of mahjong and like there’s
0:30:42 stuff like that that I think you could just build this around every affinity over time. So I think
0:30:47 there’s something there. And I like these businesses that are high dollar value,
0:30:50 meaning you’re not going to be able to become a billionaire, but you can make tens of millions
0:30:54 of dollars doing this. Definitely. And very high likelihood of success. Like you don’t need,
0:30:59 like, she’ll told you the idea. You don’t need a stroke of genius now. And like 50 people could
0:31:04 go do this and they would hold, you know, it’s just a matter of execution at this point. Like if
0:31:08 you just do the basic things. Like with all these retire, like the, what do they call it? The
0:31:16 silver tsunami? Like is there a shortage of space? I think so. I think like the reason my parents
0:31:22 pre-bought it was they, like the other Indian communities, they couldn’t get in. Like the
0:31:28 prices had increased so much or they’re just, they weren’t available. So like they pre-bought
0:31:32 into a new one. So I think it has to be a doctor. It’s actually a status symbol. You can’t get into
0:31:37 the community or you’re just barred if you’re a kid’s not a doctor. Dude, how much is a nursing
0:31:42 home? By the way, should I be budgeting? Like, I was like… Starts worrying about… I’m worried
0:31:46 about… No, I’m worried about it for my parents. I was, dude, listen to this. So are you gonna put
0:31:52 your parents in a nursing home? I don’t know. I mean, like… Indians could never do that.
0:31:56 Sometimes I think they like that, don’t they? Like they want, I don’t know. I thought it was
0:32:01 like enjoyable. I don’t fucking know. But so I was, I was being with a, like a financial advisor,
0:32:06 like three years ago. And it was like 20 years in the future. I was like, what’s that $250,000
0:32:10 a year spend? And he was like, oh, you’re gonna have kids, right? I was like, yeah, but I’m not
0:32:14 gonna have triplets. He was like, well, well, you’re gonna have one kid. And I assume that they’re
0:32:19 gonna go to like a school that’s in like the 85 percentile of cost. And so in 20 years, if you
0:32:25 have kids in two years, it’s gonna be $250,000 a year. And I was like, dude, don’t make up this
0:32:29 bullshit. He goes, I didn’t make it up. I just took the trailing like 20 years of growth for like
0:32:34 a Harvard or whatever 90 percentile cost school is. And I just applied that for the next 20 years.
0:32:38 And that’s just how I came up with it. And I was like baffled that it’s gonna be,
0:32:45 I think it was maybe 150,000 a year. It was six figures. And now that I’m realizing with
0:32:51 old people homes or nursing homes, I’m pretty sure that some of them are 10 and $20,000 a month
0:32:57 today. Yeah, that’s right. That’s how much it costs. Which is insane, I guess. So like,
0:33:01 what am I gonna have to pay if my parents eventually want to do this? You know, is that,
0:33:07 are we talking like half a million dollars a year? It’s not that high. But, you know,
0:33:13 you can, like, there’s a range. So you can do a $3,000 a month bed. You can do a $8,000 a
0:33:17 month bed. You could do 15,000, 20,000, depending on if you want to go basically the Ritz-Crawlton.
0:33:22 Is 20,000 the fanciest? I don’t know. There’s no upper end to anything in life, right? You can
0:33:28 spend an infinite amount of money if you decide to. But I would say like, you, like nice places
0:33:33 can be at $10,000, $15,000 a month. But also some of these are covered by insurance. Some of
0:33:37 these are not. Some of this out of pocket, right? There’s a whole bunch of different factors. I know
0:33:41 that in also different cultures, like I said, shame on you, just kind of joking. But in Indian
0:33:45 culture, it kind of is like that. Like there’s an expectation culturally that either the parents
0:33:48 move in with you or they’re going to have their own house and you’re going to have in-home care
0:33:53 for them. So there’s all these different ways that you can do care for elders. It could be that
0:33:59 they’re in a nursing home or a senior facility, or it could be that you’re paying for somebody
0:34:02 to come to their house every day and help them manage day-to-day life at their house, which is
0:34:07 obviously going to be a different cost. My grandparents, for example, they have their own
0:34:12 house and they have basically round the clock, somebody kind of a nurse that basically lives
0:34:17 in their house that just helps them with everyday things to just function in their own home because
0:34:23 that’s what was comfortable for them. That’s cool. I think for all those, any of those different
0:34:29 types of things, like being in the same place with a community makes sense because your grandparents
0:34:33 may not need that one person full-time, but they might, but other people might want a fractional
0:34:38 one. And it’s so much easier if that person lives in the community or comes to the community
0:34:43 and can serve many people at once. A bunch of people tried this for young 20-somethings after
0:34:47 college. It’s like an after college community, blah, blah, blah. But this is way better because
0:34:52 people are going to be in these for 30-plus years. Exactly. And they have money actually versus that
0:34:56 20-something. Yeah, they might spend one or two years after college doing this in a big city,
0:35:00 but then they’re going to graduate out of it. So you’re going to have this crazy turn all the
0:35:04 time. I like your model better. All right. What’s another opportunity? What’s another idea you got?
0:35:13 Go to this Yelp one. Okay. So the idea is Yelp for professional services. And then I originally
0:35:21 had this idea, I think, before Sam put out Sam’s list. But the idea is, why is it so hard to know
0:35:25 which insurance brokers are good, which lawyers, which financial planners, which accountants?
0:35:31 How do I know who’s good and is going to serve my needs? And there should be a site for that,
0:35:39 and it’s easily monetizable. So I can give you guys an update. So Sean, 10 or eight months ago,
0:35:44 I created this thing called Sam’s List, Sam’s List.co. And it was Yelp for accountants. And
0:35:49 I just did it because I needed an accountant. And I found an accountant, by the way, on the
0:35:56 website. So it worked. It hasn’t taken off. This year, it did $99,000 in revenue and a
0:36:02 little bit of profit. And we have someone who’s working on it. But what we’re changing over is
0:36:09 making it, we’re adding a financial advisor category. But I completely agree with you
0:36:14 of having these review sites for professional services is necessary. Everyone is begging us,
0:36:18 by the way, if anyone wants to go do it, go for it. Everyone’s begging us for Sam’s List,
0:36:22 but for agencies. I don’t know anything about agencies. So I don’t know anything about that
0:36:28 space. But that is one thing that people have been begging us for, is to have an agency category.
0:36:31 But I think that’s just because I have a lot of agency owners who follow me on Twitter.
0:36:35 No, but I think if you look on Twitter, people are constantly posting like, “Hey,
0:36:42 I need help with this. Can anyone recommend an agency?” I feel like we have a website designer
0:36:48 that I really like. And I feel like once every couple of weeks, I’m recommending him to somebody.
0:36:54 And there should be a place where you could just search and find, “I’m looking for an agency.
0:37:02 I’m willing to spend X to Y.” And it should be a site that does everything. And maybe Sam’s List
0:37:07 is that… It’s fucking hard to pull these off, by the way. It’s hard. None of these things are easy.
0:37:10 Here’s why they’re hard. What we found was we had a lot of mom and pop
0:37:18 accountants on the website. And what Sean did with Milk Road and what I did with the hustles,
0:37:23 we’d have advertisers. But the ideal situation is you have advertisers who are spending tens or
0:37:26 hundreds of thousands, or once the hustle got to a certain size, sometimes they’re spending
0:37:30 millions of dollars a year. But when you’re working with a mom and pop accountant,
0:37:36 I’m basically selling packages for like $500. And you’re like the mob, like knocking on the door,
0:37:41 like totally, you don’t have money. You don’t have aid. And the client hasn’t paid yet,
0:37:46 so I don’t have the money yet. But I promise I’ll get it to you next week. It becomes a little bit
0:37:51 of a game like that. And so if you’re going to do it, the ideal situation is that you’re doing it.
0:37:55 Accountants are basically… A lot of them are like mom and pop organizations. It’s a pretty bad
0:38:02 group to sell to. But whatever organization or industry you want to do this for, it has to be
0:38:06 where they’re already spending a lot of money. And it’s bigger companies who can write bigger checks.
0:38:10 Otherwise, you’re just going to end up like Yelp. Have you guys ever known… The joke in San Francisco
0:38:16 when we lived there was Yelp is where you go to learn how to do sales because it’s such a hard
0:38:20 sales job. And all night they would hire anyone with a pulse and they would be like, all right,
0:38:24 here’s 40 grand a year. And then you get commission. But if you hit your own target earnings, you’re
0:38:27 going to make 200 grand a year. You’d be so rich. And they find out that they’re having to go like
0:38:32 get an ice cream shop to give them like $900. And wasn’t it more like threats than sales even?
0:38:37 It was like, oh, this review is really hurting you, wouldn’t you? Don’t you just wish that would
0:38:43 go away? Yeah. I might be able to make that go away. I never found any evidence of that actually
0:38:49 happening though. People have been like, provide me evidence. And I don’t think… I don’t think there’s
0:38:53 actual evidence of that happening. There is with the Better Business Bureau, by the way, but not
0:38:58 with Yelp, from what I can tell. Where did that come from? I came from business owners complaining
0:39:05 about it. Who else would put that story out there? Well, so people have said like, okay,
0:39:10 if there’s any proof of Yelp saying pay me money and you’ll get a better review or that review
0:39:15 will get knocked out, send it to me and then nobody has ever sent it. Fair enough. Fair enough.
0:39:21 All right. What’s this pearly whites one? You got my attention. Okay. So this is my wife’s idea.
0:39:27 There’s something called the dry bar where you can just go get a blow dry of your hair. It’s like
0:39:34 kind of like an in and out thing, 20 minutes and you get your blow dry. My wife feels like she would
0:39:40 like to get her teeth cleaned more than the twice a year that you’re able to with a dentist on
0:39:46 insurance. And so the idea is you go to a place and all they do is clean your teeth. They don’t
0:39:50 do any… They don’t do x-rays. They don’t do anything else. You’re in and out 20 minutes,
0:39:55 100 bucks, 120 bucks, something like that. And she would do that like every couple months.
0:40:00 And that’s the idea. So she likes getting her teeth cleaned.
0:40:07 She likes getting teeth cleaned. I think it’s weird. I don’t, but she does. And I could see
0:40:11 people doing it like, oh, I’m going to an event. Like I’m gonna get my hair done. I’m gonna get my
0:40:16 teeth done. Teeth cleaned. Well, I like the unbundling of like the dental checkup, right? It’s like,
0:40:21 what’s the, what is the one part that people kind of would want the most or need the most often?
0:40:27 That if you separated out of your normal dental kind of cycles, there might be just like a market
0:40:32 for people who just want this. I kind of buy that, but I thought it would be teeth whitening, not
0:40:36 cleaning. That’s part of it also. And actually, like you probably make more money in the whitening
0:40:40 side. But what you could do is actually like, you standardize and like have a really nice looking
0:40:47 space. And dentists would franchise this. And they’d be like, oh, I’m a dentist. I can open one of
0:40:51 these. You need to have dental hygienists. And in some states, you need to have a dentist there.
0:40:54 But it doesn’t have to be like, they don’t have to be doing the work. They just have to be there.
0:41:01 Right. Dude, I went to my dentist and he had this sign. But like it stood out because everything
0:41:07 in the dentist’s office looked like a dentist’s office. It just looked like mom and poppy. And
0:41:11 then there was one sign that looked really nice. And this one sign was basically advertising,
0:41:17 kind of what you’re describing. It was like a 20 minute teeth whitening for like 85 bucks or whatever
0:41:23 it was, some dollar amount. And I was like, what is this? Is this yours? And he’s like, oh, actually,
0:41:30 yeah, there’s like this company that made this service that then we can then sell to our customers.
0:41:34 And they provide like the marketing and the name of this, and they’re trying to popularize this.
0:41:38 But we just get incremental revenue because we’re able to upsell this essentially.
0:41:43 And I was like, oh, that’s basically like the Hunt Brothers pizza model. What they did for
0:41:47 gas stations. They’re like, hey, here’s a, here’s a pizza shop inside your gas station.
0:41:51 Somebody’s doing this for dental offices where they’re putting in this like
0:41:57 teeth whitening upsell program. And I was like, it’s kind of work. I get it. It works because
0:42:02 otherwise, you know, the dentist offers like, you know, 1500 services. If you really wanted to,
0:42:06 you could go and ask them. What’s it called? I don’t remember the name of this one, but
0:42:10 I don’t think it was, I don’t know how popular this is, but I remember just thinking, oh,
0:42:15 this makes sense. I could see why it’s a win for the dentist. It’s a win for this company.
0:42:19 And I could see why consumers would be when you’re just sitting there trapped in the chair,
0:42:21 literally like strapped into the chair. It’s the first thing you see in front of you.
0:42:25 You stare at that thing for 15 minutes and you’re looking at this before and after photo,
0:42:28 and you’re like, yeah, cool, add that on. I’ll take that. I’ll take the whites.
0:42:38 So I’m obsessed with being transparent about money, particularly with ultra high net worth
0:42:42 people. The reason being is that there’s not a lot of information on this demographic.
0:42:47 And so because I own Hampton, which is a community for founders, I have access to thousands of young
0:42:51 and incredibly high net worth people. We have people worth hundreds of millions and sometimes
0:42:55 billions of dollars inside of Hampton. And so every year we do this thing called a Hampton
0:43:00 wealth report where we survey over a thousand entrepreneurs and we ask them all types of
0:43:04 information about their personal finances. We ask them about how they’re investing their money,
0:43:08 what their portfolio looks like. We ask them about their monthly spend habits. We ask them
0:43:11 how they’ve set up their estate, how much money they’re going to lead to charity, how much money
0:43:15 they keep in cash, how much money they’re paying themselves from their businesses. Basically,
0:43:22 every question that you want to ask a rich person, we went and we do it for you and we do it with
0:43:25 hundreds and hundreds of people. So if you want to check out the report, it’s called the Hampton
0:43:29 wealth report. Just go to joinhampton.com, click our menu and you’re going to see a section called
0:43:33 reports and you’re going to see it all right there. It’s very easy. So again, it’s called the
0:43:38 Hampton wealth report. Go to joinhampton.com, click the menu and then click the report button
0:43:46 and let me know what you think. Speaking of Hunt Brothers, another idea and this is one of my best
0:43:52 friends is doing this and I invested, but it’s called Pizza Rita Luna and the idea is when people
0:43:59 go to hotels, they most often order pizza, like mid-range hotels, people order pizza,
0:44:05 constantly dominoes coming in. So the idea was what if we gave you the ability to sell
0:44:11 a high quality pizza and originally it was like, we’ll give you the oven and the pizza that’s like
0:44:20 hand-tossed, made in Italy actually, shipped over from Italy, tastes amazing and so a lot of hotels
0:44:23 use Pizza Rita Luna and then we have the table tents and all that other stuff.
0:44:32 Dude, this is a great idea. It’s just Hunt Brothers, but for hotels and Italian. Is it working?
0:44:37 It’s working, yeah. It’s been pretty successful. It’s still fairly early, but it’s doing really well.
0:44:43 And what’s the hard part about this? Because the Hunt Brothers thing, I think they started out doing
0:44:48 wholesale ingredients, so they already had a ton of infrastructure in place where they were already
0:44:53 selling doughs and all that stuff to pizza shops all around the place and that’s why they were able
0:44:58 to just take the next logical step and create their own brand and then provide those same ingredients
0:45:06 to the gas station owners. Is this really hard to spin up or was this actually pretty doable?
0:45:12 I mean, it’s complicated. My friend is on a plane to Italy all the time. He wanted to make sure it
0:45:16 was super high quality, something that hotels felt really proud to offer.
0:45:23 Wait, but why? I don’t think I could tell if this pizza’s from Italy. Would my taste buds know the
0:45:26 difference between Kentucky and Italy? He just said it. Once he says it, you’re like, yeah, this is
0:45:33 not cheap pizza. It’s not cheap pizza. You know how Florida has Hollywood, Florida? It’s a small
0:45:38 town. Yeah, can we call it like, you know, is there like an Italy Kentucky? Italy, Wisconsin.
0:45:45 No, it turns out like the ingredients, like it just does taste better. Like they know how to do
0:45:49 it there. It’s actually, so what you’re probably thinking is like, isn’t it expensive to bring it
0:45:54 over here? It’s actually not. It’s kind of worth it and they have the experience and know how it’s
0:45:59 actually made like near Naples, which is where pizza comes from. Dude, my dad, I remember when we
0:46:03 were a kid, he saw this pizza place and the sign just said hand-tossed pizza and there was like a
0:46:08 guy in the window tossing. And my dad wouldn’t shut up about the hand-tossed pizza for like,
0:46:12 you know, a year. And these things just work. I don’t know why. There’s something to it. If it
0:46:16 says world’s greatest cup of coffee, I buy it every single time. Oh, totally. That shit always
0:46:22 works on me. Do you guys know the Grey Goose story? Yeah, the taller bottles. The taller bottles,
0:46:26 but also, so the guy who started Grey Goose started it, by the way, when he was in his like
0:46:31 70s. He was like, he was like 70 years old and decided to start a startup. Was he successful?
0:46:38 So, he, before that, he had created Jägermeister. Not created, but he had brought Jägermeister to
0:46:43 the U.S. and made it popular. So, like, the Jägermeister story was he’s out one night. All right.
0:46:48 He was like part of the family alcohol business. His wife’s, his wife’s parents’ business. And then
0:46:52 they get in a fight. They kick him out and he’s like, all right, fuck this. I got to do something.
0:46:58 And he’s out one night. He sees people, he sees a German like group of friends sipping this like
0:47:03 weird cough syrup looking thing. And it was Jägermeister and it was like a after dinner type
0:47:09 of thing. And he’s like, what is that? He inquires about it. He figures it out. And he decides,
0:47:14 I’m going to become the U.S. importer of this thing called Jägermeister. But to make it popular,
0:47:20 what he did was he created the Jägerbomb and got like Jägerettes, the girls who would go around
0:47:25 bars pouring the stuff down college kids’ throats. And he made it the party drink. So, Jäger becomes
0:47:29 this like big drink. He’s successful. Now he’s in his seventies. And he’s like, all right,
0:47:32 I’m going to start a new one. I want to start a vodka company. And he basically says,
0:47:37 I’m going to do two things differently. First, he goes, we need to source the vodka. And they go,
0:47:41 great, we’re on our next flight out to Moscow. And he goes, no, no, no, we’re not doing
0:47:45 Russian vodka. They go, what do you mean? We’re all like, that’s where vodka comes from. He goes,
0:47:50 go to France and find me vodka. They go, there’s no vodka in France. He goes, go to France and
0:47:54 find me vodka. Because if I told you this is French vodka, it just makes that dirty Russian
0:47:59 vodka look like crap. And so they’re like, but what if it’s not better? He goes, I said it’s
0:48:04 French vodka. That means it’s better. And so he sends one group there and he tells the other group,
0:48:10 he goes, go, go to the bar right now and buy the most expensive vodka that there is. Bring all
0:48:14 the bottles here. And they bring all the bottles and he’s basically like, he lines them all up.
0:48:20 And he goes, cool, whatever the time, what’s the most expensive vodka was like absolute at the time.
0:48:25 He’s like, cool, we’re going to be 30% more expensive than whatever the most expensive one is.
0:48:30 And what that’s their bottle? Okay, it’s this fat bottle. We’re going to be a tall bottle.
0:48:34 And then he got that he commissioned somebody to make it and they did the frosted glass and he’s
0:48:39 like, that’s it, that looks expensive as hell. And he created Grey Goose off of this very simple
0:48:45 concept. It was like either Italian or French vodka put in this expensive tall frosted glass
0:48:50 bottle. So tall, it wouldn’t even fit on the shelves. So you had to put it on the top shelf,
0:48:54 because if you put it on the middle shelf, it wouldn’t fit. It was too tall. So it had to become
0:48:58 top shelf like vodka by default, by default, because it was so tall. Isn’t that amazing?
0:49:04 That’s hilarious. That’s so funny. It’s interesting because it’s basically like a commodity,
0:49:08 like it’s all, it’s all pretty much the same. It’s hard for people to distinguish. I have a friend
0:49:18 who started a vodka brand. And the bottle cost more than the vodka. And it was like a premium brand.
0:49:26 Dude, it seems like, it seems like a, like a horrible business to be in. It seems like really
0:49:30 challenging. Alcohol in particular is tough because of the regulatory environment. It’s
0:49:34 different state by state, what you can sell and you have to get licensed and all this stuff. It is
0:49:41 challenging. Do you want to do another one? Yeah, what else? What else are you excited about,
0:49:45 Shiel, that you think somebody could go do? I think something I want in my life is like a school
0:49:52 for AI tools. So like, maybe you could franchise it. But for me, like right now, I would pay a few
0:49:57 hundred bucks to go to a class like half a day just to become a better photographer, iPhone
0:50:02 photographer and like show me how to edit things and like make fun, funny things on the internet,
0:50:07 memes or whatever. Same thing for video. And I think the same is true for many other
0:50:13 products that you can use like AI or software for. So it’s like a software school in person.
0:50:18 Two months just for you, like just other two other tools that are useful in your life.
0:50:25 Exactly. Yeah. It’s for adults. It can be for adults. I think start with adults and then also kids.
0:50:29 Sean, he was telling me before this, he was like, you know, I’m trying to hire this person to teach
0:50:35 me how to do like video editing and use AI. And I was like, two things. One, Sean actually hired an
0:50:42 AI like tutor, which is actually pretty amazing. And then also you went on this big rant a month
0:50:47 ago. It’s probably the greatest in terms of like EG guy of like what the world wants,
0:50:51 what Sean’s good at, what he’s passionate about and like what the world’s willing to pay for it.
0:50:56 Like him creating like, you know, another full sale university. It’s quite aligned.
0:51:04 Oh yeah. I had this idea. Well, first I did an AI tutor mostly just because I’ve realized that
0:51:10 coaches are just an absolute life hack. Once you get some money, it’s like a luxury that doesn’t
0:51:15 actually cost that much, but adds a lot of value to your life. And so now anytime I want to do
0:51:21 something, my first stop is who’s a coach I can hire that will speed up my learning curve,
0:51:25 be a forcing function because they’re going to show up and it’s going to like force me to
0:51:30 actually stick to this hobby. And yeah, get better faster. How do you find him?
0:51:36 With this, I just tweeted it out and I was like, hey, who could I’m willing to pay $500 an hour
0:51:42 for somebody who’s going to you learn all the new stuff that’s going on in AI. And then I want to
0:51:47 sit with you for 90 minutes every Wednesday. And I want you to tell me what’s going on, but also
0:51:53 like teach like, like I’m hands on keyboard, struggling, trying to do the thing because
0:51:57 that way I’ll like actually learn how to do it. And it’s been kind of amazing to be honest.
0:51:58 You’re still doing it yet?
0:52:03 We’re still doing it. It kind of shifted a little bit like other friends wanted to join.
0:52:06 So I invited a couple other friends and it’s just kind of a group thing now. And
0:52:13 yeah, it’s pretty amazing. So that’s, that’s been great on the AI side. But just in general,
0:52:20 I’m a big like, it’s like, it’s like comical now how, how my first answer to everything is to get a
0:52:26 coach. And but whatever, I’m going to keep doing it till it doesn’t work. And it’s what it’s worked
0:52:31 at everything. We hired, we hired an organizational coach to come and teach us how to like organize
0:52:37 a closet. Like I’m so on board with. Oh my God, we pay so much to our organizer. We don’t have
0:52:43 a coach, we just have an organizer who comes in and she is doing so well. She, last time she
0:52:47 was here, which was like two weeks ago, because she’s here all the time organizing something.
0:52:52 She was like, oh, my client from San Francisco is flying me. I’m going to go
0:52:59 organize their new place in Switzerland. So she’s like, this thing going, it’s an incredible
0:53:03 business. I mean, it’s not like a huge business, but she’s, she’s got people under her and stuff
0:53:07 now. Is it just like magic? Like is your house just like incredible now? I think it’s fine. My
0:53:12 wife loves it. Wow. I have a friend that just bought a home. They moved in, it’s huge house,
0:53:20 like 8,000 square feet. They paid this service $25,000 to be there before, like to map out where
0:53:24 everything like it was like, you know, like starting from scratch to like be there to map it all out,
0:53:28 to buy the storage supplies and then to put the labels and to come up with the strategy. It was
0:53:35 25 grand. That’s a lot. It’s a lot. I think we paid, I don’t remember, I don’t know how much we
0:53:40 paid total because I don’t see it because if I saw it, it would drive me crazy. But I do remember
0:53:47 the kitchen was a couple thousand dollars. Do you, do you have the like Indian frugality gene?
0:53:55 Oh, big time. Okay. You’re not a good spender. I’m not a good spender. And it’s like my lifestyle
0:54:00 hasn’t changed. That might net worth has increased quite dramatically over the past decade. And my
0:54:05 lifestyle hasn’t changed. I’m always looking for a deal. Like anything I buy, I’m going to slick
0:54:10 deals first. I’ve like got the credit card points thing down. Like all this stuff that
0:54:15 shouldn’t, I shouldn’t be doing is like stupid optimization. But for me, it’s kind of a game
0:54:20 and I love it. What are the, give us a quick credit card tip. What do you, what’s your credit card
0:54:24 stack? Cause I don’t want to do the research, but I might just piggyback off you. Yeah, yeah,
0:54:29 for sure. Okay. So I use the US bank smartly card. It’s 4% on everything. And if you just want a
0:54:35 single card, that’s the card to go off of US bank smartly. That’s what it is. Yeah. Yeah. It’s 4%
0:54:44 on everything. By the way, I use it on my taxes. So wait, what? I pay 1.82% to the government
0:54:50 to use my credit card. And then I get 4% back from US bank. It’s just like, I’m getting 2%
0:54:54 back on my taxes. I could use that for like Facebook ad spend. I could use it for anything.
0:54:58 Use a Facebook ad spend. Yeah, exactly. Is there like a limit or is it unlimited?
0:55:05 Just your credit limit. Wow. And now it’s called US bank smartly. And you have to have,
0:55:10 you have to have $100,000 with US bank, but what I did is I just have a brokerage account
0:55:17 with a single stock and that’s my $100,000 at US bank. It’s a great deal. Like they,
0:55:20 they’re losing money on me for sure. Dude, on one hand, I’m like, this is
0:55:24 sick. I gotta do this. On the other hand, I’m like, I just like, you know, I don’t know.
0:55:30 Setting it up. Dude, 4% is pretty legit. I went through a lot of hoops to get 2.6 from Bank of
0:55:35 America. Bank of America. Yeah. And so now you’re just shitting on that. This is way better.
0:55:38 This is way better. This is way better. You also tweet all types of stuff. Like the other day,
0:55:43 you’re like, does Robinhood give like 4% interest or something? Yeah. So Robinhood,
0:55:47 Robinhood has a card that gives 3% cashback on everything. And then right now they have a promo
0:55:54 where it’s like 4% or 5%. It was 5% if you put $25,000 into a Robinhood brokerage.
0:55:59 Dude, it’s kind of actually interesting because if you are a really big company or you’re spending
0:56:05 a lot, couldn’t the difference between 0% and 4% like have a meaningful impact on your margin?
0:56:10 Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if you’re buying Facebook ads for like, could be really massive
0:56:16 for you. But for me, even just my taxes, getting 2% back on my taxes is many thousands of dollars.
0:56:22 It’s pretty sweet. That’s crazy. It’s like free money. I know a guy who, well, I could say it
0:56:27 actually. His name is David Hauser. He did a podcast, so it was public, but he sold his company
0:56:35 Grasshopper for I think $125 million. And he’s like famously, he’s a friend of mine. He’s like
0:56:42 famously frugal and whatever. And he was like, convinced American Express to let him pay his
0:56:47 tax bill, which on a $100 million sale, I don’t know what that would be, $36, $40 million or something.
0:56:55 And he was like, I now have unlimited, basically unlimited flying. He’s like for the next 30 years,
0:57:02 I ball out on flying and I don’t have to pay for a thing. And then he paid with his $40 million
0:57:09 tax bill on AMX. The one thing, so speaking of miles, so like one thing I don’t want to do is
0:57:13 accumulate a lot of miles. I already have more miles that I need. And like people are like, oh,
0:57:19 well, you’re getting 4%, but I’m actually getting 5% because I get miles and miles are worth 2.3
0:57:23 cents to me because, but then I look into it and they’re like, how is it worth that much to you?
0:57:28 You’re like flying on some random time of the day on a business class flight, but it’s not
0:57:32 the flight I want to take. Just give me cash back and I’ll buy my own shit. Right. Also,
0:57:38 don’t miles inflate at some like insane inflation rate plus you don’t actually use all your miles.
0:57:42 So even in theory, every point is worth X. You’re never going to use 100% of your points.
0:57:47 So you have to discount back off that. Exactly. So for me, cashback is king.
0:57:52 Dude, I know a guy in Hampton, by the way, who is a two-person company and he spends 10 million
0:57:56 a year on Facebook ads or something. And he’s like, I got all these miles. And so I was like,
0:58:00 hey, book a flight for me and I’ll just send you the money. And I got, you know, I bought
0:58:05 four first-class tickets to Europe and I got probably a 30% discount because of it.
0:58:07 That’s awesome. It was like significant savings for me.
0:58:13 Do you have any other good financial wins or hacks? So you got the 4% cashback card.
0:58:15 Is there anything else that like is a needle mover?
0:58:19 Actually, I’ve started using Robinhood for a lot of stuff. So Robinhood had this thing where,
0:58:21 and they, they continue to have it where.
0:58:27 That’s dangerous. I don’t think it’s dangerous. Robinhood is a big company. They’re, they’re
0:58:34 making lots of money. I’m, I’m, I’m a Robinhood bull. And they had this thing where you could move
0:58:42 your assets over and they would match 1%. So it’s pretty amazing if you have, let’s say,
0:58:48 $10 million of assets in stocks somewhere, you move it over, you get $100,000 free money.
0:58:52 How long does it have to stay there? I think it’s two years.
0:58:57 But I’ve been very happy with the service and, and I, I, I just did the transfer,
0:59:03 ACAST transfer from Schwab. Schwab called me like red alert and they were like,
0:59:06 we’ll give you $15,000 right now in your account. You don’t have to do anything.
0:59:09 You just, we’re just going to give you $15,000. You just don’t move your money.
0:59:13 And I was like, yeah, but I’m getting a lot of work from Schwab, from Robinhood.
0:59:17 So I, I moved it and I’ve been very happy. And then I, I have a lot of other, I now use other
0:59:20 products on them and they have a great margin rate. It’s like 5%. It’s great.
0:59:25 Do you, are you like a stock picker? What do you do with your personal portfolio?
0:59:28 Are you just like boring index funds? Do you do anything interesting?
0:59:33 Yeah, I want to not be a stock picker. I want to be boring index funds, but inevitably,
0:59:38 like I get excited about an idea and I invest in it. And it’s been very good for me. I’ve,
0:59:41 I’ve like been fortunate to outperform the market pretty significantly.
0:59:42 What was your big best pick?
0:59:47 I bought, like my biggest position was NVIDIA in 2017.
0:59:48 No shit.
0:59:51 And what was that based on? What was the idea there?
0:59:57 It was, I did a lot of research, got excited and I thought there were two theses. Like I actually,
1:00:04 it was more based on crypto than it was AI. And I was wrong. Like we, we moved away from GPUs,
1:00:09 moved into ASICs for crypto, but it ended up being right anyway.
1:00:14 And that’s awesome. So that was in 2017. The stock was rain.
1:00:16 It’s about 30, 30 something X from that.
1:00:20 Yeah. Yeah. It looks like it’s a 30 X, 150 today. Back then it was five bucks.
1:00:23 30 X is wild. Did you keep it in the whole time?
1:00:28 And it was, yeah, I’ve kept it the whole time. I haven’t actually bought anymore or sold any.
1:00:33 So yeah, I have, and it was, it was like my biggest position in 2017.
1:00:37 And you’re, you’re basically like a fintech expert, right? You’re fun, this fintech.
1:00:41 You’ve invested in a bunch of fintech things. What’s your position on crypto?
1:00:45 Are you like, are you a big Bitcoin bull? Do you believe in all the altcoins?
1:00:48 Like what’s your, what do you stand? Cause I haven’t heard you talk about it much.
1:00:55 Yeah. I don’t talk about that much. Bitcoin is so actually looking at my assets, it’s probably
1:01:02 Bitcoin number one, Nvidia number two, and then like the house that I live in number three.
1:01:10 No way, really. Yeah. And so say more, what got you into Bitcoin or crypto at the beginning?
1:01:13 And is it just Bitcoin or do you also believe in ETH and Solana and other things?
1:01:18 I only have Bitcoin and ETH. I have some of the others, but like not a meaningful amount.
1:01:26 I actually have a tweet where I was like, like anti Bitcoin and Bitcoin was like 60 cents or
1:01:30 something. I was like, this is never going to work. Here’s why governments are never going to allow it,
1:01:35 blah, blah, blah. And then I finally bought in around $300. And the idea was I still like,
1:01:37 what people believe then, what people told me was like,
1:01:42 it’s going to be a fast and efficient way to move money. And that isn’t what happened at all.
1:01:45 Right. And so in some ways I was right. It doesn’t, it doesn’t matter that I was right.
1:01:51 I lost a lot of money by not doing it earlier. And I think as a store of value, like the more
1:01:55 successful it gets, the more successful it’s going to get. Right. And so that’s it. And more and more
1:02:02 people are putting money in. So I, I’ve put money in. Now for me personally, for me personally,
1:02:06 that makes sense. For my fund, I want to invest in things that like actual people are going to be
1:02:13 able to use and like have real impact on the world. And I haven’t found that many use cases.
1:02:16 We have made a couple of investments in stablecoins. I think there’s something there.
1:02:19 Yeah, I was going to ask you a nerdy question. There’s a,
1:02:22 a lot of people are paying attention to stablecoins right now.
1:02:27 Is that what Far coin is? That’s not a stablecoin for sure.
1:02:36 So people don’t know a stablecoin is basically it’s a digital token. So it has the benefits of
1:02:40 being like able to be transferred online easily and programmable, things like that.
1:02:45 But it’s just pegged to the dollar. So you put a dollar in a bank account and then one
1:02:50 digital dollar is created. And that’s the idea is that in order for the digital dollar to be
1:02:54 created, an actual U.S. dollar has to be put in a bank account somewhere. And so there’s companies
1:03:02 like Circle and others, Tether, who are supposedly doing this. And I guess it’s kind of like a lot
1:03:06 of people believe it’s like stablecoins is taking off now. There’s some charts. I think that all in
1:03:11 podcast has been talking about this recently. A stablecoin, didn’t a stablecoin business get
1:03:15 bought or a tech business that was bought for over a billion by Stripe?
1:03:19 Billion dollars by Stripe. So what’s, is there anything actually going on here? Or is this
1:03:23 just all a lot of hot air? I think there’s something real here. I think like they’re
1:03:28 transferring money internationally is challenging. And there’s something called Swift,
1:03:33 which is how banks do it. It’s basically like a messaging protocol. I think stablecoins can
1:03:38 make things easier. I think still at the end of the day, I think people are overhiding stablecoins
1:03:44 because at the end of the day in on-ramp and off-ramp to get money. And they aren’t that.
1:03:50 Like I had this issue. I had a wedding in India and I needed to pay a lot of vendors in cash.
1:03:55 And there was a lot of cash. And I was like, hey, I tweeted it. Can somebody help me get a
1:04:02 lot of cash in Mexico? And the reality is there’s a reason why it was so difficult. And the reason is
1:04:08 like money laundering. And actually also even what I was doing was illegal because or what my
1:04:12 vendors were doing. They wanted cash because they don’t want to pay taxes. And so the reason it’s
1:04:17 hard is because the government doesn’t want you to even want to skirt taxes. And I had this
1:04:21 convoluted thing. Actually, you guys might appreciate. I convinced my bank to let me,
1:04:25 normally you can withdraw a certain amount of money per day. I convinced my bank Schwab to
1:04:32 let me do $4,000 per account per day. And I opened six bank accounts at Schwab and I was able to go
1:04:38 to an ATM and withdraw $4,000 of cash per account per day. And I was there for the week prior that
1:04:41 basically paid for a lot of my wedding. Dude, do you know what the takeaway from this all,
1:04:45 by the way, is it’s like, that’s the second time that you’ve said something where you’ve
1:04:50 went to like a major institution and like negotiated. Yeah. Like when I hear about like,
1:04:55 you went to Schwab, I’m like, is Schwab a person that you can go to? Like, I don’t understand.
1:04:59 You know what I mean? It’s like, it’s like getting like Google Adwords help or it’s like,
1:05:04 it’s like, if I had a Gmail issue, it’s like, just, hey, Google, yeah, yeah, I need you to fix
1:05:08 this. Like I didn’t even realize that you could call Schwab or call Bank of America and like,
1:05:13 yeah, I know you guys don’t offer this, but you know, you got to.
1:05:18 Yeah, I think if you explain your situation to them, actually, one thing I do is like,
1:05:22 I know pretty quickly if I’ve got a good agent or a bad agent, and then if I have a bad agent,
1:05:28 I hang up and call a guy. Like, you know, somebody who’s like going, like, I just told them my story,
1:05:33 like told them what I needed. And, and then like somebody walked me through the process and I got
1:05:37 it done. And so I think you could do that all the time. And then speaking of negotiation or like
1:05:41 talking through something, I think something a lot of people should do is realize like,
1:05:48 you can negotiate at Macy’s. Like I did this with my wife. My wife, she bought a wedding dress,
1:05:54 post wedding dress at Macy’s. Like it was for, for one of our weddings. And we were,
1:05:58 we were at Macy’s and I was like, I want to teach you to negotiate. I want you to get a
1:06:03 better deal on this dress. It was like, I don’t know, $400 dress or something. And I was like,
1:06:09 can you get a better deal? And she did, she got like 20% off just by asking at Macy’s,
1:06:12 for like a person at Macy’s, and she saved like a hundred bucks or something.
1:06:22 Yeah, I mean, I’ll do things like, like, I’ll be like, hey, like, I don’t, I won’t know if they
1:06:26 had a sale recently, but I’ll be like, I think you had a sale recently. Like can you, like you,
1:06:30 you had like a, you know, like, for example, like I went and got something at Brooks Brothers
1:06:34 here a day. And I know that one time a year, they do like a 40% off sale. And I went like
1:06:39 three months after that sale, but I was just like, Hey, can you, can you match that? And if you,
1:06:44 I always find, I always prefer to go to women, like the workers with the, that who are women,
1:06:50 I have way more success because they’re just like easier to like get along with. And like,
1:06:54 you know, you like do like a little fake flirt, but that works like way better for me is,
1:06:58 is for, with retail, just like talking to a woman and being like, Hey, how are you doing today?
1:07:02 You know, look, I know this is a little obnoxious, but can I get that sale discount or what?
1:07:07 Yeah. And always they have like, they have a bunch of QR codes or like bar codes,
1:07:11 and they just scan the QR code or bar code and it’s like, Oh, here’s 20% off. And like,
1:07:16 all you do is ask. My buddy Dan, his mom was like the master at this. If we’re like, when we were
1:07:20 in college, we would go try to like, you know, buy stuff for our dorm rooms or our apartment.
1:07:23 And she would just, while we’re checking out, she’d be like, and give the boys a discount,
1:07:27 give them these college boys, give these boys a discount. And then they would be like, what,
1:07:31 for what? And then she’s like, give them a discount. Yeah. She would just be like,
1:07:35 come on, give the boys a discount. These, they need it. And then she would just tell them,
1:07:40 like, give the boys a discount. And then sure enough, 20, 30, 40% off would just happen
1:07:42 like that. And I would never even think to do it, but she would just say it like,
1:07:48 like, it’s a done deal. Like, Oh, it’s happening. Not like, do you think it’d be possible? Is there
1:07:52 any way we would really appreciate it? She was just like, Oh, and then throw that in,
1:07:55 put the discount on top of it, whatever you got, like, give the boys a discount.
1:07:58 Like alphas, like every clerk. Yeah, exactly.
1:08:05 I think it’s something like, I want my kids to learn, like, if I have kids in the future,
1:08:09 hopefully I will. Like, I want them to learn these sort of things. And it’s like,
1:08:13 it’s also like, somebody posted like, what job do you wish you had? I wish I had a sales job
1:08:19 growing up. And like, the people that are selling you like, Dead Sea cosmetics or something,
1:08:22 like they’re just coming up to you or like cell phone accessories, they’re like, Hey,
1:08:25 what phone do you have? And then they try to sell you something.
1:08:29 I feel like those are really useful things that I wish, I wish I knew.
1:08:35 Dude, the Dead Sea guy at the mall. Oh my God. An unbelievable skill set.
1:08:38 Just an incredible skill set. Is that a scent or a lotion?
1:08:47 I think it’s like a body scrub. Yeah. Got it. And it’s got to be like a 98% profit margin sort of
1:08:52 best. Yeah. Didn’t your dad sell like door-to-door or something?
1:08:55 Yeah. My dad sold him encyclopedia’s door-to-door when he just moved here from India. It’s actually
1:09:01 a great story. He like, he was very poor in India. He, to come to the United States, like,
1:09:06 he studied IIT in India, great university. And then like to come to America, he needed to raise
1:09:13 money. So he like raised money from the community to pay for his flight over. And you had to have
1:09:18 $300 to stay in America. Like on your passport, they stamped that he had $300. He came with
1:09:23 exactly $300 in his pocket. And so he raised a bunch of money and he had to pay them back.
1:09:26 And he had the stipend as a master’s student and then a PhD student.
1:09:32 And he decided to work as an encyclopedia salesman. Indian guy, thick Indian accent at that time.
1:09:38 He was in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, door-to-door selling encyclopedias. And he became
1:09:43 the best encyclopedia salesman in the country. Did he really? Yeah, he really did. Have you
1:09:47 asked him about it? Like, what was the secret? What was the pitch? I think it was just like
1:09:54 working day and night, I think was the pitch. And crazy enough, so he made enough money to buy
1:10:01 an apartment in like a condo in India, like a one-bedroom condo in India. And that’s still
1:10:06 the condo that like my uncle lived in. And still, like, we still go and stay in that condo that my
1:10:12 dad bought with his earnings from working as an encyclopedia salesman.
1:10:14 Dude, do you actually have a bunch of good tweets about your dad? Like, I feel like I kind
1:10:18 of know about him, like, apparently. Did that video, did you see the video recently?
1:10:25 Well, first of all, he quoted Robert Mugabe, who is like a dictator in Africa. Like, the dad,
1:10:29 like, at Shiel’s wedding, he like gave a speech. He was eddy, croted, Robert Mugabe,
1:10:33 who I think was like the dictator of Zimbabwe. Like, he must have been like…
1:10:35 What was the quote? It was about treating everyone well.
1:10:41 It was a good quote. Like, he was clearly on like brainy quotes, and he typed in like
1:10:45 quote on love. And like, it was by like a killer dictator.
1:10:52 And my dad is like Robert Mugabe, very famous for his quips. And I feel like I think Robert
1:10:54 Mugabe was famous for something else, but okay.
1:10:59 And then he’s got this other video of his dad on a cruise. Like, he’s like, we lost my dad,
1:11:02 but we found him dancing or something like that. He’s like dancing with this other couple.
1:11:06 And then, so we went on a cruise, family cruise, a couple of weeks ago.
1:11:12 It was awesome. I was very skeptical of going on a cruise. We went with eight family members.
1:11:19 It was super awesome. But anyway, we go to this tasting menu restaurant, and my dad shows up
1:11:25 with a pizza to the tasting menu restaurant. And then I filmed him, like the people were
1:11:29 like pretty mad at him. Yeah, I saw that. I loved it. He like covered it with a napkin.
1:11:33 He’s like, oh, yeah, no problem. And they’re like, no, sir, we can see it. It’s still there.
1:11:41 He’s like a baby. You like put something in front of their eyes, and it just doesn’t appear anymore.
1:11:46 Dude, thank you for doing this.
1:11:50 Well, this was fun hanging with you, as it always is. And I recommend, if you want to hear
1:11:54 She’ll Store, go back and listen to the episode. I think it’s episode 18.
1:12:00 I think it’s called the guy who made millions on selling wacky domains,
1:12:06 because you told your story in order there, and it’s a great episode. I went,
1:12:10 for me to go back and re-listen to my voice, like anybody knows, if you’re listening to your own
1:12:14 voice on a recording, that’s painful. And so for the fact that I went through an hour episode this
1:12:18 morning, that means the episode’s pretty good. And before you guys made it so big.
1:12:23 Yeah, you were there. You were the cause. And you got to give She’ll a follow on Twitter. You are a
1:12:28 great follow. Like, you just do the, like, it’s just the small things in life. Like, you just
1:12:33 tweeted out, apparently, do you have a couch that’s like a square? Yeah, I, it’s a nine foot by nine
1:12:40 foot couch. I love this thing. My wife hates it, by the way. But I love it. You just tweeted out a
1:12:44 photo of your couch, and I just like, who on earth would buy this? And then I’m somehow convinced
1:12:47 that it’s the right decision. Dude, I’ve always been curious. They go to the furniture stores,
1:12:52 and they have the pit. It looks like a pizza, because it’s like a nine square thing. You have to
1:12:57 like hop on like a small child and just like crawl around the couch because your feet aren’t
1:13:03 going to touch the ground. And you did. You bought it. I love it. It’s so fun when you have people
1:13:07 over, but it’s also modular. So you can turn it into other things. Thanks for doing this, man.
1:13:10 You’re the best. We appreciate you. All right, that’s odd.
1:13:14 I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.
1:13:20 I put my all in it like no days off on a road. Let’s travel never looking back.
1:13:40 Hey, everyone. A quick break. My favorite podcast guests
1:13:44 on my first million is Dharmesh. Dharmesh founded HubSpot. He’s a billionaire.
1:13:48 He’s one of my favorite entrepreneurs on earth. And on one of our podcasts recently,
1:13:54 he said the most valuable skill that anyone could have when it comes to making money in business
1:13:59 is copywriting. And when I say copywriting, what I mean is writing words that get people to take
1:14:03 action. And I agree, by the way, I learned how to be a copywriter in my 20s. It completely changed
1:14:07 my life. I ended up starting and selling a company for tens of millions of dollars.
1:14:11 And copywriting was the skill that made all of that happen. And the way that I learned how to
1:14:17 copyright is by using a technique called copywork, which is basically taking the best sales letters.
1:14:22 And I would write it word for word. And I would make notes as to why each phrase was impactful
1:14:26 and effective. And a lot of people have been asking me about copywork. So I decided to make a whole
1:14:31 program for it. It’s called copy that copy that dot com. It’s only like 120 bucks. And it’s a simple,
1:14:36 fast, easy way to improve your copywriting. And so if you’re interested, you need to check it out.
1:14:41 It’s called copy that you can check it out at copy that dot com.