0:00:03 I can’t believe we just agreed to do public math.
0:00:05 We only have like two rules here.
0:00:07 One, don’t get canceled.
0:00:11 Two, don’t embarrass yourself by doing public math.
0:00:12 And we did it.
0:00:14 – We did it a bunch of times, frankly.
0:00:15 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
0:00:18 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
0:00:21 ♪ I put my all in it like days off ♪
0:00:22 ♪ On the road let’s travel ♪
0:00:25 – All right, I got a business that you’re gonna love.
0:00:30 – Okay, so this is a business that in 10 months
0:00:32 has gotten to 10 million in ARR.
0:00:34 – I think I know what you’re talking about.
0:00:37 – Okay, so it started by this French guy
0:00:40 and the business is called Time Left.
0:00:42 – Yep, I had it on my topics list too.
0:00:44 – Okay, so check this out.
0:00:46 I don’t know how deep did you go.
0:00:49 Did you go into the backstory or?
0:00:52 – I know it took a lot longer than it appears.
0:00:56 – Yeah, exactly, it’s a multi-year overnight success
0:00:57 as they tend to be, right?
0:00:59 You’ve heard the phrase like 10 year overnight success.
0:01:01 It’s kind of like that.
0:01:03 So I wanna show you some things about this guy.
0:01:07 So the first thing is this graph.
0:01:09 Here’s the revenue graph.
0:01:10 And if you’re listening on audio,
0:01:13 you should go to YouTube so you can actually see
0:01:15 what we’re showing ’cause it’s way more fun
0:01:17 and you can also see what we look like.
0:01:19 And by the way, I’m Sean.
0:01:21 This voice, this is Sean, the Indian guy.
0:01:24 Sam, talk, you’re the white guy.
0:01:25 You should talk now.
0:01:28 – It’s like they think that I would talk like a white,
0:01:31 like alpha jock because of the way that I look
0:01:33 and I talk like an Indian nerd.
0:01:35 And they think that you would talk like an Indian nerd,
0:01:38 but you talk like a white bro alpha jock, so.
0:01:41 – Exactly, and we need the record to be clear on that.
0:01:42 Okay, who’s who?
0:01:43 All right, so check this out.
0:01:47 So this is the revenue graph, already impressive.
0:01:50 You can see it kind of starts super, super flat
0:01:53 and then gets to now, over a million dollars a month
0:01:55 that this business is generating.
0:01:56 And what does it do?
0:01:59 – What month did it describe that graph?
0:02:04 – Okay, so this is basically, if you start in January
0:02:07 of last year, it’s like zero.
0:02:11 You get to January of this year and it’s still,
0:02:14 the ARR is still under, I don’t know.
0:02:15 – 100K or something like that.
0:02:17 – Tens of thousands, maybe a month.
0:02:20 – Exactly, and now as of October, November,
0:02:23 it’s over a $10 million annual run rate.
0:02:25 It’s crossing 12 and a half million.
0:02:29 And so in 10 months to go to do greater than 10 million
0:02:30 in ARR is great.
0:02:34 It says, he said, it took seven months to reach one million
0:02:38 and then another seven months to get from one to 10, right?
0:02:39 So crazy growth.
0:02:40 Okay, so what’s growing like crazy?
0:02:42 What is this business even?
0:02:46 So TimeLift is a business that is,
0:02:47 it just gets people together for dinner.
0:02:51 It is a solve for the loneliness epidemic
0:02:53 that is everywhere.
0:02:54 And so if you go to their website,
0:02:56 it just says every Wednesday night,
0:02:58 strangers meet for dinner.
0:03:00 Book your seat and meet five strangers over dinner
0:03:03 all matched by our personality algorithm, book your seat.
0:03:06 And in hundreds of cities every Wednesday,
0:03:10 people get together for a dinner with a bunch of strangers
0:03:13 that are kind of curated by this app.
0:03:17 And so you pay something like 20-ish bucks a month
0:03:21 to be a part of this club, be a part of this supper club.
0:03:22 And every week on Wednesday,
0:03:24 they’re gonna set up a dinner and then you go,
0:03:26 then you pay for the dinner separately while you’re there.
0:03:27 They booked a restaurant, they booked a table,
0:03:29 you show up and it’s supposed to be a bunch of other people
0:03:31 that you should find interesting or get along with.
0:03:34 And then you spoke to Bill at the end.
0:03:36 And they claim that they have an algorithm
0:03:38 where it’s like, are you logical?
0:03:39 Are you more emotional?
0:03:40 Are you this?
0:03:41 Are you that?
0:03:42 That helps match.
0:03:43 – Yeah, roughly what age are you?
0:03:46 Are you, you know, kind of single and looking to mingle?
0:03:47 Like, kind of, what are you all about?
0:03:50 And so you take this little quiz and you do that.
0:03:56 – All right, so when I ran my company, The Hustle,
0:03:58 I think we had something like two million subscribers.
0:03:59 And we made money through advertising.
0:04:02 We didn’t actually make that much money per person
0:04:04 reading the newsletter because advertising in general
0:04:06 is kind of a crappy business model.
0:04:08 And so I remember sitting down and I’m like,
0:04:10 what are all the different ways
0:04:11 that I can make money off The Hustle
0:04:13 that aren’t advertising?
0:04:15 And so to make sure that you don’t make this mistake,
0:04:17 Sean, me and the HubSpot team,
0:04:19 we went and looked at a bunch of different ways
0:04:21 to monetize your business.
0:04:25 And we put it all together in a really cool document
0:04:27 where we laid it all out along with our research.
0:04:29 And we call it, very appropriately,
0:04:32 we call it the business monetization playbook.
0:04:34 Go to the description of this episode
0:04:35 and you’re gonna see a link to that
0:04:37 business monetization playbook.
0:04:38 It’s completely free.
0:04:39 You just click the link and you can see it
0:04:40 back to the episode.
0:04:43 (upbeat music)
0:04:48 Now the backstory, so first I found it pretty fascinating
0:04:50 that this business, which is so simple,
0:04:54 a dinner club with strangers is scaling so well.
0:04:55 And this is not a new idea.
0:04:57 Obviously, like people have been doing this
0:04:59 not even as a business for a long time.
0:05:01 I remember when I first moved to San Francisco,
0:05:03 I used to use this app called Let’s Lunch.
0:05:06 It was called and it was same idea.
0:05:07 Every, you would just agree,
0:05:09 hey, I’m down to get a lunch with a random person
0:05:11 who’s also in the tech industry.
0:05:12 And I used it when I first moved there
0:05:15 and I knew nobody, I used it to meet some cool people.
0:05:17 And it’s kind of a hit or miss,
0:05:18 first date without the romance, right?
0:05:20 – Do you remember Grupper before that?
0:05:22 I loved Grupper.
0:05:23 Grupper was my favorite.
0:05:26 It was you and two friends going a group date
0:05:29 with three other ladies and they tell you where to meet
0:05:33 and you have a blind date, a three-way blind date,
0:05:34 I guess a six-way blind date.
0:05:36 – Right, okay, so now here’s the backstory
0:05:37 that I find interesting.
0:05:38 So let me just get you interested in this guy.
0:05:41 And I know that there’s really only one way
0:05:43 to get you interested in a guy.
0:05:44 Do you know what I’m about to show you?
0:05:45 – What’s his calves look like?
0:05:47 – I’m gonna show you a body transformation.
0:05:48 (laughs)
0:05:49 – There he is.
0:05:50 (laughs)
0:05:52 – I’m gonna show you what this founder looks like
0:05:53 without his shirt on, all right?
0:05:56 So not only did he transform his business in 10 months,
0:05:59 I think this is also like a 10 month body transformation
0:06:01 where he went from the skinniest he ever was.
0:06:02 – Did he, was he sick?
0:06:05 – He was trying to run a like ultra race or whatever.
0:06:08 So he got to like less than 10% body fat.
0:06:09 And then he was like, cool, now I’m gonna try
0:06:11 to become the strongest I could ever be.
0:06:14 And in 10 months, he kind of transformed his body too.
0:06:15 So this guy’s pretty fascinating
0:06:16 before doing all of this.
0:06:17 So here’s his story.
0:06:20 So this guy starts out and he’s a nightlife promoter,
0:06:23 which ding, ding, ding is a bit of a pattern.
0:06:25 Scott Harrison from Charity Water,
0:06:29 before he went to save the kids in Africa,
0:06:31 nightlife nightclub promoter in New York.
0:06:32 There are several people who have this same
0:06:35 sort of background story before they make it.
0:06:37 So it starts off as a nightlife promoter.
0:06:40 Then he’s, he decides to start a media company.
0:06:42 And so like you, like I did,
0:06:43 we started, he started a media company now.
0:06:45 His media company was the twist was,
0:06:47 I’m only gonna say good news
0:06:49 because the news is always bad news.
0:06:50 If it bleeds, it leads.
0:06:52 Instead, I’m just gonna tell uplifting
0:06:54 good news stories every single day.
0:06:55 And they did it.
0:06:57 He grew the business to 90 employees,
0:06:59 sold or kind of got acquired
0:07:03 by this larger French broadcasting company
0:07:05 and went through that whole process.
0:07:07 – What was that called?
0:07:09 – I think it had like a,
0:07:11 it’s called buzz, like buzz something,
0:07:13 millennium buzz, something like that.
0:07:14 I don’t know, I don’t know the exact name of it.
0:07:16 And they, and he’s written about it
0:07:18 because they got acquired and they merged,
0:07:21 but they had this horrible deal structure, it sounds like.
0:07:24 Which was, it was a three year earn out.
0:07:26 But the way the earn out worked was,
0:07:28 year one, we’re gonna make all these changes
0:07:29 and invest in the business.
0:07:32 Year two, we’re gonna continue with those changes
0:07:32 and invest in the business.
0:07:34 It’s gonna be losing money.
0:07:37 And then year three, if it hits, if it performs,
0:07:38 you get this big payout.
0:07:40 And if by year three we haven’t done that thing,
0:07:41 you get nothing.
0:07:44 And he basically, that was too aggressive of a plan,
0:07:46 too risky.
0:07:48 They did not hit the three year plan.
0:07:49 It’s kind of a messy divorce.
0:07:52 He gets ousted by the majority shareholder.
0:07:54 And he basically walks away with nothing, sounds like.
0:07:55 I don’t know the exact details,
0:07:58 but it didn’t end well for him.
0:07:59 I think they ended up settling
0:08:00 and he got a little something out of it,
0:08:02 but it wasn’t the thing that he wanted
0:08:03 out of this whole thing.
0:08:07 And this was after creating kind of like this video first,
0:08:10 online only news company that was doing hundreds
0:08:11 of millions of views a month.
0:08:12 And he was getting excited that,
0:08:14 hey, we’ve built something here, that’s the future.
0:08:16 And this traditional company was buying them
0:08:19 and one plus one is gonna equal seven, right?
0:08:20 And it sure didn’t.
0:08:23 So he goes through that experience and he says,
0:08:25 okay, he gets the settlement.
0:08:26 So he finally leaves.
0:08:29 And I think he’s got some money, but he’s got a lot of time.
0:08:30 And so he goes and he decides to travel.
0:08:33 Now this was right when 2020 happens, COVID hits.
0:08:35 And this guy basically,
0:08:37 while everybody else is locked at home,
0:08:39 he’s traveling solo.
0:08:41 He planned, I think to travel for 30 days solo
0:08:43 and it ended up being 700 days
0:08:45 ’cause he was like COVID happened.
0:08:47 And he’s like, well, I might as well just kind of travel
0:08:50 around to different locations.
0:08:52 Anyways, why are they being boarded up at home?
0:08:53 – How old is he?
0:08:56 – He’s, I think 30 years old at the time.
0:09:00 And so he, something like this 30 something years old,
0:09:01 early 30s.
0:09:05 He, during this time he’s posting on social media.
0:09:07 He starts getting some pushback.
0:09:09 And people are like, dude, like there’s a pandemic going on.
0:09:10 I’m stuck at home.
0:09:12 A lot of people are kind of miserable right now.
0:09:14 And you’re out here posting pictures of you on a beach
0:09:16 in Australia or scuba diving
0:09:20 or doing these like kind of fun, exotic solo travel things.
0:09:23 And so he meets somebody and a friend suggests to him,
0:09:27 hey, you should do a little shakeup.
0:09:30 You should have coffee and meet with a hundred strangers.
0:09:33 Do a hundred coffee meetings with strangers.
0:09:35 So he does, he does, he accepts the challenge.
0:09:37 He does a hundred coffee meetings.
0:09:39 And something that happened in that changed his life.
0:09:40 He’s meeting with these people.
0:09:45 And what he realized is that the common denominator
0:09:47 amongst hundred strangers was like, man,
0:09:50 what stood out to him was I meet these people
0:09:52 and I asked them what they’re excited about
0:09:53 or what they dream about.
0:09:56 And their dreams have been snuffed.
0:10:00 Jeff Probst at the tribal council has snuffed their torch.
0:10:01 Basically they’ve forgotten how to dream.
0:10:03 They’ve been suffocated by everyday life
0:10:06 and they don’t really even have like a compelling vision
0:10:07 or dream for themselves.
0:10:10 And so he decides to make his own bucket list
0:10:12 and you can see his bucket list on his homepage.
0:10:14 He got a hundred things he wants to do before he dies.
0:10:15 What’s his name?
0:10:19 I’ve seen Barbier, I think is how you say his name.
0:10:20 French guy.
0:10:22 And if you go to his blog at Daily Max,
0:10:24 you can see a hundred things that are on his bucket list.
0:10:27 Things like swim naked in the ocean, number one, crossed out.
0:10:29 Participate in a protest.
0:10:32 Do a live DJ set at a festival, things like that.
0:10:34 So he’s got this, reached 12% body phase.
0:10:36 He’s got this bucket list for himself.
0:10:37 He decides he’s gonna make an app.
0:10:38 So he says, okay, I got it.
0:10:40 I got my new company.
0:10:42 My new company, and this is kind of like idea one.
0:10:45 In 2020, he says, I’m going to create a app
0:10:48 that lets people create their bucket list,
0:10:50 to create and share your bucket list.
0:10:52 So he sets out, he draws the wire frames,
0:10:56 he finds a coder, he hires a guy, they make the app
0:10:59 and people upload thousands of their dreams to this,
0:11:02 but kind of goes nowhere after that.
0:11:04 So he says, okay, strike one.
0:11:07 So he says, okay, maybe I’ll try something different.
0:11:10 You know, what was the problem with this one?
0:11:11 I got people to create a bucket list,
0:11:12 but they’re not doing anything.
0:11:15 What if I connected people over their dreams?
0:11:18 So it’ll be like Tinder for bucket lists.
0:11:19 And so now this is 2021.
0:11:22 So year two, he says, I’m gonna make a dating app
0:11:25 that’s not dating, meaning you say what your dream is.
0:11:26 I say what my dream is.
0:11:29 If I swipe right on a dream, and both you and I share that,
0:11:30 it’ll connect us over our shared dream,
0:11:33 and maybe we can actually go and do it together, right?
0:11:36 So that’s aspirational people message,
0:11:37 but they don’t actually go do anything.
0:11:39 – Well, this is still under the same,
0:11:42 all under the same name of Time Left?
0:11:43 – Yeah, I should explain that.
0:11:45 So why is it called Time Left?
0:11:48 It’s called Time Left because when he was traveling
0:11:50 and recharging his batteries after that acquisition
0:11:53 and the kind of messy divorce and the settlement,
0:11:55 he ends up doing some math and he goes,
0:11:59 okay, I’m 36 years old or something at that time, 35 maybe.
0:12:01 He goes, so if I’m gonna live until I’m 80,
0:12:03 and he did the math, he goes,
0:12:06 I have 600 months left in life.
0:12:09 And he goes, that’s my time left.
0:12:12 And he read that blog post on Wait But Why,
0:12:14 which was Your Life in Weeks,
0:12:16 where it kind of prints out a poster
0:12:17 that visualizes the number of weeks left.
0:12:19 And he created that, he put it on his wall.
0:12:21 And every week he would take a black dot
0:12:24 and he would mark out one week gone.
0:12:26 And he just had this urgency around himself
0:12:28 about how much time do I really have left
0:12:29 and what do I wanna do?
0:12:31 That’s what spurred the bucket list thing.
0:12:32 That’s what wanted other people to realize
0:12:34 how little time they have left.
0:12:36 And he loved that quote, which was,
0:12:37 I don’t know who says the quote,
0:12:39 but it’s, every man has two lives.
0:12:41 And the second begins when he realizes
0:12:41 that he only has one.
0:12:45 – Does this stuff inspire you as you’re talking about this?
0:12:47 I can’t decide if I am like all in
0:12:50 or if the old man in me is like, that’s a lot of work.
0:12:53 But I’m pretty sure I’m like 60 to 70%
0:12:54 on the side of like, this is inspiring.
0:12:57 I need to have a bucket list.
0:12:58 – Yeah, I get what you mean.
0:13:00 It’s like, I saw these kids that were like skateboarding
0:13:01 and doing tricks by my house.
0:13:04 And I was like, this is awesome.
0:13:04 This is great.
0:13:05 Look at what they’re doing.
0:13:07 They’re having so much fun, they’re doing the thing.
0:13:10 And then I was also like kind of out of breath from watching.
0:13:11 And I was like, okay, if I should probably
0:13:14 just move along with my days, you know,
0:13:15 it is a lot of work to do all this stuff.
0:13:16 – His list is cool though.
0:13:17 – I’m inspired by it.
0:13:19 – Yeah, like he wants to go for a run around Paris.
0:13:20 He wants to get his boating license.
0:13:21 Some of these aren’t crazy,
0:13:23 but then he’s like, I want a world record.
0:13:25 – By the way, sick thing for personal website.
0:13:26 I’m gonna steal this, put this on my site,
0:13:27 which is write your bucket list
0:13:29 and start crossing them out publicly on there.
0:13:30 I think it’s great.
0:13:32 And he links to the story behind each one once he does it.
0:13:34 – It’s great.
0:13:37 – So anyways, he names the company Time Left
0:13:41 because he realizes he’s got about 600 months left in life.
0:13:43 And he starts doing this bucket list thing.
0:13:44 Bucket list doesn’t, so app one,
0:13:46 but create a bucket list, fail.
0:13:48 App two, connect people over shared dreams
0:13:51 now they can message each other, also fail.
0:13:52 Now it’s year three.
0:13:54 And he says, okay, here’s what we’re gonna do.
0:13:55 I’m gonna connect two people.
0:13:58 So you have the same, you want to do the same activity.
0:13:59 I’ll actually like connect you
0:14:01 and get you to go do the thing in real life.
0:14:03 I’m gonna get you off your phone.
0:14:06 The whole point is find somebody to do the thing with.
0:14:07 And it starts off okay,
0:14:09 but then he realizes that women don’t feel safe
0:14:11 doing one-on-one stuff with strangers, right?
0:14:14 So this is kind of like why Grupper worked.
0:14:17 So that’s 2022, another year, no traction.
0:14:21 2023, he says, okay, forget the one-on-one,
0:14:25 small groups doing an activity in the city you love.
0:14:27 And he gets small groups together
0:14:28 and he has one feature on there,
0:14:30 which is like you upload a photo of who you are
0:14:33 so that you, when other people are trying to create the group,
0:14:35 they can just check you out before they do the thing.
0:14:37 Trying to make people feel comfortable.
0:14:39 But what he realizes talking to users,
0:14:41 as soon as you put photos in the app,
0:14:43 very thought of it like dating,
0:14:45 even though it wasn’t a dating app, right?
0:14:46 People immediately wanted to gravitate
0:14:47 towards certain people.
0:14:48 They started judging people.
0:14:50 He’s like, this is not at all what I wanted to do.
0:14:54 So 2023 goes by third year of no progress.
0:14:55 – And he can’t cross off,
0:14:57 have a winning app on his bucket list, you know?
0:14:59 It’s just sitting there, uncrossed.
0:15:04 – Uncrossed, 2024, this year, finally he realizes,
0:15:05 okay, this company’s called Time Left.
0:15:07 Well, I got nine months of cash left.
0:15:10 So now cash left is sitting there realizing,
0:15:11 this doesn’t work.
0:15:14 He had raised $2 million initially back in 2020
0:15:17 for this idea, nobody wanted to invest anymore.
0:15:19 So he said, I had an honest conversation with myself.
0:15:22 And by the way, somebody success story, start with this.
0:15:25 I had an honest conversation with myself.
0:15:26 He says, do I want to continue?
0:15:28 And if I do want to continue, more importantly,
0:15:31 what do I no longer want to continue doing?
0:15:33 And so he realized, he made some rules.
0:15:35 He goes, I want to do an idea
0:15:37 that I can launch in two weeks or less
0:15:38 without any technical team.
0:15:41 So no coders needed.
0:15:43 And I can launch this thing in two weeks.
0:15:45 Number two, I want to actually make some money.
0:15:46 It’s been three years.
0:15:48 I’ve made $0 in the lifetime of this company.
0:15:50 I want to make some revenue.
0:15:53 He goes, three, I want to have it be a group thing,
0:15:55 connecting people over an activity,
0:15:57 but it’s got to work without photos.
0:15:59 Meaning I can’t have it be where people
0:16:00 need to check out the other person
0:16:03 to be willing to go do the activity.
0:16:06 So he comes up with this idea of Time Left
0:16:08 as dinners with strangers.
0:16:10 So in three weeks, he launches this thing.
0:16:13 It’s the first Time Left dinner.
0:16:15 There’s four tables of six people
0:16:19 that he launches with on that Wednesday in his city.
0:16:21 And he makes $110.
0:16:22 And at the time, he does it with just,
0:16:23 he makes a type form.
0:16:27 So just a form you fill out using type form off the shelf.
0:16:29 A WhatsApp account.
0:16:31 That’s how he coordinated all the dinners.
0:16:33 And a Stripe account for how you pay.
0:16:35 And he was able to spin that up in three weeks.
0:16:38 And he was doing all the matching manually for three months.
0:16:41 So he himself was the algorithm, no code.
0:16:42 He was just figuring out,
0:16:43 who should I put together at these dinners
0:16:45 that I think will work?
0:16:47 And then he starts to move it to low code.
0:16:49 And eventually he’s getting 300 people together
0:16:52 every Wednesday, and he makes 20 grand.
0:16:53 But he does the math.
0:16:54 He says, all right,
0:16:56 I still don’t have a lot of cash left here.
0:16:57 I’m default dead.
0:17:00 I’m dying slower than I was before,
0:17:02 but I’m still gonna die unless I figure out
0:17:06 how to do this in a more scalable way.
0:17:09 So he quickly builds a simple app.
0:17:11 And he makes one shift.
0:17:13 He goes, does he have any employees?
0:17:15 It’s just him and a co-founder.
0:17:18 And so he goes, I’m gonna figure out how to do these
0:17:21 without having to go visit the restaurants in person.
0:17:24 ‘Cause what he was doing was he was doing this in his city.
0:17:25 And he would go to the restaurants.
0:17:26 He would talk to them.
0:17:29 He’d say, hey, there’s gonna be a group of six strangers.
0:17:30 They’re gonna come to a table.
0:17:33 You need to seat them, make it comfortable for them.
0:17:34 And then they need to split the bill at the end
0:17:36 and don’t make that awkward for them, okay?
0:17:38 And he was checking out each restaurant himself.
0:17:40 He says, I gotta figure out how to scale this.
0:17:41 So he takes a leap of faith.
0:17:45 He says, we’re gonna do this without doing that pre-step.
0:17:46 We’re just gonna book the restaurant,
0:17:48 book the table and see what happens.
0:17:50 – Do they have, I guess, like automatically used
0:17:54 like a handful of popular booking platforms
0:17:55 or something like that?
0:17:57 – Yeah, open table type of things to book these restaurants.
0:17:59 And so he does it like that.
0:18:00 It works on that Wednesday.
0:18:02 He says, holy shit, this is gonna work.
0:18:04 So now he starts opening up more cities,
0:18:05 not just his city that he’s in.
0:18:07 He’s like, I could do this without geographically
0:18:08 being in the place.
0:18:10 I was being too precious about that.
0:18:13 That was a sacred cow that once I slayed that sacred cow,
0:18:15 oh, the ceiling for my business, you know,
0:18:17 got removed and I could explode this thing.
0:18:19 So now he opens up hundreds of cities.
0:18:21 – How are people hearing about it?
0:18:23 – Ads, so he’s advertising about it
0:18:24 and people are talking organically about it
0:18:26 and he’s getting a ton of free press.
0:18:28 So he’s been written up in 400 free press outlets
0:18:33 because the narrative fits the zeitgeist of today,
0:18:37 which is that people feel that people are too alone,
0:18:38 they’re too depressed.
0:18:41 It fits the trends of people, you know, not getting married.
0:18:45 It fits the trends of people being sad after COVID,
0:18:47 people being in cells of all this stuff, right?
0:18:48 There’s all these other stories
0:18:49 that you could piggyback in News Jack on.
0:18:51 And on top of that, it’s just a feel good mission, right?
0:18:53 I’m getting people together in person,
0:18:55 not on social media, not on their phones,
0:18:56 but actually in real life.
0:18:57 – Listen to the ad. – And it’s working.
0:18:59 – The ad from Facebook, it says,
0:19:00 “Dine with five strangers.
0:19:03 “All match by our algorithm every Wednesday night
0:19:04 “in your city.”
0:19:05 It’s all it said.
0:19:06 It’s nothing.
0:19:07 – Very simple.
0:19:08 And if you go look at their TikToks,
0:19:10 go look at TikTok content about them,
0:19:12 it’s really cool, you can see what’s going on.
0:19:16 And so, in one year now, he’s exploded this thing.
0:19:18 So it’s now in 300 cities.
0:19:20 It’s the app is translated in 18 languages.
0:19:23 He’s got 70 employees that are all ops people,
0:19:25 organizing thousands of dinners,
0:19:27 18,000 dinners a week they have to plan.
0:19:28 – What?
0:19:30 – He did over a million dollars by November,
0:19:34 their IG exploded, they now have a million IG followers,
0:19:35 written up in 400 articles.
0:19:37 And the reason why he says is because I tapped
0:19:41 into a simple, universal, multicultural need.
0:19:42 People want to get together
0:19:44 and they enjoy eating at a restaurant.
0:19:45 And I love the way he talks about this, by the way.
0:19:48 He goes, “I realized that dinner is a technology.
0:19:50 “That if I wanted to get people together
0:19:51 “to actually have a good time,
0:19:54 “dinner is a piece of tech that just works.
0:19:56 “It makes that whole meeting new people thing just work
0:19:58 “because we all know how to do it already.
0:20:01 “It’s an activity every single person knows how to do,
0:20:03 “so there’s no skill required.
0:20:06 “It has a natural flow that we’re all familiar with.
0:20:09 “It has a natural start, beginning, middle and end.
0:20:11 “And at the very least, you’re gonna break bread
0:20:12 “and eat good food.
0:20:14 “At the very best, you might actually meet
0:20:16 “a couple of cool people that you want to have
0:20:17 “on going connection with.
0:20:19 “You’ve met some cool people in your city.”
0:20:21 And how amazing is this dude?
0:20:23 How amazing is this business?
0:20:29 – All right, my friends,
0:20:31 I have a new podcast for you guys to check out.
0:20:33 It’s called “Content Is Profit,”
0:20:37 and it’s hosted by Louise and Fonzie Kameo.
0:20:40 And it’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network.
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0:20:45 for companies like Red Bull and Orange Theory Fitness,
0:20:48 Louise and Fonzie are on a mission to bridge the gap
0:20:50 between content and revenue.
0:20:51 In each episode, you’re gonna hear
0:20:53 from top entrepreneurs and creators,
0:20:54 and you’re gonna hear them share their secrets
0:20:57 and strategies to turn their content into profit.
0:20:59 You can check out a recent episode called
0:21:01 “The Secret to Content That Converts,”
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0:21:08 for effective video production.
0:21:10 So you can check out “Content Is Profit,”
0:21:12 wherever you get your podcasts.
0:21:16 – This is great.
0:21:21 How did he hire, I’m looking at his jobs page.
0:21:23 How did he hire all these people that fast?
0:21:26 – He’s like, “I’m hiring, every week I’m hiring people.
0:21:28 “I’m interviewing everybody myself.”
0:21:31 And the job is pretty simple, which is like, it’s all ops.
0:21:33 It’s all ops and user experience.
0:21:34 So he’s like, you know, we take the dinner,
0:21:35 we try to break it up into moments.
0:21:37 A dinner is not a single thing.
0:21:41 A dinner is, like Scott Harrison said on this podcast,
0:21:42 it’s the moments between the moments that matter.
0:21:44 So you think it’s just about the dinner,
0:21:46 well, break the moments down.
0:21:48 So there’s the greeting, the sitting,
0:21:51 the connecting, initially getting to know each other,
0:21:53 the sharing of information and food.
0:21:56 There’s the bill and the awkwardness of that at the end.
0:21:58 And he’s like, basically, how could we make each one
0:22:00 of those steps a little bit better?
0:22:01 And if we could do that,
0:22:02 we can make the user experience better.
0:22:05 We don’t measure clicks and daily active users.
0:22:07 We measure, you know, how many people
0:22:08 had a great dinner this week?
0:22:10 – Do you think this will, will this last?
0:22:13 – Yes, I think this will last.
0:22:17 I think that some ideas just take like the time,
0:22:18 when the time is right, the time is right.
0:22:21 So in the same way that calm,
0:22:24 the meditation app went from this kind of fringe behavior
0:22:26 that not a lot of people were gonna do,
0:22:29 it seemed like outside of the mainstream,
0:22:31 you know, we all had a buddy who meditated,
0:22:33 but like, you know, it wasn’t a behavior everybody did.
0:22:38 And then only when we all got too hooked to technology,
0:22:41 did the need for calm breakthrough
0:22:43 and all of a sudden calm headspace
0:22:46 of these apps became mainstream.
0:22:47 And I think that this like getting together
0:22:51 with strangers thing, people are lonelier than ever.
0:22:53 They’re more addicted to their phone and technology
0:22:54 than ever.
0:22:56 And, you know, whether it was COVID or was other things
0:23:00 that accelerated the need for something like this to exist.
0:23:02 And so I’m a believer in this.
0:23:04 I think this is like the new meetup.com.
0:23:06 I think this is gonna scale.
0:23:08 And I think that you could build a kind of ritualistic thing.
0:23:11 I think there’s gonna be a lot of churn in this business,
0:23:12 but it’s a huge tam.
0:23:14 Everybody needs this and it’s inherently viral.
0:23:16 You’re gonna tell people you were doing this.
0:23:18 – Well, it’s, they’re charging now in a monthly subscription.
0:23:21 It’s not gonna be a monthly subscription business,
0:23:22 but it’s still gonna be an awesome company, I think.
0:23:25 And I think their branding is fantastic too.
0:23:26 – Yeah, exactly.
0:23:28 I think this is like an inspirational company
0:23:30 that a lot of people are gonna rally behind.
0:23:30 And you could see like,
0:23:32 that’s why the traction is what the traction is.
0:23:35 – I went and read a bunch of reviews on Reddit.
0:23:37 They’re overwhelmingly positive.
0:23:38 People love it.
0:23:40 They’ll say like, we met up.
0:23:43 I was so awkward and uncomfortable at first,
0:23:46 but we hit it off and it was great.
0:23:48 But then what they said was after their dinner,
0:23:51 let’s say their dinner went from like seven to 10 p.m.
0:23:54 At 10 p.m., they said that there was like,
0:23:57 I guess there’s eight people at dinner,
0:23:59 so there must have been 10 other dinners happening
0:24:00 in that city that night,
0:24:03 because 70 other people met up afterwards
0:24:07 at the after party that was also arranged by Dynelift.
0:24:08 And they were like, it was a little too crowded,
0:24:09 but it was awesome.
0:24:11 Like I got to meet these people
0:24:11 and I ended up leaving early,
0:24:13 but I had a fantastic time.
0:24:14 And then there was even,
0:24:17 we have a text group now and there was even an after party
0:24:18 where people were hanging out until 4 a.m.
0:24:20 And I’m gonna do it again.
0:24:23 And so it sounded like people absolutely loved it.
0:24:24 – Yeah, exactly.
0:24:25 And this is a big city problem.
0:24:27 Like dude, it’s so hard to make friends
0:24:28 when you become an adult.
0:24:30 Like once you’re out of college,
0:24:32 you don’t really realize this till you leave college,
0:24:33 but you’re like, man,
0:24:36 my number of new connections that I just get
0:24:41 to stumble into per week drops dramatically
0:24:44 ’cause you’re at home alone or with a couple of roommates.
0:24:49 You have work, which is a static number of coworkers.
0:24:51 And then you might go to like a bar
0:24:54 or go to some place where people,
0:24:57 it’s not clear that people default want to meet you.
0:24:59 And it’s so different than when you’re in school.
0:25:00 And I think that–
0:25:01 – Yeah, particularly men.
0:25:02 – Shocks a lot of people.
0:25:04 – Men just like won’t talk to anyone.
0:25:05 I was reading this thread where it says like,
0:25:08 what’s something that women should know about men
0:25:10 that would surprise them.
0:25:12 And the top comment was,
0:25:14 most men never get a compliment.
0:25:16 And I thought that was pretty funny.
0:25:17 – Yeah.
0:25:21 – It’s always take a story about how they’re with their
0:25:24 boyfriend or something and someone else just like said,
0:25:25 they smell nice or I don’t even remember.
0:25:27 Just some random compliment.
0:25:29 And the guy was like, very affected.
0:25:31 And the woman was like, why are you like that?
0:25:34 He’s like, I haven’t had a compliment in like eight months.
0:25:36 Like no, it said anything nice about me in so long.
0:25:38 And then, so it’s like complimenting–
0:25:41 – Dude, should we change the world right now?
0:25:42 – You look great today.
0:25:44 – And should we create, should we create?
0:25:45 Yeah, exactly, thank you.
0:25:50 – Love your jacket, love your inspector gadget outfit.
0:25:51 Oh, wait, did it wrong.
0:25:56 Should we just start like, you know, like a no-night November?
0:25:57 Should we start a new trend?
0:25:58 Should we pick a month?
0:25:59 And it’s basically just bros complimenting bros.
0:26:00 – Yeah, yeah.
0:26:02 – And it’s like, hey, every day, your job,
0:26:06 you gotta give another guy just a solid compliment.
0:26:08 – Yeah, we’ll call it off.
0:26:11 – A one-way flight to feel good.
0:26:15 And that’s what, what month has like nothing going on?
0:26:19 – Just a bunch of guys being dudes every May.
0:26:20 – Yeah, the march of men.
0:26:22 It’s like, yeah, here we go.
0:26:24 Every March, every day, 30 days,
0:26:26 gotta give another guy a compliment.
0:26:29 – That’s actually a great idea.
0:26:32 – This is also what I wanted to do with like,
0:26:34 you know, people were hosting these MFM meetups
0:26:35 in every city.
0:26:37 This is kind of what I wanted this to be,
0:26:39 which is like, I would love it
0:26:41 if we could do this with like,
0:26:43 if we could basically have time left,
0:26:47 create like an MFM, an MFM button or whatever,
0:26:48 or like, or I don’t know,
0:26:50 somehow somebody create this for our listeners,
0:26:52 which is like, if it was, you know,
0:26:54 on the first of every month,
0:26:55 and it’s always on the first of every month,
0:26:59 there’s a dinner in hundreds of cities around the world,
0:27:00 where you’re gonna meet with, you know,
0:27:01 five other people, six other people
0:27:02 who listen to the podcast.
0:27:05 – We’re gonna have to call it like more than a nod,
0:27:07 because that’s basically like my interaction
0:27:09 with most every man ever is just a nod.
0:27:14 So are we gonna do more than a nod to each other now?
0:27:15 Is that?
0:27:16 – Yeah, exactly.
0:27:18 The nod is pretty effective to be honest.
0:27:19 I see you.
0:27:20 – Yeah, it’s just a nod.
0:27:21 – And I see you and I respect you.
0:27:22 – Yeah.
0:27:26 – Can I ask you a question about your weekend?
0:27:29 You, I have a strong opinion about something,
0:27:32 but I have nothing to do with the industry and you do.
0:27:34 How is, you are at work in the e-com world,
0:27:39 was Black Friday, and I guess Cyber Monday is still for you,
0:27:41 miserable or awesome?
0:27:43 – Well, for me, now I have a full team in place.
0:27:45 So it was awesome.
0:27:46 I didn’t have to do a thing.
0:27:50 I didn’t, I just looked at the app and I said, wow,
0:27:52 that’s a great number right there.
0:27:53 And it was not, I was not on the hook.
0:27:54 You know, it’s like the perfect thing.
0:27:57 I’m not on the hook for the inputs,
0:27:58 but I get the outputs.
0:28:01 Now to be clear, I sweated this business for, you know,
0:28:04 three, four years to be able to get to that spot.
0:28:05 But like, now it’s great.
0:28:09 Before that, I will say, very stressful.
0:28:11 And it’s stressful in the same way
0:28:13 that I don’t love birthdays.
0:28:15 I don’t like forced fun.
0:28:18 And I don’t like high expectations based, you know,
0:28:22 events where it’s like, you need this to go well.
0:28:23 You want this to go well.
0:28:25 It seems like it’s going well for everybody else,
0:28:26 ’cause you’ll just see screenshots
0:28:28 of people just crushing it.
0:28:30 And I remember in the first couple of years,
0:28:33 I was so underwhelmed and disappointed by Black Friday,
0:28:35 which was a combination of me not knowing how to do it.
0:28:38 But really, when you start a brand,
0:28:39 like Black Friday is basically people
0:28:41 who already know about your brand,
0:28:43 who kind of wait around for discounts,
0:28:44 who like your brand to come back,
0:28:47 which for a new brand, you just have a very small pool
0:28:49 of people that already know and care about you
0:28:51 that want to shop, that are, you know,
0:28:53 have been waiting to shop with you for your discount.
0:28:55 So the first couple of years just sucked.
0:28:58 And now it’s amazing.
0:28:59 Now I get why they call it Black Friday.
0:29:00 You know why it’s called Black Friday?
0:29:03 – Yeah, let me tell you the background really quick.
0:29:05 But basically, in the ’70s,
0:29:07 originally Black Friday was negative.
0:29:10 It was called Black Friday because for some reason,
0:29:14 there was a, what was it, Army versus Navy football game.
0:29:16 – It was the Philly police called it Black Friday
0:29:17 ’cause they hated it.
0:29:19 They hated the Friday after Thanksgiving.
0:29:22 – This is the day that all the bad people come in town
0:29:23 and it’s just gonna be crowded.
0:29:25 And then retailers also use Black Friday
0:29:27 ’cause they’re like, this is when our employees
0:29:29 never show up ’cause it’s day after Thanksgiving.
0:29:31 Like Black Friday sucked.
0:29:32 And then like in the ’80s or ’90s,
0:29:35 you know, it kind of got shifted to where Black Friday
0:29:38 now means we’re gonna change it from,
0:29:41 this is your business, your retail business is in the red,
0:29:42 meaning you lose money all the time.
0:29:45 This is the one, the beginning of the season,
0:29:46 the first day of the season
0:29:47 where you’re gonna switch to black
0:29:49 and you’re finally gonna make a profit for the quarter.
0:29:50 – Exactly, exactly.
0:29:52 They flipped it on its head, right?
0:29:56 They lemon-since-lemonated it where this bad day
0:29:58 where, oh, there’s gonna be a huge rush in the city.
0:30:00 Everyone’s gonna try to do their shopping at once.
0:30:01 It’s gonna create traffic.
0:30:03 Then there’s gonna be a bunch of drunk people
0:30:04 because of the game.
0:30:06 And they turned it into this like shopping event
0:30:08 now that the retailers love.
0:30:10 – And then in 2005, a consortment,
0:30:14 there was like a trade group that included like Google
0:30:17 and Amazon and a few other online retailers.
0:30:19 They said, hey, this Black Friday thing,
0:30:22 like that’s pretty good, but like we need our own thing.
0:30:24 And they come up with Cyber Monday.
0:30:26 And so they like collectively agree
0:30:28 to do Cyber Monday together.
0:30:31 And then once Amazon gets even more famous and more big,
0:30:33 they kind of are like, you know,
0:30:36 pushing it forward to where Cyber Monday is huge.
0:30:39 And now all the other retailers are doing it.
0:30:42 But as an outsider, my opinion,
0:30:44 and it’s not entirely rooted in data,
0:30:46 other than there are numbers where like,
0:30:48 if you discount something like, you know, 20%
0:30:50 and you only have a 40% gross margin,
0:30:51 you gotta sell like two times as much.
0:30:54 If you discount it 30%, you have to, you know,
0:30:57 sell three times as, like the stats are pretty crazy,
0:31:00 how much more you need to sell for each 10% discount.
0:31:03 But from an outsider, I hate Black Friday.
0:31:06 Like I just think that it like ruins people’s brands.
0:31:09 Like to me, like everything eventually is gonna turn
0:31:12 into J crew where it’s like, I only buy it when inevitably
0:31:14 they have their 50% off sale.
0:31:16 – Well, actually it kind of works the other way,
0:31:20 which is every brand wants to discount,
0:31:21 but doesn’t want to dilute the brand.
0:31:22 Why do you want to discount?
0:31:24 You got too much inventory left over
0:31:29 and that’s just cash that’s tied up sitting on your shelf.
0:31:32 Maybe it’s expiring, maybe it’s just out of season,
0:31:33 but it’s definitely cash that’s tied up in inventory.
0:31:36 So every brand is not perfect with inventory.
0:31:37 That’s the first problem.
0:31:39 The second is if you want to juice your numbers.
0:31:41 So if you have a way to juice your numbers,
0:31:43 you would love to have more revenue, more profit.
0:31:46 If you could, the problem is, if you just start discounting,
0:31:48 you sort of train people to shop.
0:31:50 But just like you said, the beauty of Black Friday
0:31:52 is it gets every brand air cover.
0:31:55 It says, all right, we’re all gonna do it.
0:31:57 I’m not less of a premium brand
0:31:59 because I’m doing this, right?
0:32:00 I’m gonna join in.
0:32:03 And so you get the kind of middle set of brands, right?
0:32:06 In every category, you’re gonna have the low end
0:32:07 that are always trying to compete on price.
0:32:09 They’re always trying to lower the price.
0:32:10 They’re always trying to discount.
0:32:12 They’re known as discount brands.
0:32:13 You have the mid tier,
0:32:17 which was trying to find that balance between still value,
0:32:18 still a value purchase,
0:32:20 but maintaining some brand premium.
0:32:22 – Would you say that’s like a J Crew?
0:32:24 – I don’t shop J Crew,
0:32:27 so I couldn’t tell you anything about J Crew.
0:32:29 But that’s like a Nike, for example, right?
0:32:30 – Yeah.
0:32:31 – Nike’s not Louis Vuitton.
0:32:33 It’s not truly luxury scarcity,
0:32:36 but it’s also not trying to be 32 degrees,
0:32:39 the Costco athleisure brand, right?
0:32:41 And so you have that middle group
0:32:42 and that middle group,
0:32:45 they want to participate in a Black Friday
0:32:47 because it gives them air cover
0:32:49 to do the discounts like the cheap brands
0:32:51 without being seen as a desperate cheap brand.
0:32:52 ‘Cause it’s like, well, today is the day.
0:32:53 We all do it, right?
0:32:55 And so I think it’s really important for them.
0:32:56 And then you have the luxury brands
0:32:57 who can go the other way
0:33:00 and they could say 0% off.
0:33:02 In fact, it’s 10% more expensive today, right?
0:33:04 ‘Cause they’re gonna use this as a branding moment.
0:33:06 They’re not gonna sell high volume anyways.
0:33:07 So they use this as a moment
0:33:09 to reinforce their position as luxury.
0:33:11 So it kind of works for everybody.
0:33:13 – I think I prefer the last one.
0:33:15 I like, I would hate to have to do this.
0:33:17 I’ve been friends with you and I’ve been friends
0:33:19 with, you know, dozens of other people
0:33:21 who have startups in the e-com space,
0:33:23 not established yet brand, some established,
0:33:26 but and like their Fridays are miserable.
0:33:29 And it seems like their entire year
0:33:33 kind of is, it makes or breaks this two weeks.
0:33:35 Does that seem like accurate?
0:33:37 – It is for a lot of people.
0:33:38 It’s not, that’s not the case for us.
0:33:41 Like I saw somebody who does like 50% of their revenue
0:33:43 for the year in this like eight week sprint
0:33:46 or six week sprint between, you know, Black Friday,
0:33:48 the start of your early Black Friday sales
0:33:51 to the Christmas shipping cutoff.
0:33:53 By the way, can I give you two funny things?
0:33:57 One is Jack Butcher used to do this great
0:33:58 reverse Black Friday sale.
0:33:59 Do you remember this?
0:34:00 – He always did some crazy stuff.
0:34:01 He’s great, man.
0:34:02 He’s an artist.
0:34:03 What are you trying to do?
0:34:04 – So he’s an artist and he knows
0:34:07 that kind of that positioning and count.
0:34:09 Positioning is all counter positioning,
0:34:11 meaning you position yourself relative
0:34:14 to the position above the things.
0:34:15 That’s how positioning works.
0:34:16 It’s all a relative exercise.
0:34:17 And so he gets that.
0:34:19 And so what he did was, I think he had like a course
0:34:20 or something like that.
0:34:22 He would do a reverse Black Friday sale
0:34:24 where he would start the price at a certain thing
0:34:27 and then they would just go up in the like two weeks
0:34:28 leading to Black Friday.
0:34:30 Every day, the prices are going to go up.
0:34:31 So if you want to buy it, buy it now.
0:34:32 Cause for the next two weeks,
0:34:34 prices will go up every single day.
0:34:35 And it wasn’t even really that that was
0:34:37 that effective of a sales tactic,
0:34:40 but it’s like rather than do nothing or dilutra brand,
0:34:42 he decided to use it as a branding moment,
0:34:43 which I thought was cool.
0:34:46 We also talked about the, I don’t know if it was Brooklyn
0:34:47 and who started this,
0:34:49 but it was the old leaked email.
0:34:50 – Chubbies.
0:34:54 – So I stole, I did it and I stole it from Chubbies.
0:34:55 Did they also steal from Brooklyn?
0:34:57 – I think they also, I think they also stole it.
0:34:59 I’ve seen like a ton of people do this same trend,
0:35:01 but we talked about on the pod.
0:35:02 – That seems beneath Brooklyn.
0:35:06 – But most consumers don’t know, they don’t care.
0:35:07 They don’t, they have no idea.
0:35:08 They fall for it, right?
0:35:08 That’s kind of the point,
0:35:10 which is you send this email out to your user base
0:35:14 that looks like it was supposed to be an internal email
0:35:15 where someone on the marketing team is like,
0:35:16 Hey, just doing the testing,
0:35:17 final testing for Black Friday.
0:35:19 I haven’t, you know, the code is X.
0:35:22 You know, go test it out and see if it works.
0:35:25 And then you said a follow up, oh my God, whoops.
0:35:28 That was not meant to send to everybody,
0:35:30 but we’re going to honor it.
0:35:33 They’re not fired, you know, or we know, whatever.
0:35:36 We’ll deal with Jacobs, you know, mess up internally,
0:35:37 but you know, whatever, have at it.
0:35:39 Well, we’re going to leave it up for 24 hours.
0:35:41 And then people go crazy because they feel like
0:35:43 they got access to a leaked discount code.
0:35:44 And it works, by the way, I did that too.
0:35:46 It was super effective.
0:35:49 – I did it in 2019.
0:35:51 Yeah, right before we sold,
0:35:53 about a few months before we sold,
0:35:56 and I did it in 19 and we did it for Trends.co,
0:35:57 which was a digital product,
0:35:59 which is like the best Black Friday deal ever.
0:36:02 I don’t have to fulfill anything and it’s 100% profit.
0:36:03 And I don’t remember exactly,
0:36:06 but we made something like a million dollars in profit
0:36:08 in one day from that email.
0:36:11 – You love Black Friday.
0:36:12 What the hell are you talking about?
0:36:16 – Well, I guess like if I were to own a brand now,
0:36:20 like a particularly, I think Black Friday’s mostly clothing
0:36:23 or furniture, something like a normal retailer.
0:36:26 I don’t think I would do it, but I would be tempted to.
0:36:28 – You’re like those people who live in a gated community
0:36:30 with 12 foot fences around their house
0:36:32 and then want like an open border.
0:36:35 It’s like, bro, your house doesn’t even have an open border.
0:36:36 What are you talking about?
0:36:38 It’s like, you’re like, oh, I hate Black Friday
0:36:41 after you like, you know, totally leaned into Black Friday
0:36:42 and did the like–
0:36:45 – Yeah, once I got rich off of it, now it’s dumb.
0:36:49 – Exactly, it’s dumb beneath me now.
0:36:52 – Oh, you used to do that?
0:36:57 Yeah, no, it’s, did you buy anything yesterday?
0:36:59 – No, by the way, I found it so funny.
0:37:01 There’s a great meme that was like Thursday,
0:37:04 everybody’s like, I’m so thankful for everything that I have.
0:37:06 And I just feel so full, my cup is so full
0:37:08 with all the love and everything that’s in my life.
0:37:10 My life is so, so full.
0:37:13 I’m so thankful for everything, so grateful.
0:37:15 And then Friday, you’re like, I need more or shit.
0:37:18 I don’t have anything, I need, I need more.
0:37:20 You know how much stuff I need right now
0:37:21 that I don’t have?
0:37:23 It’s like, literally the clock strikes 12
0:37:24 and everybody’s attitude flips.
0:37:25 – Dude, you wanna do it?
0:37:27 All right, you were talking about challenges.
0:37:29 How about this challenge?
0:37:32 What if you tried to go one week, so seven days,
0:37:35 without spending a cent on a consumable?
0:37:39 So like your mortgage or rent is okay, daycare is okay,
0:37:42 but like coffee– – Food?
0:37:44 – No, it has to be– – Okay, getting out.
0:37:46 – You can’t eat out, you can’t eat out.
0:37:48 It’s just like what you bought the week before
0:37:49 at the grocery store.
0:37:51 You think you can go seven days without spending a cent.
0:37:55 So you can’t buy anything extra.
0:37:56 – Can I?
0:37:57 Absolutely.
0:37:58 Will I?
0:37:59 Absolutely not.
0:38:00 – I think, I’m down.
0:38:02 I wanna do that as the MFM challenge.
0:38:06 We get a whole week of not buying anything.
0:38:10 They do, dude, look, people do fast.
0:38:11 We gotta do a money fast.
0:38:13 – I’ll tell you what I wanted to do, that you’re not.
0:38:16 I’ll tell you where I’m gonna get your butt to clench.
0:38:19 So I was pretty inspired by Burning Man.
0:38:19 And everybody, if you live in–
0:38:21 – You’ve never gone to Burning Man, have you?
0:38:23 – No, but I’m just inspired.
0:38:25 (laughing)
0:38:28 It’s like a movie, it’s based on a true story.
0:38:31 So everybody, if you live in San Francisco,
0:38:33 people will make you nauseous
0:38:35 telling you how amazing Burning Man is.
0:38:37 And what they’re trying to do is convince me to go,
0:38:39 but what they don’t know about me is,
0:38:42 I’m like a cat where the more you try to pet me,
0:38:43 the further I run away.
0:38:45 So you telling me to do something
0:38:47 only makes it less cool in my books.
0:38:48 And so by this, at a certain point,
0:38:51 I was like, I’m definitely just not going.
0:38:51 Why?
0:38:52 ‘Cause I’m stubborn.
0:38:54 – You’re dug in.
0:38:54 (laughing)
0:38:57 – I am what the French call dug in.
0:39:00 But I was like, oh, what’s cool about it?
0:39:01 And I was like, I do like the idea
0:39:03 of like you go to this deserted place,
0:39:04 you basically build a town.
0:39:08 It’s all barter and free love and all that good stuff.
0:39:09 And then they burn this thing at the end
0:39:11 and it’s sort of symbolic in this way.
0:39:14 And I thought, what’s my version of that?
0:39:15 And I came up with this idea
0:39:18 and I pitched out this dinner and this guy was like that.
0:39:19 So here’s the idea.
0:39:21 I go, we should do a money burn.
0:39:25 I was like, so much of our life is based around money
0:39:26 and wanting money and this attachment to money
0:39:28 and people have unhealthy relationships with money.
0:39:31 And money has this power over you.
0:39:32 And I felt it on me.
0:39:34 Money has a power over me.
0:39:36 It gets me to do what I don’t want to do sometimes.
0:39:37 It gets me to act in ways that are,
0:39:39 I’m ashamed of sometimes.
0:39:43 It just takes up so much of my mind space
0:39:44 that it really shouldn’t.
0:39:47 That portion of my mind can be used on other things.
0:39:48 But money has this power over me.
0:39:49 I go, you know what we should do once a year?
0:39:52 We should do this thing where you take some amount of money
0:39:53 then for everybody, it’s different.
0:39:54 You come with an envelope
0:39:58 and it’s an amount of money that hurts you to burn.
0:39:59 – Oh my God.
0:40:00 – And we burn it.
0:40:03 And I was like, think of A, how it would feel.
0:40:04 B, what it represents.
0:40:08 See how polarizing and how angry this would make people.
0:40:11 How much news and buzz this would create
0:40:13 and how much of a conversation this could create.
0:40:17 I go, imagine if the sort of like tech
0:40:20 head up their ass, you know, elites in San Francisco
0:40:23 do the most obnoxious thing possible.
0:40:25 They go and they literally light money on fire.
0:40:27 And they say they’re doing it for this reason,
0:40:29 but it’s gonna piss off a bunch of other people.
0:40:30 It’s gonna inspire a bunch of people.
0:40:32 I was like, this is actually a tremendous idea.
0:40:35 And my friend was like, dude,
0:40:36 this is one of the best ideas you’ve ever had.
0:40:37 I’m hooked.
0:40:39 Who, which friend say this was good?
0:40:40 Yeah, I have to make sure I never listen
0:40:42 to their opinion ever again.
0:40:44 (both laughing)
0:40:47 – I’m not gonna say their name
0:40:48 because I don’t wanna out them on this.
0:40:49 But they were like, and for years,
0:40:51 every year they text me the same thing.
0:40:52 When are we doing the money burn?
0:40:54 And I don’t do it because I’m like,
0:40:58 I literally already feel anxiety over that idea
0:41:01 of like taking, I don’t know, $7,000 and just burning it.
0:41:05 Just some amount of money that would feel horrible to burn.
0:41:06 What is that minimum special?
0:41:07 – How are you gonna say that you’re willing
0:41:08 to burn $7?
0:41:11 But I’m just saying don’t spend like 150 bucks
0:41:12 in one week on coffee.
0:41:15 – Well, because I think it’s like, if I’m gonna do it,
0:41:18 might as well do the more dramatic, impactful version
0:41:18 of it, you know what I mean?
0:41:21 Like, how good of a story is it?
0:41:23 If I’m like, yeah, and then for one week,
0:41:25 I didn’t drink coffee outside the house.
0:41:26 Like nobody gives a shit, right?
0:41:28 It’s like, okay, it’s like doing a fast
0:41:30 where you still eat sandwiches.
0:41:31 Like, okay, well, that’s not really that impressive.
0:41:32 So if I’m gonna do something,
0:41:35 I’m gonna do something that makes for a better story
0:41:37 than your like consumables fast,
0:41:39 which is not catchy and not buzz-worthy
0:41:41 and not brag-worthy.
0:41:45 – Yeah, I mean, that sounds like a horrible idea,
0:41:47 but I think you should do it.
0:41:49 I would love to watch.
0:41:51 – Imagine there was the money burn, would you do it?
0:41:53 – No, but I would love to watch you do it.
0:41:58 – I’m still too scared to do it.
0:41:59 All right, let’s move on.
0:42:06 So I’m obsessed with being transparent about money,
0:42:09 particularly with ultra-high net worth people.
0:42:11 The reason being is that there’s not a lot of information
0:42:12 on this demographic.
0:42:14 And so, because I own Hampton,
0:42:16 which is a community for founders,
0:42:18 I have access to thousands of young
0:42:19 and incredibly high net worth people.
0:42:21 We have people worth hundreds of millions
0:42:23 and sometimes billions of dollars inside of Hampton.
0:42:25 And so every year, we do this thing
0:42:26 called the Hampton Wealth Report,
0:42:28 where we survey over a thousand entrepreneurs
0:42:31 and we ask them all types of information
0:42:32 about their personal finances.
0:42:35 We ask them about how they’re investing their money,
0:42:36 what their portfolio looks like.
0:42:38 We ask them about their monthly spend habits.
0:42:40 We ask them how they’ve set up their estate,
0:42:41 how much money they’re gonna lead to charity,
0:42:43 how much money they keep in cash,
0:42:44 how much money they’re paying themselves
0:42:45 from their businesses.
0:42:49 Basically, every question that you wanna ask a rich person,
0:42:51 we went and we do it for you
0:42:53 and we do it with hundreds and hundreds of people.
0:42:55 So if you wanna check out the report,
0:42:56 it’s called the Hampton Wealth Report.
0:42:58 Just go to joinhampton.com, click our menu,
0:43:00 and you’re gonna see a section called reports
0:43:01 and you’re gonna see it all right there.
0:43:02 It’s very easy.
0:43:04 So again, it’s called the Hampton Wealth Report.
0:43:07 Go to joinhampton.com, click the menu
0:43:08 and then click the report button
0:43:10 and let me know what you think.
0:43:14 – Yeah, by the way,
0:43:16 I did a great chat GPT prompt about Black Friday.
0:43:19 Just wanna share this prompt, prompt hack.
0:43:22 Prompt hack is, so I go to chat GPT and I’m like,
0:43:24 hey, tell me about Black Friday, the origin
0:43:26 and anything interesting of a blah.
0:43:28 And then it’s like, oh, the Philadelphia Police Department
0:43:29 did this thing, right?
0:43:30 So me and you both did the same thing.
0:43:31 Here’s the prompt hack.
0:43:32 Then I went and I said,
0:43:34 it says something about the Macy’s Day Parade.
0:43:37 I go, tell me about the Macy’s Day Parade
0:43:39 as if you were Malcolm Gladwell teaching me about it.
0:43:40 What would he say?
0:43:43 ‘Cause I just used Malcolm Gladwell as this like,
0:43:47 guy who gets interested in the things that we all overlook
0:43:49 or the things we’ve all like already accepted
0:43:51 and then turns it into like a bigger story.
0:43:53 So he goes, so it just goes,
0:43:56 a tipping point for American consumer culture.
0:43:59 And he talks about how the Macy’s Day Parade was started
0:44:02 by this immigrant and how it was the employees
0:44:04 that were dressing up almost like clowns and cowboys
0:44:07 and knights that borrowed live animals.
0:44:08 And Malcolm would say,
0:44:10 this is how all great movements began.
0:44:13 Messy, grassroots and deeply personal.
0:44:15 And then it talks about each symbol of it, right?
0:44:18 Like the balloons or why the balloons were a genius thing
0:44:19 over the live animals.
0:44:23 And just using this, how Malcolm Gladwell would explain X
0:44:26 or you can switch out Malcolm Gladwell,
0:44:27 but you can be like Richard Feynman.
0:44:29 How would he explain this scientific topic?
0:44:31 It’s such a prompt hack for chatGPT.
0:44:34 It makes chatGPT talk to you in a different way.
0:44:37 Our friend Sahil, he had a tweet and he said,
0:44:40 “What’s the best one shot prompt that you’ve made
0:44:41 in the last 30 days?
0:44:44 It could be for a recipe, a front-end developer,
0:44:47 an image generation, the more specific, the better.
0:44:50 The best answer gets $1,000.”
0:44:53 And it’s all these pretty good like prompts
0:44:56 that people have submitted that were amazing.
0:44:57 Like the simple one that I actually liked,
0:45:01 which is based off of everything that you know about me,
0:45:03 suggests three to five books
0:45:05 that you think I’d enjoy reading.
0:45:06 It was, that was pretty good.
0:45:09 And I went and did that and it suggested a book
0:45:11 that I’m going to start reading.
0:45:13 Another one was, “You are a lawyer that specializes
0:45:14 in working with startups.
0:45:17 Please review this legal document that was sent to you
0:45:20 by your client and summarize each section in plain English
0:45:23 and determine if that’s good or bad for me.”
0:45:25 That’s actually a pretty good one too.
0:45:26 But there’s like–
0:45:27 This is good.
0:45:27 “Today has been chaos.
0:45:29 Ask me questions to help me figure out what to do next.
0:45:31 Don’t stop asking until you are fully sure
0:45:33 you have all of the context of my situation
0:45:36 and can generate an actionable plan for me.”
0:45:37 I use chatGPT this way too.
0:45:42 I use, I tell chatGPT often to ask me questions.
0:45:44 So say, “Your role is this.
0:45:46 I’m trying to figure out X.
0:45:48 I don’t know where to start.
0:45:50 Start asking me questions and don’t stop
0:45:52 until you feel you have necessary information
0:45:54 to give me useful advice.”
0:45:55 Or ask me questions.
0:45:57 And I just keep saying, “Ask me more questions.
0:46:00 I’ll answer parts of their questions along the way.”
0:46:02 And it’s such a useful thinking tool this way
0:46:04 versus just searching and getting an answer.
0:46:07 If you try to say, “Hey, how should I do X?
0:46:08 It’s going to give you a generic answer.”
0:46:11 But if you say, “Ask me the questions that you would need
0:46:14 if you were my coach who has tons of experience
0:46:17 in this subject in order to get me to figure out
0:46:20 the answer to this, it forces you to think about it better.”
0:46:21 Are there like deep questions?
0:46:24 Could it be like marriage advice?
0:46:26 Or could it be like, “What do I do with my life advice?”
0:46:29 Or like, “I’m struggling with this person.
0:46:30 Help me solve it.”
0:46:31 Things like that.
0:46:33 – Yeah, ’cause any of those personal things,
0:46:35 I’ve used it with tax things.
0:46:38 ‘Cause if you ask it a tax question or a legal question,
0:46:39 it’ll give you a generic answer,
0:46:40 but there’s high risk, right?
0:46:42 It doesn’t have all your context
0:46:45 ’cause you don’t know how to give it everything you need.
0:46:46 So it just gives you kind of a general answer,
0:46:48 which could be totally misleading
0:46:49 when it comes to tax or legal.
0:46:51 But instead I say, “Here’s my situation.
0:46:53 Ask me the questions that you would need to know
0:46:55 if you were my lawyer.”
0:46:56 So then it asked me the question.
0:46:58 At that point, now it has the context.
0:46:59 Then I say, “Give me an informed answer
0:47:01 based on what I just told you.”
0:47:03 And then it knows, “Well, you could do X,
0:47:06 but since you said you’re incorporated here, blah, blah,
0:47:07 blah,” right?
0:47:10 And it can give you a smarter answer that way.
0:47:11 – Oh, that’s pretty good.
0:47:13 Have you used it for any other prompts
0:47:17 that are helping you solve like just like life problems
0:47:21 where like a therapist would help guide you
0:47:22 or like an executive coach?
0:47:25 – Yeah, I tell it, it’s my coach or it’s my therapist
0:47:28 or it’s my strategist or it’s my analyst.
0:47:30 And then I’ll either ask it the questions
0:47:32 or I’ll tell it to ask me the questions.
0:47:33 By the way, that’s one of the useful things
0:47:37 about ChatGPT is tell it the role upfront.
0:47:41 So the prompt structure that works is role, goal,
0:47:42 and then I think context.
0:47:45 And so you go role, you say, “You are my research assistant.
0:47:48 Your job is to find examples that support
0:47:50 the ideas that I’m gonna present you.
0:47:51 Goal.
0:47:54 I’m trying to write a really persuasive blog post about X.
0:47:55 So I need to come up with great examples
0:47:57 and counter examples.
0:47:58 And then I’ll give it the context.
0:47:59 The context is blah, blah, blah.
0:48:02 And then it knows the role, it knows the goal,
0:48:04 and then it has the context in order to actually do the job.
0:48:05 – Dude, that’s amazing.
0:48:07 I love ChatGPT.
0:48:09 – That’s why I got my AI tutor every week
0:48:11 to teach me how to actually use these tools better.
0:48:14 – I have a friend that works at OpenAI
0:48:17 and apparently he was able to sell some of his shares.
0:48:20 And he was like, “Do you remember when I told you
0:48:21 I was starting to work there?
0:48:24 And I told you like if things go well, how much money
0:48:27 I think I could make, add a zero to that.”
0:48:30 And that’s just a percentage of the shares
0:48:32 that I sold to achieve that number.
0:48:36 – Wait, can you say like roughly the level
0:48:38 of seniority of this person and roughly the amount
0:48:40 of money they made and roughly what time?
0:48:42 – I’m gonna be very vague on purpose.
0:48:43 I’m gonna say, let’s say they’ve worked there
0:48:44 for two to three years.
0:48:47 And I think according to the news,
0:48:50 like if Business Insider, they just did an article
0:48:52 and they said the average pay, all in pay
0:48:54 was like $800,000.
0:48:57 So if you were making $800,000 three years ago,
0:49:00 let’s say that’s 400 cash, 400 equity.
0:49:03 So you’re expecting 400 a year in equity.
0:49:05 I don’t know how much their value has gone up in three years
0:49:08 but I think 10X, yeah.
0:49:11 So if you’re expecting 400 grand a year in equity,
0:49:14 you would now have $4 million a year in equity.
0:49:15 And if you’ve been there for three years,
0:49:17 that’s $12 million.
0:49:19 – Nice.
0:49:20 – That’s crazy, right?
0:49:23 And that’s like not even all your shares
0:49:26 because I think like they’re known for paying people
0:49:29 even more now that there’s even more competitors.
0:49:32 – And you didn’t even invent artificial intelligence, right?
0:49:36 Like you didn’t even have to do the incredible thing
0:49:37 at that company in order to do that.
0:49:39 You did good work.
0:49:40 And I mean this in a good way.
0:49:42 You didn’t have to pull off a miracle
0:49:43 in order to get incredibly wealthy.
0:49:47 – And you were like the 1,000th employee, like.
0:49:48 – Which is why people should listen
0:49:49 to our Serious List episodes.
0:49:52 And whether you believe that the companies
0:49:54 we picked are right or not, you should do that.
0:49:55 If you’re gonna take a job,
0:49:58 might as well take a job on a rocket ship, right?
0:50:00 Might as well take a job where your equity
0:50:02 is gonna appreciate this like absurd rate
0:50:05 or has like a realistic chance to.
0:50:07 The problem is most people have no ability to assess that.
0:50:11 And it’s not always obvious like for example,
0:50:13 I think OpenAI raised money
0:50:16 at $120 million valuation recently, is that right?
0:50:17 – 120 billion.
0:50:18 – Sorry, 120 billion.
0:50:21 And I would imagine the majority of people
0:50:23 listening to this are saying that’s outrageous.
0:50:26 But in five years, there’s definitely a world
0:50:29 where we look back and be like, that was a steal.
0:50:32 How did I not like put my whole life savings into that?
0:50:36 There’s a world where that’s definitely a possibility.
0:50:40 – Yeah, yeah, there’s still a 10x jump from here
0:50:41 for an OpenAI.
0:50:45 OpenAI has a legitimate, a realistic chance
0:50:46 of becoming a trillion dollar company.
0:50:49 Which you can only say about a handful of companies.
0:50:51 – I was listening to this thing about Facebook
0:50:52 and this guy was talking about working there
0:50:54 and he was like, when I joined,
0:50:55 it was worth $78 billion.
0:50:58 And I thought like, is this peak?
0:51:00 I’m selling everything.
0:51:02 Like I gotta get out.
0:51:04 Facebook’s now worth 1.5 trillion.
0:51:09 And so these numbers, they’re really hard to comprehend.
0:51:13 I mean, dude, have you ever thought about a trillion dollars?
0:51:15 How much is it?
0:51:16 – Honestly, I haven’t.
0:51:20 – A trillion dollars is $1,000 billion dollars.
0:51:23 That is like an insane number.
0:51:24 – They should call it that.
0:51:26 They should call it 1,000 billion and not even trillion.
0:51:28 Trillion actually doesn’t even do it justice.
0:51:29 – That’s so, and you know what?
0:51:30 In about five to 10–
0:51:31 – Is that even right?
0:51:33 Is it a 1,000 billion or is it 100 billion?
0:51:34 – No, it’s 1,000 billion.
0:51:36 – It’s 1,000 billion.
0:51:38 Is that insane?
0:51:39 Is that insane?
0:51:40 That’s insane.
0:51:41 Not only is that insane,
0:51:44 there’s a world where in 10, for sure 20 years,
0:51:46 that a human being is worth that.
0:51:49 Because I think how much is Elon Musk’s worth now?
0:51:51 200 billion?
0:51:55 So if he just has a 7% annual growth rate,
0:51:58 that’s gonna double in 10 years and then double again.
0:52:01 So you’re looking at 800 billion.
0:52:02 That’s just so much money.
0:52:04 1,000 billion.
0:52:05 – He’s the betting favorite
0:52:07 to become the world’s first trillionaire.
0:52:08 – That is so much.
0:52:09 Which would be–
0:52:10 – I think he said that he thinks
0:52:12 Putin might already be that.
0:52:14 Or he said that he’s the richest man,
0:52:16 but he’s not on any of the lists.
0:52:18 – So that would be like, let’s say if you’re worth,
0:52:21 the difference between, so 100 million divided.
0:52:24 So that’d be like the equivalent of a 100,000.
0:52:28 So a trillionaire to a billionaire
0:52:32 is the same thing as a 100 millionaire to a 100,000aire.
0:52:33 Does that make sense?
0:52:36 That’s insane, right?
0:52:37 – That’s insane.
0:52:39 So like the 100 billion dollar person,
0:52:40 it’s someone worth $100,000.
0:52:42 They’re not in the same ballpark.
0:52:44 Like their lifestyles are like drastically different.
0:52:46 Now to a billionaire–
0:52:47 – A billionaire, yeah.
0:52:49 – And a trillion, that’s the, that’s how it differs.
0:52:52 – It makes a billionaire, like just like a six figure,
0:52:54 like W-2 employee.
0:52:57 – Yeah, like one bad medical bill can knock you out.
0:52:59 Yeah, where it’s like, you know what I mean?
0:53:01 Like you still use WoW airline
0:53:03 and you only did it because you got the voucher
0:53:05 for $250 round trip.
0:53:08 Like it’s like ridiculous that I was thinking about
0:53:09 like that math, it’s crazy.
0:53:10 And the reason I was thinking about it
0:53:13 is because Warren Buffett just did this big speech
0:53:16 or this big letter where he wrote that he,
0:53:16 dude, he’s such a good writer.
0:53:19 He was like, father time always wins.
0:53:21 And father time, he’s a mean son of a bitch.
0:53:24 And he, like that’s basically, yeah.
0:53:26 Like he said, like father time’s always wins.
0:53:28 And he’s like a real fickle guy.
0:53:30 And he took my wife Susie before me
0:53:31 and our plan all along.
0:53:34 We just assumed because, you know, he eats horribly.
0:53:36 We were like, we just assumed that I was gonna die first.
0:53:37 And so the plan was that it was her job
0:53:38 to give away all the money.
0:53:40 Unfortunately, she died.
0:53:44 And then we also gave the money to our children.
0:53:44 But you know what’s crazy?
0:53:47 Our children are in their 70s now
0:53:49 and they are not going to live long enough
0:53:50 to be able to give away all of our money.
0:53:53 And so when Susie died, they each got $10 million
0:53:56 and Warren Buffett’s currently worth $150 billion.
0:53:57 So $10 million is nothing.
0:54:00 But they each got $10 million.
0:54:01 And now it’s their job.
0:54:03 When I died to give away the money,
0:54:04 I don’t think they’re gonna live long enough
0:54:06 to be able to give away this much money.
0:54:08 And the future generations,
0:54:10 I don’t know them as well as my current kids.
0:54:12 And I trust my current kids,
0:54:14 but you know, it’s hard to say with my future generations.
0:54:16 And so they have this monumental task
0:54:18 to give away all of this money.
0:54:20 And if they don’t, it has to go to this foundation
0:54:22 where everyone has to vote on it.
0:54:24 Because this way each of the children,
0:54:26 as well as the grandchildren have an excuse to say something
0:54:27 like, well, my brother doesn’t think
0:54:28 that’s a good investment.
0:54:30 I’m so sorry, I got to pass on you.
0:54:32 And so he wrote this letter explaining
0:54:33 a bunch of tips and tricks.
0:54:36 He’s like, even if you’re rich or you’re wealthy,
0:54:38 my opinion is you should discuss your will
0:54:39 with your children before you die.
0:54:42 It’s a great way to bring the family together.
0:54:43 Like he, and he also says–
0:54:44 – That’s so funny, by the way.
0:54:47 Isn’t it funny that will is like the surprise?
0:54:48 – It is weird.
0:54:49 It is weird.
0:54:51 – It’s like, ooh, let’s open up the time capsule,
0:54:52 see what was it.
0:54:53 Like, why is it a surprise?
0:54:54 That doesn’t even make sense.
0:54:55 – Dude, there’s so many issues with wills
0:54:57 that I’ve learned about.
0:54:59 ‘Cause we’re setting up a state like, for example,
0:55:01 a lot of people, and he talks about this,
0:55:02 but I’ve read about it constantly,
0:55:06 and I know friends, their wills aren’t equal.
0:55:08 So, particularly women.
0:55:09 So, and then like Vanderbilt’s did this,
0:55:12 where it was like, the women get 400,000,
0:55:14 the men each get $10 million.
0:55:16 And it creates like all this like anger
0:55:19 amongst siblings, which ruins families.
0:55:20 And he talks about that in his letter.
0:55:21 And so it was a really good letter
0:55:25 that he just released like last week about how he’s–
0:55:28 – Didn’t he sign the like giving pledge, though, right?
0:55:29 Like–
0:55:30 – Yeah, but he pledged,
0:55:32 I don’t think he pledged a percentage.
0:55:34 I think he pledged an amount that he said in the letter,
0:55:36 and he’s like, but the amount is now huge.
0:55:39 So I need to give more.
0:55:41 And so, yeah, he’s giving it all away.
0:55:43 – No, he said 99% of my wealth will go to philanthropy
0:55:46 during my lifetime or at death.
0:55:47 Maybe it’s just that the 1% is now huge.
0:55:49 Is that what the, is that the issue?
0:55:51 – I didn’t understand, well, I didn’t understand
0:55:53 because in the letter, it was like,
0:55:57 I am now gifting 150,000 shares of Berkshire Hathaway.
0:55:59 Previously we did this, but now we need to give more.
0:56:02 So he didn’t reference the giving pledge.
0:56:05 It was like an absolute amount, not a percentage amount,
0:56:08 other than saying he gave each of his kids $10 million.
0:56:11 And he’s like, that’s all I gave them.
0:56:13 – So he’s selling,
0:56:15 these gifts I’m making today
0:56:20 reduce my holdings of Berkshire shares to 206,000,
0:56:24 a 56% decrease since my 2006 pledge.
0:56:25 So he’s cutting it in half.
0:56:28 And so how much is that, 206,000 shares.
0:56:31 – I think it’s $1.5 billion that he just gave away.
0:56:37 – I think it’s more, dude, how much Berkshire A stock
0:56:39 is 700 grand a share.
0:56:42 So 700 grand a share times 250,000,
0:56:46 just to use round numbers is almost, oh, sorry, wait.
0:56:48 700,000. – It’s like, did my calculator,
0:56:50 – Yeah, how many commas is this?
0:56:53 – Is that 200, almost 200 billion.
0:56:55 – Oh yeah, well, that’s a lot of money.
0:56:56 – What’s happening?
0:56:59 – The point, the numbers are so grand
0:57:02 that it’s frankly, incredibly hard to comprehend.
0:57:06 But basically he’s making like the largest gifts of all time.
0:57:09 – I can’t believe we just agreed to do public math.
0:57:12 It’s like, we only have like two rules here.
0:57:14 One, don’t get canceled.
0:57:17 Two, don’t embarrass yourself by doing public math.
0:57:18 And we did it.
0:57:21 – Yeah, we did it a bunch of times, frankly.
0:57:23 But dude, it’s a good article, right?
0:57:24 You’ll have to read that.
0:57:25 – Yeah, I’m gonna read this thing.
0:57:27 – Buffett talking about giving away $150 billion,
0:57:30 but he’s doing it in a way that we can easily understand
0:57:32 by saying everyone should read their will
0:57:33 before they die with their children.
0:57:35 – Dude, Buffett doing anything, I’m in.
0:57:38 I’m so in on Buffett telling any story
0:57:40 or talking about any subject of his liking.
0:57:43 He is absolute blank check of attention from me.
0:57:45 (laughing)
0:57:46 Right?
0:57:47 – Yes, yes.
0:57:50 – Like Bill Simmons had this thing that he coined once
0:57:52 called the Tyson Zone about Mike Tyson, where he goes,
0:57:55 “The Tyson Zone is when somebody reaches a level of crazy
0:57:58 “that somebody could tell you anything about Mike Tyson
0:58:00 “and you would believe it.”
0:58:02 Like if it was like, oh, Mike Tyson got arrested
0:58:04 ’cause he’s been eating sharks every morning.
0:58:06 It’s like, oh, fuck, that’s crazy, you know?
0:58:08 He bit an ear, he’s going to jail.
0:58:11 It’s like, there’s no story that is out of bounds
0:58:12 on Mike Tyson.
0:58:15 And I feel like the Buffett zone is basically somebody
0:58:19 who you have my undivided attention at will.
0:58:21 Whenever you want it, for however long,
0:58:23 if he’s like, I’m doing a 16 hour live stream,
0:58:25 I’d be like, okay, well, I guess I better, you know,
0:58:26 like get a comfy chair
0:58:28 ’cause I’m going to be here for 16 hours today.
0:58:31 You know, like there is no, there is nothing more
0:58:32 than Buffett could do that I would not be interested in.
0:58:34 If he was just like, I’m going to live stream myself,
0:58:36 like, you know, like doing ASMR, eating soup,
0:58:38 I’d be like, all right, I’m in.
0:58:40 – I’m going to start just like attributing facts
0:58:42 and stats to him.
0:58:44 You know what Buffett says, he says.
0:58:47 – Yeah, Buffett says is the new Harvard study.
0:58:48 – Yeah.
0:58:50 – Yeah, there was a study at Harvard
0:58:53 to support whatever point I’d like to make.
0:58:57 And similarly, you know, Buffett once said X.
0:59:00 – Oh, really quick.
0:59:02 Can you tell me if this is true?
0:59:04 Is this Enron thing a joke?
0:59:08 – I think it’s real, but I’m not sure.
0:59:09 – All right.
0:59:13 – Which is, I hope it’s a joke, which is, what is it?
0:59:14 What’s the story?
0:59:16 Did someone bought Enron and is relaunching it
0:59:17 as a crypto token?
0:59:21 Like, it’s like worse than a bad like Silicon Valley plot.
0:59:25 – I don’t know if the story is out,
0:59:28 but the Twitter handle Enron,
0:59:32 which Enron, if you are, you know, under the age of 28,
0:59:33 you probably don’t even remember this,
0:59:34 but Enron is like-
0:59:36 – It’s like FTX for oil.
0:59:39 – Yeah, it was like an oil energy company in the ’90s
0:59:41 that was one of the biggest companies in the world.
0:59:44 And then in a month’s time, it went bankrupt
0:59:46 and it turns out because the executives
0:59:47 had all committed fraud and a bunch of them
0:59:49 even killed themselves before they got sentenced
0:59:51 and a lot of them got went to prison, whatever, horrible.
0:59:54 On Twitter, somebody is now tweeting
0:59:57 from the Enron Twitter handle with their logo
0:59:59 saying, “We’re back.”
1:00:03 And they are talking about their new decentralized product.
1:00:07 And no one online knows is this real or is this not.
1:00:09 But it’s the perfect way to say,
1:00:11 “Fuck you to the crypto crowd,”
1:00:12 ’cause that’s basically what they’re doing.
1:00:14 They’re just sitting in a room, they’re like,
1:00:18 “Should we name our new crypto scam after a scam?”
1:00:19 “Dude, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude,
1:00:21 “two wrongs to make a right?”
1:00:22 Like this is a lot.
1:00:24 – It’s like when a rapper samples an old song
1:00:25 and they’re like, “Yeah.”
1:00:27 (all laughing)
1:00:29 It’s like a new fraud sampling an old fraud.
1:00:31 – Yeah, they’re remixing crime.
1:00:33 (all laughing)
1:00:35 – Dude, can I just give you one rant real quick?
1:00:38 I was watching this video that was like, it’s called,
1:00:38 I was on YouTube, it’s called,
1:00:40 “The Elon Musk Learning Method.”
1:00:42 I was like, “All right, click.”
1:00:45 That’s like another Warren Buffett says.
1:00:46 – Yeah, exactly.
1:00:47 Elon explaining how he does this
1:00:50 or like some back story about Elon.
1:00:53 But one thing he says in it, which I think is just,
1:00:55 it just struck me, this is an obvious point,
1:00:58 but I guess the implications of it
1:01:00 really just like slapped me in the face.
1:01:03 He was like, people say like,
1:01:05 we have to give people better access to education.
1:01:08 He goes, “That could not be further from the truth.”
1:01:12 He’s like, you can literally learn anything.
1:01:14 Everything you want to learn is available online
1:01:18 at a world-class level for free to anyone
1:01:20 who has an internet connection, which is almost everyone.
1:01:23 And he’s like, basically, there is no lack of access
1:01:25 to education.
1:01:26 And it’s so true.
1:01:28 Like if I want, if I was like, oh man,
1:01:29 I wish I could have gone to Harvard.
1:01:31 Okay, just Google it.
1:01:33 Watch, every Harvard lecture you want is online.
1:01:35 You could sit there, you could get a Harvard
1:01:39 computer science education today for free
1:01:41 in your underwear at home.
1:01:42 And nobody does it.
1:01:44 And that’s like the second mind-blowing point.
1:01:46 – I spent hours this week in learning
1:01:48 how different magic tricks were done on YouTube.
1:01:51 Hours.
1:01:53 I can’t be fooled.
1:01:56 – Oh, not even learning how to do them?
1:01:57 – No.
1:01:58 – Just learning how they’re done?
1:02:01 – I just needed to confirm that David Blaine
1:02:02 was just a human.
1:02:03 Yeah.
1:02:08 – Dude, when that show came out,
1:02:09 Magician’s Greatest Secrets revealed.
1:02:10 Do you remember that?
1:02:11 – I was so pissed.
1:02:13 – I remember literally thinking to myself,
1:02:17 I was like, TNT, you sure do know drama.
1:02:19 This is an amazing premise.
1:02:22 They were like, this magician has to wear this mask
1:02:24 ’cause if his peers in the magic industry
1:02:25 knew what he was about to tell you,
1:02:26 – They’re gonna kill him.
1:02:27 – He would be killed.
1:02:28 That’s just lies.
1:02:31 He could never show his face in a magic room again.
1:02:33 I was like, oh, holy shit.
1:02:35 Mom, mom, where’s the remote?
1:02:37 And I was like, it was like pre-recording.
1:02:39 I was like, got a notebook out.
1:02:40 And I was like, oh my God,
1:02:41 how do they do it?
1:02:43 And he just showed you every magic trick
1:02:44 and how they do it.
1:02:45 – That’s the greatest.
1:02:46 – That’s the greatest.
1:02:47 – That’s the greatest.
1:02:49 That’s the absolute greatest.
1:02:51 – That’s what I do on YouTube.
1:02:52 Like, you’re telling me
1:02:55 he didn’t actually bite that quarter and a half?
1:02:58 (laughing)
1:02:59 – Oh, that’s so insane.
1:03:01 – What were you saying about Elon though?
1:03:01 – Doesn’t matter.
1:03:02 That’s the fun.
1:03:03 (laughing)
1:03:04 – All right, that’s it.
1:03:06 ♪ I feel like I can rule the world ♪
1:03:09 ♪ I know I could be what I want to ♪
1:03:11 ♪ I put my all in it like no days off ♪
1:03:14 ♪ On a road let’s travel never looking back ♪
1:03:20 (electronic music)
1:03:22 – Hey everyone, a quick break.
1:03:25 My favorite podcast guest on my first million is Darmesh.
1:03:26 Darmesh founded HubSpot.
1:03:27 He’s a billionaire.
1:03:30 He’s one of my favorite entrepreneurs on earth.
1:03:31 And on one of our podcasts recently,
1:03:35 he said the most valuable skill that anyone could have
1:03:38 when it comes to making money in business is copywriting.
1:03:39 And when I say copywriting,
1:03:42 what I mean is writing words that get people to take action.
1:03:43 And I agree by the way,
1:03:45 I learned how to be a copywriter in my 20s.
1:03:47 It completely changed my life.
1:03:48 I ended up starting and selling a company
1:03:50 for tens of millions of dollars.
1:03:53 And copywriting was the skill that made all of that happen.
1:03:55 And the way that I learned how to copyright
1:03:57 is by using a technique called copywork,
1:04:00 which is basically taking the best sales letters
1:04:02 and I would write it word for word
1:04:04 and I would make notes as to why each phrase
1:04:06 was impactful and effective.
1:04:08 And a lot of people have been asking me about copywork.
1:04:09 So I decided to make a whole program for it.
1:04:12 It’s called copy that copy that dot com.
1:04:13 It’s only like 120 bucks.
1:04:16 And it’s a simple, fast, easy way
1:04:18 to improve your copywriting.
1:04:19 And so if you’re interested, you need to check it out.
1:04:20 It’s called copy that.
1:04:23 You can check it out at copy that dot com.
1:04:25 (upbeat music)